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.