Tasting Notes: Red Alert Dark IPA 04.30.14

Appearance: Definitely did not turn out red. Dark caramel or copper coloured in a small glass, brown in a regular glass. Nice thin layer of persistent head.

Smell:  Very hoppy, sweet aroma. Descriptors that came up include flowery, apricot, fig, honey, and lychee. Hard to pick out though.

Taste: Nice bitterness typical of the style, both initially and in the aftertaste, but pretty modest as far as IPAs go.  Notable maltiness as well mixed in there. Medium bodied with a nice sweet/dry balance. Maltier than a typical IPA, but no cloying sweetness present here (I get that in quite a few Quebec IPAs).

Overall: It’s very good, but nothing really “pops”. I was hoping that some of the fruity hop flavours would really jump right out at you. Next time I make something this hoppy I’ll simplify the recipe both grain and hop-wise.

Tasting Notes: Powrót Maji Baltic Porter 08.01.14

Appearance: Very dark brown, essentially black, with a fine tan coloured head.

Smell: Dark chocolate with hop aromas barely detectable, if at all. A hint of smoke makes the aroma really nice and complex. Dried fruit only starts to come through once you get close to the bottom of the glass.

Taste: Roast malt and caramel, with a nice balancing level of bitterness. Medium bodied. Very gentle aftertaste, no residual sweetness, nice balance, dry with just a bit of tannin in there (perhaps due the lengthy iterated mashing process?). Surprising since the FG was measured at 1.024. I was expecting more residual sweetness. No hints of hot alcohol present at all.

Overall: This one really exceeded my expectations. Originally conceived as an experiment, it turned out delicious and beautifully balanced. Great depth of flavour and very quaffable for something with a high alcohol content.

Saison Des Pluies 04.05.14

This is Saison De La Mer 2.0, but it should be lighter (around 5% ABV), and even drier. No crystal malts of any kind in the grist, just Belgian pilsner malt, some wheat for body, a little bit of aromatic malt, and some table sugar to dry it out. The yeast strain I used last year, WLP566, wasn’t available at the LHBS, so I went with the Dupont strain, WLP565. This strange yeast is famous for loving heat, and producing pear and pepper aromas that are associated with the much revered Vielle Provision Saison Dupont. It’s also known for finicky behaviour, sometimes stalling mid-fermentation and taking an extremely long time to finish.

The goal here is to produce an extremely dry beer, so the mash temperature was held between 64C and 65C for 70 minutes, and I ended the mash with a 15 minute dextrinization rest at 70C to convert any remaining starch. This is apparently a common practice when very high attenuation is desired. Brasserie Dupont itself ramps up the temperature slowly during the mash, starting around 45C and ending around 72C [Markowski, Farmhouse Ales].

 

The wort was boiled for 80 minutes, and hopped with Wakatu, a Halltertau derivative from New Zealand, to 32 IBU. There was some emphasis on late additions, but nothing crazy, the finished product shouldn’t be dominated by hop aromas. The water bath will start at 20C, I’ll ramp it up to 26C over a few days, trying to hit peak temperature right as the yeast is starting to slow down, then go slowly back down to 22C once the yeast activity has really died off and stay there for a few weeks before bottling.

Saison des Pluies

Recipe Specifics
Batch Size: 9L
Boil Time: 80 min
Estimated OG (brewtoad): 1.046
Measured OG: 1.046
Estimated FG (brewtoad): 1.014 (nope)
Measured FG: 1.003
Estimated IBU (brewtoad): 30
Estimated SRM (brewtoad): 4
Estimated Extract Efficiency: 75%
Measured Extract Efficiency: 77%

Grain Bill
1500g Belgian Pilsner Malt
200g Wheat Malt
100g Belgian Aromatic Malt
100g Table Sugar

Mash Schedule
Rest for 70 min at 64.5C, 3L/kg, raise to 70C for 15min, sparge to 9.5L, top up to 13.3L.

Hops
12g Wakatu 7.1% AA @ 60 min
10g Wakatu 7.1% AA @ 15 min
12g Wakatu 7.1% AA @ 0 min

Yeast
WLP565 Saison I @ ~7.7 Million Cells/mL

Fermentation Notes:
04.05.14: Yeast pitched, temperature at 20C.
05.05.14: Airlock active, temperature to 23C.
06.05.14: Temperature to 25C.
08.05.14: Activity slowing down, temperature to 27C.
10.05.14: Activity very slow, temperature to 25C.
13.05.14: Temperature to 22C.
21.05.14: Airlock still occasionally active. It seems like this yeast is happy to sit on the bottom and eat through whatever fermentables are left in the wort long after the krausen drops. I’ll wait at least another week before bottling.
28.05.14: Still waiting to bottle, airlock still bubbles once in a while.
04.06.14: Bottled 7.5L with 68g of table sugar (3.1 Volumes).

Gear Profile

For those curious about what exactly I use to do small batch brewing, I thought I’d give a more in-depth description of the gear.

Measurement / Odds and Ends:

The brewer’s best friends are a hydrometer, thermometer, and sanitizer. There’s an airlock and bottling tip in here as well, and the bags on the right contain irish moss (a.k.a. dried seaweed), which is a standard clarifying agent, as well as calcium carbonate and gypsum for water modification.

Brewing Preparation:

Cleaning supplies, including two brushes and a small jar of PBW, an industry standard alkaline cleaning agent. There’s also a carbon filter to remove chlorine from tap water, a two liter Erlenmeyer flask to propagate yeast, and a two roller grain mill.

Mashing and Lautering:

The lauter tun, along with its repurposed vegetable steamer false bottom, a stainless steel slotted spoon, the sparge arm that rests on top of the lauter tun, and the brewpot, which is also used as a mash tun.

Fermentation:

The 11 liter carboy, an aquarium heater to maintain temperature in the water bath where the carboy sits for the extent of fermentation, a canister of oxygen, regulator, and diffusion stone to oxygenate the wort before pitching yeast, a hydrometer tube, and an autosiphon.

It seems like quite a bit of gear, but almost all of it (everything but the brew pot and the shoebox) fits into two small rubbermaid boxes, one of which doubles as a water bath for the carboy during fermentation. Foot for scale.

Red Alert Dark IPA 04.03.14

This one was inspired by Green Flash’s Hop Head Red. I started more or less with the grain bill from my latest pale ale, swapped out the flaked barley for wheat, the light crystal malt for Weyermann CaraRed / Carafa Sp. III, and threw in a bit of cane sugar to dry it out. I would say that the Simcoe / Centennial / Citra combo was a nod to DDC’s Moralite, but it really just turned out that way by availability and coincidence.

All the grain was crushed together and mashed at 2.6 L/kg , 67C for 70 minutes. The pH and starch conversion test results below were performed after 15 minutes. The pH is right in the ideal range between 5.1 and 5.5, but the two dark drops of iodine show there’s still conversion yet to be done.

Before transferring to the lauter tun and sparging, the mash was heated to 75C (but not held there) to keep all the sugars as soluble as possible. Measured conversion efficiency was at 92%, and extract efficiency was 82%, an unexpected all time high, and particularly surprising given that there was just a tiny bit too much grain in the recipe for the lauter tun to hold, so I drained the first runnings before adding the last bit of grain and sparging.

After stirring the pre-boil foam, it looked like I was making a giant cappuccino.  I used only Simcoe for the 60 minute bittering addition, and generous amounts of both Simcoe and Centennial very late in boil for flavour and aroma. Simcoe has to be my favourite variety, definitely where it’s at for that lovely dank fruity aroma.

I wasn’t sure I was heavy handed enough with the hops until I lost a solid two litres of wort to hop trub in the kettle when transferring, and that doesn’t include all the trub that made it into the fermentor, which you can see there was lots of.

Red Alert IPA

Recipe Specifics
Batch Size: 9L
Boil Time: 60 min
Estimated OG (brewtoad): 1.058
Measured OG: 1.060
Estimated FG: (brewtoad) 1.014
Measured OG: 1.010
Estimated IBU (brewtoad): 46
Estimated SRM (brewtoad): 15
Estimated Extract Efficiency: 75%
Measured Extract Efficiency: 82%

Grain Bill
2100g Pearl Malt (Fawcett)
150g Wheat Malt (Canada Malting)
150g CaraRed (Weyermann)
50g Carafa Sp. III (Weyermann)
50g Raw Cane Sugar

Mash Schedule
Rest for 70 min at 67C, 2.5L/kg, drain then sparge to 12.5L, top up to 13L.

Hops
15g Simcoe 13% AA @ 60 min
5g Centennial 11% AA @ 10 min
15g Simcoe 13% AA @ 1 min
25g Centennial 11% AA @ 1 min
30g Citra 14% AA @ 2 weeks in primary (for four days)

Yeast
WLP001 California Ale @ ~11 Million Cells/mL

Fermentation Notes:
06.03.14: Yeast pitched, temperature at 17.5C.
07.03.14: Airlock very active. Krausen rising fast, temp at 18C.
07.03.14: So much krausen. Airlock swapped for blowoff tube, temp at 18C.
16.03.14: All quiet in the carboy, temp at 18.5C.
18.03.14: Added whole leaf dry hops in a cheesecloth, temp at 18.5C.
21.03.14: Bottled 6.6L with 54g of table sugar (3.0 Volumes).

Tasting Notes: Optic Extra Pale 18.12.13

Appearance: Pale golden yellow with a little haze (not anymore after a few months in the fridge, as you can see above). Fluffy white head that stays around for a while.

Smell: I get a flowery, minty aroma from this, as well as a nice malty smell, like a sweet bread. This is much more like a lager than anything else I’ve made. It’s certainly hoppy, but there are no fruity, piney aromas like you would get in a new world IPA.

Taste: Initially balanced, with the hop bitterness really coming through in the finish. Quite dry. Very nice creamy texture.

Overall: A good beer, but somewhat subtle. The closest thing to an ‘easy drinker’ that I’ve produced.  Clear hop presence, but with a subdued aroma. I think the flaked barley had a big effect on the body of the beer, and I’ll likely use it in future IPAs.

I think the lesson here is that even if you use tons of them at flameout, old world hops will not produce the fruity, dank aromas you would expect in a modern IPA. It’s likely possible to get closer by using Goldings in place of Fuggles. I’ll attribute the nice oily mouthfeel to the flaked barley,  but I’m still curious about whether the bready aroma and flavour had much to do with it.

Powrót Maji Baltic Porter 08.01.14

This batch was an experiment in making a higher gravity beer using an iterated mash. The idea is fairly simple: divide the grain bill in two, mash and lauter the first half as usual, then mash the second half of the grain bill in the wort you just extracted.

The recipe I settled on is based on Jamil Zainasheff’s recipe in Brewing Classic Styles, but I made some changes after reading more about the style and having a nice example from Les Trois Mousquetaires. I ended up with an emphasis on English grains, the addition of a little smoked malt, and a choice of higher alpha hops (mostly to use what was already in my freezer).

The two base malts and the darker grains were crushed in separate batches to make mash pH adjustment a bit easier. This way, I could run a thick first mash with just the base malts, crystal 80, and smoked malt, which shouldn’t require any pH adjustment, and then use the roasted grains in the second mash along with the rest of the base malt and some calcium carbonate to hold pH.

Iterated mashing is a time intensive process. Thirty minutes for the the first mash (it’s only necessary to give enough time for starches to gelatinize and dissolve since conversion can also happen in the second mash), about thirty minutes for lautering, sixty minutes for the second mash during which the lauter tun can be rewashed, and another thirty minutes of lautering. Below, you can see the thick and starchy first mash right after dough in, and the thin sugary second mash with the darker grains in it, right before lautering.

The mash temperature was kept around 67.5C in both the first and second mash. Just over 8L of wort was collected from the first mash, which meant the second mash was very thin, at 4.2 L/kg. The lautering process involves transferring the mash from the mash tun (aka brewpot) to the lauter tun (aka cooler) which adds even more time to the process.

The point of all the extra time and energy spent mashing and lautering is to produce a high gravity preboil wort. The standard way to brew a high gravity beer is to mash a lot of grain and boil for longer to concentrate the wort, but that requires a large mash tun and boil pot. The iterated mash method needs neither of these, but requires extra time during the mash, and some sacrificed efficiency (not much when compared to the standard method). Extract efficiency was measured at 64%, which is right on what I was expecting.

Three days before brew day I made a starter to try to reach the optimal cell count before pitching. Note that the cell count estimate was based on the ‘intermittent shaking’ model at yeastcalc.com, so this estimate is probably substantially less accurate than usual. After a day and a half of growth, the starter went into the fridge for 24 hours, then warmed up for 8 hours before being decanted and pitched.

As with the last batch, there were significant trub losses from the whole leaf hops, so only 7.8L of 1.078 wort made it into the fermentor.

Powrót Maji Baltic Porter

Recipe Specifics
Batch Size: 9L
Boil Time: 70 min
Estimated OG (brewtoad): 1.078
Measured OG: 1.078
Estimated FG: (brewtoad) 1.018
Measured FG: 1.024
Estimated IBU (brewtoad): 31
Estimated SRM (brewtoad): 36
Estimated Extract Efficiency: 65%
Measured Extract Efficiency: 64%

Grain Bill
1600g Maris Otter (Baird’s)
1600g Munich I (Weyermann)
200g Smoked Malt (Weyermann)
200g Crystal 80 (Baird’s)
200g Pale Chocolate (Fawcett)
100g Carafa Special III (Weyermann)

Mash Schedule
Mash I (1700g MO/Munich Mix, 200g Smoked, 200g Crystal):
Rest for 30 min at 67.5C, 2.5L/kg, drain then sparge to 8L.
Mash II (1500g MO/Munich Mix, 200g Chocolate, 100g Carafa):
Rest for 60 min at 67.5C, 4.2L/kg, drain then sparge to 13.3L.

Hops
10g Magnum 10% AA @ 60 min
15g Northern Brewer 10% AA @ 15 min

Yeast
WLP001 California Ale @ ~15 Million Cells/mL

Fermentation Notes:
08.01.14: Yeast pitched, temperature at 18C. Airlock active after a few hours.
08.01.14: Aerated once more 8 hours after pitching, temp at 18C.
09.01.14: Blowoff very active with an inch of krausen, temp at 18.5C.
10.01.14: Blowoff very active with two inches of krausen, temp at 18.5C.
10.01.14: Water bath removed late at night, ambient temp set to 20C.
15.01.14: Blowoff activity slow, bit of dense krausen, ambient temp to 19C.
25.01.14: Bottled 7.3L with 55g of table sugar (2.7 Volumes).

Tasting Notes: Toasty Winter Stout 18.11.13

Appearance: Black with reddish brown highlights when you get to the bottom of the glass, just like Guinness (the beer on the right in the photo is Guinness). Lightly carbonated. The syringe trick provides the creamy head.

Smell: Malty and toasty, but reserved. There’s a faint floral hop aroma mixed in too.

Taste: Roasty malt flavours up front and a slightly bitter, balanced finish with some kind of light acidic note throughout (hops? pH? inevitable consequence of being juxtaposed with Guinness, which has essentially no carbonation?). I thought this one would end up with too much residual sweetness, but that didn’t happen at all, it has a nice balanced finish.

Overall: A simple roasty stout with a nice finish. I expect it will also improve after spending a little while conditioning in the fridge. To make these notes, I tasted it with Guinness, and Maja tried both of them blind (literally closing her eyes for the extent of the taste test). Guinness was described as having a bready aroma, and a sweeter, watery taste. This beer had a roastier aroma, a pronounced malty and acidic flavour, and less residual sweetness.

This one turned out very much like I expected it to, and will be a great after-work pint next term. The syringe trick and low carbonation work well to make it full bodied, but it doesn’t quite have the same thick oily mouthfeel that Guinness does. That’s likely not possible to completely recreate without a CO2/nitrogen kegging system. Next time I make a dry stout, I’ll swap the victory malt for carapils to contribute more body, throw in some chocolate malt, forget about the late hop additions, and add more base malt to bring the OG up to around 1048.

Optic Extra Pale 18.12.13

I had some Kent Goldings hops and flaked barley left over from the last batch of stout, so why not make an English pale ale to get rid of them? The inspiration for this recipe comes in part from Benelux’s Moisson 2013 English pale ale, and in part from the famous Heady Topper. Both are lightly coloured pale ales with little crystal malt character. The consensus in the beerosphere about the Heady Topper grain bill includes a dose of wheat to provide some body, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an adjunct grain was used in the Moisson 2013 recipe as well. I figured I could achieve a similar effect by using the extra flaked barley I had sitting around. Start with a nice aromatic English pale malt, throw in a big load of English hops at flameout, and I figure I’ll end up with a light, hoppy English IPA.

This was my first chance to use the new grain mill that shipped last week from the states, which should give me a more predictable crush, and more consistent efficiency numbers.

I went with a fairly narrow roller gap on the mill, which produced a pretty fine crush, as you can see above, but there were no problems lautering, so I think I might just leave the gap where it is. This fine crush seemed to pay off, with conversion efficiency up at 95%. Extract efficiency was 75%, which is exactly what I expected. I think it’s quite possible to do better with some modifications to the lauter tun, but so long as extract efficiency stays around 75% for the near future, that’s fantastic.

There were lots of whole leaf hops in this one, which look and smell lovely, but are quite annoying to deal with, and result in a lot of trub left in the kettle. At the end of the day, I collected 7.5L of wort. I decided to go with WLP001 to make an uncharacteristically clean English IPA. The esters contributed by English yeast are usually considered essential to the style, but I’m curious about what happens when the earthy old world hops speak louder.

Optic Extra Pale

Recipe Specifics
Batch Size: 9L
Boil Time: 60 min
Estimated OG (brewtoad): 1.056
Measured OG: 1.054
Estimated FG: (brewtoad) 1.013
Measured FG: 1.007
Estimated IBU (brewtoad): 42
Estimated SRM (brewtoad): 4
Estimated Extract Efficiency: 75%
Measured Extract Efficiency: 75%

Grain Bill
2100g Optic Pale Malt (Thomas Fawcett)
200g Toasted Flaked Barley
100g CaraHell (Weyermann)

Mash Schedule
Saccharification rest for 80 min at 66.5C, 2.8L/kg

Hops
17g Northern Brewer 10% AA @ 60 min
10g Fuggle 5% AA @ 5 min
18g Fuggle 5% AA @ 0 min
10g East Kent Goldings 5% AA @ 0 min

Yeast
WLP001 California Ale @ ~9.2 Million Cells/mL

Fermentation Notes:
18.12.13: Yeast pitched, temperature at 17C.
19.12.13: Water bath temperature at 17.5C, krausen rising.
19.12.13: Water bath temperature bumped to 18.5C.
26.12.13: Water bath removed, ambient temperature to 18.5C.
31.12.13: Bottled 7.3L with 54g of table sugar (2.8 Volumes).

Nitro Pour Trick

I really love a good stout, particularly when it’s poured with a stout faucet and nitrogen to produce that delicious creamy head. I’ve avoided brewing stout in the past for lack of the stout tap and kegging system required for a nitro pour. But recently, while looking around /r/homebrewing I discovered this link embedded in a comment. Not only is it possible to reproduce the same creamy head without a kegging system and a stout faucet, it’s actually very easy. Just go to the local pharmacy and pick up a small plastic syringe.

Fill the syringe with a few mL of air and a few mL of beer, then quickly inject the mix back into your glass, with the tip of the syringe just under the surface of the beer. You’ll see the characteristic nitrogen bubble waterfall, which doesn’t last as long as a true nitro pour, but it generates the same thick creamy head.

The head should be creamy and persistent, just like it ought to (click the photo below and you can see how dense it is). A word of caution: start with a very small amount of air/beer mix. It only takes a little, and using this trick on anything with a higher level of carbonation is known to produce explosive results. The typical 1.5 to 2.0 volumes used for english ales seems to work well.

Note that this will remove a significant amount of carbonation, which changes the flavour of the beer. A beer with less carbonation will taste sweeter and more full bodied, which is exactly the desired effect for a dry stout, but would be unwanted in many other styles.