Tasting Day: Pocahontas Pumpkin Pie Ale

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

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

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

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

Let fall officially begin!

Brew Day: Peeterman Wit

Yeast starter a few days after creating it.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Brew Day - Chocolate Milk Stout

Another day off from work and another brew day.

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

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

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

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

9/3/14
Brewed.  Yeast pitched.

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

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

Barrel Prep: Riesling Wine for Lambic Blends

Filling the barrel with Reisling wine at night

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

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

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

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

Here's hoping all goes well.

Brew Day: Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin strike water ready to mix with grains.

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

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

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

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

Rolling boil that caused a boil-over

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATES:

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

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

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

O.A.T Ale - American Farmhouse Ale Yeast

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

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

Tasting Day - O.A.T. Ale

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

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

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

Here are a few things we learned about this beer.

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

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

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

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

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