BVIP II

And like that, I've reached my one hundred fiftieth batch. Keeping with my tradition of brewing a big dark beer every twenty-fifth batch, I returned to what was such a monumental hit at batch #50, Denny Conn's bourbon vanilla imperial porter. A perfectly refined porter recipe with the addition of vanilla beans and bourbon to approximate barrel aging, this treated DeAunn and me very well on our honeymoon.

I played it pretty much exactly like last time, though the original gravity was quite a bit lower (last time it was 1.085) and I left the vanilla beans in for better than a month, rather than a couple weeks. Nevertheless, it tasted great at bottling and I'm looking forward to cracking open one of these despite the approaching warm weather.

BVIP II
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.072
Projected SRM: 41.1
Projected IBU: 35.0
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 65%   

Grains
64.0% - 12 lb Rahr 2-row
13.3% - 2.5 lb Weyermann Munich I
8.0% - 1.5 lb Brown malt
6.4% - 1.25 lb UK Chocolate
5.3% - 1 lb C120
2.7% - .5 lb C40

Hops
.7 oz Millennium (15.9%) (60 min)
1 oz EKG (5.7%) (10 min)

Yeast
WY1450 Denny’s Favorite 50 (12.29.2015) - 1.8-l stirplate starter, crashed on brewday

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
2.5 Vanilla beans, chopped & scraped (secondary)
300 ml Bourbon (bottling)

Water (mash)
Base Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
Target Profile: London (brewersfriend.com)
96.1 Ca, 15.6 Mg, 27.0 Na, 58.3 Cl, 2.6 SO4
Alkalinity 103.1, RA 25.4

Brewday: 6 March 2016
Mash: 24 qts @ 152F for 60 minutes
1st sparge: 8.5 qts @ 190F
2nd sparge: 9 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume: 8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 15P (1.060)

Salt additions (mash): 5g Epsom salts, 1g Salt, 3g CaCl, 13g Chalk, 1g Baking soda, 10 ml Lactic acid (88%)

6 gallons at 18P (1.072) to fermenter at 61F. Fermented in swamp cooler at 63F ambient.
Extra runnings (including lots of trub) went to a gallon jug; added water to reach about a gallon. OG 12.8P (1.050), dosed with harvested WY1469.

Vigorous activity within 12 hours. Swamp cooler free rose to 64F ambient over the day.

On day 2 of active fermentation, temp surged and the krauesen rose out of the bucket (stopper hole was covered with aluminum foil. Swamp cooler temp had been pushed to 66F. After cleanup & blowoff setup, fermenter was put back in swamp cooler held at 62-63F ambient. Came out of swamp cooler after high krauesen & finished at 68F ambient.

Secondary: 23 March 2016

Bottled: 30 April 2016
FG: 1.021
ABV: 6.9%
Bottled with 300ml Jim Beam bourbon and 3.8 oz table sugar.
Adjusted ABV: 7.4%

Winter Porter

My last several batches have been more on the hop forward side, and I longed for a dark beer to pair with the colder weather. Following the old BJCP style guidelines, I believe this would fit pretty well into the mold of a brown porter; with the 2015 revision, for style considerations it now sits as an "English porter."

The beer came together without incident, but the yeast behaved differently than I expected. My experience with West Yorkshire Ale is that the kraeusen hangs around long after active fermentation ceases. This time around, I saw almost no visible activity other than a bit of trub ring. Though this batch had plenty of time to sit at room temp at the end of fermentation, this batch showed lots of diacetyl shortly after bottling. Fortunately, a lot of that has seemed to dissipate over time. The resulting beer is pleasant, though it has an edge that I attribute to too much roast malt. I kept pushing up the roasted grains in BeerSmith to get it dark enough; the end result is plenty brown-black, but could probably do with a reduction in these malts to keep it from getting to acrid. The remaining diacetyl works with the acrid roast character in a not unpleasant way, resulting in a bit of dark fruit character rounding out the flavor. Not bad; would rebrew with tweaks.

Winter Porter

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.045
Projected SRM: 29.1
Projected IBU: 27.9
Boil time: 70 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 66%   

Grains/Fermentables
67.5% - 7 lb Rahr 2-row
14.5% - 1.5 lb Brown malt
9.6% - 1 lb UK dark crystal (75-80L)
4.8% - 8 oz UK Pale Chocolate
3.6% - 6 oz UK Chocolate

Hops

.3 oz Millennium (15.9%) (60 min)
1.3 oz EKG (5.7%) (10 min)
.3 oz Styrian Goldings (3.8%) (10 min)

Yeast
WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - no starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)

Water (mash)
Base Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
107 Ca, 11.2 Mg, 44.1 Na, 63.7 SO4
Alkalinity 171.6, RA 88.7

Brewday: 10 February 2016
Mash: 13 qts @ 154F for 60 minutes + 2 qts @ 212F to get to temp
1st sparge: 12 qts @ 190F
2nd sparge: 13 qts @ 180F
Pre-boil volume:  gallons
Pre-boil SG: 10P (1.0)

Salt additions (to mash): 1 g Gypsum, 3 g Epsom salt, 4 g CaCl, 11 g Chalk, 5 g Baking Soda, 8 ml Lactic Acid (88%)

5.8 gallons at 64F to the fermenter; no aeration past transfer splashing.
Fermented in swamp cooler at 65F ambient.

13 February 2016: Visible activity stopped without any sign of the never-ending krauesen characteristic of this yeast. Removed from swamp cooler & agitated; sat at ambient (68F). Moderate surface bubbling—not a real krauesen yet—appeared over the course of the day.

Bottled: 2 March 2016
FG: 1.018
ABV: 3.5%
Bottled with 3.4 oz table sugar.

Moved final gallon onto Sour Culture No. 2.

Sour Bottled: 30 April 2016
FG: 1.013
ABV: 4.2%
Good lactic sourness.
Bottled with .3 oz table sugar.

Tasting

RIS III: (nearly) 2-Year Tasting

This was my last big "quarter century" beer--brewed a bit over two years ago--and my third (of three, to date) imperial stout. Not only were the roasted grains put front and center here, but I even cleared the grain bill of really anything else; the grist is about 80% base malt, the remaining 20% made up of brown malt and roasted barley.

That's a hell of a lot of dark grain, and it showed. I liked the beer all right when it was younger, but it was not easy to finish a bottle. It did all right in competition last year, but I saw a lot of truth in the judges' comments about its high residual sweetness and astringency. I ended up dumping nearly all of the bottles months ago, saving a few with the intent of cooking with them.

On a whim, I threw a bottle in the fridge the other week. After nearly two years in the bottle, I found it to have softened and rounded out considerably. I'm definitely bummed now that I only have a few bottles left, but it definitely cheers me up as I consider finally doing a vertical tasting of my first three beers in this series.

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Appearance: Jet black, the edge rimmed with tiny mocha bubbles.

Smell: Plums, big chocolate note jumps out of the glass. Fanfuckingtastic.

Taste: Fruity, high-percentage cacao dark chocolate. Comes on strong with some booze initially, but then clears out relatively quickly. It manages to avoid being syrupy despite the high FG (1.032).

Mouthfeel: Medium-thick and full; pretty mouth-filling but not overly heavy. Enough carbonation to help clear it off the palate. It (thankfully) has left heft than many huge imperial stouts.

Overall: Could use a little more going on in the middle (caramel malt, perhaps) but a damn sight better than it was in its first year. The acrid/astringent notes have mellowed considerably, leaving chocolate, fruit, and booze. It's a good lesson in patience; maybe I should just bury the next batch in an undisclosed location for a few years.

SMaSH II Tasting

The prevailing opinion these days seems to be that SMaSH beers are more useful as experiments to get to know particular ingredients than as "refined" recipes for heavy rotation imbibing. While I'll admit that the two SMaSHes I've done now haven't made me the most excited of anything I've brewed, this one in particular isn't terribly hard to drink. Though I doubled the hops from my first SMaSH, I'll probably push up the hopping rate further for subsequent batches. I do get some flavor & aroma contributions from the Sterling here, but this rates as a solid blonde ale. To really get the full sense of the hops, I'll probably aim for more West Coast pale ale character going forward.

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Appearance: Burnished gold, a touch hazy.

Smell: Slight toast, warm malt. Hops come out as herbal and earthy. Maybe just a little citrus hiding in the back.

Taste: Crisp, herbal, slightly orange. It intensifies as it moves to the back half of the tongue, finishing warm and bready. An herbal note lingers.

Mouthfeel: Medium-lean body, mid/low carbonation that gives it just a little bite around the front and sides of the tongue. Not difficult to take the next drink.

Overall: Though it's not terribly complex, it's an easy drinker. The Vienna makes a good impression here. I could use more Sterling character...or maybe I couldn't, as the lingering herbal note isn't necessarily my favorite. I could see this hop working well in a lager.

Double IPA

With few exceptions, my hoppy beers haven't been terribly successful. My attempts to brew double/imperial IPAs have met with outright failure. But hope springs eternal, and here I am, giving this style another shot.

I blame having a few opportunities over the past couple years to bury my face in a Pliny the Elder at Russian River's brewpub; living on this end of the country definitely has its advantages. For me, this beer still captures the best of hop flavor and drinkability that this style can offer. So, as many before me have done, I loosely modeled this recipe on the one Vinnie Cilurzo has given out freely for many years now.

That being said, I swapped Vinnie's crystal and carapils for dark Munich to add a touch of maltiness and added flaked oats for...well, because I can't help myself. With my excessively low mash temperature, I may yet regret the lack of unfermentables when I check the FG. Hey, I like a well

attenuated beer, so I guess we'll just see. I stuck with CTZ, Simcoe, and Centennial for hops, but added a significant amount of fruity Amarillo to the hop party. (I still have a bunch left over from last year, and I see a Yellow Snow-inspired IPA on the horizon to take care of that.) I also added a hell of a lot of brewing salts to the mash, chasing Tasty McDole's mineral concentrations I recorded from a Session at some point. I've been pleased with--or at least not offended by--the water manipulation I've done in the last few years, but this is another level of messing around.

While I certainly have a lot of trepidation revolving around this batch, fermentation on the Cal ale yeast cake from my recent SMaSH beer took right the hell off, but I easily kept fermentation temps low in a swamp cooler. With the first charge of dry hops in the carboy, it smells amazing; I'm fired up to see how it all turns out in the end.

BRING IT ON

Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.073
Projected SRM: 5.4
Projected IBU: 110.6
Boil time: 70 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 60%   

Grains/Fermentables
69.8% - 11 lb Rahr 2-row
12.7% - 2 lb Flaked oats
9.5% - 1.5 lb Weyermann Munich II
7.9% - 1.25 lb Table sugar (primary)

Hops
1 oz Columbus (15.2%) (60 min)
1 oz Simcoe (11.6%) (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (11.2%) (10 min)

1 oz Amarillo (10.7%) (0 min - 60 min whirlpool/hop stand)
1 oz Centennial (8.5%) (0 min - 60 min whirlpool/hop stand)
.5 oz Simcoe (11.1%) (0 min - 60 min whirlpool/hop stand)

2 oz Amarillo (dry hop #1 - 10 days)
2 oz Centennial (dry hop #1 - 10 days)
1.5 oz Simcoe (dry hop #1 - 10 days)

1 oz Amarillo (dry hop #2 - 5 days)
1 oz Centennial (dry hop #2 - 5 days)
1 oz Simcoe (11.6%) (dry hop #2 - 5 days)

Yeast
WLP001 American Ale - cake from SMaSH II 

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)

Water (mash)
Base Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
114.1 Ca, 18.2 Mg, 10 Na
43.3 Cl, 264.6 SO4
Alkalinity -123.8, RA -215.8

Brewday: 17 January 2016
Mash: 146F for 70 minutes (intended 151F)
Pre-boil volume: 8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 12.8P (1.050)
Post-boil OG (w/o sugar): 15.6P (1.062)

Salt additions (to mash): 14 g Gypsum, 6 g Epsom salts, 3 g CaCl, 12 (should’ve been 14) ml Lactic acid (88%)
Chilled to 58F.
5.6 gallons to fermenter; 45 seconds of pure O2 at pitching.
Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F ambient.

Sugar addition #1 (.75 lb): 22 January 2016

24 January 2016: moved out of swamp cooler to ambient temp (~66F).

Sugar addition #2 (.5 lb): 25 January 2016

Dry hop #1: 27 January 2016

Dry hop #2: 2 February 2016

Bottled: 6 February 2016
FG: 1.009
ABV: 8.5%
Bottled 5.5 gallons with 4.3 oz table sugar.

Tasting

2015 Barleywine

I admire brewers that produce annual "special" beers. From Sierra Nevada Bigfoot to Mike Tonsmiere's funky dark saisons, these can make for some very special comparative samplings. While I do mark every twenty-five batches with a big, dark beer, alternating between imperial stouts and Baltic/imperial porters, it can be several years between these batches. Usually, very few bottles from each batch remain to compare to the next. So at the end of 2015, I finally brewed my first barleywine, which I plan to rebrew annually in some form and (mostly) save for vertical tastings.

I shot for an American interpretation, somewhat in the style of Bigfoot. In light of how my Munich II SMaSH turned out, that grain should lend plenty of malty oomph to augment the crystal additions. The hops are geared mostly for bitterness; I don't plan to drink this terribly young, so I'm not worrying too much about the aromatics. The smaller batch size should be enough to taste over the span of 2016 and still leave some for comparison with future iterations. I dig establishing a new tradition.

2015 Barleywine

Batch size: 3.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.109
Projected SRM: 14.9
Projected IBU: 127.7
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 59%

Grains/Fermentables
63.2% - 9 lb Rahr 2-row
15.0% - 2 lb Weyermann Munich II
5.3% - 12 oz C40
3.5% - 8 oz C80
14.0% - 2 lb Table sugar (primary)

Hops
1.1 oz Columbus (15.6%) (60 min)
2 oz Centennial (8.5%) (15 min)

Yeast
1 pkg US-05, rehydrated

Extras

1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
.5 tablet Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
10 g Gypsum
6 g Epsom salts
2 g Salt
2 g Chalk
2 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 30 December 2015
Mash: 147F for 90 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 6 gallons
Pre-boil SG (w/o sugar): 13.9P (1.055)
Post-boil OG (w/o sugar): 20P (1.081)

Mash water target Mosher’s “Ideal Pale Ale” profile (110 Ca, 18 Mg, 17 Na, 50, Cl, 279 SO4).
3.75 gallons to the fermenter. 1 minute of pure O2 at pitching; reoxygenated 15 hours after pitching with no visible activity.
Fermented in swamp cooler at 60F ambient.

6 January 2015: First sugar addition, 1 lb dissolved in water. Lots of additional fermentation activity. Keeping swamp cooler temps at 60-61F, rousing yeast/off-gassing beer several times a day.

9 January 2015: Second sugar addition, 1 lb dissolved in water. Significant odor I associate with acetobacter, possibly from fermenting with lid only loosely placed on bucket rather than sealed w/ airlock. Might also be from first sugar addition, as odor only appeared after that. We'll see how it turns out.

Secondary: 30 January 2016
FG: 1.008
ABV: 13.5%
3+ gallons to carboy; ~1/2 gallon to growler with .5 oz home-toasted oak (boiled).
Hydrometer sample isn’t thin, but lacks the body and maltiness I’d expect from a barleywine. The bittering hops are very present but not explosive like a young Bigfoot; they lay on the back of the tongue and stay past their welcome.

Bottled: 30 April 2016
Much rounder, more pleasant, and more characteristically barleywine flavor after this time bulk aging. No acetic notes, improved body, and the hop bitterness has recede. Oaked growler didn’t exhibit a lot of oak character, but seemed just fine and went in the bottling bucket with the rest of the batch. Looking forward to tasting this carbonated, and looking forward to it even more next winter when I brew the next batch.
Bottled with 1.7 oz table sugar.

SMaSH II

My brewing runs in short spurts these days. I finally managed to get some wort out of the mash tun and over the burner during the no man's land between Christmas and New Year's Eve. The first batch was another SMaSH, this time featuring Vienna malt and Sterling hops.

I've used Vienna quite a bit and really like the bready, grainy warmth it brings to a recipe. Sterling, on the other hand, I've never used in a way that has really accentuated its character. I recall a beer brewed by Ted Danyluk in Chicago in my early days of homebrewing that featured this varietal, but that's about the extent of my experience with it.

Given the lack of hop character in my previous SMaSH, I've bumped up the hops to four ounces this time; hopefully they'll make a more pronounced appearance in this iteration. I suppose I should really aim for a half pound or more to really make them stand out, but we'll see how it goes here. As this beer features a German malt and an American "noble"(ish)-style hop, I went with an American ale yeast fermented a little cooler than normal to get a clean (possibly faux-lager/hybrid?) character.

As of this posting, the batch has been going for a solid week, the swamp cooler holding steady and cool, and the overly full primary carboy has been intermittently blowing off yeast throughout a very consistent fermentation. Thinking good thoughts as it continues to rock along.

SMaSH II

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.048
Projected SRM: 5.0
Projected IBU: 37.6
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 73%

Grains
100.0% - 10 lb Weyermann Vienna

Hops
.5 oz Sterling (8.7%) (60 min)
1 oz Sterling (10 min)
1 oz Sterling (0 min - 30 min whirlpool/hop steep)
1.5 oz Sterling (dry hop - 5 days)

Yeast
1 vial WLP001 California Ale - no starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
.5 tablet Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
8 g Gypsum
1 g Epsom salts
1 g CaCl
5.5 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 27 December 2015
Mash: 152F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7.5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 9.8P (1.038)

Mash profile target “Light colored and hoppy” from brewersfriend.com.
Received 45 seconds of pure O2 at pitching. Reoxygentated 12 hours later prior to active fermentation.
Fermented in swamp cooler at 59-61F ambient.

3 January 2016: After 6 days of active fermentation, during which there was active blowoff, upped the swamp cooler temp to 62F.

Despite very cloudy kettle runoff at the end of transfer to primary, there's probably only about 1 qt of trub at the bottom of the fermenter. Will plan to leave less in the kettle in the future!

8 January 2016: Krauesen still present, but very little noticeable activity. Raised swamp cooler temp to 64F & have agitated fermenter daily.

Dry Hop: 9 January 2016
FG: 1.012
ABV: 4.7%

Transferred to new bucket, sealed without an airlock (or hole). Fair bit of splashing during transfer early on, unfortunately, so won’t be surprised it this one turns out oxidized.

Bottled: 15 January 2016
Bottled with 4 oz table sugar.

Tasting: Success! Easy drinking with notes of warm bread and herbal hops.