Inventing Cocktails Inspired by Craft Beer

As someone with a "beer-centric" palate, it is often difficult for me to find cocktails that I enjoy. When I go to a cocktail bar and order something that sounds interesting, the flavors are often overwhelmingly concentrated, and the balance tends to be either super-sweet or super-boozy. The 20-30+% ABV of most cocktails also makes them rough to drink at the same rate you would a beer...

So, I thought it would be interesting to invent a few cocktails inspired by the balance and flavors of some of my favorite beer styles. If you want to drink something that tastes exactly like a beer… drink a beer! These cocktails are “inspired” by the flavors in the style and the overall balance of the style in terms of alcohol-bitterness-sweetness, they aren’t meant to be “ringers” for drinking a given beer. I'm also trying to avoid "uncommon" ingredients... although some of these may take a little searching at a specialty grocery/liquor store or online.

I’m not an experienced bartender or mixologist, if you try one of these let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!

Ramos Gin Fizz... Hazy IPA

Gin and Tonic is my standard cocktail order because it isn't too strong or too sweet, and the bitter/herbal notes are something I appreciate. I also find Ramos GIn Fizz to be a fun one, with the added body of an egg white and cream, and more citrus from lemon juice and orange blossom water. In this "Hazy IPA" inspired riff, I swapped out the tonic for aromatic hop water. To replace the malt sweetness and enhance the juicy flavors from the hops I added orange juice. To keep it from being too one-note orange, I added New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which contains high concentrations of many of the aromatics produced by Thiolized yeast and found in New Zealand hops. An egg white helps to add haze, foam, and body.

Recipe

In a shaker, combine:

1.5 oz Bombay Dry Gin

1.25 oz Orange Juice

1.25 oz Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc

1 Egg White

Dry shake 10 seconds

Pour into a glass, then top-up with:

6 oz Hop Water

6.7 % ABV

Ingredient Notes: The Hop Water you choose is up to you. I've enjoyed the ones from breweries as well as places like Hoplark. You can also make your own with carbonated water and some hop terpenes (I like the ones from Abstrax). Use pasteurized egg white if you are worried about the risk of salmonella. If you don't like orange, try mango or another juice that appeals to you. 

Tasting Notes

Smell - Winey tropical-citrus. Slight herbal from the hops and gin. Doesn't read obviously juniper.

Appearance - Very pale, very hazy. Great sticky head.

Taste - Pleasantly sweet. Good balance of the juice and wine, without either dominating. The gin provides some depth, but again not overtly gin-y. The hop water brings herbal complexity without dominating the other ingredients with "hops."

Mouthfeel - Medium-light body, light carbonation.

Drinkability - Light and bright, citrusy.

Changes for Next Time - Certainly could add a few drops of hop terpenes if you want to send it more hoppy. Some hopped bitters could be a nice addition if you like a little more bitterness.

The Charleston... Rye Barrel English Barleywine

Thanks to Audrey, I've really come to enjoy fortified wines like Port, Sherry, and especially Madeira. It's traditionally made by halting fermentation with an addition of brandy to preserve the sweetness of the wine, then aged at elevated temperatures. The result is a like a concentrated barrel-aged English barleywine, woody, with dried fruit, and pleasant oxidative notes. I added Rye Whiskey to elevate the vanilla notes. Malta is essentially unfermented wort, but tends to have big caramel and malt extract notes from pasteurization. It helps by lowering the alcohol without thinning the cocktail, adding a little carbonation. 

Recipe

Combine together:

.5 oz Bulleit Rye (95 Proof)

1 oz Broadbent 10 Year Verdelho Madeira

1 oz H&H 10 Year Sercial Madeira

Stir, then top with:

2 oz Malta India (or Malta Goya)

14.0% ABV

Ingredient Notes: Madeira comes in various sweetness levels, the really sweet ones are too sugary for my tastes in this. Sercial is the driest and Verdelho is off-dry, but find ones that work for your palate.

Tasting Notes

Smell - The vanilla/oak of the rye leads. Rich dried fruit behind it. There is some maltiness there, but definitely tastes like a really aged-out barleywine without any fresh graininess. Boozy, hotter than I'd expect from an English barleywine.

Appearance - Deep leathery brown. Good clarity. No head.

Taste - The Maderia really gives it an "aged" character, lots of raisin and date. The Sercial especially gives it a fun oxidative weirdness, and a faint acidity. There is a "sugary" sweetness, along with some alcohol warmth. Subtle bitterness.

Mouthfeel - Almost flat, "barrel sample" generously. Not quite as full as a real barleywine, but not watery or thin by any means.

Drinkability - This is one of the more evocative ones, really has a lot of the flavors you'd expect from a barrel-aged barleywine. It's a little sweet for me, but so are a lot of barleywines.

Changes for Next Time - Wish it had a little more carbonation. Otherwise it really satisfies that English Barleywine itch.

Sherry Shrub...  Flemish Sour Red/Oud Bruin

One of the classic inclusions in the microbe blend for Flemish Red/Browns (e.g., Wyeast Roeselare) is Sherry Flor. This oxidative yeast forms the pellicle on sherry and produces the characteristics aldehydes that give sherry a nutty/fruity aroma. Oloroso is more "microbe" forward, funkier, while PX is more sweet and dried fruit (especially raisin). The acidity of the grapes needs a little help to mimic the classic examples of the style, so inspired by shrubs I added both vinegar and kombucha. The blend of sherries, sweetness of the kombucha, and amount of vinegar are all variables you can adjust. 

Recipe

Combine together: 

.5 oz Lustau Oloroso Sherry

.5 oz Lustau PX Sherry

.25 tsp Balsamic Vinegar

Stir, then top with:

3 oz Wild Bay Elderberry Kombucha

4.6% ABV

Ingredient Notes: The kombucha choice is tricky, a cherry kombucha is a nice choice if you are looking to replicate a fruited version of the style. For my palate I'd avoid those kombucha with stevia or other non-sugar sweeteners. Cream Sherry is a blend of Oloroso and PX and could be a stand-alone replacement (although you the flexibility or tweaking your blend). 

Tasting Notes

Smell - Fun mix of red fruit and raisins. A little oak/almond. The elderberry works well compared to some other kombuchas since it isn't as distinct as cherry, strawberry et al. I like the Wild Bay since it doesn't have stevia or other non-sugar sweeteners.

Appearance - Clear, more amber than red. Color is about right. Not much foam.

Taste - Pleasantly sweet. Tart, with just a touch of vinegar. It has a good blend of fresh and dried fruit flavors, plum, fig, raisin etc. A little oaky. Has that classic Belgian Red balance with sugar balancing the acid.

Mouthfeel - Medium body, pleasant low carbonation.

Drinkability - This is a super interesting result for low ABV.

Changes for Next Time - Misses the maltiness of the real version, but it has the fruitiness, acid, oak, age. For a low ABV cocktail it really delivers, with the fermentation of the kombucha helping stretch the Sherry.

Espresso Martini... Coffee Stout

Flavored beers are one of the "easiest" points of entry since they already have big flavors that aren't from malt, hops, or yeast. That said, it seemed like a waste of time to make a smoothie sour cocktail. Coffee stout is still a stout, and seemed like a nice place to work in bourbon since it usually includes some barley and brings big oak aromatics that work well in stouts. A little Malta again provides body, sweetness, and a touch of carbonation. 

Recipe

Combine together:

4 oz Cold Brew Coffee

1 oz Kahlua

1 oz Bourbon

Stir, then top with:

2 oz Malta India

7.5% ABV

Ingredient Notes: I should probably have sourced a "better" coffee liquor, but Kahlua is what we had on hand. Homemade cold brew would work just as well, if not better. 

Tasting Notes

Smell - Big coffee nose, with some vanilla. It reads caramel malty, but not roasty.

Appearance - Deep brown, with red at the edges when held to the light.

Taste - Has a pleasant sweetness, certainly sweeter than a typical coffee stout thanks to the simple sugars. Nice note of bourbon woody/vanilla in the finish

Mouthfeel - Medium body, light carbonation.

Drinkability - I really like this one, more coffee-focused than a stout usually is, but the other notes round it out.

Changes for Next Time - I think this one straddles the line between traditional coffee stout and pastry stout. A little sugary compared to a classic stout.

Conclusion

This has been fun for me to work on the last couple months. I'll probably make a Part #2 if there is interest... already playing around with a West Coast Grapefruit IPA, Pastry Stout plus plans for Wit, Rauchbier, and Saison! 

Shoot me a line if you try any of these out, or if you have suggestions or other ideas!

Historic English Imperial Stout Revisted

Any long-time readers may recall my interest in the original Russian Imperial Stouts – brewed in England with four malts (pale, amber, brown, and black) plus caramelized sugar. Fermented with English ale yeast and Brettanomyces. They bear about as much resemblance to modern pastry stouts as the original English-brewed IPAs do to today’s hazies and milkshakes.

Of the many recipes from this blog that we’ve adapted to the big system at Sapwood Cellars (Atomic Apricot, Cherry Wine, Tmavé Pivo, Scottish Stout, Cheater Hops, Saphir Pilsner, Berliner etc.) my Courage RIS-Inspired is probably the one I was most excited about! We closely followed the original recipe from 2007 (which I preferred to the 2016 rebrew). Last summer we released the base beer (Lord Rupert Everton), followed last fall by Lord Rupert Barrelton which had a quick dip in barrels that held Cognac Finish Rye Whiskey from Sagamore Spirits.

After refilling the barrels from kegs of the same base beer, we pitched the same strain of Brett I used for the original, WY5110 Wyeast Brett anomalus. It's been out of production since 2007, but I asked everyone I could think of (starting with Wyeast) and no one had the strain available… French microbiologist Christophe Pinchon to the rescue! We’d already gotten “his” Willner Brett strain second hand for our gose (Salzig). The culture he sent started up quickly and I pitched half of an active 2L starter into each 80 gallon barrel in September… then not much happened. The Brett didn’t produce any CO2 or reduce the gravity over six months. Originally, we planned to bottle the beer once it stabilized, but without any apparent fermentation we decided we were better off kegging the beer as Sir Rupert Barrelton.

Sir Rupert Barrelton

Smell – Loamy, with fresher notes of Tootsie Roll (from the malt) and coconut/vanilla (from the barrel). I really have a hard time figuring out it that earthy note is Brett, or just mild oxidation from time warm in the barrels. The spirit-character is relatively subtle, but is enough to immediately make it clear this isn’t an authentic take.

Appearance – Black with chestnut edges. Pretty good dark brown head. Solid retention.

Taste – Smooth flavor without any sharpness from the roast. The Maris Otter and Amber malt help to fill-in the background of the black malt. Plenty of baking soda prevents the roast-acidity that can cause stouts to become acrid. The dark candi syrup brings a subtle dark fruitiness without being obnoxiously raisin/plum like dark crystal can be.

Mouthfeel – Not as thick as stout drinkers are used to (I’ve seen some stouts finish above 1.080 now… and I used to think Dark Lord’s 1.060+ was absurd)! Low carb, just how I like by big/dark beers.

Drinkability & Notes – It’s a unique beer compared to the other more “modern” stouts we brew. The “reasonable” FG of 1.026 makes it easier to drink than the typically sweeter ones. I like the depth of the combination of barrel-character and malt. The age/Brett give it additional complexity. If you are in Maryland and want to try the beer we'll have it available in crowlers the next month or so.

Changes for Next Time – Maybe it was the alcoholic boost from the barrel that prevented the Brett from doing more? Better to use more neutral barrels, or stainless with oak barrel-alternatives. We refilled the barrels with a riff on my Big Funky Ale and pitched additional microbes. It would be fun to try making our own invert no.4 to replace the dark candi syrup.

Courage RIS Inspired 2016

Smell – Brett (cherry, funk, dusty). The Brett C really covers up the malt almost completely in the nose. Blind I suspect I’d lean towards calling it an Oud Bruin.

Appearance – Black with dark-brown edges. Big tan head that is held up by the carbonation for a few minutes before deflating.

Taste – Stout-ier than the nose, with some cocoa notes. However, the Brett is still the primary flavor. Some nutty (almost peanut brittle) flavors from the malts. Moderate bitterness.

Mouthfeel – Carb is similar to what I remember, higher than I’d prefer. A little thin, although once the carbonation is swirled-down it improves.

Drinkability & Notes – It’s a bit beer with a lot of funk, plenty of alcohol, and a bit too much carbonation, not exactly a beer I (or many) would drink quickly.

Courage RIS Inspired 2007

Smell – Oaky. Unlike Sir Rupert, it is the wood rather than spirit coming through. Not damp basement, and not Home Depot lumber aisle either. Just a pleasant vanilla-sugar cookie woodiness. A hint of licorice. The roasty-toasty malt is there, but is subtle. Like Sir Rupert the Brett is restrained, honestly makes me more confident that the Brett really did do “something” in the fresher beer.

Appearance – Black with chestnut highlights. Head pours small and drops quickly.

Taste – Every bit as good as it was 10 years ago. Cookie-toasty, vanilla-oaky, cocoa-roasty, and leather-earthy. It is relatively dry for a beer this big, but the bitterness is mostly gone too. I don’t get any wet paper, or any other signs of detrimental oxidation.

Mouthfeel – The body a bit thin, but considering I brewed it when I was 24 and I’m 37 now I can’t complain! A testament to my beginner's luck… and metabisulfite. Carbonation is low, but I wouldn’t mind if it was even lower.

Drinkability & Notes – What can I say about a beer I brewed more than 1/3 of my life ago? The other two are good beers that I enjoy, this one is something special. A huge range of flavors that all work in unison. Sadly this is my last bottle.

10 Year Old Courage RIS Clone

A torch passing of sorts. With the bottles of my 2007 batch of Courage Russian Imperial Stout clone running out I rebrewed the recipe (with a few tweaks) in 2015. I’ve labeled the caps from 2017 to 2050, so this marks the extension of my now decade-long Christmas tradition!

Watch me drink the two beers, or read my thoughts below. If you've got any comments on the videos (other than my microphone induced v-neck) let me know!

Courage RIS 2007

Smell – Fantastic mixture of deep/dark Port-like fruitiness and rich caramel. Roast is subdued, more coffee than a Quad or Belgian Strong Dark, but not by much. Brett provides subtle leathery notes, but it isn’t obvious with everything else going on. I could pass it off as "age" if I hadn't brewed it.

Appearance – The head is soap-sudsy, the bubbles are larger than expected. Nearly pitch-black body. When I returned for a second pour it came with hard bits of desiccated yeast. Should have poured it all to start!

Taste – Similar to the nose, rich and full of plums, figs, caramel, and light roast. The Brett lingers softly in the finish. Leather, and maybe a little cherry. Harmonious, really balanced thanks to the added attenuation by the Brett. Minimal hop bitterness thanks to the aging. Still tastes remarkably fresh compared to big stouts I’ve brewed more recently, thanks to the metabisulfite.

Mouthfeel – Smooth and full, without being sticky. Low carbonation, perfect for a big dark beer.

Drinkability & Notes – Would have opened another bottle if it was an option. One of my favorite batches of homebrew to date.

Changes for Next Time – As close to perfection as I can imagine creating in a big-dark-funky-fruity-historic stout! I don’t know what Courage Russian Imperial Stout tasted like 100 years ago, but I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t this good!

Courage RIS 2015

Smell – Fresher and more apparent English-maltiness. That brown malt provides a coarse toasty note that clashes with the bolder Brett funkiness. Comparatively mild caramel and dark fruit.

Appearance – Darker, denser, creamier, longer-lasting head. Part of that is higher carbonation, and the rest is likely freshness.

Taste – Coarser, with burnt toast, Brett-funk, and oak competing for attention. There are some nice flavors there, and the fresher-brighter-cleaner biscuity and roasty notes are pleasant. Hopefully with time the oak will mellow and the Brett and malt will balance.

Mouthfeel – The carbonation disrupts the smoothness, especially when combined with rough tannins from the oak. Hopefully the latter will mellow, and swirling helps with the former. Not sure if I was unsuccessful at killing the Brett, or if I simply over-primed (or had attenuation from the bottling strain).

Drinkability & Notes – It’s OK, but still young, rough, and discordant. It has a lot of time to improve, and I'll be disappointed if it doesn't!

Changes for Next Time – Hopefully time is all that is needed, but would be hard not to revert to the original recipe if I were to brew this again… especially on a larger scale!

Tropical Stout with Muscovado

When I tell people I brewed a Tropical Stout, most of them assume that means I added tropical fruit and/or hops to a standard stout. On the contrary, this is a style originating in the tropics (specifically the Caribbean and Southeast Asia). The most widely available examples are Lion Stout, Dragon Stout, and Guinness Foreign Extra Stout from Jamaica. Prior to the release of the 2015 BJCP Guidelines the style was rolled into Foreign Export Stout with the drier/bitterer stouts brewed in England and Ireland.

When my friend Scott (this Scott, not that Scott) noticed Topical Stout wasn’t on my list of styles brewed he suggested that we split a batch. Like daiquiris, sweetness and rummy flavors can go with warm weather, so it seemed like a version on the lower-gravity-end might be a good beer for the end of summer!

We started with Gordon Strong’s recipe from his BYO Style Profile (referencing the similar recipe in his Modern Homebrew Recipes). We used Irish Ale yeast because I had a slurry on hand harvested from my Guinness Anachronism Draught. Warm-fermented lager is classic for authentic Tropical Stouts because most of the breweries primarily brew lagers. We replaced the rather subtle turbinado sugar the recipe called for with more characterful dark muscovado. Increased proportion of simple sugars causes yeast to produce more esters so that may add to some of the traditional fruitiness of the style.

I’ve found that I get the best pours from the stout tap when carbonating and serving with ~20 PSI of beer gas. However, it can take a few weeks to really get that great creamy head given the low partial-pressure of carbon dioxide. To speed this up I attached a .5 micron carbonation stone with a foot of tubing to the gas side of this keg. A carb stone releases tiny gas bubbles which rise up through the beer, increasing surface area and boosting absorption. The key is to start the pressure low, increasing it by a few PSI a couple times a day. That ensures that the bubbles keep coming slowly, speeding up carbonation. There are other methods for using a stone, but this is easy and doesn’t waste gas. The only drawback is that you can’t purge the head space easily, so I just pushed in through the stone and vented a few times. To get around this you can also make (or buy) a carbonating keg lid that doesn't occupy the gas post. The result was a creamy head in about 10 days rather than three weeks!

Caribbean Stout

Smell – The classic problem with beer gas, the nose is closed without much CO2 in solution to rise up carrying aromatics. What is there is nice, freshly milled roasted barley and coffee ice cream with Hershey’s syrup. No big fruitiness or rum/molasses notes.

Appearance – Head is stupendous! Creamy, off-white, and super-long-lasting. Black body, with a red underline at the bottom of the glass.

Taste – Flavor is similar but bigger than the aroma. Fresh roasted malt, mocha with a finish of date-sugar. Even a little vanilla or brownie batter. Sweet without being too cloying. Just enough bitterness to reset the palate in the finish.

Mouthfeel – Coating, rounded, smooth. Perfect!

Drinkability & Notes – Despite the provenance, this one hasn’t been drinking quickly this summer. The sweetness and richness just don’t call out for a second pour when the weather is this hot.

Changes for Next Time – I’m glad the gravity ended up a little low, but for a version closer to the guidelines it’d require better efficiency and a lower mash temperature for higher attenuation.

Recipe

Batch Size: 12.00 gal
SRM: 43.7
IBU: 33.8
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.023
ABV: 5.4%
Final pH: 4.53
Brewhouse Efficiency: 74%
Boil Time: 90 Mins

Fermentables
----------------
75.5% - 20 lbs Crisp Floor-Malted Maris Otter
3.8% - 1.0 lbs Weyermann Carafa Special III
3.8% - 1.0 lbs Muntons Roasted Barley
1.9% - 0.5 lbs Crisp Black
1.9% - 0.5 lbs Briess Crystal 120L
1.9% - 0.5 lbs Chateau Special B
1.9% - 0.5 lbs Bairds Chocolate Malt
9.4% - 2.5 lbs India Tree Dark Muscovado

Mash
-------
Mash In - 45 min @ 158F

Hops
------
4.00 oz East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 6.00% AA) @ 60 min

Water
-------
6.00 g Calcium Chloride
5.00 g Chalk

Calcium	Chloride	Sulfate	Sodium	Magnesium	Carbonate
100	75	50	16	10	140

Other
-------
1 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 5 mins

Yeast
-------
WY1084 Wyeast Irish Ale

Notes
-------
Brewed 5/28/17 with Scott.

CaCl added to the mash tun before the malt. 1 cup of super-saturated chalk water (~5 g of chalk) added to the mash tun to try to raise the mash pH, didn't get much higher than it started, 5.25.

2.5 lbs of India Tree Dark Muscovado Sugar added at the start of the boil. ~14% by extract (Gordon's recipe is ~18% turbinado).

Undershot gravity a bit, was aiming for 1.070.

Hop pellets in 400 micron screen.

Chilled to 70, placed in fridge set to 64F for a couple hours before pitching a cup of thick slurry from low OG Guinness.

Maintained 64F beer temperature for 3 days, then up to 66F.

6/2/17 Moved out of fridge and allowed to warm to 70F to ensure fermentation finishes up. Currently: 1.028 (56% AA, 4.7% ABV)

6/7/17 Still 1.028... pitched a rehydrated pack of US-05.

6/10/17 Down to 1.023 (64% AA, 5.4% ABV), hopefully still dropping.

6/16/17 Nope, finished. Kegged.

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19th Century Guinness Extra Stout

One hundred years before I was born, around the time my great-grandmother was leaving Ireland, some guy in Dublin was brewing Guinness Extra Stout. I brewed my own batch based on the recipe in Ron Pattinson's Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer. My only tweaks were a slight boost to the Black Patent, and swapping the English ale yeast for Irish. I have no certainty of how close WY1084 is to the yeast Guinness uses today, let alone 135 years ago!

Times have changed, Guinness is opening a brewery in Maryland where they'll be brewing a wide range of mediocre beer and screwing up laws for local craft brewers... like me! They won't be brewing stout though, I guess it is too unthinkable for them to not have "Imported" on the Guinness Draught labels in the US, even if it is only imported from Canada.

My batch of  circa 1883 Extra Stout is still young at six-weeks from brewing and the weather is a too warm to be drinking 7% stout, but I wanted to write up tasting notes for the full-strength version while the diluted "Draught" half of this batch is still on tap to compare. I'll post an updated tasting this winter.


1883 Guinness Extra Stout

Smell – Clean roasty notes of coffee plus brown bread. Relatively straightforward maltiness without dark fruit or caramel. There is an earthy hoppiness, although not as strong as in the diluted half. Thankfully the hint of diacetyl that was there a couple weeks ago is gone.


Appearance – Perfect stout appearance. Dense tan head with staying power. Near black body with a few amber highlights. Surprisingly clear when it isn't opaque.

Taste – Rolling bitterness, coating without being harsh. Bitter, but not as much as the IBUs would suggest. Clean coffee and toast malt. Without the added sticky-oomph of crystal malts, or dark sugar, and with the firm balancing bitterness it doesn’t linger. Clean fermentation, no alcohol heat or other off-flavors. If you told me this was 5.5% ABV I’d probably believe you. Hoping it gets more interesting with age.

Mouthfeel – Relatively thin for a big stout, especially at this OG/FG, but I'd call it medium overall. Medium-low carbonation, which breaks my streak of somewhat over-carbonated dark beers.

Drinkability & Notes – In a way it reminds me of a schwarzbier: clean, bright, and fresh maltiness. Easy to drink for a stout with both high alcohol and bitterness, a testament to simple recipe design.

Changes for Next Time – Far too early to be making proclamations about what to change. I’m looking forward to tasting this beer after six-months in the cellar, once the weather cools off.

Recipe

Batch Size: 5.00 gal
SRM: 39.7
IBU: 73.3
OG: 1.075
FG: 1.022
ABV: 7.0%
Final pH: 4.58
Brewhouse Efficiency: 67%
Boil Time: 120 mins

Grain
--------
82.8% - 12.5 lbs Crisp Gleneagles/No. 19 Maris Otter
10.3% - 1.60 lbs Muntons Amber
6.9% - 1.00 lbs Simpsons Black Malt

Mash
-------
Sacch I - 40 min @ 152F
Sacch II - 20 min @ 160F

Hops
-------
2.50 oz Fuggle (Pellets, 3.57 % AA) @ 90 min
2.50 oz Fuggle (Pellets, 3.57 % AA) @ 60 min
2.50 oz East Kent Golding (Pellets, 4.80% AA) @ 30 min

Other
-------
2.3 g Chalk @ mash
0.5 Whirlfloc @ 5 min

Calcium	Chloride	Sulfate	Sodium	Magnesium	Carbonate
70	32	54	15	10	130

Yeast
-------
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Notes
-------
Recipe scaled to be brewed as a 5 gallon batch. 

5/6/17 4 L 1.034 starter with 6 week out yeast.

Dissolved 17 g of chalk in 30 oz of filtered water. Chilled and carbonated to get it to dissolve.

pH measured 5.19. Added .6 cup of the resulting saturated liquid to the mash. pH measured 5.25 at mash temperature, 5.39 pH when chilled. Both with Halo.

Chilled to 66F.

Left at 67 F to get started. Got up to 70F overnight, moved to fridge, slowly brought back to ~67F actual temperature to ferment.

1.075 post-boil. 5 gallons pitched with 2.5 L of starter.

Left at 67 F to get started. Got up to 70F overnight, moved to fridge, slowly brought back to ~67F actual temperature to ferment.

5/26/17 Bottled 5 gallons of the full-strength half with 95 g of table sugar. Aiming for 2.2 volumes of CO2.

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Guinness Draught - 1883 Edition

A couple months ago I posted a page featuring links to my favorite recipes for all of the 2015 BJCP styles that I’ve brewed. I was surprised by how many I'd brewed, but it also reminded me that even after 12 years of homebrewing there are plenty of classics that I haven’t, like Irish (Dry) Stout. It seemed a shame to own a stout faucet and not use it to serve the style it was invented for!

Rather than brew something akin to modern Guinness Draught I decided to get weird! I brewed a batch of 1883 Guinness Extra Stout based on a recipe from Ron Pattinson’s fascinating Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer, a sort of distillation of his blog Shut up about Barclay Perkins. My goal was to leave most of the batch at the specified gravity, and dilute a few gallons to create an anachronistic imagining of Guinness Draught as it might have existed in 1883.

The recipe, one of the few in the book not based on actual brewing logs, has a few interesting features. It contains pale malt, but not the other two  grains in the standard Irish Stout formulation. It is from just after the Free Mash Tun Act of 1880, well before Guinness took advantage of the end of adjunct prohibition. As a result it calls for black malt instead of unmalted roasted barley (which they changed to around 1930). It also includes amber malt for a richer flavor than flaked barley (added around 1950). Hop additions follow many 19th century recipes, copious amounts of low alpha acid varieties towards the start of the boil. I made two minor tweaks to the recipe as written, increasing the black malt from 5.56% to 6.9% to prevent the diluted version from being too pale and subbing in Wyeast Irish Ale for Whitbread Ale.

I ran off 5.5 gallons of the resulting 1.075 wort into a fermentor (that portion is bottle-conditioning currently). For the draught-strength I ran off 3 gallons of the chilled wort into a separate fermentor, and diluted it to 1.047 with two gallons of distilled water. That is what is now sitting on beer gas. Guinness didn't start using nitrogen until 1959, so Ron wasn’t a fan of my plan:

No, no, no . . . no nitro. https://t.co/LZxrtsSc8x
— Ron Pattinson (@patto1ro) May 7, 2017

This was my first batch using a Halo pH Meter sent by the kind folks at Hanna Instruments. The biggest benefit of this “Beer Analysis” version is that the hardy titanium body can take pH readings directly at mash temperature without cooling a sample! You do need to add .2-.35 to the reading to adjust for the influence of the elevated temperature. That’s about what I found with the Halo reading 5.25 at mash temperature and 5.39 on a chilled sample.

The time-savings of  not chilling samples makes up for the added hassle of  pairing the Halo with my phone. The point of co-dependent smart-devices is to leverage the existing hardware, but the Halo costs more than twice as much as my Milwaukee MW102. The app would be more valuable if there was a need to track pH changes during the mash, but I don't have an easy way to mount the meter and once the pH stabilizes there really isn't a need to track small changes.

I’m interested to see how long the probe/electrode lasts with the exposure to high temperature. It includes an extendable cloth junction that can be pulled out to refresh it. However, Hanna does not sell replacement probes so after the expected 12-18 month lifespan it’ll be another $225 rather than $43 for a replacement probe for my MW102. Might be worth expensing it to Sapwood Cellars, but I imagine not an annual purchase for most homebrewers!

My preference is for a slightly higher mash pH on dark beers, to prevent the roasted malts from tasting acrid. That said, my old friends at Modern Times aim for a slightly lower final pH for batches of Black House destined for nitro to replace the acidity otherwise provided by carbonic acid. When the pH reading came in a bit lower than I wanted I dosed the mash with chalk dissolved in carbonated water (using a carb cap) - the same chemical reactions are behind acid rain eating away at limestone. I first read about this technique on Braukaiser. The issue with adding chalk directly to the mash is that it doesn’t dissolve at typical mash pH like other water salts. While it likely helps buffer the boil and final pH, baking soda or slaked/pickling lime are better choices for direct mash tun additions. However, dissolving chalk is a useful technique if you want to add calcium rather than sodium along with carbonate.

Guinness Draught 1883

Smell – The nitro-pour subdues the aromatics, but what comes through is pretty expected: fresh grainy-roast, some fresh yeasty notes, and a hint of earthy hops.

Appearance – Shows off the classic swirling, cascading bubbles that Guinness features so prominently in their advertising. Settles into a velvety, half-inch off-white head. A pure sheet of lacing trails each sip. Will look even pretty after a few more weeks on tap as nitrogen continues to slowly dissolve and the slight haze hopefully drops out.

Taste – The first sip has really firm bitterness from hops and roast. The bready maltiness picks up, more than in the classic Irish Stouts, but not enough to bring English stouts to mind. As my first glass winds down the bitterness has tamed to a crisp finish. Has a lingering “dirtiness” from the Fuggles I presume.

Mouthfeel – The low carbonation certainly helps to provide some fullness that wouldn’t be there with high carbonation. The texture of the head on each sip helps as well.

Drinkability & Notes – A true summertime stout. Light, smooth roast, and refreshing bitterness like an iced coffee. Easy to pour a second glass.

Changes for Next Time – It’s a rare beer that I don’t have much to change for next time. I might go all EKGs, or at least at the 60 minute addition, to clean and brighten it up a bit.

Recipe

Batch Size: 5.00 gal
SRM: 23.8
IBU: 43.8
OG: 1.047
FG: 1.014
ABV: 4.3%
Final pH: 4.31
Brewhouse Efficiency: 67%
Boil Time: 120 mins

Grain
--------
82.8% - 7.5 lbs Crisp Gleneagles/No. 19 Maris Otter
10.3% - .95 lbs Muntons Amber
6.9% - .625 lbs Simpsons Black Malt

Mash
-------
Sacch I - 40 min @ 152F
Sacch II - 20 min @ 160F

Hops
-------
1.00 oz Fuggle (Pellets, 3.57 % AA) @ 90 min
1.00 oz Fuggle (Pellets, 3.57 % AA) @ 60 min
1.00 oz East Kent Golding (Pellets, 4.80% AA) @ 30 min
Scaled all three hop additions to account for the higher utilization assumed for a low gravity beer.

Other
-------
1.4 g Chalk @ mash
0.5 Whirlfloc @ 5 min

Calcium	Chloride	Sulfate	Sodium	Magnesium	Carbonate
70	32	54	15	10	130

Yeast
-------
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Notes
-------
Amounts above scaled to be brewed as a 5 gallon undiluted batch. 

5/6/17 4 L 1.034 starter with 6 week out yeast.

Dissolved 17 g of chalk in 30 oz of filtered water. Chilled and carbonated to get it to dissolve.

pH measured 5.19. Added .3 cup of the resulting saturated liquid to the mash. pH measured 5.25 at mash temperature, 5.39 pH when chilled. Both with Halo.

Chilled to 66F.

Diluted 3 gallons with 2 gallons of distilled to 1.047. Pitched with 1.5 L of starter.

Left at 67 F to get started. Got up to 70F overnight, moved to fridge, slowly brought back to ~67F actual temperature to ferment.

5/19/17 Kegged the diluted half.

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Courage RIS (No Brett): Tasting

The continuation of my Christmas eve tradition of drinking homebrewed Courage Russian Imperial Stout was beginning to look in doubt. After 2015 I was down to three bottles, so February 2016 I rebrewed a tweaked 10 gallon batch (recipe). Originally the plan was to give half the wort to my friend Scott, but when his plans changed at the last minute I split the batch with myself instead: half clean, half with White Labs Brett claussenii and oak spheres.

The funky-oaky half is ready to bottle this week. As with the original batch from 2007, once the gravity reached 1.020 I transferred the beer to a clean fermentor with one campden tablet (sodium metabisulfite) per gallon. This additional 20% apparent attenuation from Brett isn't guaranteed. Mike Karnowski, the brewer/founder of Zebulon Artisan Ales (and author of Homebrew Beyond the Basics), homebrewed a similar recipe a couple years ago and split it between five commercial Brett strains, but didn't see significant attenuation from any of them (not a bad thing) - I got to taste a sample of each at a bottle share while I was in town for the Asheville Homebrewers Conference!

Courage RIS 2016: Base

Smell – Expressive clean roasted nose. Charred cocoa, fresh bready malt, a hint of ethanol. There is a subtle dark fruitiness from the candi syrup, but not nearly the intense-raisin that many year-old dark-crystal-malt dependent imperial stouts fall. No noticeable oxidation. No hop aroma, unsurprising given the single early Columbus addition.

Appearance – Beautiful, opaque, black body. Voluminous mocha head (bigger than I like to see on what should be a low-carbed beer). Great retention despite the snow landing on it.

Taste – Flavor is a delicious blend of 85% cocoa chocolate bar, richly toasted malt, and subtle English ale fruitiness. Enough bitterness (hop, roast, alcohol) to balance the plum-sweetness in the mid-palate. It doesn’t taste like a 1.040 FG beer, but then it may grow sweeter as the bitterness drops off with time.

Mouthfeel – Thick, coating, rich. Carbonation is elevated from my preference (and the 2.1 volumes I targeted), but I wouldn’t call it over-carbonated in general beer terms.

Drinkability & Notes – Surprisingly drinkable for a beer this big in alcohol and sweetness. It maintains a fresh malt flavor from the Maris Otter and amber malts that plays off the firm Black Patent roast wonderfully. Without Brett the malt is much more in focus.

Changes for Next Time – This is it for me other than the carbonation (which is easy enough to swirl out). As big as it needs to be, with an intense maltiness that I don't think would be possible in a smaller stout. At 9% a 12 oz bottle is a reasonable serving, something I can't say for the many commercial stouts that don't achieve this flavor-saturation with 12-16% ABV!

Hopefully the next few years are kind to the remaining case and a half!

I drank my third-to-last bottle of the original on Christmas eve. Not much had changed since last year so it didn't seem worth writing up the full tasting notes. Carbonation was still pleasantly low, big dark fruit, gentle funkiness, no sign of impending oxidized-doom for the last couple bottles!

Courage Russian Imperial Stout: Second Attempt

For the last nine Christmases running, while visiting my parents in Massachusetts, I've opened a bottle of Courage Russian Imperial Stout clone stored in the closet off their garage (or bring one back with me to share). My friend James and I brewed it in 2007, and considering we split four gallons, I'm amazed it has lasted this long! Sadly, with two bottles remaining I needed a replacement to maintain the holiday traditional that has now spanned more than a quarter of my life!

I coordinated with my friend Scott to brew and split a 10 gallon batch, but at the last minute he had a family emergency... the result is a whole lot of strong/dark beer for me! Thankfully I had a second set of hands provided by Chris, an NYU grad student who was visiting to work on a profile of me for a class and potential magazine article.

The base beer was only slightly tweaked from that original batch: more brown malt, dropped the white sugar, and a couple convenience adjustments to base malt and hops. With five times as much beer as last time, I also decided to split the batch: half bottled clean, half with Brett prior to bottling.

I attempted to grow up the Wyeast Brettanomyces anomalus dregs in the last bottle of 100% Brett beer I brewed with the same pack that went into the original batch. Wyeast discontinued the strain soon after because it was miscategorized (likely B. bruxellensis). Sadly the nine-year-old dregs didn't grow anything suggestive of Brett, just some mold(?) after a couple weeks. The beer itself was nearly as disappointing, oxidation was the primary flavor.

Then I got a Tweet from Ron Pattinson letting me know he'd sent an old bottle of Courage RIS to White Labs to have them attempt to isolate the original Brett! I checked with Kara Taylor, White Labs' Analytical Lab Manager, but sadly all they got (oddly) was Saccharomyces. So, I opted for my final resort: White Labs Brett claussenii, which I enjoyed it in a similar role for my Funky Old Ale... nearly ten years ago!

I'll be following the same process I used for that first batch of Courage: waiting until the beer reaches 1.020, then fining with gelatin, racking, and killing the Brett with potassium metabisulfite (campden tablets). The brewer's yeast stopped at a higher gravity than the first batch's 1.030, spot on the 1.040 Ron reported for Barclay Perkins 1924 IBS Ex in his recipe-dense The Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beers. More on why that's relevant, and the history and rebirth of this beer on his blog.

Rather than chemically-Pasteurize the whole batch, I may even leave a gallon with live Brett to see how far it will dry it out. I'll be interested to taste the different between the two (or three) versions as they age for decades to come!

Courage Russian Imperial Stout #2

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 11.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 45.25
Anticipated OG: 1.106
Anticipated SRM: 58.3
Anticipated IBU: 54.6
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75 %
Wort Boil Time: 80 Minutes

Grain/Sugar
---------------
66.3% - 30.00 lbs. Thomas Fawcett Maris Otter
13.3% - 6.00 lbs. Crisp Amber Malt
6.1% - 2.75 lbs. Crisp Brown Malt
5.5% - 2.50 lbs. Simpsons Black Malt
4.4% - 2.00 lbs. Candi Syrup, Inc D-90
4.4% - 2.00 lbs. Candi Syrup, Inc D-180

Hops
-------
4.00 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 10.50% AA) @ 75 min.

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

Yeast
-------
WYeast 1028 London Ale

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

Mash Schedule
------------------
Sacch Rest - 40 min @ 158F

Notes
-------
2/13/16 Made a 4.5L stir-plate starter with one three-month old pack of WY1028. Crash chilled after three days.

2/20/16 Brewed with Chris. Started with 16 gallons of filtered DC tap water. Mash pH 5.38. Added 4 grams of baking soda. Sparged with 3 gallons filtered DC tap.

Collected 14 gallons of 1.096 runnings, including candi syrup (D-90 and D-180) added to the kettle during run-off.

Chilled to 65F. 60 seconds each of pure O2, followed by pitching the decanted room temperature starter. Left at 58F ambient to begin fermentation.

2/25/16 Raised ambient temperature to 65F, fermentation visibly slowed.

3/23/16 Bottled 5.5 gallons with rehydrated Pasteur Blanc and 95 g of table sugar. FG 1.040 (8.8% ABV, 62% AA). Racked the other half to a keg, waiting on Brett.

5/16/16 Pitched a tube of WLP645 White Labs Brett C and 4 Xoaker Medium Pus Toast French Oak balls (.75 oz) into the keg. Left at 65F to work for a few months.

8/9/16 Bretted version building pressure regularly, down to 1.031.

9/15/16 Down to 1.029

10/22/16 Down to 1.023, Brett and oak really coming out!

11/12/16 Racked to tertiary with 5 campden tablets after 48 hours of crash chilling.

1/9/17 Tasting notes for the clean half.

2/20/17 Bottled the half with Brett, 1 more campden tablet, 2.5 oz of table sugar, and a few grams of rehydrated Pasteur Blanc.

1/11/18 Tasting note for the Brett half.

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