HUGE Baltic Porter & small beer - with Sean Burke

I had been kicking around some "collaboration brewing" ideas with my friend Sean Burke, and we both knew that we didn't want to do something normal. It was our first time brewing together, and we wanted to do something with some gusto. We were both enthused by the idea of a Baltic Porter, and we toyed with the idea of doing some home-smoked malt in it, before ditching that idea because neither of us has a smoker. We finally settled on trying for a huge Baltic Porter and a small beer from the second runnings. We might mess with half the batch by adding oak and/or spirits.

Neither of us knew just quite how huge the Baltic Porter would really be, and we were pretty shocked to see it is one of the highest O.G. beers that either of us have ever brewed, and a lager at that.

The brewday really maxed out my "brewhouse's" capabilities, and because of this we ran into a few classic homebrew-y snags. I found myself apologizing quite a few times for the unforeseen problems, not to mention wishing that we had Sean's march pump on hand for the end of the boil.

For starters, we mashed in a keggle with an EZ-masher, but not only did we slightly scorch the grain bed when trying to raise the temp a bit, but we also knocked loose the EZ-masher screen in the process somehow, and the result was a completely stuck mash. Luckily we had an extra cooler mash-tun on hand, or we would have been totally, completely screwed!

After transfering the entire mash to the cooler, things went pretty smooth until the end of the boil, when we found ourselves losing the siphon, losing flow through the heat exchanger! That was fixable by getting the pot higher and having someone stand up there stirring the kettle to free up any hops from the kettle screen, so it could run freely to the fermenter. This was somewhat exacerbated, I'm sure, by the incredibly viscous 1.117 O.G. wort.

Despite all the setbacks, we had a fun time and didn't get too stressed out about the little snafu's. We also managed to get a pretty decent small beer out of the process which came in at 1.030 O.G. I fermented mine as a "dark mild", pitching the Wyeast West Yorkshire ale yeast. It is already drinking pretty well after only 8 days and comes in at a sessionable 2.5%. It's a decent beer, but it could use some more caramel sweetness, without which it comes off as slightly roasty and harsh. Still, it's hard not to like a sessionable, easy to drink ale that was fast and basically free to make.

Sean pitched his portion with a lager yeast which he plans to use as a giant starter wort for another lager. It will be interesting to try the small beers side by side.

The huge Baltic Porter got a full (5 gallon batch) yeast cake pitch of 3rd generation Bohemian Lager yeast, from the just-transferred rauchbier that is tasting really nice. I did not post that recipe here, so here it is: Jamil's rauchbier from Brewing Classic Styles, brewed with 70% Rauchmalt. That's the recipe. I obviously haven't tried it fully lagered yet, but all I can say is, try brewing it. It's great. We drank a full pint of green lager that had been held aside for a flavor/gravity sample, and it already tasted super fine. 70% is not too much smoke, and seems quite gentle so far.

Our cat "Chk Chk Chk" also hung out for the brewday, but she was pretty lazy. She mostly sat around and whined, occasionally entertaining herself by jumping onto the kegerator, which I try to keep as a sanitary work surface, and leaving muddy paw prints all over it. Damned good-for-nothing cats.

A couple things about the recipe:

1) The pre-boil/post boil gravities on the baltic porter don't work out. So I'm not sure what went wrong there but the O.G. was 1.117. Possible a combination of inaccurate pre-boil reading and post-boil volume measurement?

2) As you will see with the grainbill and hop timings, we weren't really concerned with stylistic accuracy here, just making what sounded great.

Main Mash:

27 lb. Weyermann Pils

10 lb. Briess Munich 10 L

1 lb. C-60

2 lb. C-77

1 lb. C-120

1 lb. pale chocolate

1 lb. chocolate

1 lb. Carafa special II

Mash: 11 gallons at 152ish, for almost 2 hours by the time we actually got it transferred to the cooler.

Sparge: 21 gallons at 170

Continuous fly-sparge, switching over to second kettle once first kettle was full.

Beer 1: Baltic Porter

13.5 gallons pre-boil 1.090 (???Doesn't add up)

Boil 90 min:

25 gr. Magnum pellet 11.5% AA 90 min

44 gr. Warrior pellet 15.8% AA 90 min

yeast nutrient & whirlfloc 10 min

56 gr. Sterling whole 7% AA 0 min

11.5 gallons post-boil

oxygen for 2.5 minutes

pitch full yeast cake of Wyeast 2124 at 54 degrees

1.117 O.G., 68 IBUs

Fermented at 50 for 8 days, then raised to 56 when bubbles slowed down.

1/2/11 Racked to secondary fermenter, tastes very promising but still at 1.050. Looks like the primary yeast shit the bed right at 9% ABV. Looking into pitching more yeast, hoping to get it down to 1.035.

Beer 2: "small beer / dark mild"

10.5 gallons pre-boil at 1.022

Boil 90 min

8 oz. Belgian amber candi sugar rocks 90 min

28 gr. Northern Brewer whole 7.8% 35 min

O.G. 1.030

15 IBU

Fermented my half with Wyeast West Yorkshire at 68-70

F.G. 1.011, ABV 2.5%

What's on tap - Tastings

Again, I am so bad about going back to do tastings of the recipes I've posted here. Sorry. I hope these are worth reading... the beers are tasting good! I pulled some samples yesterday while planning out what's going into kegs next, what's getting funk-dafied, and what's going on fruit. Later in the evening, Clarissa and I went up to the soft opening of Grain & Gristle, a new bar/restaurant in NE Portland that is a collaboration between Alex Ganum, owner of Upright Brewing, and a few other partners. The tap selection was great and the moules et frites was great too. So check it out if you're in Portland. Now for some tastings:

Saison:

Color is like a hazy pilsner, on the light side for a saison, with a thick standing head with good retention. Aroma is very "saison-like" with a good balance of fruity esters, hops, and peppery phenols, and a background grainyness from the pils malt. A little more bubblegum/clove than I usually get when using only Dupont yeast, which I attribute to the secondary addition of the DeRanke yeast. Flavor is complex, starting with a medium-full body impression from high carbonation, some sweetness from the pils malt and esters, and hop flavor that it sort of earthy. It is dry and leaves the palate with a hoppy bite that encourages another drink. Alcohol is moderate but slightly warming with no "hotness". Overall, I think it's actually one of the best saisons I have made. It is not an over the top saison, but very drinkable while still remaining complex.

Rye-Amarillo Pale Ale:

Clear copper in color with a thin, wispy white head. Hoppy, slightly lemon tea-like aroma, some grapefruit, and slight caramel/biscuit flavors from malt. Clean esters and alcohol. Medium-full bodied pale ale flavor with a fairly good balance of malt and hops. Creamy mouthfeel from the rye and fairly high final gravity. Overall, I like this beer and it's very drinkable, but I would like it to be a little drier, and I would like to mix up the hops a little bit more to get a better complexity. Very drinkable, but not astounding.

Flanders Red-Kriek:

Big frothy pink head that dies quickly, on top of a cherry-red ale with a slight haze. Aroma is full of cherries and there is a spicy quality from both the brett and the innate spicyness of sour cherries. The acidity is noticable and very clean, as in lactic acid, not acetic. It does not smell exceedingly sour, but it is noticable. A little caramel malt background, no hops, low alcohol. Flavor is clean and lactic-sour, with a subtle maltiness. Maltiness could be higher to give the cherries and sourness more foundation. Nice carbonation, nice cherry flavor that blends with a touch of burnt sugar. The brett comes through well, as well as a hint of almond flavor from cherry pits. Overall, it's great, one of the best sours I've ever made. It could still use a touch more maltyness and maybe a touch more acidity, but I am very happy with this beer. It's not up there with the best commercial krieks, but it's very good and I'm proud of it. Its clean flavor and modrate sourness almost make it a session beer. I could drink 2 pints of it, whereas I would like it to be a slightly more intense beer that you would want to drink a small glass or two of.

The Yeast Fairy came to Alameda today!

A friend from Wyeast came by Alameda today to drop off a ton of free yeast packets. I picked up one of each of a lot of stuff: Trappist, West Yorkshire, Cali, some other American ale, 2 lagers, steam yeast, and I must be forgetting a few.

Sean Burke and I have a big-ass Baltic Porter brew planned out for next week. I could easily see pulling a second-runnings beer and pitching a yeast pack in that for a fun small beer. Maybe a dark mild with the West Yorkshire? Jamil Zainacheff really likes this strain, so I would like to try it.

Turkey and Beer Hoedown

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends, but when you don't have the money or time to travel back to family, sometimes you just have to have a "Friendsgiving". Clarissa and I spent the day with some good friends, and I will brag a little bit by saying we cooked up a spectacular meal together. Clarissa and I covered the turkey, gravy, and dressing, and our friends helped with side dishes and dessert.

The latest Beeradvocate Magazine had an recipe by Sean Paxton on beer-brined turkey with Moroccan spices. I took this as a jumping-off point for my own cooking, but I left out the Moroccan spices, concentrating on traditional Thanksgiving savory herbs. I also changed out the beer. Instead of throwing down $12 on 3 bottles of Ninkasi Believer Double Red Ale (which I would rather drink than soak a turkey in), I used some good but not exceptional homebrew. I used my Alt, which is less robust than the Ninkasi, so I used a little more of it. What I did use was Paxton's basic brine proportions, which are the most important part.

Here's what I came up with:

3/4 gallon water

1 cup pickling salt (cuz we were out of kosher)

3/4 cup sugar

bay leaves

black pepper corns

1 chopped onion

3 stalks chopped celery

6 smashed garlic cloves

- Simmer all that stuff together for 10 minutes, then cool it to refrigerator temp.

- Add 3/4 gallon beer, in this case Alt.

- Remove the innards from a 17-pound turkey, rinse, and dunk it in the brine, keeping it at fridge temp for 2 full days.

** You could probably scale the brine down and use less, if you soak the turkey in a plastic bag.

- Day of: Remove turkey, drain and pat dry inside and out. Bring to room temp over a couple hours, then roast in a 350 degree oven to 160 degrees internal temp. Roast it on a rack, or some sticks of celery if you don't have one, to keep it off the juices. This took a little under 3 hours.

- Remove from oven, rest under tin foil, while making the dressing and gravy (vague recipe provided below by Clarissa's mom is their family recipe). Carve, dowse in gravy, and eat the moistest, best-seasoned turkey you've ever eaten.

Recipes provided by Ann Hitchon:

Mama Lowe's Cornbread Dressing
1 cup celery
1 cup onion Slighty boiled ( I have also added more than this never less)
2 or 3 eggs
1/2 Turkey drippings (save the other half for gravy)
sage or poultry seasoning
salt and Watkins pepper to taste
milk to moisten
dry bread crumbs (left over bread of almost any kind--toasted)
pan of cornbread
Mix together and place in a greased pan
Bake at 400 till done (golden brown and firm to the touch in the middle)
Mother ALWAYS used a large cast iron skillet, but I have never been that brave.

Giblet Gravy

cook all giblets in enough water to cover DO NOT DRAIN
2 or 3 boiled eggs sliced
thickening/ flour or starch
drippings from turkey
salt and Watkins pepper to taste
milk
Cook the giblets and leave them in the water. When cool enough to touch, slice all giblets and clean all you can off the neck too.
Return them to the water and add sliced eggs
Return to a boil and add drippings and then starch and/or flour

All this together with some from-scratch creamed corn, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beens, and a zucchini dish made for an awesome feast.

As for the turkey, here is my opinion on the brining process: It produced by far, the best turkey I have ever had a part in. It was juicy, perfectly done, and perfectly seasoned. Even the leftovers stayed moist for days. No one was actually able to taste any beer flavors in the turkey. Since I have never done any other brines, I can't say if I think the beer contributed anything that a regular brine wouldn't have, but it was damn good. I guess this is one of my issues with cooking with beer. A lot of times I am skeptical about the actual flavor contribution of the beer. Certainly it can add flavor in certain applications, but would this turkey have been just as good with a regular-old brine?

Well, in any case, it was a great opportunity to pair a food with the beer it was made from, since I also brought a growler of the Alt to drink. However, the best beers to drink with dinner were the saison and the rye-amarillo pale ale I made recently, which reminds me I need to put up some tastings on the blog soon about those beers.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and if you had a chance to cook with beer, or found a great beer and food pairing, please feel free to share in the comments!

E-Z Lambic

I brewed up my first ever batch of lambic yesterday, unless you are one of those people who doesn't consider it a real "Lambeek" unless you do a turbid mash and live in the Sienne valley, in which case I guess I did a pLambic. Close enough for me, all I know is I'm not going to spend my day off from brewing by brewing an even more time-consuming homebrew. I kept this as simple as I could! Not sure what my future plans will be for this beer, other than I want to bottle-condition it straight or blended, but not with fruit, and that I would like to pitch in some commercial dregs later on down the line.

It was a fun brewday, Ryan and a friend came over to check it out and keep me company. We had some great sour ale on tap (the kriek) and also the Rye pale ale, which is a good, very drinkable beer, but it doesn't have the flavor impact I would like (need to add a bunch more hops).

I don't see why it would be necessary to even do a protein rest when brewing a lambic this way. I didn't, because the pilsner malt has plenty of diastatic power to convert the wheat flakes. Any cloudyness or starchyess is going to be taken care of by the bugs in the next year or so.

E-Z Lambic

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 5.8 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.058 F.G. ABV IBU's ???-low.

6.5 lb. Weremann pils

5 lb. flaked wheat

.5 lb. rice hulls

72 gr. homegrown Cascade hops (aged 2 years at room temp in a paper bag) 90 minutes

Mash: 4 gallons + 3 gr. CaCl + 1 gr. Gypsum

158 for 1 hour, fell to 154

Sparge 5.25 gallons, same water additions as mash

83% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes

chill to 60, aerate by shaking and pitch:

1 pack Wyeast Lambic blend

1 pack Scottish ale yeast

(Thanks Owen who works for Wyeast for the yeast packs! Both these packs were 3 months old by the time I pitched them which is why I used a clean ale yeast too.)

Primary ferment at 68ish

12/14/10 Racked to secondary (corny keg). 1.019. Already developing some sourness and wonderful funk/barnyard/goat sweat character.

See? E-Z brewday. Just what you want for a beer where all the important stuff happens during the year-plus fermentation.

Any suggestions from lambic brewers for commercial dregs to throw in? My obvious choices would be Drie Fonteinen & Cantillon. Others?

Lager season opens! Golden Dortmunder-ish lager

What would these guys drink? Probably not what I just brewed yesterday. It is probably too "heavy", and you might not be able to read a newspaper through it. Never the less, lager season is officially open at Chez Wonton and I felt a hunting image would do it the most justice.

Fredo! Wait, I mean, Stan, you are so melancholy and tragic, I want to dedicate a beer to you. Here it goes: A maltier than usual Dortmunder-ish beer, or whatever. A style free lager that is golden and bready, but balanced with a bitter bite. Let's forget style for a minute, brew a beer, and see how it comes out.

Check it out. I made an insulating jacket for my stainless mash tun, so I can keep it warm outside without constantly reheating it. Maybe a little overkill, but I set it on a heating blanket after I mashed in and it only lost 1-2 degrees over 60 minutes. I'll take that. This is made out of 3 layers of Reflectix and heat resistant tape, and yes, it was more labor than I thought it would be, but it's done! And seemingly working very well.

I wanted to get the Ayinger lager strain for this one (Whitelabs WLP830), but it would have taken 3 weeks just to get through the homebrew store. (Ayinger Oktoberfest-Marzen is probably in my top 10 favorite beers. I just can't get over that soft, bready and wonderful melanoidin character.) I didn't want to wait, so I went with the Wyeast 2124 Bohemian lager strain. I used the same yeast last year and had some sulfur or DMS issues in the first 2 beers. This yeast seems to kick off a butt-load of sulfur, so I will be monitoring that more closely and making sure it has plenty of time to off-gas and ferment out before capping it. I am also chilling the beers more rapidly to prevent DMS formation after the boil

Here's the recipe. Water is adjusted to emphasize the malts, hopefully giving it a softer overall profile. The bittering hops were 2008 Magnum, which were sealed in mylar. I adjusted the AA% down from 13.6% to 11.5% for age, but in reality this beer might taste like more IBU's than the recipe calculates. I'm still not sure if it is ever really necessary to adjust AA% down for time, if the hops are treated right.

Cazale Lager - Brewed 11/3/10

Recipe is for 6.9 gallons pre-boil, 5.3 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.052 F.G. 1.013 ABV 5.2% IBU's 28

All malt is from Weyermann:

4.5 lb. Pils

4 lb. Munich

1 lb. Carahell

10 gr. Magnum pellets (2008, adjusted down to 11.5%) 65 min

28 gr. Sterling whole 7.9% 15 min

Mash: 4 gallons + 3 gr. CaCl + 1 gr. Gypsum

151 for 60 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons + 3 gr. CaCl + 1 gr. Gypsum

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.040 = 77% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes

Wyeast nutrient & Whirlfloc at 15 min

Chill to 59 through heat exchanger

oxygen 90 seconds

Pitch 3 liter stirplate starter of Wyeast 2124 (decanted)

chilled to 50 over 12 hours

Ferment at 50 for primary

Seemed to be nearly done after only 7 days!

11/10/10 Moved inside for a D-rest at ambient temp.

11/15/10 Racked to secondary to collect yeast. VERY bready! A good deal of yeast in suspension adds to the breadyness. Some sulfur and acetaldehyde still there. Maybe a week more before I keg and crash it.

12/14/10 Racked to keg. Tastes pretty good so far. Clean lager.

Soon up, a really smokey Rauchbier al la Schlenkerla

Tasting objectively: Harder than it might seem at times

Wow, I had a bit of a humbling, but very interesting experience today that I want to share. I was out in the garage, brewing my first lager of the season. I pulled a couple of tasters of some beers I have on tap: The Rye-Amarillo pale ale, and the Wontonamo Bay IPA. I was planning on doing a tasting of the IPA for the blog, which in a way this will be.

There has been a flavor to the IPA that a couple of my beer geek friends have noticed, but no one put their finger on until now, including me. It is an annoying flavor, and it's probably the reason I haven't posted a taste evaluation of it yet. I don't really like it, to be quite honest.

So this flavor was there, that my 2 beer geek friends and myself have been picking up, was being described by all of us as an overly sweet or caramelly. Even though the beer was heavily hopped, low on the crystal malt, and well attenuated to 1.012. So where was that sweet flavor coming from? I was chalking it up as an unknown, possibly a combination slight alcohol sweetness (it was fairly high in alcohol, at 7.3%), and possibly some esters (I had let the temp rise towards the end to about 72).

It took me trying it next to another hoppy beer to figure it out, and then it hit me over the head like an oversized wooden mallet. Diacetyl! Big time. Why did I not pick this out before? I know what diacetyl tastes like (artificial butter, basically), but I was not picking it out in my own beer. I have been able to pick it out in other commercial IPA's, so why not mine? Possibly, at least a little bit, because it was being overpowered to a degree by the heavy dose of hops. Possibly because I was dealing with a new hop (Citra), and I thought it might be coming from there. But more likely, most importantly, was that I have never really had a problem with diacetyl. I consider myself a pretty skilled brewer, so it never really crossed my mind! Cali ale yeast is usually a clean, hardy yeast that is not known for diacetyl production. It's not something I have had a problem with in the past. Yet, there it was, clear as day once I finally recognized it. Doubtless someone else could have picked out the problem on the first sip, which is what brings me to the important point: Sometimes the brewer is just too close to the beer to realize what is wrong with it.

It's a tough lesson. No brewer is ever good enough not to, sometimes, make a rookie mistake. I think the problem with my beer was just not pitching quite enough yeast (only a 1 quart stirplate starter) for the high gravity/ alcohol level, and not letting it finish out a little longer, which probably would have cleaned it up eventually. Also, the alcohol is just a bit too noticable, which again points to not pitching enough yeast.

I have always tried to give my beers an honest and clear evaluation. If anything, I think I err on the side of being too critical. In this case, I guess I just had my blinders on. It's something to try to look out for in the future, and I think it leads to the conclusion that now matter how good of a brewer you think you are, honest and critical outside opinion is of the utmost importance. I tend to be a little tough on other brewer's beers too, even though it is always in an effort to be helpful. For instance, when tasting any of my my friends' homebrews, I try to always be encouraging and focus on the positive, but also try to give a straightforward critique of what I am tasting. If I didn't do that, I think it would be a disservice to them as a brewer.

If I could try to evaluate the flavor of this IPA otherwise, I would say the hop flavor/aroma would be magnificent if not muddled up by a bunch of fake butter. I would have brewed it to a lower O.G., but I'm not sure that I would change anything else. Maybe this recipe deserves another shot with thsoe 2 easy fixes.