Tasting Day: Rooster Red - 25% Sour Wort - Version 1

So I'm finally getting around to writing up a tasting day post about the Rooster Red.  Just to recap I am doing a full wild bug fermentation of the same base recipe that will be done around November 2013.  In the meantime I am trying the method of souring a portion of the wort to create a quick sour.  In this version, 25% of my wort was soured and then added back to the clean beer.

Overview:  See above.  Basically a quickly soured Flanders Red inspired beer.

ABV is at 6% and the IBUs come in at 16.

Appearance: Very nice amber color.  Reminds me of Elliot Ness.  Zero head and zero lacing.  This is one of the bigger concerns from this tasting.  More to come on this in the conclusion

Smell: Mission accomplished in one way!  This beer smells sour.  I was wondering how sour a beer with only 3 days of souring time.  When you crack this open you know that you are about to drink a sour beer. Lemonade like tartness smell with some of the tart cherries adding to the aroma.  No toast flavor from the oak. No malt aroma.

Taste:  Well, this is where it gets promising yet disappointing. The sour flavor is there but not much else to support the beer.  It has a bit of a metallic-like fruity flavor and no oak flavor whatsoever.

Overall/Conclusion:  No other way to put it – this beer needs some work.  I don't know for sure, but this beer would of been a lot better with SOME carbonation.  If these flavors had some of the benefits of the carbonation I think it would of helped over all.  No carbonation gave no mouth-feel made the beer one dimensional.

The beer was one dimensional because some of the other characteristics I was hoping for didn't shine through either. Below are two things that didn't really come through.

Oak - I asked the guy at the LHBS and he recommended the cubes vs the chips for the oak.  He also said to let them go for at least 8 weeks for maximum benefits.  Next batch will have cubes in place of the chips and instead of one month in the bucket I will go up to two months.  I know that I set out to create a sour beer in two months but it seems I may need some more time just for the oak alone.

Fruity Flavors - I got some of the tart cherry flavor but I now think I need to use sweet cherries to counter balance the strong lactic acid flavor.  I also need to figure out why the fruity flavor had a metallic flavor to it.  I pitched the cherries in directly from the can (Oregon Tart Cherries) and wonder if I should of brought them to a boil and then cooled them before adding to the secondary.

Overall Complexion - Sour beers are some of the most complex beers in the world.  Not this one.  I have some Belgian Candi Syrup left over from a Saison I just brewed.  I already have the 100% soured wort going so I cant change much for that batch.

Here is the new plan. Take 2-3 bottles worth of the 100% sour and bottle it and increase my carb levels pretty dramatically.  See if this beer is better with just more carbonation.

The rest of the beer will be mixed with a clean beer that will be made with some Belgian Candi Syrup.  I will mix it so I have a few bottles that have a 50-50 split and a few that are 75% sour with 25% clean beer.  Maybe the mixing will add some sweetness/complexion and help balance this beer out.

Good thing about this is that all of my testing will be complete with this next batch.  Look for results in about 2.5 months on the 100, 75, and 50% soured wort beers.

Till next time.

100% Sour Update

Seven days in the primary an I am still stuck at 1.02. Wonder how long this will take? I've seen a few posts on some other blogs that suggest using champagne yeast? Guess I will go to the LHBS on Thursday after the holidays and see what they think.

Update:  After 2 days with some Champagne yeast the beer if finally on the move. Down to 1.01.  I will let is sit for a week.  In the meantime I am brewing a clean beer to mix with this one.  Hoping this will add a bit of complexion to the final taste and round out the beer better than the straight lactic sour beer.

MacGyver - Homebrew Edition

So last night we were sitting in the living room and all of a sudden, we hear a hissing noise.  Figured it was the cats.  It wasn't.  The air lock on my latest brew was overflowing and hissing like an over-carbonated 2 liter of Mountain Dew.

I had a problem. I didn't have any tubing small enough to fit into any of my stoppers.  After some panic, my inner MacGyver kicked in.  I had a turkey baster that fit into the stopper and the end of the baster was wide enough to jam some of the tube that I did have into the other end. Not pretty.  But it works.  The water and sanitizer solution in the growler is still bubbling away this morning.

Tasting Day: Red Ryder Ale

The Red Ryder Ale next to the "Christmas Story" lamp.

Another day and another beer is ready to taste.  The plan was to taste it last night at the holiday party with some friends but, the Pitchfork Black stout was too good to put down.  So, today is the tasting day for the Red Ryder Ale.

When I think of Christmas, I think of one thing.  That one thing is A Christmas Story.  So naturally, when I began to make my red holiday ale, I thought of the gift that Ralfie wanted so badly - The Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle. 

Overview: This is an American holiday red ale that was brewed with sweet orange peel and a generous addition of Styrian Goldings hops.

ABV is 6.4% and the IBU comes in at 66.

Appearance: A nice deep amber red color with a large white foamy head that disappears pretty quickly after settling in the glass.

Smell: It has a bigger malt smell to it than most of my other beers since I used English Ale yeast for California Ale.  You can smell some bitter orange which is the combination of the Orange Peel and extra hops.

Taste:  Big malt sweetness followed by a quick hit of orange and then a nice bitter finish a little after you swallow.  Nice combination of malty and hopy with that little something extra you are custom to tasting in holiday brews.  It's a nice beer but it may need a bit more of something else to give it a more unique flavor.  More orange?  Touch a cinnamon?


Overall:  I like it better than the other holiday brews that I have done which have been too spiced.  This might of been too much of a compromise though.  We will see how it ages but the goal is to have this batch completed by January.

All was right with world (with a brew in your hand)

Update
So I find last night at our beer tasting club that Erie Brewing Companies Ol' Red Cease and Desists was originally named Red Ryder.  They got two cease and desists letters from Red Ryder and that is what created the new name.  I guess next years batch will be Ralphies Red or The Red Rider.

Sour Mash Experiment - 25%

So here are some details on the 25% sour mash I created.  I am making one-gallon test batches that will be soured in 25% increments.  My first test is a 25% sour.  This means 25% of my wort will be soured and then reintroduced into the primary.

After 3 days this is the wort
with a small pellicle.

I mashed Aromatic, Caramunich II, Special B, Munich and Pilsner with some flaked corn.  After pulling the needed amount of wort, I took 32 oz of the wort and set it aside in a small container.  I then added a handful of the Pilsner malt left over and added that to the 32oz or wort. 

Malt contains lacto bacteria on it naturally.  This is the bacteria that should make this portion of the wort sour.  I then let this sit for 2-3 days while it builds up some funk.

The remaining 75% of the wort is just brewed as normal and I just used dry ale yeast.

After the spoiled wort is filled with funky goodness, I skimmed off the pellicle and strained the gains out.  I took this mixture to the stove top and pasteurized at 180 degrees for 30 minutes.  I let it cool and then added it to the primary with the remaining beer that has been fermenting with the yeast for the past three days.

After fermentation slowed down I moved the beer to a secondary. I let some of yeast settle out for a few days and then added some French Oak chips that had been soaking in beer for a few days.

Gnarly Funk with some tart
cherries popping through

After two weeks I planned to add Oregon Tart Cherries.  This is where things got interesting.  When I opened the small bucket I was fermenting the beer in, I noticed there was another pellicle! 

I skimmed off the film and then added the cherries.  A week later and the funk was really starting to take over the beer - which I hope is a good thing.

I decided to skim the funk off one more time and transfer the beer to a tertiary fermenting bucket without the funk, cherries and oak.  The thought here was to just clean up the beer for one-two days before bottling.

Clean beer under the funk

On bottle day I decided it was time to try the beer.  Under all of that funk was a nice amber colored beer.  It had some nice malt flavor to it and a lemonade-like tartness. 

I was satisfied – so – into the bottle it went.  In one more week it may be time for a taste to see how phase one of this experiment really turned out.  More to come once we crack a bottle.

Tasting Day - Pitchfork Black

Well, today we are going to a holiday party and I wanted to take along some of my homebrew.  I always like to taste my beers before letting other people have at them.  So its time to try the Pitchfork Black.

Overview:
It's an Imperial American Stout that had some Espresso Coffee and Blackstrap Molasses added during the brewing process.  Added hops for a more bitter stout makes me classify it as an American Imperial.

It clocks in at 8.2% ABV and has 63 IBUs.

Appearance:  According to BeerSmith the SRM is at 47.  So it is a pitch black.  At the edge of the glass you can see a dark burnt brown color if light gets through. 

Little to no head on a pour right down the middle of the glass.  Some lacing on the glass as you drink it. I expected this though.  I hope another week will give it a bit more head and pop from the carbonation.

Smell: Surprisingly you don't get any overpowering burnt or roast smells. A tiny bit of an alcohol smell with a bit of coffee.  The bottle holds some of the smells and you can smell the Cascade hops in the bottle.

Taste: Again, I am a bit surprised at how balanced this beer turned out.  Very smooth up front with some roasted flavors coming through.  Biggest thing is the bitterness from the Blackstrap and Cascade hops.  But you have to search for them.

Mouth:  Smooth going down but leaves a nice coating in your mouth which makes you want to take another sip.

Overall:  This may be my best stout brewed to date.  Its complex but yet the complexity is not so up front that it makes you question if you like it or not.  I drank a bottle in the time it took to finish this post.  Could be dangerous.  At this point the only thing I will possibly adjust is the the carb level.  It might need just a bit more, but we will see how it goes in another week or two.

 Ostrovia!

Sour Mash Experiment

I have had 3-4 sour beers in my life and really enjoyed every single one that I have had.

Only problem – they are just harder to come by in the Pittsburgh area and some of the big guys in the US market are not available around town.

Russian River bottles at the bar?
Nope. According to their website, the closet place is Philly.

Jolly Pumpkin at your distributor?
Nope. Unless there is some special list I'm not on.

So the solution is pretty simple for me – make it.

I have read a lot about it on other blogs and listened to podcasts, etc etc.  The one thing that is not too fun about brewing the sours at home is how long it can take. It seems the sour mash technique is a way to get some funky flavors while not waiting over a year for your brew to mature.

The goal:  To make a Belgium-inspired beer using the sour mash technique and try to get some complex and tasty brews in 8-10 weeks.

My experiment is pretty simple.  I am going to sour mash a Flanders Red wort  in different amounts.  For example, I will sour 25% of the wort in this first beer.  Next up will be a beer that will have all of the wort soured for what I am calling a 100% sour.

From the two extremes I will then decide how to tweak the recipe.

I am using the sour mash technique from an article on BeerSmith.

More details on the 25% Sour coming next.
Cheers.