Out Of Key Brewing

Not going to spend too much time talking about this but its worth a mention if only for the absurdity of it all.

A 110 proof beer, the world’s strongest, was launched Thursday by a British firm
selling the tipple for $762 a bottle.

The blond Belgian ale, named The End of  History, is an astonishing 55 percent
alcohol by volume (ABV) and is  presented in a case made from stuffed animals,
including stoats and  squirrels.

Made by BrewDog, based in Scotland, the beer  is infused with fresh juniper
berries and nettles from the Scottish  Highlands and was developed using an
extreme freezing technique.

Thats got to hurt

So lets see.

55% Alcohol – Check

$765 Dollars a bottle – Check

Packaged in dead road kill – Check

Ok fellas our work is done here.

No review is forthcoming.

Since my original post on brewing a watermelon wheat, I have brewed the recipe several more times.  What I have found is that the most important aspect of having solid watermelon flavor is the use of the proper watermelon.  It is my opinion that you should avoid at all costs, seedless watermelons.  They are attractive from a mess point of view due to their lack of seeds however they just do not have same level of residual sweetness  / flavor when they ferment out.

This is what I am talking about

You should be looking for large oblong ripe watermelons.   Think old school watermelons, not these new fangled seedless varieties.  Trust me on this, they will make the best beer.

at the twisted spoke and all I got was this lousy picture of Greg Koch and I

Recently I had the chance to fulfill one of the items on my brewing bucket list(L), filling a 55 gallon bourbon barrel with beer.  After the November First Thursday meeting Doug(L) were riding the train home and discussing things that we would be able to do if we were members of a homebrewing club.  One of the things that was at the top of the list was how awesome it would be to fill a barrel with beer for aging.  However we both had  a lot to drink and agreed that finding enough brewers to fill 55 gallons would be difficult.

For the time being I set those thoughts aside.

In early January when the barleywine we brewed at a local brewery (note to self I need to write that up) was released to the public, I had the chance to talk to the brewer about what he did with the barrels he used.  He told me that he put them out back.  He thought he may be turn them into planters…….

Game On.

He was absolutely open to giving us a once used barrel for aging a beer in.  He agreed to keep it wet for us until we could pick it up.  He said he would have a barrel available for us in late February.

I started the next day assembling a team of brewers I trusted to get a recipe together and get the batches brewed.

In total we had six total brewers.  Five of them brewed 10+ gallons and remaining did 8.   The recipe we settled on was an imperial porter which shook out like this:

Anticipated OG:          1.080    Plato:             19.43
Anticipated SRM:          33.9
Anticipated IBU:          67.9
Wort Boil Time:             90    Minutes
Yeast:  CalAle
Mash:  Single Infusion 154

Malt
%     Name
————————————————-
8.8     Flaked Barley
55.9  TF Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
14.7  Munich Malt
8.8     TF Brown Malt
5.9     Crystal 120L
2.9     Crystal 40L
2.9     Chocolate Malt

Name                           IBU  Boil Time
———————————————————–
Magnum                         61.8  60 min.
Goldings – E.K.                6.1   10 min.

The hops served as nothing more than a guideline.  We all agreed to go with very clean bitterness and and English style hop for finishing.  We really we just trying to avoid anything that was going to drive it too citrusy.

We had a chance to sample the beer on fill day and all the batches were quite similar.  The beer really turned out as a big smooth porter.

There is certainly a hint of alcohol as most of the beers finished at around 1020 resulting in a pre-barrel abv around 8%.  Our volumes were right on and we ended up with around 3 gallons left over.  Jon (the barrel host) is using that for topping off due to evaporation and wood absorption.

The current plan is to let the beer age six months and then start sampling.  Once feel we have picked up enough bourbon / oak character we will keg and bottle the beer.

I will report back in September.

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.