HotHead, Juniper, and Right Proper Hyperborea

I hope that people get something from my talks at homebrew festivals around the world, because I certainly benefit from the arrangement! My trip to Norway for the 2016 Homebrewers Weekend in Drammen was enlightening on many fronts, but it was the introduction to kveik that has proved the most valuable. Kveik is true farmhouse yeast, with the now commercially available strains passed between local brewers up until only a few years ago. While I enjoyed the test batch with the cultures I brought back, I wanted to try the traditional combination of kveik with juniper and smoke. With the light acidity of those test batches, I decided to buy a fresh pitch of the orange-scented heat-loving Stranda culture from Omega Labs, HotHead.

Traditionally (as Lars Garshol extensively documented) juniper branches, not just the berries, were an indispensable and underappreciated component of traditional brewing across Europe. This is annoying as berries are easy to buy and store, while branches are not. As fate would have it the Eastern Red Cedar in my backyard is in actuality Juniperus virginiana, Virginia juniper! Not the first time I've turned to one of the four trees on our property (mulberry, the others are oak and sour cherry).

I loosely based the amount of Eastern Red Cedar tips on the Sahti recipe in Homebrewer's Almanac (written by the brewers and foragers of Scratch Brewing). It is one of the most inspiring brewing books I've read in years! I enjoyed samples of their beers at GABF a few years ago enough that I'm considering making the four hour drive down to Ava, Illinois when I visit Indianapolis for the next BYO Boot Camp in November 2017. I backed down on their flame-out addition to leave room for the yeast and smoke.

Anytime you forage for brewing ingredients (or anything) make a positive identification of what you are harvesting. I contacted a local arborist to confirm what I had growing. Given the pictures and ranges I saw online I was pretty sure, but pretty sure isn't something to risk your health on!

I'd been looking for an excuse to hang out with Blane, who is opening Sinistral Brewing in Manassas, Virginia. We brewed on the 15 gallon electric system in his garage. He was into the weird idea despite not loving smoked beers, and luckily enjoyed the results. We'll see if it was enough for him to ever brew something like it commercially! We were joined by his friend Carlos, who had foraged for local juniper before to brew sahti (not to mention malted quinoa, and had strong opinions on brewing with corn and chiles - someone I need to brew with again!).

Summer Kveik

Smell – When it was young, orange from the yeast was the primary aroma. Over the last couple months stonefruit has overtaken with the citrus. "Peach gummy rings" as a couple friends described it. Fresh juniper has a less singular more green aroma than the berries, a little more spruce than gin. Smoke is smooth and woody, not phenolic or sharp.

Appearance – I’ve been jokingly calling this one New England Kveik given the glowing cloudy orange-juice body. Head retention is decent, not great. Given some experiments with juniper teas I was expecting more color, but the lower ratio of tree to liquid prevented that.

Taste – Zesty orange, apricot, and fresher herbaceous juniper. I was going for a winter beer… clearly I missed on that! The smoke is firm but fleeting, which works well with the bright fruity flavors. Balanced, smooth, minimal bitterness, but enough to keep it from tasting candied (like my Spruce-Grapefruit India Pale Gruit). I don’t pick anything distinctly rye, but it has a rounded malt flavor likely contributing. Mellow sweetness in the finish.

Mouthfeel – Lighter body than I intended, partly because we undershot the gravity by .010. Medium carbonation keeps things moving.

Drinkability & Notes – It is weird for a smoked tree-flavored beer to be quenching and crushable, but it is! One of the strangest and most intriguing beers I’ve brewed. Authentic? Likely not, but I enjoy adapting flavors and ingredients rather than slavishly recreating.

Changes for Next Time – For a more authentic result I’d move all of the juniper to the HLT and do a longer infusion. I’d opt for a Bohemian Dark (or Munich) for the entire base in place of the Golden Promise. I would also go darker on the Carared maybe CaraMunich II, and add a touch of Carafa as I was originally planning. Not that it would be a better beer, just more in line with my original target. Also makes an interesting blend is the citrusy gose with smoked sea salt on tap next to it.

I brewed Kodachrome Dream(ing) with my friend Nathan at the Right Proper brewpub in Shaw a couple years ago. For our second collaboration (and the first at the Brookland production house) we wanted to brew something in the same vane, although more inspired by Alu by Norse (a small amount makes it to the US). Jacob McKean the founder of Modern Times was planning a trip to DC, so we roped him into the plan.

After tasting my batch, Nathan wanted to tone down the assertive fruit flavors from the yeast. As a result he blended the HotHead (harvested from my batch - strangely trusting) with US-05 and lowered the fermentation temperature to 70F. In search of increased maltiness and color, he added CaraAroma and Carafa. He also wanted a more traditional juniper flavor, so we added juniper berries near the end of the boil in addition to 15 lbs of juniper branches at 190F in the HLT overnight for 24 bbls.

Nathan named the resulting beer after a mythical people of the article circle, the Hyperborea. Kegs will be available in DC, Virginia, Maryland, and New York! If you try it, let me know what you think! Sunday March 12 Nathan will be brewing a Nordic IPA with Stone, Pen Druid, and metal band Sunn O))), feel free to stop by the brewery around 1 PM and say hello! Both beers should be on tap through CBC next month!

Right Proper Hyperborea

Smell – Brighter than you’d expect for a dark/smoked beer. Mild generic citrus and green-herbal. Light phenolic smoke, the Briess Cherrywood Smoked gives it some sharpness. Touch of toast. Not distinctly juniper from the berries.

Appearance – Fantastic head retention, at least partly thanks to the flaked oats. Really dense, off-white. The body is reddish-brown, and pretty cloudy… likely again partly thanks to the oats.

Taste – Balanced depth between the combination of toasty-smoke and yeasty-juniper fruit. The Munich and dark malts serve as a malty bridge between the smoke and the fruit in a way that my beer is missing. Minimal hop bitterness. Nice lingering herbal-smoke melding.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, light tannic drying. Carbonation seemed a bit higher in the growler than it was on tap at the brewery.

Drinkability & Notes – For a beer with so many components it really falls into place. Doesn’t quite hit the oomph and richness of Alu, but not far off! Nathan was right to temper the Hothead with US-05 to prevent it from crushing the malt and juniper.

Summer Kveik Recipe


Batch Size: 16.00 gallons
SRM: 5.6
IBU: 14.5
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.3%
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%
Boil Time: 60 mins

Grain
-------
32.3% - 10 lbs Simpsons Golden Promise
16.1% - 5 lbs Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Dark
16.1% - 5 lbs Weyermann Oak Smoked Wheat
16.1% - 5 lbs Weyermann Rye Malt
16.1% - 5 lbs Weyermann Beech Smoked Barley Malt
3.2% - 1 lbs Weyermann Carared


Mash
-------
Sacch Rest - 50 min @ 156F

Hops/Juniper
----------------
60 g Juniper Tips @ Hot Liquor Tank
60 g Juniper Tips @ Mash
60 g Juniper Tips @ 60 min
2.25 oz Mixture (Pellets, ~4.50% AA) @ 60 min
60 g Juniper Tips @ 30 min
1.00 oz Hallertau (Pellets, 4.50% AA) @ 15 min
90 g Juniper Tips @ 0 min

Other
-------
None

Yeast
-------
OYL-057 Omega HotHead

Notes
-------
12/14/16 4 L stir-plate starter with 3 month old HotHead.

12/16/16 Crashed starter. Harvested Eastern Red Cedar from the tree in my backyard.

12/17/16 Brewed with Blane on his electric system. Dosed 60 g (three 12" twigs) into the HLT and then again into the mash, 60 min, and 30 min. 50% extra at flameout. Hops @ 60 min were a variety (Hallertau Tradition, EKG, Tett, Hallertau).

Chilled to ~95F and pitched half of the decanted starter into 5 gallons (my share). 5 gallons additional for Carlos, 5 gallons with the Voss culture from Norway (slightly lactic) for Blane.

Fermentation by 6 hours on the radiator insulated in a sweatshirt.

1/3/17 Kegged with 3.5 oz of table sugar into flushed keg.

Blane's version tested at 5.68% ABV.

I get a commission if you click the links to MoreBeer/Amazon/Love2Brew and buy something!

Palace of the Cracked Heads Tasting

One of my favorite fruits to add to sour beers is nectarine. They don’t dominate a subtle beer the way sour cherries or raspberries usually do. I’ve added them to a couple of pale sours, with beautiful results. When Jacob suggested them as one of the fruit choices for Empty Hats (Modern Times’ oud bruin) I wasn’t sure how it would work out. Nectarine is delicate for such a malty barrel-forward beer. Luckily the results are wholly different, but no less delicious!

There are some brewers who deem only their “best” sour beer suitable for fruit (given the increased price and manpower requirements). Others seem to be adding fruit to their worst beer in an attempt to cover-up wretched off-flavors. For me, the ideal barrels for fruit are those that are bland (i.e., those that lack bold and beautiful aromatics and/or adequate acidity). Dumping is the only real option for sour beers with strong off-flavors, no amount of fruit will cover them completely.

Modern Times Palace of the Cracked Heads

Appearance – Red headed towards amber. Hazier than the unfruited beer, but nowhere near murky or muddy. The head sizzles down within a minute, not leaving so much as a spec of foam.

Smell – Apricot fruit leather. Saturated stone fruit, but not so much that it dominates the beer-y nature of the beverage. Cherry-funk around the edges. At around one pound of nectarines per gallon, the rate lower than what I’ve used at home. Less fruit, combined with the more assertive base certainly changes the perception of the fruit, creating a more balanced profile (at the cost of the knock-your-socks-off farmstand aroma).

Taste – Big acidity, lactic and malic: bright, sharp, and quick. The nectarines are there, jammy, concentrated, but not juicy-fresh. I think the flavor melds better with the biscuity maltiness that the Vienna and Munich provided. The damp-barrel goodness is there, but the fruit covers up much of it. There is just a touch of acetic towards the back.

Mouthfeel – Solid carbonation, it is lively without being disruptive. The mouthfeel is a little stickier than the base beer, full enough to support the big flavors.

Drinkability & Notes – Rocking beer. Nice blend of fruit, malt, acid, and funk. It’s the early leader in the clubhouse for my favorite of the five “first round” Modern Times sour beers. There are still a couple more to go though!

Modern Times Empty Hats Tasting

I don’t usually post commercial beer reviews/tastings, but I thought I’d make an exception for a few sour beers from Modern Times! These were the batches that I grew the microbes for while in San Diego during summer 2013, and contributed to writing the recipes for.

Today’s subject is Empty Hats, which was originally brewed to be a Flemish Red (codename Bebop). However, the color, gravity, and resulting flavor were deemed closer to Oud Bruin. As a result the Oud Bruin recipe I wrote was lightened and converted into the Flemish Red (dubbed News From Nowhere). After aging, Empty Hats falls somewhere between the two “styles” more acidic/dry and barrel-forward than traditional Belgian/Flemish Oud Bruins, but maltier than the average Flemish Red. Hard to quibble over the line between two arbitrary styles, but the question remains, from a hedonistic standpoint is it a delicious beer?

Modern Times Empty Hats

Appearance – Pours with a frothy white head. Decent retention for a sour beer, but by the time I take my first sip most of the bubbles have collapsed into the clear reddish-auburn body. Color-wise it is right on the line between reds and browns.

Smell – Nose displays a wonderful mix of red fruit from the wine barrels, fruity Brett, and a touch of farmyard. I also get a toasty-cereal edge that may need a little more time to drop out. Nothing off-putting about it, lots to really like.

Taste – Bright lactic acidity leads, has a sharp/quick edge that makes me think malic, SweeTarts(without the sweet). Very much an “American” oud bruin, minimal acidity compared to all of the Belgian versions of the style. The finish is wine-like, rounded oak spice, and plums. I don’t get the cereal, “Cheerios” finish, so maybe that aroma is just the toasted oak or Vienna/Munich malts? Luckily I also don’t detect any acetic acid or ethyl acetate (praise be to San Diego’s mild weather!).

Mouthfeel – Not too thin or tannic, despite the low FG and more than a year in 100% first-use red wine barrels. The firm carbonation works with the beer because it isn’t roasty.

Drinkability & Notes – Trying to be as objective as I can, I’d put Empty Hats in the same league with my favorite widely released American sour red/browns: Bruery Oude Tart and New Belgium La Folie. It has plenty of bold flavors (malt, bugs, and barrel), but enough balance for the acidity to retain good drinkability. I’m interested to see how it does with another six months in the bottle, more Brett, less cereal?

I’d really like to thank head brewer Matt Walsh, and resident brewer and microbe guy Andrew Schwartz who did the work of turning my ideas and bugs into an actually physical bottle of beer (not to mention the palates of Derek, Jacob et al.). Great team effort!

As of today Empty Hats is sitting at a 4.2 on BA, and 4.3 on Untapped (#7 in the style, sitting right between De Dolle Oerbier Special Reserva 2009 and 2010, talk about a compliment). Not bad for a first effort!

Conan’s Island Tasting

Fresher is not always better for beer as it is for milk. That is even the case for styles that fall apart relatively quickly, like the hoppy 5% ABV American wheat beer I'm drinking tonight. Not to suggest that this fourth homebrewed version of Fortunate Islands would benefit from months of aging, but four to five weeks from brewing to drinking doesn’t hurt. I kegged it two weeks after brewing, the day before the March DC Homebrewers meeting. I decided to bring two plastic bottles I shake-carbed them with my Carbonator cap. With only 24 hours on the keg hops the flavors and aromatics were still discordant and raw. It had a strongly resinous bitterness, like chewing on hop cones or orange peel. It was a unique flavor and not entirely unpleasant, but it didn't exactly make for a session-able beer.

Two weeks of sitting in the keg later, the flavors are now hitting their stride. Hopefully the bright hoppy aromatics hang around for another six weeks or so (and by then there shouldn’t be much left).

Conan’s Island (Fortunate Islands #4)

Appearance – The clarity of this golden beer reflects every bit of the 53% wheat malt. Even after 18 days of cold conditioning it isn't nearly as clear as the original. Great sticky lacing from the tight white head.

Smell – Someone at the DCHB meeting accurately described bergamot (Earl Grey tea) in the aroma right after kegging. The citrus has mellowed since, but it is still vibrant and a bit pithy. Tropical fruit is hiding in the back. I find that dry hopping late in fermentation brings out more of the varietal character of the hops (which I prefer), and less "nose in the hop bag." Overall the aroma is a similar, but more intense version of what I get from the Modern Times brewed version. Sadly not much of the stone-fruit peachiness I detected from the ECY culture, although that could come down to other factors.

Taste – Resiny bitterness, may have dialed it up too much. I enjoy it, but it has considerably more IBUs than the original. The hop flavor is nicely saturated with orange, lemon, and mango from the nose, along with some catty-Citra-ness. As it warms the faintest hint of caramel maltiness comes out in the finish.

Mouthfeel – More body than the original, not quite as crisp. Seems right for early spring, but summertime would call for a bit drier. Medium carbonation lifts the aromas and helps cut the body.

Drinkability & Notes – As you may have noticed this has become my favorite sort of beer, hop profile of the Double IPA, alcohol of a pale ale! Happy with the way this batch turned out, sort of Fortunate Islands turned up to 11. It feels and tastes more substantial even though the alcohol is similar. At some point I need to try out these Conan isolates are without loads of hops.

Fortunate Islands - Homebrewed Yeast Variant

While I was working in San Diego last summer, my favorite beer in Modern Times' core-lineup turned out to be Fortunate Islands: under 5% ABV, bright, citrusy/tropical hops, quenching, everything I want in a warm-weather beer. Luckily it seems like plenty of beer nerds agree as it’s currently sitting at a solid #3 (of 1,121) on BeerAdvocate’s list of most popular American Pale Wheat Ales (slowly gaining on the two fantastic beers ahead of it: 3 Floyds Gumballhead and Lagunitas Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’). Granted all three have hopping rates well above where the style was founded (i.e., clean fermented "hefeweizens" from breweries like Widmer, and Pyramid), but I’d rather brew beers “to flavor” rather than “to style.”

To avoid demanding that Jacob ship me a case of Fortunate Islands can each month, I decided it would be easier to simply “homebrew” my own version of the recipe that I helped develop. I'm incapable of brewing a batch without a twist though, so I took advantage of the opportunity to try out The Yeast Bay’s Vermont Ale strain (their version of Conan) – the Modern Times original is brewed with Cal Ale. I'm hoping for a strain with higher attenuation than the East Coast Yeast isolate (North East Ale), but with the same great burst of peachy-fruity-estery complexity that I got in Simcoe & Sons.

As the most hyped hops become more competitive to obtain (Citra and Amarillo in this case), using a more characterful yeast strain to bolster subdued/available hops will be a valuable route to investigate. Many of the compounds found in hops are also present in other herbs and spices, so that’s another approach to consider. Luckily there are all sorts of exciting new hop varieties that will be coming out each year as breeders rush to catch-up with brewer's new found interested in unique aroma hops. Hopefully that push combined with the ramp-up in acreage relieves some pressure from other varieties.

I kept the malts and hops identical to the original recipe, with only a few adjustments to timing and amounts for my system. Rather than go through the effort of setting up the hop-back and plate chiller, I staggered my flame-out hop additions. Before adding the second dose, I allowed the wort to naturally cool for 15 minutes to preserve some of the heat-sensitive essential oils that are usually driven off with a standard hop-stand. Anytime you see one of my recipe with hop-back additions, a similar adjustment is an option.

My kitchen (and as a result my water filter) has been out of commission since early January for major remodeling. I needed to buy bottled water, which provided a good excuse to experiment with a water treatment schema advocate by Gordon Strong in his book: Brewing Better Beer. I used 90% distilled water and relatively small mineral additions. The idea is that minimal buffering capacity (carbonate) makes lowering the pH much easier. It also reduces variation by allowing you to start at the exact same place every batch (where tap water varies with the seasonal sourcing). I’ll be interested to see how the character of the finished beer differs from the higher mineral levels I usually employ.

This batch was kegged a week ago, so expect tasting notes sooner than later. Hopefully now that my work on the book is completely finished, as are the classes I taught through LivingSocial, I’ll get back into a more frequent posting rhythm! Although I’ve got another BYO article due in a few weeks (I’ve already submitted one on solera blending sour beers, plus a Zymurgy article on the influence of the mash on sour beers). Expect some trimmings from the book to make it to the blog as we ramp-up for the mid-June release of American Sour Beers!

Fortunate Islands #4

Recipe Specifics
-------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.38
Anticipated OG: 1.051
Anticipated SRM: 5.5
Anticipated IBU: 44.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 65 Minutes

Grain
------
53.0% - 5.50 lbs. White Wheat Malt
38.6% -  4.00 lbs. American Pale Malt
7.2% - 0.75 lbs. Belgian CaraVienna
1.2% - 0.13 lbs. Acidulated Malt

Hops
------
1.00 oz. Horizon (Pellet, 10.00%AA) @ 60 min.
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ 0 min.
1.50 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ -15 min.
0.75 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ -15 min.
1.63 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ Dry Hop
0.88 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ Dry Hop
1.50 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ Keg Hop
0.75 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 10.00%AA) @ Keg Hop

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
-------
The Yeast Bay Vermont Ale

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: San Diego, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
-----------------
Sacch 45 min @ 149F
Sacch II 15 min @ 161F

Notes
-------
2/28/14 Made a 1 L stir-plate starter with Yeast Bay Vermont Ale.

Brewed 3/1/14

Strike water - 3.5 gallons distilled .5 gallons spring, 2.5 g gypsum, 1 g CaCl

Mash had a pH of 5.3 at room temperature.

Batch sparge water the same blend, minus the minerals. Collected 7 gallons of 1.044 runnings. Added a quart of reserved sparge water to dilute.

1.5 g of CaCl and 2 g of gypsum added to the boil.

Added hops right at flameout, then the second 15 min later with the temperature down to 192F. Waited 15 min before starting the immersion chiller. Chilled to 64 F, pitched entire starter, shook to aerate, and left at 67 F to ferment. Post boil pH, 5.1 at room temperature.

Fermenting after 12 hours, moved downstairs where the temperature is about 62F at that point.

24 hours later, fermentation already seemed to be slowing, so I moved the fermentor to 67F ambient. Moved next to the radiator the next day, hopefully a degree or two warmer.

3/4/14 Added the first half of the dry hops, loose, as fermentation finished up.

3/15/14 Kegged with the keg hops, bagged. Put onto gas in the kegerator. Turned out only down to 1.016, so similar to the ECY strain. I probably should have warmed it up more near the end of fermentation as suggested.

4/3/14 Tasting notes. Turned out to be a very good beer, but the yeast didn't add the huge peachy-stone fruit aroma I was hoping for. The alternate water treatment regimen didn't change the character of the beer appreciably to my tastes.

Sour Experiment #1 - Two Week Sour

One of the most annoying (and intimidating) aspects of brewing sour beers is how long they take to ferment. Sure there are shortcuts, like sour mashing, but rarely do the results approach the nuances of long-aged mixed-fermentation beers. One of the last things I did while I was at Modern Times in August was to taste the four versions of a beer I brewed with an experimental souring technique two weeks earlier.

Souring a beer before the alcoholic fermentation is a good idea, but a sour mash presents three major issues:

1. After souring the mash, it can be difficult to separate the wort from the spent grain.

2. Exposure to air during souring can lead to the growth of unwanted aerobic microbes that produce off-flavors.

3. Allowing the pH to drop too low can cause fermentation issues for most ale yeasts.

To remedy problem #1, I dipped into my bag of tricks and pulled out the sour worting technique I used a few years ago. After a single-infusion mash, I collected the reddish wort and heated it in the kettle to near boiling to ensure any microbes from the grain were dead. With this method the wort is drained with a standard temperature and pH, so there are no issues lautering as usual.

To address problem #2, I ran the wort through the plate chiller (aiming for 115F), and into four plastic carboys, each of which had been flushed with carbon dioxide (back at home I miss the plumbed CO2 lines at the brewery). Flushed kegs would work equally well.

To achieve the acidity, I pitched one carboy each with a starter of Wyeast Lactobacillus, a starter made from the microbes living on pale malt, a starter from the microbes living on acid malt, and a small hop-sock of crushed acid malt. For the grain starters I followed a similar protocol to the one used for that previous sour worting batch. My goal was to determine which of these microbial sources produced the best results.

To maintain the temperature in Lactobacillus’s ideal range, I placed each carboy in one of the pilot system’s vessels, filled with 120F water. At the start and end of each day for three days I removed the carboys, reheated the water, and replaced them. I also insulated the rig with blankets to help maintain temperature. Usually they'd be down to about 100F by the time I reheated. I didn’t have room for the fourth (pale malt starter) so I left it under the blanket.

The results were surprising. After three days, the least sour of the bunch was the Wyeast Lacto, clean and pleasantly tart. The two grain-starters were next (despite the temperature difference), they were still clean, but a bit more lactic. The grain bag was the most acidic, but also had a slightly stranger aroma that was more in line with what I expect from a sour mash but luckily not as cheesy or intense. With acid production complete (pH 3.4-3.5), I boiled each in turn with a small dose of hops and yeast nutrient. During each boil I cleaned and sanitized the fermentor, refilling it with 68F wort post-boil.

To resolve problem #3, rather than fermenting with pH sensitive Saccharomyces, I opted for a 100% Brett fermentation with the BSI Brett Drie we had on hand for production brews of Neverwhere, Roraima, and Southern Lands. Brett works quickly at a pH as low as 3, and produces interesting flavors too.

My last day working in San Diego I racked each of them to a Corny keg, and shook in carbonation. The pale malt starter and the steeped acid malt were my favorites. Each had a nice acidity with a pleasant Brett character. I had skipped boiling the Wyeast Lacto portion and the result was a subtle raw graininess similar to what I taste in my no-boil Berliner weisses. The acid malt starter had an unpleasant aroma not present before the Brett fermentation, just sort of rough. With that interesting range of characters, we decided to blend the three we liked to make 15 gallons of beer to serve at the Tasting Room Grand Opening.

Reviews were mostly positive on Untappd, "I'm not one for sour beets, but this is fantastic! Tickles the taste buds in the back of your mouth in just the right way." - Stephanie P. "Had it 3 times so far might get another" - Heather H. Both included pictures of the finished beer as well, something I never got to see for myself!

I had a beer at GABF from TRiNiTY Brewing (7 Day Sour) that used a similar technique, but fermented with a mixture of Brett strains post-kettle-souring. The result was terrifically funky, and brightly acidic. I think I’ll have to try something similar, integrating a strain like Brett Drie/Trois which ferments quickly, with others that produce more classic Brett aromatics.

Modern Times Pilot System Brew Day

I thought it would be fun to walk everyone through a typical batch on the small Modern Times system (if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you probably saw a lot of this already). During my two months working at the brewery, I brewed on the ~23.5 gallon pilot system about 15 times. Some of those batches were true recipe pilots intended for eventual scaling, while others were experiments, or food for our souring microbes.

This will probably be a bit more practical than the production batch brew day walk through! I know there are homebrewers out there with systems that are similar to this one, but there are a few neat things we are able to do at a brewery that no one has at home. It is much more advanced than my usual rig. The stand was built by a local homebrewer (John McKay), and he outfitted it primarily with components from Blichmann Engineering. He's built several similar systems, including one that Coronado Brewing uses for their pilot batches.

The mill is the same one I use at home, a drill powered Barley Crusher. It would certainly be nice to have a mounted and motorized mill, but this one gets the job done. Base malt is usually easy to come by, but I did my best to avoid taking sacks of malt that were earmarked for an upcoming production batch. If we had a specialty malt on hand for I'd take a few pounds, but for anything else a trip to the local homebrewing store (Home Brew Mart) was required.

The system came with a propane regulator and burners, but my first job was to switch it over to natural gas. Natural gas is much less expensive and doesn't run out or lose pressure like propane. The pressure is lower though, so it requires a larger diameter hose to produce the same amount of heat. After getting accustomed to how easy it was to deal with, I'll certainly be switching my homebrew system to natural gas when I get around to overhauling it.

 

Here is the empty 30 gallon mash tun with false bottom. Rather than the manifold I use, this is piece that separates the wort from the spent grain. Seemed very effective, no stuck sparges, even when using a high percentage of oats or wheat. Brewhouse efficiencies hover between 75-80%, pretty good considering how hoppy many of the beers we brew are.

Rather than starting with cold tap water and using the burner to heat it to the strike temperature, we can simply steal hot water from the brewery's hot liquor tank. It can be heated slightly more, or mixed with cold water as needed to achieve the target temperature (about 10 F above the intended mash temperature, with a 1.3 qrts/lb ratio). The large diameter hose helps speed things up too.

After mashing in, we insert a temperature probe into the thermowell and set the associated controller to the target mash temperature. When the temperature falls below the set point, the controller opens a valve that allows gas to flow to the burner (ignited by the pilot light). The march pump circulates the wort continuously from under the false bottom and back into the top to prevent the wort from scorching.

A second temperature probe measures the temperature of the wort flowing out from under the false bottom. The goal is to run the pump fast enough that this temperature closely matches that of the mash itself. The pump on the right is only for water, while the one on the left is for wort.

After a 45 minute rest (the wort has been recirculating this whole time, so there is no need for additional time spent vorlaufing), it is time to sparge. A few minutes before the rest is complete, the brewer fills the pilot's HLT with hot water from the brewery's HLT. The system is equipped with an AutoSparge, which operates with a float (similar to a toilet's tank). Rather than rely on it, I tended to match the flow in from the HLT with the flow out to the kettle, using the AutoSparge as a safety in case I got distracted and wandered off.

Here is the control panel with its two Love controllers and a bunch of switches (from top to bottom they control the main power, temperature readouts, gas valves, and pumps). While it was nice to have all this automation, it also makes life more complicated when something stops working. For my last couple brews the controller responsible for the mash tun stopped reading correctly, meaning I had no way to turn that burner on. Luckily with 20 gallon batches, you don't lose more than a couple degrees over the duration of the mash rest. The issue may have been the probe, with all the heat and water the risk of damage to them seems substantial.

Empty boil kettle with HopBlocker. No pouring the wort through a sieve like I do at home, this inverted metal cup prevents most of the hops (even pellets) from being transferred out of the kettle after the boil.

Here's a rolling boil with some good hot break. At most we aim for 23.5 gallons post-boil, which means starting with about 26 gallons (accounting for evaporation, and losses to trub). Hops came either from the commercial stock, homebrew odds-and-ends, samples, or were specifically purchased if we needed something we didn't have on hand. After the boil ends, we manually whirlpool the wort, and then allow it to settle for 20 minutes before running off.

 

Knocking out wort into one of the four insulated 27 gallon More Beer conical fermentor. Impossible to see in the photo, but chilling water comes through a pipe connected to the cold liquor tank, which always has water held in the high 40s F. The CLT pump really shoots water out through a 1/2" opening, so I needed to pin the hose carrying the spent water to prevent it from whipping around. Makes knocking out 20+ gallons of wort quick, usually15-20 minutes. There is a slot to insert one of the probes to monitor the temperature of the wort as it exits the chiller.

When it is available, we take a few cups of dense yeast slurry from one of the yeast brinks, or big fermentors. Barring that, we'll either make a starter, or when pressed for time... buy a whole bunch of White Labs vials.

The cold boxes are set to around 40 F to store kegged beer, which is too cold for fermentations. The solution was to attach a heat bands to each fermentor, then cover in adhesive-backed foam insulation. A Ranco temperature controller probe inserted through a thermowell turns the heat on when the temperature falls too low. We were actually having the opposite problem when I left, with a nearly full fermentor, and booming fermentation, the insulation was actually too effective, trapping so much heat that the temperature would climb into the mid-70 F. A cooler knock-out may be the solution, setting the temperature in the low 60s F initially, allowing it to climb to the high 60s F on its own before ramping up the setting on the temperature controller to hold it there.

I also learned the valuable lesson about the heat bands. The first batch fermented set to medium, which was enough heat to cook the krausen onto the inside of the conical. That was not a fun hour of scrubbing.

After emptying and scrubbing out the boil kettle and mash tun, we flush the plate chiller with a hose, and then run hot water plus caustic through it. While that was running for 15 minutes, there is just enough time to clean the floors (floor drains are another big help). On good days I went from milling grain to completely cleaned up in about five hours, not too bad for quadruple the volume I brew at home!

 

After fermentation is complete, we turn off the heat wrap and allow the beer to crash cool. When it is ready to keg, we attach a hose to the racking arm, rotate it up, and push with a couple PSI of carbon dioxide pumped in through a bayonet affixed to the top of the conical. Makes it easy to transfer wort, no pump to prime, and less exposure to potentially damaging oxygen. Then it's as easy as shake carbing and attaching the liquid out to one of the taps in the tasting room!

 

Working at a Startup Craft Brewery

I'm back from my summer in San Diego, two months working for Modern Times. Came back to my old desk and 6,900 emails earlier today at my real job. For the last few weeks in California I was having so much fun that I stopped posting on the blog, sorry about that. While I was out there I detailed a brew day on the brewery's "main" system. So to follow up on that, I thought I'd give an overview of what day-to-day life is like at a startup craft brewery when you aren't brewing. I think many homebrewers don't have a clear image of what goes into working at a new craft brewery.

Cleaning
A few years ago a brewer, although I can't remember who, told me that far from being a glamorous job, brewers are glorified janitors. After working at a brewery, I wouldn't dispute that characterization. There is of course cleaning the mash tun, fermentors, kegs (using a three keg washer), the random mess that comes from boxes constantly arriving (full of stuff from McMaster-Carr, brewery schwag, hops, microbes etc.), not to mention the floors. Sure there are days when the brewers get announced and a round of applause when they walk into Toronado, but that isn't most days.

We used six different products/methods in various combinations to clean and sanitize the brewing equipment:

Caustic (Shear 250) - Strongly base (the opposite of acid). Caustic is probably the most dangerous thing in a brewery to human skin (as anyone who has seen Fight Club is likely aware). This makes sense as organic compounds (like yeast residue) are the prime target of caustic. If you do get caustic on your skin, quick action and rinsing with something acidic (like beer) are essential. Its effectiveness increases as the water temperature rises, to a point (around 140 F was what Alex suggested). The caustic laced (2-4%) hot water is run in a CIP (clean in place) loop that sprays the kettle, mash tun, or fermentor. When cleaning is complete on one vessel, the caustic can be pumped over to another and reused. After rinsing with hot water, the pH of the tail-end of the final rinse is checked to ensure it is equal to that of tap water, ensuring that all traces of caustic have been removed (caustic tends to float).

Oxidizer (SB Brewery Cleaner) - Similar to the PBW (or OxiClean Free) that many homebrewers use. An oxidizer helps to boost the action of caustic, although it could be used on its own. Used where there are especially nasty deposits that even caustic would have trouble removing without assistance.

Phosphoric/Nitric Acid (Acid #14) - Diluted with cold water, this acid blend helps to remove inorganic calcium oxalate, commonly called beerstone. The low pH shines the stainless steel while removing places for unwanted microbes to hide. When dumping spent chemicals it is important to remember that bleach plus acid releases chlorine gas (which killed many people during the trench warfare of the first World War).

Peracetic Acid - The no-rinse sanitizer of choice for fermentors at Modern Times. It takes a surprisingly small amount mixed with cold water to effective kill microbes. When exposed to water or the atmosphere, peracetic acid breaks down into acetic acid (aka vinegar). Luckily such a small amount is not a concern for the flavor of the beer. Like homebrewing, sanitizer is not used on surfaces that contact wort prior to chilling. Surfaces that touch boiling or near-boiling wort are not a contamination risk. Remember to always dump any sanitizer that might be trapped in the racking arm of a fermentor before pumping the beer or yeast in. Unlike homebrew-sized fermentors, you can't really look into the sanitized conical or shake it to ensure it is empty.

Iodophor - I tended to use this for Corny kegs, carboys, and accessories on the Pilot system. It is relatively skin safe, so I tended to use it anytime I'd have to touch the sanitizer. It was also kept in spray bottles to sanitize sample ports, gaskets, clamps, and the tops of filled Sanke kegs.

Heat - As I mentioned in the brew-day post, water from the hot liquor tank is often used to pasteurize hoses and smaller vessels (e.g., yeast brink). Heat has the benefit of killing microbes down in small cracks and crevices where it is impossible to guarantee sanitizer would reach.

What You'll Do

If you are coming onto an established brewery that does several brews a day (our head brewer was overseeing more than 40 batches a week when he left Lost Coast), your experience of day-to-day life will be quite different from mine. When I left, there were only a couple big batches brewed each week. With sales steadily growing, the tasting room now open, and canning starting in the next couple weeks, brewing will become more frequent.

In addition to cleaning, most of my days were spent brewing 20 gallon batches on the pilot system (I'll walk you though one of those next week), helping to build out and paint the brewery, getting microbes started for the barrel program (30 wine barrels are arriving shortly), writing, organizing, and other miscellaneous projects. Luckily I was spared the sales work that the other brewers are doing, visiting local bars to give samples, working with our sales reps, and working the tasting room. The brewers also spend time monitoring fermentations, carbonating beers, filling out kegs, working on paperwork for taxes, ordering ingredients/equipment etc. Drinking and evaluating our beers was an important part of all our jobs, but not huge time-wise.

Gear

Just like any job, brewers have a set of gear that makes their job safer and more comfortable. There is no perfect wardrobe for every brewer, but here is what worked for me:

Boots - The single most essential item for any brewer. Everyone has their own tastes, but footwear need to be water- and chemical-proof at a minimum. You need protection from the near boiling liquids and caustic/acid that flow (sometimes unexpectedly) across the floor. Mine are 6" laceups, which served me well (and quite reasonable at about $30). Alex preferred tall slip-on rubber boots, while Matt wore low slip-on leather boots (when he wasn't walking around in flip-flops, the California brewer look as he called it).

Socks - Up through college I wore tube socks. I never really liked them (they tended to end up bunched around my ankles), but it's what my mother bought and I didn't realize there were options. Since then I've become a convert to shorter socks. Turns out they are an unsurprisingly poor pairing with over-the-ankle boots. After a couple days I bought socks tall enough to prevent the boots from rubbing against my calves. You'll be standing and walking around a lot, so the more comfortable your feet are, the better.

Pants - There are different schools of thought on pants, I wore shorts on days I wasn't going to be dealing with heavy-duty cleaning, but most days called for jeans/dungarees. Essentially whatever you're comfortable in accepting that you might bump against a hot piece of metal, or receive a brief spray of caustic...

Gloves - The brewery has a couple pairs of chemical resistant gloves floating around for measuring out the dangerous cleaning products. You need a combination of safety and dexterity, gloves aren't much help if they protect your skin, but prevent you from moving dangerous liquids carefully. Some brewers also have more maneuverable gloves to make handling scalding hot hoses easier.

Safety Glasses - Always good to have some eye protection when working with dangerous chemicals. It only takes a single drop to the eye to cause serious problems (luckily the emergency eyewash station hasn't needed to be deployed yet).

T-shirts - As a brewer you are generally required to wear t-shirts from the brewery, or breweries you've previously worked at, bars where your beer is served, or obscure industry-specific suppliers. Luckily you acquire these for free at a relatively brisk pace. Really dress-code depends on the place and who you interact with.

I learned a lot this summer thanks to Matt, Alex, and Derek. I really appreciate the time they took to answer my questions, and help me when I had no idea what I was doing (aka most of the time). Hopefully some information on sours and Brett flowed the other way as well. I'll be writing another, more philosophical post here about what I learned, and probably some sort of wrap-up post for the Modern Times blog about what I accomplished.

Modern Times Sour Beer Update

With only three weeks to go before I leave San Diego, we're really kicking the sour beer program into first gear. I've got 15 cultures growing, and another 20 waiting in he cold box. The newest delivery was from Jeff of Bootleg Biology. While some of his cultures are from the usual place (bottle dregs) he also sent microbes he isolated from kombucha, wild honey, and his backyard in Arlington, Virginia. They should add some nice biodiversity to our microbial holdings.

We're talking to a couple wineries and brokers about buying barrels, but haven't actually purchased any yet (that should be coming shortly). Ideally we'd prefer the place to be within driving distance so we could go, inspect the barrels, and drive back with them. Buying only as many as we need at a time for only one batch. We'll see if that happens. We've also got barrel racks on order (pretty reasonable at $36 each, including shipping).

Over on the Modern Times blog I have a post about the four initial base beers we'll be brewing, including complete recipes for each (although the Halltertau hops are just a placeholder for whatever we end up using). The post includes some basic thoughts on the sorts of strains we'll pitch into each, and how we might go about flavoring them once they are soured. Luckily getting all my hard work out of the way this trip, can't wait for subsequent trips to San Diego that will focus on the fun stuff: blending and adding fruit etc.

While the barrel-aged beers won't be ready for at least a year, we're considering a few stainless fermented sours that should be ready sooner. I have a couple cultures growing from the microbes living on malt (Lactobacillus mostly). These will go into a "quick" sour ala my sour-worted brown. We'll split the 20 gallon test batch of reddish wort to see which culture produces the best results (including a Wyeast Lactobacillus as the control). When the target sourness is reached, as determined by tasting and pH readings, we'll use heat to kill the bacteria before doing a 100% Brett fermentation. Should produce an interesting, tart, complex beer in not much more than a month.

How to Brew on a 30 bbl Premier Stainless Brewhouse

Three years ago I did a post on my basic homebrewing process. Since then it has been of the most popular pages on the blog. Several people have told me that it really helped them to see an example of a complete process, rather than reading a book that can be overwhelming with several options for each step.

In a similar vein, I thought I'd walk through a brew day at Modern Times. This won't be enough specificity for you to brew a batch on our Premier Stainless Systems 30 bbl brewhouse, but hopefully it is enough to give you a flavor of what a batch on a two vessel craft system is like. This particular batch was the third of Lomaland saison.

Alex "Captain Kunindra" Tweet walked me through the first half of the brew, before our head brewer Matt Walsh arrived to finish things up. Ironically Alex's first all grain batch a few years ago was a recipe posted on my blog (shortly before he swept the Ballast Point competition that earned him his nickname). Matt has been a brewer for years, starting at Alesmith before stints as head brewer at Karl Strauss, Speakeasy, and most recently Lost Coast.

Excuse the photo quality, I brought along my DSLR, but left the memory card in my computer. As a result I had to shoot with my phone.

This big red box is our hot liquor tank (HLT). Purchased secondhand, it is automatically controlled to keep a supply of hot water ready to use for the mash, sparge, and cleaning.

We waited until the water in the HLT reached 170 F before mashing in because while water is being sent to the brewhouse, the HLT stops heating.

The night before Alex milled in nearly all of the malt (pale, Pilsner, and acid) followed by the flaked wheat and corn through the trap door in front of the mill. The grist is conveyed by an auger to the hopper in the center of the picture.

Here is the control board for the mash tun, there is a similar one for the boil kettle, and another for the fermentors. At the moment nothing has been switched on.

Here is the mash tun. The "rakes" on the right side are raised or lowered manually. They stir the mash, and are used to clean out the mash tun. Running the rakes down with the mash tun full of spent grain can cause serious damage.

Unlike homebrewing where the mash water is heated in its entirety to a specific temperature, here the water from the HLT is cut with cold water (via the black-handled valve) to reach the desired temperature as indicated by the thermometer at the top.

To get hot water to the brewhouse we hit the HLT to Brewhouse button. This stops additional water from being added to the HLT or heating.

The clean in place (CIP) is opened so that the hot water is sprayed over the interior of the mash tun to pre-heat it to the target mash temperature.

The valves below the mash tun are opened to allow this pre-heating water to drain. The door used to empty the spent grain is also cracked to allow the hot water to drain.

Here you can see the hot water spray on the manway of the mash tun.

The temperature slowly rises over about 15 minutes.

The hot water drains.

He dials in the speed of the pump that delivers water to the mash tun. The auger that carries the grain operates at a fixed speed, so we have to adjust the water delivery to reach the desired mash ratio. A slow flow rate can also cause the grist to jam up as it mixes with the water. The same readout also provides the total amount of water added.

And closes the valves, to begin trapping water in the mash tun.

About 100 gallons of water is allowed to enter the mash tun without any grain. This lays a foundation so that grain is not forced down onto the false bottom that serves to separate husks from wort during lautering.

Alex continues to dial in the temperature to reach the target, about 11 F above the mash temperature (149 F).

Our flow rate (gallons per minute).

 Right on target (after a minute or two of fiddling).

The rakes are turned on to stir the mash.

Once the temperature is on target, and the foundation water has been laid, the auger is switched on to deliver the crushed grain.

The door is slid out to allow the grain to mix with the hot water as it enters the mash tun.

He fiddled with the cold water to get the temperature just right as is seemed to be coming in a degree or two high.

When the grain is almost drained from the hopper, Alex ground a final bag of pale malt to ensure all of the specialty malts were "chased" out. This is especially important when brewing a darker beer, as it doesn't take much dark malt trapped in an auger to affect the color and flavor of the following beer.

Crushed grain passing out of the storage hopper and into the auger that carries it to the mash tun.

The mash tun as it fills with hot water and grain.

When all of the grain is in the mash tun, we continue to run the water until we hit the target volume.

The hop extract used for bittering is put onto the boil kettle in advance so it warm up and liquefies (it is very thick and syrupy right out of the cold box).

 

The valves are opened to allow wort to flow via gravity from under the plates of the false bottom and into the grant.

More valves are manipulated to allow wort to be pumped from the grant back into the top of the mash tun, preparing to vorlauf.

After the 20 minute mash rest, here is what the wort looks like.

The mash tun has two sight glasses to allow us to gauge how the wort is flowing through the grain bed. The one on the left shows the pressure above the plates, and the one on the right is below (it would much easier to see with a stout). If the one on the right is just a few inches below the one on the left, then things are running smoothly. In the difference is greater, then the wort isn't flowing well and you may be in for a stuck vorlauf/sparge.

The valves and pump speed are adjusted so that the wort flows into the grant at the same rate it is pumped out. This is the easiest time to get the flows equal so it does not need to be adjusted later.

After 20 minutes of vorlaufing the wort is flowing much clearer.

 

Here is the empty boil kettle. The hole at the bottom is for cleaning, wort headed to the chiller will exit the hole at 1 o'clock.

He moves the valves to pump the wort from the grant to the kettle instead of back into the mash tun.

He takes the gravity of the first runnings.

Our final mash temp is only .4 F below our target. It is easy to over-correct. Initially the temperature appeared low, then high. Trusting the water temperature calculations are key, any adjustments need to be slow and subtle.

As enough wort flows into the boil kettle to cover the bottom we turn on the kettle's bottom steam jacket. Unlike many smaller breweries (and 99.99% of homebrewers), steam from a boiler heats the kettle rather than a direct flame or electric element

When the wort drops to level of the grain bed, we begin to sparge with 170 F water. The goal is the keep the sparge water flowing at a rate the keeps it just an inch or so above the grain bed.

As the sparge continues, and the kettle fills, we turn on the other jackets to speed the heating.

When the sparge is complete (signaled not by volume, but by the runnings reaching 2P, 1.008), the spent grain is allowed to drain. When it is reasonably dry, a hopper is positioned under the door.

The door is opened and the spent grain is allowed to spill out (and then encouraged to do so with the rakes).

Once the wort reaches a rolling boil we pull a sample to test the gravity.

We were slightly under volume, but over-gravity, so we added one barrel of hot water. Then a few pumps of foam control followed by 30 IBUs of hop extract (the tins are rinsed to get every drop of extract out).

With 20 minutes left in the boil yeast nutrient and Whirlfloc are added.

A solid rolling boil.

After 60 minutes the steam jackets are turned off and 22 lbs of Saaz hop pellets are added.

There is no hanging out while we're brewing, any downtime (mash rest, sparge, boil etc.) are taken up by other chores like kegging.

After a five minute whirlpool and 20 minutes of settling, the wort is still at 210 F. This is the reason we were getting significantly more bitterness from our recipes on the big system than we ever did in test batches.

The valves are moved, and the connections are made to send wort to the sanitized fermentor.

With the wort ready to run off the oxygen in turned on to be shot into the wort in-line after chilling.

 

The water from the cold liquor tank (which is chilled to around 40 F) is running full blast to the plate chiller, so the pump speed for the wort is adjusted to achieve the target pitching temperature of 75F.

The oxygenated wort flowing through a sight-glass.

A sample of the wort, just a few tenths above our target OG of 12P.

With the fermentor filled, the line is pasteurized with water from the HLT (which was mostly refilled with "waste" water sent there from the heat exchanger) to prepare it to pitch the yeast.

The 100 L of yeast slurry harvested from Lomaland batch #2 is forced into the fermentor using CO2 pressure.

The now empty 100 L keg is then flushed with hot water to remove any residue.

A local farmer arrived to pick up the spent grain for animal feed.

The fermentor control board, showing we are a single degree under our target for fermentor #3.

Not too bad for six hours of work, especially because most of my time consisted of snapping photos while Alex and Matt did the actual work. When everything runs right brewing on a system like this is less physically taxing than brewing on a homebrew system (or it will be once we get a grain silo). Water and grain are conveyed by pumps and motors, but it's more mentally taxing. If things go wrong (valves in the wrong position, mechanical failure, stuck sparge...) it is a much bigger challenge to deal with. Not to mention the pressure that if you you ruin a batch it isn't $20 and a wasted Saturday, but thousands of dollars or the reputation of your brand.

Hopefully this gave you a taste of "the dream." I'll have a walk through of a day on the pilot system for anyone interested in a few weeks.