Brett Brux Belgian Pale Tasting

One of the most important factors in making good sour/funky beers is using the right bugs (they are the ones doing the hard work after all).  I've slowly been trying to figure out which microbes impart characters I enjoy the most. The session Belgian pale that I brewed with my friend Pete last summer was my first beer with White Lab's Brett bruxellensis (a sister to the strain used in Orval).  It is supposed to impart a complex "classic" funk (the sort of leathery-horse-blanket-funk people imagine when they think of Brett), but I assumed it would be restrained (mellow even) in a low gravity (1.042) beer mashed at 147 (for high fermentability), boy was I wrong.

Brett Finish Belgian Pale

Appearance – Pours from the tap with an attractive golden hue. Slightly hazy, but much clearer than it was when it was tapped. The head pours short, but it sticks around and clings nicely to the sides of the glass.

Smell – Big aggressive aspriny/yeasty/horsey funk. Slight toasty malt backbone. Not much else going on.

Taste – Complex funk, farmyard, hay, hints of fruit, minerals, slight urinal. Toasty/yeasty finish (the Vienna malt comes through nicely). The finish is pretty dry, but it isn't grating. Slight hop bitterness, but not much other Saaz hop character left (I was originally planning on drinking it fresher, but I kept waiting for the funk to get to a happier place).

Mouthfeel – Light body but it avoids being watery or tannic. Moderate carbonation.  About right for a borderline table strength beer.

Drinkability & Notes – Should have been a refreshing beer, but the aggressive funk gets in the way. Seems like a solid recipe, I think the issue may just be the strain of Brett Brux. I've used it on a few other beers and don't really love any of them. I might have to dump my culture and give the Wyeast version a shot in a few beers.

Bohemian Ale (Czech Pilsner Fail)

I've written in the past about batches of beer that failed to turn out well due to poor recipe design, and microbial invaders, but those aren't the only ways to screw up a batch...

For a few months I'd been thinking about brewing a traditional Czech/Bohemian Pilsner.  I ordered Saaz hops and Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner malt (although I didn't get my hands on their traditionally floor malted stuff) the only two ingredients needed for the clean/pale/spicy beer style.  I spent considerable effort researching/calculating water adjustments (to soften my water I cut it with distilled) and a decoction mash schedule (I attempted the Hochkurz Double Decoction).

Five days in advance I made a big yeast starter with a smack pack from Wyeast, it took three days to get going and when it did it looked/smelled a bit off.  No problem, I ran out to the homebrew store the day before I wanted to brew to pick up two fresh vials of lager yeast from White Labs.  I made a new starter, but 24 hours later it wasn't showing much activity when I pitched it into the 50 degree wort; at that point I wasn't too worried.  Two days later with no drop in gravity or pH I decided to cut my losses and pitched a packet of clean ale yeast.

I'm still expecting this to be a drinkable beer, but it won't be quite as clean/crisp as I was anticipating.  Lesson learned, I'll keep a dry yeast on hand that can sub in for whatever I'm brewing (American, English, Belgian, Wheat, Lager etc...).

Bohemian Fail

 Recipe Specifics
----------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.00
Anticipated OG: 1.052
Anticipated SRM: 4.2
Anticipated IBU: 44.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72 %
Wort Boil Time: 105 Minutes

Grain
-------
100.0% - 10.00 lbs. German Pilsener

Hops
-------
1.00 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet, 3.50% AA) @ First Wort
1.00 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet, 3.50% AA) @ 75 min.
1.00 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet, 3.50% AA) @ 23 min.
1.25 oz. Czech Saaz (Pellet, 3.50% AA) @ 10 min.

Extras
-------
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 17 min.
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 17 min.

Yeast
-------
Safale US-05

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Pilsen

Mash Schedule
-------------------
Protein Rest 15 min @ 127 (Infusion)
Sacch I 45 min @ 144 Infuse (Infusion)
Sacch II 20 min @ 150 (Decoction)
Sacch III 30 min @ 158 (Infusion)
Mash Out 15 min @ 169 (Decoction)

Notes
-------
12/1/10 Made a 2.5 qrt starter with a ~3 month old smack pack. No activity after 24 hours. Starter never really took off.

12/4/10 Made another starter with tubes of WLP800 Pilsner Lager Yeast and WLP802 Czech Budejovice Lager Yeast. ~2 qrts, put in fridge at 46.

12/5/10 Heated up 2.5 gallons of distilled with 2 gallons filtered DC tap. Added 1 g each CaCl and CaSO4 to the strike and sparge water.

Weyermann Bohemian Pils, I believe it is the non-floor malted type.

First decoction did not raise the temp as much as expected, only 150 instead of 158.  Added boiling water to get it the rest of the way.

Batch sparged with 174 degree water. Collected 7.5 gallons of 1.046 wort.

Year old 4% AA hops adjusted down.

3.5 gallons into the fermenter at 57 degrees. Put into fridge at 47.

Topped off with 1 gallon of chilled spring water and the starter to make 5 gallons. Starter looked less than active, but it seemed to be producing a small amount of CO2. Shook to aearate. Left at 48 ambient to get fermenting.

No activity after 48 hours, shook several times and upped temp to 55.

12/7/10 Gravity and pH stable. Pitched a pack of rehydrated US-05.

Good fermentation within 24 hours. Upped ambient temp to ~60.

12/19/10 Fermentation appears finished, most of yeast flocced out. Racked to a keg, dropped temp to 45, then 24 hours later to 35 to lager.

12/28/30 Sample was a bit buttery, so I pulled it out of the fridge and roused the yeast once a day for a few days.  Four days later the diacetyl was gone.

1/10/11 Back into the fridge until a tap frees up.

1/13/11 Put on gas to carbonate at ~20 PSI.

2/9/11 Turned out pretty well despite the fermentation fail.  Next time around (beside active lager yeast) I'm planning on switching the malt to the floor malted variety, and adding an addition ounce of Saaz at the end of the boil.

East Coast Yeast Bugs

On our drive up to Boston today Audrey and I stopped to buy a handful of the first few commercial releases from Al Buck's East Coast Yeast lab at Princeton Homebrew in Trenton (the only place they are currently available).  Before this venture Al had been putting his considerable microbiological talents to isolating brewing microbes, giving away Bugfarms (custom blends of those microbes, we used III in our wine barrel solera), and winning homebrew contests.  His sour blends have always been balanced for more aggressive sourness and funk than the Wyeast and White Labs blends, so dregs aren't necessary.

I picked up four of the strains/blends:

Bugfarm IV - A large complex blend of cultures to emulate sour beers such as lambic style ales. Over time displays a citrus sourness and large barnyard profile. Contains yeast (S. cerevisiae and S. fermentati), several Brettanomyces strains, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. The BugFarm blend changes every year and can be added at any stage of fermentation. Now producing Bugfarm 4 (includes a newcomer – Brettanomyces custersianus).

Brett Blend #1 - Three individual Brettanomyces isolates from lambic producers combined to give an aggressive brett presence in any beer. Vigorous, funky and acid-tolerant, the blend can be added at any stage of fermentation and is excellent for priming or re-yeasting.

Saison Brasserie Blend - A combination of several Saison yeasts for both fruity and spicy characteristics accompianied with dryness. Apparent Attenuation: up to 80%. Suggested fermentation temp: 75-85° F.

Scottish Heavy - Leaves a fruity profile with woody, oak esters reminiscent of malt whiskey. Well suited for 90/shilling or heavier ales including old ales and barleywines due to level of attenuation (77-80%). Suggested fermentation temp: 60-68°F.

I'm planning on using the Bugfarm for our second solera (a strongish golden ale that Nathan and I will be aging in our new apple brandy barrel).  The Saison blend and the Brett blend will be combined into a slightly strong rye saison.  I was hoping to use the Farmhouse Brett (the Saison blend plus a Brett), but it was sold out.  Finally the Scottish Heavy will go into a Scottish stout (followed by some sort of heather gruit).

Princeton Homebrew also had the Old Newark (the actual Ballantine strain) and the Trappist (I suspect one of the fabled Brewtek strains), but I didn't want to overbuy. The Princeton Homebrew website doesn't allow online orders, but you can arrange for Joe to ship you the East Coast Yeasts if you send him an email (joe at solarhomebrew.com).  The Bugfarm is $10, the rest are $8 (shipping is $8 uninsulated, or $15 insulated/iced), supplies are very limited.

Smoked Double Secret Probation Tasting

With a sizable backlog of cellared beers to sample, I thought I'd knock another one off the list by revisiting my Rauch Doppelsticke (literally Smoked Double Secret).  If you'd remember back to the summer of 2009, this beer was originally slated to be the second beer into our bourbon barrel, but after the Wee Heavy started to sour I just bottled it straight.  In a week we are going to bottle the second beer from that barrel (a porterish stout) so it seemed like another good time to revisit this one.

Double Secret Probation

Appearance – Nearly opaque dark brown, but it has a luminous ruby glow when held to the light. Pours with two-finger-creamy-tan head that sinks slowly over a few minutes trailing a spotty lacing.

Smell – Good balance of rich “German” maltiness and subtle smokey complexities. The malt is a bit crackery, fresh, grainy.

Taste – Woodsy smoked malt start, but not to the level of being bacony or meaty. There is some dark fruit (raisin) complementing the bready malt. Just a hint of alcohol in the finish along with a touch of full city roast coffee. Slight lingering bitterness balances the moderate malt sweetness. Still tastes pretty fresh, no oxidation character (unless that's what the raisin is...).

Mouthfeel – Medium body, not too full/thick like many big German beers (thanks to close to 80% apparent attenuation). The carbonation is medium-low, just about right for a complex ale like this.

Drinkability & Notes – A complex yet drinkable beer as is, but it would have been great with a bit of oak/vanilla from a few months in a bourbon barrel. I love the flavor possibilities of big lagers, but they are often so sweet that the balance and drinkability of their smaller siblings is completely lost.

What is the toughest type of beer to brew?

Clean (Pale lagers, Kolsch) - 39%
Sours (Lambic, Flanders Red) -  27%
High gravity (Anything 1.100+) -  12%
Yeast driven (Hefeweizen, Saison) - 5%
Hop bombs (American IPA/DIPA) - 4%
Non-Reihentsgabot (Fruit, spice, or herb laced) - 4%
Malt driven (Milds, Dunkle) - 2%
Other - 2%

I won't say that the results from this one surprise me, but for once I'm with the dissent.  With my brewing it's been the malt driven beers have always given me more problems than either sours or clean/pale beers.  Getting just the right balance of malty flavors in a session gravity beer (neither bland nor obnoxious) is something I have yet to consistently master.  Most other styles have something to camouflage their flaws (alcohol, hops, yeast, sourness etc...) but styles like English mild and dunkel have a clean/fresh malt character and not much else.

The "clean" lagers/ales are a similar category, but for whatever reason I've had better luck with my batches of  Kolsh/Helles etc... maybe because they are so bland I keep my recipes simpler.  Up until a year a go I probably would have rated hop driven beers as one of my biggest challenges, but since starting to keg those sort of beers have improved substantially. Non-Reihentsgabot beers also deserve a mention since they require not only a solid base beer but also layered complexity of adding a unique ingredient (especially when the ingredient(s) stray away than the handful of common fruits/spices historically used in brewing). 

Anyone have a particular style/flavor that has been their white whale, something you've tried repeatedly to brew without ever really being happy with the results?

Second Runnings American Bitter Recipe

There is so much toil that goes into to turning sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into sugar (i.e. growing/malting/kilning/mashing the barley) that it seems like such a waste to brew a big beer and then just throw away the still sweet mash.  To avoid squandering these free fermentables (after extracting the first runnings) I added sparge water and capped the Pliny the Younger clone mash with a bit of Cara 20 and Special Roast (for a bit more body and malt character) and ran off five more gallons of wort.

The gravity of the runnings pre-boil was only in the mid-1.030's so I decided to use a light hand with the hop additions... just kidding I blasted the wort with big American hops, including a couple ounces each of pungent Citra and Chinook at the end of the boil. I though the two hops would provide complementary characters with the Citra's big tropical/citrus nose and the Chinook's cattier/resiny hop punch.

The fun with this batch will really start when I serve it, gravity-cask style.  I shortened and bent the dip tube on the corny keg so that it draws beer from closer to the side (when the keg is lying on its side this will be the bottom).  I'll lay the keg down with the out post at 6 o'clock and connect a picnic tap.  To the in post I'll attach a gas corrector without tubing to allow air into the headspace to displace the dispensed beer.

The cask should be a fun (and less alcoholic) addition to a Pliny tapping party in a month or so. I'm carbonating the beer with an addition of sugar rather than force carbonating (to stay true to tradition), but I still flushed the keg with CO2 before and after filling to minimize oxidation.  I won't add the dry/cask hops until a couple weeks before tapping to ensure they impart the freshest aroma possible.

Second Runnings Pale Ale

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 4.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 26.69
Anticipated OG: 1.041
Anticipated SRM: 10.5
Anticipated IBU: 40.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 17 % (65% including first runnings)
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Grain
------
93.7% - 25.00 lbs. American 2-row
3.5% - 0.94 lbs. CaraPils
1.4% - 0.38 lbs. Crystal 20L
1.4% - 0.38 lbs. Special Roast

Hops
------
0.50 oz. Columbus (Pellet, 13.00% AA) @ 60 min.
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ 0 min.
2.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) Cask Hop
2.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) Cask Hop

Extras
-------
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient Other 15 min.(boil)
0.50 Whirlfloc Fining 15 min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
Safale US-05 Chico

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

Mash Schedule
----------------
Sacc Rest 15 min @ 143F
Sacch II 60 min @ 149F
Sacch III 5 min @ 156F

Notes
-------
Brewed 12/19/10

After the first runnings were drained for Pliny the Younger, I added 6 gallons of 160 degree water (with 5 g of gypsum).  Drained 1 gallon for Pliny then added 6 oz each Belgian cara 20 and special roast to the mash.

Let sit for ~60 min before running off. Collected 5 gallons of 1.034 wort Half flameout hops added at flameout, half after the chill started.

Chilled to 66, pitched onto ~1/2 of the yeast cake from the pils ale. Shook to aerate. Left at 63 ambient to start fermentation. Good fermentation after 24 hours, moved to ~59 ambient.

12/21/10 Measured fermentation temp at 68.

12/28/10 Down to 1.010, 75% AA, 4% ABV.  Right on target.  Krausen down, but I'll give it a few more days at 64 to ensure the fermentation is complete before racking.

12/30/10  Purged a keg with a shortened dip tube.  Racked the 3.5 gallons of beer into the keg with 3 oz of sugar dissolved in 1 pint of water.  Flushed headspace, pressurized.  Left at 62 to naturally carbonate for a few weeks before dry hopping.  Might be a bit over carbonated, but I figure I'll lose some when I dry hop.

1/26/11 Added dry hops.  Purged headspace, left at ambient ~60 F.

2/24/11 Hugely complex hop character, and the cask serving worked really well.