Fall/Winter Brewing Roundup and Spring Forecast

It's a new month so I better post a new entry.

Smack pack round 2!

I started this blog four years ago to share my love of homebrewing and to document my own adventures. I initially posted an entry for every batch of beer I brewed, but that slowed down when I wrote my PhD dissertation at the end of 2013, and again when I moved across the country to start my first post-graduate research job. I still photo-document every batch, but those images are stored on my personal laptop, which I don't have ready access to as my wife uses it regularly for her graduate coursework. I barely get to use it for more than 5 minutes at a time when I download podcasts and sync them to my iPod a couple times a week. Before my current work travel to the Black Hills, I uploaded the photos from my past four homebrew batches to Facebook galleries and now feel right posting about those brewdays as I have access to their images. Three of the batches I described in my previous homebrewing post have been tasted and are almost gone, so I now have the opportunity to give a wrap-up report on them.

New yeast, old hops, milled grain for a porter.

In that last post I had bottled the Grapes & Grain, Zorba's OPA!, and was fermenting Jason's Almost Gold Medal IPA. The Grapes & Grain turned out really good. The Scuppernong batch was slightly over carbonated so those bottles were gushers, and that tends to adversely affect the taste and flavor, but the Muscadine was great and if I were to brew this batch again I'd do a full 2 gallons with just those grapes. I shared both with a group of friends in December (a personal craft beer event I just realized I've forgotten to write about!) and the Muscadine was the preferred version.

I shared a bomber of Zorba's OPA! with friends at a Friendsgiving at the end of November. While they liked it, commenting that it was really smooth and easy to drink, I did not like it and still don't. I served it to my friends in the December event, and they also liked it. My first taste of it when I bottled it hinted at something off, but I figured it was just green and hoped that bottle conditioning would help. It didn't. The issue I sensed was the presence of acetaldehyde, which is a green apple taste and smell. That chemical is a precursor to ethyl alcohol, and appears in beers whose yeast drop out before completing the full conversion of maltose to ethanol. Because of this I chose not to enter it into a homebrewing competition in December, but partly to get rid of bottles and partly to see how judges would interpret it, I entered it into a March competition in North Napa. The batch came to about 6% ABV, which was roughly my aim, so I know much conversion completed, but I also know from the BJCP Beer Judging panel I attended at the end of SF Beer Week that even low concentrations of off chemicals can be perceived. I brewed it before I had heat and cooling control in my fermentation chamber, just as the nights got cooler in the East Bay. The batch is also sweeter than I wanted. With this evidence I came up with the following diagnosis: Fermentation kicked off fine but after the exothermic process stopped the ambient temperature dropped below the yeast's preferred range and so dropped out before completing conversion. This left acetaldehyde in the beer which I can taste. As for the sweetness and overall lack of hop bitterness (not that I was going for Imperial IPA levels of bitterness), I looked at the recipe again and saw that I used low AA% Hallertau hops for bittering. I bet if I had used higher AA% hops the isomerized oils would have masked the acetaldehyde. Hallertau are also not the usual bittering hops for this style. I would like to try this recipe again, switching up the bittering hops and maybe dry hopping, too.

Jason's Almost Gold Medal IPA turned out great, easily the best beer I've ever made. I was proud to take it to the BAM Christmas Party competition and even scored some points! I didn't place, but that's ok. I liked it, my friends in December liked it, another friend drank more than his share at Christmas dinner, and I've already brewed my first iteration of it, adding more bittering hops to see how that affects it. It's been bottled and I'll try the first bottle by March 12.

Now on to the new beers.

Primary is winding down...

Little Lebowski (Dec 6, 2015)

My final beer for 2015 was an attempt to reduce the alcohol content of my most favorite homebrew The Dude Abides. That beer was meant to mimic a White Russian cocktail, so I aimed for high ABV, reaching 8 and 9% ABV in my first two brewings. But that much alcohol makes it a special occasion beer, and I wanted something more drinkable and not so boozy, so I decreased the base malt by 27%. I also felt that the coffee content in my pre-Berkeley batch was a bit low so I increased it form 1.5 oz to 2 oz. the final product was as stout-y as one would want, with an ABV of 6%, but I overkilled on the coffee a bit, and I'd like to bring it down another 0.5-1% ABV. I already have ideas for the next iteration, but that might have to wait until after my Year of Beer Back to Basics brewing experiment. I shared this with friends during a recent viewing of The Big Lebowski and they loved it, so I know I'm on the right track. I submitted this to the North Napa homebrew competition as a specialty beer, and to World Cup of Beer 22 in two categories, sweet stout and specialty. The strong coffee may dock it points in sweet stout, but I'm hoping that it'll score well in the specialty category on both competitions.

P.O.S. (Plain Ol' Saison) (Jan 10, 2016)

Using the heat tape for the first time.

I started my Year of Beer Back to Basics series with a saison. Ever since I was introduced to the style with the Spicy Jalapeño Saison I wanted to brew that recipe without the chiles and extra sugars, but always made the chile version because I liked it so much. Since my brewing goal this year is to iterate basic style recipes, I kicked off 2016 brewing this. The brewday went well except I had forgotten to buy a new mesh grain bag. Luckily in my quest to find a smaller grain bag like what I had purchased back at my store of choice in Cleveland I bought a mesh bag from Northern Brewer. This bag was too small for ordinary batches, which is why it was still sitting unused in my brew bin. I had intended to buy a new grain bag, but forgot. This batch's grain bill is 3.2 lbs, so the small bag was just about perfect for it. Mashing wasn't the easiest as it took some work to get all the grain wet, but in the end it worked out well. I also used a new digital thermometer for the first time this brewday. I decided to go the electronic route so I could get faster, more accurate temperature readings. Using it with this batch made taking readings much nicer than ever before, and since the device is intended to use with meat, the probe is metal and pointy at the end so I just jabbed with through the grain bag during the mash. As for the rest of the brew day, nothing of note occurred and I had yeast-pitched wort sitting in my fermentation chamber by day's end. I tried one bottle about two weeks after bottling and it was fine. A little green, and the foam didn't have high retention, but I wanted to see what it was like before entering it into competition. Since judging wasn't until March I felt fine submitting it to the World Cup of Beer 22 homebrew competition. My only hope is for a nice score and constructive feedback. If I place at all it would be a miracle.

FG low enough to make the ABV high enough.

Gold Medal IPA (v2) (Feb 4, 2016)

As this was the best beer I've ever brewed, especially the best IPA I've ever brewed, I've chosen to use it as the basis for my experimentations in IPAs during my Year of Beer. I did enjoy it greatly, and wanted more IPA in the apartment, and in my first iteration I increased the bittering hops, as noted above, to give it a little more of that flavor and texture. The sample I tasted at bottling was promising, and as I bottled it on Feb 24, it should be perfectly conditioned, carbonated, and ready for tasting by March 11. In fact, I'm having my wife place a bomber in the fridge a couple days before I get home so that it's ready for me to take to the March 10 BAM meeting and taste for the first time with my fellow homebrewers.

P.O.P. (Plain Ol' Porter) (Feb 21, 2016)

Heat break and breakfast.

Continuing with my Back to Basics series I wanted to brew something dark next as my milk stout was nearly gone and I had just brewed two lighter beers. Looking through my recipes I realized I had never actually brewed a straight porter; the only porters I brewed had special ingredients such as pumpkin or peanut butter. I like a good porter, but they tend to skew stout-y from a lot of breweries, and that's understandable. In modern interpretations the two styles aren't that different; one might be maltier and littler hoppier, the other drier and roastier. I chose to make my porter less stout-like and so included no black or roasted malts or barley in the grain bill, just chocolate malt and some carafe II for color. I started my brewday at 7AM on a Sunday so I could get it done before the afternoon, which I spent walking around Berkeley. Primary fermentation completed in a few days, and I placed the airlock before leaving for two weeks of work travel that following Thursday. Before my flight I checked it and the bubbling subsided, the yeast and sediment had settled to the bottom of the carboy, and I set the temperature control to 69°F to keep the yeast active enough to complete their conversion of all the yummy maltose I provided for them. I hope to submit this to upcoming competitions, and if it turns out as good as it looked when I last saw it, it should do well.

Coming down the pipeline are two experimental brews for March and April. A friend has one last bottle of a rare continental treat and I found a clone recipe of that beer. We had planned to cultivate the yeast from it and brew a clone, but after some research found that the Belgian abbey brewery uses westmalle yeast for a few generations before getting a new batch from the manufacturer, but the idea to cultivating yeast from bottle to produce a clone is just too intriguing to pass up. Sierra Nevada famously bottle conditions their Pale Ale, so I plan to cultivate and brew with it just for fun when I brew next. My friend and I will likely brew the abbey clone either in early or late April, and with the fermentation and long aging timeline it'll be ready by high summer. 

The second experimental brew will be a gluten free beer. I have a few GF and gluten sensitive friends, and so have been thinking about attempting one of those for a while. I recently remembered I have a recipe that doesn't call for me malting my own buckwheat and so I want to give it a try, likely after I get the cultivated Sierra Nevada going. Both of these experiments will be 1-gal batches so I don't have to worry about the possibility of 4 gallons of gross beer, and to keep my 3-gal carboys free for other brewing.

That's all I have for now. Have you submitted homebrew to competition this year? Is there a specific competition you like to enter every year? What are your fun brewing plans for the spring?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!