Out Of Key Brewing

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%.