Doctor Duvel

Gnomegang

2011-03-30T18:27:00.003-04:00

Ommegang Gnomegang. The name pretty much had to have come up with itself. Courtesy of a kind soul at the brewery, a bottle found its way to me: Thanks Scott! This is a collaborative beer between Ommegang and, naturally, La Chouffe. I might've imagined that they'd go after the IPA Tripel style, with that particular collaboration, but the label calls it a blond ale. It's a big one, at 9.5%. Apparently it's made with both house yeasts. I'd love to think that I have the palate to determine how they interact or cooperate, but I'm thinking that's a stretch. Here's what I get: Pretty golden color. Full head, but not quite as voluminous as some of their others; I think the carbonation is a trifle subtler, which happens to go with the fuller palate, which we'll get to. The key note in the aroma is something I never find quite the right descriptor for. Several stronger, pale Belgians have a version of it, the quintessential example for me being Piraat. It's a rich, alcoholically hot, creamy, whiskey-ish aroma. It normally signals a big, voluptuous sort of beer, like Piraat, and this follows through in that vein. There's some spiciness going on too, aromatically and on the palate. Like I said, the carbonation seems just a bit softer, perhaps less than Hennepin? That goes nicely with the rich, velvety body here. Sometimes when people say a beer is "hot" they don't mean it as a good thing, but I do here. Belgians over 9% almost always have a pleasant little mini-burn to them and this is no exception. The palate comes across as mildly sweet, though not cloying. I know enough about beer to know that it might be bone dry statistically. You can never tell with Belgian yeasts. But it feels full on the palate--rich, creamy, and so on, but also balanced by a subtle, earthy hoppiness, and some brighter, fruitier acids. I think this is a pretty delicious beer... Tomorrow, assuming I can get out of school at an approrpriate hour, it's Pilsner-brewin' time. All Hallertau. Wyeast Bo-Pils. Simple grist. Bring it on.

Drastically less grumpy

2011-03-24T18:20:00.004-04:00

Worked a hard, focused half day. Came home, kegged Petit Houblon Edition Trois, a.k.a. (Belgian) Plague Pale. Tasted good. Dry hopped with Sterling. Stashed three corked botttles out of what wouldn't fit in the keg. Confirming a previous good ferment and having a happy looking yeast cake (Leuven), I threw together a Belgian Amber Ale, loosely inspired by one I made some years ago. Loosely inspired by M.C. I went for a brisk (in temperature not pace) run to the Utica Zoo and back. Beer is now aerated and getting ready to do its thing. Drinking, courtesy of Katrina and Kier, a Russian River Consecration. Thanks guys! A hauntingly beautiful beer by the way.

Next up, a pizza inspired by Russian River's sometimes wacky line-up. Maybe Pesto-Artichoke-Bacon for starters.

Yay...

Grumpy as hell

2011-03-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

Just me venting. I don't like brewing. It's not fun anymore.

Just kegged a beer and bottled a beer. They both look good and are interesting high gravity experiments: a 1080 oaky-bretty saison and a 1090 faux scotch whiskey barrel DIPA. They'll certainly pack a punch...

But it's not fun. Packaging two beers equals a whole fucking afternoon down the drain. Why the hell do I do this shit? My beer is good, but seriously, I'm not sure it's worth it. Grumble, grumble, grumble, fucking goddamn grumble.

I have four more interesting beers in carboys (Steam, Belgian pale, Old British Bitter, and a Roeslare) and I anticipate procrastinating packaging them as long as possible. as it my m.o. these days. Filling those carboys again will be slightly less annoying, since I dislike the brew day a lot less, but it's not fun either. Just another household chore.

There, I said it. When this fridge dies I may shrink the kegerator. This is bullshit.

Thanks for listening to me bitch. anyone who reads this... I'm going to go stomp around and mop the motherfucking kitchen.

Dream Bitter and updates

2011-02-13T08:39:00.003-05:00

I did make that Steam Beer. No name yet, but if I had to name it right now I'd call it "Shut the fuck up, Will Shortz" Steam Beer.

I also made a new Belgian in my special house style, the over-hopped Belgian pale I've been making for spring for a couple years now. This one has the Leuven yeast, which I may re-pitch to make a tripel. Tentatively named "Plague Pale" for the flu that set its production back three or four days.

Kegerator has three beers: "Mostly Wet" IPA (excellent); "No Internet Jerkstore" Winter Pale (class balance...); Random-Ass Hoppy Brown Porter (a new, sleeker twist on my leftover-based Porter/Stout tradition). "Fuck it: Smoky Oaky Rye Brown" is next up, after a few more days conditioning.

Right now, it's "Dream Bitter" I'm mashing, the Old British Beers Recipe #7 I've meant to make for years. The name makes me nervous: I'd hate to screw up and have it become "Nightmare Bitter." Naturally, I've already discovered that the mash temps are totally uneven...

Anyway, from the Simonds Brewery in Reading, from 1880, it's a "Dream bitter with a lovely flavour. A Durden Park favourite." Here's the recipe, corrected for my system and stripped of the charm of Imperial Gallons:

6.5 U.S. Gallons.

Mash 186 oz Maris Otter and 35.5 oz home-oven-toasted "Pale Amber" malt at 150 or so. Tsp of gypsum in the mash; will hit the wort with a Tbsp of Burton salts.

Boil 90 minutes with 3.65 oz Fuggles. Shut-off hop is .8 oz of Golding and a 1/2 oz Golding dry hop down the road. This results in about 50 IBU on a 1062 beer. Not exactly the proportions of a modern bitter, are they?

I'm fermenting mine with 1469 West Yorkshire. After brewing, for batch after batch, tried-and-true house specialties or laid-back spontaneous creations, it was weird, annoying, even stressful, to crunch all the numbers and try to do this sucker by the book.

After an initial yo-yo fuck-up, the mash has stabilized at the proper temperature. Here's to the Durden Park Beer Circle and the late Dr. John Harrison, though I'm sure they'd object to my toasting them with coffee...

Playing catch-up

2011-01-14T11:46:00.002-05:00

I seem to have become a binge brewer. Didn't touch a kettle from 9/20 until 12/16 and am not even sure why/how that happened. Work priorities plus general indolence, I guess.

The kegerator is almost empty, with a Chicory stout running out fast. It was running strong six weeks or so ago but then some no-named, chucked-together beers starting running out, basic IPA's and pale's. Oh, and the delicious Leroy Brown, best brown ale I've ever made. Gotta re-brew that one.

Anyway, 3 or 4 weeks ago I went through and did a catch-up bottling binge of beers made in late summer. Conditioning and tasting decent-to-excellent are a house saison, wet-hop ale, and a brett-y 3789 contraption. Bottled stocks in the basement are touch-and-go. Lots of some good beers, but some weird gaps and the glaring problem of a soured batch of smoked marzen. Damnit. But plenty of pilsner, lots of good Belgians, bits of this and that. It could be a lot worse. About to go on draft are two older efforts, a partly-wet-hopped IPA and the first new brew MAC and I brewed: "No Internet Jerk Store Ale." The name is a long story but it's a malty winter pale ale.

Was running out of specialty malts and hops and decided to make a clean-out effort before restocking, for the sake of order, freshness, etc. With what I had on hand I've thrown together the next generation of draft beers, inspired by what was on hand. I love brewing that way actually. Accordingly, in fermenters are:

"Fuck it! Smokey-Oaky Ale (with Rye!)": Give me random crystal malts, some peated, and surplus oak chips and I'll give you a random concoction like this. Time will tell.

"Random-Ass Hoppy Porter": Surplus brown malt and a really random range of hops conspire to produce, hopefully, a delicious over-hopped porter slightly reminiscent of, and definitely inspired by, the Mikkeler Holiday Porter I had around the corner at The Green Onion.

Today's brew is a faux-barrel DIPA. Mega IPA crushed with tons of old hops and some fresh ones, tweaked with oak chips soaked in Sheep Dip. Why not? "Sheep Dip DIPA," I guess.

Still kicking around in fermentors are a Roeslare Ale, still not ready, and a big huge wine-barrel Saison, which got Brett and Cab/Merlot-soaked chips added a bit ago. That should be a classic.

So that's the brewery update. Many plans in the hopper for when the new shit arrives, starting with a back-logged batch of steam beer in the next few days.

Wilco Tango Foxtrot

2010-08-22T17:47:00.002-04:00

Lagunitas has a way with names and labels. The malty jobless recovery ale W.T.F. is certainly a case in point. It's good stuff and I'm thinking it's possible the beer I'm brewing (quite unintentionally) will resemble it slightly: Chunky, with a burnt edge or two reminiscent of amber malt, or a dark crystal. About the color of a strong-ass cup o' tea. Full-throated hops, particularly on the palate, help hold it together. Lingering raspiness, but from darker malts more than hops. It's a good, characterful brew in keeping with the house style over there. There are exceptions (like a really good pilsner, as I recall) but most of the line-up leans toward perilously maintained balances--chewy hops and gobs of malt duke it out on the liquid gridiron.

back to school brewing

2010-08-22T16:09:00.002-04:00

That Saison is fermenting nicely as are a basic draft IPA and a fall brown. Right now, in the midst of the single ugliest day of the summer (non-stop dreary ass rain since 6 am) I'm brewing something new. I don't know what it is. I just sorta threw it together. Maris Otter base with a half pound each of five specialty malts: Simpson's Caramalt, Crystal 60 and 120, Amber, and Victory. Why not? It'll be the antidote to the ultra clean, lean other IPA which is a pale-malt-only exercise in minimalism.

Pause: Sipping a Goose Island "Sofie." Good stuff. Middle strength pale Belgian with partial barrel aging that lends a delicate winey quality.

So, yeah, for my beer... Chunky malt. Kinda in the Marzen color range. Toasty. I'll hop it somewhere between pale ale and IPA, maybe a little more toward IPA, but probably taste it before dry hopping lest I obscure something interesting. Assorted C-hops should do the job. Is it an amber? A strongish fall pale ale? A bent IPA? Who cares?

Back at it

2010-08-18T19:35:00.002-04:00

June was a month of serious work, sprinkled with a good deal of pleasure. July was the month of chaos. August is the month of general scatteredness. So it goes.

But I'm brewing right now in a miserably hot kitchen and, temps notwithstanding, it kinda had to happen.

On draft is a mediocre Denny's RyePA (I don't like Denny's special yeast frankly--back to US 05 on that one) and a delicious fake pilsner cream ale thingy. Nothing ready to tap up next which is NOT good.

Recently rounding out in the bottle are this year's pilsner and edition four of my smoked marzen. Both taste very promising but will need another month or two minimum to come into full form. In the basement awaiting bottling are a roeslare pale and the batch 200 Orval-ish thing, neither of which I'm interested in rushing.

Boiling a ce moment is my classic, stripped-down, elegant, no-nonsense, house Saison with the vital French Saison strain from Wyeast (all hail the aforementioned). Should be good if I don't do anything dumb.

As much as I don't feel entirely like brewing (laziness, heat, other commitments) I'm psyching myself up to go on a spree before school starts.

Possibilities:

Another Saison, possibly with experimental faux wine barrel treatment and/or brett dosing.
Steam beer (wait for it to cool down a bit...).
Draft IPA, two batches.
Draft Brown.
Draft Porter.
Other random quickie draft beer that occurs to me on the fly.
Vague clone of the Brewer's Art's Clamper's Ale (light pale ale with lemon peel).
Leuven pale ale yeast using thing of vague Belgian nature.
Ardennes hoppy IPA tripel thing (Prolly wait for new hops).
Benediction: A big-ass 3787 thing with dark sugars out the wazoo.

Do I have that many carboys? Not quite...

The Enabler

2010-07-06T20:20:00.002-04:00

At some point I should go off on my recent one-month beltway sorjourn, but I haven't quite found the energy to go through the notes. A phenomenal time was had; serious beer was drunk.

I did, however, review some great photos a moment ago and just poured a pint (in my "The Johns Hopkins University Graduate Representative Organization" glass) of "The Enabler," a Baltimore homebrew by C. P., new brewer, serious grad student, and pizza porn photographer extraordinaire.

Mike sent me home with this beer for post-hoc sampling and I couldn't quite remember what style it was supposed to be, but the nose makes it clear: MAPLE. The base beer seems to me to be a pale ale. Pleasant hoppiness, just enough to balance. Not at all cloying in its maple character, but clearly hit with some of the sweet stuff, given the aroma. The maple character blends nicely with the base malts. Really a very tasty beer and unique at that.

Oh, Canada . . .

still at it

2010-05-28T16:19:00.003-04:00

Still brewing catch-up. Just dry-hopped a RyePA for kegging in early July. Just dry-hopped the Orval-ish beer too. Roeslare fermenting in the basement. Pilsner and smoke beer lagering. Yesterday I flung together an emergency thirst quencher. Sort of a bullshit cream pilsner? Like a pilsner recipe, but weaker, and lightened with sugar. Not over-bittered. Lots of Tettnanger and Hallertauer for aroma. U.S.-05 is fermenting it in the basement, relatively cool. Wish I had one more IPA going too. May have to do an emergency batch o' that at some point damnit...

hoppy beer tasting

2010-05-18T20:06:00.002-04:00

Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale: This is a superb black IPA with massive, sticky hop flavor and solid aroma. I love it. Expensive, but I should buy a couple more...

Oskar Blues Gubna: Another winner. Nose melds understated, but creamy, malt and pine-accented hops. Despite huge size, has all of the balance and much of the drinkability of the always lovely Dale's Pale Ale.

Lager time

2010-05-15T07:53:00.002-04:00

I normally brew two or three lagers in January-March, but it got put off...

Yesterday: Rauchbier. Third time I've brewed one of these. Half Munich, half Bamberger smoked malt, touch of Carafa II to bump up the color. Currently fermenting vigorously. Used to double decoct this beer, but just did a single one. Dough in at 153 and then set-up a big bubbling Dutch oven next to the main mash. Bavarian lager yeast.

Today: House Pilsner. Tweaked with a little Munich and somewhat overhopped by Czech standards. Hops will be U.S.-grown Hallertau and Tettnang. Bohemian lager yeast.

These will be in the basement in the cooler for about 6 to 7 weeks and then should get bottled in early July when I'm back from my Folger fellowship. Aging with them in the basement but at ambient temperature will be the Roeslare and 3789 beers. Each got a couple weeks at kitchen temperature but they should be downstairs shortly to make sure the Brett doesn't get too wacky.

Next up in the brewing marathon is probably Denny's Rye PA with the 1450 strain (a new one for me) and a steam beer.

I'm on a roll.

Other impending things: two Saisons; a redundant Rye PA; an IPA Tripel; other Belgians (Leuven, 3787); some sort of a quick-drinking, refreshing session ale with noble hops. One of the Belgians needs to be the missing beer in my mass cycle: Benediction.

Batch 200

2010-05-02T14:04:00.004-04:00

Just brewed batch 200. Was vaguely planning to do something outlandish, some sort of oak-aged, improbably strong, fusion style, ostentatious sorta deal. But the number crept up on me so I just brewed something that went with the yeast I had already smacked, an old pack of 3789 from last spring. The result is a beer loosely inspired by, but not intended to be a clone of, Orval.

I'm hell bent on brewing fairly regularly for the next couple of weeks to create a base of future operations and restore some stocks. So there was a batch of Roeslare pale last week, this Orvalish concoction today, and several other things in the works: Steam, Pils, Smoke, and Saison are probably at the top of the list. Draft stocks are OK and about to get better so the long term lagers and Belgians are key for the moment, though, as always, a batch of IPA or summery pale ale for draft would not be a bad idea either...

Sam Smith's Stingo

2010-04-12T18:21:00.001-04:00

How, long-time Smith's fan that I am, have I never heard of this? It's an eight percent, deep amber to brown ale, aged in old oak barrels for over a year. Rummy, yummy, lightly tannic, gently oaky, with lots of interesting fruit notes. If you were to produce a legitimately good fruitcake, this'd be a hell of a complement. And yet it's light enough that I'm somehow sipping it in the yard, pruning rose bushes. Go figure.

Forgot to post this yesterday. By way of follow-up I'm sipping a draft smoked porter. My usual Smuttynose-inspired porter but with a peated malt addition. Good stuff.

Next brew day is going to be something with Roeslare and I need to keg an IPA pronto.

Dogfish Head Burton Baton

2010-03-30T18:38:00.002-04:00

Random tasting notes on the above:

Pretty intriguing beer. 10% DIPA meets old ale with some oak aging for one or the other or both. Haven't exactly researched this. It has elements that are clearly right out of the DFH 90-minute wheelhouse: Sweet, smooth, candied malt character; floral piney hops. There is an earthiness and an oaky vanilla aspect that is a welcome addition to the profile. The high alcohol is nicely concealed and the edges of the beer well rounded.

The other night I had a sip or two of bourbon (Elmer T. Lee), and then poured a half pint or so of my draft IPA (all Simcoe) without rinsing the glass. The resulting elixir has inspired me to contemplate a serious bourbon barrel DIPA. Might be phenomenal if properly executed. I like the Burton Baton but I think I could do better with a little luck, simply because these DFH IPA's are always just a little bit too malt-balanced for me. I'd prefer something a tad drier, but with some of the same tenuous balance between the rich and the hoppy.

Looking at brewing a hoppy spring Belgian pale this weekend, I think...

Drinking as Literature

2010-03-25T19:14:00.002-04:00

From a home brewing standpoint, the recovery continues: I've got an IPA to keg and a Saison to bottle. Two new kegs, a porter and a pale ale, are ready to queue up. Should brew something this weekend and had best figure it out.

From a trip-taking, drinking, note-taking standpoint, I've got a note-pad from CA to transcribe:

Went to Russian River and boy-howdy does Vinnie know how to make beer. The highlights from an afternoon of dangerous over-consumption:

Temptation: Kumquatty, gorgeous tartness; wonderful mild oakiness. Chardonnay on one level but a grassy Sauvignon Blanc on another. One of my ten favorite commercial beers in the entire world. Maybe top five. That's why I had it first. I have four bottles of various RR beers including this for a contemplative tasting or three.

Supplication: Never had this before. Where to start? Great tart character, like Temptation. Kinda Rodenbach-y in so far as it does not contain, but feels like it might, tart and dark cherries. Burgundy-like fruit. Brilliant balance between the tart, the woody, and the fruity.

Consecration: Zinfandel aftertaste noted by K. DeAnda. Oaky. Rindy. Cherry/berry meets thick sweet/tart pomegranite. Hell of a beer.

Rejection: Nice black malt haracter. A little toasty, burnt fruit. Hazelnut. This is a flat-out beautiful beer and I love the black beer for Valentine's day routine.

Russian River IPA: Herbal hops. At this point we were headed south. I wrote "flavory" and Kier noted "cold."

Pliny the Elder revived our spirits and I scribbled something about asking the brewer how they get that astonishingly fresh dry hop aroma. It's out of this world. I had a great bottled Blind Pig a few days later too.

Some days later, at Barclay's on College Ave. in Berkeley, which smells funny (the bar not the whole town), I had Big Sky IPA, which was sorta weird. Seemed like a lager in some ways. Port's Wipeout IPA, by contrast, was its usual delish self.

At one of the bay area's many brilliant liquor stores I got some assorted bottles and brought them to a gathering:

Stone/Jolly Pumpkin/ Nogne O (pretend there are slashes through each O in that), Special Holiday Ale. Crazy ingredients list on this, with Barley, hops, water, yeast, malted oats, rye malt, chestnuts, juniper berry, white sage, and caraway. WTF. The diverse elements are nicely amalgamated which makes sense given the '2008 ' on the bottle. Great spiritous malt character, with the spices blending in and the palate remarkably uncloying.

Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noire: This is sort of a black saison: earthy, bone dry, 1/4 to 1/2 tart. Fun stuff. JP is like the American Fantome--I love these beers.

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja: Had this in Philly and wanted another taste. Brilliant tannic/tart combo with lots of earthiness. Huge fan of this stuff.

New Belgium La Folie was, I underlined, "Awesome." This is a brilliant sour beer, very much in the class of the best Belgian examples with a huge cherry/molasses/plum nose.

Port Brewing Hop 15 is a great DIPA with a simply massive green hop aroma that almost smells and tastes like pot. Grahm-crackery malt holds it together, barely.

Shit. I had some other things, but stopped writing down.

I had a Russian River Damnation Batch 23 courtesy of Jeremiah, which was totally extraordinary, as always. I need to inquire about how to brew something similar, an oak-aged Belgian strong pale.

What else? Oh, there was an anniversary beer from Sierra, for their 30th, co-brewed with Fritz Maytag. Nice, beltingly warm, but beautifully balanced imperial stout in a big corked bottle.

There was a tasting of forgotten carboys from Jeremiah's garage. A solid Flanders red. An astonishingly good Kriek. A carboy or two of unspeakable poison.

Oh, in San Fran, I had a terrific local Czech pils with a silly name that had a pun on "czech / check." What the hell was it called and who brewed it?

I had a fresh bottle of Green Flash Imperial IPA which was fabulous.

At various places I had Racer Five, always good, and more Pliny, too much Pliny really.

Some good New Belgium and Lagunitas beers from J and L's fridge: NB Tripel. Lagunitas IPA and The Hairy Eyeball.

Coupla Anchor Steams somewhere or other.

Right now, I'm having a bottle of Below Decks that MC kindly left in my kegerator. Very English barley wine. Great malt balance, subtly hopped mostly to balance. Delish.

And by "more soon"

2010-02-16T07:45:00.003-05:00

I apparently meant "by February."

The slump continued and I am only beginning to shake out of it. Fall saw something like two brew days while I rethought my career, panicked, fretted, sweated, etc. I do somehow have four beers on draft: A tasty Simcoe IPA that's new (an emergency brew from December); the last couple pints of the wet-hop ale (decent but never great); a lousy Raspberry Saison that was just a salvage attempt of a beer where my mixed culture ran amok; and a deee-lish brown ale, all malty and quite the winter comfort beer. So, basically they're fifty-fifty, but I have lots more of the good stuff, which is some consolation.

Another emergency, getting-my-crap-together batch was a smoked porter that is fermenting and ought to be on draft in early March. I took a classic Smuttynose-inspired Porter recipe, tweaked to the available specialty malts and spiked it with a pound of peat-smoked malt. That should be good. Considering the lapse in productivity my bottled stocks are pretty decent; the alarming thing is that I only have one beer ready to bottle (actually way over-due to bottle), a saison brewed with the so-called Biere de Garde yeast. I think that that batch had a dumb name and so maybe I will rename it "Mike Carlin Carried the Carboy Down the Stairs Cuz My Knee was Fucked Up" Saison. MCCCDWCMKFU Saison?

Anyway, between the porter and the pale ale I brewed Saturday, the draft situation is temporarily stabilized, since I've got things lined up to replace the crummy, almost-gone draft beers. The pale ale is based on a long-ago recipe. I often get in an IPA rut, where even my non-IPA pales wind up being pretty hop and pretty pale. This one derives from the same period as the porter recipe I was tweaking, when I was in occasional correspondence with Dave Yarrington at Smuttynose who is a cool guy and cheerfully shares recipes. I was inspired to attempt a clone of their Shoals Pale Ale, an off-beat English/American pale-ale-meets-ESB formulation that has an unusual darker crystal component. This time I didn't have most of the right malts so I took the basic proportions as a guide and then cleaned out some stray malts I had nothing planned for. Thus I brewed what should be a beautifully balanced pale ale, NOT IPA, kissed with a melange of Belgian specialty stuff: A little aromatic, a little Caravienne, a little Biscuit, a little "B." We'll see how it goes.

Of course, now I had better order some shit from Northern Brewer and get cracking on my next generation of bottled beers. The list of styles I meant to attack a few months ago is daunting and will be the next subject for discussion...

(Hi to Mike and Chris)

Oy

2009-10-18T12:01:00.002-04:00

As to the question about what I'm brewing:

Not much, damnit.

Right now I have a small glut of beers that need packaging. Two saisons and a tripel to bottle. A pumpkin ale to keg (NOW!). A wet hop ale shortly. The wet hop one is, I think, the only beer I've brewed this term, unless there was another in the first week before things got hairy. I've just been swamped. I did harvest 3 or 4 weeks ago a big bucket of Cascades from the yard and brewed with them immediately. Looking forward to that one. But a whole bunch of other projects are backed up and I need a week off to catch up with all the yeasties that need food . . . Perhaps next weekend will be the time to straighten things out, on which prospect more soon.

La Rulles + Brown's

2009-09-12T21:08:00.002-04:00

Tried two new beers today.

At Nail Creek, I had a La Rulles seasonal (was it called summerfest?). La Rulles is a Belgian brewery about which I know precious little. Their website is charmingly translated, promising that the products will have "Passion, Quality, and Typicity." Good to know. There is no mention of this summer beer on their page or anywhere else I could find, but it's a delicious, quirky beer with very lively, vivid, lemon and pepper notes. I wonder if it's got grains of paradise or something in there. The lemoniness is striking, but not tart. A most enjoyable and offbeat beer. I should blog, before long, about Nail Creek's first batch of their own beer. Had a sample the other day and it was quite good, but I was without pen and paper. It's a big, malty dubbel, not too dark, with an interesting interplay of caramelly malt and a teasing little sourness. More anon.

The evening beer is less promising. Brown's Brewing in Troy, NY produces a whiskey barrel porter and I'm afraid I'm just not a fan. I had previously had one of their beers, at Nail Creek again, a fun, quaffable summer rye ale, or something like that. This porter is all out of whack though. The nose is full of vanilla from the barrels. The trouble is that the beer doesn't follow through. It's awfully light, closer to a deep brown ale than a porter, in my opinion. It'd be really interesting to transplant the whiskey nose onto a porter with some balls, say, Smuttynose Robust Porter. On this beer, it feels out of place. There's little body here at all and a base beer that might be alright on its own winds up feeling thin and mildly acrid. Oh well.

In other news, the brewery is a mess. Too many beers to make and not enough time. Will either brew something in a helter-skelter, messy environment tomorrow or will just keg a couple beers, specifically the Juniper Blonde and a Saison Framboise. Got shit to bottle too.

Still sipping: Seriously. Who the hell whiskey-barrels a light, session porter? It doesn't make sense...

Seriously Old Beer Tasting II

2009-08-30T15:13:00.002-04:00

Continuing to thin out or eliminate some old library stocks, reflecting on when I knew what the hell I was doing, when I didn't, what works, what doesn't, why, that sort of thing:

Multi-Grain Saison, brewed 6/16/06: This has been an interesting beer. Seems like it was never the same twice. The final glass is highly pleasant. The notion was to do a Saison in the manner of an early-twentieth-century farmer, who (the books say) would use whatever was handy. I brewed this with pilsner and wheat malts, plus a gruel of spelt, buckwheat, and rye. Lightly hopped and fermented with 565, which worked this time. The result has often reminded me of Brasserie de Blaugies. I forget the names of their different beers, but there's one or two of them that have low original gravities (this one is only 1046) and that are therefore exceptionally delicate and light. This is one of the palest beers I've ever made and it is dry, slightly tart, and crisp with notes of apple and citrus and a touch of cellar funk. I brewed a similar Saison a couple of months ago but, in search of more old-timey authenticity, added the dregs of a brett beer. The brett got a little excited, the beer is a little funky, and I've elected to make it a raspberry Saison as a way to hide some aromatic imperfections I suspected were unlikely to age out. Should be tasty anyway. It's currently resting with the remains of almost four lbs of raspberries in it and will be kegged fairly shortly.

XX Bitter-er, brewed 7/30/05: The name indicates the inspiration. I was obsessed for some time with De Ranke's XX Bitter, a remarkable beer to be sure, though not what it was. Back in the day when they used a mixed culture from Rodenbach, I thought the beer was beyond stunning; with their current, more conservative, less expressive yeast the beer is only damn good. Anyway, long ago, I tried to "clone" it, a dubious notion to begin with. I pitched Roeslare into a super simple, wildly over-hopped, pils-and-sugar wort. The result has been a consistently odd beer, but one that can at times be quite tantalizing. It is so intensely hopped (66 IBU on a 1054 frame) that it's held up beautifully and I've got a couple more bottles, at least one corked. As one would expect, the balance has shifted as the beer has gotten a little more funky and a little less bitter over time. At some point early on it was quite a bit too bitter and that clashed weirdly with the brett aromas and the ultra-lean, dry body. Right now, it has a very exotic brett aroma, rather like the earthy/leathery quality of Orvall, only much more prominent and incorporating more fruitiness. The palate is too thin, as it always has been, with a weirdly astringent pineapply quality. After brewing with brett and with mixed cultures in general for a few more years, I think the way to do this "style" (Wild Belgian pale ale? Orval et al.? Whatever you would call it), would be to ferment with something like a Saison strain and pitch brett later. There's got to be a way to keep the beer a little more stable, a little more balanced. It was also probably stupid to pitch a mixed culture in mid-July, something I don't do anymore. Anyway, XX was a great experiment and it's always been an interesting glass o' beer. I have a pack of Wyeast's special 3789, billed as the mixed culture, more-or-less Orval strain; whenever I smack that, I'll be making something broadly similar to this, though not quite so damned hoppy. Sometime this fall...

Houb-Doublon, brewed 11/11/07: Not nearly as old as the others, but, what the hell? I'm getting ready to brew another IPA tripel and this one went awfully well. I took a pale/pils grist, added about the same proportion of sugar as for my usual Westmalle-style tripel and hopped it in a way inspired loosely by the La Chouffe version: Chinook, Simcoe, Santiam, Saaz, Amarillo. It was a great beer the minute it was conditioned and it's been lovely ever since. Sometimes, to my mind, it's even better than its commercial inspiration. At close to two years old, it still shows pretty vivid hoppiness. The nose blends tripel-y phenols and esters with the dry hopping, which is beginning to fade a bit. This isn't really a problem, is it? The goal in designing a beer like this is to create a flexible balance that will shift elegantly at the beer ages, hence it's more IPA when it's young, more tripel when elderly. Might be different in a commercial setting, but when you're brewing six or more gallons and you're anticipating drinking four of 'em yourself, it makes sense to create a beer that will develop with some panache and keep you guessing. The hops help it age well, avoiding the thinning problem I was talking about yesterday with my more conventional tripel. I think it might keep eight to ten years, honestly. The palate of this one is full, rounded, balanced, but bristling with hops--is there a more distinctive bittering hop than Chinook?

Seriously old beer tasting I

2009-08-29T17:45:00.002-04:00

Did some basement cleaning that involved beer reorganization and thought I'd clean out some, in all likelihood, overly aged samples from early batches. Sharing little glasses with Lisa.

My first Belgian-style single, Saint Carlile, brewed 3/13/05: Rocky head with great lace-work. Somewhat over-carbonated. Orange gold (1 lb Biscuit malt? I was specialty-malt crazy early on) with even a slightly oxidized tinge to the color, like sherry. This style is hardly meant to age for 4.5 years, but I tend to leave at least a six-pack of most any Belgian for experimental, super-extended aging and this is the last one. It has an old malt aroma and flavor that older pale beers tend to get. It's an interesting aroma but begins to wear on you after a few sips. Finish still has a bit of hop to it, but is also over-attenuated. R.I.P.

Forbidden Grisette, brewed 7/2/06: Who makes Grisette?? It's a weird style, in so far as definitions are variable and hard to come by. I got interested in them from reading Farmhouse Ales and cooked one up with a Pils/Vienna/Wheat grist, Mt. Hood hops, and the Forbidden Fruit yeast. I've always had a soft spot for this beer. It's quirky, low-alcohol, wildly refreshing. It's aged surprisingly well and there are another four or five bottles kicking around. I think a little bit of lactobacillus got in here at some point and it's one of those rare times when your beer is a trifle infected and you don't mind. You shrug cheerfully and say,"Well, it is an old-timey style that would've been brewed with a mixed culture." It's an immaculately clear bright gold with a lightly fruity, delicately toasty aroma. The nose also hints at a slightly wild tartness and the palate follows through with a crisp, bright, appley acidity. Am I crazy or, back in the late 90's when Hennepin came out, did Ommegang market it as a Grisette? I could swear it said Grisette on the label somewhere, but later somebody wised up and decided Saison was the ascendent style for American cognoscenti. . . These should be drunk with people who like tart-dry beers on some hot day soon, in the unlikely event one should somehow materialize.

Summer Saison, brewed 5/15/05: This was a break-through Saison, one where I started slowly figured out that spicing was largely unnecessary and that specialty malts should be seriously subdued if present at all, a philosophy that subsequent reading of the aforementioned Farmhouse Ales helped crystallize. This one has a little wheat and biscuit, but is otherwise just pilsner malt and simple, subtle, English and Styrian hops, built along the basic parameters of Saison Dupont (in terms of gravity and IBU). White Labs 565 did its job, something I later learned it would not always do, producing an aromatically vivid beer that is also bone-dry (1.003). Visually stunning and beautifully preserved, with some earthy complexity and a surprisingly full palate, this one gets a classy send-off into the great beerafter.

Then there's "Recalitrant" Saison, brewed 6/30/06: So called because 565 decided to mail it in and quit fermenting at 1011. This was just never a good Saison because it was not dry enough. It hit a sweet spot at one point where it was alright, but it was never anywhere great. As a fitting send-off I think the last bottle was contaminated. Mildly tart. So-so aromatics. Good riddance. All hail French Saison, the strain that has rescued us from such attenuative vagaries.

Finally, Take Two Tripel, brewed 4/11/06: At one point, this was a virtual dead-ringer for Westmalle Tripel. It's beginning to be over the hill and I should probably look for excuses to share the last 5 bottles or so in the near future. 18 to 24 months ago it was dry but full-bodied, estery, complex. Now, it's very interesting but fading: Winey, slender bodied, drifting toward cidery.

Note to self: Locate any corked bottles of the above (there's one or two somewhere) and drink 'em up.

Great tasting note

2009-08-28T09:41:00.003-04:00

I make a Christmas Porter that's based on an Old British Beers and How to Make Them recipe. Big fleshy creature chock full o' brown malt. . . I gave a well-aged bottle to a (maltophile) friend who seemed to really need a beer a few days ago.

His tasting note:

Last night we enfolded ourselves into a Christmas Porter. It had the malt body and base tones of the humus of an ancient, dark, Beech forest surrounding a peat bog (I could smell the fungi and hear little creatures scuttling around in the leaves) and had the perfect balance of hops and malt. A triumph and deeply appreciated.

Made my morning...

Style-bending: Hoppy Belgian Pale

2009-08-23T15:11:00.002-04:00

In search of a really perfect session beer, I may have stumbled into a style experiment with some merit and I'm not sure who else has done so. It's certainly not just me as at least one of my fellow brewers has been nipping around the same problem with notable success... Belgian pale ales are a weird family, codified in the iconic De Konink (if you'll forgive the phrase) and its sweeter, maltier cousin, Palm. I had a Palm in a Brussels cafe last summer and was pleased but not enthused: It's a simple, straightforward, malty beer that could almost pass for English, topped with a pleasant soupcon of spicy/fruity yeastiness. I've heard De Koninck is magic in the Antwerp cafes but I haven't had the pleasure; bottled over here it's OK, but I don't think it travels well. I suppose an account of the style ought also to include the brilliant Rare Vos from Ommegang, a beer that is flat-out perfectly composed, combining the best of a variety of mid-gravity pale and amber Belgians.

So I went looking to brew a Belgian pale sometime in my first year of brewing and have run through a variety of attempts. I've tried grain bills with pale, pils, Vienna, Munich, and some Belgian and German crystal malts in various combinations, simple to elaborate. I've tried yeasts including 1388, Ardennes, Leuven Pale, and Schelde. Originally I kept the hops well in the background, as a Belgian would, and at some point I decided I was sick of them being relegated to that role and I started fantasizing about a beer that would combine the yeast-derived aromatic complexities and soft, pleasant Belgian malt character with a balance that was maybe closer to Sierra Nevada pale ale than De Koninck.

Somehow what I came up with is a hopelessly deviant Belgian pale concept that I've made twice, starting June '08, quite differently each time, but with the same essential parameters: I shoot for a gravity in the mid-50's; I want a malt character that is fully and toasty; I want primarily noble hops or their U.S. derivatives but delicate touches of sharper Pacfic Northwest standards are not out of the question; I'm a sucker for a spicy floral hop over the top (think Tettnang, Halltertau, Mount Hood) as these are hops you don't always get to enjoy on their own merits outside of the broad family of pilsners. The malt character can be gotten with British pale ale malt, touched with Caravienne, or, as in my current version, all-Vienna.

Here's the current one, named "Petit Houblon," indicating that the beer is in some sense a playful, diminuitive cousin of the new IPA-Tripel style:

10 lbs Vienna, mashed at 147
1 lb of table sugar in the boil
Water lightly Burtonized
1.6 oz Willamette, first wort
1.1 oz Amarillo to bitter
.75 oz each, Mt Hood and Amarillo at shut-off
OG 1053; FG 1012
40 IBU or so? (using older hops so there's a little more variance than I'd like...)
Fermented with Belgian Ardennes
Dry-hopped in the keg with Saaz and Tettnang

It comes out that beautiful shade of gold you only get from Vienna. The nose is marked by pronounced hop spiciness (like Pilsner without the lagery aromas) underlain by sweet fruits (one taster identified lychee for instance). The palate blends a bracing, but rounded hop bitterness, complemented by a toasty maltiness that feels fuller than the gravity might indicate (always a good sign in a Belgian ale). I think some version of this beer will be an annual event, brewed sometime from early spring to early summer. It's direct enough that you can knock a couple back playing darts; it's also pretty elegant and you can sit and think about a glass if you want to; better yet, it serves nicely on draft and seems to reinvent itself every couple of weeks.

Brewery Update

2009-08-22T14:27:00.002-04:00

Brewing today: Saison with Wyeast's so-called Biere de Garde yeast (by most accounts, actually the Fantome strain and hence for Saison really...) and tweaked with some grains of paradise and biscuit malt.

Kegging today: "Dear Liza" a hoppy pale ale touched with honey,

On draft: "Up a Creek" Kriek; Arbitrary IPA; "Petit Houblon" Hoppy Belgian Pale Ale.

Bottle conditioning: Sanctus (Dubbel)

In fermenters:

Dizzy's Juniper Blonde (next to keg)
Raspberry Saison
Incredibly unpromising stinky lambic
Saison de Cesar (standard saison with French strain)
"Sweaty Pumpkin!" pumpkin ale

Impending projects:

Ardennes strain: Benedictus (Strong Dark) and a new hoppy tripel
Canada Belges strain: Agnus Dei (fruity wheaty tripel)
French strain from Saison above: Faux red-wine barrel-aged, brett-tinged strong Saison
Brett Brux pale ale
Flanders Brown
3789 mixed culture: Some sort of Orval-ish concoction?
Assorted draft staples (Brown ale, wet hop ale, smoked porter)
Ludicrously Overdue Barley Wine (should I name it that?)
Denny's Rye IPA

Less likely but interesting would-be projects: Pumpernickel Ale, Chili Ale, Sticke Alt.
Winter lager projects: Bohemian Pilsner(s), bock(s); Rauchbier is mandatory this year.

You think I have too many Belgian yeasts kicking around?

You think I have too much to do???

Largely Commercial Sunday Beer Tasting

2009-08-16T12:44:00.004-04:00

High and Mighty Beer Co. "Beer of the Gods": My guess was that this was a fairly hoppy pilsner-ish beer. The website suggests it's really a sort of hoppy Kolsch, which makes sense to me. Good noble-type hop aroma (I don't actually know what kind they are), bracingly hoppy palate. Pretty refreshing. There's something about the malt character that, to me right now, is a trifle thin or over-attenuated. Might be that this sample is just over a year old. Perhaps it's a little long in the tooth? Decent beer though.

Fantome Pissenlit Printemps 2003: Oh, Fantome, how you torture us. . . Your best beers are glories to remember; your worst actively suck. The "Pissenlit" is a dandelion Saison. I had one about 5 years ago in L.A. and was beside myself: It was glorious, offbeat, dry, bitter, quirky, green-tasting, herbal, earthy (dirty?), wildly complex. So I bought an old bottle at Borough Market in London last summer for six pounds, the only time I had seen it since. Then I let it sit in my basement for an extra year--why, I am not sure... A lot of their beers sour as they age. Is a mixed culture responsible? At this point, this one is effectively a Flanders Red. The color resembles the prettiest Oktoberfest you've ever seen, darker than the one I originally had (I believe). And it is pretty damn sour, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the beer I loved. So, a la recherche du temps perdu, je came up empty. It is an interesting antique though: fruity, a little sherry-ish, tart, complex . . . A similar phenomenon happened recently. A reader of this blog had glowed mightily about Fantome Chocolat. I finally found one (in Baltimore a couple months ago) and it was more or less just an "eh" or a "meh" kind of beer. They change their recipes wildly from year to year and the character of the house yeast is fluid, to put it mildly, so those kinds of occasional disappointments are endemic to the Fantome experience. (Where the hell is my circumflex?) The standard Saison Printemps, for instance, ranges from transcendental to a piece of crap, from year to year. . . But, hey, when they're good, they're often extraordinary and I'll keep trying their beers, in search of the ones that got away. . .

I am, by the way, blogging throughout the day and sharing these beers with the wife. This fall's pumpkin ale, "Sweaty Pumpkin!", should be fermenting shortly, and I'm about to bottle a Belgian Dubbel, to be dubbed "Sanctus," if it proves worthy. It is hot. Hot. Hot. Here.

What's next?

De Ranke Noire de Dottignies. I was curious what others thought of this beer, as I began sampling it. Someone on Ratebeer.com associates it with blood and "corroding girders." I love that last descriptor, though I can't agree, per se, having never tasted a corroding girder. Not sure about the blood either. It's a pretty dark beer by Belgian standards though "noir" doesn't really fit. Like, say, Westmalle Dubbel, it looks deep brown but then flashes a brilliant ruby when held to the light. It's a flamboyantly hoppy beer, honestly--malt depth and dark color notwithstanding. The bitterness is bracing, lingering (big time), and somehow minerally--like iron. Does that explain the blood note? The blood guy also says it has a cola note--that, I totally agree with. A really, really, really good watermelon smells and tastes kind of like cola and this has that watermelon cola quality, with an extra, burnt anisey twinge to it. Cool... I'd love to know the malt bill. It apparently uses six different malts (not that big a deal for a lot of homebrewers, but a massive number for those normally restrained Belgians who tend to use 1-3 malts and a sugar...) and I'm guessing a really long boil or some extra kettle caramelization helps account for the wonderfully complex, earthy, palate of this fascinating beer. Nino and Guido, the brewers, are two talented fuckers, let me tell you.

Pretty Things

2009-08-09T17:43:00.003-04:00

Pretty Things Beer and Ale. Never heard of 'em. Saw a bottle of their Jack D'Or "Saison Americain" and felt like I hadn't tried anything new in a while. They appear to be a very small brewery in Mass and if this is any indication, someone knows what they're doing. Grassy, hoppy, spicy nose. Reminds me ever so faintly of a NZ sauv blanc (my favorite white wine), what with the grassy thing. Actually, scratch that. It reminds me a LOT of a New Zealand Sauv Blanc. It's that grassy, green bell pepper thing. Shit! I love it! Dry, peppery palate. Nice bitterness, higher than would be traditional with (a look at their site confirms my palate suspicion) some U.S. hops. Wow. Quite a discovery. I'm going back for a few more bottles. They were being closed out at a local beer store... Pourquoi???

Oh, the label's a kick, by the way. It's, like, a birch forest with a washtub, and some sort of rutabega looking character with a Frenchy handlebar mustache taking a bath in the tub. I'm guessing he's a barley kernel, actually, but my first thought was, "What the fuck? It's a rutabega taking a bath!" Perhaps they were inspired by de Dolle Brouwers to do whacky illustrations.

Cheers!

Belgium Comes to Cooperstown

2009-08-02T09:04:00.004-04:00

Well, B.C.t.C. was pretty interesting and I managed to survive with a good deal more dignity than the last time I went. Here's a quick breakdown of the sampling, to the best of my imperfect recollection:

Duvel Green: This is a new Moortgat product that the intelligent, pretty, well-informed server explained was a special, new, lower-strength Duvel that they can turn around faster and which is designed to compete with Stella and shit like that. Lighter, simpler, crisper, and brighter than the flagship product and about 50 times better than a Stella. At this station, I also tried the obligatory Houblon Chouffe, which is terrific on draft.

I didn't bother too much with the importers' tables, as I had tried most (nearly all?) of the stuff. I did have a draft Piraat at some point, which was yummy. I have to say that one real weakness was the awfully predictable selection of actual Belgians. It'd be nice if they were able to get a few more novelties. How about a keg of Cantillon Lou Pepe or some representation of De Ranke or other cutting-edge outfits?

Ommegang: Didn't try much of their stuff since I've had it generally. I did not, having had it many times, have an Ommegang Rouge, but I should've talked to a brewer about it. That's an unreal beer that I've become a huge fan of, as it is occasionally available at my favorite local pub, Nail Creek. I need to find out a little about how it's made and I should do it soon. The cutely named "Obamagang," which appears to be a sort of cherry Belgian porter, is delicious. "Adoration," a strong dark, was only for V.I.P.'s. Fuck those guys!

Allagash: These people are awesome and I should make a trip to Maine. They had a beer called Interlude, which was a 9.5% Saison with brett aged in Syrah barrels. It was a JOKE. Staggeringly complex, gorgeous beer--couldn't get enough of it. If I had missed that one I would've been enraged. I mean, I love Belgium and Belgian brewers, but, seriously, fuck those guys: It is all about the American craft brewers and their extraordinary gumption and creativity. A major theme of the day was the awesome stuff we're doing here particularly in the area of wild and/or sour beers. I am not a knee-jerk, drum-beating, self-proclaimed patriot, but I'm honestly, genuinely proud of the American brewer right now. And why shouldn't I be?

It appears I had a Brooklyn "Cuvee de Cardoz" which was a strong wheat beer. Near the end of the day. I just wrote "tasty."

I should go to Captain Lawrence Brewing Company. Where the hell is Pleasantville NY? They had some really cool sounding beers that they were all out of by the time I found them. I did have a "Liquid Gold" Belgian pale which was quite good.

Clipper City, a brewery I've just discovered, came up from Baltimore. The awkwardly named "Heavy Seas Red Sky at Night" Saison was pretty good. I might mention, for the sake of hop-heads, that their Loose Cannon IPA is a real gem, though that was not represented at the festival.

I had something from Dogfish Head. What the hell was it?

I love Iron Hill and they didn't show up. At any rate, I sure as hell couldn't find them. Give us a freakin' tent map, Ommegang! Then I could also have found Captain Lawrence before they ran out of everything.

Ithaca Brewing Company: These guys are doing amazing work. Lucky Fairy was a dry-hopped sour red served from a cute little firkin-ish vessel. Brilliant beer. Brute '09 was a "golden sour ale" at 7%. Also a brilliant beer, very bright and pleasantly sour. I was very chagrined to miss "Sour Flower Power." I love Flower Power IPA and they had it with a brett addition but I was trying to save my palate and when I came back it was out. Damnit!

"Kelso of Brooklyn Brewery": Who are these guys?? Damn, are they talented. Newtown Kriek was simply awe-inspiring. It was made with sweet cherries and yeast cultured from a bottle of Cantillon, a kind, on-site brewer explained to me. I might just try that myself. St. Gowanus was a malty, hoppy, nicely balanced, Belgian pale--not entirely unlike a drier, hoppier Palm?

Peakskill Brewery had a fruit beer spelled "Yeah Peaches," which the perky server kept exclaiming: "Yay Peaches!" It was alright... Not remotely in a class with the other fruit beers, but maybe they weren't going for a serious sour beer.

Smuttynose: I love this brewery and I wanted to meet David Yarrington, who was there, but I kept missing him. I did talk to another brewer of theirs and I took the liberty of glowing about Dave's kind assistance to home-brewers and open-ness about their recipes. They had an oak-aged version of the Hanami Ale, their spring cherry beer. It's marvellous with the oak addition--lots of oaky-vanilla yumminess. The Gnome, their take on the Houblon Chouffe style, was also pretty cool. It was aged since 2007 and had a deep, full, malty palate (typical of the house style, by and large) and layers of interesting hopping. The tripel, brewed with Chimay yeast, was also extremely pleasant.

Southampton Publick House: Another brilliant outfit. Cuvee des Fleurs was a lavender-spiced Saison. Very offbeat and reminded me a little of the Brewer's Art's spiced beers. The "trappist IPA" was loaded with hops and oak and quite tasty. I just had a couple sips of the tripel but liked it too. Southampton Grand Cru is the best thing this side of Westvletern 12, which it strongly resembles. I wonder whether the recipe for this is anything like the "Abbot 12" detailed in Brew Like a Monk, 163-4?

Stone Brewing brought a phenomenal "Hoppy Tripel." Not unlike the vertical epic beer that was an IPA strong pale type thing from a year or two ago. Just a gorgeous dry hop nose on this one (the hop aroma of the day really) and a very friendly hip guy from the brewery leaked information about the secret new vertical epic beer, which I promptly forgot. A Belgian porter or something?

Troeg's, a brewery I'm liking more and more, brought a nice, orangey, fruity Belgian Strong called Naked Elf. Good stuff.

Finally, this being in no coherent order really, Victory impressed, as always. They had a particularly subtle, dry "Abbey 6" that I thought was very distinctive. Nice combination of interesting malt character and lean dryness. "Wild Devil"was also delicious, balancing wild yeast character, lots of hops, and a fairly full, malty palate. A dipshit volunteer in a red T-shit (most of them were quite cool) had no idea in hell what I was talking about when I guessed it was a Brettanomyces beer. He thought I said something about potatoes. A nice guy from the brewery confirmed my guess that it was the Hop Devil recipe fermented with Brett, a neat idea.

Some overall pro's and con's:

Con: We had to park our car on a surface that appeared to me to be about 60% fresh manure.
Pro: Free parking, I guess...
Con: The ticket is, in my view, over-priced. Yeah, it's a pretty exclusive set of beers to try, but it's 2 to 3.5 times as expensive as a lot of similar events. In the final estimation, it is worth it though, partly because . . .
Pro: Most similar events involve staff that know NOTHING about beer. B.C.t.C. involves a lot of on-site brewers who can tell you a tremendous amount about the products. That's a big pro, especially for enthusiastic homebrewers looking to push the envelope...
Pro: It's also worth noting that they've improved dramatically the range and availability of food since a couple years ago. Pretty reasonably priced in that regard as well.
Con: Silly NY state law involves using a ticket for each sample.
Pro: I probably had close to thirty samples and only had to use two tickets. Interesting...
Pro: Cute little mini Duvel glasses are way cooler than the crappy mini tumbler you used to get.
Con: I obliterated two of them in a uneven, manurey terrain / structurally unsound styrofoam cooler incident...
Pro: Glossy program with lines for tasting notes.
Con: The paper repels ink. Oh, and nice proofreading, guys! "Omplex flavors?" Rodenbach has 56% alcohol?
Pro: Two kinds of cave-aged beer available (Ommegang plus Hennepin).
Con: Holy crap, they've raised the prices on those. Jesus...
Con: Too many white beers.
Pro: I needed one style to consistently skip to reduce alcohol intake and palate confusion. The solution? No white beers for me.

My strategy, incidentally, was to steer toward dryer, hoppier, or sour beers where possible. Palate fatigue was not nearly as bad as other times I've been to this and other events. I put off anything remotely sweet or rich until the end. Good strategy. It'd be even better to do all the sours and then all the dry and/or hoppy ones, and then go around looking for the big hitters, but that gets a little bit ridicuously unwieldy to execute. I found a nice middle-of-the-road strategy that meant I tried a lot of good stuff, only missed out on a couple things, kept the palate basically functioning, kept a nice buzz, and didn't feel shitty later. It is, unavoidably, the kind of event where you're going, dear reader, to glance down at your glass once or twice and say, "Hey, what the fuck am I drinking again?" But that was kept to a real minimum by this participant... Thanks to Lisa for providing the impetus for the excursion and for driving us home.

Juniper

2009-07-27T13:45:00.003-04:00

I'm overdue for a brewery update... Just for starters, I decided to mix up my draft selection and add something a little experimental to the line-up:

Inspired by the creative use of spices at Baltimore's The Brewer's Art and by the fantastic new CD that I listened to twice during brewing, Dizzy (Gillespie) on the French Riviera (1962).

"Dizzy's Juniper Blonde"

1049
9 lbs pils
14 oz aromatic
1 lb sugar

aprrox 35 IBU
Centennial to bitter
Sterling for flavor
Mt Hood and Amarillo for aroma
.5 oz crushed juniper berries at shut-off

Should be subtle but off-beat and interesting. I hope...

Brewery Update

2009-06-03T16:12:00.004-04:00

Today was a two batch bottling day. Ugh...

On draft:

Up-a-Creek Kriek
"I'm Finishin' My Coffee" Stout (virtually gone--a gem, by the way)
No-Name English Bitter (what I'm sipping)
Aimless Academic Ale (a-stylistic UK ale--brown meets Winter Welcome?)
Pliny the Motherfucker (a very bitter, free-style, Pliny the Elder knock-off)

Bottled stocks:

Lookin' good. Lots of Belgians available and a nice range of summer-ish beers, from helles bock, to pilsner, to weizen. Weak point would be a lack of bottled pale ale and barley wine stocks that need replenishing. May plan a tasting or two to clean out the library--there are a few things where the final bottle or two may as well be dispensed with.

Just bottled:

Fucktoberfest: The Okobterfest I didn't mean (or need) to brew but someone gave me a smacked pack of Wyeast Oktoberfest. Just as well--it should be delicious. Quirky, non-traditional grain bill with some toasty Special "B" giving it a certain je ne sais quois.

No-Name Altbier: Old Guy Altbier? I'm turning 35 shortly. . . Also tasted promising.

In fermenters:

A probably mediocre saison--good concept but has some weird aromas. May be fruited and served on draft.

A horribly fecal and sour lambic. Patience will be needed. Big time.

A hopefully delicious Ardennes hoppy Belgian pale. Yeast cake will probably produce an IPA Tripel, that style that everyone is doing now . . .

Session IPA. Bottle or keg? Should really bottle one for a change.

3787 Dubbel.

Upcoming projects include, in rough order of priority:

Corny summer piss beer
More IPA
Saison (2 different yeasts to use)
Chili ale?
Other Belgians (Have packs of Trappist Blend and Canadian Belgian--both new to me)
1 or 2 Roeslare beers (Pale and Flanders brown?)
Barley wine

All in all, I've a healthy brewery. I am running out of bottles though...

Thanks for reading.

Clark's People's Real Ale Festival

2009-05-31T15:44:00.003-04:00

Saturday, May 9, we met Andrew and Laurie for the "People's Real Ale Festival" at Clark's: 18 cask ales, all or nearly all dispensed from little gravity-fed firkins.

I managed to taste 12 of the 18, in half pint servings. Here's a quick rundown:

--Captain Lawrence Freshchester Pale Ale: Lovely, simple pale loaded with grapefruit.
--Empire Sub-Terranian Ale: Theoretically a farmhouse/tripel fusion, this was the one horrid fiasco of the day, a ghastly, bilgey, sweet-sour, cloying beer with all the palate appeal of a half pint of Ny-quil.
--Ithaca Flower Power IPA: My favorite of the day, a big expressive IPA with a hugely floral hop blast to the nose.
--Landmark IPA: Typical US IPA but with a particularly nice balance to it.
--Livery Blue Jackets Best IPA: This is a rare UK-style IPA. Very English tasting but with a more bracing hop palate than you're likely to get there. Delicately fruity yeast profile too.
--Middle Ages Dragon Slayer: A gorgeous, red-winey, burly stout. I loved it.
--Rohrbach Scotch Ale: Only had a sip of someone's but this was, according to my notes, "malty, malty, malty."
--Sly Fox Rte. 113 IPA: I'm afrad I just wrote "pretty good" here.
--Stoudt's DIPA: This takes DIPA into barley wine territory; a massive, massive beer.
--Stoudt's Scarlet Lady ESB: A hell of a lot subtler, obviously, with a nice malty palate.
--Troeg's Hopback: I've become a real fan of this beer as it was on draft at Nail Creek for some time. Lovely and beautifully balanced as per usual, the hops blending intelligently with the toasty, copper-colored malty aspects.
--Victory Hop Wallop: Had this in the bottle once and was unimpressed; it was good from the firken: not such a memorable nose, but a great hoppy palate.

Good tasting; good company; good roast beef sandwich.

Green Flash Tasting

2009-05-17T21:12:00.002-04:00

So, I discovered Green Flash Imperial IPA at Nail Creek on draft some months ago. It's one of my favorite DIPA's. This inspired a tasting of other bottled beers of theirs which I discovered were available nearby, unbeknownst to me . . .

1) Yesterday, we tried GF Double Stout, a big, rounded, chocolate pillow of a beer, sweet, barely balanced by Target hops, and lightened and complicated by a range of fruity esters. A gorgeous stout, of homebrew-ish proportions.

2) Just tried their Trippel. I'm less in love with this one, but it's a good beer with some tasty esters and spicy aspects. My gripe, as with a few other U.S. tripels, is with attenuation. It's hardly a big, clunky beer, but I'd love it if it were a touch drier--there's something just a little bit barley-wine-ish about the palate and so I'm missing the refinement. This is largely a matter of taste. Not all Belgian tripels are steely dry either; I just like them a little less malty, myself.

3) "Le Freak." The brewers bill this as a fusion of the San Diego pale ale style and Belgian tripel. The nose juxtaposes dramatic west-coast hops with some Belgian-style esters and higher alcohols; it's a pretty heady colllective scent. The palate is mostly hops (citrusy and resiny), barely held together by a toasty, but very dry and slender, malt profile.

Hell of a brewery, all things considered . . .

Angry Beer Tasting

2009-02-27T16:17:00.002-05:00

2/27/09

4:10 Bryant and Sharon arrive. Stout and Obama's Brown IPA are consumed.

4:20 Randy and Rick arrive. Randy's ass is wet from a beer spilled in the car. He blow dries his ass. We drink Reconciliation, a brett brux beer. It's lovely, dry, half tart, mildly funky.

4:45 Sherry-ish oxidized Flemish brown with raspberries--lovely.

4:55 Old lambic. Chlamydia aftertaste. Super weird, funky lambic. Really grows on me, Randy, and Rick. Sharon and Lisa are not down with it. Understandably.

5:05 Draft Kriek is consumed. It is deemed overly fecal, but complex and highly sour. Rick likes it more than Randy does

5:25 "Vin" Chardonnay beer is drunk. Oaky, buttery, vinous, plums, hard-to-place fruit, butterscotch. Good stuff.

5:50 Moreval is horsey, leathery, dry. Great beer.

6:10 Kyrie is a gorgeous, dead perfect, floating on a cloud saison. Rick regards it as the best beer of mine that he's had.

6:30 Bad Angel black saison is gorgeous. We like it.

Groups splinter off for other events, but it was a fine beer tasting.

DIPA Brew-day

2009-02-01T17:30:00.002-05:00

Had been trying to work up the energy to brew for a good week and I finally found it, more or less. The result is an un-named DIPA. It's very loosely based on the morebeer.com kit recipe that is a Cilurzo-authorized Pliny the Elder copy. OG 1075; theoretical 217 IBU; should be a good 8% a.b.v. The grain bill is like the Pliny recipe, only subbing half pilsner and half Maris Otter for two-row and replacing 5 oz of Crystal 40 with 4 oz of Crystal 60. So it'll be a little nuttier and toastier than the traditional Pliny. So be it; that was what was around. Hops were more or less done ad libitum, using as many varieties as possible, keeping half an eye on the Pliny quantities and timing. First wort hopping with Chinook; bittered with Chinook, Cascade, Centennial, Summit, and Amarillo; flavor addition of Cascade and Centennial; crushed at shut-off with Chinook, homegrown Cascade, Amarillo, and Centennial. Absurdly large dry hop in fermentor and keg with most or all of those hops to be determined. Oughta be pretty damned tasty, I would think. Go yeast! Go! Fly, my pretties!

Wheat beer tasting

2009-01-24T16:16:00.002-05:00

Soon, well, eventually, it will be spring--and spring is for wheat beer, non?

With that in mind, here are reflections on two wheat beers. What I'm curious about is yeast choice. I've used three wheat yeasts over the years, the Wyeast Weihenstephan strain (abundant banana and clove; characterful, but can get out of hand) the Wyeast 3333 strain (much cleaner and more restrained but still clearly a German wheat yeast), and, more recently Safbrew WB06. These two wheat beers use the latter two strains and unfortunately do not have carbon copy recipes, but, still, maybe I can figure something or other out:

Sunny Thursday, brewed last February, used 3333 and had a higher proportion of wheat than the other beer; it also had a higher OG (1054).

Cloudy Thursday was brewed in May with the Safbrew, a little less wheat, and is more slimly built (1045). My recollection is that the lower gravity and the light hand with the wheat malt were simply dictated by supply issues, i.e. I was using up all my wheat and used just enough pils to balance it.

I gotta think of a better way to name wheat beers. I got on this brew-day-weather-related naming kick with the first one I made and it stuck for some weird reason. Worse yet, they wind up with inscrutable initials on the caps, for which reason Michael C. took to calling Sunny Thursday Saint Weizen. . .

So, anyway, ST and CT are both decent wheat beers. CT is a touch tarter and a touch fruitier in the aromatics. If I were brewing another wheat beer right now (I should relatively soon) I'd go with the ST grain bill and SG, as it is the prettier beer in terms of color and clarity (if you pour it sans yeast), and has a somewhat more satisfying body. My inclination would be to forego the dry yeast, despite its convenience, simply because I've been gravitating toward less fruity wheat beers. If I get bored with 3333 I could always try the Safbrew or the Weihenstephan again, but I think, come mid- to late- February, I'll clone ST and call it something else. But if any brewers are reading this and like to use dry yeast (I do), the WB06 is pretty decent stuff, not as phenolic as Weihenstephan, not as clean as 3333--at least at these (unknown at this point) fermentation temps.

I'm going to attempt to have this be the first in a little series of "beers and what I learned from them" postings in the vague hope that a) I will learn something, b) I will intellectualize my alcohol intake, and c) I will actually use this stupid blog, which does have its charms.

Noel des Geants and Gouden Carolus

2008-12-23T16:58:00.004-05:00

Another couple holiday things, which will hopefully settle jangled holiday nerves:

The Noel is a pretty damned good beer from Brasserie des Legendes (who must have merged with or absorbed Brasserie Ellezelloise since they currently seem to be making the latter's Hercule Stout?).

Highly effervescent; deep amber in color; nice head. The aromas tend toward the fruit-cakey, but it's good fruit cake, you know? Like with subtle spicing and a range of interesting cherry / apple / raisin aromatics. And it doesn't come off as having an overly "cooked" quality. The palate, while malty, is refreshingly dry which is essential to the beer's success, in my view. It is emphatically not cloying even though it has aromas that might momentarily suggest that possibility. Good stuff.

A good bit closer to cloying is the Gouden Carolus Cuvee Van de Kaiser. At 11% a.b.v. it's sort of in a Scaldis vein and needs to be judged accordingly. It's supposed to be a little sweet and a little heavy. A big, heady, syrupy nose leads into a fairly massive palate. If I hadn't had a Dogfish 120 Minute (yikes) the other day this beer would probably bowl me over a little more. It's big though. There's a little numbing effect that's quite pleasant. A dessert beer, in some sense, but nicely made one. I might like to try the Gouden blonde, which was available at Marcy Discount Beverage, where I bought this one.

Yay, beer sampling...

Holiday beers

2008-12-21T20:44:00.003-05:00

I bought some holiday beers and have begun working through them.

As a sort of stupid tax I accidentally bought a year-old Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome. Wasn't that bad considering. It helps that they've finally broken down and started using dark bottles.

Much better was a Hook Norton 12 Days of Christmas. Gorgeous, toasty, brown ale with layers of flavor. Another new experimental beer was an Elysian IPA--not bad, but nothing to write home about. The immortal Sierra Nevada Celebration is lovely, as always.

Right now, on a less holiday-ish note, I'm drinking Stone's 8/8/08, which is effectively a Belgian-style IPA tripel (strong pale, they say). I think it's an awesome beer, quite comparable to IPA tripels brewed by Randy and me. It's fuller and richer than the La Chouffe version of this style. The hopping is high, but also balanced by a full, creamy body. I love what they've done here. The trick, as with any hoppy Belgian, is the age. When does the bubble-gum die down? Does it take too much of the dry hop with it? What's the perfect balance of dryness / ester character / hop? When the malt goes from slightly sweet to steely has the hop aroma already faded too much? These kinds of beers have odd little windows like that, but even it they're a little off, they're still pretty damned good.

Cheers!

Do I still have a blog? a.k.a. Belgian strong pale tasting

2008-12-07T19:14:00.002-05:00

It's hard to keep up with brewing these days, let alone bullshit about it herein. I meant to do a deep and thought-provoking comparison between Duvel and my own Doctor Doom II, more or less a broad "clone" of Duvel, but my palate is sort of off and I'm just not feeling that thoughtful. My wife's contribution from the next room, when prompted for subtle observations on the contrasts between the two beers is "they're both nice." Oh well. I'll try anyway:

The commercial beer is a touch paler and a touch clearer--not surprising. Both heads are nice--theirs a little fluffier / lacier, mine a little denser. Both beers have a nose marked by subtly spicy, noble-type hops and a fruity note that seems to be to be pear-like. The pear note is riper in mine. The Duvel nose is a little brighter with a tiny little lemon hint, maybe? The palate probably comes down to a matter of taste, as to what one might prefer. The Duvel has a pretty lean palate; mine, while being, statistically, quite well-attenuated, is a little bit fuller and more rounded. Mine actually reminds me of some of those Canadian Belgian-style beers from Unibroue in precisely this respect.

I'm pleased with how mine came out and it will only get better, I hope. I should probably only have one a month as I find this style ages slowly and becomes really fantastic when 12-18 months old. We'll see. There are also 6 or 8 corked 750 ml bottles in the cellar.

Brewing has been a disaster lately as various aspects of my professional have eaten me alive this semester. I'm essentially out of draft beer for Christ's sake. . . But I've rebounded over the last two weeks, with three new beers fermenting. I have an IPA that's wildly overdue to be kegged and a tripel that's overdue to be bottled. The new beers are Obama's Presidential Brown IPA, "Seasonal Affective Disorder" Toasty Pale Ale, and "I'm Finishin' My Coffee" Stout (one of my trademark, clean-out-the-grain-bins, way-too-many-specialty-malt stouts). So things could be worse. Gotta keg / bottle those, bang out a couple of lagers, maybe a steam beer, finally make a fucking barley wine.... There's a lot to be done when grades are in. So it goes. So it goes . . .

perfunctory update

2008-09-29T23:35:00.001-04:00

Clipped from an email to a friend:

I brewed a black saison sometime this summer. Essentially only one odd-ball brewery in Belgium does this "style." I did a traditional saison with a shot of Dingemann's debittered black and a smaller shot of Carafa II. A little dark crystal too. Caramunich?? Special B? I'm too lazy to go downstairs for the book...

The nose has all the crazy esters and higher alcohols of a saison, and some nice spicy noble-type hops. The black malts make a wonderful, subtle contribution. It's kind of like sniffing good fruity brandy with a high-cacao chocolate bar melting in the next room. More black malt meets brandy and candied fruit on the palate. But it's bone fucking dry. I know the final gravity--something like 1.004 or 1.005--but it feels chewy, full, rounded. I love it.

Beatification

2008-09-04T21:45:00.002-04:00

Kier and Katrina kindly brought me a bottle of Russian River's Beatification from CA. Thanks!

I'm drinking it. It's a 100% spontaneously fermented beer, aged in barrels for a good year. It's completely stunning. You could call it, fairly, a California Geueze. Applying the name "lambic" is of course technically wrong, but this sure as hell tastes a lot like one and I'm duly impressed.

Wonderful, layered, earthy, Brett-dominated nose. Bracing, fairly severe acidity. Bone dry. Label it Cantillon and hard-core lambic folk would not be disappointed.

For my money, there's not a better brewery in the country. Period.

BBLT and a brewery update

2008-08-31T19:07:00.003-04:00

Beer and BLT's. Can you do any better?

I just had a glorious BLT accompanied by my Hopsy Bier, a 1388 hoppy pale ale.

The beer is a perfect complement, slashing through the unctuous richness of the sandwich. You have to make your own mayo (I use Alton Brown's recipe). You need good bacon and bread with some taste and enough crust to stand up to the abuse it will take. You need good, crispy Romaine lettuce. You need, most of all, abundant, big, fat, juicy, thick slabs of the best goddamned heirloom tomatoes money can buy. Or in my case, ones that a wonderful professorial colleague up and gave me. This particular sandwich was on a whole wheat Italian bread with wonderful, firm, sweet yellow brandywines and this awesome, deep red, almost purple, meaty, firm-fleshed tomato of unknown origin. A boxcar Willie maybe?? Purple Cherokee also works. I like to have a plate of sweet 100 cherry tomatoes nearby so I can stud my sandwich with additional little fruit-based orgasms as I go. Feel free to lick your fingers and arms. Generally to be eaten only with people you are sleeping with. I mean, with whom you are sleeping.

Anyway, as you're gorging on the fantastic chaos of fatty, salty, tart, sweet, crunchy, juicy, savory, crispy, gooey insanity, you drink a nice, dry, hoppy beer (Orval is always great) and it just cuts right through it, cleanses your palate, and refreshes your nerve centers with that high, airy, floral hop aroma. Possibly my single favorite food experience in the world.

If you care about food and beer and love life, make yourself a BLT while tomato season is in full swing and pair it up with a great pale ale, IPA, legitimate pilsner, or Belgian Saison. Do it. Now. If you're a vegetarian, tough shit! No, actually, that's not fair. Substitute goat cheese, or a smoked mozzarella or something. You might wind up needing to replace the mayo with a vinaigrette of some kind, but it'll still be a great sandwich. Fuck it.

Brewery update:

After a bottling spree (Lambic, Spruce Porter, Black Saison, Belgian Singel), I brewed a Belgian Tripel. Gotta make a couple more Belgians while the weather is warm. I also just flung together my next generation of draft beers: M.C.'s Pekoe Pale, Sugar Notch Brown Ale, All-Summit IPA, and, in a day or so, "I'm Finishin' my Coffee" Stout.

The world seems OK. It really does.

Post-Brewing-Spree Update

2008-06-22T10:11:00.002-04:00

This blog is, obviously, near moribund, but I guess it's worth a random note that I'm still alive. Summer brought with it a renewed sense of brewing purpose and I've been kicking some serious ass this past week. Over a five or six day period, the following has occurred:

Bottled a new Bavarian wheat beer (using the new dry wheat yeast); bottled a new Pilsner (Elitist Pilsner, with all Liberty hops); bottled Kyrie (a Dupont-style Saison and the first in a series of Belgian beers with names based on the movements of the mass in commemoration of my participation in a recent choral performance of Bruckner--lengthy enough explanation?).

Kegged "Denny's RyePA" with whole-flower Columbus (hard to get these days) in the keg; kegged an Oud Bruin with raspberries (needs a name).

Brewed the following, filling all but one remaining fermenter:

Belgian Witte (with oranges and spice, intended for summer consumption particularly during K and K's visit).

"Bad Angel" Black Saison, a second attempt at a very odd style (my first try a couple years ago ran afoul of an infection).

Spruce Imperial Porter, a bigger porter based on the basic Smuttynose porter recipe I've been tweaking for years, hammered with Spruce tips from the Buchanan/Wise estate.

1388 Hoppy Pale ale. Also a starter for a Duvel-type beer, this is a slender, dry, pretty hoppy Belgian that'll be dry-hopped in keg with the last of a very pungent lot of Herrsbrucker hops and maybe some Tettnang too. Vaguely inspired by the idea of a Poperings Hommel Bier or Arabier but at De Koninck strength.

3787 Trappist-style Singel. This recapitulates Sunset Singel, one of my best Belgians ever. Very simple, half-pilsner, half-pale grist. Nothing to it really, but should showcase a great yeast, some Mt. Hood hops and provide a yeast cake for a dubbel or tripel.

I just might fill the last fermenter with a Black IPA or a Brown IPA for draft as soon as my back recovers.

There should be another burst of activity in a month when I bottle/keg and use a couple of yeast cakes to make bigger Belgians. Sour pie cherries will also be available in mid-July, allowing for at least one Kriek on draft, maybe two if I bottle my old lambic and throw together a new one.

Two self-gratifying pats on the back: My friend and fellow brewer Randy announced that my recent Primary Pilsner is the best I've ever made. I agree. It's all Tettnang hops from Hops Direct. For the first time, I didn't decoct, proving for me that Pilsner doesn't remotely require that bit of arcana. Elitist Pilsner isn't decocted either; it just switched to a non-noble hop variety. The most popular beer of the last month or so wound up being Equinox Honey Pale, an interesting experiment. I brewed a beer that was a little smaller and more lightly hopped than an IPA, but more assertive than a pale ale, added a pound of local honey at shut-off, and favored fruity-floral, not piney, hops (no dry hops, but a half ounce each of Cascade, Amarillo, Liberty, and Santiam at shut-off). Turned out fantastic and should probably become a regular offering.

Still an Ass-Clown

2008-04-07T22:34:00.002-04:00

Yes, it's true.

I did finally build the kegerator though.

Currently on draft in my former dining room:

Opus 3 Raspberry Lambic
"Not Medically Relevant" Brown Ale
Pliny the Welder Xtreme Double IPA

They have vintage tap handles, respectively Schlitz, Lowenbrau Special, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Joining them next will be "Robin's Revenge" English Bitter and an Oatmeal Stout (weird name TBA). I'm kegging those tomorrow, I hope.

Recent bottled beers to mature include Bitch Bastard Blizzard Bock (awesome), Amanuensis Ale (very good American blond ale), Sunny Thursday Bavarian Weizen (also good), and Primary Pilsner (lovely, all-Tettnang hops).

In fermenters are Vinification Chardonnay Ale, a young lambic shortly to be krieked, my old lambic (really, I'll bottle it soon), a Flemish sour brown, and a spring pale ale. I obviously went on a wild beer spree. . .

Shortly to be brewed:

Barley Wine
More Pilsner
Steam beer
Black IPA
Witte
A serious series of Belgians (Singel, Dubbel, Tripel, Strong Pale, Saisons, you name it)

A brewer's work is really never done. Especially when he's also a professor and publishing scholar. . .

Non-Posting Ass-Clown

2008-03-01T19:07:00.002-05:00

It's been a while. Random brewery update:

After an alarming nine-week hiatus, the brewery kicked into high gear and I temporarlily lost my mind. Currently in fermenters:

Vinification Charbonnay Barrel Beer (Roeslare + Lambic Blend)
Pliny the Welder (pretty close to the Pliny the Elder recipe)
No-Name American Brown Ale
Amanuensis Ale (American pub-style Blonde)
Sunny Thursday Bavarian Weizen
2.5- year-old Lambic that I may bottle soon

Currently boiling is an all-Tettnang Pilsner.

Shortly to follow:

Framboise Lambic (pack is swelling)
Some sort of IPA with Flying Dog yeast?
A British bitter (West Yorkshire yeast)
Something dark . . .

Northern Brewer order needed soon to replenish bottle caps, yeast stocks, and minor specialty malts.

Thanks to the Bambergers for delivering malt from North Country to Randy's house, whence I have three new sacks of grain.

Promising new beers include Bitch Bastard Blizzard Bock (all-Vienna Helles-Bock) and a Belgian IPA Tripel type of thing. . .

Cheers!

Pumpkin Evaluation

2007-12-21T21:21:00.001-05:00

Comparing my pumpkin ale to the Smuttynose model again; I did this once before and decided the spice level in mine was too low and added further spice directly to the keg. Something like 6 cloves plus cinnamon and nutmeg to the tune of a scant .2 oz total. Gotta get a scale that converts to grams for stuff like this...

My beer is a big loser in visuals. I put pumpkin right into the primary and this created a serious haze. Honestly I don't care though.

Other than that, the beers are really close in quality. Both have big, full spice noses. Being bottled, the Smutty has pricklier carbonation, whereas mine has a softer draft feel (probably a plus for this style actually). The spice flavor is underlain by a fairly solid malt foundation, with a delicate carameliness. The Smutty is a little bit more firmly hopped. If I were going to do a bottled version and drink it off and on for a year or more, it'd make sense to give it 8-10 more IBU's.

Overall, that was encouraging...

X-Mas Beers 5

2007-11-27T23:19:00.000-05:00

I'm struck by these Ridgeway beers. Wow. Just when you thought all British ales were basically subtle, along comes these whalloping huge holiday specialties. I had a Very Bad Elf a few weeks ago and loved it--forgot to take notes. It's essentially a strong pale ale brewed according to a historical recipe, I think with pale amber malt (a real oddity).

Now I'm having Lump of Coal Dark Holiday Stout. Given the name, it could be a touch darker. But then I've been drinking crazy homebrewed stouts that all have absurd amounts of roast barley. Lump of Coal is definitely black, but also quite translucent when light hits it. The malt character is tremendous though; I'd say it has more malt character than a keg of Guinness....

The malt aroma and heady flavor derive, I suspect from really liberal use of all those yummy intermediate malts: Brown? Amber? Various dark crystals? Anyway, you get a whiff of this intense rum-soaked fruitcake thing and it's basically everything lovely about the holidays with none of the senseless horror. I like it.

X-Mas Beers IV

2007-11-26T23:04:00.000-05:00

OK, why I'm suddenly blogging daily I have no idea...

De Proef Kerstmutske: This is another of those Belgian malt-bombs, and the last member of my late, lamented Shelton Bros. X-Mas beer box (a source of genuine pleasure). The palate is pretty darn malty, with a delicate teasing acidity to help out with the balance, hops being scarce in this one. A darker beer, this resembles last night's offering but with a smaller black malt quotient. I find the nose quite enchanting but am annoyed that I cannot describe it. What is that odd little combination of aromas? Oak and rhubarb? Can't do it justice...

Belgian X-Mas Beers III with an update from the brewery

2007-11-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

Tonight brings Brouwerij Kerkom's WinterKoninkske. From the brewery's website:

"The ‘Winterkoninkske’ is the ideal beer to make a cold and chilly winter evening pleasant.
The ingredients are: seven types of malt (among which rolled oats), two belgian types of hop, brewing liqour and yeast.
Our winter beer is a dark and heartwarming beer with a pure, sugary flavour and a long, bitter aftertaste.
The alcohol content of this heavy beer is 8,3 % vol.alc."

And the bottle says it's brewed with juniper berries. It's a gorgeous looking beer, quite dark, sort of a burnt ruby topaz, definitely using some black malts. The juniper berries definitely leave a mark, both in the nose and on the palate--quite peppery. Big and velvety; really pretty sweet. There's just enough hops to balance and keep some structure to the finish. Very enveloping and heady. I like it.

By way of a brewery update, the last few kegged beers have been really good. Even the bizarre sour beer blend with raspberries is delicious. Really delicious. Today I bottled Fence-Post Porter, racked Red-Headed Stepmother IPA onto dry hops, and kegged Oatis McOatmeal's Oat-tastic Stout. All were promising, especially the IPA which I am seriously excited about; it's wildly bitter and dripping with hop aroma already. Shortly, I'll be bottling the IPA, plus the other pale ale, and dry hopping the Belgian IPA Tripel that is glugging away in my office.

Probable upcoming beers: Vienna bock. Another kegged IPA (can't keep it on draft...) designed to use up stray year-old hops. Maybe another brown ale? Something subtle and British. A weird sour oaky 18-month project beer. An old British beer for Christmas would be a must. RyePA. A Pliny the Elder clone. A barley wine for the love of crumb cake. That's a lot of priorities. . . I need to keep getting bottled beers made to straighten out the basement stock. I'd also like to have a big wintery dark beer and a serious IPA on draft for winter guests (maybe a honey one like last year?).

Belgian X-Mas Beers II

2007-11-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

Brouwerij Achilles is apparently a garage microwbrewery, sort of like Blaugies used to be. Their "Serafijn Christmas Angel" is sort of like a lighter, perkier, drier Scaldis Noel. O.K., that's a lot of exceptions/qualifiers. The aroma has a very Scaldis-esque, candy-candy-candy maltiness. Then it gets drier, cleaner, and brighter: brilliant, effervescent palate; appley nose; surprisingly dry, given the deep, malty nose. A rather lovely beer, all around.

Oh, home-brewers, do NOT forget that Belgian beers are NOT all complex with a capital "C." Au contraire, many of them are surprisingly direct and uncomplicated. Here, in the grand scheme of things, some bright, fruity esters overlay a rich malt palate lightened by sharp carbonation. That's about it. And yet it's awesome. Go figure.

Belgian X-Mas Beers

2007-11-21T16:25:00.000-05:00

Working my way through a Shelton Bros. X-mas box.

First up: Brassere de la Senne X-Mas Zinnebier

Sounds like one of the brewers is Yvan de Baets and it's a very new, very small brewery, apparently him and another guy brewing under contract, actually, at someone else's brewery...

This is a lovely beer, vaguely reminiscent of Rochefort 6 to me?? At any rate, it has some of the chocolatiness of that beer, more chocolate than the medium amber color would tend to suggest. Emphatic, wildly spicy nose. Full, elegantly nutty malt character. Apple fruit. Awesome beer.

Second up: De Ranke Pere Noel. This is the only thing in the box I've had before. I had it, however, under suspect conditions (old magnum languishing on a shelf). Wasn't all that impressed. This time I am. It's really, really hoppy, particularly on the palate, where the hop character reminds me of some of Randy's beers (that is, arguably over-hopped, but in a good way). It's kind of copper colored. Piney/herbal hop-dominated nose, even drifting toward pleasantly medicinal; toasty malt character overbalanced by the strident hop flavor. Faced with a wide range of highly malty holiday beers, why not throw something like this into the mix? It's basically Belgium's answer to Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. What the hell are they hopping this with?

Cheers y'all.

Brown Ale Evaluation

2007-11-07T19:12:00.000-05:00

It's another Smuttynose-inspired beer and I'm doing like I did in the last post, however dull that may be... It helps me think about what I am and am not doing well as a brewer.

Smuttynose Old Brown Dog v. Fall Down Brown (thanks to Trina for the name)

Fall Down is a touch deeper in color, more red and less copper. The Dog is a classic brown ale in my view: very clean, elegant lines; toasty, direct malt character; hops just to balance. Not surprisingly, my beer loses. It's good, but the Dog has a chocolatier, denser nose, and a slightly fuller mouthfeel that I prefer. Nevertheless, Fall Down is pretty solid. I may, next time I brew a brown ale of this type, pop up the chocolate malt just a touch to try and get a little more depth in the aromatics, perhaps mash another degree or two warmer to flesh out the body. Shouldn't be hard to do.

By the way, I've gone on a little spree. Last weekend, I kegged a pumpkin ale (can't wait...), brewed a big, super bitter red IPA, and an oatmeal stout (first in a long time). I also created this crazy experiment where I dumped a bunch of crappy, sour Belgian dubbels and sour Kolschs (blech) into a keg and added raspberries and some lambic dregs. It's intended to produce a kind of faux Goudenband type thing with the berry element. We'll see.

Wheat Wine Evaluation

2007-10-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

I brewed a wheat wine a while ago (I think it's about 9 months old now?) using a grain bill from Smuttynose. I couldn't get a hold of a bottle of theirs and it was winning awards right and left, so I asked for the recipe. I'm lining mine up with the real deal just for fun, keenly conscious of the fact that mine didn't come out that well.

Mine has less carbonation. In a beer this big (around 11%) a little more prickle actually helps. But I hate spritzy, over-carbed barley wines so I played it safe and really underprimed mine. No biggy.

Smutty's is definitely a shade darker. Not sure why that is, except that I used all or nearly all Golden Promise for the non-wheat base malt and that's a really pale malt. Plenty of other explanations--boil time, malt suppliers, etc.

Mine smells tasty. The dry and late hopping swings pretty fruity. I hopped it with Amarillo and Crystal and I think the Crystal particularly can get almost bubble-gum fruity sometimes. I didn't copy Smuttynose's hopping because that seemed silly and slavish. I just made something up that I thought would be appropriate for a wheat wine, looking more toward fruity/floral hops than piney ones I guess.

The nose on the Smutty has a little more pine going on, but is still relatively elegant and subtle.

Mine's a decent beer, but it really doesn't hold up. The key flaw is the kind of overly fruity, somewhat tangy palate. I suppose that could be an overly hot fermentation, or a very mild infection or off-yeast (it's hardly sour, but something's just a little funky).

In contrast, the Smutty is velvet from start to finish. I guess the wheat adds a paradoxical lightness to what is really a giant beer, a little bit of a fluffy je ne sais quoi . . . It's a weird style in that sense. Oak chips leave a nice, subtle mark on this particular example too, adding an extra dimension beyond pure hops and alcohol. I might also note that, while David Yarrington says the hops are designed primarily to just barely balance the beer, this is still a pretty damned hoppy beer. There's a really firm, almost steely intensity to the initial bitterness. Anyway, I'm impressed by it overall.

I don't know if I'll brew a wheat wine again. Given the limited amount of time for big beers and the shortage of bottle space and whatnot, I'd rather brew a more traditional barley wine probably 9 out of 10 times. We'll see. But if it's something I return to, I suspect I'll be hard pressed to find a better model.

More Fall Brewing

2007-10-07T10:43:00.000-04:00

As part of Project Have Actual Normal (i.e. Non-Belgian, Non-Sour, Non-High-Gravity) Beers in Bottle in the Basement (Project HANNBNSNHGBBB) I am brewing a Smuttynose style porter today (Fence-Post Porter). Tomorrow a.m. will be a medium sized U.S. pale ale (not IPA), basically a clone of my very first, surprisingly good kit beer. It'll be a pale ale punched up with honey malt and sweet, low-color crystal malts with Willamette and Cascade, which are very nice together. The original inspiration would be More Beer's American Pale Ale II. \

Today, I'm kegging a Fall Brown Ale (name???) and Water Hazard Wet Hop Ale.

Rogue Juniper Pale Ale

2007-09-26T22:29:00.000-04:00

Another random beer tasting...

The aforementioned is a very pale pale ale (3.2 L). According to the bottle, it's 13 degrees Plato, 77 AA, and 34 IBU. That would make it about 5.3% a.b.v., by my calculations. Ingredients: Northwest Harrington, Crystal, Triumph, Maier Munich, C-15; Styrians and Amarillos and juniper berries.

I think it's great, overall. Aromatically, you get a general whiff of hops, nothing too overbearing, underlain by an earthy pepperiness I take to be the juniper berries. There's an elegant, supple malt character (moderate malty depth from, I guess, the Munich and Crystal 15). The juniper effect kicks in most dramatically in the finish, which is really pretty distinctive. I have some juniper berries kicking around and that's definitely the earth/pepper thing.

So, sometime when I get sick of brewing basic pale ales or IPA's, this'd be a pleasant experiment, brewing a nice malty pale and spiking it with the ginny goodness of juniper...

Flying Dog Double Dog

2007-09-20T21:09:00.000-04:00

Saw this at Marcy Discount Beverage and thought, "what the hell..."

It's a fairly deep color, drifting toward amber.

What's the difference between a double pale ale and a barley wine anyway?

This is 1.102 with 10.5% a.b.v. and 85 I.B.U. so it's pretty much in barley wine territory.

The nose balances (kind of) a huge layered malt character and pretty intense hops (Cascade and Columbus according to their site). It is definitely not a double IPA given the serious malt warmth and fat heaviness--much more like a 'roided up pale ale. So they named it right... The palate is really huge, swinging toward deeply weighted dextrinous malt flavor.

It gets more complex as it warms up, the herbal, almost vegetal, occasionally minty, dry hop character dancing with the over-blown and delicately fruity malt flavors.

I think I'll save the other two bottles for winter.

Fall Hits the Brewery

2007-09-16T18:26:00.000-04:00

It's beginning to feel like Fall and this makes me want to crank up production. Last weekend saw the brewing of a brown ale (based on a Smuttynose recipe) and the bottling of three promising new beers: Van de Velde's Belgian Pale Ale, Star Chamber II Double IPA, and The Curse of the Silver Thermometer Saison (long story). They should really all be good, which is a much-needed shot in the arm given my relatively low stocks and a couple of very mediocre batches that make it look like I have more beer in the basement than I really do...

Yesterday I harvested almost 2 lbs of luscious Cascade hops and today most of them went into a wet hop ale. It's about 1065 with a little more crystal/Munich than usual for a deeper color and fuller malt character. I chucked in .7 oz of regular, dry Chinook to make sure it had adequate heft. The amount of Cascade required to get anywhere near normal bitterness was just sort of ridiculous. The idea is apparently to use wet hops as you would dry, only use five times as many. So I first wort hopped with 5 oz, bittered with 5 oz plus the Chinook corrective, and slammed it with 8 oz at shut-off. There will of course be a keg dry hop as well. I have high hopes for it.

The beer of the moment is the newest keg to come on line, a super subtle English bitter with oak chips in it to crudely simulate the serving conditions at my favorite Sam Smith's pub in London. It tastes highly English, I love the delicacy of it, and you can pretty much drink up with a starting gravity of only 1039 or so.

Coming soon: A few commercial beer reviews.

Upcoming brews: Pumpkin Ale, bottled Porter, Ardennes IPA Tripel, Overdue Barley Wine???

RIP Michael Jackson

2007-09-01T09:48:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,

As you toast the late lamented Michael Jackson, off and on, over the ensuing weeks and months and years, here's my favorite little interview for you to keep in mind:

http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-001403.html

I think we can all see ourselves, for a moment, in the pro's and con's of being a professional beer writer, even if his commitment thereto is something to which we can only amateurishly aspire. As a kind of professional writer myself, I might say that Mr. Jackson, in addition to being a beer expert, a whiskey expert, and a bon vivant, was an under-rated writer. He wrote with a wonderful, very British reserve: elegant but not flashy; occasionally emotive but never sloppy; concise without being spare; witty without being ostentatiously clever. Everyone who appreciates the quality of beer available here (wherever that is) and now owes him a debt of gratitude.

Cheers,

JD

Smutty IPA plus vague plans

2007-08-26T17:15:00.001-04:00

Well, this blog is near death. Thought I'd give it a whirl though.

My brewing career is in a difficult spot since I didn't make enough beer this summer and school is starting. Where will I find time?

I'm sipping, incidentally, a Smuttynose IPA. What a stunning hop character this has... Last time I had one was on draft in Syracuse. It was delicious too, but a shock to the system as I was just returning from 3 weeks of English ale drinking. This hits you with grapefruit and a deep earthiness. Piney, but not pitchy. Little twinge of something that reminds me of a great loaf of S.F. sourdough bread. Just enough body to carry the hops. Paradoxically session-y tasting. I could put away a lot of these if I weren't careful.

My beer stock in the basement is all fucked up. I have lots of Belgian style beers, some OK, some good, some excellent. I have a few odd specialties, a six-pack of spruce beer, a mead, a smoked beer, an imperial stout that won't be drinkable for years--that kind of thing. I've somehow got into the habit of kegging all pale ales, IPA, browns, porters, and stouts. So if I want a mixed six-pack to bring somewhere, I'm screwed; if I want to offer someone who visits a beer, I'm limited to what's on tap a lot of the time, unless they're worthy of / capable of comprehending, say, a Flanders red.

I've got to brew some normal beers and bottle the damn things to restore order, because this is just ridiculous...

Hanami Ale

2007-06-28T16:23:00.000-04:00

Who's my favorite pro brewer (you didn't ask)?

It's a toss-up. I'm a huge fan of Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River fame, creator of all those crazy, wild yeasty, barrel-aged enigmas--as well as Pliny the Elder. The guy with DogfishHead is pretty interesting too. Whoever really designed the beers at Anchor is extraordinarily skilled. But I'm going with David Yarrington of Smuttynose. He's a nice guy--I base this on the fact that we shared a couple sociable emails and he parted with four of his grain bills to help my home brewing along. There's also the fact that the beers are just shockingly balanced. No, there aren't the bells and whistles you get with the first two guys above, but if you want a perfect session IPA, a gem of a porter, the tastiest brown ale I think I've ever had, an elegantly smooth, surprisingly drinkable barley wine, and so on, you gotta go with Dave.

As an act of faith I bought a sixpack of Smuttynose's Hanami Ale. It's a cherry beer. It's not a lambic. Characteristically, in my view, fruit beers that are not (traditional!) lambics blow approximately 95% of the time. Exceptions might include a couple of odd beers from DogfishHead and the lesser-known Craftsman Brewing of Pasadena, CA. So the Hanami is good. The beer is not pink. They also refrained from just chucking fruit juices or flavorings into the usual ho-hum hefe-weizen base like everybody seems to do. Whatever they built this around, it's got more substance. I just checked their website to make sure I was right about the grist and I am: No wheat at all, but pils, carahell, aromatic, and a touch of carafa for color. The beer is also, shock of shocks, relatively hoppy, with a delicately raspy bitterness engaging nicely with the earthy sourness of the cherries. You get the flavor of tart cooking cherries, not sweet table cherries here. And the finish is dry, earthy, kinda bitter, almost tannic.

Am I going to go buy a case? No. But it really is a damned interesting, well-crafted beer which, as per their m.o., is perfectly balanced. Just like so many beers--craft brews and schlocky industrial ones alike--aren't.

Beer is a pain in the ass

2007-06-18T17:01:00.000-04:00

So, I changed my mind on that saison. The whole jaggery thing felt too cutesy and I'd rather keep to the relatively low-gravity traditions of the style. I tasted one of my old saisons and liked it so much I borrowed the grain bill. 9 lbs pils, 1 lb wheat, 1/2 lb each biscuit malt and sugar. 1053. The old hop bill was very traditional, with English Kent and Styrian Goldings. This time I went with 32 IBU of zappy Perle hops for bittering, plus 1.5 oz each of Crystal and Mt. Hood at shut-off, which should give some really bright aromas that are like noble hops but, well, not quite. I did keep the grains of paradise because the Farmhouse yeast isn't peppery enough for my taste. 1 /2 tsp should give a subtle but noticeable little zip. We'll see.

Only problem is I had to mash the damn beer twice. I have two little dial thermometers. One somehow got to be almost 20 degrees off. I discovered this during a routine check; I don't think I brewed with it anywhere near that far off. Well, till today. I had set it aside to calibrate it. So I doughed in the mash for the saison at 145. 20 minutes later, while checking the temperature of my coffee brewing water, I realized my grievous error. I checked the mash, checked the thermometers, swore, and contemplated solutions. I HATE under-attenuated saisons. I was almost positive that I had more or less totally denatured the beta-amylase. (For you non-brewers, that's bad!) The idea of spending all day on what I feared would be mediocre at best was just too oppressive to continue with the same beer. I contemplated throwing in some crystal and shit and cobbling together "Accidental IPA," but, you know what? I HATE overly chunky IPA's too. I have no use for an all-alpha-amylase beer. So I started all over again. There goes 5 bucks worth of grain and, more importantly, an hour and a half.

Everything else went fine, except that I kept spilling constantly and zoning out and doing dumb things--including breaking my hydrometer. You know you've given yourself second-degree burns while brewing, when you think mashing twice and breaking your hydrometer still leaves you in the ballpark of a relatively good brew day.

To add further stress, the 3787 beer (much smoother process) is climbing out through the airlock. I should've done a blow-off tube. It -always- does that. I love that yeast though so, like, whatever. I think I just heard the airlock pop out. Better go check. Anyway, somehow, I have two new beers fermenting, plus a keg of pale ale and a keg of stout for my trouble.

The sad thing is that I'm thinking about doing one more tomorrow as long as my research project is frustrating me and I don't feel like doing yardwork...

Belgians to brew

2007-06-16T20:10:00.000-04:00

So, despite it being lovely out, despite not really feeling like brewing, I forced the issue by smacking two packs. Otherwise I'll wake up in 4-6 months with no beer and I'll be seriously pissed off.

The yeasts: 3787 Trappist High Gravity and 3726 Farmhouse.

It's hot and it's the right time of year to ferment beers of this type. If the enthusiasm (such as it is) holds, I'll do an IPA and something else to keg next, but for now, it's Belgian time. I'd like to make some British style things inspired by my travels, but I'm concerned about the heat and run-away fermentations. British beers suck when they overheat... Belgians are safe and so is US-05.

Anyway, I'm sipping a Westmalle Dubbel for inspiration. It's delicious--all plummy and spicy.

Relevant supplies: Should I wish to spice anything, coriander and grains of paradise abound, plus other shit. Relevant hops: Mt. Hood, Crystal, Perle, Hallertau Mittelfruh, Sterling. Relevant malts: Pils, caramel pils, carawheat, Vienna, Munich, wheat, Biscuit, Caramunich 40 and 120, aromatic, Special B, debittered black.

The Saison... I haven't made a spiced one forever and I just ate a grain of paradise and it's yummy. I also just ran across, in some old notes, a vague plan to produce a jaggery saison. How about an experimental saison? Quite peppery. Super dry but with a weird unrefined sugar thing in the background?

I'm imagining roughly this recipe: 1048 ish. 7.5 lbs pils, 1 lb wheat, 1 lb carawheat, 1 lb jaggery. Cool mash. Crystal hops to 25 IBU with 1.5 ounces at shut-off. At least 1/2 tsp grains of paradise at shut-off. Maybe more. Have to consult with a brewer who's used more of them. I've only done 1/4 tsp as part of a melange. Will brew Monday so there's time.

Now, as to the 3787...

I'm going to stay close to the key stats for Rochefort 6, with absolutely no intention of cloning it. Wrong yeast. Don't want to anyway. But I like the soft balance of that beer a lot, hence I'll aim for 1072 and a mere 18-20 IBU.

After a lot of fiddling around, I settled on this:

1071: 9.5 lbs Pils, 10.7 oz Caramunich 40, 5 oz Caramunich 120, 1 lb soft candi sugar, 1 lb table sugar. Correct color with debittered black as needed. Bitter to 20 IBU with 1 oz Mittelfruh. .5 oz of same at shutoff. Touch of coriander if I feel like it at the time.

New brews?

2007-06-12T20:58:00.001-04:00

Well, it's summer. I've just returned from England a little over a week ago. I should do a huge post on the beer I drank there. I have notes on paper...

After close to five weeks off, it's time to make some beer. I have too many yeasts in stock and am not sure where to start. I need a couple of session beers for kegging--British style things or U.S. pales and IPA's. I am way overdue to bang out a barley wine and a DIPA. I also have Belgian yeasts to use--Farmhouse, 3787, and Ardennes for starters. Plus lambic and Roeslare packs. Sheesh.

The Farmhouse will produce two saisons, a relatively slender little hoppy Saison and, later in the summer, a big over-blown honey Saison, loosely in the manner of Dupont's Biere du Miel. Ardennes was acquired specifically to do a big hoppy IPA Tripel fusion thingy, but I'm inclined to do a littler beer to get it going--not sure what yet. 3787 is a standby of mine with which I've made great singels (had one last night), great dubbels, and very Westmalle-esque tripels. Since those Saisons are all pale, I'm inclined to maybe take this year's pack of 3787 somewhere different.

In case it helps, I'm going to drink a Rochefort 6 from my stash. I tried a Rochefort cloning project, but had real issues with 1762, their supposed yeast--it doesn't attenuate enough for me. The 6 is sooo soft, with a delicate spiciness to the nose.

Perhaps one solution to my dearth of dark beers and my tendency to do 3 or 4 pale Belgians for every 1 dark one would be to craft a medium gravity darker beer to be fermented either by 3787 or Ardennes in lieu of a singel or Belgian pale. I could target 1072 or so (what this beer is) , incorporating plenty of a liquid candi sugar or the "soft" candi sugar and one good crystal (Special B or a Caramunich). Very simple. Bittering hops only. Perle or Northern Brewer to a very delicate number of IBU's. Seems like that couldn't go far wrong...

Lisa keeps posting on my blog

2007-05-15T16:48:00.000-04:00

Lisa has decided she can post on my blog. I say no. What's the ettiquette here?

Anyway, rumors are flying.

Yes, I had a nasty brewing accident.

Brewers, and for that matter cooks in general, BEWARE!!

As part of my sparging set-up, I lost my grip on an 8-qt stockpot of boiling water. This resulted in a great deal of screaming (real screaming) and the throwing of myself into a frigid shower and the frantic application of ice to sensitive areas. Oh, and the abandoment of a batch of steam beer. The mash was adopted later that day by my next door neighbor/

After a trip to the emergency room, a follow-up at a burn center, morphine and other powerful drugs, and the application of various ointments and unguents by a lovely Ukrainian woman, the ultimate picture is that I'm leaving for London in one piece. I have first-degree burns all over my chest (like an unusually nasty sunburn) and nasty second-degree burns (think yellow pussy blisters and some skinless patches) on both legs. Fortunately, the burns to truly delicate areas are minor.

All in all it was a truly horrifying experience, but I'm seeing the first stages of some healing already. It will be an inconvenience and will involve some pain for a couple weeks. The burn dude said there'd be no scarring so all things considered I feel very fortunate. It could've been worse.

So BE CAREFUL WITH HOT LIQUIDS, ya hear?!

Getting ready for the UK

2007-05-12T15:25:00.000-04:00

I am stressed out at the prospect of leaving for the U.K. Really, it should be fun, but I'm sweating it. In an attempt to make use of the house in my absence I threw together two beers and am planning a third for Monday. The idea was to have three beers ready to go when I return, slam all three into kegs and then use all the carboy space to make some Belgians, some experimental crazy shit, and so on. This tactic has given me precious little to prep and pack, but I don't know what I'm doing anyway and don't know where to start so maybe it's just as well if I wing it.

Sipping a Sunset Singel to take me down a notch. This has always been a class beer. Very clean and elegant. Anyway, Thursday I knocked out a basic summer pale ale, dubbed Passport Pale in tribute to the arrival of my all-important new document. I took an old recipe I concocted based on Smuttynose's Shoals Pale Ale, lowered the gravity and cut down the crystal malts a little bit. It should be pleasant and relatively light, but with some complexity from a little hit of Crystal 120, the not-so-secret ingredient of Shoals.

Friday saw the kegging of Reoganization Black IPA and the brewing of Sigmund O'Malley's Vienna Stout. My stout brewing career has focused almost exclusively on Russian Imperials and chunky, kitchen-sink, homebrew-type odd-balls. I'd never done the classic Irish Dry, Guinness-esque sort of thing. Well, I guess I still haven't. I took the basic parameters of your average Guinness clone, kept the flaked barley, restrained myself from using crystal malts, kept the roast barley at a relatively normal level, but then cut the pale malt and replaced it with Vienna. My theory is that I'll get something not entirely unlike Guinness, hence drinkable in the summer, relatively light-bodied, and refreshing, but also much more complex and nutty and rounded thanks to the delicious under-used base malt. Plus I just liked the name.

Spontaneous Grisette Tasting

2007-05-01T19:58:00.000-04:00

9 months ago, I made a Grisette. It was mostly an excuse to get some Forbidden Fruit yeast going to start a darker, bigger beer (also a success). So the grist was simple--almost equal parts, pils, wheat, and vienna. Lightly hopped with Mt. Hood. The corked version, which I am tasting right now, is a real charmer:

Luminous yellow-gold with a nice, sparkling white head; indescribable nose (delicate citrus, evanescent hint of hop, wildly floral {lilies?}, kiwi {?}, hint of bread baking around the block); slender, but satisfying, body with delicate, thirst-quenching tartness.

This is a nice reminder of how good (and refreshing) a Belgian style beer can be without the brewer getting carried away or mucking stuff up. Also without getting all high gravity, as if that were somehow a requirement. This started at only 1045 and I would have it no other way.

Getting back in the swing of things

2007-04-29T19:48:00.000-04:00

The brewing career, with the luminous expanse of summer on the horizon, is beginning to look quite pleasant. I have just packaged the first generation of post-infection-fiasco beers and am getting ready to plan a barley wine and a whole bunch of summer Belgians.

I am currently sipping a "Spring Saison" that is pushing two years old. It is truly elegant. Everything extraneous has aged away: What remains is a huge head atop a burnished gold beer; a subtle twinge of sour-dough bread in the nose, melding with floral notes that used to be fruity; a bone-dry, but rounded, minerally palate. To quote the lamest advertising slogan ever, I'm lovin' it.

Yesterday was a bottling marathon. "Sticky Right Foot" Mead found itself two homes: Most of it is primed and in various clear and glass bottles (good way to get them out of circulation for a while) where it will become sparkling. Some of it is also in corked wine bottles where it should remain relatively still. 1856 Imperial Stout version 2 appears promising; I decided to do two special edition corked bottles for consumption in 5-10 years. The third instantiation of my smoked lager, "Log Jammin' 3," is resting in the basement. The real excitement of the day involved sampling my 18-month-old Flanders Red. It had some cute name back when I brewed it, but it is way too gorgeous for any such moniker now. It developed beautiful, elegant, winey, delicately tannic/oaky flavors and a Roeslare nose to kill for. I put most of it in corked 750's with a stock in 22's and 12's for younger consumption. The hydrometer sample was just stunning so I have high hopes. Please, please, for the love of all things holy, let it not overcarbonate, or undercarbonate, or do anything weird!!!

Brewday + Beerfest at Randy's

2007-03-16T19:36:00.000-04:00

Had one of those typical disasters at Randy's the other day. Rick (his brother) was leaving to return home to the U.K. which apparently mandated that he and others get hammered.

I jotted down, and mostly remember tasting, the following:

Started with a choice pilsner (a specialty of the house).

Drank some old IPA's from keg: Ghost Warrior (a very pale Warrior IPA) which was delicious and the so-called "Cask IPA" (really an all-Simcoe beauty).

Then a string of Belgians: a fantastic 3787 pale which I've had 5 or 6 times and loved every time; a nice spring Saison; and a "Labor Day de Leuven." They were all good, but the 3787 sticks out in my mind...

Then a 1992 Courage Russian Imperial: volatile alcohol aroma; layered richness; savory licorice; dates and prunes. Basically astonishing.

By a planned maneuver, we compared my own 1856 Imperial. It needed to sit for 20 minutes for the carbonation to dissipate. It's not a "fizzy" beer per se, but it seemed like one next to the near-still Courage and that threw shit off. I noted down that mine smelled/tasted of candied dates and bourbon barrels. Considering the Courage has about 13 years on my beer, it was actually a closer contest than you'd think. Watch for the rematch around 2020.

Then we had the infamous CSIBS. This is Randy's beer from 1999. The acronym stands for "Camillo's something-or-other." It's an imperial stout tribute to a beloved grandfather. Beautiful beer.

Somewhere or other, I seem to have had a "Dark Bavarian Winter" from 2000, which was good.

I poured my Spruce beer to general acclaim, leaving one for Linda I hope...

There may have been other beers, but things got foggy around then.

Anyway, today I brewed an all-Ahtanum IPA, racked this year's Impeachment Pilsner to secondary, and kegged "What the fuck?!" Stout, which tasted astonishingly good actually. Apparently the coffee-and-chicory-at-shut-off routine has potential. We'll see how it comes out.

Then I discovered that a medium-old Belgian was heading south fast, tasted a couple other things, and reorganized the basement beer pile. I stashed a few things in the cooler for a "Mediocre Beer Party" and discovered that I had a lot less good beer in bottles than I'd like.

Looks like I had better rededicate myself to brewing...

Soon to bottle: Pilsner + the 2nd ed. of 1856 + Moreval.

Soon to brew: Smoke (tomorrow) + another IPA? + wheat beer + steam beer + barley wine + double IPA?

So much to think through....

State of the Brewery

2007-02-24T10:05:00.000-05:00

I think I'm in the process of restabilizing the brewery. After a couple nasty infections, a sanitizer change, and a month of being too busy, I've just gone on a brief brewing binge (3 beers in 6 days).

The resulting carboy census is as follows:

In the basement: "Impeachment Pilsner," an all-Saaz pilsner, broadly in the Czech style with a little tweak toward the bolder Victory/Dead Brain Brewery style--in primary.

In the kitchen: "What the Fuck Stout," my crazed, mish-mash, asinine, second-runnings, caffeine-riddled affair, is in primary as well.

Upstairs: "Really Sticky Right Foot Mead" is in secondary, shows no signs of problems (other than being a mead... It won't be ready for a good year). Carboy covered in gunk, "1856 Imperial Stout II" appears to be fermenting nicely. "Moreval," a dry-hopped, Roeslare beer, conceived as a loose riff on the Orval genre, is playing host to over 2 ounces of Crystal, Mt. Hood, and Sterling hops. Two older beers (my lambic and Ned Flanders Red) continue to chill out. I may bottle the latter soon.

Keg conditioning are an Old British Beers Porter (Flowers Brewery 1872 Christmas Porter, to be precise) and Denny Conn's immortal RyePA recipe with Columbus in the keg.

There are no genuinely awful beers in the basement, just a couple so-so batches. One good party, and a couple more brew days and I'm back in business.

Next up is probably a smoked Marzen, a bottled Weizen for late-spring consumption and a simple APA or IPA to go on draft and act as a barley wine starter. Then there's summer-time Belgian brewing to conceptualize and plan out. That's still a lot to do...

Second Runnings Stout

2007-02-21T22:40:00.000-05:00

So last night I did cobble together a stout from the second runnings of the imperial.

The choice was simple: Having made a wort with the finest Fawcett malts, create an elegant, subtle, low-gravity, English stout, hopping judiciously and borrowing a packet of Nottingham or something delicate to ferment it. Or, clean out the specialty malt bins, throw in anything, whatever, U.S. 56, and any stray spices or inappropriate hops.

The result? "What the Fuck Stout."

It wound up being around 1064 with probably 64 IBU's so it should be decently balanced. Beyond that, who knows?

I brought the leftover wort up to 170, steeping the following asinine assortment of stuff on the way:

8.7 oz Chocolate Rye (What else was I gonna do with it?)
1 lb Dingemann's Caramunich (Old)
10.2 oz Franco-Belges Carawheat (Never really knew what to do with that malt anyway)
1.8 oz F.B. Cara-Vienne (Why not?)
1.7 oz F.B. Carmunich 60 (See above)
7.3 oz Simpson's Dark Crystal (Had that around forever)
9 oz Simpson's Medium (Same deal)
10 oz Roast (Can this beer get any blacker?)
1 lb Weyermann Carmunich (When and where did I buy that??)

I pulled all of that random grain (Yay! It's gone! Now I can find stuff!) and brought the wort to a boil, adding 7 oz of molasses. Why 7 oz? I have no idea.

I bittered it with a combination of First Gold (Some project that never came together) and Fuggle (Highly particulate, long-in-the-tooth pellets),

At shut-off, after briefly contemplating grinding up some Ancho Chilies, I restrained myself and added 1 oz of Newman's Own "Nell's Breakfast Blend," 1 oz of Sweet Maria's "Brazil: Screen-Dried Moreninha Formosa" (I am also a coffee geek), 1.5 oz of French Chicory, and 1.5 oz of the afore-mentioned Fuggle.

What is this going to come out like??

Part of me hopes it isn't that great. Because the idea of recreating this particular process, not to mention shopping for ingredients, is a little intimidating. We shall see.

Shut-off

2007-02-19T21:13:00.000-05:00

Thank god.

After a 2 hour and 50 minute boil, the imperial reached the desired gravity--spot on, in fact.

I am pitching on a cake of 1028 London in a few moments. The baby beer, another O.B.B. affair, tasted O.K. going into keg. As I am now officially paranoid about sanitation and bugs, I was afraid I detected the tiniest, tiniest sour tinge, but there's not a lot I could do about. No guts, no glory. Pitch on the cake of the requisite English yeast, probably attaining beer nirvana, or puss out and pitch five packs of U.S. 56 to create a pallid simulacrum of the original beer? A simple decision. So hopefully the culture is still pure enough. I think that what I was picking up in the other beer is simply the little bit of acidity that goes with dark malts--in this case, lots of brown and a good shot of patent.

No worries.

I hope.

Having a tripel (very nice) to unwind, but better go sanitize the aeration equipment.

The leftover wort is about 6 gallons at 1034 or so. This should produce about 5 gallons at 1041 or so. Perhaps 1.5 pounds of assorted crystal malts, some supplemental black malts, and a cup o' sugar'll do 'er? Just looking to make a simple session stout. I may try to borrow a pack of some dry English yeast, or I could really chunk it up with every scrap of odd lot malt I've got, add some molasses and chicory, go ape-shit, and produce some kind of half-assed Dogfish-Head-ish experimental monstrosity. Hop the hell out of it? Who knows?

An Imperial Evening

2007-02-19T19:18:00.000-05:00

How's this for ill-advised?

I'm brewing the second incarnation of my 1856 Imperial Double Brown Stout, a classic Barclay Perkins recipe from Old British Beers.

On a week night.

This was one of the 5 or 6 defining beers of my "career" and only a couple of bottles remain (It was a tiny 3.5 gal. batch on the first try due to various fuck-ups). The process involves 28 lbs of grain for a 5-6 gallon batch. Oh, and 16 oz. of East Kent Goldings.

We're an hour and ten minutes into the boil with at least another 90 to go, I suspect. Target original gravity is 1.007.

I ran off an additional 6 gallons of second wort which, given the energy, I will pasteurize later tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I'll toss in a bag of crystal malt and a little roast barley and make a small session stout with quite little work. But today is rather labor intensive, given the necessity of side-by-side double sparging.

The end is not really insight, but at least the sucker is in the kettle now and an initial floor washing restored a semblance of order to the place.

Thoughts

2007-02-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

I continue to lack brewing energy. I've got two beers ready to go in kegs but I've actually only got about two glasses of porter on draft. Better get it together.

A few notes before I forget:

Last week Randy and I shared the last bottle of 533 P.R., the private reserve stock of my first Belgian pale ale. This was really old for that kind of beer--would have to check on how old exactly, but it somehow developed this lovely perfumey nose. Quite a fascinating beer, and one that encourages me to buy some Ardennes yeast and do some more with it. The other beer I made with that yeast sucked, but the 533 is enough of an endorsement to suggest that I would do well to employ that yeast for something or other soon, building up to a yeast cake for an "Houblon" triple-IPA type project.

Right now I'm sipping a Smuttynose barley wine which is a strong reminder that I should get off my ass and brew another barley wine. This is lovely, subtle, balanced stuff--an elegant dance of malt and hops. The beer I brewed with this grain bill is similarly subtle--as barley wines go--and worth recapitulating with one or another creative hop bills. Dave Yarrington shared the grain bill with me, which I really appreciated. I've done this a couple of times: steal a pro grain bill and then wing the hops. It works.

On another note, I enjoyed a beer so much the other night that I called myself, lacking a note pad... Here's a transcript of the messages.

Message 1: "Oh, Christ. Dude. Notes on 1992 Courage Russian Imperial Stout: (Other drunk people in background throughout) The nose is a huge huge belt that combines burnt, burnt dried fruit, and some almond extract, and other nut liquers. And a kind of, bourbon whiskey, burnt-wood-like quality. In the mouth it's ab-sol-ute silk and velvet. There's not an edge anywhere in the beer. It reminds me of the 1856 Imperial stout that you/I brewed. The finish keeps going for, like, a couple minutes. Mmmm. So this is 15 years old. Oh my god! Put that in your blog That's gorgeous. How do I shut this off?"

Message 2: "Add extraordinarily sherry-ish. Lisa said that and it's incredibly correct. It's like an oxidized old wine."

Message 3: "Dude, you gotta brew the old Courage recipe in Old British Beers. It may in fact reflect the beer you just called yourself about."

And it really was that good.

Smuttynose Farmhouse Ale

2007-02-05T21:55:00.000-05:00

Random beer review:

The Smuttynose Farmhouse Ale is not without interest. Nice spicy, fruity nose--I know they used White Labs 565 so that's no surprise. Pleasant malt character (aromatic) but, as Dave's Brewer's Notes attest, they were going for a drier finish. The relatively rich, full body is out of style. Nonetheless, it reminds me of some of Randy's early saisons when he was slinging around the specialty malts and chunking them up: a little out of style, but also damn tasty.

Making RyePA

2007-01-28T18:17:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the comments on the last post everybody. The new sanitation measures seem to be going pretty well--more will be clear in a few weeks, but the Star-San switchover has been smooth and certainly makes me feel better. And I'm being more careful with those blasted carboys...

Today, too apathetic to tackle either a Pilsner (decoctions...) or a second version of my Old British Beers super-huge Imperial Stout (ridiculously unwieldy mash amounts), I just threw together a batch of Denny Conn's RyePA. I resisted making this beer for a long time, just because everyone else was doing it and I write my own recipes 85-90% of the time. But Jeremiah brewed a batch that was so damned yummy I couldn't resist the temptation and ordered a few pounds of rye and the right crystal malt to make it happen. Boil is underway.

Some amount of brewing apathy is setting in lately. I didn't really feel like it today, but am trying not to let my kegs go dry. Sometimes this feels like a chore. I need to either slow down and brew ten batches a year less (not such a big deal) or take six weeks off sometime in the spring and focus on other things.

As a post-script, the Belgian-style ale in the Saranac winter box is pretty good. Needs a little more carbonation. Most places that don't specialize in Belgians are, I think, loath to screw with their process and give these beers the extra little bit of priming they need. But they sprung for a good yeast, crafted a nice, nutty malt foundation, kept the hops in the background--all the right general priorities.

Near-Death Experience

2007-01-15T21:57:00.000-05:00

It had to happen sooner or later. If you make beer, you inevitably handle large glass vessels with wet hands. So I was rinsing the bleach out of a carboy and the sucker slipped out of my hands. It shattered fairly violently. I was, conveniently enough, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. No shoes. No socks. I feel supremely lucky to have escaped with one nasty cut on my shin and several minor nicks. I could very easily still be in the emergency room. I could have serious lacerations anywhere, severed tendons or ligaments in forearms, feet, wrists, hands... These are big hunks of glass and they could really fuck you up.

I was brewing a hoppy Belgian-style beer inspired (at the last minute) by Orval. I couldn't get a concept in my head and consulted with other brewers (Jeremiah and Randy), but somehow nothing clicked with me. I just knew I was using Roeslare yeast (as one was accidentally smacked) and that I wanted a relatively hoppy pale ale. Roeslare is probably more interesting than the combination of Bastogne and Brett. I'm leaning away from stale, Euro hops and more toward fresher, more vivacious, cheaper U.S. hops. So I took the stats for Orval (1055; around 38 IBU) plus the orange color (Carvienna?) and then I hammered it with Crystal, Mt. Hood, and Sterling. It kind of has to be good. At any rate, I'm hopeful. My next-door neighbor, Andrew, rescued me by providing a clean carboy when I went and wrecked things by exploding mine.

I'm drinkin' a Smuttynose Wheat Wine. Pretty interesting beer. Lovely, fat malt character, but peculiarly light somehow (the wheat I guess...). Not all that hoppy really. Given the psychotically hoppy Smuttynose Imperial Stout I tasted recently, I expected a little more hop aroma. Very slightly tart (the wheat again). Luminous orangey color. Honey, nuts, butter, and apricots. Once you orient yourself toward the aromatic profile, the subtler hop aroma feels highly appropriate. Heady, but not overbearing alcohol character. Yummy. Very yummy.

I think I will handle carboys differently now. There's no reason (there's no FUCKING REASON!!) why I couldn't just lay out a rag towel and rinse the carboy by rolling rather than shaking. Just right there I cut the likelihood of serious injury by a lot, so to speak...

We'll see how the new generation of brews turn out. I discovered recently that I have been diluting my iodophor solutions too much for my entire brewing career. This explains a small rash of spoiled batches recently. The microbes have caught up to me, but I am attempting to defeat them by switching to Star-San and scrubbing more thoroughly. An Old British Porter and this hoppy Belgian are in carboy in the Post-Overly-Diluted-Iodophor era. We'll see if I can recoup and also post to this stupid blog a little more.

Valediction X: The Star Chamber

2006-12-11T19:52:00.000-05:00

I love this beer. It's the last fucking bottle. DAMNIT.

Star Chamber is a double IPA: Lovely, retentive head. Soft carbonation. Beautiful, crystal-clear, pale amber color. The nose is not as hoppy as it was when the beer was young, but it still sings. The palate is full, soft, teasingly bitter. No trace of harshness at 12-13 months old. The alcohol is hardly noticable.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of double IPA's. On one end is Dogfish Head's 90-Minute (relatively soft, winey/brandyish); on the other is Smuttynose or Pliny the Elder (brash, more emphatically hoppy). This leans toward the former and I would reproduce this exact recipe without alteration. All I did is scale up my normal IPA. Gotta make more.

The Crowbar, revisited

2006-12-05T22:16:00.000-05:00

Have I made a better beer than Old Crowbar? Certainly nothing with a better name...

Wow. This was originally designed as kind of a riff on the great "Bigfoot." Like the Sierra Nevada model, this is hit hard with Chinook, Centennial, and Cascade. It has most of the same malts. In this case, 15 lbs of pale, 2 lbs of Carastan, 8 oz each Crystal 75 and Carapils.

That's a lot of specialty malts for a barley wine and I could try it again a little leaner and see what happens. Somehow or other this has come out great though.

Young, it was hoppy and vibrant, and not-un-bigfoot-like. After a brief awkward period where the hop had gone down but the malt hadn't smoothed out fully, it has developed into something really lovely.

At 20 months, it has a lingering veil of hoppiness up front, but the malt has taken over, projecting a vivid combination of aromas I just described in an email to a friend as a "plum/raisin/lapsang-souchong/earthy" thing. It's an overwhelmingly creamy, enveloping beer. The palate is full and just balanced by what's left of those pungent Chinooks--which also help to dry out and balance the finish. That's my one beer for the day and I'm happy.

Valediction IX

2006-11-25T16:47:00.000-05:00

Not every beer gets a valediction; this is a slightly arbitray process, but sometimes I feel a beer needs a good-bye and it's a good excuse to post something. This has positively got to be the last full pint--though the seemingly immortal keg has still not kicked--of what I called Rebar Porter (in vague tribute to some work on Randy's bridges), the second of two porters I've made with Dave Yarrington's Smuttynose porter recipe. I tasted this one alongside his and it is -not- a clone. Mine, despite having a prety high final gravity, feels a little leaner; his is fuller and much, much more chocolatey. And yet I've used the same grain bill. I think that we are using different chocolate malts (the beer has a lot of chocolate in it) and that this is the only logical explanation. I could also imagine omitting the subtle touch of finishing hops that I use and seeing if that helps.

Anyway, I don't care, because this is a lovely porter. The nose shows clean, restrained rostiness from the dark malts, marked by a suggestion of floral American hops (but it is hardly hoppy). There's also some underlying burnt fruit, suggestive of figs or prunes, and almost certainly derived from the liberal use of Belgian Special "B." The palate is fairly rich, with nice bitter-sweetness throughout. Not a beer for contemplation so much as it is for robust winter labor: toss one down after raking leaves in sub-40-degree and you could do a lot worse. This is a recipe to which I will return off and on for some time, tweaking this or that and looking for different specialty malt producers from time to time.

Alaskan Smoked Porter

2006-11-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

Fuck. This blog has really died down of late. I blame my stinking career and various general anxieties.

I'm drinking a bottle of Alaskan Smoked Porter in preparation for making, in the immediate future, a good smoked porter. I have no hardwood-smoked malt in stock right now, but I do have a pound of peat-smoked malt which I think should do interesting things. The Alaskan has a wonderful smoky aroma and a rich, smoky palate. It really is more of a smoked beer than it is a porter. To produce something similar would probably require the use of home-smoked malt, or perhaps Weyermann rauchmalt as a base malt, accented by crystal and chocolate. What a lovely beer...

I'm likelier, right now, to just throw together a nice porter recipe with plenty of deep crystal malts and some chocolate malt, subbing a pound of Fawcett peated in for a pound of the base malt. How bad can that be, really? The key is probably to keep the black/chocolate malts in modest enough proportion that they don't totally drown out the smoke aromatics. I've brewed some totally opaque porters, but they do not need to be that way every time. They can just look black in the glass and actually flash translucent red when held up to a light. There's a big difference between 18 and 30 S.R.M.

My other imminent brewing problem is deciding what to make with a packet of 1028 London. Something not too high in gravity needs to be brewed to create an uber-powerful yeast cake for the eventual production of 1856 Barclay Perkins Imperial Double Brown Stout Take Two.

Hanssens Oude Kriek

2006-10-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

Wow. Been a while since I had one of these. Went for a beautiful, if very chilly, autumn run and suddenly felt an overpowering desire for Kriek. This one is a stunning earthy, oxidized, orange-amber-red. The first aromatic impact is very earthy with lactic sharpness, fading into a deep, deep perfumey cherry scent. The palate is very sharp at first, mellowing into a paradoxically rich, palate-clinging, warmth. Flavor-wise, there are cherries everywhere, leaving their sharp, sour essence. This lambic always has a fantastic astringency and this is no exception: the finish lingers drily. It's probably not the perfect cheese for this beer, but a little sharp cheddar makes a nice counterpoint. The dregs just went into my lambic carboy, by the way.

Long time no post

2006-10-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

It was a weekend of hard brewery labor. Over two ten-to-twelve hour days, I

Bottled Subcommittee Imperial Stout
Bottled Recalcitrant Saison
Bottled Sterling Wheat Saison

Brewed Batch 100 Bourbon-Oak Imperial Pale Ale
Brewed Bad Angel Black Saison

Racked Saison de Noel, dry-hopping with Tettnang (This wins the "most promising coming out of primary" award. Yummy.)
Racked Research One IPA, dry-hopping with Simcoe and Santiam
Racked Recount Red, dry-hopping with Chinook and Columbus
Racked Ad Hoc Dubbel

Kegged Mish-Mash Stout

Fuck I'm tired. Not exactly rested and ready for the work week. But I had a serious back-log from the end-of-summer excessive brewing period. Things should die down a little now, although I do still have several things in secondary. Many are intended for kegs fortunately. Homer sleep now.

IPA: Checking the Doubles--Planning Simcoe/Santiam

2006-09-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

I may regret this, but I just poured two glasses of double IPA--my first and second attempts thereat. The first was purely my own concept, conceived in a vacuum, dedicated to the notion that a double IPA could be screamingly hoppy and elegant at the same time. The second is indebted to Pliny the Elder. I diverted from a Pliny clone due to hop availability, but it's intended to be pretty similar still--paler, leaner, and brasher than my first one.

Excellent heads on both. Pliny the Room-Mate is very pale; Star Chamber is a deep, glowing orange. The nose on the Pliny is screamingly loud, with a vivid Columbusiness that drifts in two directions--an almost strawberry-like fruitiness and a very intense pine character. Despite its greater age (10 months?) the Chamber still has a relatively declamatory nose; it's not as bright but it is more complex, with much more resin than fruit--and much more spice as well.

I can't help comparing faux Pliny to real Pliny (I had one a week ago). Mine compares very favorably in hop character and aromatics; its weak spot is a slight hole in the palate. Pliny has this weird viscosity that's kind of awesome. If I were to brew a beer similar to this recipe again, I would mash it 4 degrees higher and try to get a little more meat on its bones. U.S. 56 is an awfully attenuative yeast, especially when re-pitching.

The Chamber, on the other hand, has a stunning depth of malt. It is the more perfect beer of the two. In this, its twilight, the palate is beginning to develop a barley-wine-esque fatness. I think it peaked at about 6 months of age. You can certainly age DIPA's but I really think they are best when they still have a cleaner, drier feeling, younger malt character. I'll brew this again without alteration when I get around to it, and will feel freer to drink them young.

On a totally unrelated note, the varietal hop project has come to at least a brief halt. I've no more hops that I think are appropriate. I could do an all-Newport or all-Santiam IPA, but I seriously doubt either hop has the requisite back-bone. Instead, I'm going to give Simcoe/Santiam a try. Amarillo/Crystal with Chinook bittering is another concept I had, but I'll let that one wait. I don't have a ton of Simcoe--just enough to do most of the bittering, with an ounce left for dry-hopping. In between, it'll be all Santiam. Just punched it up in ProMash. Oughta be good.

After that?

Batch 100, baby.

Stone Smoked Porter

2006-09-06T23:18:00.000-04:00

For quite a while I've had two smoked porters sitting around my basement--Alaskan and Stone. There's a pretty good chance that my next dark beer will be a smoked porter and I might as well do the research, right?

The Stone is pretty damned good. It's not impenetrably dark--red clearly shows through when held up to the light. It's 5.9% a.b.v., so they seem to have restrained themselves from making too bulky a beer--atypically. There's a wonderful chocolatiness to the nose, mingled with smoke. The smoke picks up on the palate. I'm pretty sure I read somwhere that they use peat-smoked malt and I'm inclined to guess that that's true. It's a little earthy/peaty, as against the cleaner hardwood smoked routine. Alaskan should be the opposite, but I can't have two right now. This is tremendously balanced, by the way: no exaggerated hoppiness or excessive astringency. The full nose suggests that underlaying the burnt overtones is a fairly generous application of dark crystal malts. A great beer overall.

Valedictions VII and VIII

2006-08-27T20:06:00.000-04:00

1872 Flower's Christmas Porter meet 1850 Whitbread's London Porter.

Last winter, I was infatuated with making old British beers, after the astonishing revelation that was 1856 Barclay Perkins Imperial Brown Stout. Most were good. There was an oatmeal stout that somehow didn't quite live up to its promise, and an 80-Schilling that was good but not great. But these two porters were spectacular, particularly the 1872 on draft. Small bottled stocks existed and I'm down to the last bottle of each. Well, I was until I poured both of them to help me conceptualize what I want to brew this winter with my remaining brown and amber malt.

They're both almost impenetrably dark. The London has a better head, but it's also slightly over-carbed, so that's kind of a wash. They have relatively similar grists, but the London has a lower gravity; the Christmas has a pound of sugar and 13 less IBU's. Both were brewed with Wyeast 1084. Both have deep, burnt aromatics, but the London is a trifle harsher and the Christmas has richer underlying fruit (figs and red wine?) and a more complex, volatile, aromatic profile overall--plus an eerily numbing palate. Lisa prefers the Christmas and I think I agree, but it's very close.

Yep. I've thought about it more and sipped back and forth for several minutes and I'm a big fan of the 1872 Christmas. It brings me back to how soft and gorgeous it was on draft. I'll do this again sometime in October or November, serve it on draft young, save a few bottles, and step the yeast up into another big porter or stout. Or maybe one of the various interesting strong ales in the book...

One question would surround the yeast. 1084 did an awfully good job. I may have to buy a pack. Otherwise, I could use 1028 London and use the Christmas Porter as a staging beer for a second batch of imperial. Wow. I've missed dark beers... I shouldn't really confine them to winter, but I do find porters and stouts more satisfying the earlier it gets dark.

Imperial Stout Tasting

2006-08-27T13:46:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd report, after the fact, that I held a fantastic imperial stout tasting with Buck and Sharon the other day. We analyzed the following stouts:

My Old British Beers 1856 Imperial Double Brown Stout:

We started with this one and it basically won. The nose is all raisins, prunes, and apple sauce. The palate is huge, enveloping, and deeply bourbony with a compelling but subtle astringency holding together a great array of flavors. The finish is all bourbon. I don't how to explain how convincing this beer is. Despite the logistical difficulties, I expect I'll brew a batch at least every other year. It is a huge, expensive, pain in the ass. But I'm NOT complaining...

Weyerbacher Old Heathen:

We decided this is a faux imperial. The nose is quite lovely, with brighter fruit but a little overlap with the above--also some smokiness. I detected a slight off aroma vaguely reminiscent of chicken boullion. The real problem is the extremely slender palate that fades into an acidic, watery finish. Tasting it right after the 1856 didn't help it any, but we worked in a beer of Randy's and mixed things up to give it a chance. It's just not at all rich enough. We tasted an old stout of Randy's just for the perspective created by his liberal use of roast barley; unfortunately the beer was just over the hill and didn't represent his stouts properly. Oh well.

Great Divide Yeti:

I had high hopes for this beer but they were quickly dashed. The nose is noticeably more alcoholic than 1856, despite its lower alcohol... Still a good, deep nose, with some milky richness. The palate is the problem. It's velvet for a moment and then becomes unspeakably harsh. The harsh, minerally bitterness gets sharper and sharper into the finish and then lingers way too long. Sharon cleverly connected the particular type of bitterness to bitter greens, like old, old arugula that you shouldn't eat. We poured out the last third of the bottle. Could bad treatment during shipping in any way explain this beer??

Smuttynose Imperial Stout:

This beer has one of the four or five most outstanding dry-hop aromas that I've ever smelled. It takes your breath away. There's just one problem: The hops totally obliterate the imperial stout character. It tasted pretty good, with a soft palate that provided welcome relief from the Yeti, but we felt the overwhelming hop presence really hurt the beer. Ease off on the dry hops Dave! Where's the roastiness?? It was still a beautiful beer in its own way though. Reminds me that I really have to do a Black IPA. I've been planning to for ages and calling it "India Ink" in the back of my head.

We then side-by-sided North Coast's Old Rasputin and my Raskolnikov--which was based on a fairly well-established clone recipe for the Old Rasputin. I do hope that the Raskolnikov mellows into something great later this winter, but at around 6 months old it's still somewhat harsh. It's not bad, but it's a long way off from the voluptuous Rasputin. The problem is a kind of harshness, particularly in the nose. Buck regarded this aroma as almost skunky--I call it vegetal. Whatever it is, that sharpness detracts from the otherwise nice malt character in the nose. It also has a slightly rough bitterness to the otherwise yummy palate. With that lesson in mind, I totally re-wrote the recipe and brewed another imperial the next day that I think will soften much more quickly. I worked in Munich and more crystal malts, deleting the black patent, going for softer hops than the Columbus I used in Raskolnikov, and omitting the Mt. Hood dry hop that I think might be helping to create the aromatic distractions.

And thus was born Sub-Committee Imperial Stout. We'll see how it turns out.

Rochefort Project

2006-08-26T14:29:00.000-04:00

I've smacked a pack of 1762, which was probably a bad idea, and I'm sipping a Rochefort 6 to help me figure out what to do with the yeast. I had a bad experience with it the first time. I attempted to do a clone of the 6 and it got infected. The infamous bad sack of pilsner malt, I guess, made for weak attenuation, then I shook and stirred and sampled too much. The resulting "accidental sour brown" has exactly the right color, but is otherwise not helpful. In fact, I need to start using it in cooking... I can't decide about the attenuation though--was it the bad malt, wrong temps, too much crystal??

I've just glanced at the famous Herman's Bierpage clone formula. I'm about to finish the bottle of 6. It's fantastic. Figs, burnt sugar, anise... It's just aromatically fabulous.

Hmmm... There's no fucking way I'm going to "clone" this. I really don't trust the established recipe as the crystal malt presence seems way too high and I fear poor attenuation. The other time I used a large portion of dark sugar syrup I made a great beer, my Pale Dubbel, which is sort of like a paler, spicier Westvleteren 8. I think I'll follow my own lead there and add 16 fluid ounces of that stuff near the end of the boil. But in a futile effort to incorporate some of these deep, gorgeous, figgy, burnt qualities, I'll draw on some crystal malts. Certainly Special B. Some foundational Caramunich, but not as much as those Dutch dudes used. Screw the whole corn thing. I'll just use sugar this time. Touch of carafa. Lightly hop. Done.

Off to the basement to assess ingredients...

I may reconsider this very slightly, but I like the following beer, inspired by, but not remotely a clone of, Rochefort 6. Hopefully it will get at least a little of that figgy depth and will prove a valuable stepping stone for brewing a big, honkin' 11% alcohol off-shoot.

Ad Hoc Dubbel

1072
19 IBU
hypothetical FG, maybe 1009-1011?

10 lbs Pilsner
1 lb Weyermann Caramunich I
.5 lbs Special B
2 oz Carafa II
2.4 lbs sugar total--including one bottle of dark syrup

Mash at 145 and boil for 75 minutes.

.7 oz Northern Brewer (60)
.5 oz Hallertau (20)
.2 oz Hallertau (5)
.2 oz Coriander (5)

Given good sanitation, how bad can that possibly be??

Hooky Bitter

2006-08-20T18:33:00.000-04:00

It's going to be British ale brewing season pretty soon so this Hooky Bitter, kindly hand-imported by Andrew, is a timely inspiration. It's quite pale, not much darker than my IPA--a little oranger maybe. It's really soft and subtle--almost ephemeral. You could drink about forty of these while playing cards or darts. The nose combines a sutble floweriness and a whiff of walnutty malt. The palate is similarly subtle, but does pick up a relatively bracing bitterness in the finish--though soft, it has beautifully defined contours, thanks to the judicious hopping.

So, I pretty much get how to brew American pub-style beers with few (almost no?) misteps; it's so much easier, as minor flaws are easily hidden by big, gallumphing crystal malt flavors and robust, domestic hop varieties. These British deals are tough and my experiences have been more mixed. Probably this fall, I'll make a bitter and a brown or a porter or something on this Cask Ale strain I have in the fridge. Other British endeavors will probably use 1028 and/or London III. If I know me, I'll get frustrated and drift off into the far larger and more forgiving Old British Beers recipes after a little while... You get a lot more flavor and alcohol and lot more to hide behind if your recipe emplys, say, 4 lbs of brown malt and 5 oz of Goldings. But I'll try to take a crack at some of the modern standards.

Varietal Hop Project / Valediction VI

2006-08-15T21:51:00.000-04:00

Comparing a couple IPA's: R.I.P. First Hydrometer IPA (Columbus) and Dirty Hippie IPA (Chinook).

R.I.P. is better, but this may not be all that indicative... There's a problem with inconsistency in these beers where I only bottle a slight keg over-run, which is the case with the Chinook one. R.I.P. has a great, piney, vibrantly fruity nose and a full, nicely bittered palate. D.H. is just eneven and not that great--it was a nice beer on draft, but this particular bottle (probably 1 of only 7 or 8) is ho-hum at best. Eh. It's gone now.

So, damnit, I didn't really learn anything from this one. Except that it's hard to screw up a Columbus IPA. What a great hop...

Valediction V

2006-08-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

The last bottle of D.Y. Porter: This is a Smuttynose Robust Porter clone--the affable David Yarrington gave me the grain bill and I designed the hopping. And seeing as how I am, like, fucking damn near out of dark beers (excepting imperial stouts) I had better make more next week. It's imperative. I'm partly looking forward to fall and winter because they inspire me to make darker and chunkier beers. IPA's stick around, but wheat beers and summer ales and the lighter pale ales tend to go out the window in favor of more browns and stouts and porters in the draft fridge.

This is a seriously opaque porter, loaded with chocolate and carafa malts. There's a little citrusy twinge in the nose from some Cascade, but mostly we're talking dark chocolate and more dark chocolate. Special B and other dark crystal malts lend a warm, rich support structure and some deep raisiny fruit on the palate and in the nose. There will be no significant changes to this recipe and the next one is going on draft, which may make it even better...

In other news, my Altbier officially sucks. I seem to be totally jinxed on German ales, seeing as how the two I've tried have both had contamination issues. God-DAMNIT! Is there a Ralph's around here?

On the other hand, my multi-grain saison looks like it'll be a rousing success. An early bottle was utterly delicious.

Sterling Wheat Saison

2006-08-06T20:38:00.000-04:00

Had a random Saison idea the other day. I have Wyeast Farmhouse, which is supposed to be the Blaugies yest (they produce uber-dry, traditional Saisons). Around the time I was thinking of using this yeast, I also realized I had some things to use up. 1) Sterling hops, which are one of those kind of noble hop a la U.S. kind of things--they're supposed to be Saaz-y. 2) Franco-Belges Caramel Wheat Malt. It's hard to say the Lovibond on this, but it's probably in the upper twenties. It's just something I bought as an experiment and have somehow failed to use...

So this got me thinking: How about a wheat-heavy Saison that actually uses a caramel malt? And how about those Sterling? I had a Sterling-based Saison at BCTC that was terrific. The goal is to produce a fearsomely dry, relatively low-alcohol, subtly hopped Saison that is also fluffy with wheat, having just a little bit of toasty depth from the carawheat.

How bad can it be?

XX Bitter

2006-08-01T20:54:00.000-04:00

It's the ficklest of classics: XX Bitter.

Brewers all know it. Before I headed into the ether at Belgium Come to Cooperstown, I talked to a brewer (from Offshore Ales) about his "Hop Goddess." It was a consciously XX Bitter/Orval- inspired beer. It was great, by the by. My version from a year or so ago is way off the mark, but great. I brewed a hoppy Roeslare pale, trying to harken back to the days when XX was brewed with Rodenbach yeast. Drinking XX right now, mine is actually more interesting, but perhaps less balanced... It's a tricky style. Mine has amazing Roeslare aromatics, but an awful lot of bitterness for the slender, wild-yeast-attenuated body. The actual XX is more balanced than I recalled. It's bitter and lean, even a little severe, but balanced by a delicate maltiness and some subtle yeast aromatics.

The more I drink it the more I think I can compete. My next Roeslare pale will be less hampered by imitation. I'll just compose a simple, hearty grist, hammer it with characterful hops, and relax.

In other news, I've thought of a new Saison profile. With the Wyeast Farmhouse strain, I'll be brewing a Spring Wheat Saison with pils, wheat, and cara-wheat malts and lots of Sterling hops. Should be good.

Valedictions III and IV

2006-08-01T19:43:00.000-04:00

Ah, so painful.

I'm sitting in my SWELTERING office sipping beer...

My original U.S. IPA, Eastern Thing, is next on the chopping block. I like old IPA's and this one is a good 18 months old. The nose is earthy and floral--Chinook and Cascade and such have lost their sharp grapefruitiness and faded into a more ethereal forest-floor thing. And the malt character has worked its way into the aromatics more. The palate has this particular, old IPA quality that's hard to describe... It's still bitter. The hops are bracing and a little tannic, but there's also a malt warmth that makes this feel almost like a mini barley wine. It brings me back...

And this one is really gonna suck...

"Log Jammin,'" my Bamberger Rauchbier. The first of its kind. I tried to improve it on the second batch and it was not nearly as good. It was perfect. Why did I try??

I guess I wanted to compete with the insane sausage-y smokiness of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier and that's really hard to do without a smokehouse. Next winter I will return to the original: A simple 1/2 Munich 1/2 Rauchmalt grist with a touch of Carafa for color. To wit, this:

Glorious, deep, crystal-clear amber. The nose has a pronounced, but not overbearing smokiness--very young, I remember it smelled a little like hot-dogs. Mature, it's always felt like a distant camp-fire with steaks and single malt. The palate has a terrific, very Munich-y maltiness. None of the thickness of caramel malts--just even, subtle, suave Munich. The smoke flavor carries through into the finish, which is both sweet and smoky. It's pretty much a perfect smoked lager.

Valedictions I and II

2006-07-30T15:08:00.000-04:00

It's time to bid adieu to a few beers, so I'll pay them tribute on the way out.

Here's the final bottle of Probation Pale, a nice A.P.A. It's got a pretty predictable hop combo (Chinook/Cascade) but there's a little wrinkle to the grain bill--10 oz. of Fawcett Amber malt. Amber malt is tricky. It's over-bearing and too much of it can make a beer into a caricature. But a little bit can give a lovely subtle "black tea and wheat thins" kind of malt character that comes through both in the nose and in the palate. I'd brew this again without change. The malt character is toasty enough that it could support more finishing hops, but I think I'd rather keep the melange of hop and malt that characterizes the nose as it is.

Damn. There it went.

I'm resting, by the way, while my drill recovers. I'm laying cement board in my bathroom and the drill was starting to smell a little like my Belgian Wit (Rim-shot/Ed McMahon sounds). So I decided I'd let it cool off for a bit. Hence one more beer.

This one's gonna hurt: The final bottle of Sub-Committee IPA. The IPA I return to for inspiration. The first time I really nailed it. The hop bouquet is floral and lovely. This got a Chinook dry hop atop late additions of Cascade, Columbus, and Mt. Hood. I love the subtlety and balance of this beer. I see that I only left the dry hops in for six days--that may be what is allowing the elegance of the Cascade and Mt. Hood to slip through and compete. If I didn't know what this was, I think I'd have real difficulty naming the dominant hop, or identifying much of the combo here. I think they melded somehow in a way I couldn't have predicted. The palate is dry and clean but with just enough malt character to hold up to the bittering hop (Chinook of course).

As I'm working on my varietal hop project and making IPA after IPA that is not quite as good as this one, I'm struck by how much I like the rougher bittering hops. The Warrior and Amarillo IPA's, despite having nifty aromatics (especially the Amarillo), were not as bracing and bitter as, say, Columbus, Chinook, Centennial, and Cascade. Simcoe is next I think, which may compare better to the C-hops--we'll see. I think I'm leaning toward a dream IPA that is just a clone of this one. Centennial is really worthy of its own annual single-hop spin-off, as is Columbus. Chinook is staggeringly good for bittering and dry hopping, but it needs a little help from its friends to really go over the top. Cascade is pretty good all by itself. I think Amarillo is a great late hop, but not that great for other things. Warrior is also just a little too soft for me. I've done all Mt. Hood on pale ales (this is sort of an experimental off-shoot). I'll also do all-Santiam and a couple of others for hops that don't seem big enough for IPA's all by themselves. Mt. Hood rocks and is particularly nice in an accent role in any kind of IPA.

Anyway, Sub-Committee was great and it's gone. Good night sweet prince...

That's not sentimentalizing Shakespeare by the way. I'm quoting Walter Sobchack not Hamlet.

What to brew, what to brew...

2006-07-25T21:28:00.000-04:00

I have various brewing priorities that I'm trying to sort out. I have a wheat rye summer beer in primary. I have a Leuven pale in primary, but it's been there so long that it's clear as a bell and can be bottled. I have a multi-grain Saison to bottle. I have a Grisette in primary. I have a Saison Dupont style beer in primary too. I should probably let the Dupont strain go with just two beers produced on it, as I have lots of other yeasts lined up to try. I -could- pitch it one more time and make a super saison. I've meant to do that. We'll see. First things first. Tomorrow I will bottle the Leuven and brew a final beer on the Forbidden Fruit yeast, racking the Grisette to secondary.

Now, what beer?? I have two points of inspiration here, detailed in an earlier post, a beer of Randy's and the Hoegaarden Forbidden Fruit--a gorgeously soft malty beer. After a lot of fiddling around I arrived at the following: OG 1075. IBU 28.

6.5 lbs Vienna
3.5 lbs Wheat
3 lbs Munich
1.25 Carmel-Pils
.5 lbs Special B
2.5 oz Carafa II
2 lbs sugar

Bitter with Perle; Aroma with Saaz + some Coriander.

It just kind of feels right to me.

A Civilized Beer Tasting

2006-07-21T22:43:00.000-04:00

How civilized? Pretty civilized.

Randy kindly invited me to Holland Patent to sip some lambics that his brother Rick brought from Belgium. Moderation was the watchword and I tracked the ounces of beer consumed as I proceeded, trying to rectify the heinous excesses of Belgium Comes to Cooperstown.

We warmed up with some samplings of Randy's beers. A Forbidden Fruit Singel was highly promising; an old Spring Saison was a knock-out (on the hoppy end of the style, but balanced and intriguing with a stunning orange-copper color). A 3787 Dubbel was tragically spoiled, but we sampled a few other assorted Roeslare beers to cheer ourselves up.

The lambics were as follows: Mort Subite Oude Geuze was kind of a revelation. It upsets me terribly to know that the vast majority--like, basically, all--of their output gets sweetened and ruined to produce those sticky, unpleasant fruit beers. This was a seductive lemon-custard of a beer with prickly sourness and a mouth-grabbing, very full palate. Boon Kriek Marriage Parfait (several years old) was lovely with an oxidized color and much deeper flavors (less overtly acidic and more earthy). But it also had a little delicate acetic prickle. Oud Beersel was a pinker, perkier Kriek, but no less complex. Bright and musty at the same time, it was a teasinly tart beer that provided a perfect contrast to the moodier Boon.

Randy and I then compared Brett beers--this was less illuminating. We'll have to line them up next to each other next time. They're very similar beers. And very good ones, with subtle, soft, wheaty palates and nice fruity, delicately horsey aromatics.

We also had the others compare our pilsners, brewed a week or so apart some months ago. Two out of three tasters preferred Randy's, which was a trifle brighter and a little more emphatically hoppy. But mine had a fuller malt character and was, to me, just a little more balanced. It was really a coin flip and I had no real preference between the two myself. I'm just pleased I figured out how to brew Pilsner. My first try sucked. I plan on making two batches next year: One I'll make just the same and the other I'll head for non-Saaz hops just to mix it up.

Anyway it was a successful exercise in relative moderation and self control. Who knew it was possible?

Old Bottle of Cat's Paw Pale

2006-07-20T20:43:00.000-04:00

I'm sampling the final bottle of some 14-month-old pale ale. This is Cat's Paw Pale, named for the trusty hand tool. It's a little past its prime, but there's a lot of good stuff still going on. I based this on Smuttynose's Shoals Pale Ale and what it shares with that beer is a really firm, full malt base marked by more and darker crystal than is common--12 oz. of Crystal 120 for instance. It would be well worth repeating without major changes.

Or, on the other hand, I could redo the hopping just for fun, dropping Chinook and Cascade for, like, Warrior and Santiam or something. Usually I tend to be pretty restrained with the specialty malts in pale ales and the like, but this is a special case and it would probably be best conceived as a nice late fall seasonal--this'd be great after raking leaves on a chilly day.

I'm sick of not brewing. I haven't brewed in over two weeks, simply because of stress and paranoia relating to home ownership. Fuck that, man. I'm waking up early tomorrow and making the second version of my E.S.B. (Emergency Summer Beer). This was a beer I made up late, late last summer when we had a mysterious heat wave and I was pissed about having a bunch of Fall beers on draft. It was designed to be a U.S. Wheat beer, but hoppier and with rye. It was fucking great. The slightly re-touched second version will use a little more wheat to correct for my lousy wheat efficiency and will replace Newport with Perle for the bittering hop.

What a disaster...

2006-07-16T21:41:00.000-04:00

Belgium Comes to Cooperstown was a total catastrophe. I drank way too much, made an ass of myself, and passed out to the justifiable displeasure of my wife who fended off people taking pictures of me passed out. Ugh. There's a reason that one of the seven Duffs is named "Remorseful."

Here's what I remember of the beer mixed with various exclamations about things I missed cuz I got too hammered. Ommegang appears to have offered two new/small batch beers that I never tried. DAMN. I'm just going through the list of breweries and importers trying to reconstruct... American Flatbread's Gruit was kinda crummy. Interesting idea though. Appalachian Brewing's Obbie's Grand Cru was OK. The Reverend and Salvation from Avery were pretty good--both a little on the heavy side though. Brewer's Art apparently makes a green peppercorn tripel. How did I miss that? Boulevard Brewing was a bright spot. I tried a Dubbel, a Trippel, and "Saison with George Bret" and chatted with the brewer about technical matters. Real good brews with the appropriate respect for simplicity and complex but uncluttered flavors. I had an IPA from Brooklyn just to shake hands with Garrett Oliver and tell him I like his book. I was probably already slurring my speech though. Sigh.

BullFrog Brewery I was not wild about. Their Honey Super Saison was really crappy. Dogfish head brought Festina Lente, their peach lambic--it was delicous. I should have gone back for Fort and Raison d'Extra but I blew it. Harpoon had an IPA and a Belgian Pale and I apparently really liked the IPA, but don't remember why. I was headed rapidly downhill when I made it to Iron Hill, which is really too bad. I tried all the beers and loved them, but I have no palate memory at all; they brought a wit, a Flemish sour, a lambic, a strong, and a quad. North Coast's Brother Thelonious was a real stand-out with stunning malt character. Offshore Ale Company from Martha's Vineyard had a very chatty likeable brewer and terrific beers. Hop Goddess was a kind of XX/Orval inspired beer made with Sterling and Styrian Golding hops. I loved it. His Kolsch was absolutely textbook perfect and the Tripel was great too. He recommended the White Labs Kolsch yeast which I might try next time.

Then there's The Shed Restaurant and Brewery. "Substance D," a saison with Brett was good; Double Hoppy Illumination was good; Silent Illumination Black Saison was a real stunner. Bone dry; great malt character; all kinds of good things going on. Stone poured me a big glass of 6/6/06 (hastening my demise). It was good but predicatably a little on the heavy side. Southampton Publick house made a great impression too with a Grand Cru, an Abbot 12, a Tripel, and a Double White. They were fantastic beers. I wonder if the brewer was there? I should've asked because I love his Farmhouse Ales book. Stewart's Brewery offered a totally unmemorable Abbey Hoffman Dubbel. Stoudt's Tripel sucked. Stoudt's pretty much just sucks overall in my experience. Rogue now makes a Saison--it wasn't bad. I apparently had another Gruit brewed by Zero Gravity... What's with all the Gruits? Victory Whirlwind Wit was lost on me I think. I forgot to go to Unibroue.

I missed an embarassment of riches in the area of imports. I had a De Konink (blech), a Gulden Draak (yum), Rochefort 6 and 10, Westmalle Tripel, Maredsous 10, and Lindemans Pomme. The last one, actually, I think I just smelled and dumped. Somehow or other I appear to have had La Moneuse, Gavroche Red, and Thiriez Blond, but I don't remember them at all. Shit. The most grotesque omission is that apparently Shelton Brothers brought Fantome's Brise Bon-Bons, an IPA Saison of sorts. I didn't see it. Oh and I really wanted to see if Vinny Cilurzo was at Russian River so I could offer him a brett beer. He may or may not have been there but it would've been cool to at least try.

So, yes, it was a total disaster and I still feel a little ill. And remorseful.

Take-Two Tripel, Weizen, London Ale III

2006-07-14T23:57:00.000-04:00

Three random notes:

My new tripel is off the charts. Wonderful herbal nose is highly reminiscent of Westmalle--thyme, bay, lightly spicy hops, delicate citrus. I'm so pleased. Now I just have to give it more time, but for being relatively young, it's just fantabulous.

I also tried a Rainy Saturday Weizen. I have just 8 or 10 bottles. Bavarian style wheats really ought to be bottled. It's a lot more interesting, especially from a textural standpoint, than it was on draft.

And one other note. I learned today that Wyeast 1318 London Ale III is the Young's strain. Why have I not used this? Come fall, I'll have to go on a little British beer kick... 1318 plus the cask ale strain in my fridge would be a good place to start. 1318 could be taken through a bitter, an oatmeal stout, and a barley wine. That would be just cracking I think.

Dulle Teve

2006-07-13T21:52:00.000-04:00

This beer and I have a vexed history. It's a pretty inconsistent product, but every time I've found it at least interesting and sometimes it's really blown me out of the water. The name means Mad Bitch, either in Flemish or some odd-ball local dialect, and it's brewed by de Dolle Brouwers. It's pale and heavily sedimented with a decent but unamazing head. The nose is dominated by bright mint/basil/grassy herbaceousness with some woody cork notes. The palate is sexy and full with more apparent malty sweetness than I suspect the beer actually possesses, from a statistical standpoint. That grassiness in the nose has at times reminded me of pot--and it does this time too. What a quirky, complex beer.

Beer Design Problem

2006-07-12T23:20:00.000-04:00

What to do? What to do?

I had Forbidden Fruit in Canada. I loved it. 9% a.b.v. Other than that I don't know much.

I also had a beer Randy brewed a month or two later. It was called Dutch Castle II and had the following rough recipe: 2.3 English, 2.0 German, 2.30 Munich,2.25 Vienna, 3.5 Wheat. 9.3 ounces CaramelPils, 13.6 ounces Special B,3.5 ounces aromatic, 9.3 ounces caravienne. HOPS:1.5 ounces of Northern Brewer @ 60; 1.0 Saaz @ 1 min. 9% and 3.2% resprectively on the hops.

The recipe sounds scattershot, but the beer has a lovely soft maltiness that reminded me of the F.F. On tasting it again I get a tiny roughness that I think lowering the specialty malts would smooth out.

What if I were to design a recipe for my F.F. yeast cake along the following lines? Upper 1070's. Perhaps 25 I.B.U. Use wheat and Vienna as base malts. I have a lot of both and they should conspire to create a softness and a sound maltiness respectively. Munich could work. Special B and Aromatic would both be good. Sugar would also be appropriate to foster dryness. Orange peel and coriander would be fine too. Caramel-pils is a nice malt in a beer like this too.

I'll mull this over with a cup of coffee tomorrow. Not sure how to tackle it.

House, Reconciliation, Redbach

2006-07-11T22:03:00.000-04:00

Lately my life has revolved around the house... No brewing for several days. Turns out my downstairs toilet had been slowly leaking for years, effectively demolishing the floor of the bathroom. It's now about 2/3 of the way fixed. I have nevertheless tapped two new kegs, a very promising, but slightly green, Belgian pale (roughly in the manner of De Koninck) and a lovely, balanced India Brown. Must keg an IPA tomorrow, get back to brewing (Belgians, a summer ale, a porter?), bottle a saison or two, a Belgian pale, and an altbier... I'm swamped. As a side-note, my Wit blows. I may never bother with that style again. What a pain in the ass it was to produce a crummy beer... Complicated adjunct mash, long brew day, long fermentation and the damned thing smells a little like an electrical fire. Shit.

Anyway, I'm sipping Reconciliation, my brett beer. This is a great summer refresher. The wheat-heavy grist has a little twang of sauermalt. The hopping is almost non-existent, just enough to give a teensy background bitterness. The nose is rather like a fruity white wine. It's not as horsey and sharp as it was before--this'll probably change a lot from month to month. I'm serious about the wine thing--this has practically everything I like about a nice dry white. I can see why the Russian River crew would've thought to do a long-term, chardonnay-barrel-aged brett beer (which they did--it's amazing). My only gripe about this beer is the lousy head retention--not sure why that should be... Otherwise, I love it. I could brew this every year as a fluffy summer beer, trying out different brett strains (this was Brux), or I could adapt it to be a stronger, longer-aged beer and work in some oak or other flashier elements.

So, on a related note, Rodenbach was unavailable in this country for quite a while. About a year or so ago, the beers reappeared with a new importer and different labelling. I had the basic blended Rodenbach on draft at Clark's with Randy and Andrew--it was lovely; I also had it from a corked bottle purchased at Party Source. It's a great kind of session sour beer--not too prickly, but still tart and a great aperitif. The grand cru is the best--bordering on vinegar-y, it's about as sour as beer gets and mind-blowingly complex. They used to make a beer called Alexander Rodenbach which incorporated cherries--I don't remember it all that well. This seems to have been reinvented as "Redbach: Rodenbach kissed by cherries." It comes wrapped in a suspiciously soda-pop looking label and then, lo and behold, it's a twist-off bottle... This is not a good sign. The color is drop-dead gorgeous but it's downhill from there. There are some definite hints of the trademark Rodenbach complexity in the nose, but the palate ruins it completely. It's just too sweet. "Wickedly sour" my ass. I'm dumping the rest of the glass and I will not be buying this again... Fucking cherry soda.

Just to get that rather substantial disappointment out of my head, here's something totally different: D.Y. Porter, my tribute to Smuttynose Robust Porter. David Yarrington, their very friendly and seriously gifted brewer, shared the grain bill with me. I followed it almost exactly and came up with my own hop schedule--it still has the same IBU's though, more or less. The flaw with this batch was uneven carbonation--some bottles had an overly spritzy carbonation that really didn't fit with the rest of the beer. Otherwise, it was a great success. It's dead opaque, with a massive chocolate-y fullness. It's loaded with chocolate and carafa--so much so that it could easily be mistaken for a stout. Underneath the chocolate is deep, dark fruit, which has to come from the large quotient of Special-B. The palate is bracingly bitter, full, delicately sweet, yet totally uncloying. I see no reason to fiddle with this recipe and will be brewing it again more or less a.s.a.p. Whenever my home-repair / academic research schedule allows...