PCTBB Recipes & "Round Table" Tasting

A few months ago my buddy Angelo, a local beer writer and founder of Brewpublic, asked me to be an contributor for the website. I think it will be a cool opportunity to add a homebrew-y perspective to an already great craft beer publication. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to write about, but I'll just write when I get an inspired idea. I don't really want to do the "Brewery X releases yadda-yadda limited release" thing, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's being done plenty well by plenty of beer writers already.

For my first piece I invited some local homebrewers to my place to do a "round table peer review" of our Portland Cheers to Belgian Beers homebrew entries. It was a lot of fun for everyone involved, and you can read the full article here, including a tasting of the 2 recipes below.

Here are the 2 recipes I submitted to the PCTBB competition. Neither of them placed, but they scored well and I am happy with how they both came out. I'm not sure how many Belgian Specialty ales were entered exactly, but it was probably around 20.

The first beer, which I entered as a "Dry hopped Belgian Bitter", was inspired by De Ranke XX Bitter, but it tastes more like a super hop-fruity saison, a lot of tangerine and citrus going on with some bitterness and also some residual sweetness.

Brewed on 3/5/2010

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 5.7 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.067 F.G. 1.010 IBU's 63 ABV 7.5%

6.5 lb. Great Western Superior pilsner malt

5 lb. Belgian pale malt

.25 lb. aromatic malt

11 gr. Nelson Sauvin (2008) pellets 11% AA 60 min

28 gr. American Perle pellets 7.5% AA 20 min

28 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% AA 10 min

28 gr. Czech Saaz pellets 3.1% AA 0 min

21 gr. Hallertau pellets 3.1% 0 min

14 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 0 min

42 gr. Sterling pellets dry hopped cold for 12 days

Mash: 4 gallons + 4 gr. gypsum + 1 gr. calcium chloride

150 for 1 hour

Sparge with 5 gallons

Collect 7 gallons at 1.054 = 84% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, with additions of whirlfloc and wyeast nutrient at 15 minutes

Oxygen for 75 seconds

Pitch Wyeast 3724 Farmhouse Ale Yeast at 66 degrees

Raise to 80 degrees over 10 days, then finish ferment at 75

Racked to secondary after 13 days to harvest yeast for the second batch.

Racked to keg on 4/10/10 and force carbonate, also dry hop in keg.

The second brew I did was a "Cascadian Dark Saison", which is basically very similar to the "fresh-hopped black saison" I did last October. Of course I used the Farmhouse yeast strain to make it eligible for the competition, as well as lowering the amount of base grain to get the alcohol down a bit. I used all dried hops this time, concentrating on American varieties that I thought would compliment a saison yeast but also be very up-front in the aroma.

Brewed on 3/18/10

Recipe is for 7.1 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post boil, all grain

O.G. 1.063 F.G. 1.008 IBU's 55 ABV 7.25%

6.5 lb. Great western Superior Pilsner malt

2.5 lb. Weyermann Pilsner malt

1.5 lb. Munich malt

.75 lb. caramunich 60L

.5 lb. Carafa Special III 600 L

28 gr. Magnum whole 12% AA 60 min

28 gr. Amarillo whole 8.6% AA 15 min

28 gr. Crystal pellets 3.2% AA 15 min

28 gr. Amarillo whole 8.6% AA 0 min

28 gr. Crystal pellets 3.2% AA 0 min

Mash: 4 gallons H20 + 5 gr. chalk, 3 gr. gypsum, 1 gr. calcium chloride, 2 gr. baking soda

148 for 60 min, then raise to 160 over 8 minutes, rest 15 minutes.

Sparge with 5 gallons, collect 7.1 gallons at 1.053 = 86% efficiency.

Boil 90 minutes with whirlfloc and Wyeast nutrient at 15 minutes

Oxygen for 75 seconds

Pitch 1/2 cup thick yeast slurry of Wyeast 3724 from the first recipe.

Warmed to 74 over 3 days and left it there for 7 days.

Finished out at 80 and racked to keg on 4/14/10, force carbonated.

Just for fun here are some photos from the PCTBB event hosted at Hopworks. It was a really fun day! I got drunk. Lots of great beers to taste and a few bad ones.

Brewing for PCTBB

9 full carboys! And only one open keg. Time to do some drinking! (And bottling.)

• Starting at the left: PCTBB beer #2, Baltic Porter
• 2 cornies: Flanders Red (brewed in Brooklyn), Berlinner Weisse
• Back row: Flanders Red, Berlinner Weisse, Flanders Pale
• Middle row: Deliverance Kentucky Sour x2, Brett strong saison
• Front: PCTBB beer #1

I just finished brewing my second beer for the homebrew side of the Portland Cheers to Belgian Beers festival / competition. This is one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen for a beer event, and one that could only happen in a brewtopia like Portland, Oregon. I will be entering at least 2 beers, and I want to keep the recipes secret until after the competition because I know of at least one local beer judge that reads this blog. Since they will be entered in the Belgian specialty beer category, I will have to specify the "style" of beer I am brewing, and I want to make sure my beers are judged without a clue of who brewed them. I'll post those 2 recipes after the competition on May 1st, along with a tasting.

My friend Forrest was in town this week, and he helped me brew a 10 gallon batch of the Deliverance Kentucky Sour, which I will post soon, along with catching up on some tastings of recent beers. I also need to try my saison Dupont "Clone" against the real thing, and let me tell you, although I'm wild about the bottle conditioned version, it's very different from Dupont.

Work is going well, I've helped out at probably 8 different breweries bottling beer with Green Bottling recently. Things are going slow but steady on opening for Breakside. We just took a look at the brewery space yesterday. The floors still need to be sealed and we need to build a temperature control room for the 60 gallon plastic conicals, since they are not jacketed. I'm going to try to find fittings for them this week so we can attach a blow off and CO2 line, drill a hole to fit a racking arm, and construct a dump valve for the bottom. We are probably going to put the stand on casters so the conicals can be moved in and out of the cool room, taken out to room temperature for the last few days of fermentation, and then crashed in the walk-in. I'll try to post some pics of the Breakside setup as soon as I get my girlfriend's camera battery fixed and the place gets a little better set up.

EDIT: If you are brewing for PCTBB I'd love to hear what you are brewing or your experience with the yeast in the comments.