Brew Day: Maesters Mahogony - An Ale from the Seven Kingdoms

The Vorpbrew Rooster dressed as a maester.
Potential label artwork.

I hate brown ales.  Just have never learned to like them.  So here I am this weekend brewing a brown ale.  Why? 

I get bored of brewing the same type of beer over and over.  If it was up to me, I would just brew stouts, IPA's and sours.  All day everyday. But I want to learn more about brewing.  Sometimes that means you gotta step outside of what is comfortable and brew something new. 

I asked a friend at work what kind of beer he liked. 

"Newscastle Brown". 

Well, OK then. "I'll brew one for you" 

Since I have said that we have learned that we both liked Game of Thrones.  He is a huge GoT nerd.  I am just learning.  He is the Maester and I am the Samwell in this story.

So I went to the Citadel to learn how to brew a proper brown in the Newcastle tradition.  I learned that it is mixed from old ale and new amber ale to create the Brown Ale we all know.

I planned to do this in the proper tradition but I thought that I had to make it my own.  I had to make it a bit more American while retaining some of those traditional English flavors.

I brewed up a brown ale that I am calling the Maester's Mahogony - An Ale from the Seven Kingdoms.  My recipe was a mix between Newcastle and Moosedrool, the American Brown Ale that gets the most attention, and a light stout.

All of my malts where from England, I used English yeast and added a few more ounces of black patent (for that stout twist - along with some brown sugar) and hopped the beer with American hops with English ancestry.

It's currently bubbling away in the primary fermentor and I can only wonder if any of the Game of Thrones characters would like to have a pint of this ale once its done.

Old Beers are Soon to be New Beers

I made two beers a while back.  Probably 6 months. Maybe longer.

One was an old time Brown Ale.  It never got down to final gravity.  I think my diastic power equation failed me.  I used a large portion of brown malt and a very small amount 6-row.  It didn't work.  I planned on putting some Brett in the final beer to give it that old barrel flavor that should of been present in the 1700's in England.  Also added a bit of oak.  So instead of wasting the final beer I added the Brett and oak and decided to see what would happen.  The beer was at 1.034.  After six months its only down to 1.028.  I am going to bottle this in some sturdy bottles and see how it tastes. It currently tastes awesome. A bit sweet but it has a great depth of flavor.  I will be interested to see how it finishes out.

The other one was an Orval clone that  I am calling Opal Abbey.  Named after my high school band of course.  This one has a huge Brett nose. Fruity, funky yet clean.  I dont know how that makes any sense but thats also what it taste like.  It was actually pretty clean.  It smelled more funky and fruity than the flavor. I am going to dry hop this for a few days and then bottle this one up.

Hopefully we will have some tastings in the very near future with these beers.

Vorpbrew - Back in Business

It feels like I have not brewed a beer for fun in a long time.  Don't get me wrong. I loved brewing beer for the wedding but it's time to brew beer and not have to worry about 150 people liking it.  A brew day is coming and it will yield a Heady Topper clone.  I have been wanting to try one of the New England IPAs for a long time now.  Hope my version comes out good.

More importantly I finally went to my parents and got my tap gear that has been at their place since the wedding.  So that means Vorpbrew is back open.  I had a Mexican Mocha Stout last night and it still tastes great.  It really has not aged at all in the keg. Tasted the same as it did almost three months ago.

I also drank a Roosters Red when the Pens won the cup on Sunday.  After a year in the bottle it seems to be losing some of its punch.  One thing I need to keep in mind is this beer is now almost three years old.  Its losing some of its crisp sourness that it had last year when I first drank one.  Its becoming a more deep and rounder flavor.  I like it crisper. Just my preference though.

Can not wait to brew this IPA and get it on tap so I can have a nice beer to sip on the deck.  I also want to get my sour program back on target with my normal timing.

Up next: an actual brew day post!

Wedding Beer - The Failed Recipes

Way back in the end of January,  my only post of this calendar year, I laid out the groundwork for what I wanted to accomplish this brewing year.  I am currently failing miserably.  For most of my brewing career I have been making one-off recipes or beers that are not supposed to be the same year over year (my sours for instance).  This year with the wedding coming up I decided to brew my own beer for the wedding since I had the capabilities and our venue is BYOB.  Perfect, right?

Here is where things went wrong.  My first witbier was an amazing beer.  I think mostly due to the dregs of Jolly Pumpkin adding the delicious tartness and added depth in the flavor. It was a great beer.  It really way.  Fast forward 2.5 years and I want to make something similar.  First attempt was no good.  It was medicinal. Probably from my use of tap water straight from the tap on such a light beer.  So for the next batch I decided to finally purchase a water filter.  The beer turned out OK.  It just was not up to my standards for my "Wedding Wit".  With time running out at this point I turned my attention to a beer that was maybe a bit more sturdy and not as delicate and did not rely on the yeast to bring that added complexion.

I turned my attention to an English Summer Ale.  The recipe from Radical Brewing seemed to be just what I was looking for.  I brewed the "old school" version that used traditional English hops.  I always found English hops to be a bit too earthy – almost dirty - in flavor.  This recipe was great on all fronts except the hop flavor profile.  I just found that the beer was a bit too spicy or earthy for my liking.  The bitterness levels where good and the malt flavor was a nice bread-like crustiness with some mellowness from the wheat.  I think the hop flavor could of been tamed a bit if I used another yeast.  I love dry beers.  When I read the description for this beer in the Radical Brewing book I just thought it would be great to have that bone dry crisp finish.  I think this let the hop flavor push all the way through without a bit of sweetness to balance.

So, now what?

I was brewing my Mango Brett IPA.  This recipe got turned down to more of a Xtra Pale Ale. Too big for a pale ale technically and just a tad too small for an IPA.  So what are we going to do about the other 10 gallons we needed for the wedding.

My cousin-in-law volunteered to brew up these ten gallons.  He brews these types of British beers more than I do so what better way to do this than pass on my recipe and tasting notes to him?

He took my recipe and brewed five gallons.  He used a more malt-flavor-retaining yeast and cleaned up the hop flavor by using Cluster.  The American version of the British hops I am not a fan off.

He then brewed up a 5 gallon recipe of Kentish Ale.  This should just be a really nice light ABV English Pale ale.  Complex but sessionable.

I will recap the festivities and the beers that we all have.  Hopefully come June I will be back on a more regular schedule.

When I get back into my routine of brewing it will be a run of IPA's and the three base sour beers. 

Keep it easy for the first summer of marriage!

2016 - Brewing Schedule

At the beginning of each year I like to plan out what I want to accomplish each year.  I can only fit in so many brew days and there are just too many great ideas for beer.  So putting it here on this blog helps me look back and see how I have done.  I already have a great lineup of beers to brew this year.  Some are tweaks.  Some are new based on great commercial examples and, well, some are just continuing my sour program.

First up are the beers for my wedding.  We have a venue that allows me to bring in my homebrew.  Great news for me.  I get to say I'm working on the wedding while I am brewing test batches or the full batches that I will get to brew in April.

For the wedding here is what I am planning on:

10 Gallons of my Brett IPA.  I plan to take down the ABV just a tad so it's a bit more sessionable.  I may or may not add the mango juice.  Depends on costs of everything else.

10 Gallons of a witbier.  I just brewed up a new recipe that I will post about shortly.  This is my basic witbier recipe but I added 5% acid malt.  I want to push the beer to have more tang like my first witbier that was dosed with some Jolly Pumpkin dregs.  I dont want to go that sour since this will be for mass consumption, but I do want to have a refreshing tart bite.  Hopefully the lactic acid malt and the WLP 400 yeast can do the job.  This test batch should be ready for me to taste very shortly.  I also want to brew this one quick and serve it super fresh like it would of back in the day.

I may even test the waters on a Lite American Ale.  Part of me wants to do it just because while the other part says not to waste the effort.  We will see if I have time for a test batch.

Next up is my sour program.  Here is what I plan to do this year.
I will get a barrel of each beer.  I will take the beer from those barrels and break them out pretty close to the same way as I did this year.

Red Barrel - My sour red will be broken down into the following batches:

1. Straight sour red
2. Sour red with sour cherries (this batch from 2015 was probably the best of the crop)
3. Another attempt at my Currant and Raisin blend.  I added way too much currant this year.  It pushed the acidity into an almost un drinkable stage. I may even brew a clean red this year to mix on tap with this batch.

Black Barrel  - The sour stout will most likely stay the same.  I do have a few ideas for some smaller break downs.

1. Straight - Most will be straight.
2. Plum - I want to put some on some Vinter Harvest Plum fruit.
3. Figs - Once Trader Joes has these back in stock I want to do a Fig and Honey or Fig and Oatmeal combo.

Golden Barrel - Since I break my golden down for making Gueze I dont have as much to play with.  Here are the plans for that:

1. 2 gallons for Gueze.  First batch will be in 2017.
2. 1 gallon straight
3. 1 gallon on raspberries that my friend picks from his backyard (this batch looks amazing. the batch from 2015 should be ready to drink in March or June of this year. 
4. 1 gallon on Peach.  I really wanted to do a peach this year but didn't get enough sour beer after the mix.  Heres hoping I do this year.

Finally I want to brew a few other beers so far in the works are the following:

1. Oak aged Brown Brett Porter (already brewed this one.  Need to do a recap)
2. Belgian Speicialty Ale (Duvel like beer - already brewed this one too. Need to do a recap)
3. Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout (brewing this weekend.  A beer based on Xoxoveca by Stone.  A simply amazing beer)
4. Barley Wine - Slowly getting into these.  A small 2 gallon batch will be brewed in Spring so we can enjoy it next fall and winter.

I know that these 10 or so beers I have listed will most likely cover the majority of my year.  To close here are some numbers on my sour beer program.

Around town, it costs roughly 20-30 dollars to get a quality sour beer in a 750mL bottle.  Pretty expensive.  I've paid that much for a few 12oz beers here as well.  It's an expensive beer to be a fan of.  Part of the reason I started brewing sours was my goal to make a beer good enough to stand up with some of those commercials.  Four years later I think I finally did that.  My sours are pretty damn good.  I still buy those 30 dollar bottles, but not nearly as much.  I pulled 72 bottles out of my barrels this year (750mL)  This would of costs me over $2,000 to buy this amount of sour beers.  The costs of the barrles, wine kits that I brewed to add to the barrel for flavoring before the beer went in, ingredients for the beer, bottles etc was probably just north of 1,000 dollars.  So I save roughly 1,000 dollars.  My costs this year to maintain my sour program is going to be MAYBE 200 dollars. Depending on the fruit combos I do it could be even cheaper.  I just need to brew 3 five-gallon batches.  Cost savings are really going to kick in this year.  

Think about that.  What I would of spent 2,000 dollars on - is going to cost me 200.  Making great beer and saving a ton of money.  Great stuff right there.

Until next time...

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.