Sour Butternut Squash Ale

Sometimes you try a beer that really broadens your perception of what you can do with an ingredient. I am normally not much of a fan of the "standard" pumpkin ale formula (amber, heavily spiced, not much actual pumpkin flavor), but last year my friend Scott shared a bottle of Alpine's Ichabod with me. Ichabod is a pumpkin beer that is made as a different style each year, the 2007 version we had was wine barrel aged for several months with a dose of Brettanomyces.

A sour pumpkin beer may sound like a way out there idea, but for fall 2008 both Jolly Pumpkin (La Parcela) and Allagash (Drunken Promise) did sour/funky pumpkin ales as well. Sadly I have not had the pleasure of trying either of them. It is nice to see several breweries going off the beaten path on a style that normally has so little variation.

I couldn't get much information on Ichabod, so this recipe is not a clone. For the base beer I just came up with a recipe for a malty Belgian brown/red of my own design. The base malt was pils, with some Munich and melanoidin for bready maltiness. I added some wheat and flaked barley for body and head retention. The grist was rounded out with two types of crystal malt for residual sweetness and flavor, and a bit of carafa for color.

Pumpkin was out of season when I wanted to brew, so I decided to use butternut squash instead (butternut squash tastes better and is easier to work with than pumpkin anyway). I was amazed that my 3.75 lb squash


(after it was seeded, peeled, cubed, and roasted) yielded only about 1.5 lbs to add to the mash.


I may add some more to the secondary fermenter at some point if the beer doesn't have much squash flavor.

For spices I went with classic fall choices, nutmeg and cinnamon. I think nutmeg in particular pairs well with the flavor of squash. I wanted the spices in a supporting role (there is so much going on in this beer as it is), so I just added a couple grams of each. As always it is easier to add more spices later than deal with an over-spiced beer.


The beer was pitched onto the yeast cake from the Funky Flower, so it should get pretty sour. I added 1 oz of medium toast oak cubes which had been soaking in cognac since last summer. I also added a cup of wine to help simulate wine barrel aging. I am hoping that the squash, spices, oak, and bacteria/yeast combine to make a complex autumnal flavor. This one should be ready to bottle by late fall, but it is really up to the yeast/bacteria to decide.

Sour Squash

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.19
Anticipated OG: 1.067
Anticipated SRM: 16.7
Anticipated IBU: 17.4
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71 %
Wort Boil Time: 120 Minutes

Grain/Squash
--------------
7.00 lbs. German Pilsener
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt
1.56 lbs. Butternut Squash
1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.50 lbs. Crystal 90L
0.50 lbs. Crystal 55L
0.25 lbs. Flaked Barley
0.25 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
0.13 lbs. Carafa Special II

Hops
-----
0.63 oz. Amarillo @ 60 min.

Extras
-------
2.00 gm Cinnamon @ 0 min.
1.00 gm Nutmeg @ 0 min.
1.00 oz Medium Toast French Oak Beans in secondary

Yeast
-----
WYeast 1056 + dregs (La Folie +Russian River)

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

Mash Schedule
---------------
90 min. @ 156

Notes
-----
2/27/09 Peeled, cubed, and roasted a 3.75 lb butternut squash. 45 min @ 400 F. The pieces ended up soft, with brown spots, and a sweet aroma (and only 1 lb 9 oz).

2/28/09 Brewed by myself

Added the squash to the mash in chunks. Collected 7.5 gallons of 1.047 wort. Cinnamon was jarred, nutmeg was fresh grated.

Pitched onto the whole yeast/bacteria cake from the sour honey wheat beer that was brewed two weeks earlier.

3/14/09 Racked to secondary. Added 1 oz of oak cubes soaked in cognac. Also poured in a cup of J. Lohr Seven Oaks Cabernet Sauvignon. Volume about 4.75 gallons.

3/21/09 Small pellicle starting to form. The sample I pulled tastes pretty good, some spice and wine/oak flavors evident, and maybe a hint of squash.

8/09/09 Added a bit of Primere Cuvee for eventual carbonation.

2/10/10 Bottled with 3.25 oz of cane sugar.  Final gravity 1.012, surprisingly high for how sour the beer tastes.  Dry hopped 6 bottles with 2 Citra cones and 1 Simcoe cone.

3/16/10 First tasting of the dry hopped version.  It is good, but I should have reviewed it earlier when the hops were fresher.

Didn't do too well in the 2010 NHC, judges wanted more spice/quash flavor and aroma.

5/6/10 First tasting of the plain version.  Very tasty, lots of sourness pretty complex.  I don't think it needs more spice/squash (both are just over threshold).

6/9/10  Last bottle of the dry hopped version.  Not what it once was, but still pretty tasty.  That hops have gotten a bit grassy, not too surprising after 4 months on them in the bottle.

Book Review: Principles of Brewing Science

George Fix's classic work Principles of Brewing Science is about the science behind brewing beer. If you are the sort of brewer who wants to understand the "why" behind each step of the brewing process, then this is the book for you. It probably won't make your beer taste much better and it isn't a fun or inspiring read, but it might make you more focused on small the small details of your process that you might have otherwise overlooked.

Content: Each chapter covers a different aspect of the brewing process.

Malt and Mashing. This section starts with a discussion of water, including the impact of various ions on brewing. This section reads like a chemistry textbook, explaining how the various dissociation reactions function. Fix talks at length about how the various ions and acids affect mash pH and mashing in general. Next the composition of malt is analyzed, this includes carbohydrates, protein, phenols, sulfur compounds (like SMM>DMS), and finally other trace elements. He finishes up this chapter by looking at what happens chemically to barley as it goes through the malting process and into the mash (which he explains as an extension of malting).

Most interesting topic - Sour Mashes

Wort Boiling. This is where hops are covered, particularly the chemistry behind the isomerization of their alpha-acids into stable iso-alpha-acids. Light struck flavors, hop oils, and other hop compounds are also looked at. The rest of the chapter talks about the other processes taking place during the boil, Maillard reactions, protein coagulation, and DMS reduction.

Most interesting topic - First Wort Hopping

Fermentation. This section tells you everything you could want to know about yeast. From what metabolic pathways they use during fermentation, to the stages of growth. The rest of this chapter talks about various spoilage microbes. This includes, wild yeast (including superattenuators, and Brettanomyces), and bacteria (including Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and loads of others I had never heard of because they aren't big players in sour beers).

Most interesting topic -Lactic Acid Bacteria

Oxidation. The causes of and solutions to oxidation are the focus here. Honestly I agree with him that oxidation is a issue for commercial breweries (although maybe not as much as it sounds like it was 10-20 years ago), but I don't think it is a big issue for most homebrewers. He covers common (and less common) oxidation inhibitors (like metabisulfite and vitamin C). He then goes through a variety of compounds present in beer to talk about what happens to each one when it oxidizes.

Most interesting topic -Hot-Side Aeration

Beer Stabilization. This chapter is about how to get your beer to be as stable as possible after it is packaged. The main focus is on attaining clear beer. First it looks at the causes behind cloudy beer, then at the solutions. A wide variety of methods are looked at including various fining, cold conditioning, and filtration techniques.

Most interesting topic - Freeze Stabilization

Gases. This section mainly looks at carbonation. This is one of the densest sections, covering the various laws that govern how gasses interact with liquids. It finishes with a discussion of how to figure out the correct serving pressure for kegged beer.

Most interesting topic - Head Space Oxygen

Accuracy: I have a hard enough time absorbing all of the information, let alone trying to find inaccuracies. That said it was written 10 years ago, so I would imagine that some information does not reflect the very latest brewing science (although I doubt much has changed on the homebrew level).

He does occasionally have some advice that I don't agree with, such as that overnight mashes can lead to erratic results (from bacterial contamination). It also bothers me that it seems like half of the citations in the book are to his own papers. I realize that this is the way science works, but it still seems a bit excessive.

Recipes: There are no recipes or even discussion of recipe development.

Readability: This is the driest brewing book I own, but for the most part it is at a level that you can understand if you really sit down and concentrate. I do wish each chapter included a brief plain English summary with the key suggestions spelled out for quick reference. The way the book is set up you sometimes need to read an entire chapter to find the piece of information you are looking for.

Overall: It is worth having on hand if a brewing science question comes up, but I don't think I retained much from reading it cover to cover. At this point there are very few revelations left in it. Many other books have distilled out the key details and figured out the techniques that take advantage of them. I would only suggest this book if you have a passion for science and find other homebrew books to be lacking in this department.

Hoppy Brown Ale (India Brown Ale)

I based the recipe off of Janet's Brown (a Mike McDole recipe) in Brewing Classic Styles, but I tweaked it a bit. I backed down on the crystal and carapils because I felt that at 10% each it would be too sweet/thick for my taste in a hoppy daily drinker. I also fine tuned the hops and malts to match what I had on hand. I'm still working through the last of my 2007 hops, I bought mostly American hops when the hop shortage first started, but ended up brewing mostly European inspired beers for the last year.

This recipe has 7.33 oz of hops in just 3.5 gallons of beer. It had hops in the mash, three boil additions, and dry hops. All of the hops were Cascade pellets from Hops Direct except the Centennials for dry hops. The general idea of the recipe is that the crystal and high (154) mash temp balance out the huge hop kick better than a dry IPA. As a result a beer with a 1:1 bitterness to gravity ratio drinks like a less hoppy beer.

I am not a big fan of the Centennials from Freshops, they tend to taste a bit more herbal than I like my American hops. I've loved all the other varietals of hops I've gotten from them (and I love Bell's Two Hearted, an all-Centennial beer), but have now had issues with two different orders/vintages of Freshops Centennials. In this case though they blend pretty well with the dark malt, but it still isn't exactly what I was aiming for.

Tasting 3/09/09

Appearance – Dark brown, bordering on black. Nice thick rocky tan head. Good head retention, the carapils and the crystal certainly responsible for this. Any darker and I would say it was a porter, but I think it still qualifies as an American Brown.

Smell – Fruity (apricot?) hops, with considerable dank/herbal notes. The hop character is more reminiscent of Columbus than Centennial/Cascade to me, not as bright as I was hoping/hopping for. Slightly toasty, chocolaty, bready malt contribution, but the hops conceal it for the most part.

Taste – Bitterness shines over the malt sweetness, but not by much. The high mash temp and crystal malt certainly did their job, balancing out the big hop bill. There is a hint of chocolate with a touch of charcoal.

Mouthfeel – Medium bodied, with medium carbonation. Glad it attenuated as well as it did, not as thick as I was anticipating.

Drinkability & Notes – Complex, but still balanced enough to drink easily. The malt balances out the hops, but it also makes this a less of a hop bomb than an equally hopped IPA. I made a mistake going with the Centennials, I should have used the Amarillo or Simcoe I have in the freezer.

Hoppy American Brown

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 3.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 9.92
Anticipated OG: 1.063
Anticipated SRM: 22.8
Anticipated IBU: 64.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 61 %
Wort Boil Time: 105 Minutes

Grain
------
7.25 lbs. Maris Otter
0.84 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
0.84 lbs. Crystal 40L
0.66 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.34 lbs. English Chocolate Malt

Hops
------
1.50 oz. Cascade Mash Hop
1.50 oz. Cascade @ 60 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade @ 10 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade @ 0 min.
1.33 oz. Centennial @ Dry Hop

Extras
-------
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @15 Min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 Min.

Yeast
-----
WYeast 1056 American Ale/Chico

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

Mash Schedule
-------------
60 min @ 154

Notes
-----
Brewed 1/19/09 by myself

Starter made 36 hours before it was pitched (never got a krausen, but it produced a head when swirled), crash chilled for 8 hours before pitching.

Batch sparged, collected 6 gallons of 1.040 wort.

2007 cascade pellets from hops directed adjusted down from 4.8% AA.

Boiled down to 3.5 gallons, chilled to 66, strained to remove as much hop matter as possible, let sit for 20 minutes, then transferred to the better bottle (lost .5 G to trub), pitched ~1 qrt of starter (which smelled a bit odd) left at room temp around 74, cooled quickly to mid/high 60s with an open window.

1/29/09 Racked to secondary onto the dry hops (which I had rehydrated in 1 cup of 150 degree water for 5 minutes).

2/06/09 Bottled with 2 1/8 oz of cane sugar. Gravity ~1.014 (6.4% ABV, 78% AA). I am surprised by the high attenuation despite the hot mash and 16% crystal malt.

6/13/09 Scored 27/30/30 at the SoFB. The judges were split two thought it was too hoppy, one not hoppy enough.

Book Review: Farmhouse Ales

Farmhouse Ale: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition by Phil Markowski covers the rustic styles of Bière de Garde and Saison (as well as other related styles). It is from the same excellent series of books on Belgian Brewing as Wild Brews and Brew Like a Monk (although each was written by a different author).

Markowski was the right man for the book as the Saisons and Bière de Garde that he produces at Southampton Publik House are some of the best American examples available (such as their Bière de Mars, French Country Christmas Ale, and Sasion). Aside from making great "to style" beers he also embodies the Belgian spirit with beers like Cuvee des Fleurs (a saison flavored with various edible flowers), and Sasion Deluxe (a super saison).

Content: The book starts out with a brief history of farmhouse brewing in what is now the boarder region between Belgium and France. The author claims that we are in a golden age of rustic brewing following a long period when most small breweries in the area just scrapped by making bland lagers for the local populace.

The book then moves on to a section that suggests that no set of style guidelines can accurately capture two such rustic and diverse styles. The commercial version can vary so much that it is nearly impossible to quantify all of the variations these two styles can have in a short description.

The rest of the book is roughly divided in half with a section on Bière de Gardes, followed by a section on Saisons.

Bière de Garde: This section gives the best look that I have found at this often overlooked style. It starts out with a review of the history of the style. This chapter is great because it covers part of brewing history that even most beer nerds aren't too familiar with. The style started out as something closer to a low alcohol historic English Old Ale (a moderate gravity beer allow to oxidize and sour slightly), but the alcohol has been increased over the last 30 years to make them into more of a specialty beer.

Next comes a section on the general characteristics of the style and sub-styles (Bière de Mars and Bière de Noel) and the best commercial examples to seek out. Like Brew Like a Monk many of the commercial beers discussed get an ingredient and method overview which would be a great help if you were trying to go in a certain direction or clone a beer. Each brewery gets a short profile as well, with some interesting tidbits about the history, brewer, and physical brewery.

The meat is in the last chapter of the section, which talks about production methods. Each ingredient and aspect of production are covered, first what the current commercial practices are, followed by the best suggestions for doing it for yourself.

It is very interesting to see the differences between the examples from larger and smaller breweries, particularly in yeast choice and grist composition. Smaller breweries tend to use ale yeast and relatively complex grain bills, while large breweries use lager yeast and often just base malt and a dark malt for color. It is more difficult for large breweries to use multiple malts or yeast strains, so this is more of a choice about ease of brewing rather than flavor profile.

Each portion of recipe development is laid out with the options (and effects) presented. There are some great charts with suggested yeasts (ale/lager and White Labs and Wyeast). The way that the book is written makes it very easy to use when designing your own recipe, or just for tweaking a recipe you already like.

Saison: The history chapter is written by Belgian beer expert (and brewer at De la Senne) Yvan De Baets. Saisons originally started as a refreshing beer for field laborers. Apparently the style has radically transformed over the years from something funky and reminiscent of low alcohol De Ranke XX to the cleaner, higher alcohol beer it is today.

Next comes a chapter covering the general description of modern saison including related styles (Grisette and Super Saison) and a review of a few of the commercial examples. These beers are pretty well known today as this book really kicked off a revival of the style when it came out five years ago. It is particularly interesting to read about breweries, like Vapeur and Blaugies, that are still basically brewing with some of the same ingredients, techniques, and equipment as farmhouse breweries did in the 19th century. It is also surprising how many of their breweries are part time jobs for the brewers (Alpine Beer Company is the only brewery in America that comes to mind like that, but I am sure there must be more).

Next comes the chapter on Saison production. The malt and hop suggestions are pretty short, but then the general suggestion is to keep things simple. The advice certainly leaves room for customization, but as a yeast forward style the malt and hop characters are not as important as they are for a Bière de Garde.

The big revelation of this section is that Saison yeasts love to ferment hot (often 85+). They are unlike any other beer strain out there in this regard (which is why Les Perkins from Wyeast suggests it may have mutated from a red wine strain). With most other strains fermenting at these temperatures would result in a beer that tasted like a combination of gasoline and nail polish remover, but with saisons you get a wonderful complex peppery-fruity flavor.

This chapter also has some nice info on using other grains like spelt, wheat, and oats. Spices are another big topic. The suggested amounts are far lower than you often see in homebrew recipes. I mangled my first batch of saison three years ago by adding 1 oz of dried ginger (on the suggestion of a BYO Hennepin clone). By comparison Farmhouse Ales suggests just .5-1.2 grams of dried ginger for a 5 gallon batch.

Accuracy: It is a very accurate book with lots of first hand information. It is hard to doubt the fermentation temperatures cited for saisons when there is a photo of the temperature gauge at Dupont and a graph of the fermentation temperature regime the author uses for his saison. I don't have any major issues with the accuracy of the information provided, and the editing is very good.

Recipes: Farmhouse Ales covers a few variations on each style, for eight recipes total. The recipe structure is similar o the other two books in the series. Like Wild Brews many of the recipes have built in options and ranges suggested for altering the recipe. For example "Add up to 5% white sugar (by extract)" or "Caramel Malt - add up to 2% for color and residual sweetness." I really like recipes that give some freedom and options, particularly styles like this that are not centered around a single "classic" example. That said if you are looking for a book with 40 recipes that you can select between you will be a bit disappointed. I also really like that this book (unlike BLAM) clearly tells you that the percentage of sugar is by extract.

I have not tried any of the recipes directly, but the Saison and Bière de Garde portions of my Cable Car Clone was highly influenced by the information in this book. The Dark Saison was also heavily influenced by suggestions in this book and the notes on SPF 8.

This book is less about recipes and more about recipe design, think of it as a Designing Great Beers for rustic Belgian/French ales (this book covers a much wider range of Saison and Beire de Garde in terms of gravity, color, bitterness, and flavor than the BJCP recognizes).

Readability: Much like Brew Like a Monk the information goes beyond just telling you how to brew the styles from a technical standpoint. It tells you how to think and design recipes like a farmhouse brewer. I like the way the book is divided in half, if you want to read about one style or the other you don't have to skim through the entire book.

I really like all of the headers that identify each topic in a chapter, for example in the Brewing Saisons chapter here are the headers for just four pages (Malt, Unconventional Brewing Grains, Mashing, Hops, Spices, Yeast), it makes referencing the book quick and painless.

Overall: A well put together book that looks at traditional and innovative brewing at the same time. An indispensable read for anyone interested in either Bière de Garde or Saison. That said, if these are not styles you have much interest in you'd probably be better off taking a copy out from the library since there isn't too much information that is applicable to other types of beer.

This is my second copy of the book (my first was left in a hotel room in Florida last spring), so it is in pretty good shape. If you buy a copy make sure it has all 198 pages, the first replacement copy I bought from Amazon was missing the last 50 pages.

Book Review Schedule Set

Here is the schedule based on the results of the poll:

1/22/09 The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
1/29/09 How to Brew
2/05/09 Designing Great Beers
2/12/09 Wild Brews
2/19/09 Brew Like a Monk
2/26/09 Radical Brewing
3/06/09 Farmhouse Ales
3/13/09 Principles of Brewing Science
3/20/09 Brewing Classic Styles
3/27/09 Extreme Brewing
4/10/09 Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers
4/17/09 Homebrewer’s Garden
4/24/09 Barley Wine
5/01/09 Brewing up a Business
5/08/09 The Brewmaster’s Table
5/15/09 New Brewing Lager Beers
5/22/09 Smoked Beers
5/29/09 Brewing Wheat Beers
6/05/09 Microbrewed Adventures
9/25/09 The Everything Homebrewing Book
11/28/11 Brewing Better Beer

I've moved the reviews to Fridays for the time being because my beekeeping class starts this week on Thursday nights.

After that I have some random other books on beer, mead, cooking, and baking that I'll take a look at.

The new poll was submitted by a reader named Ryan who is interested in what homebrew software people use.

Hoppy American Tripel: First Tasting

I was thinking of doing a second tasting on my Hoppy American Tripel, but then I realized that somehow I missed doing a first tasting on this while it was fresh. It has changed considerably over the last year (namely the hops have really mellowed), but I thought it was too hoppy at first.

Appearance – Brilliantly clear golden orange. Nice creamy white head, with good retention and lacing. It certainly looks the part of a tripel, one of the best looking beers I've made.

Smell – Sweet, fruity, with a hint of clove, but with a fair amount of oxidation (although thankfully dark fruit and no wet cardboard). No more fresh hoppy aroma, but the Belgian character comes through more than when it was young.

Taste – Still sweeter than I like my Belgians (even more so now that much of the hop bitterness has dropped out). Good malty backbone, and nice fruity esters (apples and pears especially). The alcohol has mellowed over the last year, very hidden for 10% ABV.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, nice prickly carbonation. A bit thicker than ideal, but the carbonation helps to keep it in check.

Drinkability & Notes – This beer probably peaked after 6 months in the bottle, but it is still a dangerously drinkable beer. With the light oxidation it almost tastes like a Belgian barleywine. If I were to rebrew this I would lower the mash temp to 147 (to reduce the sweetness and lighten the body), and make sure the yeast was healthier. I would also consider leaving out the dry hops.