Honey Sour Beer Tasting

These five sour beers were split from the same primary fermentor with Conan and East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale (recipe). When fermentation slowed, I divided the young beer into five one-gallon jugs each with a half pound of a different single-varietal honey. Once the gravity was stable I bottle conditioned with one ounce more of the same honey to trap some volatile aromatics (something I usually caution against). All told, the honey provided about 35% of the fermentables!

This wasn’t my first time adding honey to sour beer, but I wanted to play with a variety of new flavors in a bland-ish base beer to evaluate them!

Honey Sours: Five-Way

Appearance – Quintuplets: clear gold body, nice foam on the pour, but mediocre retention (see it as I poured left to right). Honey shouldn’t hurt head retention, but sugar without protein doesn’t help either.

Smell/Taste – Even at one third honey, the differences between the aromas are subtle. They have more alike than unalike. They each have a mild fruity aroma, light horsey-Brett funk, pleasant acidity, and restrained maltiness. Similarities are always a good sign for a split-batch, no major process issues!

Acacia: This was the oddball through most of the fermentor samples I’ve pulled (weird plastic/stable aromatics). It has calmed down, but the honey doesn’t add much. It is abrupt, changing course mid-palate from fruity to funk. However, it has some interesting white-wine and watermelon rind notes I don’t get from the rest.

Sourwood: Classic honey aroma, with some vinous notes behind it. Fresh, honey on your pancakes flavor. Not exactly what I’m looking for in a pale sour, but I drank it quicker than any of the others. Wonderful lingering floral note!

Gallberry: Subtle waxy aroma. The most herbal, a nice counter to the berry. The honey flavor is nicely integrated into the base sour. The most interesting of the posse, with subtleties that needed a pale canvas to showcase.

Raspberry: Young this had a big cotton-candy note, but that has mostly faded. It is still the fruitiest and suggests the most sweetness. Least funky, most acidic. The nose is almost acetic, but the flavor doesn’t bear a trace. An outlier, but then it always has been.

Blueberry: Light, fruity, berry but not distinctly blueberry. Balanced, pleasant, the maltiest, but not quite the right match for a pale sour. Would be ideal for a sour red!

Mouthfeel – Happy that they all seem to have fermented out and carbonated at similar rates. Could be spritzier, but I don’t mind it as is.

Drinkability & Notes – This is the sort of batch that I love to brew! One of my recent pushes has been to brew beers that embrace homebrewing. A large brewery couldn’t procure enough gallberry honey to brew a batch at a reasonable rate. As homebrewers we have the opportunity to produce beers on a scale that allows us to use ingredients that are impractical for even brewpubs because of availability or cost. I’ll be talking about this for one of my talks at the Norwegian Homebrewer Weekend (aka Hjemmebryggerhelgen 2016) later this month, I’ll also be talking to Brad Smith about it for his BeerSmith Podcast if you can’t make it to Drammen!

Sour Brown: One Batch Two Barrels

Split batches are wonderful! They provide the opportunity to see (and taste) the changes that just one variable can make. They helps to cut through all the confounding batch-to-batch variables and identify what a single tweak is responsible for. However, with sour beers you always have to be cautious not to read too far into them as identical worts aged in identical barrels under seemingly identical conditions can diverge as the microbes compete. The beating of a bacteria’s flagellum can cause a proverbial hurricane of flavor!

These two beers started from the same mash, I pitched the same microbes (White Labs WLP665 Flemish Ale Blend, and dregs), and aged them in two third-use barrels from Balcones Distilling for four months. While most of each batch then went onto fruit (raspberries for the rum, cherries for the malt whisky) I reserved a gallon of each fruitless to taste the base beer. While I love fruited sour beers, I’m usually far more interested in the straight-up examples. They provide a truer expression of the magic of microbes, barrels, and wort!

Rum Barrel-Aged Sour Brown

Appearance – Clear, mahogany leather, dense off-white head.

Smell – Madeira-like, brandy-soaked raisin aromatics with a touch of oxidation. A brighter fruit candy note as well – SweeTarts perhaps. A tinge herbal as well, not what I usually pick-up in an old/dark sour.

Taste – Flavor leaves those darker fruit flavors behind for cherry-acidity flowing into cocoa powder. Dry, but still enough to support the malt and oak. Not distinctly rummy to my palate… but in comparison to the whisky-barrel it is surprising how much of that fruit is from the barrel!

Mouthfeel – No tannins or anything rough. The acidity helps to cover-up the lean body.

Drinkability & Notes – Somewhere in the nebulous realm between old ale and oud bruin, with the barrel playing a wonderful supporting role. While I enjoyed the jammy raspberry contribution, I'm glad I also got to taste all the nuance here that was obscured by the fruit.

Malt Whisky Barrel-Aged Sour Brown

Appearance – A twin, other than the slightly stickier head.

Smell – A cleaner more fresh-brown-liquor aroma. What I thought at first sip was dark fruit from the combination of fermentation/age/malt really seems to have been coming from the rum barrel. This one is more dusty-basement damp-oak. Coconut candy bar.

Taste – Acidity is tamer, but still firmly sour. The fruit is more plum than cherry, not as bright. The finish is a bit curdled milk, lingering in a not-entirely pleasant way. Likely more a result of the particular fermentation in this barrel rather than anything inherent to the wood/spirit themselves.

Mouthfeel – Similar, feels slightly richer, maybe just drinking it second a bit warmer and flatter.

Drinkability & Notes – It is a fine beer, but next to the Rumble-barrel it is missing that extra something that makes a great dark sour. Academically it is the same, but I’m tossing the last few sips and going back to the other bottle for the last few ounces!

Whisky Barrel Sour Cherry Brown: Tasting

Sometimes the timing of a tasting gets away from me. I posted about the raspberry-rum half on this “Double Barrel” sour brown back in 2013; now finally getting around to the half that was aged in a Balcones Single Malt Whisky barrel and then on homegrown sour cherries from Audrey’s parents!

Whisky-Cherry Sour Brown

Appearance – Glowing fire-red when back-lit! Pristine clarity. Head retention is exceptional for an aged-out sour beer.

Smell – Hints of cherry-cola. Some mild age-perfume, but otherwise unharmed by the ravages of time. Subdued Brett-funk, more towards the Cascade Brewing model (as was the bourbon barrel that the culture came from).

Taste – Cherry has aged nicely: skins, pits, dried fruit, really concentrated. The malic acid from all those cherries certainly adds acidic sharpness on the front of the tongue compared to straight lactic. Just a hint of acetic, despite the four months in a five-gallon barrel (with its high surface-to-volume ratio). Graham cracker maltiness is subdued, but present. Slight buttery oak-coconut in the finish. Dry, but with a suggestion of malty-sweetness left to carry the big/dark flavors.

Mouthfeel – Medium-thin body, medium-low carbonation. About what I hope for in a dark sour, nothing to detract from the richness.

Drinkability & Notes – One of the best cherry beer I’ve brewed! I often find this most-singular fruit dominates pale beers, so I tend to prefer it against a maltier red or brown backdrop. The barrel adds nice complementary flavors without being too out-in-front. I’ll have to get around to tasting the fruit-less versions of these two soon…

Czech-Baltic Porter

There are some brewers who see almost all of the possible drinkable beers neatly fenced in by established styles. Most on a continuum like mild, to brown ale, to porter, to stout with no spaces between. The only places not bounded by styles being the willful targeting of gaps, for example a Pilsner dyed black (and even then that’s just a schwarzbier...). I see much more fertile ground where new styles and recipes are waiting to spring forth!

One of my favorite ways to come up with unique beers is to imagine what sort of recipe the brewers from one country might brew if they wanted to make their own version of a style from another country. A few examples have been my Scottish Stout, New Zealand Saison, and India (American) Wit. This isn’t as silly as it might sound because Flemish red, Munich helles, schwarzbier, and American pale ale each grew from brewers taking a style from somewhere else and adapting it to their local ingredients, equipment, and tastes!

This batch is the big brother to tmavé pivo. It was from the same mash, but had a higher proportion of first runnings, a longer boil, higher bittering rate, and a cool rather than cold lager-yeast fermentation. It is my re-imagining of a Baltic porter brewed by a Czech brewery!

Czech-tic Porter

Appearance – Not as pretty as the tmavé, head retention and chill haze are worse. Luckily it’s a dark beer which means it's still pleasant on the eyes, but I’m not sure how two beers from the same mash and fermented with the same yeast could differ so much.

Smell – Clean malty aroma. Fresh spent coffee grounds, whole wheat toast, and some caramel especially as it warms. No hop aroma. Yeast comes across clean despite a mid-60s F fermentation temperature peak, in line with the baffling Brulosophy experiments (the third of which I participated in).

Taste – Flavor is similar to the aroma, that Munich-like (Weyermann Bohemian Dark) breadiness comes through, but a little less rounded than the classic flavor of bock and dunkel. The roast is subdued even for a Baltic porter, coffee ice cream, milk chocolate, and subtle dark fruit - more plum than raisin. Drier than I expected it to be, maybe thanks to the good attenuation and the more substantial bittering charge. Again, a clean fermentation behind all of that malty goodness.

Mouthfeel – Medium-full body, medium carbonation. Feels substantially wintery, without being sticky.

Drinkability & Notes – A pleasantly substantial speciální tmavé-porter 18°! I will say it doesn’t exhibit the depth and complexity of my favorite Baltic porter (Les Trois Mousquetaires Porter Baltique), but it also isn’t nearly that strong at 6.8% ABV compared to 10%. The Czech influence comes in in the softer palate, less assertive roast, and firmer bitterness.

Czech-tic Porter Recipe

Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.34
OG: 1.075
SRM: 33.1
IBU: 49.1
Brewhouse Efficiency: 73 %
Wort Boil Time: 110 Minutes

Grain
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51.9% - 8.00 lbs. Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner
29.6% - 4.50 lbs. Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Dark
13.0% - 2.00 lbs. Weyermann CaraMunich II
3.7% - 0.56 lbs. Weyermann Carafa II
1.9% - 0.28 lbs. Weyermann Carafa Special II

Hops
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2.00 oz. Sterling (Pellet, 7.50% AA) @ 55 min.

Extras
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0.50 Whirlfloc @ 5 min
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 5 min

Yeast
-------
White Labs WLP800 Pilsner Lager

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington, DC

Mash Schedule
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Protein Rest - 15 min @ 126F
Sacch I - 30 min @ 145F (direct)
Sacch II - 20 min @ 158F (direct)

Notes
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Two stage starter made a week in advance (1.25 L to 3.5 L). Second stage was mini-mash of Bohemian Dark. Crashed in fridge prior to brew day.

Brewed 10/25/15

Note: adjusted the amounts above so that this recipe could be brewed as a single batch.

5 g CaCl added to the filtered DC tap water for the mash. Started with only Bohemian grains. Added specialty malts as I heated to the second Sacch rest to ensure conversion, but reduce intensity/astringency.

Collected 8 gallons of first runnings at 1.055 for the Baltic Porter. Chilled to 58 F. OG 1.075. Shook to aerate. Pitched 1/2 starter. Left at 60F to ferment.

11/2/15 Up to 65F.

11/3/15 Gravity down to 1.028 (63% AA). Hoping for a bit closer to 1.022.

11/6/15 Down to 1.024 (68%, 6.8% ABV). Solid, malty, sweetish, coffee. Likely won't fall much more.

11/7/15 Into a flushed keg and into the fridge at 60F for the slow ramp-down. Looked pretty yeasty and there was a dense persistent krausen. 1 extra liter into a growler with 1.25 tsp of sugar.

2/22/16 Tasting notes above.

Post-Fermentation Malt-Infused Porter

Why can’t beer just taste like beer anymore? Maple beer, passion fruit beer, elderflower beer... even new hop varieties are marketed as smelling like "coffee" and "garlic." What about a beer flavored with malt? Sure the Reinheitsgebot was an artificial constraint on the ingredients available to German brewers, but it focused their creativity on process (think: decoction, acidulated malt, first wort hopping).

With the ever increasing prevalence of weird-ingredient beers, American brewers (both craft and home) are overlooking the possibilities that weird process provides! Whether that is dry hopping before fermentation, concentrated Maillard-intensifying boil, or adding malt after fermentation (which is what I'm investigating with this post)!

The concept for this porter was to age it for six months (while the other half was on tap), and then add cold-extracted dark grain to refresh the dark malt flavor and aroma. I've used cold-extracted dark grains before, but only before fermentation (like Dark Saison IV). Over the years I've drank a few stouts and porters (fresh Deschutes Abyss comes to mind) that have exhibited a hint of dough-in: that wonderful combination of fresh coffee and bready malt. That's what I wanted to accentuate. While not as sensitive as hop compounds, malt aromatics are driven off by the boil and fermentation and muted and muddled by age and oxidation. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it can be boring when that is what all malt goes through on the way to the glass!

The base for this experiment was the “plain” half of the chocolate-butternut squash porter that I brewed in early August. It had some roastiness, but after five months in the keg it was beginning to show its age, too dark-fruit forward. Dosing into a glass let me play with different rates and malt combinations without risking the whole batch. After testing a variety of dark malts in small scale infusion I settled on equal parts Weyermann Carafa Special II and Chocolate Rye. Both are husk-free, and provide a softer flavor contribution than black malt and roasted barley.

To make the extract for the full-batch infusion I ran the grains (2.5 oz each) through my Barley Crusher. While you can use a blade-style coffee grinder for dark malts, the fine particulate makes the spent grain sludge difficult to separate from the liquid. I combined the grain with 48 oz of filtered water in a sanitized growler, shaking occasionally to aid extraction. After 10 hours I decanted the liquid through a mesh coffee filter to remove large pieces of grain that hadn't settled. I then passed it through a paper filter to remove any dust (stouts and porters often taste better after roasted particulate is allowed to drop). Despite being a second pass this still took about 30 minutes.

I pasteurized the resulting inky black concentrate at 170F for a few minutes. While I doubt it would have caused a microbial issue going into cold/fermented beer, the extra effort was worth the peace of mind. Heating the extract also helps to reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen, although not as much as boiling would have. After cooling, I did another taste test to dial in my ideal ratio, and then dosed 23 oz directly into the depressurized mostly-full keg. This technique might also benefit from combination with water adjustments, but I didn't find that necessary flavor-wise (beers on nitro often benefit from slightly lower pH to replace the absent carbonic acid).

ReMalted Porter

Appearance – Doesn’t look much darker than it was prior to the cold extraction, but when held at an angle to the light it is less translucent (still transparent, but brown rather than red right at the edge). Nice big tan head, a bit voluminous though, needed to settle and top-off to get a full pour.

Smell – Not quite brew-day morning, but much fresher grainy-roasty flavor than the beer was prior to the transfusion. Still has some dark fruit behind the coffee and roasted grain. On the upper-end of mocha for a porter. No hop aroma.

Taste – Roast is mellower on the palate than it was in the nose. Smooth cold brewed coffee, minimal roasted bitterness. Hops were never prominent, but by now they add just a slight bitter edge. Smooth, although a bit dry for my tastes. Fermentation seems clean, no noticeable off-flavors.

Mouthfeel – Not quite as full as I prefer for a cold-weather rye porter, although the creamy head helps with that body while it lasts. Low carbonation after running through the stout faucet. Amazing how much mouthfeel the butternut squash added to the other half!

Drinkability & Notes – This method breathes malty freshness into an aged beer, the malt equivalent of a hop tea. Adding more dark malt after fermentation certainly improved this beer, but at this rate it doesn’t provide a showcase character. It would be interesting to taste a dark beer with all of the roasted grain added like this! It could also be an easy way to make a split batch without having to divide the wort pre-boil. You could even try a shorter/hotter extraction if you wanted to see how that changes the roast impression. Lots of options, and certainly not the last of my attempts to use traditional ingredients in new ways!

Maple Bourbon Adam Tasting

Maple imperial stouts... so hot right now. Like coconut last year, mole a few years ago, and whiskey-barrel-aged before that (not that any of those have gone anywhere). Maple syrup is a comparatively mild flavor, difficult to showcase in a flavorful style without resorting to "natural" flavorings or fenugreek.

Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout was the first to really get beer nerds excited about maple-stout. I aged a Breakfast Stout inspired recipe on maple syrup-soaked bourbon oak cubes to replicate the contribution of bourbon barrels that subsequently held maple syrup, but only got a hint of flavor.

More recently Tree House has Good Morning sitting at #1 on BeerAdvocate. I was amazed how intense the maple flavor was, really jumped out of the growler (although I’ve talked to other people who had growlers from later in the same batch with only a hint of maple, not sure if it was palate or beer differences). Toppling Goliath’s Mornin’ Delight is #2 on BA (although I’ve yet to get a chance to sample it).

Rumor is that some well-thought-of maple beers are brewed with 10% or more by volume (e.g., a half gallon of maple syrup in a five gallon batch!). That seemed like too much simple sugar, so for this batch of Adam I added only a quart (5%) of Grade B as fermentation slowed. Some brewers suggest dosing the syrup into cold beer to prevent refermentation, but I didn't want that much sweetness in the finished beer. Others suggest adding it early in the boil to encourage the Maillard reaction between the sugars and proteins, but I worried that the fermentation would scrub out volatile aromatics. I wasn't worried about boiling them off though, as maple syrup is created by boiling for many hours.

Usually I bottle big beers to space out my enjoyment, but not 13% ABV big! I didn't want to risk two cases of uncarbonated beer (like my first Adam clone) so I kegged and force carbonated. Nice to have the option to pour a few ounces without committing to a whole 12 oz bottle, but tough to tie-up a tap long-term. After a few months I disconnected the keg to put the Saphir Pilsner on. Doubt I'll tap it again until next fall. I actually dusted off the last bottle of my original Adam clone to share while brewing a more traditional adambier with a group of homebrewers in Fargo, ND a few months ago: still delicious, and Hoppy Halloween was a blast!

Maple Bourbon Adam

Appearance – Brunette body with a tan head. Dark enough to be nearly opaque, but clear edges when held at an angle. Decent retention for a liquor-infused strong ale.

Smell – Light woodsy smoke, caramel, vanilla, and hints of clean ethanol. Varied aroma, but given everything that is in there not especially intense. Not too phenolic as I’ve heard complaints about Briess cherry wood smoked malt.

Taste – Sticky-intense caramel maltiness. Bourbon notes come through in the finish (vanilla with a hint of butterscotch), about the right intensity. Mellow maple syrup contribution despite accounting for 12% of the fermentables. Finish is a nice blend of oak and hardwood smoke. The cherry wood malt melds well with the bourbon and maple, but none of them are bold. How some of those commercial maple beers get such an assertive aroma/flavor is beyond me!

Mouthfeel – Full and luscious. Despite being on the same PSI as my other kegs this one never seems quite as carbonated, not that I’m complaining!

Drinkability & Notes – The blend of smoke, booze, and maple evokes my trip to Montreal and dinner at Au Pied de Cochon, which was the goal. A hulking 13% ABV beer in a relatively drinkable cloak. That is good and bad – for that much alcohol I want a WOW beer and this is a pleasant sipper. I’m not an “It hides its alcohol well” fan, I’d much rather a 9% beer drank like 13% than vice versa (not hot or boozy, but rich, full, complex, intense etc.)! Should age beautifully!