Darkish American Lager No. 1

I hadn't brewed in a month, mostly due to a crazy work schedule, and it was time to get this show back on the road.

The recipe-

Fermentables-
Pilsner- 4 pounds
Vienna Malt- 4 pounds
CaraVienna- 4 ounces
CaraPils- 4 ounces
Crystal Malt 60L- 4 ounces
Black Patent Malt- 1 ounce

Hops-
Nugget (11)- .75 ounces- 60 minutes
Vanguard (4.6)- .875 ounces- 10 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 2007 Pilsner- 1400 ml starter

Mash-
149/167- hot water infusions- missed this by 1 degree

Gravity Target/Actual-
1.045/1.044

My initial idea with this beer was to make an orange one. It struck me that orange as a taste is probably not all that hot in beer form (truth be told, "orange drink" was horrendous out of those leaky McDonalds cups when we were kids). I wanted some depth of flavor, but I didn't want grain soup, so while there are a few different character grains in it, they are low in weight (the Patent Malt was just there to darken it a little. And it does not take much. I think it was something like 2 tablespoons worth to get the color I wanted). The Nugget hops will give it an assertive forward bitterness, but the late Vanguard addition should make smooth too. Balance. I would have called it Balance Beer, but that sounds like maybe a manufacturer of energy bars for ladies have gone into the beer business. You know, like, it's beer, but it helps fight Osteoperosis. Maybe you could have a bunch of women sitting in those inexplicable Viagra commercial bathtubs in the middle of some far off field drinking them and laughing together. Or maybe a bunch of women in one bathtub. At least it would be a fun commercial anyway.

Super close on my temps, super close on my gravity, blah blah blah. It was nice to brew again. I'm glad my technique is consistent. My beers this year are going to be so much better. I can't wait to crack the first one of these open sometime late in March.

Holy crap

The news: I have not brewed yet this calendar year.
More news: I will brew a lager this weekend.

I have just finished up an epic month long work related project. I am ready to brew again. I had planned on doing a one gallon batch to get the yeast cake for a big lager, but I'm going to scratch that. I've probably got another month and a half at best for doing lagers, and I'm going to try to squeeze three brew days out of that.

TBC

Lager season commences

I've gone on a few times about how I'm pretty much bound by the weather around here as to what I brew. With temps dropping down for the winter, it was time to brew a lager.

My dogs are friends with a number of dogs in our hood. One of them happens to belong to the head brewer for a pretty well known local brewery. I won't say who the brewery is, but you can probably guess it if your favorite movie is The Three Amigos, and your favorite band is Pink Floyd (Syd Barret version, of course). To make a long story short, he got a packet of hops a little while back that he couldn't really use. It was a little under three ounces of pellet hops. He gave them to me, with the stipulation that I'd give him a few to see what these hops were like. So, I give you: Three Dogs Lager:

Three Dogs Lager:

Fermentables-
Pale Six Row- 7 lbs
Flaked Maize- 2 lbs
Cara Pils- 8 oz

Hops-
Mt Hood- 1.5 oz- 60 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 2 oz- 15 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 1.875 oz- 5 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 2007- Pilsner- 1000 ml starter straight off the stir plate.

Mash-
149 infusion

Gravity target/actual-
1.051/1.046

I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with this. Chris' brewery is known for some pretty hoppy beers (their mild would probably be called a IPA at some places), so I wanted to be sure that I brewed this in a way that would showcase the hops in a flavor/aroma sort of way. There aren't many commercial examples of the classic American Pilsner, so I wasn't too hemmed in by any classic guidelines. This is a style that German brewers started doing when they came to America, and as such they used the ingredients that they had on hand. They found lots of corn here, hence the flaked maize. Six row malt to help covert the corn. Cara pils to add some body and foam.

The brewing went pretty good. I missed my numbers for the first time in a while, but I am chalking that up to the maize. I hadn't used it much before, and never used six row, so I'm not too worried about it. It'll still have a decent amount of punch. The hops are all German in origin. The Mt Hood is a Hallertauer offshoot, and the GR Select is a low alpha acid Tettnanger hybrid. I threw everything I had in on the two final additions, so the hoppiness should jump out of this beer, because the grain is not malty at all.

I have to give an honorable mention to Kerry on this beer with her timely Christmas presents. Santa..er..Kerry gave me a really nice digital thermometer, and a refractometer. Really good equipment, easy to calibrate. It definitely made things easier today.

Not so nice was my discovery yesterday that my Altbier had an infection. Every bottle had a nice layer of scum forming on the top. This was a big bummer, as I had some high hopes for that recipe. Needless to say, it was a big time cleaning day today. Pretty much every brewing implement I own got a long soak in some hot PBW, with a long soak in sanitizer after. I tossed my old hoses, so I'm hoping this is a one time thing.

Biere de la Voie

I think that most people get the idea that the French are mostly effeminate snooty wine drinkers. I'm sure that unless you're a big beer fiend/brewer, most Americans are completely unaware that the French really have a beer style all their own. I confirmed this the other day at work, when I quizzed six dudes about French beer (one of whom used to bar tend).

Biere de Garde is a style that is a close cousin to the Belgian farmhouse Ales. In theory it's the beer of the miners, farmers and drunken cycling fans lining the cobblestone sections of the Paris-Roubaix. In brewing practice terms, it's an ale that is fermented at low ale temps, and then lagered (garde being the French counterpart for the German word lager) for a period of time. It's got a malty backbone that would be similar to some Belgian beers, or even the German Altbier, and the hoppiness should tend to be a bit more spicy as opposed to fruity. Like some French brewer found some two year old hops in his hayloft, and decided, what the hell, I'll use them anyway. So then:

Biere de la Voie-

Fermentables-
Belgian Two Row Pale- 7 lbs
Vienna- 2 lbs
Munich Light- 1 lb
Crystal 40L- 3.5 oz- I had actually planned on 8 ounces, but this is what I had in stock. It was more of a coloring addition than for flavor, so no big deal.
Table sugar- 8 oz

Hops-
Fuggle- 1.25 oz- 60 minutes
Mount Hood- 1 oz- 10 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 1007 German Ale- 1000 ml starter. This was what Wyeast recommends for Biere De Garde, and I happened to have it to hand, so it worked out nicely.

Mash-
149/168- hot water infusion

Gravity target/actual-
1.058/1.058

Another ho hum brewday. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy myself. Just that nothing went wrong. I nailed all my temps. I nailed my target gravity. I guess I'm going to have to start writing a little more about why I'm choosing what I am for ingredients, or else I'll have nothing to write about.

As far as the ingredients go, I pretty much went with a standard Biere De Garde grain bill list. Table sugar to dry it out a little. The yeast is not typically a high attenuator, but the low mash temp, along with the sugar should get me to 80%. I'm going to start doing a force fermentation from now on to figure out what my actual terminal gravity will be, but I didn't have the extra yeast to do so this time.

Speaking of the yeast. If you ever decide to use Wyeast 1007, use a blow off tube. I do not have one at the moment, and it went absolutely crazy with this beer, blowing the carboy cap off twice. I suppose I could have tried to harvest the yeast off my pantry floor, but it's probably not the most...ahem...sanitary place to get your brewing yeast. A true top fermenting yeast. On the bright side, our furnace died sometime Saturday night, and the yeast kept working even though the temps strayed down into lager territory. I haven't tasted a beer that I've made with this yet, but I like how it works in a technical sense.

Hohenoelsner Alt

It's a weird time of year for me as a beer brewer. I don't have the space/money/equipment to do very much as far as controlling fermentation temperature is concerned. Yeast, like probably all other biological life forms, have an optimum working temperature, and that differs from strain to strain. It's early November though, and while it's definitely colder now than a month ago, it's not quite cold enough for me to start doing lagers.

I started reading through yeast strain guides (I know. I'm strange. I suspect few people on CTA buses are reading the Wyeast catalog), and discovered that there are some German strains that are particularly well suited to cold ale temps, but don't quit working if it actually drops into lager temp territory. These beers (Koelsch, and Alt) are malt driven German barley ales. They have one hop addition at the beginning of the boil, which is particularly nice given how expensive hops are right now. So the first I'm doing is an Altbier.

Hohenoelsner Alt-

Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner- 5 lbs- the LHBS didn't have the full 7 pounds of German malt, so I had to substitute some.
German Pilsner- 2 lbs
Dark Munich- 1 lb
Black Patent- 4 ounces- this addition is mainly for coloring

Hops-
Mt Hood- 2 ounces- 60 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast 1007- German Ale- 1200 ml starter

Mash-
128/149/170- infusions with a traditional decoction mash out

The grain bill itself is a standard looking recipe for a Duesseldorf style Altbier. The hops are decended from the German Hallertauer hop strain, so with that and the German yeast, this isn't too different than what you see in a Rheinland brewery that was brewing an Alt. It should make for a nice malty red colored ale.

Brewing was smooth, as it always is nowadays. I missed my gravity by .002, which I don't feel too bad about. My equipment isn't calibrated down to the quart, so it's hard to get an exact reading as to volumes in the brew kettle.

The yeast was quick to take off, and since I was using a five gallon carboy as a primary, I had to put in a blow off tube, as the starter went bucky. I've never seen so many gigantic chunks of yeast swirling around. The temperature outside dropped at just the right time, so the yeast were held perfectly at 63 degrees.

The name of the beer is named for the tiny village in Germany where I lived for a year back in 1993. It was so small that the cows would walk down the main drag when they moved from the summer pastures to the winter ones.

St Phillipe Dubbel, Part two

I was given a copy of The Brewmaster's Table recently. It's got some beautiful photography in it, but that had been about as far as I'd gotten until a week ago. We're having Thanksgiving at our house this year, and it occured to me that it would be the perfect time to start delving into food/beer pairings. And luckily for me, turkey goes best with the types of beer I've been working on brewing the most: Belgians.

My St. Phillipe Dubbel that I did a while back turned out pretty good, but needed some tinkering. I had previously said that I like the Wyeast Abbey Ale II yeast, but having brewed a few beers with it, I kind of revised my opinion. It comes from a Trappist brewery, so it's obvious that you can make good beer with it, but it seemed to bring certain flavors to the fore that I wanted in the background, and vice versa. I had said that my first Saison tasted somehow kind of thin, and I had chalked this up to the large amount of Acidulated Malt that I used, but when I did the Wedding Saison, it had that same sort of alcoholicky banana flavor right up front. They were decent, very drinkable beers, but I wanted something different.

St Phillipe, Part 2-

Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner Malt- 8 pounds
Vienna Malt- 1 pound
Belgian Aromatic- 8 ounces
Carapils- 8 ounces
Special B- 5 ounces
Dark Candy Sugar- 1 pound

Hops-
Mt Hood- 1 ounce- 60 minutes
Crystal- 1 ounce- 15 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast Trappist High Gravity- pitched right from the smack pack

Mash-
128/150/167- Hot water infusions with a decoction mash out

So, the recipe itself saw some adjustments from the first St. Phillipe. The main reason was that I was able to actually procure some of the dark candy sugar as opposed to clear, so I substituted the Dark Munich malt with Vienna. The rest of the grains were pretty close, with an extra ounce of Special B. The hops were the same type, but I added an extra quarter ounce of Mt Hood at the 60 minute mark. The yeast is new, and for the first time, I didn't use any sort of starter. Mainly because I completely forgot to. I had read that some Belgian brewers underpitch on purpose, as it gives them some esters that they wouldn't get with the proper amount, so I will have to see how that goes. Again, this beer was done for Thanksgiving, so it'll be two weeks in the primary, two in the secondary, and three in the bottle to condition. It's not as long as I'd like to have it in the bottle before initial consumption, but time was short. I can't wait to see how this one ages, and be able to do a side by side tasting with the first version.

Brewing for me now is basically at the point where I don't need to spend too much time on the technical aspects of the brew day, which is nice. This one went so smoothly that I was able to paint our picnic table while I was brewing. And I still nailed my starting gravity exactly.

Bugs in the brewhouse

That's right. I've got bugs in my brewhouse. No, this isn't a sort of Monday Night Brewery standard operating procedure type infection. I brewed me up a wild beer.

My lovely wife is, both fortunately and unfortunately, not a fan of beer. She is, however, a big fan of Framboise, specifically of the Lindemann's variety. Given that my beer brewing addiction has essentially consumed my waking thoughts for over a year now, I decided to brew something that she might like as well.

The deeper I delve into Belgian brewing, the more smitten I become. I just finished reading Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow, and it was another eye opener. As he says in the book, this sort of brewing isn't a product of a throw it in a fermenter under unsanitary conditions and let it ferment sort of idea. It's artistic, calculated, and harrowing all at the same time. Especially when you consider that it's going to be at least a year before what you brew is drinkable, and even then, you may need to blend it with a beer you are going to brew a year from now before you get a product that is good if not great. So here it is, my attempt at a Flanders Red:

Fermentables-
Vienna Malt- 5 pounds
Flaked Maize- 2 pounds
Belgian Aromatic Malt- 8 ounces
Carahell Malt- 8 ounces
Caravienne Malt- 8 ounces
Special B- 4 ounces

Hops-
Crystal- 1.25 ounces- 60 minutes

Yeast-
Wyeast Lambic Blend- This was a smack pack, and I pitched straight from the pack. Sparrow recommends not making a starter with yeast/Brett blends, as sometimes the quicker growing beer yeast will overwhelm the bacterias before they have a chance to get a foothold.

Mash-
122/148/162/170- all hot water infusions

The grain bill was almost straight out of Wild Brews. I haven't experimented or consumed enough of this style of beer to really know my way around what to include. If anything, this will give me a good base to work off of a year from now. Doing a two hour boil should give it the classic red color. It also gave me a long time to prepare my carboy, and clean up most of the brewing equipment before I was ready to chill it.

The lag time on it was over 24 hours, which is weird if you pitch big happy starters like I usually do. I was actually starting to get little nervous when I hadn't seen any activity a full day after I brewed. The next morning though, there was a nice familiar fluff of krauesen on top. Phew!

This batch is going to get split into two when I rack to the secondary. As I stated at the beginning here, the idea was to brew something Kerry would like as well, so half of this is going to get a 2 pound charge of raspberries. The other half will get a chance to age on it's own. I'll probably bottle some of that straight up, some will be blended with other Flanders beers, and some with other sorts of beers suitable for blending.

Thanks to Ted for the inspiration to do a wild beer. I had a bottle of his Ancient Ale, and it was easily one of my favorite beers I've ever had. Also big BIG thanks to Mike for coming over to help brew. I seriously could not have managed to brew without him. Hopefully I will have a pump soon, and once my new brew setup is built, all we'll have to do is fill it full of grain and water, then sit back and watch.

As far as recent other brews go: Black Dog Stout is great. Brown Ale not so much. Seriously though, I may play with the stout a little bit, but it's delicious as is. Fresher yeast maybe. But the bitterness is just right, and the roastiness and mouthfeel are spot on. The Brown Ale needs to go back to the drawing board. Maybe a better name would improve it a bit. Age may as well. Fingers crossed.