3 Beers, 1 Mash, Good Deal...

It might just become a yearly brew for me… A triple beer mash that is.  Last year I did a Bavarian Hefeweisse, an American Wheat IPA w/ pineapple, and a Session Sour from a single mash.  This year I did a single mash for 3 more beers.  This year the Hefe was switched out for a Witbier, the Wheat IPA for a clone of 3 Floyds Gumballhead, and the sour mashed Session Sour for a sour mashed “Saison” with oak and Pinot Noir juice.  Made for a great brew day, and hopefully, despite a few hiccups, some great beers.

Single Mash:

11# Flaked Wheat

9.6# Great Western Pale Malt

3# Rice Hulls (for good measure)

5/8 tsp Gypsum

3/8 tsp Calcium Chloride

Single Infusion: 151*F for 60 minutes

Ran off 13.5 gallons.

Split into 2 - 6.75 gallon batches

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Witte Comeback:

45 minute boil

FW 0.30oz Sterling AA% Unkown (home grown 7.5% estimated)

15   0.70oz Sterling AA% Unkown (home grown 7.5% estimated)

KO 1.00oz Sterling AA% Unkown (home grown 7.5% estimated)

10 mins 0.80# Flaked Wheat added to boil

KO zest of 2 Cara Cara Oranges, 0.12oz Coriander, 0.12oz Pink Peppercorn, 0.12oz Green Peppercorn (didn’t buy enough spices and missed each addition by half… oops)

Tea of: zest of 1 Cara Cara Orange, 0.20oz Coriander, .12oz Pink Peppercorn, 0.10oz Chamomile steeped 5 mins @ 190*F added to fermenter (1.5 cups)

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5.0 gallons 3726 Farmhouse Ale yeast slurry

0.5 gallons 3726 Farmhouse Ale + souring bugs/Brett

Fermented @ 83*F 2 days, 78*F for 3 weeks

Blended at bottling

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5.5 gallons

OG 1.050

FG 1.005

15 IBUs

4 SRM

5.9% ABV

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Gumballhead:

0.75# Caravienne steeped 35 minutes @ 150*F

45 minute boil

FW 0.50 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

45   0.30 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

15   0.50 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

5     1.30 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

KO 1.00 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

DH  1.40 oz Amarillo 9.3 AA%

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1056 American Ale pitch f/ Oakshire

Fermented @ 66*F for 2 weeks

DH @ 66*F for 4 days

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***Hit the 1.055 gravity perfect @ 5.0 gals but forgot to drain ½ gallon of StarSan from Better Bottle before racking so ended up with 5.5 gallons @ 1.050.  Added 1# sugar boiled in 1 pint water to the fermenter on day 2 to boost gravity back up making it 1.057, and FG hit low @ 1.007 making for a 6.6% ABV beer instead of 5.5%***

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5.5 gallons

1.057 OG

1.007 FG

34 IBUs

5 SRM

6.6% ABV

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Vino Cilurzo (Sour w/ Pinot Juice):

Last runnings from mash 6 gallons @ 1.011 soured with 0.10oz of Pale Malt in bucket @ 98*F for 50 hours, smell of yogurt, not much sour, light twang, somewhat astringent.  Went to boil and my burner caught on fire resulting in no boil.  Racked back into the same bucket less grains.  Pulled 1 quart of wort and brought to just under a boil on the stove.  Added hops and steeped for 5 minutes.  Strained into bucket.  Pitched ¼ cup slurry of 3726 Farmhouse + souring bugs/Brett slurry.  Added 3 pieces of French Oak blocks.  Didn’t take OG, estimated @ 1.030.  On day 2 added 3000ml of Pinot Noir concentrate that I scored for free when it was broken in transit to Falling Sky, estimated new OG 1.050.  Smelled of sulfur so I added 3726 Farmhouse slurry for more yeast activity and also added yeast nutrient per recommendations from a fellow brewer.  As of 4 weeks the sulfur smell is gone and a pellicle has formed.  Looking forward to how this one turns out... it will be bottled in early July since I need the bucket for my Flander's Red, and I don't have another fermenter (unless I pull it off to 1 gallon jugs).  At this point FG is 1.010.

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1.00 oz Cascade (home grown)

1.00 oz Challenger (home grown)

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~ 6.5 gallons

~ 1.050 OG

~ 1.002 FG (unkown, assuming low FG with bugs, Brett, juice)

~5 IBUs

~ 6% ABV

Yogurt... In My Beer?

So much cleaning, so much sanitizing, so much stressing about whether I would ever be able to brew a clean beer again, and then the inevitable happens... another infected batch. I had stripped apart my conical, soaked it in PBW and hot water for over a day, and then left it in bleach for nearly a week. After brewing up 8 gallons of Blonde Ale to split between the conical and my Better Bottle (that had housed the infection as well) as a test to see if I had rid myself of it, I let them both ferment for a week. I pulled samples of both of them to taste, smell, and check the gravity. What I found from that conical was so much different than the Better Bottle. Dull, lifeless, dirty fruit, watery, and 3 points lower, diagnosis: INFECTED! With that, I resigned my efforts to salvage the fermenter, after all I had done, it was to no avail, and thus, a new fermenter for brewing up sours was born. And with all my renewed passions towards sours, it happened at just the right time. I was already planning on souring half the batch anyways, this just made it easier.

I pulled a gallon of the beer from the ball valve that went straight into a glass jug that had housed my Brett starter before it went into the leftover wort from this brew session, and had yet to be cleaned. Given a few months, the Brett should build up a nice pellicle and funk it up quite a bit. In the conical, I added a 1/4 cup of a starter I had built up from the dregs of Russian River's Consecration last summer, as well as a 1/4 cup of the Lambic I brewed last September using yeast I cultured from blackberries growing wild in my neighbor's backyard. I tossed in about 8 cubes of French Oak that were previously used by a winery in Lodi, CA to revive an old barrel as well. I also have a starter from RR Supplication that I won't be adding, at least not right now, because there is a lot of head space in that vessel right now and that culture has some definite acetobacter from when I used it in a bucket on another brew.

Just for the fun of it, I also made a 1L starter with 750ml water and 250ml Apple Juice, and 100g DME, that I cooled to 115*F, and pitched in 1/3 a serving Zoe Non-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt, which I inserted my temp control probe into and set it to 115*F wrapped in the heating blanket I received from a friend. 3 days later, the temp is constant at about 39*C (~100*F). When I poured a sample it fizzed like Alkaseltzer, which is good, that means carbonation, which means that something is going on. A sniff gives hints of yogurt, clean, nothing off in the aroma. A taste gives off sour apples, and a light yogurt twang. I effectively cultured Lacto from Greek Yogurt! After a few more days, I added 3/4 gallons of water mixed with 1.25# Clover Honey to bring it up to 4L, and give it a week or so at 100*F. Once this gallon of Lacto fermented Mead is ready to go, I will add it to the main Blonde Ale in the conical, along with another 1.25# of Clover Honey in a gallon of water, and let her ride for a good 6-8 months. Then I will add back in the gallon of Brett only portion, and hit it with 2-3# of fresh Apricots this Summer. This will bring the total volume of beer up to 6 gallons, with a new OG of 1.041 (1.037 prior to honey), and a FG of near 1.002 (or less) for a 5% ABV oak aged, wild Honey Blonde Ale.

Here's to innovation and infections!

If It's Infected, Why Not Infect It?

I've been thinking a lot about sours and wild brews lately, much of this is from the infections in 8 batches and the despair that I may not be able to brew clean beers again. Then a shipment of Cantillon came in and I was able to get a bottle of 1900 and Rose de Gambrinus and a renewed desire to brew sours on purpose arose. I have the American Blonde going in my fermenters right now, and was able to get an extra 2.5 gallons of wort out of it which got straight Brett B from a starter I had made from Orval (huge pelicle right now). I am planning on diverting 3-4 gallons of the Blonde to another fermenter for souring upon bottling, some with oak, some with Apricots, all with a blend of bugs. This new joy for sours got me thinking... I have a case of infected stout that I am not going to drink... why not sour it all? So I did. Last night I popped the top on the whole case of gushers and poured them into 2 - 1 gallon glass jugs. The foaming was outrageous; it took 3 shots of foam control in each jug to get them full. Once I got them filled I hit them each with a bug blend I have of Lacto, Pedio, and Bretts. One of the jugs overflowed when I hit it with the solution. Both jugs were still throwing off tons of CO2 10 hours later (not too worried about oxidizing these since the airlocks are more active then the fermenting Blondes). I'll give them a few months to go wild and see what comes of it. If they turn out to be drain pours then I've lost nothing but part of an evening and a few drops of foam control. If they turn out to be awesome wilds, then great, glad I did it and saved a batch of beer that was just going to get poured out.

Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong

Thought it would be a good idea to pull some of the little gems and tidbits that I am gleaning from Gordon Strong's book Brewing Better Beer.

One thing that he points out that is good to know, and I wish I had known before I brewed my massive stout a week ago, is that when brewing a beer with dark grains, they do not have to be in the mash. Dark grains are pre converted, so the sugars are easily accessible and do not require mashing to convert (crystal malts work the same way). The character is also easily imparted without mashing as well. Strong gives 4 ways to use dark and crystal grains in a beer without mashing them.

1. Steep them in your wort after it has run off into the kettle, and then remove them and boil as normal. Doing this will still impart some of the harsh and astringent bitterness that comes from the dark grains, so this method is good for stouts.
2. Add the grains to the mash after it is complete, and stir them in, then lauter (drain) and sparge. This will impart all of the desired character, and the harsh and astringent just like steeping (effectively this is steeping in the mash instead of in the kettle).
3. Cold steep and short boil. With this trick you will steep the grains in cold water for 24 hours, then, after removing the grains, you will give it short boil to sanitize before adding it to the fermenter (after cooling, of course), or, if you plan ahead, you can add the cold steeped wort to the kettle the last 5 minutes of the boil and then cool and move with the rest. This will add a little bit of the harsh and astringent character, but not much since it is a very short boil.
4. Cold steep, no boil. In this method, you cold steep the grains for 24 hours, remove the grain, and then add it to the fermenter during fermentation, relying on the pH of the fermented beer, and the alcohol to inhibit any bacterial infection.

Using these would greatly benefit my mash. In a big stout like the one I just brewed, I would need lots of kettle salts to buffer the mash and ensure the mash pH is prime for conversion. If I were to leave the dark grains (chocolate, Carafa, black patent, roast barley) out of the mash, the pH would have been perfect for conversion, then adding them in afterwards and running off, would have given me all the character I was looking for without needing to add mash salts.

Another thing that I picked up from the book is that adding rice hulls to the mash will help even out the temperature in the mash. At any given point in the mash, the temperature can range quite a bit. On this last beer I brewed (a 10.5% Imperial Stout) one corner of the mash was 151*F, while the rest of the mash ranged from 142*F to 145*F. Using rice hulls would help the temp to even out consistently around the entire MLT.

Concerning boil overs, bittering hops, and hot break, Strong recommends waiting 15 minutes after the boil starts to add the hops to help keep boil overs at bay, or adding the hops before the boil. The reason for this is that as the wort begins to boil it is releasing oxygen that is in suspension, but this will be accelerated if a large dose of hops are added causing nucleation sites. Also, the tannins in the hops can facilitate boil over.

There were many other things that were interesting and helpful for brewing. In the section on finishing beer, he talks about different ways to correct your beer if it hasn’t finished as you’d liked. For flavoring he talks extensively about blending. Using a fairly dry, clean beer in a sweet beer can help to balance it and dry it out. Using a slightly sour beer can help balance a flabby beer, as can adding lactic or phosphoric acid, but too much will make the beer watery and sour. Some things are unfixable like soured infections and oxidation. If the maltiness or bitterness do not pop as you were wanting, he also talks briefly about adding Gypsum or Calcium Chloride after the fermentation.

Another beneficial section is on balance in beer. Sweetness and bitter balance each other. Sweet and sour balance each other. Sweet and alcohol balance each other. Sour and bitterness clash, as in a local brewer who decided to try his hand at souring one of his beers but used his Winter Warmer and made a train wreck. He states that dark grains and citrus hops clash, though I am not sure I agree. I did a Black IPA with Cascade and Simcoe hops, i.e., Grapefruit & Pine Sap, and it worked great, and I have had quite a few Black IPAs that use many of the citrusy and fruity hops. In a stout or porter this may be true, but the dark grain character just doesn’t come through on a Black IPA.

All in all, some of the stuff is fairly common sense, like changing only one thing at a time when trying to dial in a recipe. Others, as I have already stated are very helpful and beneficial. He also stresses learning how to critically judge beer so that you can find issues related to style, balance, infections, off flavors, oxidation, and the like. The more I critically assess commercial beers, the more I feel comfortable assessing where I need to make changes in my own beers.