Saison #1 2008

BAHIA DRAKE, OSA PENINSULA, COSTA RICA

Well I was out of town for a while. Clarissa and I went to Costa Rica for 9 days and it was awesome. We had a lot of nature time, saw some great wildlife (all kinds of monkeys, scarlett macaws, poison dart frogs, crabs, coatis, to name a few).

From a craft beer lover's perspective it was a bit of a blackout...Imperial is like Central American PBR. I don't even have any pictures of me drinking it! But I did...drink it. Very cold if possible.

I was jonesing for a good brew session and finally got it this weekend, with the first saison of the season. And we got to work on Clarissa's new bike, which is an 80's Vitus aluminum French road frame. We already repainted it and spent a little time putting the headset, cranks, forks and handlebars back on. And we bought all the parts we need to complete it.

Saison Dupont is still probably my all-time favorite beer, if I was pressed to name one. And my beer is meant to lean heavily on that framework: all-malt, bone dry, a firm bitter flavor and earthyness from the Goldings hops. Of course I couldn't make a clone though! I threw in the spelt because I was out of wheat, but I wanted something to kick in some head retention. I went for a super-long, low step mash and a 90 minute boil to decrease DMS.

I decided to name this one after one of the species of wildlife we saw, the green and black poison dart frog. Hopefully this beer

will be nowhere as dangerous as that little animal.

POISON DART FROG

Rana Verde Saison

6 gallons recipe, all grain. O.G. 1.055 IBU's 30

9.5 lb. Weyerrman Bohemian Pilsner malt.5 lb. raw spelt
.25 lb Belgian Aromatic malt.

7 gr. German Magnum pellets 14.9% AA 60 min
14 gr. East Kent Goldings pellets 5.5% AA 60 min
14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% AA 15 min
16 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% AA 0 min
18 gr. East Kent Goldings pellets 5.5% AA o min

Whirlfoc at 15 min
1/2 tsp Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.

.5 gallon starter of Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison yeast, activator pack. (decanted 1 qt. and pitched 1 qt. slurry)

Mash: 3.5 gallons H2O + 1 tsp. gypsum to 138.
Mashed in to 132. Added .5 ml lactic acid. held for 15 minutes, temp dropped to 130.
Heated to 146 over 10 min. Held 90 minutes, temp fell to 142.
Heated over 14 minutes to 160. Held 10 minutes and started the sparge.

Sparge: 4.9 gallons of water + .25 ml lactic acid.
180 degrees ( I let the temp fall to 170 and held it there)

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.047. Efficiency = 84%

Boiled 90 minutes, additions as noted. Boiled down to about 6 gallons.
Chilled to 68 degrees and whirlpooled. Collected 5+ gallons. Aerated with aquarium pump and stone for 30 min.

Using a strategically placed heating pad on the side of the carboy, I took the primary fermentation through the following ramp:

Start temp: 68 degrees. Fermentation within 10 hours.

Day 1: Started at 70 degrees, applied heat that evening.

Day 2: 82 degrees.

Day 3: 82 degrees. Applied more heat to raise temp to 86 degrees.

Day 4: 86. degrees.

Day 5: let fall back to 82

Day 6: 82

Day 7: turned off heat and letting fall back to room temp ferment, about 76 degrees.

6/4/08 Racked to secondary. Tastes very promising. Very estery, more so than Dupont I'd say. Still at 1.020 but there is still a slow fermentation going on. It's tempting to try to warm up the carboy, or pitch more yeast to dry it up more quickly, but I want to see where this one goes on it's own, and only repitch if necessary. It's supposed to get up to 90 degrees this weekend, so I don't think I'll need to worry about heating it up.

Deliverance Kentucky Sour

I like to brew to style. It's a wonderful way to hone your skills as a brewer and exercise your creativity within the style. But, every once in a while, I just get this really inspired idea. I might get a little seed of an idea, and by the time I've fleshed it out it's like I can almost taste and see the beer in the glass. (This time it was a Belgian tulip glass.)

So I while I think it's great to brew to style, if I didn't at least make an attempt to brew these inspired ideas, I would really be doing myself a disservice. This doesn't mean that I will actually come up with a product that is a great as the beer I have in my mind. It might suck, but but if you are comfortable enough with your recipe formulation skills, and with a little bit of luck, you should be able to get pretty close.

This beer started with a name: Deliverance. I just thought it was a pretty bad-ass name for a beer. Evocative of certain imagery, if you know what I mean . You can almost hear the dueling banjos playing down the holler. So my next question was, what kind of beer would this be? And the answer to me was obvious: A Kentucky common, also sometimes referred to as a Kentucky sour. This is a beer style that was brewed in the old days in Kentucky, as a table beer, and it had some interesting traits, being brewed in a region that also produced a lot of bourbon. Bourbon is distilled from a sour mash, and sometimes these beers had lactic sour note. My beer is not really trying to be a historical Kentucky common, so much as to riff off the idea.

So what I came up with is a dark beer, the color of a brown ale, with a portion of rye malt, which could easily have been used in a region where bourbon is made. I definitely wanted it to be sour, both from lactic fermentation and brett character, which would have been present if this beer was aged in wood. I wanted it to be a real sour/wild ale, not just a low gravity common ale that was not brewed cleanly. This is not a bourbon barrel beer, but I am going to use some oak. Hopefully it will be a uniquely American sour ale, with a malty background and a nice funky/sour complexity.

To get the lactic sourness and brett character, I decided to try the Wyeast Berliner Weisse strain here again. However, so far I am very underwhelmed with the sour character from the Berliner Weisse. I've heard people say that it does get more sour over time though. If this beer doesn't sour up properly on its own, I'll probably move it to Ray's basement for the summer to keep cool and start dumping the dregs of some commercial sour ales in. That might be fun too...

Anyway, here is the recipe.
Deliverance Kentucky Sour
5.9 gallons all-grain
O.G. 1.059 IBU's 16

8.25 lb. Golden Promise malt
2 lb. Rye malt
1 lb. Munich malt
1 lb. Crystal 80
.5 lb. chocolate rye malt.

Note: I recommend grinding your grains by hand and listening to the "Shady Grove" album by Dave Grismond and Jerry Garcia to get that old-timey, country feeling.

35 grams crystal pellets 3.3% AA 60 min
whirlfoc at 15 min
1/2 tsp. Wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Mash: 4 gallons H20, mash in to 149 for 75 min
Heat to 170 over 25 in
Total mash time 100 min
Sparge 4.8 gallons at 170
Collect 6.75 gallons at 1.053 = 77% efficiency.
Boil for 60 minutes, additions as noted

Chill to 68, whirlpool, and collect 5+ gallons
Aerate for 30 minutes with air pump and stone
pitch 1.5 cup medium thickness slurry of Wyeast 3191

Ferment at 68.

Racked to secondary on 5/19/08: The aroma was very malty and only slightly hinted at any wildness. The flavor was not so good...very metallic. It sort of tasted like sucking on pennies. I can't make any pre-judgements yet, best to just let it sit with the funky white film on top for a while and see how it progresses. If it doesn't turn out well, though, I think the answer is to go to another bug blend next time, like Roselaire, or a lambic blend.

Around mid-October, 2008, I added a tube of Al B's custom bug blend, which he sent to a lot of the people on the Babblebelt forum. This was packaged in a White Labs style tube, which contained a mix of different Bretts, and some Pedio and Lacto that he had isolated from a bunch of funky commercial beers. It also had oak cubes and chips, so these were innoclated with the bugs also. It smelled awesome, mainly of oak. I just pitched the whole thing right in to this beer.

Sometime in early January I added 1 ounce of medium toast oak cubes, sanitized in a little boiled water, and pitched the water and the cubes.

IPA #1 2008

I was going to brew an IPA today, and after a nice Sunday brunch, walked into the house and cranked up the stove. The water was already in the mash tun and ready to go. The second thing I did was check out the Wyeast 1056 starter I made on Thursday. It was sitting on top of the fridge in a 1 gallon Carlo Rossi jug. Luckily, I noticed the unhealthy looking slimy film on top of the wort. (This was the same jug I made the starter for the Berlinner Weisse in so even though I thought I had cleaned and sanitized it really well, I guess I wasn't quite thorough enough.)

"Shit," I thought, "no brewing for me today."

But then I called in a favor. Ray had a mason jar of Cali yeast in his fridge from the last IPA he brewed. He was spending the afternoon in his backyard doing his first full-wort boil on his new propane stove.

I mashed in, stuck my brewpot in my pre-warmed oven to keep it warm, and hopped on my bike to buzz on down to Ray's. He hooked me up with the yeast, which was sanitary and fresh, but had a ton of hop junk in it. Ray is still brewing partial mash , so he just dumps everything into the primary including the hops. So when it came time to pitch the yeast for this batch, it was really just guesswork as to how much I pitched. I ended up going with a 1 1/2 cup slurry, hops and all. This seems to have been the right amount, as there was an occasional bubble four hours after pitching, and it was chugging along well by 7:00 a.m. on Monday.

This recipe uses Golden Promise malt, because that's what I got from the Sixpoint brewery last time I was down there, but I suspect any British pale malt would do just fine. I also got about 6 ounces of Centennial, my favorite American hop. Before anyone cries bloody murder for me not supporting my local NYC homebrew store, THERE ISN'T ONE! The bittering hop, Millenium, is a high-alpha American bittering hop which I won a bunch of at a homebrew comp. It's pretty decent for delivering a ton of AAU's if that's what you are looking for.

Here we go:

American IPA: 6 gallons post boil, all grain.

O.G. 1.062 F.G. 1.016 IBU's 68

11.5 lb. Golden Promise malt

1 lb. crystal 35

.5 lb. DME (to make up for my low efficiency)

19 gr. Millenium pellets 16.3% AA 60 min

28 gr. Centennial pellets, 9.5% AA at 15, 10, 5 and 0 minutes (4 ounces total)

Mash in 3.75 gallons to 151 (a little high, so I added some ice cubes to take it down to 149.)

Rest 60 minutes at 149, then add bottom to reach 170 over 15 minutes.

Sparge: 4.8 gallons at 170

Collect 6.5 gallons at 1.053 = 75% efficiency (This is really low for me. It may be something to do with the Golden Promise, as the only other batch I did with it was also 75%)

Added .5 lb. DME and 1 qt. water to reach my target pre-boil numbers

Boil 60 minutes, hop additions as noted

1 Whirlfloc tab at 15 min

1/2 tsp. Wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled to 62, whirlpooled, and collected 5+ gallons at 1.062

Aerated for 30 minutes with my normal setup: aquarium pump and diffusion stone

Pitched 1 1/2 cups of hoppy slurry when the beer was at 66.

I fermented this beer in the mid-low sixties for 8 days. I didn't have a fermometer on the carboy so I had to guess, a bit. I tried to err on the low side of the optimal fermentation temp, as it's better to ferment a few degrees too cool than a few degrees too hot. It must have been low because it still had a rich thick krausen after 7 days. I removed it from the water bath to warm up to room temp, and the krausen fell within a day or 2.

One problem I notice with this beer is that after fermentation it really is still very murky looking in the fermentor. I noticed this on the last IPA I brewed, and I've never noticed this until I switched from Marris Otter to Golden Promise. When I think of this in relation to the much lower yield I got from this grain, I think it may not have been fully converted in the mash. Last time though, I just kegged the IPA and it came out very clear after a few weeks of conditioning. I may need to extend the mash time to alleviate this. The other thing that makes me think that it is a conversion problem is that I used Golden Promise as the base for the Kentucky sour too,which was mashed for 15 minutes longer than this beer, and had a slightly better efficiency, even though I used rye.

5/13/08 I kegged this beer about 3 weeks ago, and it's pretty good, but the residual sweetness detracts from the hop flavor and aroma. I need to dry this out more. Reduce crystal by half and possibly a slightly longer mash time.

The Current State of Things

This photo shows the Berliner Weisse in the left two carboys, then the apricotty Belgian in front, and the regular Belgian in back. The canning jar is a starter of brett brux that is taking it's sweet-ass time to ferment.

Last night I got together with 3 of my homebrewer friends to sample some commercial beers: Worth mentioning were Deschutes "Abyss" imperial stout, bourbon barrel aged of course. Also 2 De Struise beers: I didn't know too much about these guys until I listened to last week's Sunday show on thebrewingnetwork.com, which featured the De Struise brewers. It's a great podcast; I'd highly recommend listening to it.

According to Beer Advocate users, De Struise Pannepot is the best beer in the world. Although I certainly don't believe in the concept of a single "best beer", it certainly says a lot that these guys bumped out Westvleteren 12, which is nearly impossible to get your hands on outside of the monastery itself. Pannepot was a delicious beer, and so was their Witte: extremely attenuated, delicately fruity, and slightly sour. (4/2/08 Edit: that was according to the show, but I looked on BA and Westy 12 is still at #1. Pannepot is #25.)

Right now here's what's going down:

Kegerator:

• IPA
  
• Dortmunder that's just now starting to taste really good (currently serving as a hair of the dog while I write this)
  
• JZ's Munich Dunkel Lagering in keg
  
• Also: Doppebock at room temp, hopefully attenuating a bit more as it is a bit too sweet...
  

Fermenting:

• 2 carboys of Belgian Beer, waiting for some brett to go in this week
  
• 2 carboys of Berliner Weisse, 6 days old. Fermented at 68, now I'm letting it raise to room temp to speed the souring/aging process a bit.
  

Today I ground the grains for another American IPA I will brew tomorrow, using almost exclusively Centennial hops, and a lot of them. Then next week I'm planning on the "Deliverance Kentucky Common", a sour American pseudo-historical beer, but really just my own invention. Then hopefully a porter on the same yeast as the IPA.

Clarissa and I will then be in Costa Rica for a week, so if I can get all that done in the next few weekends, I'll be pretty happy.

Berliner Weisse: 10 gallon recipe

(Somebody needs to tell the Nazis to stop inbreeding for a while.)

It's a nice spring day here in NY and the birds are chirping. Pretty soon it will be hot out: Time to start thinking about summer beers! With the new Wyeast Berliner weisse seasonal strain out, this brew was a no-brainer.

The recipe is largely based off Jamil's Berliner weisse recipe. But at 1.032 OG, it is possible to brew 10 gallons all-grain on a 6 gallon system. So that's what I did. The only snafu was as usual, I didn't check my grain supply thoroughly enough beforehand, and didn't have quite enough wheat. So this recipe is about 30% wheat.

Recipe is for 10 gallons in the fermentor, all grain, with a 6.75 gallon boil, diluted after cooling

OG 1.032 F.G. 1.005 IBU's 4.5

8.75 Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner malt

4.25 lb. wheat malt

.5 lb. rice hulls

50 gr. Hallertauer pellets, 4.6%AA at 15 minutes

Mash: 4 gallons of water + .5 ml lactic acid to 161

Mash in to 149, hold for 75 minutes.

Add heat and mash out to 168 over 15 minutes.

Total mash time 90 minutes.

Sparge with 5.75 gallons + .25 ml lactic acid at 172

Collect 6.75 gallons at 1.055 = 75% efficiency

Boil time = 15 minutes

Hops and 1 whirlfoc tab at 15

3/4 tsp wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled to 68, whirlpooled, and collected 6 gallons (3 per carboy) at 1.057

Diluted to 1.032 with 2 gallons of water per carboy.

Aerated and pitched yeast at 66 degrees

Will ferment at 68 degrees.

Pitched a 2 qt. starter of Wyeast 3191, made 2 days beforehand and shaken periodically.

Fermented at 68 degrees for 6 days, then I let it warm to room temp (72).

I kegged 1 batch after about 2 weeks in the primary. I secondaried the other batch with the intention of bottling it.

5/8/08 The keg and the batch in secondary are both hanging out at room temp, which is about 77 degrees right now. Sampled a taste from the secondary. Quite nice but still lacking in lactic sourness. I hop it gets more sour or I'm gonna be pissed at Wyeast!

5/26/08 Bottled the other 5 gallons with 6.5 oz of priming sugar. It is starting to taste nice, and actually fairly bretty.

American Porter with 100% homegrown hops

This beer was originally brewed on 12/1/07. It took 1st place in porters at Homebrew Alley 2.

The basic idea was to brew a nice, drinkable porter with a bigger than average American hop profile. I used some homegrown Chinook hops for bittering, which were generously sent to me by my friend "Chillindamos", a homebrewer from California. The finishing hops were Cascade and Kent Goldings, which I planted when I lived in Ohio. My mom continues to tend them for me, dry them in a food dehydrator, and send them to me every autumn (Thanks mom!).

The beers I turned to for inspiration while formulating the recipe were Captain Lawrence Smoked Porter, Avery New World Porter, and Jamil's robust porter.

Damn, I wish so much that I had a bottle of this to drink right now to make notes as to the flavor. I just sent the last 2 off to the AHA club-only competition for porters. But that left me high and dry. I am going to brew this again with smaller flavor and aroma hop additions.

Recipe is for 5.7 gallons,post boil, all grain.

O.G 1.064 F.G. 1.019 IBU's about 50+ ABV 5.9%

9.5 lb. Glenn Eagle Marris Otter malt

.5 lb. Chocolate malt

.5 lb. Munich malt

.5 lb. Breiss special roast malt

.5 lb. Crystal 40

.5 lb. black patent malt

.25 lb. Special B malt

Hops:

34 gr. Chinook, homegrown, guestimated at 10% AA, 60 min

28 gr. Cascade/Kent Goldings mix (75/25%) guestimated at 5% AA, 15 min

28 gr. Cascade/Kent Goldings mix " ", 0 min

Mash in 3.75 gallons water to 151, hold for 1 hour

Raise heat to 170 over 20 min

Sparge w/ 4.8 gallons at 170

Collect 6.5+ gallons at 1.056 = 81% efficiency

Boil 60 min, hop additions as noted.

Irish moss at 15 min

1/2 tsp. Wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled to 68 and strained

Aerated for 30 min. with air pump and stone

Pitched a 1 qt. starter made from an activator pack of Wyeast 1056

Fermented at 68 for 1 week, secondary for 3 weeks.

Racked to keg and bottled from keg.

4/11/08: I got my scoresheets back today from the perfect porter competition. The scores were good, averaging 38.3 I got good feedback but not much critique. One judge said it needed some more malty complexity, while another judge said it needed better head.

Bretty goodness

Ray and I just finished brewing a partial-mash Belgian style ale that we are going to spike with brettanomyces bruxenellis later. Since we have 10 gallons we are going to play a bit. One carboy will probably get some oak and the other might get some fruit or dry hops. After tasting Captain Lawrence's Cuvee du Castleton, and Ommegang's Saison Gewurtz, I wanted to do grapes. But it was not grape season; I ended up using a can of Oregon Apricot puree for convenience.

Recipe is for 11.75 gallons (11 gallons in the fermentors)

O.G. 1.059 F.G. 1.004 IBU's 30

12 lb. Durst Pilsner Malt

2 lb. wheat malt

1.5 lb. crystal 30

6 oz. sauer malt

3 lb. Munton's light DME

2.5 lb. corn sugar

48 gr. New Zealand Hallertauer, whole, 8.6% AA, at 60 min

28 gr. N.Z. Hallertauer at 15 min

40 gr. N.Z. Hallertauer at 0 min

1 gallon starter of Wyeast 1388 belgian strong ale yeast, in a starter made from 2 qts. of munich dunkel wort and 2 qts. water (1.030,will add some color and munich malt flavor)

Mash: 4 gallons

150 for 55 min (added.5 ml lactic acid to give the brett something to eat later)

Topped up with 1 gallon boiling water, which raised it to 157. Heated to 170 over 20 min.

Sparge: 5 gallons at 170

Collect 7 gallons at 1.065: 77% mash efficiency

Boil: 90 min

Added the DME and corn sugar at 20 minutes left

whirlfloc at 15 min

wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled, aerated, and diluted to 1.060. Pitched starter when wort was at 65 degrees.
Primary fermentation ramped naturally to 76 degrees.

Racked to secondary on 3/20/08. Gravity= 1.008.
I racked half of the beer on to a can of Oregon Apricot Puree (3.1 lb.)
The Apricot puree tasted wonderful, and when I tried the fermented wort it already tasted surprisingly apricotty on it's own!

3/27/08 I made a small 1 qt. starter with 1 packet of Wyeast Brettanomyces Bruxenellis. The reason I made a starter was to grow the brett a bit before splitting it into the 2 carboys. I Let the starter ferment at 72 degrees, rousing/shaking it frequently for 6 days. Then I crashed out the yeast in the fridge for 2 days, because the carboys are too full to fit the whole starter.

4/3/08 I poured off most of the starter wort, leaving 2 1/2 cups of wort and yeast. Pitched this between the 2 carboys at 72 degrees. I'm really excited and giddy! I'm typing one-handed now (no, not that) because I'm tasting a sample of the starter wort that I poured off into a wine glass. It is surprisingly acidic, with a definite brett aroma, a touch of plasticy phenols, and a mellow, biscuity background.

4/11/08: The brett really started refermenting this beer almost immediately. I've been watching a small rise of bubbles coming up the neck of each carboy for a week now. I tasted asmall sample today, because I noticed the temperature of the carboy was up to 76. It's higher than I would like it, but there's not much I can do about it. I think I'm going to relax and it will be alright. The sample tasted good and not too bretty or fruity.

After drawing a sample, I simmered up 3/4 oz. of medium toast french oak chips in about 2 oz. of water for a few minutes, and added it all to the carboy without fruit. I want to err on the subtle side with the oak, as oak can be extremely pervasive, and this beer will be very dry.

5/8/08: Both carboys are still showing signs of slow brett fermentation. Small bubbles are constantly coming up the sides. I took a taste of each today. The apricot one tastes like apricots and has a nice acidity to lift the flavors. The oaked one has a definite French oak aroma and flavor - glad I didn't use more! I also added 10 grams of Hallertauer pellets and 18 grams of EKG pellets to the oaked carboy, loose. I'm hoping to bottle both of these within a week to 10 days.

5/26/08 Bottled both batches today. I bottled 6 galllons of the apricot batch with 6.5 oz. priming sugar. I really like the way it is tasting. Bottled the 5 gallons of oaked beer with 6 oz. of sugar. The oak is really pervasive and out of place, in my opinion. I'd rather just leave it out entirely next time.