Book Review – American Sour Beers

Posted on 2015/04/30 by Doug

For years, Michael Tonsmeire’s blog, The Mad Fermentationist, has been one of my favorite resources for recipe ideas and information while brewing both clean and sour beers of my own.

Last July, Brewer’s Publications published Tonsmeire’s first book, American Sour Beer. The book is billed as an overview of the many approaches American professional and home brewers use to create beers fermented with microbes other than brewer’s yeast.

Parts of this book are like having the best bits of advice and practical information plucked from the blog and rewritten in a more clear and concise matter, while other parts provide a fascinating look at the processes that a number of the best sour beer producers in the United States (such as Allagash, Jolly Pumpkin, New Belgium, Cascade, Russian River, and others) use in the production of sour beers. As is the case with all Brewer’s Association publications I’ve read, the target audience is both professional and home brewers, so suggestions are made for those who measure batches in barrels and those who measure batches in gallons.

As you might expect from a book that targets such a range of brewers (and such a shifty topic as wild/funky/sour fermentation), there’s less in the way of strict step-by-step instructions and more of a “here are some different things that work for various people and here are some general guidelines to remember” approach. I highly recommended this book for any brewers looking to experiment with sour and funky beers. While we have yet to brew any new sours since reading the book, I have already used it to improve results when re-yeasting at bottling and plan to refer to it while planning our next project.

***

So far, we’ve made five forays into making sour beers and wild ales. The first two were made by pitching Russian River bottle dregs into a black saison (briefly detailed here) and a Belgian brown. The second is mentioned here, where I suggested it will “hopefully get a bit strange in a good way”. It certainly got strange — several months later, we pulled a sample and it tasted exactly like fruity paint thinner. That’s not a good strange. Eventually we bottled a quart of that with a gallon or two of various clean beers. After another year or two in the bottle, it turned out very nice. Sadly, I put it all in large format bottles, so I’m reluctant to open either of the two remaining bottles.

A couple summers back I made a saison with fig puree in the boil that was fermented with a mix of the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast and Brettanomyces claussenii isolated from a bottle of Cantillon Iris by Dmitri of BK Yeast. I am pretty sure I had unrealistic expectations for the beer, largely because I conflated the barnyard funk of Brett and the tartness of lactobacillus. I was mistakenly expecting more of the latter, and didn’t sort out the right mix of fruit and hopping to make the flavor of the beer pop a bit more.

The two most recent sours we brewed started off as clean fermented Belgian-style ales. We pitched the Wyeast Roselare Blend when racking to secondary to take care of the souring. The first was another brown ale, which I aged on pinot noir soaked oak cubes and cherries. The second is a golden ale aged with white port soaked oak cubes.

Near the end of March, one of Brooklyn’s homebrew shops, Bitter & Esters, held a book-signing / homebrew tasting event with Michael Tonsmeire. We brought our copy of American Sour Beer and a bottle of the second sour brown ale along. I introduced myself to Michael, explained that while I hadn’t brewed any sours since reading the book, I got a lot of advice from his blog for earlier efforts. After handing him my book for signing, I asked if he’d like to try the sour I’d brought with me. He accepted, and decided to wait to write an inscription until he’d tasted the beer.

I think he liked it:

This is one of my favorite inscriptions, along with Tim Powers dedicating my copy of “The Bible Repairman” to “Doug, old pal from Saratoga”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A writer for Brooklyn Magazine was in attendance, and judging by her comments in the introduction to her interview with Tonsmeire, she liked the beer as well. (Astute readers should be able to pick out a quote from Martha.)

***

If you’re looking to make sours at home, check out Tonsmeire’s book and blog for advice, and be very patient. Sours may not be beers you can turn around quickly like IPAs or brown ales, but you could be rewarded with unmatched levels of complexity and flavor.

Or you may just want to set it all on fire.

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Book Review – The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beers

Posted on 2014/02/24 by Doug

A few years back, I went to a Meet the Brewer event at Beer Table featuring Pretty Things, one of my favorite brewers. The special surprise they had for us was the somewhat cryptically titled “November 15th, 1901 KK”, the second brew in their Once Upon A Time series of historical beers. It was black without even the slightest hint of roast character and packed with a ton of English hops, suggesting that the Brits did the whole “Black IPA” thing a century before anyone over on this side of the Atlantic (and did so without throwing such a divisive name on the beer). The story behind the beer, which can be found in more detail at Old Beers, is that Pretty Things collaborated with a part-time British beer historian to brew recipes directly from historical brewing logs. The historian in question is an Englishman dwelling in Amsterdam by the name of Ron Pattinson. He runs a blog called Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, which not only holds a wealth of historical beer information and recipes, it is also an opportunity to see a historian working in real time. Many of the posts feature part or all of an original document coupled with Ron’s explanations and interpretations of that document.

The Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer

The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer by Ron Pattinson

Recently, Ron published The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer. The book begins with an overview of historical ingredients and the challenges these create for modern brewers looking to recreate these beers. For example, the specialty brown malt of today is very different than the brown malt that served as a base malt in the 19th century–a major obstacle to anyone wishing to exactly recreate almost any porter (or stout) recipe in the book. Hops present another challenge, as the majority of the recipes predate the quantification of alpha acids in hops and bitterness in beer.

The bulk of this book is a collection of recipes dating from 1800 to 1965 organized more or less by style, with a brief historical exposition presented before each section’s recipes. Regular readers of Pattinson’s blog will be familiar with many of the stories and themes (IPA was not a strong beer, popular accounts of Scottish brewing traditions are nonsense, etc.), but one of the highlights of this books is seeing all of this information collected and edited into a chronological narrative. Yes, some of the details like advertisements and gravity tables are omitted, but those are still available back on the blog. Despite the editing, Pattinson’s personality comes through in the writing, as does his enthusiasm for the subject.

The recipes are scaled to fit the typical 5-gallon homebrew batch, and typically include simplified mash and boil schemes, for those who don’t wish to do, say, two mashes, three sparges, and a four-hour boil. Each recipe has a brief set of notes attached which typically highlight the historical significance of the beer, unusual ingredients, and modern modifications.

1832 Truman XXXX Mild

An example of the recipe format for the book, with grains, hops, gravity, ABV, IBM, SRM, and mash info.

The recipes are all-grain, which makes the book more appropriate for experienced brewers, and knowing how to adapt recipes to your system is essential. As the title suggests, the book is written primarily for homebrewers, though I imagine anyone interested in the history of British beers can gain something from a read. The recipes tell an interesting story on their own to those who can parse abbreviations such as OG, FG, and IBU, and Pattinson provides a healthy dose of supporting context. For me, one of the highlights of the recipes is to see what a diverse range of beers British brewers were able to produce with a limited range of ingredients – nearly all of the 19th century recipes, outside of porter and stout, are built from pale malt and Goldings hops.

We recently had a party at our apartment where we served beers we made from 1830’s recipes, two of which are in this book. I have another two lined up for brewing in the coming weeks. I recommend this book primarily to anyone looking to brew examples of the ancestors of today’s beers, and secondly to curious folks looking to learn a different side of history. The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer is published by Quarry Books and is available in spiral-bound or Kindle editions.

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Airlock Adventures

Posted on 2012/03/19 by Doug

I took a look in the fermentation chamber (aka the bedroom closet) today to see how the Belgian strong dark ale was doing and was pleased to see that fermentation had taken off quite vigorously. Perhaps a touch too vigorously, as there was a steady stream of bubbles coming out the airlock and most of the sanitizer had been pushed out. I tried adding a little more sanitizer to the airlock and watched as it all bubbled right out the top.

LOTS OF BUBBLES!!!


I thought that was amusing and only mildly alarming, until I took a look after dinner and noticed that krauzen had made its way up through the airlock and out onto the lid of the fermentation bucket. Not quite as amusing, and a bit more alarming.

The things that look like dress shirts near the top left and top right corners of the photo? Those are the shirts I wear to work. Surprisingly few people complain that I smell like beer.


Anyway, rather than risk the airlock being forcibly ejected from the top of the bucket with an accompanying spray of yeast and foam, I decided to opt for a blowoff tube. For the moment, there is peace in the bedroom closet.

The growler is from Shawnee Craft Brewing, who make excellent beers.

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Homebrew Sunday – Two Month Catch Up Edition

Posted on 2012/03/18 by Doug

Two months ago, when I last posted about homebrew on here, I had just bottled the KK and racked an English barleywine. The KK has turned out quite nicely, with definite caramel notes from the malt and sugars plus an almost fruity note from the Bramling Cross hops, which serve as a nice foil to the earthy Goldings.

The barleywine spent a month in secondary. One gallon was left alone while the other gallon had oak cubes soaked in Lagavulin whisky in the jar. Both turned out quite delicious, with the oak-aged version (dubbed The Howler*) showing some pleasant woody notes and the unoaked version (dubbed The Limper*) tasted like a drier version of JW Lee’s Harvest Ale. Both beers are definitely drier than intended, and have already started to take on some port-like character which I usually associate with aged barleywines. Next time around, I want to get the starting gravity higher in order to hit a similar ABV (11.8%) yet have a sweeter, fuller bodied finish.

Calypso Pale Ale. It does not dance.

The Calypso Pale Ale, our experiment with a relatively new hop variety called Calypso, turned out very well. It’s roughly 5% ABV and very clean drinking, with notable floral and lightly fruity flavors from the hop. I took a bottle to a recent homebrewer meetup where it elicited the comments “This would be a great summer beer” and “This is definitely a recipe to make again.” It’s a bit murkier that I hoped, though I’m not sure if that’s due to my usual inability to effectively clear up the wort in all-grain batches or the yeast (Wyeast 1056 American Ale) taking a lot longer to flocculate out.

Ever since I started repitching yeast about a year ago, I’ve started planning our recipes in sets with common yeast and increasing strength. The pale ale was the first of four beers brewed with the 1056 yeast. Next was batch #31 and dubbed the Wilbert Montgomery ale, named for the guy who wore 31 on the Eagles back when I was a kid. I suppose you could call it a brown ale, a dark old ale, or simply a dark ale. I usually go with American strong dark ale, as it’s fairly strong (7%), it’s quite dark, and it’s an ale brewed with American yeast. I suppose I like descriptive style names. Originally modeled after beers like Pretty Things’ St. Boltoph’s Town and Smuttynose’s Really Old Brown Dog, I ended up taking the recipe I drew up for the dark mild I made in October and doubled everything.

1.100. I was so proud I needed to take a picture.

That seemed like such a fun idea that I decided to triple the mild recipe for the fourth beer brewed with the 1056, which is called Stormbringer*. It is a 2 gallon batch, which meant I could make it very strong without having to resort to buying lots (or any) extract. I shifted the percentages slightly in the end, as I didn’t want the chocolate malt to overwhelm the entire affair. It was a proud brewday, as I broke the triple-digit gravity points boundary for the first time with a potent 1.100 original gravity. I racked it a couple weeks ago to age for a month before bottling and it’s down to 1.020, which means it’s similar in strength to the barleywines yet has a much bigger mouthfeel. Both the Wilbert Montgomery and the Stormbringer are rich, somewhat chocolatey, and a little nutty. The Stormbringer is definitely sweeter, which makes sense given its relatively high finishing gravity.

The hop additions for the Double Joe Montana. From left to right: 60 minute, 20 minute, 10 minute, and 0 minute additions.

The third of the four 1056 beers is the Double Joe Montana, which is batch #32 (i.e. twice the 16 that Joe Montana wore for the 49ers, Martha’s team from her younger days). This is a double red ale with lots of hops, though the emphasis was on flavor and aroma hops rather than bitterness. Something like 80% of the hop additions came in the last 15 minutes of the boil, with the largest dose being added at flameout. We opened up the first bottles on Friday night and were quite pleased with both the color (brick red) and flavor (lots of malt without too much sweetness).

The mess left in the bottom of the kettle -- hops, raisins, Zante currants, and a cinnamon stick. Tasty.

Back in January we were up in Massachusetts for my nephew’s second birthday party and pouring bottles of the Belgian strong dark ale (more or less named for my nephew) we’ve made for the past two Christmases. We got to talking about the fact strong ales of this sort benefit for several months of aging before they reach their prime and hit upon the now obvious idea of actually brewing them many months before Christmas. Seems so simple in hindsight… Anyway, two weeks ago I did an all-grain four gallon batch of a straightforward Belgian brown which serves three purposes: provide a fresh beer to blend with the six-month-old sour at bottling time, be the base beer for a new sour (this time with the Wyeast Roselare Blend providing the bugs and pinot noir soaked oak cubes adding character), and build up the yeast for this year’s strong dark ale. Yesterday I brewed the 2012 St. Aedan’s Ale. The changes from last year included dialing the amount of spices (nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon) slightly down, mixing the candi syrups (a pound each of D-180 and D-45 from Candi Syrup, Inc.), and making the hop presence even smaller (BU:GU ratio of 0.21 with the no flavor or aroma addition).

Next weekend we’ll be bottling what we can of the sour with oak and dates, then there will be no brewing happening until mid-April as we’re off on vacation for the first two weeks of next month.

*At some point, we decided to begin naming very strong beers after members of The Ten Who Were Taken, a group of enormously powerful wizards from The Black Company series of books by Glen Cook. The Limper, The Howler, and Stormbringer are the first three names we’ve used.

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Christmas in Oregon – The Beers, Part 2

Posted on 2012/03/05 by Doug

On our last full day in Oregon, we grabbed a Zipcar early in the morning and set off for a beer-fueled adventure on the coast. The drive took us through the Tillamook State Forest. At some point, we passed through the amusingly named ghost town of Idiotville. Once on the coast, we drove through the town of Tillamook and saw the high school stadium, which proudly declared itself Home of the Cheesemakers. Sadly, I can’t find any mascot pictures online.

We saw no pelicans while at the Pelican Pub, though I did spot one further down the coast.


The flight of Pelican's standard offerings, plus the Bridal Ale at the far right.

Our destination was Pacific City and the Pelican Pub and Brewery, located right at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

I ordered a standard sampler featuring a cream ale, an IPA, a Scottish style ale, a brown ale, and a stout to go with my lunch, which was a hop-crusted tuna steak sandwich. The sandwich was incredibly tasty, though I would not have guessed there were hops involved in the preparation without being told. The beers were straightforward and well made. Our waitress mentioned that Dory’s Dark Ale, the brown ale, was the first beer made by the brewpub. I appreciate details like that when visiting a new place. The beers were all solid brews, and I’d happily order any of them on tap, but the highlight of the visit was the flight of various vintages of the Stormwatcher’s Winterfest barleywine and its barrel-aged version known as Mother of All Storms.

The flight of three vintages of the Stormwatcher's Winterfest barleywine and two vintages of Mother of All Storms bourbon barrel aged barleywine.

Pelican describes the Stormwatcher’s Winterfest as an English barleywine, and that’s an apt description, though it’s perhaps a bit darker than JW Lee’s Harvest Ale, which I consider the hallmark of the style. Still, the beer is all about the barley, with an almost imperceptible hop presence. My tasting notes run something like this:

  • 2011(SW) – “Sweet gooey malt bomb. Caramel nose and flavor”
  • 2010(SW) – “Cinnamon toast in nose. Slightly sweeter. Dark fruits.”
  • 2008(SW) – “Almost a toasted nut character to the nose. Sweetness mellowed out to allow more flavors, like dates and figs.”
  • 2011(MoAS) – “Very nice. More of a bite, understated slight caramel bourbon presence.”
  • 2010(MoAS) – “Biggest bite of all the beers, though more from the bourbon and booze than hops.”

It’s safe to say we spent quite some time at Pelican as I slowly sipped my way through the flight. While sitting there, we watched a storm roll in off the ocean and chase the handful of people and dogs from the sand.

The Rogue brewery, or Rogue Nation World Headquarters, as they call it.

While looking over the map and sorting out a route, I noticed that hugging the coast for a while would bring us to Newport, OR, where we could turn eastward for a straight shot to Corvallis, our final destination of the day. Newport just so happens to not only be the end of US-20, it is also the home of Rogue Ales. To get to the tasting room/restaurant in the brewery, you need to wind your way along a path that passes between a number of fermenters and a stack of barrels before you reach the bottle store, where stairs take you up to the bar. When you sit down, you are greeted with the shot of the day, a 4oz sample of one of the 40 or so beers on tap.

The Yaquina Bay Bridge. Rogue sits at the southern end.

We sat down to two small glasses of Mogul Madness, a winter warmer. The Christmas-in-Oregon sampler madness continued with four more small pours, the highlight of which was the Chatoe Wet Hop ale.

By this point my taste buds were a bit blown out and my head was a little fuzzy. Martha drove us off to Corvallis, where we wandered around the Oregon State University campus and peered in the windows of greenhouses, wondering if there might be experimental hop varieties growing inside. We then made our way to the local brewpub, Block 15, for dinner and yet more beer. I stuck with the seasonal theme, opting for the 12 Hops of Christmas, a double IPA that was not nearly as hoppy or bitter as the name suggests, and the Chocolate Porter, which was every bit as chocolaty as the name suggests. We struck up a conversation with the super friendly bartender, who let us know some interesting info about the pub, such as the fact OSU fermentation science students get occasional opportunities to brew a batch at the pub and the OSU professors once showed up with a pile of experimental hops which they made into an IPA that sold out in a week. He also mentioned that Block 15 is building a coolship in the ‘wild half’ of their basement, so be on the lookout for some interesting wild ales to be coming out of that area. Of course, you’ll likely need to make a pilgrimage to Corvallis to try them out, but I’d say Block 15 is worth the trip.

And if Block 15 is a bit too packed, check out Les Caves next door, a more upscale beer bar owned by Block 15 with a diverse tap list and a massive bottle selection focusing on imports and more unusual craft beers. We stopped by long enough to have a glass of Beer Valley’s Leafer Madness IPA, but I easily could have spent hours of time and many, many dollars exploring their bottle list.

And so ended our day on the Oregon coast, save for the drive back to Portland, which featured lots of Speedwolf played at a high volume, which is only proper.

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Christmas in Oregon – The Beers, Part 1

Posted on 2012/02/20 by Doug

We spent the week from Christmas to New Year’s Eve out in Portland, which has a well-earned reputation as an excellent beer town. In our 7 days there, I drank a grand total of 53 different beers, at least 40 of which were new to me. My liver is grateful that the majority of those 53 beers were sampler-sized pours at various brewpubs and brewery tasting rooms.

\m/ Sleighr - Raindeer Blood \m/

We landed in Portland late on Christmas Eve and my first beer of the week was a few hours later when Martha’s brother handed me a bottle of Ninkasi’s Sleighr, which they describe as a “double dark alt.” It was massively malty and the perfect fortification for helping to assemble our nephew’s new toys. The label scored bonus points with us thanks to its play on Slayer’s logo. Later that day, I had Ninkasi’s Spring Reign Ale, which was a pleasantly hoppy and refreshing pale ale that paired well with the first ham sandwich of my life.

Monday we caught the season opener for the Trailblazers. There was talk of trying to make it to Upright Brewing for their pregame tasting room hours, but that was not to be. We did bring a bottle of one of their beers, a hoppy saison featuring all Pacific NW ingredients. I was curious to try their beers as they had been using the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast as the house yeast, which is my saison yeast of choice for my summer saisons. The Upright Five was easy-drinking with a hint of funk and a bit of sharp sourness that reminded me of the hoppy saison I made last summer. I wonder if the 3711 just doesn’t play well with hops.

At the Rose Garden, where the Blazers play, the beer situation was the inverse of almost every other sport venue in the country. Nearly every concession stand had at least one craft beer on tap, and all of the large bars were local(ish) microbreweries. You had to make an effort to find Coors Light or Bud Light. Win! I hit up the Laurelwood stand twice, once for their hoppy red ale and once for their porter, which was decently roasty, super drinkable, and not too sweet, unlike many of the porters I had later in the week.

The first proper pub of the week was the Deschutes pub in the Pearl District. Sadly, I had a cold at that point so much of the beer experience was lost on me. The Abyss, their imperial stout, was excellent as always, while their Chainbreaker “white IPA,” a witbier hopped like an IPA, did nothing for me, though I’m not much of a fan of witbiers in the first place. Later in the week I had a cask-conditioned double IPA there called Hop City II, a nod to Rip City, one of Portland’s nicknames. Big and fruity with the healthy bitter kick you expect from pale ales in the Pacific Northwest. The Yellow Belly Burger, a hamburger with (house made) root-beer braised pork belly, candied yellow tomatoes, and jalapeño puree was a thing of wonder.

Greg (hopless beer brewed with squash), Blue Dot (double IPA), Fred (strong golden ale), and Adam (old ale).

Later in the week we walked across the Morrison Bridge to visit Hair of the Dog. The sampler revealed nothing new (Adam is still my favorite beer of theirs), but the bottle list is where the true treasure is found. It features various barrel-aged versions of their beers which can be difficult to find outside the brewery, especially on the East coast. We tried the 2009 Cherry Adam from the Wood, a version of Adam which spent several months on cherries in bourbon barrels. It was awesome — malt, tobacco, and subtle cherry flavors abound in a beer so rich it took most of an hour to drink a 12 oz bottle.

Little did we know that we were only a few blocks from the Cascade Brewing Barrel Room, which features a variety of sour ales alongside more traditional NW craft brews. We found our way to Cascade’s brewpub, Racoon Lodge, on Saturday. By that point, I found myself beered out, much to my surprise. So it goes. At any rate, I found the highlight of the visit to be the Sang Noir, a sour red ale aged in whiskey and pinot barrels, then blended with cherries. Quite tart and refreshing, with a welcome dry finish.

The final beer of the week was a Deschutes Inversion IPA at the Portland airport. I chose to enjoy a glass there, though there are multiple bars in the post-security sections of the terminal that offer growler fills for sale, just in case you need some fresh beer for the flight. Cheers!

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Homebrew Sunday

Posted on 2012/01/15 by Doug

So this is the new year, and this is the first Homebrew Sunday post of 2012. This week I bring you bullet points:

  • Last week I moved the KK into secondary and added an ounce each of East Kent Goldings and Bramling Cross for dry hop purposes. I also racked the 2 gallon all-grain barleywine into two secondary vessels. One is unadulterated while the other has 5 grams of oak cubes that spent the last month soaking in Lagavulin whisky. In related news, I discovered that soaking oak cubes in Lagavulin for a month might be the only way to make Lagavulin undrinkable.
  • I tasted the Belgian brown that’s been souring for three months with dates, oak cubes, and Russian River Consecration Dregs and it was not at all awesome. Tasted somewhat like fruity paint thinner. Perhaps more time will be the savior.
  • Yesterday was brew day, and I’m happy to report there are five gallons of Calypso Pale Ale bubbling away in my closet right now. It’s a straightforward, sessionable (~4.5% ABV) American pale ale made with only Calypso hops. Ultimately, it’s an experiment to see what Calypso hops are like, and hopefully it’s a very drinkable experiment.
  • Today we bottled the KK. It’s a lovely light brown color, which is much, much lighter that intended. So it goes. The important thing is that it tastes good, and while there’s still a bit of the extract/invert sugar tang, I imagine that will mellow with carbonation and time.
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San Antonio, The Beers

Posted on 2011/12/21 by Doug

At the bar at Blue Star. Later, the tanks in the background were bedecked with holiday decorations.

We made our way to two breweries while down in San Antonio. The first was the Blue Star Brewing Company, which is in the Blue Star Arts Complex. We walked there from our hotel on Friday night and tried three beers while trying to work up an appetite for dinner. I had the Belgian Country Ale and the Stout, while Martha tried the Frankincense. The Country Ale was a saison that was easy to drink but a little thin and unremarkable. Not much in the way of funk or spiciness happening, but I could imagine it seeming a lot better on a hot day. The stout was a straightforward dry stout that I thought was served much too cold to be properly appreciated. The Frankincense was a spiced brown ale with some clove and cinnamon character. Our entertainment for the evening was watching some of the staff hanging Christmas decorations (strings of artificial evergreen branches and ornaments) along the top of the bright tanks behind the bar.

Freetail's logo: a Mexican Free-tailed Bat, the official flying mammal of Texas (and Oklahoma, the only other state to designate a state flying mammal).

Saturday afternoon we drove up to Freetail Brewing, which was about 30 minutes from downtown. Looking over the list of beers on the website, it was clear it was a more adventurous brewery, as the selections ranged from the ubiquitous wit beers and pale ales to imperial stouts to barrel-aged sour ales. We arrived and ordered two samplers, which meant a total of ten 4-ounce pours, and the green chili, artichoke, and goat cheese dip, which served as a damn tasty foundation for all the beer.

The left plate was mostly hoppy and traditional items, the right plate was almost entirely sour ales. The pinkish-red beers are the ones made with prickly pear.

The samplers were served on plates with parchment paper beneath the glasses and the beer names written in Sharpie next to the glass. Here are some highlights from my tasting notes:

  • The Mighty
    • Atê – A sour blonde ale that was super dry and tart with a tiny bit of residual malt sweetness and vaguely Chardonnay-esque character.
    • Self-Regarde – lovely sour brown ale with lots of fruit flavors like sour cherry and apple, almost like a young red wine.
    • Hopothesis E – They called this an experimental ale. Fruity characteristics suggesting an English yeast strain, prominent malt profile, and a notable but not aggressive hop presence that was more piney and resinous than citrusy.
    • Round Earth IPA – Dubbed a “West Indies Pale Ale,” it had a faint caramel presence in the aroma and bracing hop bitterness with not a lot of hop flavor.
  • The Middling
    • 4 Shadow – A ‘smoked Belgian stout’ that smelled like chocolate covered bacon tobacco and tastes like smoking the same. Improved a lot when paired with the goat cheese dip.
    • Tadarida Oscura – They call it a CDA, feel free to call it a Black IPA if that works for you. Hoppy, slightly watery, and thankfully not too roasty with an interesting vegetal undercurrent.
    • Otoño Bienvenido – A saison brewed with pumpkin. Bit of funk, some spices, mostly an easily drinkable Belgian amber.
  • The Meh
    • La Muerta – an imperial stout brewed annually for the Day of the Dead, this was much too smoky, even for the style. Perhaps time will help it out.
    • Prickly Realtail and Prickly Fairy Peril – an amber and a wild ale brewed with prickly pears. Both were very vegetal and reminded me a bit of a bitter melon dish at a Sichuan restaurant. I wrote “something approaching good” about the latter. Perhaps prickly pear is just not my thing.
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Homebrew Sunday: Barleywine, Take Two

Posted on 2011/12/18 by Doug

I have never tried to hide my love of barleywine, particularly the glory that is JW Lee’s Harvest Ale. Back in April, I made my first attempt at making a barleywine of my own. That batch was a one gallon all-grain batch, which fell short of my expectations in a number of ways. The main issue was that I had yet to sort out a reasonably effect mash technique, so the gravity wound up much, much lower than intended, even with some dextrose and brown sugar dumped in the boil as an emergency measure. It turned out reasonably well with some age, though I think it’s a bit dry and thin bodied.

The recipe for this batch was the same as the last one: Marris Otter malt, East Kent Goldings hops, and Wyeast London Ale III yeast repitched from the KK. This batch was supposed to be 2.25 gallons, and the plan is to split this in two one-gallon glass jugs for secondary. Half the batch will be conditioned normally, while the other half will sit on oak cubes that are currently soaking in Lagavulin whisky. Should be interesting.

Started out with 11 pounds of grain, mashed it for an hour, and collected about 4.2 gallons of wort. The pre-boil gravity was 1.065. According to one of the post-boild gravity calculators I checked, that would make for a post-boil gravity of 1.120, which was my target. The plan was to boil everything for an hour before adding the hops and boiling for a second hour.

Things went fairly smoothly, except the wort didn’t boil off as fast as expected and I likely still have a fair bit to learn about accounting for hop loss in recipe formulation. In the end, I wound up with about 2.4 gallons of 1.094 gravity wort. Next time, I’ll boil it down further before starting the hop additions.

Repitched slurry from the KK that I racked on Friday and had active fermentation within 8 hours or so.

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Homebrew Sunday: KK #2

Posted on 2011/12/04 by Doug

Back in March, I made my first attempt at recreating the Pretty Things November 15, 1901 ‘KK’. Stylistically, I’ve seen the KK called a Burton Ale, though I’m not sure how much that helps most folks. An easier description is strong, dark, and hoppy, but with little to none of the roast flavors usually associated with dark beers. The color comes primarily from invert sugar, which results in a beer that has some lovely caramel notes.

After two all-grain batches in a row, I went back to partial mash since the target gravity was 1.079, and I don’t have the equipment to either mash the necessary grain or collect enough wort to boil for 90 minutes. Here’s the list of fermentables:

  • 4 pounds Maris Otter
  • 1 pound brown malt
  • 10 oz crystal 120
  • 6 oz crystal 80
  • 1 oz chocolate malt
  • 4 pounds extra light DME
  • 2 pounds invert no. 3 (made using Lyle’s Golden Syrup and blackstrap molasses)

I threw in the chocolate malt to add a little bit of color, but didn’t want to add too much and wind up with the roast flavors that don’t really belong. 2.5 pounds of the DME was added at flameout to keep the boil gravity down and increase hop utilization.

The hop load was fairly heavy, as I was going for 99 IBU using traditionally low alpha acid hops like East Kent Golding. It certainly helped that the whole leaf Goldings I have are 6.7% AA. I also threw in a small amount of 10.5% AA Centennials in the first bittering addition. The other featured hop of the beer is Bramling Cross, an English hop known for blackcurrant and lemon flavors. Martha and I found some pellets down in Pennsylvania at Keystone Homebrew, so they were included in the last two additions and will feature in the dry hop as well. The hop schedule:

  • 1.5 oz East Kent Golding and 0.15 oz Centennial – 90 minutes
  • 1.5 oz East Kent Golding and 0.5 oz Bramling Cross – 60 minutes
  • 1.5 oz East Kent Golding and 1.5 oz Bramling Cross – 30 minutes

Pitched a slurry of Wyeast London III (1318). Original gravity turned out to be 1.070, 9 points below the target. Colorwise, this came out more of a milk chocolate brown, which is certainly lighter than intended, though I’ll be interested to see how this winds up after fermentation. The plan is to rack this in two weeks, then condition for another two weeks with an ounce each of East Kent Golding and Bramling Cross for dry-hopping.

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