New Beer Brewday: Imperial Stout

Today is another exciting day for us at Blue Pants. We are brewing our first Imperial Stout which will be aged in Bourbon Barrels. We've kept pretty quiet about this one so far because it will still be quite a while before it's ready for release, but since I like writing about new beers so much, I figured I'd go ahead and offer a bit of a teaser.

The idea for this beer came about almost as a matter of necessity. We need to fill our Bourbon Barrels that previously held Wee Heavy so that they don't dry out. In the past, we have brewed Pinstripe for aging in barrels with mixed success. Our first year brewing bourbon barrel Pinstripe, we had some great beer come out of the barrels, but the beer didn't seem to support all the bourbon flavor. We actually had to blend the barrel aged beer with a pretty significant portion of non-barrel aged beer in order to make it seem balanced. Last year, we had our first barrel contamination and we lost our entire batch of Bourbon Barrel Pinstripe (which would have been released this year). As a result, we started thinking about what we could use the barrels for. Originally, I wanted to rinse them and brew a stout fermented with Brettanomyces in them, but it would have been a bit of a waste of bourbon, since there is still a significant amount left in the barrels. Mike and I had talked about brewing an Imperial Stout several times over the last two years, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

The exciting thing for me about this beer is that it gives us another opportunity to show off very high quality English malts. After seeing how much people appreciated the complex malty flavors of the Chocolate Oatmeal Porter, I wanted to follow that up with another malty beer that will feature the highest quality malts available.

Once again, we will be featuring Floor-Malted Maris Otter as the base malt. What a lot of people don't realize is that American 2-row is typically a blend of barley varieties that get malted together. The reason for doing so is because maltsters can blend different varieties together in order to creat consistent batches of malt from year to year. But what we end up with is a pretty bland base malt which doesn't provide much character to the beer. Maris Otter, on the other hand, is a specific type of 2-row barley grown in England and it is known for having a more intense malty flavor than most other base malts with a little bit of a toast character to it... When ordering Maris Otter malt, what you receive is not a blend of 2-row, but just Maris Otter by itself. When using floor malted ingredients, the malty flavors are even more pronounced. This was the same type of base malt we used in the Chocolate Oatmeal Porter.

In addition to the Maris Otter, we will be using English Crystal Malt which provides a toffee like sweetness without the sugary-candylike sweetness associated with American Caramel Malts which result in a cloying mouthfeel in high gravity beers. We will also feature a blend of Chocolate Malts (this time we are using more Pale Chocolate Malt to try to avoid the roast astringency of regular Chocolate Malt). In an effort to make the beer pitch black, we will be using a debittered black malt which will make the beer black, but will induce white foam. Lastly, we will be using Flaked Barley to add body and head retention thanks to their high amount of beta-glucans.

When brewing high gravity beers like this, I typically use a low mash temperature so that the beer will not be overly thick, but since we are aging in a bourbon barrel, I do want the beer to have a lot of body to support the bourbon and oak flavors. So instead of my typical low mash temperature, we went with a medium 154 degrees. Also, my normal philosophy is to use a yeast with a lot of character, but with a high gravity fermentation, there will be plenty of esters produced using a more neutral ale yeast, so instead of London Ale yeast like I normally would, we are using American Ale yeast which is a bit more robust.

What we will wind up with is a base beer at about 11% ABV before going into the barrels. The beer should be completely black with a long lasting off-white head, and with 50 IBU's should have a low apparent bitterness. Now just give us about a year before you get to sample it!

Upcoming Beer: German Pilsener

For the last week, all I've been thinking about is how to follow up with our huge success of our last two new seasonal beers. Starting with the Oktoberfest, it seems that our customers liked having an easy drinking, German style beer that featured high quality German ingredients. At the time, it became one of our fastest selling beers in the brewery's short history. Although the beer was very popular, I was really happy to get away from brewing German styles this winter because ever since finishing school, a majority of my new recipes had been German or Belgian influenced beers. I felt like I was working myself into a box as being known as the guy brewing German beers.

It was a lot of fun for me to come up with an English style porter and go in a new direction. In the past, I think as a brewer I had always leaned towards styles that are heavy on hops or heavy with yeast characteristics... Pale Ales, IPA's, Saisons, high gravity Belgians, etc. When I did brew malty beers, I tended to use the typical American malts that were easy to come by and I was never very happy with the results. With our chocolate oatmeal porter, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could brew a malty beer. The porter featured very high quality English malts, including a fairly rare Oat Malt which gives significantly more oat flavor than flaked oats. The porter has been a huge success for us and recently became our highest rated beer on BeerAdvocate.com. While that has been very encouraging, it definitely puts the pressure on to come up with the next big seasonal.

So after making Spare Pair a year round beer, we are now looking for our next Spring seasonal recipe. We have settled on a German Style Pilsener. I was originally happy to get away from the German styles, but now that I've had a break, I am really looking forward to this Pils. The idea of brewing a Pils is appealing for a lot of reasons, but selfishly, I am looking forward to the challenge. It might be hard for a lot of beer geeks to understand why a Pilsener would be so exciting for a brewer... The real reason is because it is very difficult to brew a good one and a good Pils is something to cherish. This is the beer that keeps me awake at night, stressed out hoping that I am making the right decisions. To brew something that is perfectly balanced with a mellow malt backbone balanced with delicate hops, requiring a perfect fermentation to achieve that clean, crisp taste, all of which requires very soft water and a gentle boil to achieve the light straw color typical of a Pils is extremely challenging. So what goes into designing this Pilsner to live up to the challenge?

First, I think of the ideal beer and I think of the main qualities: Appearance, Aroma, Taste, and Mouthfeel. For the appearance, I want the beer to be as light colored as possible with a fluffy, long lasting, white head. So to narrow that down specifically, I think of all the things that influence the beer's color... Malt selection, Water Chemistry, Length of Boil, and Vigor of Boil. Then, I think of the things that influence head retention... Residual sugars, High Molecular Proteins, and Water Chemistry. That makes me realize that I need the lightest color Pilsen Malt available with a high ratio of High Molecular Proteins. For the malt, I will definitely be needing to order malt from a German maltster to get the exact specifications for a Pilsener. I also need soft water (luckily, we already have soft water in Madison, so the only real treatment we will use is an active carbon filter) with a low pH level and to maintain a boil that will drive off volatile compounds, but is not so vigorous or lengthy to induce Maillard Reactions.

Next, I think of the aroma of a good Pils. Obviously, some of the aroma will come from the Pils Malt. That is where the straw, or hay aromas come from. Personally though, I like a spicy aroma from the use of traditional German Noble hops along with a touch of citrus zest. For this particular beer, a blend of Noble hops will be used with the showcase being German Hallertau hops. The flavor should be a blend of hay, spicy hops, citrus, and herbal flavors with a really clean, crisp finish with no lingering aftertaste. So using that thought process, I know that I will need to have very strict quality assurance of all of my ingredients (and particularly the hops) when they arrive and I will need to pay close attention to the fermentation. We will use yeast from a well-known brewery from Munich which will provide a little bit more unique of a fermentation characteristic than is typical for a Pils (Munich breweries are known much more for Helles than Pils), but is still very clean fermenting and leaves a very crisp mouthfeel.

I still haven't decided on a final recipe and I doubt I will for at least another two weeks (I'm pretty indecisive when it comes to this type of recipe because of how every little factor can influence other parts of the beer) but I am very excited to continue to work on this beer and I will give a write up of the recipe when I am done!