Hood River Hops Fest, and a very un-hoppy Belgian Dark Strong

Above: new 70 quart mash tun with a Celebrator goat that Jamil gave me at NHC.

I've been trying to brew as much as possible for competition, and Roots is collaborating with the Oregon Brew Crew on a competition for an upcoming pinot noir/bourbon barrel aged brew. Only 2 categories are open for this competition: Baltic Porter and Belgian Dark Strong. My personal feeling is that a Baltic Porter might be a better beer to age in these barrels. But with limited time and a healthy yeast cake of trappist ale yeast, I went with the Belgian Dark Strong. There's really no way that this beer will have matured properly in only 21 days, which is the entry deadline. But, since I can just bottle up a few bottles with the Beergun, it's no big deal. I'll just keep rest of the beer in a keg until it's time to bottle the rest.

Below, you can see the detail on the new mash tun. I actually turn the pipes upside down when brewing so the slits are facing downward. Cutting and fitting all the pipes, and then using a hacksaw to cut the slits in the copper pipe was extremely time & labor intensive process! So my advice to anyone is to go with the stainless mesh tube in the bottom of the mash tun if you're doing a conversion like this.

So, I brewed the Belgian Dark Strong on Friday, and then on Saturday we took a trip to Hood River Oregon for the annual Fresh Hop Fest. The weather was supposed to be great, but unfortunately it was pretty rainy. This didn't seem to phase the Oregon beer revelers though!

There were tons of great beers there. As a brewer, I felt that it should have been better marked as to which beers were 100% fresh hop beers, and which used a mix of wet & dried hops. My favorite fresh hop beer, which not only used an excellent hop variety, but also displayed it perfectly by holding back on the crystal malts, was Widmer's Hopturnal Emission. It was brewed with fresh Summit hops, and the aroma was so inviting! The flavor was intense and hoppy.

I also really enjoyed: New Old Lompoc's Harvestman Red, which was brewed with fresh Crystal hops, had a juicy malt backbone and subtle hopping. It was an excellent session red ale. Rock Bottom's Octoberfist (yes, I spelled that right) was an excellent malty lager, with a touch of extra hop character from the fresh Hallertauer hops. Maybe the reason that some of my favorite beers were on the malty side is that after a whole day of drinking hoppy ales, my pallete was craving a change. There were many other great fresh hopped IPA's from other breweries, the full list of which can be found on the Hood River Hops Fest website.

Back to the brew: This is Jamil's Belgian Dark Strong recipe brewed pretty much straight up out of Brewing Classic Styles. The differences are:

• Recipe calls for WLP530 Abbey yeast. I used a blend of Wyeast 1214 and WLP 530.
• Recipe uses Hallertauer hops as a 60 minutes addition. I used Perle and Magnum.
• I had a little issue with not getting as good efficiency as I hoped for. I was at 66% instead of 70%. What I should have done is add a half pound of DME to make up for it, but instead my cheap ass spent an extra 40 minutes collecting the last runnings in another pot, boiling this on the stove at the same time as the regular boil, and then adding the runnings to the main pot once they could fit. While this was a big time-suck, I did hit all my numbers dead-on, and I don't think I picked up much extra caramelization.

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil, all grain + sugar

O.G. 1.103 F.G. 1.023 ABV 10.7% IBU's 30

15 lb. Pilsner malt

3 lb. Munich malt

1 lb. caramunich 60

1 lb. aromatic malt

1 lb. special B

8 oz. Melanoidin malt

8 oz. Wheat malt

1 lb. corn sugar

15 gr. Magnum pellets 13.6%AA 60 min

6 gr. Perle pellets 7.1%AA 60 min

Mash: 6 gallons + 1 tsp gypsum, mash in a little low to 149

at 10 minutes into the mash, added about 1 gallon boiling water to bring up to 153

Total mash time 65 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons at 170 degrees

Collect 8 gallons at 1.071 = 70% efficiency

Boil: about 2 hours, started in 2 pots. See above notes.

Sugar at beginning of boil.

Once boil volume was down to 7 gallons, started the timer at 90 minutes

Hops as noted, Whirlfloc and Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chilled to 68, whirlpooled, and collected 5.25 gallons

Oxygen for 2 minutes

Pitched 2 cups (half a yeast cake from the blond) of Wyeast 1214 & WLP 530

Ferment at 68 degrees for first 48 hours, then let slowly come up to 72 degrees over 1 week.

Took a gravity reading at 10 days, 1.023. Target was 1.024. Pretty good! tastes/smells pretty solventy, I guess that's to be expected at this age.

P.S. I just lined up a one day a week internship with Upright Brewery. Very exciting! Even if I'm not getting paid yet, it will be great to be brewing and learning.

Cheers & Brew Strong.

Sean / Chupa / Senior Wonton

New Kegerator, The search for a brewing job goes on, and a new beer is born.

Today I took a taste of the 2 wild ales I brought all the way across the country in cornelius kegs. Above, on the left is the all B. Bruxellensis session ale. I'm letting the sample de-gas to take the F.G., but it's very dry! The flavor is not incredibly brett-like or horsey, but it does taste like a good session beer. I'll do a full tasting later once it's fully carbonated.

On the right is me & Ray's Flanders Red, which is tasting good, and is has developed a moderate level of sourness, while retaining some sweetness and caramel flavors. I might take this keg back out and let it sour up for another 6 months.

In the middle is a mix of the 2 that came out of the beer line on my new kegerator. It tasted really good! Maybe better than either of the 2 beers separately.

Speaking of new kegerator:

I just finished up installing the gas and liquid lines on this baby yesterday. I went a little over budget on it, but thanks to a generous friend who shall remain nameless, I got a great deal on the faucets and all the liquid & gas hookups. So I went for a 3rd tap, couldn't help myself!

So I can now fit 8 kegs in at once, or 4 kegs and some fermenting lagers, plus some additional space for competition beers. Cool!

I also racked my first Portland (saison) brew to a keg, which is kind of perfumey, incredibly dry (1.004), and hoppy. I'm not sure what I think of it yet, but I am drinking it uncarbonated & at room temp. I think it leaves a somewhat cardboardy finish, which is not from oxidation, but maybe the extreme dryness is making the hops seem harsh? There is also the issue of Portland water, which contains some chloromines, and I haven't found time to by a water filter yet. It would be a nice thing to rule out, more than anything.

This week also marks 1 month that I have been in Portland. Although I haven't written anything on this blog about my job search out here, I am looking for brewing work, and believe me, it's not as easy as it might seem. So far my efforts have included going door to door to breweries and brewpubs to introduce myself, ask about work and give them a resume and a few homebrews, which I brought out specifically for that purpose. So far, only one or two breweries of maybe 12 has said that they were even hiring, and my main hope ended up hiring someone who has about 14 years experience as a brewer.

Instead of getting bummed, I have tried to keep my focus positive, and just do my best to truly immerse myself in the brewing scene here. That includes the work I have done making connections at breweries, as well as homebrewing a lot to give out more samples, and joining both the Oregon Brew Crew and the PDX brewers clubs. I'm also planning on entering as many local homebrew competitions as I can, and start stocking up beers to enter in the National Homebrew Competition.

This week I helped 2 breweries with their bottling days. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. Upright Brewery initially really impressed me with "Flora Rustica", a saison brewed with some kind of flowers (it was an awesome saison, but I'm not sure what type of flowers were used or what they were supposed to smell like). They also have many other beers using Wyeast 3711 as a primary fermenter, and if you haven't tried them out, you should, because many of these beers are outstanding. I was particularly impressed with the "4", a session saison, and "Reggae Junky Gruit" which is spiced with lemongrass, szechuan peppers, and uses no hops at all. Yes, the name is a Ween reference. Upright uses a custom built bottling line for bottle conditioning 750 ml bottles. It is completely hand operated, and fills 6 bottles at a time. It's not an extremely fast setup, but with 4 people, we were able to prep, bottle 6 barrels of beer, and clean up in about 6 hours. Not bad!

New Old Lompoc 5th Quadrant brewpub produces a number of tasty beer styles, and has a fairly extensive barrel collection going on right now. They use a roving bottle filling business called Green Bottling. It's basically 2 guys running a labelling machine and a filling machine, which are unloaded from a truck into the brewery. I helped clean and pack the bottles into cases, and we got through 24 barrels of beer in about 4 hours! There were a lot of cool folks to get to know, and they sent me away with a backpack full of bombers.

So, the search for brewing work goes on. I'm just trying to stay positive, work hard, and brew strong! In the mean time, here's a beer I brewed up for the upcoming AHA club-only competition for Belgian Strong Ales. I brewed it up to be a Belgian Blond ale, but we'll see how it tastes once it's bottled and decide which category to enter it in. It bares a striking resemblance to Mr. T's 30 Pound Necklace, which did well as a tripel. I will probably not have time to bottle condition this one though. I'm planning on using the Beergun.

I used 2 different yeasts on this beer, because I had a starter of Wyeast 1214 (Chimay) yeast going, but I didn't see any activity in the starter after 8 hours! Wassup, Wyeast? I bought an additional tube of Whitelabs 530 (Westmalle) and pitched that in as insurance. It took awhile, but 24 hours later is was going strong. I think it will be just fine.

Blackeyed Blonde

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil volume.

O.G. 1.068 F.G. 1.011 ABV 7.7% IBU's 27

9.5 lb. Pils malt

1 lb. wheat malt

4 oz. aromatic malt

2 oz. melanoidin malt

1 lb. corn sugar

8 oz. unrefined cane sugar

24 gr. Perle pellets 7.1%AA 60 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 30 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 0 min

3.5 gallons mash water +1 tsp gypsum + 1 tsp Bruton salts

Mash in to 151, keep between 149-151 for 60 min

pH was 4.9 on the ColorpHast strips, 5.2 on the cheap strips.

After 60 minutes, raised to mash out 170 degrees

Sparge: 5 gallons at 165-170

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.049 = 82% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, sugar at start of boil

Hop additions as noted, Wyeast nutrient whirlfloc at 10 min

Chilled to 70, whirlpooled, and racked to carboy.

Oxygen for 70 seconds.

Pitched 1 qt. starter of Wyeast 1214

Also pitched 1 tube WLP 530

Fermentation did not take off for almost 24 hours, but then it was vigorous.

Ferment at 68 for 3 days, then let rise to 70 degrees.

Racked to keg on 10/2/09, I thought I picked up a bit of residual sulphur at this point.

I left the keg out for a few days, occasionally venting the headspace to let any sulphur out, and refilling it with CO2.

Clarissa's "Sweet Meat" Saison

Clarissa and I picked up this beautiful Sweet Meat squash at our first Portland farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. As soon as I saw it I knew it was destined to go in her birthday beer. I've done a couple of saisons with squash in the past years, but not since I have been a more skillful brewer. The last ones had way too much spicing added, to the point where it was like, "Oh, nice ginger beer!" (Also pictured: our strawberry freezer jam, which is awesome and incredibly easy to make.)

I've played with different spicing, but the previous versions never relied on the classic pumpkin pie spice mix. For this one I was just looking for low levels of complimentary spice that would let the saison yeast take the main stage, and hopefully the squash will make a subtle appearance in the flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel of the final beer.

First I cut it in half with my big chinese clever. It only gets used for big ridiculous tasks like this.

I cored out the seeds, then I roasted it for about 90 minutes at 400 degrees, until the meat was soft. I added about an eighth of an inch of water to each pan to help it steam. After I took it out of the oven it collapsed a bit.

The skin was pretty thin on this squash, so I got a pretty good yield. A 9.5 pound squash yielded 6+ pounds of roasted meat. I kept the squash in the refrigerator overnight until the brewday.

I added the squash, mashed up fairly well, to the mash water before I added the grains. I did this so I could calculate it in with my water volume and hit my mash temp correctly. Even though I used a half pound of rice hulls, I still got a SERIOUSLY STUCK MASH! It took another half pound of rice hulls, adding more water, and repeatedly re-stirring and recirculating wort to eventually get the sparge going properly.

During the mash, I also went down to the local hardware store to pick up the fittings for a kettle diverter tube, which I have been lacking until now. Below is a pic of the diverter tube, which I use when no whole hops are being used, and the bazooka filter, which I use when brewing with whole hops (or a mix of pellets and whole).

This beer only received one hop addition at 60 minutes. I used some 2007 East Kent Goldings, which were still sealed in a nitrogen barrier bag. They still smelled awesome, actually, but I calculated the Alpha Acids down for age (4% to 3%).

At the last 2 minutes of the boil, I used a mix of chamomile, coriander, and ginger for what I hope will be a subtle spicing effect.

Clarissa's Sweet Meat Saison

All Grain, recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post boil volume.

O.G. 1.061 F.G. 1.004 ABV 7.5% IBU's 24

10 lb. Weyermann Pilsner Malt

6 lb. roasted winter squash

1 lb. Munich malt

5 oz. Victory malt

8 oz. rice hulls (more added when mash got stuck)

56 gr. East Kent Goldings Pellets 3% AA 60 min

7 gr. dried chamomile 2 min

1/2 tsp (less than 1 gr.) dried ginger 2 min

3 gr. coriander, cracked 2 min

Mash: 3.75 gallons water + 2 tsp Burton salts

Heat with squash, Mash in to 148

Hold at 145-148 for 90 minutes

pH was 5.4 on the cheap strips, 5.0 on the colorpHast strips.

Raised to 170 over ten minutes.

Sparge with 5 gallons water at 165

Collect 7 gallons at 1.052

Boil 90 minutes, additions as noted

Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes, no whirlfloc

Chill to 72, Whirlpool, and collect 5.25 gallons

Oxygen for 60 seconds

Pitch half the yeast cake of Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast form previous saison.

Fermenting at 76 currently, topped out at 78

Racked to keg on 10/1/09. F.G. 1.004

Hop Madness! 2009

This is my first attempt at a "Vlog". I had never actually opened iMovie on my Mac, but I had to rotate some video that I took this weekend at Hop Madness. Then I just started piecing this together and did the voiceover today.

Here's the recipe for the black "saison" I did. I write saison in quotation marks because I am not expecting a very dry beer. This was supposed to be around 1.065 O.G. including a 1 pound sugar addition. Due to collecting more wort in the boil kettle, I got a huge 89% efficiency. So this beer clocked in at 1.069 O.G even when I left the sugar out, and even though it was mashed low, I figure it will probably end up around 1.013 - 1.015 F.G. The residual body might be nice, since this also has healthy dose of IBU's. I think it should be around 60 IBU's, but it's impossible to calculate with unknown moisture content and alpha acids of the fresh hops.

Recipe is for 8.5 gallons pre boil, all grain. Boiled down to 7 gallons, collected 6 in the fermenter.

O.G. 1.069 F.G. 1.006 ABV 8.1% IBU's 60?

11.5 lb. Weyermann pilsner malt

2 lb. Munich malt

.75 lb. Caramunich 60

.5 lb. Carafa special III (600L)

All hops are fresh! and whole of course

6 oz. Nugget 60 min

6 oz. Willamette 30 min

6 oz. Willamette 20 min

6 oz. Willamette 10 min

4 oz. Willamette 0 min (was supposed to be 6 but I ran out.)

Mash: 4.5 gallons + 1 tsp gypsum

Mash in to 149, keep between 145-149 for 60 min.

pH was about 5.3-5.4 at room temp

Raise to 154 for 15 minutes

No mash-out due to time restrictions

Sparge with 5 gallons of 180 degree water

Collect 8.5 gallons at 1.058 = 89% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, with whirfloc & yeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chill to 76 (would have liked to get lower, but hell, it's a saison!)

60 seconds pure oxygen

Pitched half of the yeast cake of Wyeast 3711 from the last batch of saison

Fermenting at 78 degrees.

Racked to keg straight from primary on 10/1/09 F.G. 1.007. Damn, this yeast is unstoppable!

First Brew in Portland, Oregon

I kicked off our first week in Portland with an inaugural saison brew. It was a good brew day, but it's hard to get used to brewing in a new environment! Everything was out of place and I was running around a bit looking for equipment that I had packed away for the move. I brewed on our new back porch, which is very large indeed! Quite a change from my indoor New York setup (well, pretty much everything out here is very different from New York).

What can I say about Portland to do it justice? If you are a fan of craft beer, enjoy nature, riding your bike, and going to farmer's markets, you should definitely visit at the very least. And as an added bonus, I hear that there are some excellent establishments that combine American cuisine, craft beer, and exotic dancers into an irresistible menage a trois. Not that I know firsthand (yet).

This saison recipe is pretty straight-forward, and I'm planning on using it to get a feel for the flavor characteristics of the Wyeast 3711 French saison yeast. Then I'm off to more experimental ground with the same yeast. Next week Clarissa and I will be attending Hop Madness in Salem Oregon, which is a homebrew celebration of fresh hop brewing. I figured while most people are brewing fresh hop pale ales and IPA's, I might as well brew a black, fresh hopped saison. I mean, how much can I expect to control the temperature while we are camping anyway? The third beer will be a birthday beer for Clarissa, and I'm planning on going back to an old beer idea which is a lightly spiced saison brewed up to 7-8% ABV and using orange winter squash in the mash.

Here's the recipe for the current saison, which is kind of a cross between me and Ray's "session saison" using 3711 and the "petit saison" I brewed up about 5 months ago. The water out here tastes excellent, and it appears to be low in calcium like NYC water, so I added a little gypsum. I toasted the new brew with the last saison I brewed with Ray, which I think is good, but extremely dry, which makes the high bitterness too much to blend in with the other components of the beer.

Portland Inaugural Saison

6 gallons all grain, post boil volume

O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.004 ABV 6.7% IBU's 28

8 lb. Pilsner malt

1 lb. flaked triticale (I don't know what the hell it is either! Look it up in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing)

1 lb. wheat malt

4 oz. aromatic malt

2 oz. melanoidin malt

1 oz. carafa special II

29 gr. Sterling pellets 5.9% 60 min

28 gr. U.S. Goldings pellets 4.2% 10 min

27 gr. Sterlling pellets 5.9% 0 min

Step Mash: 90 minutes total

3.75 gallons + 1 tsp gypsum to 148, kept between 145-149 for 60 min.

Raised to 154, rest 15 min

Raised to mash out, 170 degrees

Sparge: 5 gallons at 168

Collect 7 gallons at 1.048 = 86% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, whirlfloc and wyeast nutrient at 10 min

Chilled to 74 (best I could reasonably get), racked and collected 5+ gallons

Oxygen for 1 minute

Pitched a 1 qt. starter from a stirplate of Wyeast 3711

Fermenting at 76

Racked to secondary in order to harvest yeast after 1 week

Racked to keg on 9/29/09

Lastly (I'd better add this in before I forget), We had some fantastic organic beers and pizza at Hopworks Urban Brewery last Saturday I was especially fond of this beer. I stopped in to Hopworks yesterday to introduce myself and see if they might need some brewery help. I met the owner/brewmaster, Christian, and 3 of his brewers. They were all great and generous guys, and while they don't need any brewers right now, I was glad to get to know them. I shared a couple of homebrews with them, and they seemed so be well received. So that only leaves 29 or so other breweries within city limits that I need to drop a resume off at. I'd better not spend all my time homebrewing!

10/14/09: I'm not digging this beer! I originally thought it had a strange dryness on the tongue, almost like the inside of a shipping container might taste with all the cardboard and styrofoam. This isn't a huge flavor, but it lingers in the finish in a truly annoying way. My first suspicion was that this was somehow coming from the water (chloramines that I did not remove causing phenols). But while I am now taking steps to remove chloramines in my water, I think the flavor is really more like a slight ashiness and dry grainy aftertaste. Originally I had planned on adding only a half ounce of carafa to this recipe, but I accidentally used 1 oz. because I am not used to measuring in less than 1 oz. quantities. I think that, combined with the other specialty grains, gives it a slight "cigarrette ash" bitterness. Maybe there is some contribution from the water too, who knows, but I'm pretty sure this is mainly due to grain choice. Also, since the 3711 yeast really ferments this beer to dryness, there is no sweetness for the dry grainy flavors to blend with.

Moving Preparation: It sucks!

I've been stuck in Clarissa's apartment, packing like crazy while she's out in Portland looking for apartments for us & doing job training.
This is how far I've gotten so far. Everything has to be packed in a 5 x 8 x 9' tall truck space, so I have been basically distilling my life into the tiniest space available. Sadly, the kegerator had to go, but I was able to sell it to my good friend Fritz. So now he has moved up to kegging, and I should be able to buy a larger deep freezer when we make it out to Portland.

I picked up my keggles when I was in Ohio, and a propane burner. More importantly, I picked up a 1996 Subaru Outback for $1400. After $1100 of engine repairs, it's more like a $2500 car, but the engine should be good for 100,000 miles at least.

I also picked up a 60 qt. cooler to transport the "beer resume" (which includes a saison, the "Meetification" pale ale, the BQ IPA, and the "Woody" barleywine) out to Portland, which will eventually become my mash tun when I set up a 10 gallon outdoor system at our new place. I'm also bringing out a recently kegged Flanders Red, which is almost 1 year old, and a keg of the all-Brett session ale.

Can't wait to get out west and start brewing outdoors!

BQ IPA Tasting

Before I get in to this beer tasting, I want to make an announcement: My girlfriend, Clarissa, got a job offer in Vancouver, Washington, just a short commute from Portland Oregon. It was an offer too good to turn down, so Portland is officially where we will be moving to! I'm very excited, but also scared, as the unemployment rate is very high right now, at over 11%. Wow. I might be unemployed for a bit while looking for a brewing job. On a good note though, expenses are relatively low and we have the security of one job at least, not that I'm expecting her to be my sugar momma (although I wouldn't turn it down! Honey, I promise the kegerator will never run dry.).

This is the beer we brewed during the Beer Quest shoot, and it is every bit as good as I hoped it would be. I was a little worried that it might not be hoppy enough, but this is a solid and intensely hoppy robust ale:

Aroma: Hugely aromatic hop bouquet, mainly pine and citrus (orange), caramelly and somewhat nutty malt backbone. Some residual sweetness, low esters and no hot alcohols. No diacetyl.

Appearance: Slightly hazy copper (I'm fine with a hop-haze in dry-hopped beers), a truly enticing color, with a lasting ivory head and carbonation on the lower end of the American ale range, maybe 2 volumes. Similar to a draft pour at a bar.

Flavor: A big resiny hop assault, but a malt backbone that is slightly more substantial than most west coast IPA's. Ample dextrins and residual sugars almost balance the hops, but not quite. The hop flavor includes orange, pine, wood, and spicy resins. Although there is some sweetness here, it is certainly balanced towards the hops, and the resiny aftertaste of the Chinook hops leaves a spicy and mouth-coating bitterness. No hot alcohols or off flavors are present.

Mouthfeel: Medium body, medium carbonation. Dextrins provide fullness. A lingering resiny hop quality. No husky astringency, but a slightly astringent hop character which I think is fine.

Overall: Awesome IPA, somewhat reminiscent of a Sierra Nevada Celebration ale, with more aroma and dry hops. I totally pounded this pint even though it is 7.2% ABV. I did prefer it on draft, as the carbonation seemed perfect then, and we lost a little during bottling, which de-emphasized the crispness & hop impression slightly. It is really interesting to see how much maltiness the Glen Eagle Marris Otter malt can provide on a stand-alone basis. If we would have added crystal malts, this would have been way too sweet!

If I would tinker with this recipe at all, and I'm not sure I would, it would be to lessen the percentage of Chinook hops as the bittering addition. Chinook is a love it or hate it hop, and it certainly has a rough lingering bitterness that I can see why some people do not appreciate. But if I took away some Chinook, I might increase the IBU's by 3 or so to compensate.

Overall I think Ray and I went out on a solid note with this beer and the last saison we brewed. Ray, I will miss you as a brewing partner, brotha! I'm sure we'll brew together sometime in the future though.