Tasting Day: Phunky Pumpkin

This one is a bit late.  But I finally have the tasting notes ready for the sour chocolate pumpkin ale I made.  This beer started out as a chocolate pumpkin stout.  I noticed a pellicle after two weeks in the secondary and then noticed that I put the beer in one of my sour fermentors.  Whoops. Nothing really to do other than let it go at this point.  One year later, I put it on tap.

Appearance: Pretty much black.  Bit of a burnt amber on the edge of the glass.  Little bit of head is left after the beer settles.  Bit of lace on the glass as you sip away.

Aroma: It has a vinegar sourness in the nose. A bit of chocolate maybe.  Spices are noticeable but you can't pick one out.

Taste:  This is a weird one.  A good weird.  Some sips you get chocolate.  Some you get that vinegar sourness. Others have a mixed sour and cinnamon flavor.  As the beer warms you get way more chocolate.  It's sweet while not being over powering.  Very unique and overall a great beer.  Very surprised by how this "mistake" turned out.

Overall:  I probably won't brew this one again just because I have too many sours going but if I ever had a spare carboy that I can use up for a year I just may.  I saved a few bottles worth that I can sip on next year.  So we are looking at two years at a minimum.

Sour Tastings

I have tried most of my sours that are in bottles.  I have not done proper tasting notes on these.  My goal is to do them over the holiday break.

1. sour red
2. sour stout
3. kriek
4. sour red with currant and raisin
5. sour stout with blackberry pinot noir
6. phunky pumpkin sour pumpkin stout.


These will be fun.

Look for these postings coming at the end of the month.

Speed Brewing

So I bought the new book "Speed Brewing" by Mary Izett. I hear her on the Beersmith podcast and the book sounded like it had some interesting stuff in it.  Glad I bought it.  It has a tone of little easy to brew recipes.  Ciders, meads, small beers, sodas and more.  What this book has done is showed how to make some other fermented beverages without being as involved as brewing.

I never made a cider.  I knew it was easy.  But I just needed a nudge.  This book was that nudge. I have now made three ciders since getting the book.

Cider 1: A cider made with honey crisp apples and fermented with White Labs English ale yeast.
Cider 2: A cider made with multiple apple juices and blackberry juice and fermented with champagne yeast.
Cider 3: Crab apples, fuji apple cider, honey crisp apple cider, and a regular apple juice mix. Fermented on White Labs English Cider yeast.

So I have quickly covered cider.  Got my feet wet and I am just waiting on the finished product.

Next up is a mead.  I will admit that I have been intimidated by mead.  I also have not had a mead I liked.  I find them too boozy most of the time.  I also didn't want to hold up a fermentor for a year or so for a mead.  This book is about small ABV drinks that are quick to ferment.  On the podcast Mary said these meads are light, refreshing and much more enjoyable than typical meads.  So what the hell.  Let's try one.

In the book she mentions a mead called Vikings Blood.  OK.  You have my attention.  Its a mead with cherry juice.  I just happened to have some left over sour cherry juice from my kriek.  It seemed like I had to make this one.  So I mixed up 1.5 gallons of wildflower honey with 16oz of sour cherry juice. Added water to top it off and shook it all up.  Added champagne yeast and its off and running.  Curious to see how this one turns out.

I plan to do some alcoholic sodas and maybe even some brew in a bag recipes from this book. (Im tired of brewing in the cold in the winter)

Hopefully more to come.

Brew Day: Molasses and Brown Sugar Stout

It's winter.  That means stouts for me.  And I brewed up a batch of my Molasses and Brown Sugar Stout.  Nothing crazy on the brew day.  All went well and I hit my target starting gravity.  Its currently in the secondary and going to sit for another week or two.

The only thing that I did this time different is that I took one gallon and put it on chile peppers.  My buddy had some really hot peppers this summer.  At the end of the summer I took 3 and added them to this beer.

I hate chili beers so this is for him at his request.  Curious to see how it turns out but my taste buds probably wont like it even if it turns out "great".  See how it turns out.

Follow Up: Golden Sour Mixers

I've been terrible at posting lately.  I am going to do a lot of small posts to get everything somewhat up to date.  First up is the mixers I made for a mixing with my golden sour.  The two beers that I made were a lacto sour, essentially a berliner weiss, and an American farmhouse ale.  I have been mixing a few examples and still haven't found anything that I like.  The light blonde body doesn't have much to it for any flavors to hide behind.  I have one more mix.  Basically a 0.5 to 4 blend.  If this doesn't turn out I am going to go with the golden sour as is.  I liked it striaght, but wanted some new beer to add for carbonation and added complexion.  I am going to bottle this beer, either straight or blended, next weekend.  I'm losing time and don't want to back up my production timeline.  The two beers I made will be mixed and soured until next year.

So that's where I am with this beer.  Frustration is mounting but I think the beer will be pretty good no matter how it turns out.

Brew Day: Golden Sour Mixers

Recently I bought a carb cap.  You take the cap and put it on a normal plastic bottle with a screw top bottle and hook it up to your gas.  Shake, shake, shake and shake some more.  Keep repeating until the bottle stays firm.  Boom!  You have carbonated beer.

This is a great tool for sour makers.  We spend so much time aging these beers we want to make sure we get things right.  What I am able to do with this tool is mix and carbonate very small samples of beer and taste how they will be under carbonation.

Recently I carbonated my golden sour straight from my 5.2 gallon barrel.  I wanted to taste what this beer was really like before determining what to mix in with it.  To my surprise, its really great as is.  I do think it could use a tiny bit of funk and a bit more lactic twang.

With these two things in mind I went to work.  I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of the base golden ale recipe.  I split that into two 2.5 gallon fermentors.

Batch 1 got dosed with American Farmhouse yeast from White Labs.  This has been sitting for a week and the yeast has taken it down from 1.052 - 1.008.  I am going to let this one sit a bit more with a hope that it will go down another 2 points.

Batch 2 was dosed with Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and Lactobacillus Brevis for 2 days prior to adding yeast.  After the two day period I added a blend of Brett Trois and my "house" strain of WLP 550.  After a week this beer is only down to 1.022.  Still got a ways to go.  I'm calling in the big guns and going to order up some Wyeast French Saision.  This yeast is known to plow through almost anything.  Last time I had a slow and sluggish fermentation I used this yeast and it was down to terminal gravity within a few days.

Once they are both finished I will do a little mixing and testing with my plastic bottle.  Once I finalize a mix I will be off to the races towards bottle day.

Bottle Day: Sours

This weekend had a lot going on. Blending, bottling, dry hopping, transferring to secondary and more.  This is just a real quick update on my bottle updates.

First up, I bottled my Kriek.  I bottled this the same way as my previous sours.  One exception is that I read that you can reduce a bit of the tannin from the barrel by using gelatin.  I decided to give it a whirl.  I transferred the beer to what would be a tertiary, actually a 4th fermentor, to get the beer off the fruit.  I then put it in the fridge after adding the gelatin.  Let it sit for a while to clear up and then brought it back to room temperature.  After it was at room temp I added fresh yeast (WLP 550) and sugar. Bottled and capped with the bench capper.

I did the same thing for my currant and raisin sour.  This was only a gallon, but it followed the same process.  This beer had very little fruit particle compared to the cherry.

Cant wait until these are ready.  The Kriek is a super red and cherry smelling beer.  I hope it tastes half as good as it smells.  The currant and raisin has a very wine like scent.  Again, cant wait for this one.

The brewery is running on full cylinders and I am pumping out a lot of sours now.  Hard to believe that after this spring and summer of mixing and bottling that it will soon be time to start all over again.  January is not too far away and that marks the one year anniversary for the batches currently waiting to go into barrels.

Blending Day: Sour Pale Ale

Not only did I mix up some sour pumpkin, I also mixed up the sour pale ale. This was a pale ale that was soured with the Wyeast Lambic blend and it has been going for about 18 months now.  It currently resides in one of my barrels.  The barrel was originally home to a homebrew Resiling. Idea here is to bring out the green apple flavors that can be common in lambics and exaggerate those with the green apple notes in a resiling. 

We tasted the beer directly from the barrel.  The delicate nature of the base beer is a blank canvas for the bugs and wine barrel to create their own flavors.  The beer from the barrel is slightly funky, very minimal actually, with a sharp crisp wine flavor.  That wine flavor has that green apple note we were looking for so mission accomplished. What this beer was missing, strangely enough, was more of a beer flavor.  This beer as it stands today is a great wine and beer hybrid like the Dogfish 61 minute (I may even bottle one or two of this straight) but it wasn't reminiscent of a lambic from Belgium.  It needed more funk and more citrus, sour twang.  How do you get that you ask.  By blending.

I had brewed up a Witbier a few weeks back for this exact purpose.  The Witbier I brewed last year was slightly tart with huge citrus notes from the orange peel and coriander.  After tasting Sour Monkey, a sour beer made from Victory's triple beer I felt OK about mixing a beer with orange peel and coriander so I wanted this to be a beer I could use for blending.  From that same brew day I saved 2 gallons of wort that came in around 1.032.  I added lacto and Brett Lambics at 100 degrees with the hope to get a really gnarly funky and tart beer.  This beer mostly came out funky.  Big barn yard nose with grassy hay and it has a bit of that medicinal scent I have seen in some of my other 100% brett beers.

So first up was trying to add some acidity or harness and mainly cut back on the wine flavor.  I did a 6:1 mix of the sour ale with the witbier.  It seemed a bit more sour, not much, with a bigger hit of citrus.  Most importantly the wine flavor was really knocked back by just that little bit of witbier.  It was knocked back enough that it wasn't so dominating.  This version had no funk.  So, enter the funk.

Next was 6:1:0.5 of pale sour, witbier and gnarly funky barnyard beer.  It had a sour bite to it.  No really harshness showing through.  Wine is well subdued and the apple flavor was popping a bit more.  This could maybe be attributed to the lacto-brett beer.  It was showing some funk but nothing crazy.  Overall I really liked where it was.  But we still wanted to try for some more funk.

So I reversed the ratio of witbier and funky beer.  Simple put this had a funky nose a bit of sourness but it started to give of a medicinal thing.  I call it band-aid like.  It was minimal, but it scared me.  This was my friends favorite mix.  I just couldn't pull the trigger with the thoughts of the full batch getting band-aid like.  I have had this happen before and that is no fun.

To solve that I decided that since we liked the beer straight and we like the funk flavor to be higher than the citrus punch from the witbier that the next logical step was to just even out the witbier and funk beer.  6:0.5:0.5 blend of the three beers.  It was grassy with a pleasant funk smell with some wine notes still shining through and just a bit more citrus.  It tasted similar to the funky version without being too concerned with the funk taking over.

The one thing I might play with on final mixing day is added lactic acid to the mix.  This will be the dry lactic acid.  I just want to add a bright sharp acid note to make the beer a bit brighter.  I will probably mix these up and let them sit for a week and then divide them up.  I have 4 destinations for these beers.

1 gallon will be saved for Gueze.

1 gallon will be mixed with Peaches and Apricots

1 gallon will be straight

2 gallons will be mixed with home grown raspberries.

Out of this batch only the 1 gallon with be bottled right away.  The fruited versions will sit for another 2 months and then be bottled and sat down for 2 months while the Gueze gallon will sit for another 2 years.

Blending Day: Wild Pumpkin Ale

This past weekend was another busy one in the VorpBrew brew house.  Biggest thing that was accomplished was blending some new batches and bottling others.

First up was the Chocolate Pumpkin Ale that I let get wild and funky with some Brett Lambicus yeast.  This one was brewed almost exactly a year ago.  I let it sit on the Lambicus yeast after noticing that my equipment might have been infected with a previous sour batch.  Instead of pitching I decided to just let it go with this yeast and see what happened.  I wasn't going to put another clean beer in the fermentor anymore so I had the space!

After a year of getting funky I am surprised to say it wasn't all that funky.  It drank like a somewhat tart and sour pumpkin beer with notes of cinnamon spice and chocolate in the background.

We start all mixing sessions by taking the base beer and tasting it straight up.  From there we determine where to go based on what other beers we have to blend.  In this case we had the ability to add more spices or add some sour stout to give the beer a bit more tang.

We were really struggling what to do with this beer after tasting it.  It was surprisingly subtle and multilayered in flavor but it was just missing something.  So we just started to add some other ingredients to the base sour beer.

We added a sprinkle of pumpkin pie mix to the soured beer and really liked how it brought out the spices just a bite more.  So that was determined as a good direction.

We then added some sour stout.  First ratio was 12:1.  That one part sour really added a more rounded flavor than anything.  It didn't necessarily make the beer more sour but it made the sourness that was already there... fuller. The one thing this ratio did was completely mask the chocolate and you really had to hunt for the chocolate.  So the next step was to reduce the ratio to 24:1 to try and bring back the chocolate flavor.

The 24:1 ratio brought back the chocolate and it somehow made the beer more sour.  Less sour stout and it makes it tastes more sour!  Didn't understand this at all.  My buddy was blind to most of the mixing so I would tend to wait for his response before giving mine and it was confirmed that somehow this beer was more sour.  Weird.  Anyways, back to the tasting.  This version had a bit more pumpkin but not much more that the 12:1 ratio.

We decided that the 12:1 ratio was the way to go because we really liked how it just made a more round flavor in the sourness and it still had a bit of the pumpkin flavor.  We opted for the spice to add that traditional pumpkin pie flavor rather than a beer that was a bit one dimensional.

I mixed this up and its now sitting in a carboy marrying together.  I plan to keg most of this batch to try out kegging a sour so it will be ready relatively quickly. I plan to bottle some others for next year and see how they age over time.

Brew Day - Melting Pot Pale Ale

Fresh picked hops.

This past week I harvested my hops.  I did not harvest enough to make a full beer with just those hops but I did have enough for a whirlpool addition.  First year I let the vines grow and take hold. Second year all i wanted to do was see if the hop flowers could grow.  The growing conditions in my back yard are not the greatest.  If I am able to make one beer from the hops I grow my self I consider that a success.  Now that I know that the hops can grow I am going to build a proper trellis so I can see if I can grow a few more for next year.  Anyways. On to the beer of the day.

The hops I grow are cascade. I figured that I should brew the beer that introduced cascade to a lot of craft beer drinkers – Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  I took a base recipe from BYO and tweaked it to make it my own.  The recipe said to use Perle, a German hop, along with Magnum, a highly alpha acid American hop and then finally the star of the show Cascade.  Uses some American 2-row and C40.

I tweaked the recipe to make it more of a true American mutt.  A melting pot of different nations.  I used Belgian 2-row and an English strain yeast.  So in have hops from Germany and America.  Malt from America and Belgium and yeast from England. Four nations to make a simple pale ale.

My hops with some additional for a nice
soak in the hot wort

Brew day was OK.  I had a very cement-like grain bed and it was pretty hard to get all the wort I needed without mixing everything up.  My gravity was a bit low after sparging so I added a bit of extra light malt extract and just a tad bit of sugar.  Ended up getting my gravity right where I needed it by the end of the boil.

Chilled the wort, pitched the yeast and now it's time to wait and see how the true American Melting Pot of ingredients turns out.

Double Brew Day! - White Wool Witbier and Funky Berliner Weisse

This past labor day I labored away on two new brews.  This is the first time I used the last runnings to make a small beer.  The main beer I was brewing was my witbier - the working title is White Wool.  Same recipe as last year.  Only difference is that I could not find any Jolly Pumpkin witbier so I do not have any dregs.  This will show me how much of that yeast really influenced last years beer.  I thought last years beer was great!

I have since learned that what I brewed was not a Peeterman Wit.  It was more of a old-world Leuven Witbier. To offset no Jolly Pumpkin, I added a little bit of lactic acid bacteria.  In this case it was Lacto Brevis.  So in a few weeks we will learn how much that Jolly Pumpkin yeast added to that beer.

Brew day was simple.  I ended up with about 4 gallons of 1.052 wort which was right on target.  Fermentation took off and is currently firing away on all cylinders.

The second beer I am making is a Funky Berliner Weiss.

I took the last gallon of sparge water I had left over and drained off another gallon of wort from the grain bed.  I did not boil that. Hoping that some of the funk from the malt will last and help funkify the beer some more.  I then mixed in one gallon of the Witbier to provide some hop and boiled wort.  I didnt want the Berliner to taste too much like wort.  I've read a few articles on how no boil Berliners can have that "raw" wort flavor.  Hoping the half boil vs half unboiled makes a nice in-between style.

I then added Lacto Brevis for 24 hours.  It was ripe – I mean funky –after that 24 hour rest.  I only cooled the beer to 120 when I pitched the lacto to help build up the sourness a bit quicker.  It seemed to work because this was nice and funky.  To make it a bit more funky the only yeast that will see this beer is Brett Lambicus.  When doing a 100% fermentation with Brett (though technically the lacto probably converted some of the sugar to alcohol) Brett Lambicus is supposed to have a funky fruit flavor.  Some say pineapple while I have seen some reviews say that it can pass as a Cherry fruit beer when using as "primary"

I only pitched one vial with no starter with the hopes of stressing the yeast some to get some more traditional funk in a short time.  24 hours later there is airlock activity and things are progressing.

The hope with this beer is that I can use it to mix my Pale Sour which will be coming off the oak very shortly to add some sourness or funk.  If its not needed I can just mix with some fruit and make a funky Berliner.

More to come as it happens.

Summer Homebrew and Seafood Boil: Tasting Day Galore

Yesterday was the "grand opening" of my "tap room".  This may also be known as a basement with a refrigerator and two taps installed with a small bottle fridge next to it but you get the idea.  I shared 5 homebrews with my friends yesterday and I am here to recap those beers.

Overall, it seems all of the beers were appreciated and one seems to have rose to the top. All of the beers are gone so something went right.

One downside to only having a 2.5 gallon keg for these is that we actually kicked the Kiwi Apricot Saison and the Three Blind Mice "Brett" IPA rather quickly.  On the plus side, it means I can try more beers and it will force me to brew more often, something that has become harder to do with work, planning for a wedding (and making the beer for it) along with owning a house that just takes time away on the weekends.

I am going to provide a condensed tasting notes from each beer and then provide my overall impression and thoughts on how to move forward.

Here we go!  Up first...

Three Blind Mice - Brett IPA with Mango Juice
I really love this beer. It has nothing to do with the fact that I made it.  At 7.35% it drinks like a session.  It's bitter with a fruity nose along with a fruit hop bite.  What I really like is that is ends with just enough of a twist that it just isn't some other fruity hop IPA.  That finish was best described by my one friend who said smoky.  The smoky finish could what I call the funk bite.  This of course coming from the "brett" yeast that was solely used to create the beer.  As we know now, this yeast, Brett Trois, isn't actually brettanomyces (brett-a-no-mice-ez).  They are saying it's a wild saccharomyces yeast strain.  Hopefully by now you figured out why I called it Three Blind Mice.

Overall - I don't really plan to change this recipe. The one thing I will change is upping the bittering hop addition.  I tried to match the extract potency with pellet hops and I think I miscalculated slightly.  Another ounce in the beginning of the boil should do it. It will also help balance the extra sugar and ABV coming from the Mango juice.  I thought the juice addition was near perfect.  It made the beer have an extra fruity dimension without it punching you in the face and taking over the beer.

I do however plan to brew 5 gallons at a time when I make it going forward.

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Kiwi Apricot Saison
This beer...  I don't know what to say.  This is exactly what one friend said too.  Another said "It's trying to be something, I just don't know what"

I think this is a case of too much going on.  I tried to make a saison with New Zealand hops, apricot, Brett Trois and French Saison yeast.  In theory all of the elements made sense.  New Zealand hops are fruity, almost wine like.  Apricot is, well, fruit. Brett Trois has tropical fruit esters and my experience of French Saison to this point was a nice fruity funk. Sounds like a decent concept.

It just did not come together in the first pint.  The beer was a grassy, wine heavy beer with a slight hint of farm yard funk.  One friend said he got sulfur in the finish that added that saison funk he knows of.

Why did I say it did not come together in the first pint?  Because you have to get over the first pint and everything being thrown your way.  Once you do its actually a really drinkable beer.  It just messes with your head and it's hard to decide if you like it.  The Nelson Sauvignon hops created such a wine heavy smell and flavor that you didn't know what you were drinking at first.

Overall - Solid experimental beer.  I will go back to the Saison drawing board on this one and use the design philosophy of KISS - Keep it simple stupid.  I think next year I am going to return to my original recipe with my original noble hops and add the apricot to that recipe and see how ti comes out.

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Barn-Cat Black - Sour Stout
Holy shit. That's all I need to say.  This beer didn't taste too good in the bottle after 3 months.  But now.  It's almost exactly as I saw the beer coming out when my girlfriend and I mixed this batch.  It has just enough roasty and toasty flavors to let you know you have a stout and it has the crispness, funk and sour edge you would expect from a sour beer. Im still in a bit of shock as to how this beer that almost turned into vinegar was saved by my first blending experience.  These bottles will be savored and only come out on special occasions moving forward.

Overall - This beer has showed me that blending is a must for homebrew sours, not just commercial sours.  Even though my blending method is super simplified it works out pretty well.  I just took the super sour beer and made a new batch of clean Belgian inspired stout.  Mixed them until I got the acidity where I wanted it along with the roast and toast flavors.  The key is using a yeast that will make a really, really, dry beer.  In my case WLP 550.  This way you give yourself some assurance you wont create bottle bombs.  So far so good.  I will most likely be blending every batch to try and gain that balance.  I'm sure there will be occasions where I may say screw it and go for a straight blend but this beer was a huge learning opportunity.


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Roosters Red - Flemish Style Sour Red
Double Holy Shit~!!!!  This is the first bottle I opened of this beer.  When me and my buddy mixed this ratio we kept getting a harshness that I couldn't explain.  Maybe the tannin from the small oak barrel but it was just harsh with some sour sweetness.  We mixed until the harshness was as minimized as we could get it.  To my surprise this beer had ZERO harshness.  I don't know what to say other than I was blown away. I can't wait to try this on a day where I don't consume as many beers as I did yesterday to get a true read on it but initial tastings are through the roof when it comes to expectations.

Overall - Pending a clean tasting day next time I crack one of these open there is nothing else to say other than FINALLY.  After tasting my first two traditional sours that went from too oaky, harsh, vinegar, thin, flat and really just uninspired, I think I now have the confidence to really start making some great sour beer.  One friend described this beer as "Great.  As good as most and better than some commercial examples"  Nothing more you need to say.


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Golden Geese - Lambic-Inspired Pale Ale
Interesting beer.  It feel a bit flat.  This of course came after we had the other sours listed above.  It has the flavor needed in a lambic - funky, funky, funky, tart, horsey, etc.  They just need turned up or dialed in more.  It tastes young at 18 months. This bottle was a bottle that I saved from when I transferred the beer into the barrel.  So technically, this is an unfinished product and guess what, thats what it tastes like.  I will blend the barrel beer with a fresh batch and hopefully regain that balance.  I amy even make a "clean" lacto belgian Blonde to mix with to punch up the acidity.  I feel the beer has the funk it just needs some more to go along with it.


Overall - It tasted incomplete.  That's good because this beer is incomplete.  I will be bottling the barrel version in September.  Around Christmas or so we should know where we landed with this one.


I would say this was a successful day of debuting some new homebrew beers to my friends.  Here is how the ranked the beers for the day.

5. Golden Geese
4. Kiwi Saison
3. Three Blind Mice
2. Barn-Cat Black
1. Roosters Red

Preview Tasting Day: Three Blind Mice "Brett" IPA

This is the second time I have brewed this beer.  The previous run was exactly the same as this run - until the secondary.  This time I decided to put this beer on a bit of 100% mango juice I got from Whole Foods.  I only brewed a 3 gallon batch and by the time I got to secondary I really only had 2.5 due to dry hop trub taking up a large portion on the bottom of the fermentor.  Since I only had a small 2.5 batch I only used 16oz of the fruit juice.  This comes in at a mere 5% of the beer.  I figured 5% was small enough that I was not going to ruin the beer.  I also thought 5% would be enough to play a supporting role in the beer.  This is just a preview tasting day.  Meaning I am going to officially do the tasting notes when I have a little get together August 22nd.

I would like to say at this time that I find the beer to be fantastic.  Great hop aroma, great hop taste and the yeast and the fruit juice mingle so well with the hop and malt that its blends into a great mix.  It's a great summer time IPA.

More to come on the 22nd.

Tasting Day: Kiwi's Apricot Saison

Today I officially tapped the New Zealand Apricot Saison.  I snuck in a small taster the other day before the "official" tasting and I was bit concerned.  Anyways here is real tasting notes on the official tasting day.

Appearance: 4/5.  Probably a bit too hazy for the style.  I love the color though.  It screams summer beer. The beer is a very cloudy light hay color.  Has a lemon cream pie kind of look going on.  Cant see through the beer at all (fruit pectin?) Big fluffy white head as it pours out of the tap as it settles out leaving a half inch to quarter inch head.  It leaves a small amount of lacing on the glass as you drink it.

Smell: 2/5.  Does not smell like a saison and I can barley smell any fruit (apricots).  It has a hint of fruit in nose. Mostly a white wine/grape juice smell with a heavy dose of grass-like hop smell.

Taste: 3/5.  Unique to say the least.  Not like any other saison I have had.  Grassy/Hay hop flavor dominates.  The wine and dry grape flavor are there too. A tiny bit of fruit comes in at the very beginning but is gone before you know it was really there.  If I did not tell you it was brewed with apricots you would probably never guess it.

Mouthfeel:  5/5.  For the style this is right on target.  Very light and refreshing once you get past the bitter grassy hops.  Very dry.  Beer ended up at 1.004!

Overall:  2.5/5.  I expected more from this beer.  To be fair this beer is still really, really young.  I much prefer a straight saision vs a super hoppy, fruited version like this one.  Hopefully with some time this beer ages into a more refined version of it self.  Maybe as the hop flavors die down you will get some more subtle flavors coming through.  I also don't know if you would say this is a saison if you had it without know what it was.  Little, to no funk going on.  This is my first time using White Labs French Saison.  Maybe their strain is not nearly as saison-like as the Wyeast version.

If I were to brew again I would not add the fruit.  The hops dominate.  Or, I would not dry hop this beer at all.  Let the 60 minute addition and the flame out hops be the only hops in the beer and then finish with the fruit.  I also would go back to Wyeast vs White Labs for the French Saison strain.  Maybe the hops are covering up the traditional saison flavors but right now I am a bit let down how "normal" and clean this beer tastes.

If I were to really rethink the recipe as a whole I would just rebrew my previous saison and add apricots to that beer as it was originally constructed.

I learned a lot about the New Zealand hops on this beer.  The packaging for Nelson Sauvigon said "White wine like flavors".  Boy oh boy are they right with that one!

If this beer ages into something different I will update the post.  Until then.  Get ready for my next fruited beer - Mango Trois IPA.  Should post about this in a week or so.

Oh yeah... the tap is working pretty well!


UPDATE:
Two weeks later and this beer has really smoothed out and started to come together. This just goes to show you that just because you can keg a beer and drink it two days after your fermentation schedule does not mean you should.  Time is still your friend for some of these beers.

The subtle fruit flavor is a bit more intense and the super grassy hop flavor has somewhat mellowed out as well.  Brings everything back into balance.

I would bump this up to a pretty solid beer and give the smell another quarter point to give it 2.25 (still zero saison smell).  Taste would get another half point for the balance it is showing but I am still bummed that no real saison character is showing. 3.5.

Overall would get another half point for everything outlined above.  Unless time will reveal some of that traditional saision character, this beer is probably going to max out here.  There is some "Brett" trois in this beer so there is still a chance it could turn it into something.  I just don't think the keg will last that long.

Brew Day: Three Blind Mice IPA (Formerly 100% Brett IPA)

Brett Trois (White Labs 644)  is not no longer Brett.  I have seen it called Wild Saccharomyces.  Saccharomyces Trois just doesnt roll off the tongue like Brett Trois.  The beer that this yeast makes is wonderful on the palate though - especially IPA.  My favorite IPA and close to my favorite beer I have ever brewed was the previously named 100% Brett Trois IPA.  Currently going to call this beer 3 Blind Mice keeping with my barn theme and of course a node to Trois.

Here is the description from White Labs:  This strain, used traditionally for wild yeast-like fermentations, produces a slightly tart beer with delicate characteristics of mango and pineapple. Can also be used to produce effervescence when bottle-conditioning.

Wild-yeast-like fermentation.  Key phrase.  This yeast certainly acted like a 100% Brett fermentation when I brewed it last.   So I made a starter this time around.  Last time the brew day crept up on me and I did not have time to make one.  This should help kick the fermentation off faster and produce and even better beer than last time. 

Brew day was pretty simple.  I did replace the hop extract with regular old Centennial hops.  I just added enough to the beginning of the boil to reach my target IBU.  I got a gravity reading of 1.066.  Two points shy of where I wanted to be but still really good.  This beer really dried out.  I expect it to go below 1.010.  Beersmith says 1.007 is the estimated final gravity.  We will see how low it goes.

The only thing I am going to do this year is add a bit of 100% Mango juice.  I want to push the beer one step further towards that tropical fruity flavor that the hops and yeast were giving the beer last time.  It also continues my experiment with wine and fruit juices in beer.  I will post some notes as they happen.

Brewery Update

Beatrice my trusty cat helper on the floor next to the bottle capper.

Half way through the year already.  I feel like I am not getting nearly enough done.  Good news is that work has finally slowed down (enough that I'm not working weekends - currently) and I have some brew days lined up in the very near future.  In the meantime I needed to take a full day and just have a maintenance day in my "brewery",

Because I am not 100% up to speed on my sour production I am still brewing a lot of beers for blending mixing with the barrel - or after the barrel - to get the right taste on these first batches.  I have three five-gallon barrels.  They push out a lot of oak.  It's going to take time and more importantly, more batches, to ease out that oak flavor.  After more than two years I am just now drinking my sour stout.  This one didnt have to go through the barrel because I did not have it ready yet.  But the next batch will go on oak.  This weekend I finished cleaning and preparing my new barrel.  To celebrate that accomplishment I put 5 gallons of a Blackberry Pinot Noir into the barrel.  Its going to sit for about 3 months and then the next wave of sour stout will go in.  This first batch in the barrel will most likely be filled with too much oak flavor so I will then have to blend and mix that batch.  So on, and so on.  Until of course the barrel stop giving off the heavy oak flavors.

Another accomplishment of the weekend was bottling my sour red that came out of the barrel.  This is the second generation out of the barrel.  The first batch was way too much oak flavor.  I took that batch and blended it back into clean beer and back into the barrel it went.  After it came out I blended yet again with clean beer.  This batch is much more tolerable, but it currently still has a heavy oak and full of tannin-like flavors.  I recently had a pint of Bells Brewery "The Wild One".  My beer has similar flavors.  Its a complex beer.  It has a bit of harshness mixed with some funky fruit flavors from the Brett.  You can kind of get the tart cherry pie aroma when you smell it - reminiscent of a Rodenbach.  But it has a punch that Rodenbach does not.  I would love to have my beers skew more towards the sharp acidic bite with fruity notes that Rodenbach has vs my beer which I would describe as a beer that smells like a Rodenbach but then punches you in the face with an almost abrasive funk/acid bite.  Here's to hoping that the carbonation will add some brightness to the beer and liven it up some.  I will check the first bottle in two months.

Sour cherries sit on the bottom of the carboy as I siphon
sour red beer on top. A Kriek is a brewing!

While bottling the sour red I also blended two batches from that base beer.  I took two gallons and put them on 4lbs and canned sour cherry fruit with all of the juices.  This should play well with the aroma I described above.  The fruit may even soften some of that flavor.  We wont know on this one for another 4 months.  It will sit on the fruit for two months.  If it's ready to bottle at that time it will then sit for another 2 months before I taste one of the bottles.

The final batch I mixed up was with black currants and dark raisins.  The dried fruit was added to a small one-gallon test batch.  Ill be curious to see how this one turns out.  I expect this version to push more towards the wine flavor present in the red sour from the barrel.  The strong Cabernet Sauvignon flavors may come out more with grapes and currants in the mix.  Don't really know what to expect on this one.

On top of mixing and bottling the three beers outlined above I cleaned a lot of carboys and bottles.  Since I felt like the Brett was getting out of control I have been cleaning a lot more.  For instance I didn't even need to clean some carboys but did anyways.  Just cleaning the gear if it has been sitting too long without beer in it.

All and all it was a very productive day.  Coming up this weekend though is two brew days.  Me and Mike make our second collaborative oat beer.  This one wont be as tricky since we are not using any witch weed to brew with.  We are making an oat beer with with lemon, ginger and honey.  Should be a real summer quencher if it turns out.  I will also be brewing my 100% Brett IPA again.  Although it probably should be call IPA since they recently found out Brett Trois is really a "Wild Saccharomyces".  I will be making one small tweak to the recipe this year by adding just a touch of mango juice to the secondary to really push the tropical flavors.

I should have a tasting note for my La Fin Du Maz shortly as well.  It's the first beer I put into a keg and it should be ready to sample tomorrow.

Finally, I will be putting my saision on tap soon.  This is my New Zealand Apricot Saison.

Building a Keggerator

Finished project. Just need to add a drip tray.

This fathers day I got to spend a bit of time with my dad building something great.  We built a keggerator.  It was a simple project in the end but non-the-less an important one.  Work has been crazy busy and I have not had time to see my dad or mom since our vacation in late May.  This is a project that we wanted to tackle well before Father's Day but it just kept getting pushed back.  My dad has always helped me build and fix stuff.  Him and my uncle just know how to do stuff without much instruction.  He looks at the pieces and we build.  This case was a bit different because I had watched 1,000 hours of YouTube video's on how to build this thing out.  Here is what we did and how I got my keggerator set up and ready for its first draft beer in my "brewery".

 Step One: Plan like crazy.  Look at your fridge.  Think of how you want it set up.  Determine if you want small kegs or typical 5G sized kegs. You will be doing this with a lot of unknowns but you should try to visualize exactly what you want.  Watching all of the YouTube videos will help you understand what is possible for your scenario

Step Two: Go to a good homebrew shop or online store that can supply you everything you need while walking you through what part does what.  In my case it was Country Wines in North Hills of Pittsburgh.  I said I have a standard fridge with a top freezer from the 90's and want to fit two kegs and a small CO2 tank so everything can be held inside the fridge.  They then went to the shelves and pulled everything out one by one telling me what the piece does and how to hook it up or put it together.

Step Three: Do a dry run of your system to get a feel for the space and how you might like it set up.  In my case I put both kegs and the CO2 tank in the fridge and tried to move my shelves around to squeeze out as much storage as possible.  I then figured out where the taps would go on the door and had a rough idea of where those would be placed.

Step Four: (Enter my dad)  I discuss my plan and he concludes that it should work out as I planned.  We measure the spot for the taps to go into the door.  I measured to make sure they fit within the one shelf of the fridge door while also being low enough that when I open the freezer the taps dont kick open and pour precious beer everywhere!  We mark the outside of the fridge with our marks for the hole saw.  We made the tap handles four inches apart.

Step Five:  Pre drill through the door to have a guide for your hole saw drill to do its thing.  Then drill the hole saw through the metal side of the fridge door.  Stop the drill and remove the circle of metal.  Continue drilling through to to the other side. Most fridges are not going to have anything in the door other than metal, plastic and foam.

Step Six:  Put a small piece of wood on the inside of the door to distribute the pressure from the hex nuts.  We held up the piece of wood after cutting it to size against the inside of the fridge.  My dad then did a quick drill to mark where the hole saw needed to go through the wood.  Finish drilling with the hole saw.

Step Seven:  Insert the tap shank into the hole and the wood. Put the hex nut on the wood side and then screw on the taps.  Tighten until the taps arent spinning around and you are not flexing the plastic too much.  Snug.  Not death grip.

Step Eight:  Hook everything up. Hook up all of your hoses as outlined by your LHBS.  Use hose clamps on all ends.  Hook up regulator to the CO2 tank.  Hook the beverage tubing up to the tap shanks and the kegs.  Hook everything up. All of it!

Step Nine:  Once you have everything hooked up you should run cleaner through your system.  I had my kegs pre-filled with cleaner solution.  So once everything was hooked up we tested the gas.  Turned everything on.  Tested the pressure.  Put water and soapy solution over all of the placed gas could leak to test for any small leaks.  Test the lids.  I had my lid off center ever so slightly and a nasty hiss kicked in sa soon as the gas was turned on.  Turn of the gas and try, try again.  Once you have a leak free system have 4lbs of CO2 on the water and cleaning solution and let it flow.  Pull the taps forward and run all of the solution through the keg or kegs.  Rinse with water and repeat.  Finally.  Sanitize.  Now you are at the best step.

Step Ten:  Put homebrew in the keg.  Hook it all up and set your regulator to your desired PSI.  (I have not even done this part yet so I wont pretend to know for sure).  I am going to sue this site and calculator to start and see how it goes with my system and particular setup:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/keg-carbonation-calculator/

Wait 7-10 days.  Try the beer.  Hopefully enjoy!

So that's it.  It only took about 1.5 hours for me and my dad to get it set up and the first two kegs cleaned and run through the system.

Once I get some time to finish kegging my beer I plan to do that while bottling a few for long term aging.

Hopefully you see a post on that within the next ten days.

Cheers.

Tasting Day: Barn-Cat Black Sour Stout

Work has been tough sledding lately.  I rewarded my accomplishment of the day (finishing Wednesday) by cracking open the 3 month old sour stout.  I really want to check in along the way to see what this beer is doing in the bottle.  Here is my quick recap:

One month in bottle:  It was way better than it should have been.  Setting expectations pretty damn high.

Two months in the bottle:  It was all over the place.  The fresh stout flavors were really competing with the sour flavor.

Three months in the bottle:  More calmed down.  Still has some abbrassive qualities but they die out after the beer opens up in the glass for a bit.


The good news is that its getting better and I can tell that the beer is starting the meld together better.  After the three sip rule - the rule where someone must take three drinks of a sour beer before truly knowing what the beer tastes like - this beer is really, really good.  The first two and maybe even third sip are tougher than they should be.  You get punched in the face with acidity and some funky roast flavors.  You know you are drinking an American sour.  It let's you know what it is right up front.

As the beer sits and warms up a bit in the glass that abbrassive bite fades and it becomes a great sipping beer.  The sour, tart and slightly tar-like bite form this weirdly refreshing beer.  I kept going back for a sip quicker and quicker.

I drank a full 750mL by myself in a pretty short amount of time.  That right there shows that there is something in this beer.  I plan to crack one more before the fall to see how its doing. My friend who introduced me to sours needs to come out and have one soon just so he can see how it is doing.  He has heard me talk about it for over 2 years now so I think he might deserve a glass or two.

After that bottle is done I am going to sit on it until stouts are back in season - let's say September or October at the earliest.  I will plan to drink one a month to track the progress until I have one left.  That one will sit for a long time.  I want to see how it lasts over at least 2 years in the bottle.

I am going to bottle the Blackberry Barn-Cat Black Sour Stout later this month or early June and start tasting those around September or October as well.

Brew Day - Saison - New Zealand Funk

Today I brewed up a saison.  This saison is different than my last batch.  This one is highly hopped and hopped with New Zealand hops.  I was listening to the sour hour when Sante Adairius Rustic Ales was a guest and they discussed West Ashley, an apricot saison with Chardonnay grapes.  This reminded me of a post from the Mad Fermentationist: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2014/08/new-zealand-saison-and-glycosides.html

I decided to combine the two.  The hops used all have descriptions of stone fruit, citrus fruit and white wine.  Seems to be a perfect fit for the Chardonnay wine addition along with apricot puree.

The brew day went pretty well.  I did have a pretty large boil over which resulted in me getting less than 5 gallons or wort into the carboy for fermentation but that's OK.

There was also a lot of trub.  With 6 oz of hops going into this beer just for primary it had a lot of green left behind.

I added the yeast at 80 degrees since the saison strains love warmer worts.  I used the White Labs French Saison vs Wyeast this time. I hope to get similiar results.  The description online does not mention fruit like the Wyeast so hopefully its just a more tame version of the Belgian Saison strains.

I will update as the beer progresses.

UPDATE:
After about 10 days the airlock finally started to slow.  It was a slow and steady fermentation.  I'm sure the Brett Trois ate through some sugars that the French Saison yeast couldn't.

The smell from the airlock was anywhere from super fruity - almost like fruit flavored bubblegum - to super funky.  The fruity scent has to be from the hops and the French Saison yeast while the funkiness is coming from the Brett Trois and the French Saison yeast.  If the Whitelabs French Saison is anything like the Wyeast strain, this beer should have a more subdued funk and a bigger fruit nose.

I transferred the beer into a secondary carboy along with 96oz of canned apricots.  The beer is currently undergoing another round of fermentation with the added fruit sugars right now. I will give it about 2 weeks to chew through those sugars before putting into a keg and a few bottles.
 

Brew Day: The Beginning of the End

This weekend I finally got around to brewing.  I was supposed to brew this beer about 3 weeks ago.  Weather and life just got in the way.  At the time I am calling this beer the Beginning of the End.  Essentially it is a La Fin du Monde clone.  I am making it for my friend who recently started drinking good beer.  His gateway drug?  La Fin du Monde.  This is the same friend that I had to make a hard lemonade for so he has come a long way.  I should start a series called the Friendship Series and keep track of these beers.  We will save that for another post.

Everything went smooth on this brew day except for one thing.  I forgot to take a OG reading.  My wort chiller busted on the previous brew day and I just plain forgot to buy a new one.  I was left with only a cold water bath to cool my brew down to pitching temps.  By the time my beer got to temp I forgot to take the reading. I guess you can say two things went wrong as I did not want to let the beer sit that long while it cooled.  I much prefer using a wort chiller and getting it cooled down in a half hour at the most.  This took many hours because it was hot yesterday and it just took too damn long.

Fermentation was rolling this afternoon so it took off in less than 24 hours.  Not too bad considering I did not use a yeast starter.

This may be the first beer I keg.  More on that later.
Until then...

Update:
This beer sat in the primary for two weeks and one day.  This was due to my travel and not necessarily planned.  I have been thinking about really reducing my secondary time as I hear more and more people say it is not worth the risk of adding more oxygen to your beer.  Some are even abandoning the secondary all together.

Its a very nice straw yellow color.  Still cloudy. Hopefully that clears up some.  Smells like a nice Belgian beer.

This will be my first beer on tap.  I have 4 mini kegs (3gallons each) coming to the house tomorrow.  I am stopping at the homebrew shop to put in a grain order for a new beer along with buying the rest of the supplies to get up and running.

Really excited about this development.  Having 4 kegs will let me age 2 beers while having two on tap.

Tasting Day - Barn-Cat Black Sour Stout - 2 Months

This is the two month mark of the Barn-Cat Black being in the bottle. The carbonation is great.  The flavor seems the be a bit young.  Its not as crisp as it was at the one month mark.  I think some of the roast flavors are coming out a bit more and creating a muddied effect of the flavor.  Time to let them sit for another month and then taste another.  I will be curious to see how this beer changes over time.  For my first attempt at blending back a beer that was too sour I am extremely happy with how it turned out.  I can only hope that it gets better as it ages.  About once a month you can look for a new tasting note from me.

• One Month - Carbonation great.  Flavor seems bright and lightly sour.  Well balanced. 
• Two Month - Great carbonation again.  Flavor seems less bright.  Roast and sour are clashing a bit on this one.  The beer is finding itself.

Mixing Day: Sour Red

Sour red beer out.

This past weekend was a busy one.  I did find time to mix up the sour red though so here is a rundown of the day.

I took 3 gallons of sour red from my barrel and then mixed it with 2 gallons of clean red Belgian beer based on the tasting notes from our initial mixing day.  I have a 6 gallon glass carboy that they are going to sit in for two weeks total before I add some fresh yeast and bottle them up just like I did the sour stout.  What I did do that was a little extra was adding some of the sour stout I had left over.  The super acidic beer.  The sour red mix we made was lacking that sharper sour note to it.  I noticed that the packaged beer from the stout came out LESS sour than I thought it would based on the tasting.  I figured added a half gallon or so of the sour stout should at least help carry a little extra punch.  I will be curious to see how it does once it is all packaged up.

What was pretty amazing is that when I pulled the 3 gallons out of the barrel I figured I would have to put in 3.25 or 3.5 gallons back into the barrel to top it off.  To my surprise I needed to add over 4 gallons.  This means that over the year I had lost almost a gallon and a quart of beer to the "angels share". 

On a recent podcast of The Sour Hour they had the head brewer of Roddenbach.  They discussed the angels share and should they top off barrels.  Surprisingly again, the head brew master said, "no".  The goal is to create an acidic beer that can be blended back. 

Fresh, slightly sour young beer in for the long nap.

Now, their main goal is to blend beers.  I would love to get my barrel to a point where I don't have to blend.  For instance the first two pulls from the sour red barrel had to be blended to take out the oak flavor.  It is now producing some really complex beer without too much oak flavor.  I hope the main task now is for me to make sure the beer does not get too acidic and that I am able to maintain the quality of the barrel.  It's a solera barrel so I dont really ever plan on totally emptying the barrel.  I may at some point to just run some hot water through it and then just put the same beer back in, but that is about it.

Anyways - this beer will be bottled up within the next 10 days and a tasting will follow a month after that.

Also coming up is my second tasting of the sour stout.  It will have been 2 months in the bottle.  I will be able to test the carbonation level and to see how the flavor is developing.

Hard to imagine but at the pace I am going I should have all three base beers in bottles by the end of the summer and then all of the fruited versions coming off shortly after that.  Super exciting times.

Tasting Day and Mixing Day

The beer that will be tasted after my first blending
session. I can only hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Last night I went over to my friends house to watch the hockey game.  Naturally we wanted to drink some beers.  Since this weekend was set to be my first taste of the newly bottled sour stout I took over my 12oz "taster" bottle.  I also took over some beer from my red sour barrel along with the clean red Belgian I recently made so we can mix up some goodness.  Lets start with the mixing session.

Mixing Session:

I brought two pints of beer.  One a clean red Belgian ale and the other the 2 year aged sour red that has been sitting in my Cabernet Sauvignon barrel.

We started out by tasting the two without any mixing so we knew what flavors we were dealing with.  Once we knew what we had to work with we could then figure out where to go with our ratios.

The clean version was exactly that - very clean Belgian flavor from the WLP 550 Belgian yeast.  It had a light banana flavor.  Not nearly as strong as some of the German Hefeweizen beers.  It was sweet while still being thin.  You can really smell the caramel from the C60 malt but it only comes through in the final beer as generic sweetness.

Next up the barrel aged sour red.  First impression is that its sour.  That's good for making sour beer!  Behind the sourness is a weird harshness.  Astringent is the best way I can describe it.  My buddy said it was harsh but he liked it.  I did not know really what to think of it.  I too liked it but then also felt it had a burn to it.  This harshness was only up front.  It faded quickly.  This beer was also strangely sweet.  I can somewhat pick up a vanilla that might of been contributing to that perception.  There is a little tannin quality showing through too, but in no way is the beer saturated with oak flavor.

Looking at the tasting notes after trying both we came to the conclusion that all we really wanted to do was remove that harshness - or at least calm it down - while maintaining a sour edge.

We started with a 1:1 ratio.  This was not very sour.  All of the harshness has been removed from the upfront flavor with only a little in the back.  This is not our mix though.  A sour beer needs to be, well, sour.

Next up was a 2:1 ratio.   That harshness returned on this one.  this version atcually tasted more oak like than the straight version.  This is a learning lesson that those flavors may be in the beer and they may just be masked.  In this case the harsh flavor that we are getting was probably blocking us from tasting the oak and barrel flavors.  Too harsh.  On to the next mix.

3:2 ratio was still sour but it wasnt very astringent.  It had an overall smoothness that the others did not have.  Again some new flavors crept in.   This round we were getting what we could only describe as a piece of funky fruit.  Sounds pretty good right?  We thought this was a really good mix.  It wasnt as sour as I hoped for but it seems pretty balanced.  Let's try one more with a bit more sour in it.

3.5:2 ratio.  The harsh flavor came back to almost the same level as the 2:1 ratio without picking up too much more on the sour side.

In the end we like the 3:2 ratio and that is where I am going to start.  The reason I say that is where I am going to start is because I still have plenty of my sour stout that has a very sharp acid bite to it.  I may mix in a bit of that to pump up the final acidity in the mixed beer.

_________

The sour stout showing its tight bubbles from
carbonation. Also a bit of lacing.

Now onto the tasting.  The moment we have been waiting for.  It feels like I have been brewing sours for 2 years and have nothing to show for it.  A bunch of quick sour methods while I waited for my original batch of sour red to age in the barrel.  That first beer was far too oakey.  So back to the drawing board.  Next up with the sour stout.  I bottled it right around the 1 year mark but then time got in the way and it slipped into a two year aging process.  It was far too sour so I needed to blend.  Had to wait for that beer to age long enough and now here we are.

I did a 1.5 clean to 1 sour mix for this beer.  Mixed them together and let them sit for a week to mingle and marry together.  I then bottled with fresh yeast and priming sugar.  Then a long 4 weeks ensued.  I really wanted to taste the beer at the two week mark but I was able to make it the full 4 weeks (well actually 3 weeks and 6 days).

I took the bottle opener grab the bottle and just hoped I would hear that hissp sound when you crack open a beer. 

HISSSSSSSP! 

Good sign.  Next I wanted to see some resemblance of a head when I poured the beer.

Glug, glug, glug. HISSS. 

A very tight bubble head formed and quickly falls.  The tight beading sticks with the beer throughout and even leaves some lacing on the glass.  SUCCESS.  A carbonated sour beer!  Im way to excited at this point.

Now my nerves switch over to the ultimate questions - how does it taste? 

I take that first sip.

To my surprise, the beer is super balanced.  It's not as sour as I expected but you know you're drinking a sour beer.  You get a faint hint of the roasty and toasty stout flavors but in a very good way.  They dont clash with the sourness of the beer.  A balanced beer.  (for a sour)

After my first sip I just smile from ear to ear and tell my buddy he better try it.  At this point I was too happy to really critique the beer.  I will do that on the next taster or the first 750ml bottle. 

After my buddy drinks the beer he says "I wish you brought a full case of this because we could drink it all tonight"  The weird thing is that he was right.  This beer ended up being a very refreshing sour.  Not heavy like the head and color would suggest.  Crisp, sour, light and bright. 

I'm sure there are some flaws but I can look for those another day.  Today was about the joy of actually tasting 2 years of work in a small glass.

Now - ONTO THE RED!

Brewing Stuff

Just wanted to follow up on some stuff.

Last weekend I racked the Belgian Red into the secondary.  Everything looks great on that one so far.  I will be mixing the clean red with the barrel-aged red next weekend when I taste the sour stout that will have been in the bottle for a month.  The main goal for this day is two-fold.

1. When I taste the sour stout I should have a good idea how the fresh beer along with a fresh vial of yeast are interacting with the old sour beer.  On The Sour Hour podcast show, host Jay Goodwin says to never taste the beer in the bottle before the 2 month mark.  This is my ultimate goal for the larger 750mL beers that I bottled.  I bottled two 12 oz servings that I can use to gauge how my new bottling procedure is working.  These old sour beers are so old there is probably zero CO2 left in the beer and I have just had a tough time getting them to carb up.
2. Once I crack that tester bottle open, I should know how the process is going.  If I am getting better carbonation than I have in the past at the 1 month mark I will know that I can continue on with mixing the red sour the same way.

Some other things have happened since my last post.  I went to Country Wine and Beer supplies and saw Brett Claus and a Lambic yeast vial on the shelf.  They NEVER have these on the shelf.  I immediately grabbed them and took them to the counter to make sure they were not on hold for someone else.  Once they said I could buy the I was on my way back to the house to innoculate some more beer.

I have a molasses stout that was showing signs of infection and I decided to just push it by adding the spent yeast from my sour stout.  So for this beer I added the Lambic Yeast to  really get this thing funky.

As for the Brett Claus I decided to add that to the Sour Pumpkin Stout that was already dosed with Lambic yeast.  Just some more wild yeast armies to tackle the beer.  I dont plan to age these beer nearly as long as the other ones I have going.  I will bottle them right around the year mark so they are ready to drink during the holiday seasons of Halloween/Thanksgiving (Sour Pumpkin) and Christmas (Sour Molasses Stout).

I have some interesting fruit and spic combonations that I will try with them as well.

Anyways - next week should be a big week with a bottle taster and possibly another mixing session.

Brew Day: Red Belgian Ale

Yesterday was a pretty nice day considering the terrible winter we had so it was time to get out and brew another batch of beer.  This batch will be another clean beer meant to be mixed with my sour red.  This year is all about getting my sour production into drinking order.

First was the mixing and bottling of the Barn-Cat Black, my sour stout.  Now I am moving towards bottling up my sour red which I am calling Roosters Red.  I made a pretty simple red beer with wheat, pilsner and caramel 60.  Nothing special.  I am fermenting it with my "house strain" of WLP 550.  This can really dry out the beer and leave very little sugar left behind which I am hoping makes it safe to mix with my sour beer that has brett, peddio and lacto.  I figure the less sugars available the less chance of something re-fermenting too far in the bottle.

This time next week I will have my beer fridge in the basement which I can somewhat control the bottles if they are getting too carbonated.  I stated above, this year is all about getting my sour production in order and a big part of that is figuring out how to mix and blend and more importantly bottle condition these things.

I know that I will be mixing some clean beer with the sour red because my sour red is pretty tannic.  It has a harsh bite and its asserting its barrel qualities a bit too much. Unlike the sour stout that was too sour, I am trying to calm those qualities by mixing in some clean beer.  I don't think very much needs to be taken out so I can see me only adding 25-30% fresh beer to a mixture of the barrel aged beer.  The sour stout was very sour and I figured a 50-50 split would calm it down.  It ended up needed 60% clean.  Based on that last blend I assume my 25-30 should be pretty good.  That's at least where it will start.

3 weeks from now I will mix them up and figure out my quantity just like the last batch.  Using tablespoons and teaspoons to make little shot glasses for tasting.  I will start at 25% clean and 75% sour and move up or down based on those results.

In the meantime,  I will be trying to squeeze in another brew.  I have the stuff to make a old-world porter with brown malt and some 6-row.  It wont be nearly as authentic as making my own brown malt that has the full diastic power to convert on its own but this is the best I can do with the malts available to me off the shelf.  I am just doing a small 2 gallon batch here.  One gallon to taste straight up and the other to of course sour in a one gallon jug for a year to test and see how this tastes.

If you're keeping track at home I have 5 sour/funky beers I plan to make on a consistent basis

1. Sour Red
2. Sour Stout
3. Lambic Inspired Sour Pale
4. Berliner with Peach
5. Witbier with Lacto

Something tells me I dont need to get another one in the rotation but a one gallon test cant hurt.

Finally,  I bought more Grogtags for the three big beers coming out of my "brewery".  Here is the graphic line up:

Bottle Day: Barn-Cat Black

Grogtag custom labels look great.

Today I bottled up the sour stout that I named Barn-Cat Black.  In my recent post I mentioned that I mixed the old sour beer with some fresh beer to pull back the acididty and add a bit more complexity.

It sat for a full week after I mixed everything together.  The smell is right where I wanted it.  You can smell that it is a sour.  I think this is important because your nose is the first thing that is going to experience the beer.  I did not want a beer that smelled like a stout and had a sour bite.  I think that would be a bit weird.  I want the drinker to know that they are drinking a sour once the pour it into their glass and smell the funky sourness coming from the beer.

The taste wasn't exactly as sour as I expected so I added a few more ounces of the straight sour into the bottle bucket.  Also included in the bottle bucket was some fresh WLP550 yeast along with some Champagne yeast and sugar mixture.  I hope that the freshness of the beer along with fresh yeast in the bottle bucket will bring me some luck with bottle conditioning these beers.  I have had some issues getting it where I want it to be.  Fingers crossed that it worked out well.  As you can see in the photo I went out and got some GROTAG labels.  Great product for projects like this.  I plan to make this over and over and just substitue out clean vs fruited versions.  The label you see here will be the main label and I am using the neck labels to write on the fruit or other ingredients used at bottling along with the vintage of the beer.

Two gallons of this will now sit and wait for the carbonation to build up and hopefully get to the level that I want.

The remaining two gallons where put on top of some Blackberry Pinot Noir must that will will ferment out over the next month or so.  This will then be bottled up with any adjustments needed after we test some bottles from this first batch.

"Brewery" Update

Finally had some time off this weekend.  Naturally, I spent some of it working on my brews.  The clean stout was done and ready to mix with the sour stout.  Measuring and mixing everything together was a fun process - but a difficult one.

In my previous post I mentioned that the 1:1 ratio was still too strong and that a 2:1 ration was too clean.  I knew I was going to be somewhere in between.

To make sure my previous tasting notes were accurate I did a 1:1 test first.
Wasn't as bracing as the first tasting.  Weird. It was 100% a sour beer .  No hint of stout flavors coming through though - this was just a calmer version of the very sour straight beer.

I then moved to the middle point with a 1.5:1 ration of clean to sour beer.  This gives me 60% clean beer mixed with 40% sour.   I was tasting the roast and toast flavors up from and then a sharp acidic bite at the end.  First tasting the was multidimensional. Promising.

Next up was 1.75:1.  This is roughly 63% clean.  Essentially I was reducing the sourness by 3%.  Amazing how quick the mix can change the beer because no there is no strong sourness.  It has tartness but not sourness.  It drinks like a thing stout that has a weird aftertaste.  If you think about it, Guiness is said to have 3% sour beer.  That little percent makes a pretty big difference in Guiness so it only makes sense that dropping down 3% makes this beer a much different beer.  In the end, not what I am looking for.  I want you to drink this and know that you are drinking an American Sour.

Final mix was a 1.25:1 or 55% clean vs 45% sour.  This one had minimal stout flavor with a very sharp sour edge.  Only slightly less acidic than the 1:1 ratio.  This shows that the 5% less sour was very minimal in the over flavor compared to the 50-50 split.  This probably has to do with my personal threshold for sourness.  I assume once it gets to a certain point the sourness is so strong it just blows out the rest of the flavors to a point that you cant pick out as easily.

The straight sour stout that I am using for mixing is coming in at 3.3 on my pH strips.  According the the American Sour Beers book my Michael Tonsmeire, sour beers can range from a pH of 3.0 - 3.9.  A beer that has a 3.9 reading would be tart and and a beer at 3.0 would have bracing acidity.  He goes on to suggest that beers below 3.0 are probably best used as mixing.  I felt that my taster bottle was too sharp and too acidic to really enjoy.  It was fun to try but I would have a hard time drinking and sharing 5 gallons of that straight. The final thing that he mentions is that the pH scale is logarithmic.  Basically each point is equivalent to 10 times more or less acidity.  So a beer that that is off by 2 points is twice as acidic.

Keep in mind lactic acid is going to be softer than acetic acid.  So the readings are not the sole determining factor.  I actually prefer sharp acetic bites to my sour beers.  I love the Flanders Reds.  I use plastic buckets which let in more oxygen which will contribute to the production of acetic acid. I will do a test on the mixed beer once I bottle on Tuesday to see what my pH strips say.

This first mixed batch comes in at roughly 3.75 gallons.  I am going to do two gallons straight an the rest on some of the must we saved from the wine.  This is a Pinot Blackberry.  I will add a bit of oak cubes to replicate the barrel flavor that we will get from my third barrel once it is up and in production.

I will update later this week with a pH reading and how the final blend tasted going into the bottle.  I hope that the three days mixed together will let the two flavors meld together a bit more and create a bit more rounded flavor.

Mixing Day - Testing

The clcean Dark Dawn stout that I brewed was ready to move to the secondary last weekend.  I used this time to do a test mixing to see where I thought the final ration may come in.  I started out by doing a one-to-one ration.  I did this by mixing 1.5 oz (shot glass) of soured stout with 1.5 oz of the clean stout.  I mixed them back and forth in two glasses to ensure everything was mixed well and then took a sip.  To my surprise the it was still very sour.  I only pulled a few ounces to I had enough flat beer to give it another try. 

This time I did a 2-1 blend.  Two parts clean and one part sour.  Amazingly this was too clean.  I had the lady of the house try this blend to make sure I did not blow out my taste buds on the first one.  She tried the 2-1 blend without having the previous blend and agreed.  Only slightly sour.

So where does this leave us now?

When its time to do the final blend I know that its going to fall somewhere in between 1-1 or 2-1 blend.  I like to keep round numbers so I am going to try 1.5-1 and then go from there to either 1.25-1 or 1.75-1.  Hopefull one of those three solutions will work for our tastes.

No matter the solution, I am going to need to make another clean batch to help finish the rest of the sour beer. The most I need based off of this preliminary blend is 2 gallons out of the 4.5 to 5 gallons that  I have soured.  I only need to save one gallon to put into the new barrel once its ready. I should have about 1.5-2 gallons left over for blending with a new clean beer or I can decide to save it and just have it to up the sourness in any other beer I create moving forward.

Tasting Day: Sour Pale Ale

Back in early December I bottled two 12-oz bottles of the straight lambic-ish beer.  The hope was that I could have a taster to share at the holiday party.  After a month in the bottle it looked like the beer was sick.  It had snot like build up in the bottle.  It looked scary.  After a few months in the bottle they are starting to clear out.  I only have two bottles so I wanted to be as sure as I could that the first bottle would be worth opening.

This weekend was the weekend to open it up.  the snot build up seemed to be gone and really it just looked like there was a lot of yeast floating around.

I cracked open the bottle and heard a faint whisp meaning we had some carbonation - my enemy so far is sour home brew.

Its poured with a very small head as you can see in the photo to the left.  Its a very pale yellow color and looks amazing in the winter sun.

The smell was amazing.  It smelled just like you would want a lambic.  Funky brett aroma with some lemon peel in the nose.  Really nice stuff.  Not any off-putting aroma.

The taste...  The taste was awesome. I cant believe how well this beer is after one year. Honestly the only thing I did not "like" about the beer is that the aroma made it seem like it would be more tart.  The tartness is not quite to a Lindemann's Gueze tartness but this is a straight lambic styled beer – not a gueze.  To be honest this is one of the better straight lambics I have ever had.  Cantillon is very hard to find around here and when you do find it, it's usually really expensive.  The ones that I ahve had are almost always flat and are way more in the territory of basement funk than bright tartness.

If you click on the image and get the full size image you will see the one major problem.  The snot in the beer was most likely a weird flocculation issue with the lambic yeast.  It has still not settled out and there were bigger groupings of yeast than you would want in a finished beer.

When the first pull from the barrel happens I will most likely put it in a carboy and place in the refrigerator and then use gelatin to clear it up as much as a can.

Cant wait to try to oak aged version with Riesling notes  lingering throughout the beer.  March or April is when I plan to move it out of the barrel and into carboys to keep the oak from taking over.  And then it will be time to mix with fruit and then bottle.  Hopefully by the summer I will be sampling some versions of this beer in its final state.

Brew Day - FINALLY! - Dark Dawn Clone Recipe - Clean

Benefits of brewing in the winter -
free wort chiller is on the ground

It's been too long.  I hate winter for more than the normal reasons.  I hate it because my brewing production takes a nose dive.  The weather finally cooperated and I was able to get outside and brew up this batch of Dark Dawn.

This is the recipe that Ron Jefferies provided to The Jamil Show: Can You Brew It.  I followed it pretty much exactly as it was laid out except I added a pinch of molasses to the boil kettle.

The sole purpose of this beer is to be a clean beer to blend with my sour stout.  The soured portion is just a tad too sour.  I think a 60-40 blend will do well and create a very well balanced sour.  I will finalize those proportions once I have the clean beer to mix with some sour.

I will do a small mixing in shot glasses to get it just right.

I will then break the beer off into multiple batches for fruited and non fruited versions of the beer.
I am even going to test killing off the wild yeast with some tabs that are used in wine making to stop fermentation.  I will then pitch a new vial of yeast and let that sit for a day or two before bottling with sugar.

Some of these batches should be bottled in the next month and then they will sit for at least another two months before trying.  Here is my break down on how I am going to split this 6 gallon batch:

1 Gallon = Sour and Sweet Cherry
1 Gallon = Blackberry Pinot Noir Juice
1 Gallon = Plum
2 Gallons = Straight
1 Gallon = Straight = Kill the yeast prior to adding fresh yeast

Hope it goes well.

Check back in April or May for the tastings.


Brew Notes:

• Initial mash temperature was a bit low - Came in at 144F.  Sat at 144F for 15 minutes
• After boiling water - I adjusted the temp up to the desired 148F and let it sit for 45 minutes
• Batch sparged - Rinsed the grains for ten minutes while recirculating the wort through the grain bed.  Collected 1.25 gallons on the first run.
• Added 3 gallons of 168F water and let it sit for 10 minutes
• Rinsed grains for another 10 minutes after.
• Final amount of wort collected = 4 gallons
• Pre Boil gravity = 1.024
• Brought it to a boil
• Added 4.5oz Raw Organic Sugar
• Added 3.5 oz White Table Sugar
• Added 1.5 oz Blackstrap Molasses (added a bit more sugar due to lower pre boil gravity)
• Brought back to a boil
• Added 0.5 oz Nugget pellet hops at 60min left.
• Added 0.7 US Fuggle at 30min left.
• At flameout - added 2.2 organic wildflower honey
• Whirlpooled
• Chilled to 70F with wort chiller and snow bank
• Pitched WLP 550 vial after shaking 3 gallon better bottle. Filled to roughly 2.6 gallon mark
• Placed the carboy in the family room were the temp is set to 68F.
• 15 hours later very strong fermentation
• 17 hours after pitching yeast the better bottle started to swell.  Airlock was blocked.  Inserted blow off tube