For the last 4 years, I don't think there has been any more widely requested beer for us to brew than a Hefeweizen. I have always been reluctant to do so since our equipment doesn't allow for raising the mash temperature. Being able to do a stepped infusion mash would allow us to conduct an acid rest which would create ferulic acid for the yeast to convert into 4-vinylguaiacol. 4VG is the compound that gives great hefeweizens their clove-like flavor. Many American brewers try to brew hefeweizens with a single infusion mash and they end up with banana bombs.
I think a large part of the problem is that there is a belief among American brewers that the Germans are only using Pilsen and Wheat malts in their hefeweizens. That was what I had always been toldm(and what is stated in the BJCP guidelines... If you pay attention to a guideline where everything is made up and points don't really matter). While historically it is true that German hefeweizen brewers typically did use only Wheat and Pilsner malt, they also typically did decoction mashes. A decoction is where you pull a portion of the mash, boil it, and add it back to the main mash to raise the temperature. A decoction results in a darker wort and sweet melanoiden flavors.
Most of the brewers in Germany now are still using multiple rest temperatures, but they do so with stepped infusions. A stepped infusion is very different because the mash is never boiled and the wort is not darkened. Instead, jackets around the mash tun are filled with steam to bring the temperature up. To my surprise, I learned that many Bavarian brewers had begun using darker colored malts and crystal malts in their hefeweizens. When discussing hefeweizen recipes with one of my professors at Doemens, they even suggested a recipe that was about 10% crystal malts. The color of that beer was a golden color reminiscent of Schneider's hefe and even though it was such a large percentage of crystal malt, it did not taste overly sweet the way I had expected. Surprisingly, the beer also had a great balance of clove to banana flavors.
As it turns out, some of the malts being made for hefeweizens today can achieve some natural phenolic flavors without the use of an acid rest. Weyermann CaraWheat even says in the description "It is almost 100% caramelized, and contributes some phenolic wheat flavors along with mild notes of caramel, almond, and biscuit." It is not surprising then that using this malt would contribute to a more traditional hefeweizen flavor and color than what we typically see from American brewers that are copying old German grain bills and not decocting their mashes. It is also not surprising that German brewers determined that decoctions were a waste of time if they could get the same flavors from an infusion mash.
The other important piece of hefeweizen brewing is the yeast. Hefeweizen yeast is a true top cropping yeast strain. It will alter its fermentation flavor profile rapidly if brewers crop yeast from the bottom of the fermenter. The vast majority of American breweries have closed cylindroconical fermenters, meaning the only real way to crop yeast is from the bottom. In Germany, wheat beer brewers use open top fermenters and they skim the yeast off the top. Many American brewers will attempt to bottom crop the yeast and they end up with flavorless hefeweizens with an excess amount of sulfur. We will not be reusing our yeast as a result. We did one yeast starter large enough for all of our batches.
The yeast strain we chose has the classic banana and clove flavors, but in addition, it produces plum, pear, and red apple esters. I have never been a fan of banana bombs and I would much rather have a well balanced hefeweizen more complex fruity flavors and high drinkability.
This is going to be a fun beer to release and it will be our first beer in cans. Be on the lookout for the cans in mid-April!
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Hopback!
It seems like for the last year, everything that we have done with hoppy beers has been working on decreasing bitterness while increasing overall hop flavor and aroma. I've probably stressed that point in hoppy beers more than anything else. When we introduced our Hopbursted IPA, it was really the beginning of a new (to us) process that we've used in every hoppy beer ever since. However, even when we put all of our hops in the kettle after we stop boiling, we still extract significant amounts of bitterness. In fact, a little over a year ago, we found out that our Pale Ale was getting about 45 IBU's just from our flameout hop addition after we sent our beers to a lab for analysis. After getting our results back, the way I began formulating recipes became much more exact with IBU calculations and it has helped us determine how we can cut back the bitterness levels.
As most of you know by now, we are changing the Weedy's Double IPA recipe. After brewing test batches at home, I realized that there would be no way for me to replicate the low amounts of bitterness I was getting on my 5 gallon system while getting all the hop aroma I was able to extract unless we changed some of our approach. We ended up getting a new hopback which is going to help out a lot. A hopback is really a pretty simple piece of equipment, but not one that is used very commonly. It is just a vessel that you fill with hops and run wort through before pumping the wort through the heat exchanger. With the hops being in contact with the hot wort for such a short amount of time, there is not time for the alpha acids to isomerize, so no bitterness is extracted. Instead, you are basically stripping the hops of their essential oils and capturing them in the wort.
Since the hopback has a false bottom, it can be filled with whole leaf hops. Our equipment was set up to be used with pellets, but whole leaf hops can offer some substantial benefits. Since the hops never get hammered, they are never subject to heat or any other type of damage and you don't lose any of the hop matter. Another nice benefit from the brewery production side is that the whole leaf hops will act as a filter when trub starts to come out of the kettle. When we were brewing the Double IPA before, the amount of hops that went into it meant that we only would recover about 23 barrels of beer out of an anticipated 30 barrel batch. Now, we will be able to filter out some of the hop material and recover some additional wort, hopefully getting us up to 26-27 barrels of beer.
The biggest advantage though to using a hopback is the way the oils get extracted right before chilling. There are a lot of people that think that a hopback just provides the oils in the same way that dry hopping does, so they determine that a hopback isn't worth their time. That isn't truly the case. The since all the essential oils are in the wort for all of the active fermentation, they have the ability to undergo a process known as biotransformation.
Biotransformation has turned into somewhat of a buzz word for a lot of brewers lately, but many brewers have yet to really learn what it is. The simple explanation is that yeast has the ability to take a compound (in this case, oils) and convert them into a different compound. The most common type of biotransformation is Geraniol into Beta-Citronella. Geraniol is a hop compound that is associated with floral flavors, sometimes even getting rose-like. Biotransormation can convert that compound into beta-Citronella which is very orange citrusy. Beers brewed with Citra (the hop that I have been frustrated with not being able to find), have proven to have a high amount of Citronella in them.
That has led to a lot of experimentation to find a way to maximize the flavors we desire from Citra, while using more readily available hops. Using hops high in Geraniol content (Cascade, Bravo, Apollo) therefore could potentially be used in a way that would allow us to get a Citra-like flavor. With the right yeast strain, it is possible that we could even create a more intensely aromatic Double IPA than would be possible with the yeast strain we were using before when we were using Citra. The yeast strain we have found has allowed us to take full advantage of biotransformation in a way that no other yeast strain I've seen is capable of doing.
Of course, the key to any good beer is to achieve some sort of balance of flavors. If the only flavor compound we got was Citronella, we wouldn't have a beer that resembles any type of hoppy flavor profile that we would enjoy. So the rest of the balancing act is getting flavors to compliment and balance the Citronella. In this case, some of the hops that we are using are high in Linalool. On its own, linalool has a distinctively fruity pebble flavor. With all the other flavor compounds though, it provides a sweet passion-fruit like flavor. When you combine those flavors along with the esters that our yeast strain provides (which have a very distinctive peach, mango, and tropical flavor), you can create a flavor profile unlike anything you will find from any hop with a neutral yeast strain.
Because of this biotransformation, it is actually pretty different to use a hopback than it is to just dry hop the beer. The great thing is that you can then dry hop during fermentation to take advantage of some other biotransformations, and follow that round of dry hops up with a second round of dry hopping post-fermentation in order to take advantage of the flavor compounds that were previously transformed and are then lost. This way, you can get a completely full range of flavors, taking advantage of 100% of the possible flavors from the hops. Using the whole leaf hops also means that all of the possible flavors haven't been lost or destroyed in the pelletizing process.
It is going to be a lot of fun getting this hopback installed and put to use!
Friday, March 4, 2016
Weedy's Update and Brett IPA Brewday
I've been having people asking me a lot of questions about how the new Weedy's recipe is coming along. I think we are close to having a recipe in place and we should be brewing it at some point in March. There are a lot of things we will be doing with it that will be pretty unique.
In my last blog post, I talked a lot about yeast and how we will be evolving a strain to get more of the peach esters. That is working out well so far. The first 5 gallon test batch has a lot of intense aromas from the yeast and it has the juiciness that I was hoping for. However, the yeast strain has the ability to take certain hop compounds and transfigure them into other flavor compounds... So basically, every hop that I am used to tasting one way could come out tasting completely different than what I think of them tasting like. In this case, I got a lot of mint flavor from Chinook hops and the Cascade gave a little bit of orange rind and earthiness. The end result is a very interesting, complex beer, but not what I would want to brew regularly. The second batch is just done fermenting and will be dry hopped differently. I have high hopes for it.
That said, the first batch showed a lot of promise as we re-formulate our recipe. It is very intensely hoppy, but the perceived bitterness is so low that I was actually worried that we wouldn't be able to scale the recipe up to our brewhouse because our hop utilization is pretty high. That has led us to buying a hopback to start using for this beer. A hopback is a small vessel where you can place hops to run wort through them right before chilling the wort and pitching yeast. The hops are in contact with the hot wort for such a small amount of time that you don't extract bitterness, but you do get all the hop aroma and flavor. That also will mean that we can use whole hops instead of pellets and have even better aroma.
While a hopback is fairly uncommon to see these days, that is far from the most unique thing this beer will feature. The thing that I'm most excited about is we will be doing open fermentation in horizontal fermenters. Utilizing the open fermenters, we will have more ester production from the yeast and the beer will clear slightly better (although, this will be a cloudy DIPA as it won't have any fining agents or be filtered). With open fermentation, we will be able to ferment the beer for the normal 3-4 days and then we will transfer the beer to a separate aging vessel where it will be dry hopped with whole leaf hops and naturally carbonated.
The beer will be cloudy. As I said in the last post about yeast, we want all the hop oils and resins that coat the yeast cells to remain in suspension. We won't be fining, filtering, or centrifuging because we want the flavors that are attached to the yeast cells. In addition to removing hop oils and resins, fining agents strip polyphenols ( an essential part of hop flavor), filtering introduces oxygen, and centrifuging puts excessive amounts of sheer force on the yeast, all of which can negatively effect hoppy flavor and aromas.
The natural carbonation is the last piece of the puzzle for this beer. It is pretty rare to see modern breweries "spund" fermenters. The basic idea with spunding is that you close off the fermenter right before the beer reaches its final gravity and let pressure build. This means we will be dry hopping under pressure and getting more aroma from the hops, but more importantly, the bubbles that form from natural carbonation are smaller than force carbonation. That means it will exhibit better head retention and release more aroma from the glass. The reason most breweries don't do that is because it increases the likelihood of sulfur compounds and diacetyl. However, since we will be fermenting in shallow fermenters, the risk of diacetyl is significantly lessened and sulfur production will not be a concern. With all the steps we are taking to increase flavor and aroma while decreasing bitterness, I think we will be seeing a very intense, unique DIPA.
Also, now that we got our Brett Pinstripe out of the fermenter (bottles should be shipping next week for those keeping an eye out for them), we are able to brew our next Brett beer. This time, we are brewing a Brett IPA with whole leaf Amarillo, Mandarina Bavaria, and Citra. I requested a custom Brettanomyces blend for this one which will give us a lot of stone fruit flavors as well as a subtle pineapple flavor. While the common school of thought with hoppy beers is always to drink fresh, this is one that I think will be great fresh and as it ages it will be fun to see how it changes. I expect a dry, subtly funky, moderately fruity, and very citrusy IPA to come out of this when it is fresh and as it ages, the stone fruit character will come out more and the funkiness will increase as it ages. As is the case with all of our hoppy beers, the Brett IPA is hop bursted and since Brett typically masks bitterness in IPA's, the perceived bitterness level will be very low. Be on the lookout for it sometime in April!
In my last blog post, I talked a lot about yeast and how we will be evolving a strain to get more of the peach esters. That is working out well so far. The first 5 gallon test batch has a lot of intense aromas from the yeast and it has the juiciness that I was hoping for. However, the yeast strain has the ability to take certain hop compounds and transfigure them into other flavor compounds... So basically, every hop that I am used to tasting one way could come out tasting completely different than what I think of them tasting like. In this case, I got a lot of mint flavor from Chinook hops and the Cascade gave a little bit of orange rind and earthiness. The end result is a very interesting, complex beer, but not what I would want to brew regularly. The second batch is just done fermenting and will be dry hopped differently. I have high hopes for it.
That said, the first batch showed a lot of promise as we re-formulate our recipe. It is very intensely hoppy, but the perceived bitterness is so low that I was actually worried that we wouldn't be able to scale the recipe up to our brewhouse because our hop utilization is pretty high. That has led us to buying a hopback to start using for this beer. A hopback is a small vessel where you can place hops to run wort through them right before chilling the wort and pitching yeast. The hops are in contact with the hot wort for such a small amount of time that you don't extract bitterness, but you do get all the hop aroma and flavor. That also will mean that we can use whole hops instead of pellets and have even better aroma.
While a hopback is fairly uncommon to see these days, that is far from the most unique thing this beer will feature. The thing that I'm most excited about is we will be doing open fermentation in horizontal fermenters. Utilizing the open fermenters, we will have more ester production from the yeast and the beer will clear slightly better (although, this will be a cloudy DIPA as it won't have any fining agents or be filtered). With open fermentation, we will be able to ferment the beer for the normal 3-4 days and then we will transfer the beer to a separate aging vessel where it will be dry hopped with whole leaf hops and naturally carbonated.
The beer will be cloudy. As I said in the last post about yeast, we want all the hop oils and resins that coat the yeast cells to remain in suspension. We won't be fining, filtering, or centrifuging because we want the flavors that are attached to the yeast cells. In addition to removing hop oils and resins, fining agents strip polyphenols ( an essential part of hop flavor), filtering introduces oxygen, and centrifuging puts excessive amounts of sheer force on the yeast, all of which can negatively effect hoppy flavor and aromas.
The natural carbonation is the last piece of the puzzle for this beer. It is pretty rare to see modern breweries "spund" fermenters. The basic idea with spunding is that you close off the fermenter right before the beer reaches its final gravity and let pressure build. This means we will be dry hopping under pressure and getting more aroma from the hops, but more importantly, the bubbles that form from natural carbonation are smaller than force carbonation. That means it will exhibit better head retention and release more aroma from the glass. The reason most breweries don't do that is because it increases the likelihood of sulfur compounds and diacetyl. However, since we will be fermenting in shallow fermenters, the risk of diacetyl is significantly lessened and sulfur production will not be a concern. With all the steps we are taking to increase flavor and aroma while decreasing bitterness, I think we will be seeing a very intense, unique DIPA.
Also, now that we got our Brett Pinstripe out of the fermenter (bottles should be shipping next week for those keeping an eye out for them), we are able to brew our next Brett beer. This time, we are brewing a Brett IPA with whole leaf Amarillo, Mandarina Bavaria, and Citra. I requested a custom Brettanomyces blend for this one which will give us a lot of stone fruit flavors as well as a subtle pineapple flavor. While the common school of thought with hoppy beers is always to drink fresh, this is one that I think will be great fresh and as it ages it will be fun to see how it changes. I expect a dry, subtly funky, moderately fruity, and very citrusy IPA to come out of this when it is fresh and as it ages, the stone fruit character will come out more and the funkiness will increase as it ages. As is the case with all of our hoppy beers, the Brett IPA is hop bursted and since Brett typically masks bitterness in IPA's, the perceived bitterness level will be very low. Be on the lookout for it sometime in April!
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