Out Of Key Brewing

In November I brewed up my take on a Berliner Weisse for my recent St. Patricks day party.  Pretty simple recipe of 60% pils 40% wheat, I did a double decoction 122, 141 rests, with my scarification rest was done at 152.  The wort yielded a OG of 1028.  I used amarillo hops in the mash.  They were added after the 122 decoction was pulled.  The beer was boiled for 30 minutes and chilled to 100 F.  The wort was not oxygenated outside of simple splashing.

4 days before brewing I created a starter using three tablespoons of Trader Joe’s Greek Yogurt.  The container says it contains 6 distinct bacterias:

• Lactobacillus bulgaricus
• Streptococcus thermophilus
• Lactobacillus acidophilus
• Bifidus
• Lactobacillus casei
• Lactobacillus rhamnosus

The starter smelled somewhat sour prior to pitching but nothing too intense.  I did not sample the starter.  Within 2 hours of adding the starter there was a thick six inch krausen that had formed.    When the airlock was removed it smelled strongly sour.

After 5 days I added one packet of California ale dry yeast that had been re-hydrated on the stir plate.

The beer fermented for a total of 10 days at 65 degrees and finished at 1.000.  I force carbonated the beer in a keg to 3.5 volumes which produced a very highly carbonated beer.  I would not  try this in a bottle.

The beer by itself ended up being only mildly sour.  It has a certain twang to it and is mildy acidic.  While the plain beer is quite refreshing, when mixed with a simple rasberry syrup (water, sugar, frozen raspberries) to takes on a very nice tartness, which is very good. It would be a great beer for a hot summer day.  Additionally one of my brewing buddies got his hands on some woodruff syrup , which is a sweet traditional herbal syrup from Germany, for me.  While it imparted some sweetness to the beverage, the flavor was really not very distinct.   I served it for the first time at my St. Patrick’s day party (one of 10 beers on draft) and pretty much everyone who tried it, liked it.  It was a big hit with my friends who are not beer drinkers, who pretty much had a big glass of the pink hued rasberry flavored drink in their hands all night.

This beer will be brewed again.  The only change I will make will be In the lacto phase,  I am going to keep the beer in the upper 90s.   This ideally should produce a more bracing sourness.   By giving the lacto and other bacteria a better environment to kick out some sourness.  This also may be the perfect beer to start playing with my Kombucha scoby, perhaps a split batch even.

Last night was the Chicago Beer Societies First Thursday meeting for February.  I brought my doppelbock, Low Brass, Lost in the Woods Tripel, and the Dr. Jekyll Mild.  After my last tasting with The Mosher, my confidence was shaken, however I brought the Doppelbock over for him to taste.  He gave it a big thumbs up.  Saying that it was very clean, and while sweet, it was very well attenuated.  He gave some history on the style and talked about how historically it was never very highly attenuated, typically in the 50% range.  Amazing stuff.

Next up I pulled out the three year old Lost in the Woods Tripel) (The recipe link is broken but I can look it up if anyone is interested ).  A bulk of these beers never carbed up however, I came across a handful of fliptops that had carbed up perfectly.  This beer has actually turned out to be something pretty special.  It has become very fruity with a persistent rocky head.  All in all a pretty good beer.  Everyone really liked it, the biggest comment on it was that it was very fruity.

Next I pulled out the Low Brass Lager, which I would describe as a big Dortmunder export (A little too big if you ask me, but that’s another post).  I have to say that this is probably a highlight of the evening for me.  I pull out the bottle and start pouring for my group and over comes Randy and he says:

“I need to get some of this, this guy has had great beer all night“

Speechless.

I should just stop now.  No more.  Can’t top.  The man who wrote the book on tasting beer actually searching out my beer.  Not worthy.  Now that being said, it is possible that his glass may just have been empty and he needed a beer.  But it was my beer that he wanted.

On a side note, the Dr. Jekyll Mild won the CBS competition for the chance to enter my beer in the AHA’s club only competition.  Judging by Ray Daniels (author of Designing Great Beers), Keith Lemke, and John Laffler.  Who knows how it will do at the national level but I feel honored to just have placed against some of the competition I was up against.

A couple weeks back I brewed for the the first time using a partigyle approach.  In this process two or more beers are created from one mash.  This is typically accomplished by using different portions of the run off to brew the different beers.  So that the first beer brewed is the strongest, the successive beer is weaker, etc.  This past weekend I brewed two beers, the first was five gallons of a mammoth breakfast type stout that weighed in at 25 degrees plato (1.100).  The second beer was 10 gallons of an english style mild.  For the mild I ran off 7 gallons of wort and added some palm sugar to boost the gravity.  In the end the mild weighed in at around 1.038 or 9.5 plato.

The big beer is based upon Maris Otter and a variety of dark roasted malts.  Additionally the grist is composed of almost 10% flaked oats.  I was able to get the  the big beer, tentatively named Devil on my Shoulder (Mr.  Hyde), to ferment down to around 5.5 plato.  The primary cake started to stall at around 8.5 plato so I started some champagne yeast and pitched it at high Krausen.  Within a week it had finished at around 1022 (5.58 plato).  During this finishing it aged on two vanilla beans and about 4oz of Kona coffee.  The final beer weighs in at about 10.5% abv, it is chocolaty and quite rich.  It has a subtle bourbon character with some hints of vanilla.  Surprisingly it is very drinkable given the level of alcohol.  It will be on draft in early march.    I think its going to be quite good.

The Mild (Dr.  Jekyll) finished at 1.28 plato (1.005) which is a bit lower than I would have hoped.  Given how it was brewed I really did not have the control over the mash that I typically would.  I belive that this was probably the cause for the more fermentable wort.  However the taste is much larger that the finishing gravity would precdict.  It is a fine session beer weighing in at 4.3%.

Just a quick note on WLP002, I think I may have found my new favorite house yeast.

If you ever want to turn a beer in less than two weeks, this is your yeast.  I stepped up this yeast one time with a starter, properly aerated with o2, and pitched and it produced a great beer in 4 days.  The beer was as clear as any of my ales ever are and it was very drinkable.   The beer in question finished at 1012 but tasted of something sweeter.  It was not cloying and was quite good.

Even more amazing was the yeast cake.  After I racked off into the kegs what was left behind was, quite literally, a solid 2 inches of yeast.  It was the consistency of play dough.   I was able to pick this up with my fingers and shape it.  And when it poured it all came out at once.

I will be harvesting this yeast and using it again.

Its been a busy brewing start to the new year.  In the first two weeks that opening the new year I have put 35 gallons into the fermenters.  Both brew days were on on the coldest days of this winter thus far.  So cold were the days that we managed to put ice in the sanitizer bucket.

On the first weekend I was joined by the Freedlund men for our annual winter brewing session.  Seriously, the last time this many Freedlund men were together was down in Cell Block C in Joliet.  For this session we put together 10 gallons of the Barham Irish Red and 10 gallons of an American stout that I am calling Pavement.  Both brew sessions came off with little issue outside of coming in a couple degrees low on our mash temps.  Both batches were fermented with Whitelabs Wlp002.  I was quite impressed with this yeast but am going to save that for another post.  Both beers received 60 seconds of oxygen.  They were fermented at 62 slowing ramping to 68 over 3 days.  Both beers fermented to terminal in 4 days time.

The Barham Irish Red Fermented from 1058 -> 1012 this yields 6% abv @ 78% apparent attenuation (ADF).  On Saturday night I kegged this beer (1 week after pitching) and it was very clear.  I force carbonated a liter of it and had my wife try it and she thought it was great.  It has massive mouthfeel and has a nice level of sweetness.  This is a departure for this beer from last year but it is a change that I thought was necessary.  Two months of aging will help crisp this beer up.

The Pavement went from 1068 -> 1018 which yields 6.6 abv and 72% ADF.  I hope to get this beer into the keg this week.  The hydro sample was quite good.  I will report back once I have a chance to really taste this beer.

Both of  these beers were brewed for the Annual Barham St. Patrick’s Day party that we attend.  In addition to these two beers I will be bringing a Dortmunder Export and a Schwartz Beer.

I did a ten gallon split batch of Harry Knuckle Rye IPA.  Half is fermenting on US05 and the other on wyeast bavarian lager yeast at 50 degrees.  I am going to try and have the ale half ready for the holidays.

On Sunday I did a 5 gallon batch of Schwartz beer.  Not sure on the name.  The recipe broke down like this:

Pilsner (2.0 SRM) 60.5%
Munich Malt, Dark (15.5 SRM) 27.9%
Carafa III (525.0 SRM)  7.0%
Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L (60.0 SRM) 4.7%

Magnum [14.10%] (60 min) Hops 24.3 IBU
Spalter [4.10%] (20 min) Hops 3.0 IBU

Mash at 154 for 60 minutes.

Mill the the Carafa seperate from the other grains and do not mash it.  You want to cap the mash with these grains. I added them to the mash before the first vorlouf.

The Schwartz is for the St. Patricks day party.  It should have 2 solid months to lager. It is fermenting in the same water bath as the Harry Knuckle Rye Lager.  I used a 2 liter starter of Bohemian lager yeast.

I came across a great blog today by a Masters Candidate and Professional Brewer from Colorado that focuses strictly on the funk.  He is using his blog to document his research into several different strains of  brettanomyces.  While many of his entries in his blog are quite technical, they are full of interesting information.  What really strikes me about the blog is that while he is doing a lot of lab work there is ongoing practical research going on @ Odells.  I would love the opportunity to sample some of that research.

Went to the Chicago Beer Society’s First Thursday meeting for the last night with Jon. I brought along a growler of my Bourbon Vanilla Porter and a liter of the Swine Flu Dark Mild.

I heard good feedback on both but I would say that the Porter received with great reviews. I must have had 15 people tell me that it was a great beer. Several told me that it was the best beer they had that night, commercial or otherwise. Great feedback. I knew this was a great beer (and have told many people that it probably is the best beer I have brewed) but to hear it from a more independent source really felt good. Ive got a handful of bottles that I pulled off the keg that I plan on entering into a few competitions this February.  Just really not sure what Category to enter it in.  I am leaning towards 12b Robust Porter but am not sure how the vanilla and bourbon would affect the judging.

The Dark mild is a good beer but of a totally different character. I think a couple people were disappointed when it did not exhibit the same strong flavors that the porter did. I think this is akin to saying that the chicken is awful because it tastes nothing like steak. I did have Randy Mosher try the beer and the first thing he asked me was if it was an extract beer. Not exactly off to a rousing start here. He admitted that he was not an expert at the style but from what he knew of it, he thought it was spot on. Another homebrewer thought that perhaps it was too clean. That there were not enough residual sugars remaining and that it was not fruity enough. Perhaps fermenting a touch higher and under pitching will resolve this.

All in all a great evening. It was really great to be able to meet Randy and tell him home much I really enjoyed his book Radical Brewing.  Its not every day that you have the chance to have brewing royalty try one of your beers.

Came across these guys today in a thread about yeast costs over at probrewer.  Their site has a ton of great yeast information including a section on how to troubleshoot your fermentation.
If you have any interest in yeast it is probably worth checking out.