Savor - An American Craft Beer & Food Experience

Last night was the second year for the Savor beer and food pairing event. I didn't go the first year because of the high price, but everyone who went told me it was great so this year I decided that I should probably go. The event was located at the National Building Museum an easy 15 minute Metro ride from my apartment, so I really had no excuses for missing it.

I had a really good time, there were plenty of very tasty beers to try and lots of people to talk to (it is almost disturbing how many DC beer nerds and homebrewers I know). I thought it was really good idea to have brewers (or at least reps) on hand to answer questions about the beers they were pouring. That said it was busy enough that it was hard to have more than a brief exchange with anyone who was pouring. The hall was pretty crowded, but for the most part I never had to wait more than a minute or two for beer (Russian River was the main exception).

There were some excellent funky beers to be had, Boulevard Saison Brett, Russian River Consecration, The Bruery Saison Rue, New Belgium Biere de Mars, Lost Abbey Cuvee Tomme, and Avery Brabant. All of them were very tasty, but Consecration (a strong dark sour with currants) really out shined the rest in my opinion.

Other than the funky stuff I was really impressed by Smuttynose Star Island Single, Sprecher Black Bavarian, Firestone Walker 31 Pale (and Union Jack), Brown's ESB, Odell Woodcut #2, Blue Point Rastafar Rye, and the Black Foot Single Malt (Maris Otter) IPA. The Smuttynose was especially good, clean malt, good yeast character, should be a great summer beer.

I was a bit disappointed that some of the breweries that are distributed in the area brought easy to find beers. Sam Adams went with Boston Lager and Summer Ale, Ommegang with Hennepin and Ommegang, Oscar Blues with Gordon and Old Chub, Southampton with Double White and Saison etc... Many of the small local breweries did the same thing. With so many interesting beers and small/obscure breweries I hope there weren't many people drinking the likes of Boston Lager.

The food was just so-so for the most part. Last year they apparently did not have enough food, so this year they really stepped up the volume (it was rare to see an empty plate). That said, because of these huge piles of food I picked up numerous things that were colder than they should have been. In general the food was pretty bland, I understand that you don't want to wreck anyone's palette, but you need pretty flavorful food to stand up to the more aggressive beers.

It was also cool to meet the likes of Charlie Papazian (my friend Dan immediately asked him for advice on a Gose he is about to brew).


If they have it next year I'm not sure if I'll go, but I would certainly consider it since it seems like every year they are working out more of the kinks.

Adambier - HoTD Adam Clone

Adambier is a historical style from Dortmund that there is not that much known about. The Home Brew Wiki describes it as "A strong (about 10% ABV), dark, sour beer, which was top-fermented and then aged in wood for long periods; it was always aged for at least a year, and often many years longer." To me it doesn't sound like anything that is made in Germany today (I would only expect a beer like that from a Belgian or American brewer).

Hair of the Dog Brewing does a delicious beer called Adam that is loosely based on Adambier. Their version is closer to a hoppy-peat-smoked-wee-heavy, but it is delicious so I can't fault them. Sean Paxton has a HoTD Adam clone recipe posted over on Homebrew Chef that came directly from the brewer. I love the beer so I figured I would give the recipe a shot (with a few minor substitutions to utilize the ingredients I had in bulk).

This was my first batch using peat smoked malt. It is the same sort of malt that is used in the production of Scotch whisky. Peat is essentially chunks of marsh (given another million years and some pressure and it would be transformed into coal). This smoked malt is much more pungent (creosote is a common descriptor) than malts smoked like German rauchmalt (which uses beechwood) or alder/cherry/hickory wood smoked malt (which is probably why you don't see peat smoked sausages). I backed down on the peated malt called for in the recipe a little because I'm a wimp, and not a huge fan of that character in beer (still .5 lbs in 3.5 gallons is more than most people recommend).

The recipe also calls for an extended concentrated boil, I did 3.5 hours (the longest I have done besides my lambic). Concentrating the boil below the target batch volume encourages Maillard reactions (which add both malt complexity and color). I topped off the beer with boiled/chilled water before pitching the yeast to reduce the osmotic pressure exerted on them. I ended up a bit over gravity anyway, but the Wyeast Scottish ale yeast does a great job in high gravity beers.

I bottled 2.5 gallons of this batch a couple days ago, but I probably won't be drinking more than a bottle or two of it until after the hot summer weather passes. A big, bitter, smokey beer just isn't what I want to drink when it is hot out (the extra time will only improve a beer like this anyway). I ice distilled about 1/2 gallon of it to mimic Hair of the Dog's Dave (a 29% ABV double ice concentrated version of Adam). More on that experiment to come soon.

I will be brewing a beer that is closer to the historic Adambier in the next couple weeks, a rauchmalt spiked doppelsticke that we will barrel age once the wee heavy is bottled in a month or so. Looking forward to how the two beers compare, similar ideas with very different ingredients.

Adambier

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 3.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 14.94
Anticipated OG: 1.099
Anticipated SRM: 27.8
Anticipated IBU: 65.8
Brewhouse Efficiency: 63 %
Wort Boil Time: 210 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
-----------------------
13.00 lbs. Maris Otter
0.63 lbs. Crystal 55L
0.50 lbs. Peated Malt
0.44 lbs. Munich Malt
0.25 lbs. Chocolate Malt
0.13 lbs. Black Patent Malt

Hops
------
1.00 oz. Galena @ 90 min.
1.13 oz. Super Styrians @ 40 min.
0.75 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang @ 10 min.

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 11 Min.(boil)
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 11 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
WYeast 1728 Scottish Ale

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

Mash Schedule
-------------
60 min @ 153

Notes
-----
Brewed 4/11/09 with Audrey at the start

Added ~1 tsp of chalk to the mash to up the pH a bit.

Collected 6.25 gallons of 1.052 wort.

Chilled to 70, strained, shook to aerate (because there was already so much yeast from the ISA yeast cake I don't think growth will be an issue so I didn’t use pure O2).

I must have gotten a bad pre-boil gravity reading because even after topping off with a 1/2 gallon of water I ended up over gravity by .014. I decided to leave it as is instead of topping it off so it can still fit in my 3 gallon secondary after primary fermentation. Boiling down below the batch volume encourages more melanoidin production.

Put into the freezer set at 50 to help cool it down more, turned up to 55 8 hours later.

Rocking fermentation by 12 hours

4/15/09 After 4 days fermentation seems to be slowing so I upped the freezer temp to 62.

4/18/09 Fermentation seems to really be slowing, upped temp to 65.

4/21/09 Upped temp to 68 to finish out, gravity down to 1.031 (71% AA, 10.1% ABV). Still may drop another few points.

4/25/09 Weird thing floating on top of the primary, krausen 95% gone. Racked to secondary, topped off with ~1 qrt of boiled/cooled water. Left at 68 degrees just in case there is any more fermentation to come (CO2 release continued for a week or so).

5/12/09 Tastes good, not much peat. Took about 1/2 gallon and put in Tupperware in the freezer to recreate Dave.

5/23/09 Bottled with 1.5 oz of turbinado (white sugar was hiding) aiming for right around 2 volumes of CO2. Gravity down to 1.023 (77% AA, 10% ABV), right where I wanted it. Made sure to pick up a bit of yeast from the bottom and added a splash of WLP011 to aid in carbonation.

7/26/09 Still no carbonation, but even flat the flavor is very nice. With a few more months of age and some bubbles this will be a knockout.

10/19/09 First Tasting, still no carbonation, but otherwise very tasty.

4/13/11 Has aged very well, although it never carbonated. Prunes, light smoke, chocolate, bread, good balance.

Book Review: Smoked Beers

Smoked Beers: History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes was written by Ray Daniels (of Designing Great Beers fame) and Geoffrey Larson (the founder/president of Alaskan Brewing). It covers the use of smoked malt in brewing, concentrating on the German tradition (it is the strongest), but also taking a look at the use of smoke in American beers as well as throughout history.

Content: The first (long) chapter covers the history of smoked beers. The authors argue that up until the invention of coak dried pale malt a couple hundred years ago most malts (and thus most beers) were brown and smokey (there were some places that used either straw or air to dry malt to make for cleaner beers). This chapter also talks about events in beer history like the switch away from brown malt to pale plus black patent in porters (mainly because pale malt gives better extraction). Finally it covers some historic smoked beers (Gratzer, Lichtenhainer).

The second chapter covers some of the notable producers of smoked beers. Schlenkerla (the maker of several sausagey brews) and Spezial both smoke their own malt, while most other German brewers buy rauchmalt from Weyermann (which is also available to homebrewers). Schlenkerla gets their consistency from blending 12 batches of malt in each silo, drawing from 2 silos per brew, and blending 6 brews into a single lagering tank. Alaskan Smoked Porter was created because a salmon smokery is located across the street (once a year the brewers use the facility to smoke malt over alder wood). Peat smoked malt (which I just used for the first time in an Adambier) is covered last, they mention multiple phenols levels being available, but I have never seen that at homebrew stores.

The third chapter covers commercial examples of beers with smoked malt. The first part discusses the different rauchbiers made in Bamburg, many of which are not available in the states. The rest of the chapter gives short profiles of American smoked beers, ranging from smoke forward like Alaskan Smoked Porter to those that just have a smoke complexity like Arcadia London Porter. Quite a few of the breweries have gone out of business in the last 10 years (Brewmoon, DeGroen's etc...). There is lots of good information on each beer if you are looking to do a clone or just learn what makes a commercial beer taste the way it does (type of smoked malt, other malts, hops, ABV/SRM/IBU/OG etc...). I used the information here to help me when I was making my Alderwood Smoked Porter.

The next chapter covers the chemistry of smoke. This there is some pretty interesting stuff even if you just like barbecuing . The temperature of the burning wood has more of an impact on the flavor than I realized (of course flames bad, but different compounds are produced at different temps). There are also some carcinogens created unless the smoking is well controlled, filtered, and burned with sulfur (this is one advantage of buying commercial smoked malt). Avoiding chlorine (and even chloride) is important as all the phenols in smoke make chlorophenols even more of a concern than usual.

The fifth chapter covers smoking your own malt at home. This is something I have not tried, but there is loads of information on three different methods ranging from simple to complex. Smoking over a kettle grill with charcoal and wood on the opposite side from the malt sounds like what most people would do (unless you own a smoker).

The sixth chapter covers the recipes.

The appendix has a nice section of cooking with smoked beer (which includes recipes from several of the breweries covered in the book). The recipes range from the plausible like sauerbraten meatballs to the more fanciful like smoked porter cheesecake. The appendix also has as an outdated list of brewers who make smoked beers, as well as wood suppliers, and a metric-standard conversion chart.

Recipes: Ten recipes that cover the wide range of smoked beer possibilities. Recipes include a classic Bamberg Rauchbier, smoked weizen, and smoked mild. Extract (although a mini-mash is generally required for smoked malts) and all-grain versions of each are included. I have not brewed any of the recipes, but I did not notice any obvious mistakes (like many of these books seem to have).

Accuracy: It seems like an accurate book to me, no issues that I have spotted.

Readability: Very easy to read, with lots of interesting information (assuming you like smoked beers). I think the organization is well done, and there are plenty of pictures/insets to keep the pages from being bland. I could have used more practical information and less history, but that is my taste in brewing books.

Overall: If you are interested in making smoked beers, and particularly if you want to smoke your own malts, this is a must read. The commercial info is a bit outdated, but other than that Smoked Beers does not seem nine years old. That said, there are some new smoked malts on the market, for example Briess has recently started selling some smoked malts, has anyone tried those?

How many batches of beer have you brewed in the last year?

None 14 (4%)
1-6 86 (30%)
7-12 72 (25%)
13-18 42 (14%)
19-24 24 (8%)
25-36 28 (9%)
37+ 16 (5%)

Looks like the majority of respondents brew less than once a month, but there are quite a few homebrewers out there who brew much more frequently. I am at close to 20 batches over the last year, which is about average for me. I have a hard time imaging brewing as much as some of you guys (I’m really impressed that 16 people brewed 37 or more batches).

I feel the more often I brew the better my beers come out. When I brew infrequently I tend to have more brew day issues, I guess I get out of my groove.

It is coming up to the hot DC summer so I am frantically brewing batches so I can take July/August off. Don’t worry though there will still be plenty of updates on the various batches I have going as well as some other fermentables (which I have been lax on recently).

Wheat Triplebock

After buying a 50 lb sack of German wheat malt last year as part of a group grain buy I have been trying to use it in as many ways as possible. I did quite a few light beers like a hefeweizen, and added a couple pounds to several other recipes, but I had been looking for something big that would use up a more.

My friend Nathan came back from a trip last fall with stories of The Livery, a fantastic brewpub in Benton Harbor Michigan. They do a huge range of beers, from mild lagers, to strong sours, with lots of barrel aged fun. After doing some reading on them I saw that they make a beer they call Trippel Weizenbock (a big dark lager with wheat) that sounded like just what I was looking for. I wanted to get this brewed in time for Nathan's birthday blow-out in March, but I wanted to let it lager for longer before bottling (it will probably really be hitting its stride by March 2010).

I was able to dig up a little info on the beer from their website ("Definitely the most complex beer coming out of our brewery, Ratebeer.com has rated this as the #1 Weizenbock in the world! Flavors of leather, fig, raisin, and a sweet finish from 33% wheat malt co-mingle with warm alcohol and noble hops for a truly unique beer experience! Also available barrel aged."), but not enough specifics to really put together a recipe. So I emailed the brewer (Steve Berthel) to see if he would be willing to help me out, he graciously obliged:

"I use German pilsener, vienna, and dark munich malts, and English crystal 155-165. 2 hr. boil. German Perle to bitter and Perle and Tettnang in late strikes to balance the malt sweetness. I use White Labs German Bock yeast for now. Starting gravity is around 1.106, finish gravity is around 1.025, giving an abv of 11.75%. Good luck!"

From there it was easy to come up with something I felt would get me in the ballpark. The biggest decision I faced was how much of the Simpson's Extra Dark Crystal to use (an ingredient I hadn't even tasted until my box showed up from Northern Brewer). The flavor of the grains was part way between a regular dark crystal (like crystal 120 or special b) and pale chocolate malt. So I decided to add a full pound to my 3.5 gallon batch, assuming it would be similar to adding half a pound each of crystal 120 and pale chocolate.

I lagered the beer for 4 months in 1 gallon jugs. I left two plain, but to the third gallon I added some bourbon soaked oak cubes (I'll post a tasting of that later).

The flavor is already pretty good, the oaked batch particularly (the oak tannins help to cut through some of the sweetness that the plain batch has). If I were to brew this again I would probably lower the mash temp a couple degrees since in finished .005 higher than the original and has a bit more sweetness than I like.

Tasting 5/17/09

Appearance – Pours with a thin crema of a head on top of a dark brown, nearly black body. When held to the light it is a less dark brown with some red, pretty clear. The head is composed of coarse bubbles, retention is good with some lacing.

Smell – Big sweet nose. Loads of malty goodness with a big overripe fruit character. There is also a nice hint of coffee. As it warms there is a clean waft of alcohol, but it is not boozy or hot.

Taste – Tastes like a huge sticky doppel/eisbock to me. The big bready maltiness is just flowing from this one. The alcohol and just a hint of hop bitterness provides just enough to keep this from being cloying. Despite the fact that this is not one of the ones I oak aged I still get a bit of toasted oak, but it is just the malt playing a trick on me.

Mouthfeel – Big and thick, with moderate carbonation. Spot on for a big bock, but it means I probably won't be drinking much of this one until it cools down in the fall.

Drinkability & Notes – This beer just took a second place yesterday at the Spirit of Free Beer as an Eisbock, an impressive result for a huge beer that is just 6 months old (despite the fact that it was not freeze concentrated, I thought it was too dark/strong to do well as a doppelbock). This is yet another one that I have high hopes for with a bit more age as the complexity increases and the flavors mellow (hopefully as the hop bitterness drops the beer will not become cloying).

Wheat Triplebock

Recipe Specifics (All-Grain)
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 3.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 15.75
Anticipated OG: 1.105
Anticipated SRM: 27.4
Anticipated IBU: 34.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 64 %
Wort Boil Time: 135 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
-----------------------
5.25 lbs. Wheat Malt
4.00 lbs. Munich Malt (dark)
3.50 lbs. Pilsener
2.00 lbs. Vienna Malt
1.00 lbs. Simpsons Extra Dark Crystal 155L

Hops
------
0.75 oz. Perle @ 60 min.
0.50 oz. Tettnanger Tettnang @ 15 min.
0.25 oz. Perle @ 15 min.

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 11 Min.(boil)
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 11 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
White Labs WLP833 German Bock Lager

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

Mash Schedule
---------------
65 min @ 154

Notes
------
Brewed 11/16/08 by myself.

Added 1 tsp of chalk because the pH was low, around 5.0 (at room temp).

Collected 6.25 gallons of 1.068 wort. Boiled down more than expected (~3 gallons and 1.118) so I added .5 gal of boiled/chilled water.

Chilled to ~60, but my ground water wasn't cold enough to get it any lower. So I put it into my chest freezer at 48 degrees. 7 hours later I pitched ~1 qrt of slurry from the Helles, very fresh yeast.

11/23/08 Upped temp to 52 to help it finish out.

11/30/08 Moved out of the freezer to let my ice cider freeze.

12/08/08 Racked to three 1 gallon secondaries, the clear one got 1/2 oz of bourbon soaked American oak cubes. Put into the freezer at 34 degrees. The gravity is down to 1.030 (71% AA, 10% ABV). Pretty good flavor, certainly tastes like a big bock to me. Looks like it will finish a few points higher than I expected, might drop the mash temp to 151 to get it lower next time.

4/11/09 Bottled 2 gallons straight with 1.25 oz of cane sugar, and 1 gallon oaked with .625 oz of cane sugar. Both got a splash of WY1728 from the International Session Ale primary to aid in carbonation.

4/28/09 Fully carbonated thanks to the added yeast.

6/13/09 Scored a 37/38/38 and got a second place in its category as an Eisbock at the SoFB. The main complaint from the judges was that it wasn't boozy enough.

2/3/11 Realized I never did a tasting of the oak aged portion, one of my favorites since the oak helps to cut the sweetness.

11/1/12 At four years the plain version is still great, smooth, rich, complex, balanced, terrific! Hopefully malt-whisky-barrel-aged re-brew ages just as well!

2/18/14 Final tasting of the oak-aged portion along with the re-brew. Held up well (caramel, dried fruit, vanilla, smooth etc.), but is slowly fading with subtle oxidation.

Book Review: New Brewing Lager Beer

New Brewing Lager Beer: The Most Comprehensive Book for Home and Microbrewers was written by Greg Noonan (the longtime head brew The Vermont Pub and Brewery) in 1986, and received an update in 1996. The preface indicates that this book is about lagers and ales (lagers are just "the culmination of the brewing theories of all European brewing traditions"), I think the English and the Belgians might not agree with that, but lager brewing does tend to be the most precise in its technique because light lagers have such a delicate flavor. That said there are some techniques that are used for ales, but really aren't for lagers that this book completely skips (like dry hopping).

Content: The book is divided into two section (like just about ever other brewing book), the first covers the ingredients used and the second covers the process/techniques.

In the ingredient section each chapter covers both scientific information as well as loads of information on practical things that many brewers may not know how to do.

The barley and malt chapters cover some really interesting topics like interpreting a malt analysis sheet. Malt analysis is very important if you want to do things like decide when to do a protein rest. Strangely the chapter that explains how barley is turned into malt comes much later.

I think that the water section is one of the most comprehensive (although I tend to think How to Brew does a more practical job). Similar to the malt chapter it covers both the scientific (bonding, anions etc..) as well as the practical side (how to read a water analysis report from your water department or a lab).

The hop section is fine, but there isn't as much to talk about as there really aren't hop analysis sheets that are available to the average homebrewer (I've never gotten anything besides an AA%). There is some good information on the structure of the hop cone, something people who use primarily pellet hops might not think about).

The yeast section focuses on a couple of areas that most homebrewers don't concern themselves with. Things like yeast washing, and pure culturing (using agar plates), but there is also some good information on using and saving starters.

The bacteria chapter really just talks about bacteria as spoilage organisms. This is interesting, but doesn't really help (really it comes down to use proper sanitation so you don't have to ever deal with unwanted bacteria).

The final ingredient chapter is a short one on enzymes that covers mostly enzymatic activity in the mash, but also a bit on yeast metabolism (both of these topics should probably have been covered in their respective chapters).

The second (process) section focuses on traditional lager techniques that don't get much coverage in the other big brewing books. Things like decoction mashing, krausening, and lagering.

This section starts out with by talking about the malting process, this is interesting, but not all that useful for the average homebrewer. I think this section would have fit better in the ingredients chapter (I am sure more homebrewers grow/process hops than grow/malt barley).

The following chapters talks about crushing the malt, something many homebrewers don't think about that much. I guess in 1996 there weren't the high quality malt mills available from the likes of Barley Crusher (which has served me well for three years), because corona mills are the only type of home option he mentions. Noonan talks about the quality of the malt having a big effect on the quality of the crush, something I had never thought of.

The mashing chapter is one of the best resources I have found on complex mashes like decoctions. That said, there aren't many malts available any more that really call for a time consuming triple decoction mash.

The boiling chapter covers quite a bit, including the use of hops, the breaks, and cooling. It mostly discusses the science behind the boil than anything practical. It devotes quite a bit of space to determining the boil-off rate percentage, something I don't think is that important as for homebrewers as the pro-brewer (I deal with boil-off as a rate rather than a percentage).

The fermentation chapter is good for lager brewing, but won't help much else. It covers a lot about yeast that I think would have been better in the yeast chapter.

The planning chapter covers doing many things by hand that most people now do with software (calculating SRM, IBUs, OG etc...). If you do this sort of thing by hand still it might be worth a read, but I think DGB does a better job.

The brewing procedures chapter coverts much of the general directions in the other chapters (which could be applied to either a pro or home-brewer) and gives specific how to instructions. It also includes a good troubleshooting section.

The last few chapters and the appendices cover sanitation, equipment, extract brewing, infusion and step mashing. These chapters are fine, but don't cover anything better or in more depth than a basic homebrew book.

Recipes: New Brewing Lager Beer includes seven recipes that cover only classic German styles. I think some of the recipes are outdated relying on malts that really aren't traditional (the Bock calls for brown malt, but no Munich malt). There is also too much cara- malt for my taste (only one calls for less than 1 lb), most of these styles should be pretty dry, and I would hope that all that effort on the decoction mashes would result in good head retention (despite that most contain carapils).

Accuracy: There are some problems here and there (like the suggestion to rack your beer to secondary before fermentation is complete, which often leads to a stuck fermentation), but overall I think this book does an pretty good job.

I also take issue with his hot side aeration discussion the the boiling chapter (which he claims happens if you expose the wort to oxygen when it is above 60 degrees). This seems like lager bias to me as there are not many ales made with the fermentation temperature starting in the 50s.

Readability: The writing is technical, but accessible. It certainly is not written with the lighter feel of something like The Complete Joy of Home Brewing or even the more recent Belgian Trilogy, but it is not as dense as Principles of Brewing Science. Noonan does a good job including charts, graphs (for the complex mashes), and pictures (which always liven a book up).

The book can be hard to reference as why certain things are included in the ingredient section versus the process is unclear. For example it seems to me that the instructions for yeast washing should be in the process section, but they are found in the yeast chapter of the ingredients section.

I would have preferred to see the two sections merged (sanitizers discussed next to bacteria, malt next to mashing etc...) particularly because the the ingredient choice for things like malt plays such a big role on how you conduct your mash.

Overall: I think this is a good book for someone who wants to know more of the applicable science behind brewing. It also is a great resource for decoction mashing, and lagering. I think it is a bit too technical for a first beer book, but I think many brewers could benefit from it early on, even if you don't have a huge interest in lagers. It is a bit dated though, so it would be worth using the information to supplement other books that take advantage of the higher quality malts available to homebrewers today.

Does anyone have other suggestions for books that give good play to lagers? Most of the other homebrew books I have just treat it as a minor variant on ale brewing.