End of the Year Review

It's almost the end of 2014.  This marks my 4th year of homebrewing.  It has been a crazy ride up to this point.  The hombrewing I do determines the beers I try at bars and vice versa.  I have seen my tastes evolve and mature with each batch of homebrewed beer.  I no longer fear drinking an infected batch of beer - it might just be on its way to a perfect sour with the addition of a few more bugs.  How about a beer in the bottle just tastes to much like one flavor.  Degas the beer in the bottles and mix with another batch of beer and hope that you can balance it back out. 

Anyways – I want to put all of plans for 2015 on a piece of paper.  I somewhat did this last year with this post: http://vorpbrew.blogspot.com/2014/01/new-year-new-brews.html.

I hit most of the goals along with many more.  Here is 2014 in review:

1.  I learned the value of research.  Newly created beers all have their roots from something.  A little research on a style or an idea of a style created two memorable brews.  One was my wit.  I decided not to use any of the newer ideas of recipes and just stick to what was present back in the day.  I used the 50-50 split between malt and wheat.  Used a simple Belgian yeast and added some lacto that was most definitley present during the height of these beers.  It was not sweet.  It was light, bubbly and delicious.  My favorite beer this year.  Me and my friend also brewed a beer that would of been present in the 1600's - 1700's.  It was an Oat ale brewed with 75% oat, barley, English ale yeast and tansy.  The tansy was bought from a witch doctor online.  So we really felt like we went back in time. This beer sadly was infected to the point that it tasted like bandaids.  I'm sure the fact that the sterilizing benefits of hops were missing.
2. The Cab Sauv barrel is finally producing amazing beer.  The latest sour tasting I took from the barrel was amazing.  Complex, earthy, sour, tart, bready and even chocolate and vanilla notes are coming out of the Flanders inspired beers.  Now I just need to figure out how to carbonate them.  I have been failing miserably at this task.
3. The sour stout brewed in March of 2013 is also an amazing beer.  Again, I need to work on carbonation issues with this one.  I will also be starting to sour this in a barrel this year.  Most likely around March again.  A batch is being brewed on Friday of this week that will eventually be the first sour in the barrel.  Oh yeah, the barrel is a blackberry Pinot Noir.
4. My lambic style beer smells awesome.  But it seems during my first bottle test that I have the dreaded strain of bacteria that causes the beer to be sick.  We will see how that works since this beer is now aging in the Riesling barrel.
5. The more I brew with it the more I like Brett.  My favorite IPA I have made to date is the 100% Brett Trois IPA I brewed this year.  It was great.  I have plans for a rebrew this year.  More on that in the next section.
6. Finally - I brewed a pumpkin beer that made it out of the bottle.  This was a four year process.  I failed miserably each time prior.  This time. Success.  I probably wont brew it again and I have an update on what became of the Chocolate Pumpkin Stout.

Overall a great year.  Plenty of failures but plenty of success.  I learn so much more in those failures that I guess they really aren't failures. Hey, I know what not to do during the next batch.

So here are the plans for 2015:

1. Complete my barrel aging set up.  I have a Cab Sauv barrel for Red Sours, a Riesling barrel for my Lambic and soon will have my Blackberry Pinot Noir for my sour stouts.  This time next year I will hopefully be tasting beers from all three
2. Start my Gueze project.  One gallon from the Lambic barrel will be stored into a glass jar.  That one gallon will mix with this years version and I will go until I collect 3 gallons of lambic beer to make a traditional Gueze.  Look for the tasting notes in 2018 I guess!
3. Explore more wine and beer combos.  Yeah most of my wine beer combos are only with the use of the barrel but I intend to explore that some more.  I dont have room for more barrels so I will be stuck with oak chips.  Lame.  Here are those projects I have lined up.
4. A white wine/saison mixing.  This is not something new.  It's being done and it just sounds delicious and seems to be inline with my style.  So I am going to do it.
5. A wine/IPA combo.  I had 61 minute from Dogfish Head and was blown away by the combo.  Bitter wine notes don't seem to go together but when you can complement the flavor from each I imagine a great beer.  My initial thought is a Mango Australian Chardonnay with the 100% Brett IPA.  The mango juice flavor I got from the hops and the Brett should hopefully be amplified with this wine. 
6. Tripel.  Simple one here.  I just want to make a Tripel that is inspired by La Fin du Monde.
7. Bring back some dead beer styles:
1. Lichtenhainer - Think of a Berliner Weisse with smoked malt
2. Gose - This beer is already making a comeback.  The chapter in "Brewing with Wheat" that talks about Gose mentions that most commercial versions are not salty enough.  They provide a recipe and I plan to brew it like that.
3. Gratzer - A 100% smoked-wheat-hop-bomb of a beer.  A small beer at 1.028 OG that is made using 100% Smoked wheat for the grain bill.  It is then hopped up to 32 IBU's.  The quote from the "Brewing with Wheat" book states "The first time i opened one of these for some friends, the guys across the room smelled the smoke reek instantly."  I have to try it.
8. Figure out how to best bottle and carbonate my sours.  Once I figure this out I will be blending and mixing with fruits or bottling straight.  The fun then begins.

Well that's it.  A much more detailed list of what I did this year and what I plan to do next year.  Let's hope I can hit all of these goals.

Prost!

Brew Day: Rooster Red Sour

I have beer in my first barrel that is ready to be bottled.  It is a combo of two brews.  One of those brews which makes up over 60% of the beer in the barrel is now 25 months old. The other batch is roughly 13 months old. 

I use the solera method of mixing and souring beers.  I beleive that this is the first batch coming out of the barrel that will not need to be tweaked after leaving the barrel.  The first batch which was a "quick" sour that was made using the soured wort method and it came out with way too much oak flavor.  I think the barrel has finally stopped giving off the oak flavor and now the test bottles that have been coming out taste great.

The issue I am still having is how to properly carbonate these things.  On homebrewtalk.com you will read how some people always have carbonation problems.  Others say they never have problems.  I tried to bottle a few bottles of the red sour last month using two Brewers Best Carb drops. Nothing.  I then bought the new capsules from Northern Brewer that have a bit of yeast in the capsules to ensure carbonation.  After two weeks very light carbonation but I would still consider this unacceptable.  The review on those capsules is that it can take a bit longer than the two weeks they list on the bottle.  With how old this beer is the only live yeast are probably the small amount of wine yeast I added and whatever is in the capsule and of course the Brettanomyces.

I am have one bottle left in my test that I am going to age until the two month mark and see if that improves the carbonation some.  Maybe the Brett will eat up the sugars from the capsules and turn this into the beer I know it can be.

So–anyways–this post says "brew day" so why am I talking about this older beer.  Well, the goal is within three months, when I know how to properly bottle and carb the beer, I will take all but one or two gallons out of the barrel and then either bottle straight or mix with fruit before bottling.

Mockup of my labels.  I have three barrel that use
the solera method of mixing and creating beers.
This means I will have a steady stream of these
beers.  This is the Roosters Red label.  I saw my
cousins Grogtag lables and instantly knew
I needed them for my barrel beers.

To do this, I need to have another batch of beer ready to go into the barrel.  So I made another batch of my Roosters Red (see logo in masthead of the site).  It's a Flemish sour red ale.  Of course its mixed in my Cab Sauv barrel using the solera method.

The brew day started with a major hiccup.  I forgot to put hte false bottom in before mixing in my grains for the mash.  UGH.

I used a large grain mesh bag to line my hot liquor tank/cooler to dump the beer into. While I cleaned out the grain from my valve and tubing and then put in the false bottom and transferred everything over.

After that everything was great.  I was having issues hitting my target gravity lately so I was wondering if it was because I was not rinsing my grain as much as I used to when only using a false bottom.  When using the false bottom as my only straining/filter system I would mix the wort back through the grain many times over.  Once I started to use the false bottom with the large mesh bags inside my cooler I didn't mix it back through as much because the wort was running clear much much sooner.

I ignored the clear running wort and kept mixing it back through many times over.  I dont know if that cured what issues I was having but I hit my target OG right on the head.

This batch is actually going to be mixed with the first batch that was too oaky.  I cracked all the bottles open and pour them into a carboy to degas them. The sweetness from this batch mixed with the strong oak flavors will hopefully balance out and make a good mix.

This will go in with the other old beer once the main stages of primary fermentation are complete.  I feel comfortable enough now to age these beers long term in the barrel.

So hopefully in a year we will see how batch #3 does.  More on batch #2 once the carbonation issue is figured out.

Brew Day - Blackberry Pinot Noir

Some of the concentration cans we used.

Wait. What?  This is a wine. Not a beer.  Why is it here.  Well the easy answer is that this is the base for my sour stouts.  This Blackberry Pinot Noir is going to be the base for my new barrel.  This is a 6 gallon barrel that is made of Hungarian Oak.  Not as harsh as American but not as mellow as French.  It's said to have great vanilla flavors.  This just seems to be the answer for a sour stout in my book.

The barrel will hold this Blackberry Pinot Noir for a few month and then hold a batch of my Pitchfork Black stout (not the batch I just brewed - a new batch) before the sour stout goes into the barrel.  It could be around 6 months before this happens.  This is just step one.

I am actually excited to try this wine when it is done.    Something about making a recipe on your own with guidance from the internet vs just following directions from a kit.  It's more on you and your idea of what can be created vs matching the expectations of the kit.

I took about 4-6 ounces of the juice prior to the chemicals and whatnot being added to the must so I can use on my curent batch of sour stout.  This will be a good idea to see what flavors I can potentially come up with.

The must of the blackberries and Pinot
prior to adding the water

Here is how I plan to break down the 5 gallons.  This of course can change based on how things go – but this is the plan:

1 gallon will be bottled straight.
2 gallons will be bottled with the blackberry pinot noir juice and some oak.
The remaining 1.5-2 gallons will be saved and used for the first batch of the barrel sours.  This will help get the barrel beer get to the appropriate flavor profile quicker. (which I will brew over Xmas break) .

If the wine goes into the barell in late January or early February and the the Pitchfork Black goes in next for a few months, we can be looking at June/July before the new batch of sour stout would need to be put into the barrel.  This gives us 6 months to get the new sour started.  That 1.5-2 gallons of already soured beer should help speed that up.

At this time I hope the barrel is not pushing out as much oak flavor and that I can then let the beer age another 4-6 month in the barrel before I being the solera mixing method.

Fun times await.

Coming up next are bottle tastings for my carbonation tests.  I am using the new capsules from Northern Brewer to carbonate my sours.  They have a small amount of yeast and the appropriate amount of sugar in each capsule.  We will be tasting the follonwing beers on Christmas:

1. Straight Lambic - I used plain sugar tabs.  I want to see what happens on this one.
2. Sour Red - Hopefully the beer will carbonate and the beer we tasted at Thanksgiving will be a completely different beer.
3. Sour Stout - This will be the straight version.  This is the first carbonation test for this batch which was brewed in March of 2013.

For those interested in the wine recipe here is what we used

1. 96oz can of Vintners Blackberries
2. 3lb can of Blackberry Puree
3. 1 Can of Alexanders Pinot Noir concentrate
4. 11lbs 6oz of Sugar
5. Typcial wine chemicals etc per usual kits
6. RC212 yeast

Many tastings will be posted in the next month or so.
Stay tuned.

____________________

Update 12-15-14
Yeast added.

 























Update 12-18-14
Fermentation well underway

Brew Day: Pitchfork Black

Last Sunday I brewed up a batch of my Imperial Stout.  This is really one of the first times I have tried to duplicate a recipe.  I have made multiple versions of the sour red base beer but that never tastes the same based on conditions, yeast, bugs etc.

The last time I brewed this beer it was pretty awesome. It was thick, roasty, bitter and sweet.  It was described as being chewy because of how thick it was.  In the cold winter months this beer is just what the doctor ordered.

The beer is essentially an American Imperial Stout.  High on bittering units with all of the usual stout players.  This versions is inspired by the local brewery East End Brewing.  They make one of the best stouts - Blackstrap Stout.

My version uses 3oz's of blackstrap molasses, 3 oz or dark brown sugar and 12oz of heavy roast coffee.  The molasses and sugar are added with 5 minutes left in the boil and the coffee is added at flameout.  Centenial and Cascade hops add the bitterness (along with the molasses) and floral nose that can make it seem like its a black IPA.

Fermentation was slow to start.  The basement must be too cold.  (Time to look into a fermentation jacket that can warm up my beer as needed.  After one day in the basement I moved it up to the main floor of the house and it kicked into full gear.  It has been steadily bubbling away for the past 5 days.  I will rack to a secondary vessel for about a month and then bottle them up.

Fingers are crossed it turns out just as good as the last batch.

Notes:
12-7-14 - Brewed
12-8-14 - No signs of fermentation
12-9-14 - Moved to a warmer location
12-10-14 - Signs of fermentation
12-17-14 - Moved to secondary

Lambic-ish Update

Big day yesterday.  When I brewed the Peeterman Wit my friend stopped over to help brew.  He was the one how had the 5 year old sour yeast starter that we wanted to bring back to life.

The nasty but yet lovely pellicle on the lambic-ish

Anyways – while he was over I was showing him some of the sour projects I have going.  I pulled out my lambic-ish beer and cracked open the seal for the first time. This was probably right at the ten month mark.  OH BOY!

The smell was INTENSE. In a good way. The moment I smelled where it was I knew it was well on its way.  I made the decision then that it was time to move it to the barrel in the next month.  To do so I needed to do a few things:

1. Brew another lambic-ish beer to have it ready for mixing or to have it aged when it's time to pull this beer off the oak.
2. Get the wine out of the barrel and bottled

As for brewing another lambic-ish beer I decided to just brew the same recipe except  I pitched Roeselare yeast as the main yeast and then added a bit of the lambic trub yeast when moving to the barrel.  I'm looking for a variety of flavors and wasnt a good mix of bugs inoculated in the barrel.

I brewed this batch roughly 3 weeks prior to putting the old beer in the barrel.  I plan to age the lambic-ish for 3-4 months in the barrel before pulling it out.  I'm trying to control the oak flavor a bit more on this batch. I learned in the Flanders red that the oak flavor is super intense even after a wine has aged in the barrel.  This means that my new batch will be 4 months old at a minimum by the time my lambic-ish beer may need to come out of the barrel.  I will probably brew one more pale ale beer to use to blend out the oak in the first batch and just have that ready.

Getting the wine out of the barrel

My girlfiend and I actually wanted to drink this wine.  Riesling is her favorite wine.  That's why I used Riesling instead of Chardonay like Russian River and many other other American Breweries.  I also thought the flavor profile of the Riesling would go great with the lambic style beer. 

This was a very light wine.  It had very little flavor from the beginning.  Now after 3 months in the barrel it has picked up all the tannins and really dried out.  It left a "burny" taste as my girlfriend stated.  To get this wine back to a drinkable and more flavorful wine we had to mix.  I decided to mix it with an apple juice and sugar combo.  I took 3 cups of sugar and dissolved that into one frozen can of concentrate 100% apple juice.  We added the syrup little by little until we got to a "I-can-drink-that" flavor.  We ended up using the full mixture.  It must of been that dry.

Mixing the wine with apple syrup and taste testing

Once we had the mix I bottled the wine.

I then took one bottle worth and added directly back into the barrel and then the lambic-ish beer went on top of that.  A fresh does of Roeselare was added for more bug infection into the barrel and to help quickly eat through the new wine mixture with the added sugar.  I also wanted to note that now the lambic-ish beer smelled EXACTLY like commercial examples I have had.  Think Cantillion, Lindemans etc.

Finally, another bottle worth of wine was added to the new young lambic-ish.  Most of the sugar and wine flavor will probably get chewed up by the brett and other bugs but added complexity none the less.

The exciting part is that I bottled two 12 oz bottles of the lambic-ish beer straight.  I plan to crack these open at the holiday party at our house and at the family get together.  I just want to see what it taste like straight and then how it carbonates up.

Be sure to follow up after the holidays as I really really hope to have an awesome tasting day.

Tasting Day: Peeterman Wit

Very poor attempt at photographing this beer.
Pours with a nice head and has good lacing but
overall the carbonation is just not high enough
for the style of beer.  Great flavor though!

I tasted this about 2.5 weeks ago.  I let it go a bit more since the carbonation was not that great.  I'm not sure if its going to carb up too much more so here are the notes on the beer:

Appearance:  It's a more golden than white.  It's cloudy, but not in the traditional sense where the beer looks white.

Smell:  It has a great nose on it.  Funky basement smells with a bit of lacto or brett.  Tiny tiny bit of oak but not much. It has a big funky citrus smell.  It was very reminiscent of the Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca that served as our inspiration for this batch.  The dregs from two 750 mL bottles probably helped that out.

Taste:  Surprisingly the taste is not too funky or sour as the nose might suggest. Again, this is similar to the Jolly Pumpkin we were inspired by.  The Jolly Pumpkin is has more funk in the nose and in the taste though.  Ours is a mini version of it.  Stronger smell and stronger taste.  The biggest taste in our beer is the huge citrus hits we got from the coriander. It was brewed with a modest amount that you see in typical witbier recipes.  We added the same amount from the boil to a "dry hop" in the secondary.  The extra coriander and orange peel really shine in this beer.

Mouthfeel:  This was the most disappointing thing in the beer.  It seems me and carbonation are just not getting along these days.  I'm hoping its because it got pretty cold early this fall (down into the teens in early November) and that my beers just need to move up to the main floor of the house.  I have put the rest up by the heater on the first floor hoping to get more of that bursting carbonation mouthfeel.  This beer has the mouth feel of a very light stout.  Think of it like a Bodingtons.

Overall:  Overall I think its a pretty darn good beer.  If the carbonation was higher I would be raving about it.  Let's see where it ends up in a few weeks up in the warmer rooms in my house.  I kind of like that it ended up very sessionable while having a funky nose.  It was a pleasant surprise.  I am also going to age two of them until the spring to see if the 5 year old yeast we used wakes up even more in the bottle.

Tasting Day: Pocahontas Pumpkin Pie Ale

I feel like this day was 4 years in the making.  I have made 3 pumpkin beers in the past.  All of them way below "decent"  The first one was just a spiced amber ale.  Lame.  Second one even worse. Bottle bombs.  Third one.  Worse yet. Infected.  So what do you have this year?  A real pumpkin beer!

Every year trying to brew this beer I learned something new.  I was finally able to put it all together and make a good pumpkin beer.  This beer was my take on the Pocahontas Pumpkin Pie ale from last years Zymurgy issue.

It's a pumpkin beer I can drink.  I don't really like pumpkin beer so this is a strong compliment.  The spice levels are just right.  Not overly spiced or under spiced.  The malty sweetness is ok.  It could be a tad sweeter to push it more into the "pie" flavors.  The carbonation is a bit high.  It would be great if it was smoother and lighter levels.  It might bring out the sweetness a bit more.

After the past 4 years I'll consider this beer a big accomplishment.  Now I can finally start to change and update the recipe to work better for my tastes.  Lowering the carbonation, using a more flocculant yeast and mashing a bit higher to keep some more residual sugars for the final beer will be step one.

Let fall officially begin!

Brew Day: Peeterman Wit

Yeast starter a few days after creating it.

Yesterday I brewed up a wit beer with my buddy from work.  The thing was that this wasnt any normal wit.  We decided to make our creation of the old Peeterman style of beer. 

It started when my friend texted me and said that he found his old sour starter.  They started to dump it out figuring it was bad because it was 5 years old!  As they started to dump the starter down the drain they smelled how great it was and decided to save the rest. I came in and said I would take the starter and try to wake the yeast back up.

My plan was pretty simple - take a good portion of the sour starter and mix it a very small amount of fresh Belgian yeast (White Labs 550).  About two days after making the starter I saw activity that it was fermenting something so I let it go and then stepped it up to a larger starter in prep for the brew day.  Each day the starter smelled different.  One day it would smell rancid and then the next it would be this wonderful Rodenbach smelling wort.  After stepping up to the larger size it started to smell like a slightly sour saison.  There were no real warning signs after a few days so we decided to go for it.


We couldn't figure out what type of beer to make.  I already have a sour red, stout and lambic going and didn't want to duplicate efforts.  We were looking for something unique to go with our new unique batch of yeast.

I recently saw the New Orleans episode of Brew Dogs where the brewed a beer they called a Peeterman.  The explanation was that the beer would be a dark soured wit.  Sounded awesome.  Only problem was the episode said the recipe was 50-50 mix of pilsner and wheat.  Where was the dark color coming from?

So naturally the next step was to search the internet.  I couldn't find too much on the internet other than Peeterman was one of the three original "white beers" of Belgium and that all three hada varying degree of sourness from the lactic acid that would of infected beer before modern sanitation practices.  I wanted to learn more so  I found that a brief section of the book "Brewing with Wheat" had some information.  There was no recipe but enough for me to determine that we should just brew a wit and add our soured WLP550 batch of yeast and see what we get.

The book did provide some insight into a modern day old-school wit.  That beer is Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca.  A funky and slightly tart wit.  We added the dregs of one of these beers to our final concoction of yeast for one last punch of funk.

Brew day went smooth and our blend of yeast are rapidly chewing through the sugars.  They were active within 12 hours which is pretty fast based on how most of my beers go.  We plan to drink it fresh because the book stated that these beers were typical consumed within two weeks before they went too far over to the sour side.

Depending on what flavors we get from the primary we may decide to add a bit more orange or coriander to freshen up the flavor while its in the secondary.  We will for sure be adding a bit of oak to replicate the old style of fermenting everything in barrels.  Updates will be posted as they happen.

Brew Day - Chocolate Milk Stout

Another day off from work and another brew day.

Today I brewed up the Chocolate Milk Stout that I will blend with the Pumpkin Ale I brewed this weekend.  In total I will have three beers.  This is the same idea I had last year but the hope is that this year all of the beers will turn out.  This was a relatively easy brew day.  45 minute mash in for a nice thick stout, simple 2 hop additions at 60 and 30 minutes and chilling the wort down to temp.

OG is coming in at 1.056 and hopefully this will ferment fast like the pumpkin is.  I will move this to the secondary when the primary fermentation seems complete and then add the cocoa nibs - the sterilized cocoa nibs.

Once this beer and the pumpkin are ready to bottle I will bottle 1 gallon of the chocolate straight, 3 gallons of the pumpkin straight and then blend the remaining.  I used the same yeast on both of these batches so that when I mix the two batches together there shouldnt be any more ramp up in fermentation.  I will let those mingle together for another week and then bottle that batch as the Chocolate Pumpkin Spiced Ale.

This idea was based around mixing a Younghs Chocolate Stout with Pumpking.  I'll check back in about 4-5 days to see how things are going.

9/3/14
Brewed.  Yeast pitched.

9/7/14 
Racked to secondary. Gravity reading 1.022.  Yeast still got some more work to do. Target is 1.016.

9/21/14
Bottled one gallon.  Remaining was mixed with Pumpkin Ale to create Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Ale. This batch will age for another 2 weeks and then be bottled.

Barrel Prep: Riesling Wine for Lambic Blends

Filling the barrel with Reisling wine at night

I finally got around to preparing and filling my second 20L wooden barrel.  This particular barrel is getting 20L worth of Riesling added.  This is going to sit in the barrel and hopefully saturate the staves and provide a nice fruity/vinous flavor to the Lambic-ish sours that I am making.

The wine is not a super complex one.  Its pretty smooth with some apple fruit flavors.  A bit drier than we expected but nothing a little sugar cant fix.

It has been 7 months since I brewed the Lambic-ish. 

Another 5 months and it should be ready for tasting and potentially move into its new home - this barrel.

Here's hoping all goes well.

Brew Day: Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin strike water ready to mix with grains.

Well it's late August early September so that means its the time of year when I foolishly try to make another pumpkin beer.  I have not had success trying to brew these beers.  I don't know why.  If something can go wrong it does.

So why try to make it again.  That's the fun part of home brewing for me - trying to figure things out and create great beer.

This time I found some more blog postings about the Zymurgy article that I tried last year.  I read on one of the reviews that the user would mix the mash every 15 minutes or so to stop the pumpkin puree from turning into concrete.  I figured what could go wrong - everything else has trying to make this beer.

To my surprise this brew day was pretty near perfect.  The beautiful pumpkin orange infused strike water was no match for me this day.  I was able to pull of 6.5 gallons of a nice amber orange wort and give it the full 90 minutes boil.

Rolling boil that caused a boil-over

I did have a little boil over but nothing too crazy.  The only real disappointing thing is that I missed my target OG by a full point.  My Beersmith recipe said it would be about 1.074.  I came in at 1.064.  With all that has happened the past few years trying to brew with pumpkin I figured this was a very minor issue.

I pitched the yeast around 6:30PM last night and when I checked on it at 11am today it was already bubbling away.

Once primary fermentation has finished I will move to a secondary where I will add some more pumpkin pie spice.

Later this week while I am off I will be brewing up a Chocolate Milk Stout.  I will bottle each of it straight and then have a small batch where I mix the two in a tertiary carboy for one week and then bottle.

This time I will be sterilizing the cocoa nibs with vodka hoping to avoid another bacteria infected batch.

UPDATES:

8/30/14
Brewed and yeast pitched yeast. Activity within 12 hours
 
9/3/14
Fermentation is starting to slow down.  I should be able to move this to the secondary and add more pumpkin pie spice by the end of this week or Saturday at the latest.

9/7/14
Racked to secondary.  Added 0.5 Tbsp of pumpkin pie spice.  Gravity reading = 1.011

9/21/14
Bottled 3 gallons straight.  Added a pinch more of spice.  The other 2 gallons were mixed with a chocolate milk stout.

O.A.T Ale - American Farmhouse Ale Yeast

Yesterday I tried the O.A.T ale that we brewed with American Farmhouse ale yeast.  It tastes pretty good. Interesting mix with the tansy and the saision/brett combo in the yeast.  Only problem is that it will not carb up.  So today I put it into a saision storing spot - the attic in August.  Maybe the yeast are sleepy and need some warmer temps to wake them back up.

I will pull one next week and one after that.  If after two weeks in the warm attic it does not carb I will start to think about degassing the beer and trying again. 

Tasting Day - O.A.T. Ale

Tasting day for O.A.T. ale was actually about a week ago. It's hard for me to write blog postings about beers that failed.  O.A.T. with Burton ale yeast was a fail.  The infection I noticed at bottle time took hold of the beer and it could not recover.  Band-Aid flavor all through it.

Was it because there were no hops to help prevent bad things happening?  Or was it the 2 gallon plastic bucket had a poor seal?

I am leaning more towards the bucket having a poor seal.  This is the 3rd batch I have put into the small 2 gallon buckets at all 3 have had issues.  I cant say with certainty that this is the issue but I see a trend starting.  I am going to throw those buckets out an only use my 3 gallon carboys moving forward.

Here are a few things we learned about this beer.

1. An all oat beer is possible with malted oat.
2. The beer is way thinner that you would expect.  I need more oat for a more velvety finish like a golden stout - if you will.
3. The oat does provide a unique flavor that works pretty well with Saison type of brews.  
4. The tansy does not taste nearly as herbal as it smells.  I would recommend using tansy as a flavor agent at the end of a boil with minimal hops.
5. The tansy is not as bitter as we expected.  This is another reason I would recommend using hops at the 60 minute mark and then dose the boiling wort with the tansy.

 We tasted the batch made with American Farmhouse yeast and it seems to have a good chance of turning into something.  The carbonation was low so hopefully next time we crack one open it has a bit more so we can properly assess the beer.

As of now here is how I see the next batch playing out:

1. Increase the flaked oat to about 20% of the grain bill. The next grain bill would look like this.  20% flaked oats - 25% Maris Otter - 55% malted oat.
2. Use Fuggle's hops at the 60 minute mark for an IBU count around 12-15.
3. Use the full amount of tansy during the last 15 minutes of the boil
4. Potentially use American Farmhouse as the only yeast. I feel Burton yeast deserves another shot to see what a fruitier version of the beer could taste like.  The flavors we picked up in the beers we tried seemed to compliment the American Farmhouse a bit better though.  With the hop and tansy being switched though it would provide a new base beer for the Burton.

I will post again about this beer if the American Farmhouse version we have turns the corner.  We also have the Brett. B version aging away.  That will be ready in the fall for a sample.

Bottle Day: O.A.T. Ale

Another day - another batch of beer to bottle.  Today I bottled two batches of O.A.T.  This is the new name for the Oat And Tansy beer me and my friend Mike created.  There are two versions that were bottled.  One was with minimal hops (4 hop pellets) and a lot of tansy.  The other batch was regular hop dose with minimal tansy added during the aroma/flavor timing of the boil.

First up if the OAT with Burton ale yeast and minimal hops:
This is the beer that I have not been too fond of from the first tasting while transferring over to the secondary.  It had a weird taste then and it still does.  One would assume this is the tansy and the fact that it lacks the regular hop flavor/bitterness you expect in a beer.  To make things even more discouraging is there was a very small pellicle.  When brewing a clean beer like this, it is a bad sign to see one of these guys.  I tasted the beer and it still tasted similar to what I tasted two weeks ago so I decided to go for it.  There may have been a small leak in the seal on the lid that let air into the bucket or the lack of hops could have left the beer susceptible to unwanted microorganisms that hops can usually fight off.  If anything this beer is becoming more and more "authentic" because most brews back in the day were probably "contaminated".

Next up was the OAT with American Farmhouse yeast.  This was the most promising batch of the two when we racked the secondary two weeks ago and that still holds true.  This batch also had a pellicle but there is brett in the American Farmhouse yeast.  So after some aging I would expect to see this.  The flavor on this one is pretty unique.  Fruity up front, funky and weird on the back end with some support from the tansy.  This should be a fun beer to try out.

Both batches should be ready in two weeks.  Hopefully whatever is going on in the Burton Ale yeast batch is OK and those beers are still good to drink when its time to taste them. Fingers crossed until then.

Don't forget that we still have a batch aging on Brett Brux.  I will let this go in the primary for one more week and then transfer over to the secondary.  I plan to put a small amount of oak in it to replicate "barrel aging".  I will let it sit for about two months and start checking the gravity to see if the Brett has more work to do or not.
Check back for updates on that as things progress.

Bottle Day - Pliney the Elder IPA Clone

Today was bottle day for the Pliney the elder clone that I have brewed up.  I am interested in using carb tablets so today I tested the Brewers Best carb tablets.  I went with 4 tablets per bottle which should give me "medium" carbonation.  The photo you see on the left is the hop residue left over.  This was all from dry hoping and there is no yeast on the bottom.  That is one inch of hops sitting on the bottom with a good lacing on the carboy.  I strained the beer through a hop bag when going into the bucket to clear it out.

The smell is very nice right now.  As you can guess, its very hop forward but it has a sweetness in the smell.  Very fruity.

The taste matches the nose.  It's very fruity and sweet up front but it finished with a very bitter bite.  This should be an interesting beer.  Here's to hoping that the carb tablets work well and we have a great beer in two weeks.

Sour Stout: Quick Tasting Note

I am getting really bad at posting things on time.  Case in point - July 3rd my friend had a good ol' 'Merican picnic/party.  This was three weeks or so after I primed one 750mL bottle of sour stout.  This was a test for a few things.

1. I wanted to see how carbonation drops work with sour beers.  I have had issues with batch priming.  (After reading American Sour Beers I think I have some new things to try out)
2. I just wanted to taste the beer carbonated to see if it needed to age.  The reason I wanted to do this is because I am learning I am not too good at determining how a beer will taste once it is bottled.  I tasted a few sours before bottling and thought the sourness and funk where perfect. Only to find once they were bottled... they weren't nearly as good as I thought.

With these two things in mind I went ahead and brought the unknown (quality) of beer to the part to try out with a few friends who can tolerate soured beer.

It was dark so my tasting notes are pretty bad.  I couldn't see the beer.  Only smell, taste and mouthfeel.

Smell - It smells exactly like Tart of Darkness from the Bruery.  The beer I produced was based on the recipe they provided to MoreBeer.com.  So far so good.

Taste - Amazing.  FInally! I have been hard at work with my brewing time trying out "Quick-Sour" methods while my first batch of Red Sour and Dark Sour aged.  18 months later I am finally seeing some rewards!  This was a perfect beer.  It tasted very much like Tart of Darkness.  I can easily compare this beer to that great commercial example.  My one friend remarked after the party that he thought it was a commercial beer.  Impressed that I made something that good.  So much for friends having confidence in your brewing right!

Body - Perfect carbonation and body.  It looked like the bottle was going to be a gusher but it ended up being ok.  Couldnt be happier

Overall - By far - miles upon miles - the best sour beer I have made.  Now the only issue is to replicate this throughout a whole bottle day.  This quick process has inspired me to pull another 750 mL and bottle for a taster.  This time it is from the barrel that is currently holding 3 gallons of 18+month old Sour Red ale and 2 gallons of 4-month old Clean Red ale.  I will do a quick posting on that once its ready in about a week.

Follow Up: Tansy/Mugwort Oat Ale

I moved the Tansy/Mugwort ale to the secondary fermentor this week.  Not too much to report on other than the small tasting and aroma at this point.

The tansy heavy beer brewed with Burton yeast is pretty gnarly.  It has a super ripe fruit smell with this weird medicinal thing going on.  Not many hops were added (4-8 pellets) so this is mostly coming from the tansy.  There was no signs of infection or lacto/brett taking place so the tansy is really shining through on this one.  The taste was not super impressive but it left that weird sensation on the tongue that we experienced with while drinking the tea during the brew day.  At this point I feel the carbonation will provide some brightness that the beer is lacking and hopefully the flavors will meld together a bit more now that it is off the dead yeast from primary fermentation.

The other batch to move over to secondary fermentation was the American Farmhouse ale.

The American Farmhouse ale version is slightly funky with a bit of farmyard aromas going on.  It currently tastes like a summer saison with some extra grassy flavors along with that mysterious flavor that the tansy provides.  I have high hopes for this one.  It seems to be on a path that could provide a unique type of saison with that extra special herb providing some mystery as you drink it.

The color on all of the beers is a very pretty hay yellow.  Not nearly as cloudy as the mash was showing us.  It cleared up really nice for having 75% of the grains being some sort of oat.

The version we brewed with Brett Brux will sit for another week before getting a hydrometer reading.  If all seems well we will move that over to secondary and then just start testing for stability in the FG reading.

Brew Day: Tansy/Mugwort Oat Ale

Mike poses manning one of the two brew kettles

So the previous post was all about the research and how Mike and I decided on our recipe and how we were going to break the recipe into different batches to see how they taste.

Today is a quick recap of the brew day.

The biggest concern I had was how the malted oat was going to act.  I read that it could gum up the mash and I also read that it acts just like regular malt like 2-row and causes no issues.  So we really had no idea what to expect.

We mashed in and hit our target temp and let is sit for an hour.  During this time we made a tansy tea. We just took some of the sparge water and put it into a coffee much with a tea strainer filled with tansy.  To our surprise it was actually pretty sweet and not too bitter at all.  We knew it could change with the boiling temperatures it would be used at but we were still taken back by how sweet/herbal it really was.

After the hour, we batch sparged three times to get all of the wort that we would need for our two kettle system. One kettle would be mostly tansy, while the other would just get a small dose of tansy at the end.  We decided to add the small dose to the other batch once we smelled the brew during the boil.  It was an intoxicating smell.  It was somewhere between rosemary and thyme with a bit of a bitter smell.  Not strong though.  Smelling that, we had to add some tansy to the mostly hop forward beer we were creating with the oats.

After an hour boil we force chilled and then pitched the yeasts.  Here is the final batches and how the ended up.

1 gallon - Mostly fuggles hops with Tansy added with 15 minutes left. Fermenting with Burton Ale and Brett. Brux.

2 Gallons - Mostly fuggles hops with Tansy added with 15 minutes left.  Fermenting with American Farmhouse Ale yeast.

2 Gallons - Tansy with just a few pellets of fuggles.  Fermenting with Burton Ale yeast.

The Burton/Tansy combo was the slowest to start fermentation.  The American Farmhouse was the fastest and started within 24 hours.  The others started somewhere between 32 and 42 hours.

We will rack to secondary fermentation for another two weeks and then get them bottles once the gravity is stable.

Research and Recipe Build: 1670 Tansy/Mugwort Oat Ale

Close of of the Tansy flower used to bitter this recipe.

So this is something new for my blog.  I wanted to capture the research process that goes into some of these beers since they take weeks to complete and finalize. Everything from researching similar homebrew recipes to reading pages and pages on wiki.

This particular beer has a great back story.  Typically my recipe builds go something like this:

1. Taste a beer.
2. Say "Wow this is good. Wonder if I could brew something similiar
3. Look for similar styled recipes online and then recreate based on my preference.

This Tansy/Mugwort Oat ale is a completely different path.  It looks something more like this:

1. Friend traces his roots back to Walsall, England in 1671. That's in the West Midlands.
2. Friend reaches out to local homebrew club in Walsall, England and asks them if they would know of a "house beer" recipe that would of been brewed in Walsall during the 1670's.
3. The homebrew club then reaches out to a beer historian who then contacts my friend and provides an oat ale recipe brewed with tansy - also known as mugwort.
4. Friend brings the recipe and idea into work and we start the process of building our version of the recipe.

Here is where I enter the picture.  My friend Mike is an extract brewer and this particular beer can not be made with extract.  That is because it has a very high proportion of oats.  Since I have been doing all grain brewing I was able to help build and finalize the recipe based on my set up and equipment.

Grain Bill:
At first glance the recipe seems near impossible.  Its a simple recipe.  75% oats and 25% pilsner malt brewed with Tansy instead of hops.  I initially thought there is no way to brew a 75% oat beer and not have it take all day due to a stuck sparge. In my mind I am thinking that the oats would all be flaked oats. This is because I did not know about malted oats.  I never knew these existed.  This is where the door opened and I was able to find some similar homebrew recipes that used malted oat in higher concentrations that you would typically use - for say a stout.

After some reading it seemed that you can use malted oats just as you would pilsner malt.  Some even said, since the husks are bigger on the malted oats it provides a good filtration for the mash and sparge.

After getting comfortable with the idea of malted oats we decided on the following recipe:

70% malted oats
5% flaked oats
25% marris otter pilsner malt

Illustration of Tansy plant.

Herb/Hops:
We knew our beer was going to have the tansy flower used in place of hops in at least a portion of our beer.  We also knew we were going to split the batch and test some different yeast strains and herb vs hops.  So the biggest question was how much tansy do we add in our batch.  This required a lot of reading on the internet to determine what is a safe level to use.  Tansy can be toxic in higher concentration.  Just check out the wiki page and all of the uses or home remedies it has been associated with:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tansy

Two of my favorites are - it "has has been prescribed by herbalists to expel worms" from the digestive system and during the "middle ages and later, high doses were used to induce abortions."

Nothing to mess around with so we needed to make sure we were not using it in high enough concentration to cause any issues.  We found with doctor websites that had tansy tea and herb shops that sold tansy teas for its "medicinal" benefits.  After some back and forth Mike landed on 0.5 ounces per 5 gallons.  This is where Mike had some back and forth with the folks from England and we got the amount "approved" by Dr. Ray.

Now we just had to source it.  Strangely enough we bought it from an online witch doctor type of site.

Yeast:
Our final step was to determine the yeast. This was one of the more simple steps.  We decided on three different yeast combinations.  Here is a break down with the reason why we selected it.

1. Burton Ale Yeast - Simple.  Burton Ale is from Burton upon Trent England.  Google maps tells us its a 40 minute car ride from Burton to Wassail.  After doing this same task for all of hte English yeast strains we found this to be the closets.  This is of course using very basic information provided and Google maps alone.
2. Brettanomyces Bruxellensis - This was another easy one for me.  I love using Brett.  I remember reading in the Wild Brews book that they first "discovered" this strain of Brett on the inside of barrels in England.  This is a yeast strain that lives in the wood of the barrels.  We are guessing that barrels were used in 1660 to store beer.  It made sense to us to try one of our batches with Brett and hope to get an authentic oat ale from the 1660's.  It will also have a small amount of Burton to help fermentation along quicker.
3. American Farmhouse - Oats.  Lots of oats.  This says farm to us.  I also read on another blog that the flavor of a high oat beer is very grassy or barn-yard like.  To me this screams farmhouse/saison.  We both wanted to try this yeast on other projects but never got around to it so this was our chance.

So that's it.  This is how we got to our recipe and why we selected what we selected.  This is by no means scientific.  We are making decisions based solely on the information we could find online and with the help of our new friends across the pond. The beauty of this beer is that we have never tasted a commercial version of an oat ale with tansy.  So in reality, there were no rules. When you don't have rules or expectations it can be a very exciting journey.  - OK so there was one rule.  We needed to keep the tansy levels safe.

 Special Thanks:

This beer could not of happened without the help from our friends from across the pond:

The organization we reached out to is the Midlands Craft Brewers
Dr. Ray Carson and Alan Gayton were the contacts at this organization.

Clive La Pesee is the name of the author and historian who Dr. Ray Carson and Alan Gayton directed us to.  He helped us put together the historical recipe. His website  has historical brewing books to buy and also free to download.  Really interesting stuff.  Go check it out.

Finally, the tansy came from The Iron Cauldron on Etsy. . Maintained by a nice lady named "Raven".

A brew day posting will be put up shortly... Until then - cheers.

Brew Update - Peach Berliener Weiss

After two weeks of primary fermentation with Brett Trois and Belgian Golden Yeast my Berliener Weiss has move over to the secondary.  I added 4 bags of peaches (12oz) to the 3 gallons of brew.  I hope to get a nice 2-2.5 gallons of a great summer weiss beer. 

I tasted the beer as i took the hydrometer reading and it had a slight acidic bite.  It was very mild and hopefully the sweetness from the peaches will meld wit lactic sour to give me something similar to Dog Fish Peche.

It already a very dry beer at 1.008.  Maybe the secondary fermentation with the fruit can pull it down another notch or two with the Brett Trois still lingering around in the secondary.  I plan to age on the peaches for one week and then bottle and serve ASAP.

Tasting Day: 100% Brett IPA

I am finally getting around to the tasting notes for my 100% Brett IPA that was essentially the recipe posted over at Mad Fermentationist.

I tasted this when it was very young - two weeks in the bottle.  At that time it was super cloudy/dirty.  The flavor was all over the place and it was not the beer I expected.  The beer got great reviews from Mike over at Mad Fermentationist and I was expecting a bunch more. 

So when a beer does not taste like you expect the best thing to do is wait.  I put two bottles in my fridge.  I wanted to lager them with the hop that the yeast would settle along with the massive amounts of hop particles still floating around.

Two weeks of being in the fridge have made a HUGE improvement.  This beer is now one of my favorite - if not the favorite- that I have ever brewed.  The nose, the depth of the flavor, the body - everything is where I wanted it.

Appearance:  Bright sunshine yellow.  Pretty beer.  pours with a two finger head that dissipates once you take a sip and break the seal of the foam.  This then leaves a sticky hop lacing after each pull.

Smell:  It smells like hops and juice.  Specifically mango, pineapple and citrus with a hit of pine-tree earthiness.  As the beer warms you start to realize something is different with it.  The dank basement aroma starts to show up just as you finish the glass to let you know this was brewed with Brett.  Its in there but it shows up late to the party and adds another level of the aroma.

Mouthfeel:  Very light and refreshing.  Dry. Very dry finish for an IPA.  The hops and yeast combo fool you and you dont notice how dry it is until the end.

Taste:  I find it to be perfectly balanced.  Not too hoppy but very assertive. Citrus, tropical fruits are everywhere.  There is a sweetness to help balance it all together.  Is it the malt?  I dont know.  I think it could be the tropical yeast flavors that the Brett Trois is providing.  The very first hit on the tounge is almost like mango juice that quickly gets taken over by the citurs and flower power of the hops.  It ends with a dry bite that I found unique.  Again - I think this is the Brett letting you know something is different

Overall: Fantastic use of 100% Brett fermentation.  I may never brew an IPA with out Brett Trois.  The combination is phenomenal.  Only thing I would change is how much I brew.  I only brewed a 2.5 gallon batch and that turned out to be a dumb idea.  After two weeks of bottle fermentation I would add all of hte beers to the fridge to let them clear and settle out.  After another two weeks you would be well rewarded.

Brew Day - Berliner Weiss

I decided this summer I was going to try a Berliner Weiss.  I was inspired by Dogfish Head Peche.  Fifty-fifty split on the wheat and the Belgian Pilsner with a bit of Golden candi syrup for extra depth.  I guess it is more of an Imperial Berliner Weiss since it should come in around 5.4%.

For this batch I used the sour wort procedure that I used in some of my other quick sour beers.  This process didnt work out for those beers because it lacked the depth those types of beers usually have.  For a Berliner Weiss you are just looking for a nice clean acidity from the lacto bacteria that should remind you of lemonade with no hop flavor.  I am hoping that the golden candi syrup will add a bit more flavor to make it a slightly more complex Berliner Weiss.  Flavors that can be associated with that syrup are fresh plums and raisins along with white wine grapes.  

Here is step by step of what I have done to this point:

1. Mashed in all of my malts which was a 50-50 split of Belgian Pilsner and German Wheat
2. Once the mash was completed and I completed the batch sparge I brought the wort to a boil to kill any bacteria present.
3. I chilled the wort down to 110 degrees
4. Once at the proper temperature I transferred it over to an insulated cooler.  The cooler will keep the wort warm for the next few days.
5. I added White Labs lacto culture to the wort and sealed the cooler
6. 60 hours later I moved the wort back into a boil kettle and boiled for 75 minutes.  I added a small amount of Hallertauer hops 15 minutes into the boil for a 60 minute hop addition.
7. The last half hour of the boil I added the 5 Golden Candi Syrup.
8. Once the beer was cooled to pitching temperature I added White Labs Belgian Golden yeast
9. Two days later I added Brett Brex Trois.
10. I will age the beer in the primary for about 2 weeks.  Rack to a secondary to clear it out some and then bottle.

As you can see in the outline its a Berliner Weiss with Belgian twist.  Again this is all to see if I can get a bit more depth while still being a nice clean, slightly sour summer beer.  We will see where it ends up in a few weeks.

More to come...

Sour Stout - Update

It has been about 14 months since I made my stout that I soured with the mixed culture from Wyeast.  It has been sitting in the plastic bucket this whole time.  I checked on it around the 11 month mark and it didn't even have a pellicle  yet.  I figured I would let it go a few more months.  What a difference those months made.

Large grainy looking pellicle along with a huge dank aroma.  To be honest, I was afraid it went too far at first.  The smell was pretty bad.  Once i punctured the pellicle to draw out a sample though I realized all was right.  The smell was perfect and the taste was mouth-puckering tart.

I took two carb tablets and put enough into a champagne bottle to see how it carbs up over the next three weeks.  If all goes well I plan to bottle by the end of June or early July.  The idea is to have these ready for consumption late August or early fall.

Super excited to see how this one turns.  I will also know if I need to brew a new batch and have it ready in another 16 months.

Check back later for the tasting day.

Bottle Day - 100% Brett IPA

I have been having some stomach issues which means no alcohol.  I have not done much with home brewing the past week or so but I did finally get around to bottling my 100% Brett IPA.  It was only supposed to be dry hopped for 3 days according to the recipe I was using but it ended up being a week.  Hope there is no bad side effects from this longer dry hopping.  I tasted it while going into the bottling bucket and my goodness!  Greatest tasting IPA I have made.  Very tropical and full of citrus flavors.  Pineapple juice flavors with bright grapefruit flavors.  Amazing.  Can only hope that the finished product tastes as good.

It seems like this 100% Brett Trois IPA could be a beer that I need to make more and more of.  Fingers crossed.

Flanders Red Sour Currant Ale - Tasting Day (Early)

So I wanted to test and see how carbonation worked with pitching new yeast prior to bottling.  The sour cherry version did not carb up well without any additional yeast added at bottling so the thought was if I put fresh yeast - in this case red wine yeast - in with my sugar solution it would carbonate a bit quicker and fall into the two week range.

This week was the two week mark so I opened up a bottle and only got a small "pffft" sound from the bottle.  Surely not carbonated to where it should be.

I tasted the beer and it is much better than the sour cherry version that was full of oak.  The currant version had a much more wine-like flavor going into the bottle and it seems to have held on to that much better.  Still a stronger oak presence than I wanted but keep in mind I am breaking in a smaller barrel that will impart its flavor much more quickly.

When I grabbed the bottle from my beer chamber (a small storage space under the stairs in my basement) I noticed the bottles were pretty cold already.  I am going to move the case upstairs for another two weeks and revisit.  More detailed notes at that time.

100% Brett Trois IPA - Follow Up

Just a quick follow up about the Brett Trois IPA.  After about 8 days in primary the gravity is down to 1.010 and possible even down to 1.009.  It smells like super ripe fruit and has a very over ripe fruit taste.  I get a pineapple juice flavor.  Maybe a hint of mango.  Hop flavor is still pretty strong and it will get even better once I dry hop with even more Citra, Centential and Chinook.

It is a very bright cloudy yellow with the yeast still in suspension.  Looks great.

Cant wait to bottle and taste the final product.

Brew-Bottle-Aging Day!

Last Saturday was a big day for some homebrew.  I brewed a 100% Brett Trois IPA, bottled my quick barrel aged sour currant and pulled 2 gallons out of the barrel that contained 15 month old Flemish Red sour ale.

First up the brew day.
The recipe I used was from the Mad Fermentationist.  So much great information is on this site and he is always willing to help me out when I have questions. I pretty much use his blog as the guidelines for all of the beers that I make.  This is a case where his recipe got such great reviews, I wanted to make it as he had it outlined.

The only difference is that I did not have the time to build up a huge starter of Brett Trois.  I have made a few 100% Brett Beers and had no problem pitching one or two vials without a starter (I usually brew 3 gallon batches vs 5).  This time I was not so lucky.  After about 48 hours I did not see any activity and I did not want to waste all of the hops.  I pitched a second vial of Brett Trois and about 1/4 of a vial of California Ale yeast to get it starting.  It fired up not too long after.

I know the Brett is doing its thing because the fruity aroma coming out of the airlock is amazing.  I checked this morning and it was still chugging through the sugars.  It has a weird krausen which I assume is the Brett's doing.  This will sit for 3-4 days before I transfer over to a secondary and dry hop for 5 more days.

Next - Bottle Day
The great thing about all grain brewing is that you get two hours during the mash and the boil to work on some other things.  I had a gallon of my quick barrel aged sour currant that needed to get into a bottle.  The FG was sitting at 1.009 for over a month so I felt safe to bottle.  I tasted the sample and this one never really got sour.  It's very vinous with a bigger punch of oak.  It does have a bit of a sour bite at the end but who knows how it will turn out.  As mentioned earlier, the Kriek version came out with a very large oak presence when it had very little in the bottle bucket.  I just hope the deep wine and fruit flavor stays with the beer after it bottle conditions.

Since the Kriek did not carb up as much as I wanted I tried to add a bit of yeast to the bottle bucket to ensure I hit the desired CO2 volumes I am looking for.  For this batch I was looking for 2.5 volumes and used a pretty generic red wine yeast to bottle condition.  I poured some of the dry yeast into some 100 degree water to hydrate the yeast and then mixed the yeast and sugar with the beer in the bottle bucket.  I light stir to get everything mixed up and into the bottles.  I think I got 5 champagne size bottles and one 12oz bottle of the sour currant.  I am going to taste the 12oz bottle at the two week mark to see how the bottle condition is going with the yeast vs without.  Based on that tasting will determine how long I decide to let it sit before trying again.  If it's too oak-y I will let it sit at least another month or so.

Finally - Barrel Aged Transfer
Since I only have a 20l barrel, my beer is going to get more oak flavor faster.  This will happen until I extract all of those tannins and the barrel stops giving off the oak flavor.  I did not want my Flemish Red Sour Ale to get too much oak flavor after aging for 15 months.  To get around this I decided I am going to use the solera method for the first few batches until I feel the oak has calmed down.  What I did for this batch is pulled about 2 gallons from the barrel and added to a plastic carboy.  I then took about a half of a gallon of newly brewed red ale with Abbey ale yeast and mixed into the old batch. Really all I am doing is hoping that the small amount of new beer will cut the oak flavor just enough.  The aged beer has a great smell so I can only hope this turns out well.

I then added two gallons of fresh beer to the 3 gallons or so of aged beer in the barrel.  Again this is to just cut the oak flavor and give the old beer some new sugar to chew on.

Depending on how well the batch in the plastic carboy comes out (will bottle next weekend) will determine how long I will let the barrel age.  My guess is I will let it sit until mid to  late summer and pull another batch.

Next Up
I plan to do my Berliner Weiss next.  It will be sour mashed with White Labs Lacto then boiled slightly after a few day incubation period and then I plan to use a Brett Trois / Ale yeast mix for fermentation and then bottle condition with champagne yeast.

Brew Day - Flemish Sour Ale

So if you read my previous post that I just published, you will see that the first beer off of the barrel had way too much oak flavor at the begging.   Since the second beer (third batch of wort or wine in the barrel) was the sour that has been aging for 15 months I want to ensure that I don't over-oak this batch.  That would be a waste of 15 months I can not get back. 

To get ready for me to pull that batch off the oak, I have a new batch of my Flemish Ale recipe ready to go.  I brewed this yesterday and I am using some Abbey ale yeast to ferment it out.  Once primary fermentation is complete I will take some of the beer out of the barrel and then place the fresh new beer into the barrel. 

I plan to use my barrel in the solera method.  I will never fully drain the barrel and instead pull off some of the beer and add fresh beer and yeast to the barrel.  This should add complexity and also help "age" the barrel.  As I get more familiar with how it acts I will know how much fresh beer to put in vs old beer to take out. 

I can also use a bit of the new fresh beer to mix with the old beer that I will bottle.  This would help cut the oak flavor and also provide fresh yeast for bottling to help ensure it fully carbonates.   Next week I hope to get some of the old beer out while adding in this new fresh batch.  Stay tuned.

Tasting Day - Quick Sour - Barrel "Aged"

It's been way too long.  The weather in western PA has really brought my brew days to a halt.  I will brew with temperatures in the high 30's.  Too bad we just haven't had too many of those types of weekends.  So the only thing I have been doing lately is tasting the first beer pulled out of the oak barrel I have.

The 20L barrel was cleaned and then filled with a Cabernet Sauvignon.  This sat for around 5 months.  I then emptied the barrel and filled it with a quick sour.  The wort was soured and then it sat in the primary for 3 months with Roeselare blend of yeast and then into the barrel for an additional 3.5 months.  Next the beer was transferred into a tertiary vessel.  I split the batch between regular, currants and sour cherries to see how they would taste.  In the end I thought this batch may not be good because the oak flavor would be too strong.  This is why I decided to experiment.

Well after a few weeks/month on the fruit or in the tertiary I decided to bottle.  Everything tasted great.  The sour cherry version tasted like a super tart sweet tart with a sweet cherry background flavor with some wet-basement funk in the background. Perfect.

The currant version tasted very wine like. Not as sour and not as funky.  Probably the most well rounded version.

Finally a version that was straight.  Nothing but the sour red ale.  This was a bit more funky than tart but suprised me in how well it tasted prior to going into the bottle.

I carbonated on the lower side since my last quick sour batch seemed to be plagued with gushers.  Now it was time to wait.

After three weeks of being in the bottle I opened a sour cherry version.  If you re-read that description above and imagine the complete opposite - you would have my tasting notes!  I barely tasted the barrel in my samples before I bottled.  There was a nice cherry flavor and it was very tart and funky - like a Rodenbach.  It tasted like I was chewing on one of the staves from the barrel.  All oak.  No sour. No cherry. Flat boring beer.

Sours tend to work on their own schedule and this is an example of that.  It was not ready to release those delicious flavors and wanted more time in the bottle to work things out.  Two weeks later I tried another bottle.  The oak flavor is starting to mellow out and if you try really hard there is a bit of sourness and cherry in there.  Two weeks after that (yesterday) I tried again.  It was almost to the level of a beer that I would drink.  Since each beer has gotten exponentially gotten better it's time for the rest of the batch to age some more in the bottle.

I have not tried the straight version yet and I still need to bottle the currant version.  I intend to bottle the currant version this week and let that age until later this summer.  Hopefully I have learned my lesson and that first tasting will be amazing.

More to come as the weather is starting to break and I have 4-5 batches already planned.  A separate post on that will come later today. 

Bottle Day - "Quick" Sours Aged in Oak Barrels

Exciting times.  I bottled my "Quick" Sours that were aged on my new-ish oak barrel.  The oak barrel held Cab Sauv wine prior to this first batch of beer being put on it.  I then split the 5 gallon batch 3 ways.  This week I bottled 2 of those variations.

Batch one was mixed with Tart Cherries from Michigan.  I got these frozen and just dumped them into my small 2 gallon bucket. Once they defrosted, I added the beer.  I had 2.5 lbs of cherries for 2 gallons.  If you go back to this post, you will see how this beer had the nastiest pellicle of the group.  It was smelling pretty harsh, but the flavor was really good prior to go into the bottle.


Batch two was a one gallon of straight Flanders Red.  This batch had the dusty pellicle but in my notes on that previous post, I mentioned it was a bit tame.  Not much sour flavor and it just had some oak notes along with a bit of funk from the bugs but what a difference 2 weeks makes.  This beer really turned the corner and it was a lot more acidic and had way more depth.  The oak flavor even started to subside.  I am really shocked and how quick this one turned.

Both beers were still at 1.009 or 1.010.  Again it looks like it was probably 1.0095.  This dint move from two weeks earlier so I went ahead with the bottling.  I aimed for 2.0 volumes of carbonation as well. This is on the lower end for the category but last batch of quick sours really ramped up a second fermantation in the bottle and created gushers.  Hoping that the reduced sugar at bottling will help reduce that while still giving it enough carbonation to create a brighter flavor to carry the sourness.

Since I used less sugar I am going to let these sit for at least 3 weeks - probably more like a month.  Once I open them in a month it will have been close to 7 months total for the sours.  Some of the delay was due to the fact that I bought a house and essentially the past 2 months have been just too crazy.  The goal was six months so I am only one month off.  Here's hoping the tasting day tastes as promising as the bottle day.

See you in a month on this one!

Brew Day - Lambic-ish

They say Lambic can only be crafted in Belgium. Proper wild yeast, temperature or even the spider webs in the attic of the brewery etc. etc. etc.

OK then. So I just brewed a "Labic-ish"beer.  You may have seen this called pLambic on home brew blogs before. Mine was a simple 60-40 mix of pilsner and wheat malts with a tiny dose of East Kent Goldings.  I did not do a authentic turbid mash.  This was my first brew day in my new house and, to be honest, I was out of sorts.  I did not want to try this new type of mash.  Besides, we already cleared up that we can not create a true Lambic here in the states so a single infusion mash was what I did.

Since my brew day did not go as well as I hoped this will be on the lower end of what a Lambic should be.  They are typically 1.044-1.056 in OG.  This is mostly due to the fact that I forgot to collect more wort because it seems when you brew in the cold you lose a lot more from the boil off.  So I only ended up with about 4.5 gallons of wort that was coming in at 1.052.  I then had to make a gallon of wort from malt extract.  I only had a small portion so this was pretty weak.  I didn't even bother to measure the final OG after I mixed everything together. Ugh...

I also didn't strain my wort as it was coming of the grain enough.  I thought it was pretty clear but when I started to strain from the boil kettle I noticed a lot of grain particles.  I then put it back into the boil kettle and then strained the wort through a cheese-cloth-like material to get out as much as I could.

My thought process was this - a Lambic ages for at least a year.  During the time this is aging it will get nice and funky and sour and should clear up in appearance.  Who knows how I will batch this group but my initial thought is to have some straight, some with raspberries and some on white grapes or golden raisins.

This post will get revisited in about year.  In the meantime I plan to take another attempt at a sour-mashed Lambic inspired beer while this one ages. More on that as it happens.


1-19-14 - Brew Day.  Yeast pitched around 12am.
1-20-14 - No signs of fermentation yet at 24 hrs. moved to a warmer location
1-21-14 - 7hrs after last check, airlock activity.
1-25-14 - Airlock activity has come to a crawl - very little activity
11-30-14 Moved to wooden barrel

Wood Barrel Sours - Updates

The wood barrel sours have been aging on fruit - or not - for the past month and I wanted to take a hydrometer reading to see where we are.  Of course it was time to taste a few to see how they were coming along as well.

Straight:

This is the smallest of the group with just under a gallon.  As you can see in the photo there is a nice dusty pellicle.  When I cracked it open it smelled more like "funk" than sour.  It had a lot of oak coming off of it too.  It was reading 1.010 or maybe 1.009.  When I tasted the sample from the hydrometer there was a big oak presence.  A little bit of Brett funk was hiding back there.  It was a very clean/light sour flavor.  Would not describe it as tart. Since this beer was made with the soured wort method the straight version will probably be a bit one-dimensional like previous tests.



Cherry:

This is a 2 gallon batch.  As you can see in the photo.  A big bubble like pellicle with the cherries floating in there. This measured in at 1.010 or maybe even 1.009. This one had very little oak flavor and smell.  This one has a nice tart taste to it.  The biggest sour flavor of the group.  It has a nice fruitiness to it as well.  The cherries are definitly doing there job in this one.  The extra sugar might of kicked up more production out of the Brett and other bacteria.  Only concern on this one is that it smells very strong.  Next week I will determine if I need to mix in some straight before bottling.



Currants:

Again, this is a two gallon batch and again this measured in at 1.010 or 1.009.  Its probably somewhere in between. Strange thing about this one is that the currant version has zero pellicle.  This has a medium tartness or sour flavor profile.  This batch also exhibited the most "wine" flavor from the barrel.  Very little to no oak flavor as well.  This is probably the most balanced.  The currants are not as in your face as the cherries are either.  They are more in the background.  You can tell there is something going on but not quit sure.




Next Steps:
I will measure again next week and more importantly check up on the cherry version.  I am concerned ascetic acid may be working a bit too hard in this one. Overall I am pretty excited.  Keep in mind these are still "quick sours".  They only aged for 4 months after a week of primary fermentation.  Most of these beers take 12-18 months.  Anything rated 6 or above on a scale of 1-10 would be pretty impressive in just 6 months (by the time they are ready to drink after bottling).