Heavy Metal Birder

Today was a low key day at the apartment, with a pretty simple plan involving bottling and racking.

First up was this year’s edition of St. Aedan’s Ale, the lightly spiced Belgian strong dark ale that I make for Christmas each year. It was more work intensive than recent bottlings, as the entire batch went into bottles. The beer finished off around 1.017, making for an ABV of roughly 9.3%. A potent holiday treat indeed! Flavorwise it’s a bit hotter than I would have liked, largely from the alcohol but possibly partly due to the spices. We’ll see if it mellows any with carbonation and a bit more time in the bottle.

Second task of the day was to rack the Fat Ethel Old Scottie Stout, which turned out stronger than intended at 5.25%, though that’s not too surprising since I overshot the target gravity by 7 points or so. This was only the fourth all-grain five gallon batch I’ve brewed, so I’m still in the process of sorting out what sort of efficiency I can get on a regular basis. The beer tastes fantastic, with a lovely roast character that doesn’t overwhelm the experience in any way. Really looking forward to drinking this, and I’ve got a strong suspicion that I’ll be brewing this again.

Goodness gracious, I’ve fallen behind on this. Pretty sure the last update ended with the Green Magpie, which was meant to be a dry, hoppy, and refreshing saison that turned out dry and hoppy, though I’m not particularly thrilled about the hop character. I used all Cluster hops largely because they were what our local homebrew shop had on hand in whole leaf form and most descriptions mentioned a citrus character to the hop. I suppose that’s there, though I also get a weird ammonia flavor from it as well. If you’ve ever had Anchor Steam, you have a good idea of what Cluster hops taste like. Not sure exactly what went awry with the Green Magpie, but next year I’ll be looking into swapping hop varieties for something either more bright and citrusy like Citra or spicy like one of the noble hops. In preparation, I just ordered a pile of Amarillo and Citra whole leaf hops.

The last of the summer saisons was the Blue Magpie Saison, named for the Taiwanese Blue Magpie. Figs and papayas are favorites of the bird, so we figured we’d incorporate them in the recipe. The base beer was a fairly straightforward saison with pilsner malt, a bit of wheat, and a good bit of Caramunich as well. I added a pound of fig puree made from a mix of fresh and dried black mission and turkey figs with ten minutes left in the boil. When racking the beer to secondary, I added another pound of dried figs and a pound of fresh papaya and let it sit for two weeks. Turned out quite nice in the end, with a decidedly sweet character that never cloys. Next year I want to try pitching a pack of brettanomyces when racking the beer onto the fruit in the hopes of developing a tart funky counterpoint to the fruit.

I kicked off the fall brewing with an all-grain ordinary bitter called Bitter American, which is pretty much the same recipe as an earlier beer called Bitter, Mike?, except for the use of all American ingredients: 2-row barley, a little crystal malt, Delta hops, and American Ale yeast. It’s super drinkable with a nice toasted malt character.

In preparation for the next beer, I leaped into the world of on-line homebrew supply shopping and bought a pound of whole leaf Centennial hops, which are the sole hop used in some of my favorite American IPAs like Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, Founders Centennial IPA, and Ballast Point’s Big Eye IPA. Continuing our tradition of naming IPAs for their brew date, this became the Constitution Day IPA. The recipe was pretty straightforward, with two-row, some crystal 60 and 40, a bit of dextrose, and lots of Centennials, with the bulk of the hops added at the end for a big aroma blast. The dextrose addition was inspired by double IPA recipes, but I think it ended up drying out this relatively lower gravity (1.049) beer a bit too much. When racking this beer into the carboy, I failed to properly account for the volume the dry hops took up and ended up with about a pint of beer overflowing onto the floor. I suppose I can’t be doing too badly if that’s the first beer puddle I’ve made on the kitchen floor in a little over a year of homebrewing.

On the same weekend I bottled the IPA, I also bottled the one-gallon batch of a soured black saison that had been tucked away in the closet for three months. Two weeks after bottling, I tried a bottle. The aroma is fantastic, full of sour cherries, red wine and tobacco, and rather reminiscent of the Russian River Supplication which supplied the souring bugs. The flavor was pretty good as well, though with a weird medicinal off-flavor appearing near the end. I’ve read that sours can go through phases of flavor in the bottle, especially during the first month or two. I’ve hidden the rest of the bottles from myself to give them some time to (hopefully) develop a bit further.

The brewing plan for October called for two strong dark Belgian ales. The first was originally dubbed the “basic Belgian brown,” but it turned out nearly black so it’s now the Blackie Brown. Two gallons of that were conditioned normally and bottled. The remaining three gallons went into a carboy with dates, oak cubes, and the dregs of a couple bottles of Russian River Consecration to sit for six months and hopefully get a bit strange in a good way.

The second strong dark ale is this year’s edition of St. Aedan’s Ale, which is the Christmas beer I named (more or less) for my nephew. A strong dark ale made with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice plus dates replacing the raisins from last year.

On the last weekend of October, I made my third ever all-grain five gallon batch, which is a dark mild destined for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house. By a fun coincidence, this was batch #26 overall and it was fermenting over the NYC marathon weekend*, so it is now dubbed the Marathon Mild.

Last weekend, I continued the all-grain trend with a re-creation of an 1868 Scottish ale (original recipe here) that has been dubbed the Fat Ethel Old Scottie Stout. In a case of classic shopping fail, I went to the local homebrew shop with a short shopping list (Maris Otter, black patent malt, and Fuggles plugs) only to find they were out of two of the three items. The black patent malt was replaced by a mix of roast barley and Carafa Special II, and the Fuggles hop plugs were replaced by Fuggles pellets and Willamette whole leaf hops. It turned out well in the end, with a black wort that tastes a bit of French roast coffee and dark chocolate.

And that’s where things stand right now. Next two items on the schedule are a second attempt at a Burton ale inspired by the Pretty Things KK and a smaller batch of an all-grain barleywine, some of which will be conditioned with Lagavulin-soaked oak cubes.

*I ran the NYC Marathon this year, which was my first marathon. Finished in 3:57:22.

And now, an overdue homebrewing update!

As mentioned earlier, the plan for the summer is to make a series of saisons, as saison yeasts work well in warmer temperatures. All the beers will be named after various species of magpies, since the first beer I ever brewed was dubbed the “Magpie Saison” by one of Martha’s coworkers.

The first saison of the summer was the Yellow-billed Magpie, which was a pretty straightforward saison. Pilsner malt, pale wheat malt, biscuit malt, dry malt extract, clear candi syrup and Willamette whole-leaf hops. Started out at 1.051 and fermented down to 1.006 with the Wyeast French Saison yeast (3711, in case you’re really into Wyeast strains). Turned out quite tasty, and I’m looking forward to tapping a wombat of this later in the week.

The second saison is the Korean Magpie Saison, which was the exact same recipe as the Yellow-billed Magpie with the addition of fresh ginger, pink peppercorn and orange peel at the end of the boil. Bottled it yesterday. The gravity sample tasted significantly drier than the first saison, with the spiciness of the ginger becoming quite apparent once it warmed up a bit. This should be interesting when carbonated.

The third saison is the Black-billed Magpie Saison, which is a black saison, as the name suggests. Two-row barley, biscuit malt, Special B, Carafa II Special, pale wheat malt, a little bit of chocolate malt, and extra dark Belgian candi syrup, plus Willamette and Delta leaf hops. Jet black in color, with an original gravity of 1.056, so potentially slightly stronger than the first two beers. Tasted it for the first time today, and my initial impression was that I could skip the chocolate malt next time around. Of course, a couple more weeks of conditioning and carbonation will make a considerable difference in the experience.

Last week, one of my coworkers asked me what price I would ask to guarantee a bottle of everything I make. He said I should consider both the cost of ingredients and my time, and ended up giving me twenty bucks to guarantee that he gets a bottle of everything I brew this summer. While thinking about brewing on a recent run, I figured I’d take those twenty bucks and invest them in a 3-gallon carboy so I could play around with splitting batches for secondary fermentation. And so it is with the Black-billed Magpie. One gallon is being dry-hopped with Delta hops, one gallon is spending a couple months in a bottle with the dregs of a bottle of Russian River’s Supplication (a sour brown ale aged on cherries) in the hopes that it will pick up a bit of funky sour character, and the other three gallons are conditioning normally.

Up next, the European Magpie Saison, which will be the exact same recipe as the Yellow-billed Magpie, but will use the Wyeast Belgian Saison yeast instead of the French Saison yeast. The Belgian saison strain is supposed to do well in temperatures up to 95F, which seems fitting for the NYC summer. Plus it makes for a perfect opportunity to experience the difference a yeast makes in the same recipe.

It was a busy day at the 5th Street Bedroom Brewery, with 3.2 batches of beer being attended to in the course of the afternoon.

The primary project for the day was the Yellow-Billed Magpie Saison, the first of a series of saisons we’ll be making over the course of the summer. American and English yeast strains don’t perform well once the temperature gets into the mid-70s and higher, meaning they are more likely to produce undesirable off-flavors, but Belgian and French strains, particularly the saison strains known for making farmhouse ales work well at temperatures up into the 80s and 90s. This makes them better suited for the Brooklyn summer.

This saison should end up around 5.5% ABV, and is a partial mash batch made from Bohemian pilsner malt, pale wheat malt, biscuit malt, extra light dry malt extract, and clear candi syrup. I used Willamette whole leaf hops, which made the whole straining experience much, much easier. The plan is to repitch the yeast to make the next three or four batches, all of which will be variations on the same recipe. One will have ginger and possibly Szechuan peppercorn. Another will likely be a black saison. Fun times!

The second project was to bottle the Battle of Lee’s Mill double IPA, which ended up at a respectable 7.6% ABV and a mighty 98 IBUs. Not for those who don’t like a lot of hops. This started out as a 5.5 gallon batch, yet only 4 gallons or so made it into bottles due to liquid lost in the (rather extensive) dry-hopping process. We filled two 6 liter party wombats and 4 22oz bottles. When filling the party wombats, I threw an extra quarter-ounce of whole-leaf Delta hops in each one just because I could.

The third project was racking our Walpurgisnachtbier, which is an American blonde ale brewed with honey, peat-smoked malt, heather and pink peppercorns. It is incredibly pale straw yellow, and it attenuated down much further than expected. The smoked malt is definitely noticeable, but it doesn’t completely overwhelm the flavor. I had read a lot of stories of homebrewers having peat-smoked malt turn otherwise good beers into charcoal in a glass. Thankfully, we seem to have avoided that. It’s definitely an interesting beer — a bit sweet, with the smoke and spices creating an initial impression of sourness similar to something like a gose. Martha says this will be one to serve as 12 oz pours.

Finally, I added a second dose of dry hops to the Baldy Smith triple IPA, which is sure to send the non-hop-lovers running. That gets bottled this coming weekend. I’m expecting half of the original 1 gallon batch to actually make it into bottled form.

Having been publicly shamed, I suppose it’s time to start writing about the beer we make right here in our apartment.

We got started at the start of August 2010, when Martha decided she was tired of listening to me talk about wanting to start brewing and walked me down to Brooklyn Homebrew so I could pick out which equipment kit I wanted as a birthday present. A week later, we made our first batch (an unspiced saison using one of the store’s ingredient kits). Last weekend, we made our 15th batch, a creation of our own involving peat smoked malt, honey, heather and pink peppercorns to commemorate Walpurgisnacht. With four exceptions, the majority of our beers are partial mash batches, as we don’t have the space right now for the additional equipment required for proper all-grain batches. Three of the four all-grain batches we made were one-gallon batches done as experiments with styles such as barleywine and triple IPA that would be rather expensive as five-gallon extract batches. All of these were brewed simultaneously with a five-gallon batches to minimize the extra cleanup required.

Here’s a list of what we’ve made so far. Many of them are mere memories now, having been enjoyed by us and our friends and family. Beers listed by batch number. These are all partial mash 5-gallon batches, except #12, which is all-grain.

1. Magpie Saison – August 2010. Partial mash batch brewed from an ingredient kit. 6.4% ABV, 20 IBUs. Our friend Suran declared it the first beer she ever liked, which was encouraging.
2. Labor Day IPA – September 2010. Partial mash American IPA brewed from another ingredient kit. Brewed on Labor Day weekend, this started our tradition of naming IPAs for events that share their brewdate. 5.9% ABV, 63 IBUs.
3. St. Aedan’s Ale 2010.  Brewed October 2010. A Belgian strong dark ale based on an ingredient kit, to which we added Lyle’s Black Treacle, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Made as a Christmas beer and named after my nephew.
4. Guy Fawkes IPA. An English IPA brewed November 2010 and aged on oak chips in secondary. Learned the hard way that four weeks on an ounce and a half of oak chips is way too much time. The best way to drink this was mixed half-and-half with the Labor Day IPA. 5.4% ABV, 40 IBUs.
5. A nameless brown ale made in November 2010 from another recipe kit. Easy drinking stuff that was a big hit at Christmas with my family. 3.8% ABV, 14 IBUs.
6. Fat Ethel Chocolate Stout. Stout brewed with cacao nibs in December 2010. Named for our portly tabby. The last beer we made from a Brooklyn Homebrew ingredient kit. 4.7% ABV, 24 IBUs.
7. Monty the Nose’s Bathtub Gin Pale Ale. Made on New Year’s Day 2011, this is the first recipe I created from scratch. A pale ale brewed with juniper berries, orange peel, coriander, cardamom, and hyssop. Named for our other cat, a tuxedo whose loathing of all things alcoholic leads us to believe he must be a Prohibitionist. 5% ABV, 30 IBUs.
8. Moonlight Battle (Double) IPA. Brewed January 2011. Based on a recipe for Pliny the Elder, this was our first highly hopped beer and first experiment with heavy dry-hopping. Probably my second-favorite beer so far, after the juniper pale ale. 7% ABV, 78 IBUs.
9. Teddy Ballgame Old Ale. Brewed January 2011. An old ale that was plagued by errors at every step — I measured grain in kilograms rather than pounds, repitched yeast for the first time, and pitched way, way too much yeast. Ended up having an unfortunate medicinal quality to it. 6.4 % ABV, 54 IBUs.
10. Bitter, Mike? Brewed February 2011. A best bitter named for a line from the British TV comedy Spaced. Hugely drinkable session beer that disappeared from our apartment very, very quickly. 3.8% ABV, 29 IBUs.
11. Brookklyn Burton. (That’s not a typo.) Brewed March 2011. Inspired by Pretty Thing’s November 15th, 1901 KK Burton Ale, this recipe was cobbled together from a number of sources, including this Barclay Perkins 1928 KK recipe. I made my own invert no. 2 sugar from Lyle’s golden syrup and blackstrap molasses. 7.4% ABV, 68 IBUs.
12. 1952 JW Lees Best Mild. Brewed March 2011. Another historical recipe, which I followed fairly faithfully. Since it was a fairly small grain bill, I decided to make an attempt at a full-size all-grain batch. It turned out quite well, though I overshot the target gravity in the end. Very sessionable, though the cumulative sweetness after three pints or so is a bit much for my tastes. 4.1% ABV, 26 IBUs.
13. Monty the Nose’s Bathtub Gin Pale Ale. Brewed April 2011. We liked the juniper pale ale so much that we decided to make it again.
14. Battle of Lee’s Mill Double IPA. Brewed April 2011. Once the warm weather hits, we can’t make English and American style ales without an abundance of diacetyl and other off-flavors that may result from high fermentation temps, so we figured it was time to lay in a properly hoppy beer for the summer time. Similar to batch 8, though lacking in Simcoe. 7.2% ABV, 98 IBUs.
15. Walpurgisnachtbier. Made last weekend, still fermenting. American blonde ale with honey, peat smoked malt, heather and pink peppercorns. O.G. 1.052, 21 IBUs.

In addition to those beers, we’ve also done a handful of one-gallon batches. The first was inspired by a need to use up the extra grain we had on hand following by measurement issues for batch #9. That turned out well, so it seemed proper to play around some more.

1. Conversion Error Ale (batch #9.2). Brewed at the same time as the Teddy Ballgame Old Ale, this turned out to be the better of the two beers by far. If forced to pin a style on it, I would guess ESB. 5%ABV, 65 IBUs. Very tasty.
2. Point Two Baby Barleywine (batch #11.2). Brewed at the same time as the Burton ale. Inspired by JW Lees Harvest Ale, this has nothing but Maris Otter malt and East Kent Goldings hops. Have yet to open up a bottle, though the sample for testing gravity was mighty tasty. 8.9% ABV, 54 IBUs.
3. Baldy Smith Triple IPA (batch 14.2). Based on a Pliny the Younger clone recipe and brewed alongside the Battle of Lee’s Mill double IPA. Still getting loaded up on dry hops in secondary.

And there you have it. 

If you’re interested in the recipes for these, many of them are up on my Hopville profile page.

At the moment, there are roughly 24 gallons of beer in my bedroom closet. This is not a bad thing.