Jasmine-Hibiscus Summer Ale Tasting

This batch started out as the second half of the same base beer that produced the Heather Gruit; the only difference between the two was that they had different flowers added at bottling.  It is amazing how much impact the flowers have on the entire character of the beer, from the appearance to the flavor. 

Hibiscus is an interesting flower (sepal technically, i.e the part of the flower that isn't the petal), widely used in beverages around the equator. The most notable characteristic is the bright red color the dried flowers impart to whatever liquid they are steeped in. The flavor of hibiscus is tart and cranberry like, making it an interesting addition to either a refreshing summer beer, or a holiday beer.

The aroma from jasmine flowers are most often imparted to green tea before brewing (although I've also seen them included in with the tea leaves).  The volatile compounds are very delicate so adding jasmine as late as possible in the brewing process is a good idea.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, but the light/fruity flavor is hard to fully appreciate while the weather is so dreary.

Jasmine-Hibiscus Summer Ale

Appearance – Talk about a red ale! (Although if pushed I'd have to call it more pink than red). Almost clear, with a slight haze that will hopefully drop out with a bit more age. The head is tight/white and hangs around for a couple minutes.

Smell – Tart berry aroma with some floral aspects. The jasmine comes off slightly soapy, but the fruity hibiscus takes the lead. There isn't much of the yeast or malt character I smelled in the heather/lavender half of the batch.

Taste – Smooth and mild with a slight tartness that is only marginally stronger than the other half of the batch. This one tastes cleaner as well, it makes me wonder how much of that rustic character was the yeast and how much was the heather. Light cranberry flavor makes it really quenching. Subtle bready malt lets you know it isn't a “malt” beverage.

Mouthfeel – Medium-light body with moderate carbonation. This one could use a bit more carbonation; spritzy complements a light/crisp beer like this.

Drinkability & Notes – This will be a great summer beer (not that I'm looking forward to the hot season here in DC). The lack of bitterness makes this something that can be drank quickly, while the flowers and slight tartness keep it balanced.

Heather Ale Tasting

A few years ago Sam Adams ran a commercial that said,"Hops are to beer what grapes are to wine."  well obviously that isn't true, but hops and beer are certainly synonyms.  That hasn't always been the case though, 500 years ago brewers added lots of other herbs and spices that provided counterpoint to the malt sweetness of beer.  One example of that practice was the people of Scotland, who harvested heather flowers (tips) to add to their beers.

My first attempt at a heather ale turned out well, with a nice balance despite the lack of hop bitterness.  I've been told that heather (especially the stems) can be boiled to extract some bitterness, but I decided to steep the flowers in hot water to just extract the aromatics.  The balance comes from some acidity provided by Lactobacillus and tannins from a small amount of oak cubes added to the primary fermentation.  I was hoping for a bit more lactic sourness, but hopefully that will come with more time in the bottle.

Last week this batch took 4th place (out of 16 beers) in the DC Homebrewers Cherry Blossom competition.  Oddly that was the same spot my Honey Wheat Flower Sour landed last year.

Heather Gruit

Appearance – Hazy pale-amber beer (looks the part of a historic ale, a bit darker than I expected for just Maris Otter and wheat malt). The head is white and has decent retention despite the lack of hops.

Smell – Floral, meadow, a bit yeasty. The heather aromatics are at about the right level for me, although I think it may improve as they soften and integrate into the aroma over the next few months.

Taste – The heather permeates the flavor mingling with the earthy yeastiness and grainy malt. The lactic acid provides a slight lemony tartness, but it really isn't sour at all. It has a great fresh quality to it that goes perfectly with spring. No bitterness, but it doesn't taste sweet or unbalanced.

Mouthfeel – Moderate body with a slight tannic roughness. The carbonation is medium-low, which goes well with the historic quality of the beer.

Drinkability & Notes – I tend to like gruits with a few years of age on them, but this one has a mellow enough herbal character that it is drinkable just a few weeks after bottling. A nice complex, weird session beer. It will be interesting to see how this one changes as it ages.

Adding Flowers to a Gruit

About a month ago I posted the recipe for the base gruit I brewed.  It was a simple recipe, unhopped (obviously) but also without any of the other botanicals you'd expect in a gruit.  I should say that I'm using gruit in the generic sense to mean a beer flavored with something besides hops, and not necessarily the classic combination of bog myrtle, yarrow, and wild rosemary. A few weeks later when the beer had fermented out and was ready to bottle I spent a few hours making teas by steeping the various flowers, as well as tasting, blending, and bottling.

The base beer was alright on its own, but a bit bland.  The Lactobacillus didn't add as much sourness as I was hoping for (especially considering there weren't any hops to inhibit it), but it did add a touch of acidity that helped balance the residual malt sweetness.  Similarly I couldn't taste the oak, but I suspect the tannins it added helped cut through the malt.  The Scottish Heavy yeast strain was pretty clean, but it did leave some earthy/rustic character that really made the beer taste more "historic."

To make the flower teas I used my French press.  With its built in filter it was a good choice, although it was a bit small for the amount of heather I used.  For all of the floral teas I used filtered water right off the boil, with a steep time of about 5 minutes.  Boiling did not seem to extract more desirable compounds than steeping, but that may not hold true if you are using other botanicals (flowers tend to have more delicate aromatics than barks or roots).

After smelling all of the teas I decided to pair heather with lavender for half of the batch.  Heather has a nice hay/meadow aroma and was used in many Scottish beers before hops displaced it.  The place I ordered from sells just the flowers (as opposed to the type sold at homebrew store that still has the stems attached).  It still took two ounces of heather steeped with enough water to extract 2.5 cups of tea.  Lavender is more potent (think potpourri or soap).  I had read that culinary lavender tends to have a more food friendly aroma, but I could only find English lavender (although that is one of the flowers Southampton uses in their excellent Cuvee des Fleurs).  I used just one tablespoon in half a cup of water, and then I only added two tablespoons of the resulting tea.

For the second half of the batch I wanted to do something a bit more unique. I decided to combine hibiscus and jasmine flowers. Hibiscus is a traditional flavoring in Mexican sweetened waters (agua de Jamaica) and can often be found in a local market.  It has a great fruity, tart, cranberry flavor and imparts a beautiful garnet color (Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel uses it to great effect in Rosée D'hibiscus).  Jasmine has a very delicate floral aroma that is most often used in teas (Avatar IPA from Elysian Brewing Company uses it as well).  I used one ounce of each of these flowers, steeped separately with enough water to get 1.5 cups of extract.

After testing measured amounts of each of the teas on samples of beer I scaled up the ratios.  At that point I only added about 2/3 of the projected amount, giving me room to taste and adjust the blend.  In the end I left the flavors of both blends a little short of the where I wanted, counting on the carbonation in the finished beer to boost the aromas.  If I had been more ambitious I could have used my carb cap to carbonate samples before bottling.  I think this was a great way to take some control using ingredients that were new to me (and that don't have a commonly used amount).  Later this week I'll post reviews for both halves of this batch.

Lambic/Gueuze Tasting - Almost There

Over the last five years I've become pretty adept at making sour beers, but a great homebrewed Lambic has always eluded me.  My first batch was one of the worst beers I've ever brewed, and the second (while drinkable) wasn't that close to the style.  In a couple weeks I'll be brewing my fifth Lambic (and the first to be spontaneously fermented... I hope), so it seemed like a good time to check in on my third attempt.

The beer I have in front of me was brewed nearly two years ago.  That sunny June day in Massachusetts was my first time executing a turbid mash (my first two shots at the style used the WYeast Lambic cereal mash).  The results were well worth the extra effort, the overall character of the beer is much closer to the commercial versions of the style than my previous batches were (although it is still a bit light on the acid).  The turbid mash provides more complex dextrins and starches that the Brettanomyces needs for its long, slow fermentation.

This beer received a long boil (more than five hours) with low alpha acid hops (historically some Lambics were brewed with 50% aged hops and 50% fresh low AA% varieties, before those varieties were displaced by high AA% cultivars).  I aged the beer on the primary yeast cake for 15 months before bottling (two gallons of this batch are still sitting on Cabernet grapes in secondary).

Lambic Mark III

Appearance – The beer starts foaming as soon as the cap is removed. Pours a cloudy golden-yellow. The carbonation is strong enough that it stirred up the sediment making the beer hazier in the glass than it was in the bottle. The head is composed of coarse white bubbles; moderate-low retention despite the strong carbonation.

Smell – It has that great classic “Lambic” nose: funk (farmyard, damp basement), fresh lemon/grapefruit rind, minerals, and a bit of wheat. As it warms there is a slightly cheesy aroma that surfaces (in a good way). The Brett strains did their job admirably.

Taste – The flavor has a lot of the same complexities as the nose, especially the grapefruit pith and farmyard Brett. The acidity is soft and mellow (like fresh squeezed orange juice). The sourness is approximately 1.5 notches short of where I'd like it to be, but in reality it isn't too far away from the gentler vintages of Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueuze.

Mouthfeel – Light and spritzy, really nice. Luckily the mouthfeel does not come off as tannic despite the hot sparge (the long boil and aging supposedly help to prevent that).

Drinkability & Notes – I'm really happy with how this batch turned out. It certainly would have been a good candidate for blending with a sourer sour, but I didn't want to dilute that great funky nose. I just sent a bottle of it to the National Homebrew Contest (Tennessee region), although I added a few drops of food grade lactic acid to get it more on target with the style guideline.

I decided to drink the beer out of the Lost Abbey glass that my Heather Gruit won for me a few days ago in a local competition (although really it's just a filmy pretext to mention that if you haven't read Tomme Arthur vs The World it is the funniest web comic I've seen outside of an xkcd in awhile).

Making a German White Wine

I've spent the last few years making alcoholic beverages out of a lot of different things at home (grains, sugars, fruits etc...).  Mostly beer, but I've also dabbled in mead, sake, ginger beer, and kombucha as well.  Wine is the only major class of undistilled alcohol I'm missing (although I've added wine grapes to a couple beers).  It probably took so long because I really don't drink wine more than once a month, and then only because someone else buys it or I open a bottle to cook with.  It's not that I don't enjoy it, I just enjoy beer much more (and great beers cost the same as cheap wine)

A year ago I read From Vines to Wines a book on making wine from grapes, but for my first batch I decided to go as fool-proof as possible by using a kit. Making a kit wine is about as simple as you can get, the juice has already been separated from the grapes, and the acidity and gravity of the grape juice (must) has already been adjusted.  Similar to mead making, adjusting these variables before fermentation is important because they allow for a healthy and complete fermentation (unlike brewing where the correct mash pH and the buffering power of the malt keep the pH in a healthy range for the yeast).

The WinExpert (Selection Original Liebfraumilch) kit I used suggested dissolving potassium sulfite (campden tablets) in warm water for sanitizing equipment, but after the first stage I switched to my usual Star-San.  Sanitation seems to be less of an emphasis in wine making, probably because you end up adding stabilizing chemicals to the wine which kill Brettanomyces and other spoilage microbes.

"Brew" day is easy, the kit I bought called for diluting the concentrated must with water, stirring vigorously to dissolve oxygen, and pitching the dried wine yeast.  One of the fining agents, bentonite, is hydrated in warm water and added to the must at this point as well.  I decided to rehydrate the yeast (Premier Cuvee) in warm water to give them a healthier start even though the kit didn't call for it.  It is important to note that six gallons seems to be the standard for home wine kits, so if you go that route you'll have more must than can comfortably ferment in a 6 or 6.5 gallon carboy (I bought a 7.9 gallon bucket).

Fermentation started quickly and was bubbling rapidly after fewer than 24 hours.  Unlike wort, the must contains mostly simple mono- or disaccharides that the yeast make quick work of.  Just like beer the wine yeast have different suggested fermentation temperature ranges, white wine strains tend to be cooler while reds are fermented hotter (the ambient temperature for my batch was in the low-60s).  There was a great interview with Shea Comfort on the Sunday Session where he discusses the complementary fruity flavors that wine yeast can produce (I've been thinking of brewing a Flanders Red with BM45 since I listened to it).

After fermentation calmed down, but before the attenuation was complete, I racked the wine to a keg.  This seemed like the best option because I could flush the keg with CO2 so the amount of head space wasn't important.  I took the extra wine that didn't fit in the keg and used it to make white wine vinegar.

In a few more weeks the wine was completely attenuated and read to stabilize.  Unlike beer, which is protected by hops, wine is almost always guarded by sulfite and/or sorbate.  My kit came with these as well as another fining, isinglass (purified collagen extracted from fish bladders, which is also used to clear some English cask ales).  This is also the point that the wine is back sweetened, this is much easier to control than attempting to arrest fermentation at the right level of sweetness.  Being a German white the kit came with a large "F-Pack" of sweetened must (that tasted a bit riasiny), after adding about half of it a sample told me that it was sweet enough for my tastes.

The instructions called for me to rack the wine again a few weeks later before bottling, but I didn't get around to it.  At this point I'm a bit late to bottling, but it has taken longer than I intended to round up the 30 delabeled wine bottles, corks, and corker required to give it the "proper" treatment.  My initial plan was to just bottle/cap in bombers, but I decided to go that extra mile.

The samples of the wine have been good so far, nice tropical fruit aromatics, clean, and crisp.  The sweetness is subtle, chilled it should be a good summertime wine.  It certainly has been an interesting process, but I feel more like I've put together a bookshelf from Ikea than actually created something of my own.  Even brewing a kit extract beer feels like you are more involved (steeping, boiling, hopping etc...).  Making great wine is more about what leads to making the must (growing conditions, harvesting, crushing) than what the wine maker does during fermentation.  One of the things I love about brewing beer is that I can buy the same ingredients as the best breweries in the world.

WinExpert Selection Original Liebfraumilch

1/16/11 Sanitized with Campden tablets, 24 g in 1/2 gallon.

Microwaved 1/2 gallon of filter water for 4 minutes, added to primary with the packet of Bentonite.

Mixed in the concentrated must. Topped off with cool filtered water to 6 gallons. Stirred vigerously for a couple minutes. OG 1.088.

Hydrated the Premier Cuvee yeast and pitched. Low to mid-60s ambient temp.  Strong fermentation by the next day.

1/28/11 Racked to a keg for secondary. A bit late, was supposed to rack at 1.010 it was down to 1.004.

2/10/11 Gravity down to .998 (just under 12% ABV), just what is supposed to be. Added sulfite and sorbate and stirred vigorously. Added about half of the "F pack" since it was extremely sweet and tasted a bit raisiny. Added the Isinglass and stirred again, no CO2 coming out of solution by the end. Topped off with CO2 and resealed to allow to settle/clear.

3/27/11 Bottled, yielded 25 corked 750s.  Easy since there was no priming or racking needed, wine looked crystal clear.  Last two bottles got a a bit of air in the line, so i stuck them in the fridge for early samples.  I was a few weeks late on bottling, but the wine seemed to be fine.

4/27/11 A month out from bottling it is clear, clean, and plenty fruity.  I wish it wasn't quite so sweet, despite the 1.004 finishing gravity (the simple sugars kill me).

Berliner Weisse Tasting

At nearly 11 months since brewing I'm a bit behind on the first tasting of my most recent Berliner Weisse.  This batch was brewed to a slightly higher gravity (1.045) than a traditional Berliner Weisse, but the half I'm tasting here was diluted to a more standard 1.033.  The stronger portion of the batch is still sitting in secondary with various microbes and some oak cubes.  This probably would have been the better post to link to my Berliner tasting/interview with BBR

Berliner Weisse is still an underserved style, even though it is pretty easy to brew compared to other sour styles.  My version has a bit more acidity and funk than most of the commercial versions I've sampled, but it has always gone over well at competitions (and more importantly I like it).  I'm hoping I have similar results in a few weeks at the 2011 NHC first round (I'm sending to Nashville, TN).  Is anybody else sending beers there? I'm entering categories 17a, 17b, 17e, 22b, 22c, and 23.

Berliner Weisse 3

Appearance – The carbonation is strong enough that the bottle starts foaming up when I crack it open, not surprising with 3.6+ volumes of CO2. Pale (Budweiser) yellow with a slight haze even at cellar temps. The swirling bubbles keep the stark white head inflated.

Smell – Tart apples, slightly musty, and floral. A bit cleaner than my last Berliner, but still has plenty of aromatic complexity.

Taste – The acidity comes through as the dominant character on the first sip, tart up front and acidic in the finish. The wheaty/doughy malt comes across as a bit sweet despite how dry the beer is.

Mouthfeel – The high carbonation helps to prevent it from feeling too thin (not tannic or astringent), crisp is probably the right word.

Drinkability & Notes – Really drinkable if you like sour. I'm really happy with how this one turned out. I think Berliner Weisse is the first style that I've dialed to the point that there isn't anything I would change on my next batch.