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!
Monday, January 25, 2016
Weedy's Double Yeast Choices
After going to an awesome bottle share yesterday and talking to everyone there, I realized that a bunch of people were excited to get information about the new recipe I'm working on. Coincidentally, I'm anxious to start talking about it! Since I'm working on a yeast starter right now for a few test batches to be brewed this week, I figured I'll start my experiment updates with covering some yeast options.
When most people want to talk about DIPA recipes, everyone wants to discuss the hops. Obviously, hops are the big distinguishing ingredient of DIPA's. However, most people will get their exciting hops and then skimp on yeast selection. In my experience, anytime a homebrewer is asking for advice on a double ipa recipe, the common advice is always something like follows. 1. Keep the grain bill simple with little to none caramel malts. 2. Pick your favorite "C" hops (Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Chinook, Crystal, Columbus, etc.) and load up the hop additions at the end of the boil. 3. Pick a clean fermenting American Ale yeast (Wyeast 1056, White Labs 001, or Safale US-05). This is a proven recipe for success and it will make for a good starting point for a typical DIPA.
For the longest time, I followed that advice and I have made some really good beers that way. But now with so many people following the same formula for success, I've had to wonder what there is that is exciting about new Double IPA's. If everyone is doing that, what sets apart the great double IPA's from the average ones (other than brewing proficiency)? There are potentially 900-950 flavor compounds that can come from fermentation alone... Why wouldn't we want to take advantage of the potential flavors?
That train of thought lead to me thinking about some of the great double IPA's that have been brewed recently. In the last 2 years, we have seen a huge shift in the craft beer community as far as what is considered a great DIPA. One trend that I thought was funny was the sudden interest in cloudy DIPA's which seem to be typical of Northeastern breweries. The trend has caught on so much that now Stone has released an unfiltered variation of their Enjoy By series. It was so funny to me that we had released batches of cloudy Weedy's in the past by mistake and felt bad about it and now we have huge breweries purposefully releasing cloudy beers and customers that are complaining that the beers aren't cloudy enough.
So a week or two ago I had a little bit of a lightbulb moment. Stone's Unfiltered Enjoy By was a beer that I thought was pretty good, but not great. I didn't think that it had the same flavor components that some of the Northeast cloudy IPA's have and as a result, it really just kind of tasted like yeasty Enjoy By. In contrast, the Northeast IPA's I've had always seem to have significantly more hop flavor than the clearer, extremely hoppy West Coast IPA's. I started wondering how the cloudy IPA trend came to be. My theory: A few breweries brewed really good IPA's with special yeast strains (Notably, Conan yeast in Heady Topper and Hill Farmstead beers). Beer enthusiasts realized that the beer was world class beer despite the cloudy appearance and began to associate cloudy IPA's with these extremely tasty beers. So now cloudy IPA's are all the rage and breweries like Stone, Boston Beer, and others are trying to cash in on that by releasing their own beers that have sediment in the bottle.
The problem with that train of thought though, is that the breweries that are mimicking the appearance aren't getting the same flavors that the Northeast breweries are getting. Why? Because they are using yeast strains that are too neutral in flavor. What I believe has happened with some strains of yeast is that they have evolved in a way that they lose their ability to fall out of suspension when they are coated with hop oils and resins. Some yeast strains normally fall out of suspension very easily, but once you dry hop a beer that uses one of those specialized strains, they lose their ability to flocculate. So since those yeast cells are coated with hop oils and resins, there are flavors on those cells that would normally be lost in a clearer beer.
In addition to that, some of these strains have developed esters that can be confused for hop flavor. Some people describe these esters with words like "tropical," "peachy," "juicy," "fruity," "pear," and "melony." So when drinking an aggressively hopped double ipa fermented with one of these yeast strains, the distinction between hop flavors and fermentation flavors can be lost. With flavor profiles like that, it is hard to imagine why the common advice is still to use a neutral American Ale yeast strain. There are two yeast strains that I believe exhibit these characteristics that I will be experimenting with.
The first one is a strain that evolved from English yeast (believed to have originally been Boddington's house yeast). It is only available through a very small yeast lab and is not actually available for most brewers to use. However, if you know how to propagate yeast colonies, it can be a very rewarding strain. The second strain is from Wyeast and it is the strain that the first one is believed to be evolved from.
Since the beginning of my research on these yeast strains, I have known that I want to maximize the esters they produce. To do so, there are a few things that brewers normally try to control. 1. Temperature of Fermentation. 2. Amount of Yeast Pitched 3. Amount of Aeration of the Wort. The thing that most brewers don't have the ability to control which also has an impact on ester formation is the amount of pressure exerted on the beer in fermentation.
In most American breweries, the common type of fermentation vessel is a Cylindro-Conical vessel. These fermenters are great for the majority of beers a brewery would want to brew. However, there are flavor compounds that can be achieved with other types of fermenters. For example, if a fermenter is wide and shallow, the yeast wouldn't have as much pressure built up on it during fermentation and would increase ester production and decrease diacetyl production. Fortunately for us, we have a 1,000 gallon vessel that was originally intended to be used for lagering. For a multitude of reasons, we never did set it up as a lagering tank. Now, it can be used as a fermenter and we can have all the benefits that would come from open fermentation without the big downside (potential contamination from open air).
So the beginning of our DIPA experiment starts with yeast... The ingredient most frequently thought of last in a double. So where does that get us started?
1. The beer should exhibit intense esters that will be tropical in flavor
2. The beer will be cloudy with yeast covered in essential hop oils and resins
3. The beer will have a soft mouthfeel and will still be dry like our DIPA always has been
I would call that a good start!
When most people want to talk about DIPA recipes, everyone wants to discuss the hops. Obviously, hops are the big distinguishing ingredient of DIPA's. However, most people will get their exciting hops and then skimp on yeast selection. In my experience, anytime a homebrewer is asking for advice on a double ipa recipe, the common advice is always something like follows. 1. Keep the grain bill simple with little to none caramel malts. 2. Pick your favorite "C" hops (Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Chinook, Crystal, Columbus, etc.) and load up the hop additions at the end of the boil. 3. Pick a clean fermenting American Ale yeast (Wyeast 1056, White Labs 001, or Safale US-05). This is a proven recipe for success and it will make for a good starting point for a typical DIPA.
For the longest time, I followed that advice and I have made some really good beers that way. But now with so many people following the same formula for success, I've had to wonder what there is that is exciting about new Double IPA's. If everyone is doing that, what sets apart the great double IPA's from the average ones (other than brewing proficiency)? There are potentially 900-950 flavor compounds that can come from fermentation alone... Why wouldn't we want to take advantage of the potential flavors?
That train of thought lead to me thinking about some of the great double IPA's that have been brewed recently. In the last 2 years, we have seen a huge shift in the craft beer community as far as what is considered a great DIPA. One trend that I thought was funny was the sudden interest in cloudy DIPA's which seem to be typical of Northeastern breweries. The trend has caught on so much that now Stone has released an unfiltered variation of their Enjoy By series. It was so funny to me that we had released batches of cloudy Weedy's in the past by mistake and felt bad about it and now we have huge breweries purposefully releasing cloudy beers and customers that are complaining that the beers aren't cloudy enough.
So a week or two ago I had a little bit of a lightbulb moment. Stone's Unfiltered Enjoy By was a beer that I thought was pretty good, but not great. I didn't think that it had the same flavor components that some of the Northeast cloudy IPA's have and as a result, it really just kind of tasted like yeasty Enjoy By. In contrast, the Northeast IPA's I've had always seem to have significantly more hop flavor than the clearer, extremely hoppy West Coast IPA's. I started wondering how the cloudy IPA trend came to be. My theory: A few breweries brewed really good IPA's with special yeast strains (Notably, Conan yeast in Heady Topper and Hill Farmstead beers). Beer enthusiasts realized that the beer was world class beer despite the cloudy appearance and began to associate cloudy IPA's with these extremely tasty beers. So now cloudy IPA's are all the rage and breweries like Stone, Boston Beer, and others are trying to cash in on that by releasing their own beers that have sediment in the bottle.
The problem with that train of thought though, is that the breweries that are mimicking the appearance aren't getting the same flavors that the Northeast breweries are getting. Why? Because they are using yeast strains that are too neutral in flavor. What I believe has happened with some strains of yeast is that they have evolved in a way that they lose their ability to fall out of suspension when they are coated with hop oils and resins. Some yeast strains normally fall out of suspension very easily, but once you dry hop a beer that uses one of those specialized strains, they lose their ability to flocculate. So since those yeast cells are coated with hop oils and resins, there are flavors on those cells that would normally be lost in a clearer beer.
In addition to that, some of these strains have developed esters that can be confused for hop flavor. Some people describe these esters with words like "tropical," "peachy," "juicy," "fruity," "pear," and "melony." So when drinking an aggressively hopped double ipa fermented with one of these yeast strains, the distinction between hop flavors and fermentation flavors can be lost. With flavor profiles like that, it is hard to imagine why the common advice is still to use a neutral American Ale yeast strain. There are two yeast strains that I believe exhibit these characteristics that I will be experimenting with.
The first one is a strain that evolved from English yeast (believed to have originally been Boddington's house yeast). It is only available through a very small yeast lab and is not actually available for most brewers to use. However, if you know how to propagate yeast colonies, it can be a very rewarding strain. The second strain is from Wyeast and it is the strain that the first one is believed to be evolved from.
Since the beginning of my research on these yeast strains, I have known that I want to maximize the esters they produce. To do so, there are a few things that brewers normally try to control. 1. Temperature of Fermentation. 2. Amount of Yeast Pitched 3. Amount of Aeration of the Wort. The thing that most brewers don't have the ability to control which also has an impact on ester formation is the amount of pressure exerted on the beer in fermentation.
In most American breweries, the common type of fermentation vessel is a Cylindro-Conical vessel. These fermenters are great for the majority of beers a brewery would want to brew. However, there are flavor compounds that can be achieved with other types of fermenters. For example, if a fermenter is wide and shallow, the yeast wouldn't have as much pressure built up on it during fermentation and would increase ester production and decrease diacetyl production. Fortunately for us, we have a 1,000 gallon vessel that was originally intended to be used for lagering. For a multitude of reasons, we never did set it up as a lagering tank. Now, it can be used as a fermenter and we can have all the benefits that would come from open fermentation without the big downside (potential contamination from open air).
So the beginning of our DIPA experiment starts with yeast... The ingredient most frequently thought of last in a double. So where does that get us started?
1. The beer should exhibit intense esters that will be tropical in flavor
2. The beer will be cloudy with yeast covered in essential hop oils and resins
3. The beer will have a soft mouthfeel and will still be dry like our DIPA always has been
I would call that a good start!
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Weedy's Double is Getting a Facelift
For the last 2 years, we've known that the Weedy's Double IPA recipe was in need of a change, but we've been able to delay the need. 2 years ago, we were told that we would no longer be able to get Citra hops from our supplier due to high demand and low quantity. We have watched as the resale value of Citra has gone from $12 per pound to $30 per pound. In the past, we have made some pretty crazy prices for ingredients in order to make the highest quality beer possible, but at $30 per pound, were forced to draw the line. We were lucky enough that we were able to get enough Citra for two batches of Weedy's this year since we were on a waiting list just in case there was extra available.
Running out of Citra actually did come as a bit of a surprise since we did have it on contract for a few years. However, the reason for the shortage was made apparent recently. With the release of New Belgium's Citradelic, I ran some quick math. Using some very generous estimates, I estimated that they would be using between 50,000-100,000 lbs of Citra in the coming year. There was already a shortage before they began brewing Citradelic, so while it is unfair to point the finger only at New Belgium, the truth is there are hundreds of breweries that would have loved to have Citra available to them that would have brewed beers that are much more exciting than Citradelic is.
As a result, we have had to face some really difficult questions... Should we stop brewing Weedy's (one of our most popular beers)? Should we try to find a hop substitute? Is it time for a full on recipe change?
In regards to stopping brewing the beer, we would be forced to do so if we couldn't come up with a recipe that was better than the original. Just being as good as the original would not be enough. Finding a hop substitute is not a real option either. Galaxy is a hop that is very similar to Citra (and arguably, Mosaic is similar as well) but neither of those hops are more readily available than Citra now.
The idea of changing a successful recipe is always a difficult thing to wrap our heads around . Many breweries (even large craft breweries) will change recipes for this exact same reason as we are now, but instead of being open about it, they try to hide it. As consumers, when we notice the change, it is all too often that we are disappointed. For that reason, if we are going to change the recipe I decided that the beer can't just be as good as the original, it needs to be better. In addition, I want to be very open about the fact that we have changed the beer. I really believe our consumers deserve to know that.
Sidetrack rambling: Something interesting about the original recipe is that we never intended for it to become a regular beer when we first brewed it. I wanted to brew a small batch of a Double IPA for the taproom back in 2011. I used a recipe that was very similar to some recipes that I had brewed at home when I was 19 years old and the beer sold shockingly well. A 1 barrel batch was soldout in 3 nights. Naming the beer was also pretty funny... When I kegged the beer and put it on tap, we didn't have a name for it. I suggested putting it on the board without a name and just calling it "Double IPA." Doug thought I should get credit for the beer and he put my name in front of it. After seeing how well it sold in the taproom, Pants and Chris (Alabama sales rep) decided we should put it in bottles and Chris suggested keeping the name as it was. So there I was, 21 years old with a Double IPA with my name on it available in bottles at grocery stores.
So now we are faced with the task of giving a very popular beer an upgrade. Over the next few weeks, I will be brewing some homebrew batches (breaking out the old homebrewing equipment!) and experimenting with a few theories I've been working on. In the last few weeks, I've tried about 20 different Double IPA's and I've been taking notes on specific things that I think are good and bad about each beer. In addition, I've been reading reviews on BeerAdvocate, RateBeer, Untappd, and on other blogger's posts.
Through my research, I've learned some very interesting things about hop varieties and some specialized yeast strains. I believe completely that with the experiences I've had in the last 4 years, education from brewing school, and with the new products available to brewers today that I will be able to develop a recipe that blows the original out of the water. This is going to be a wildly fun project for me and in addition to experimenting with new hop varieties and yeast strains, we will be experimenting with different fermenter shapes and designs which will allow us to utilize flavor compounds that no other brewery in Alabama (or that I know of in the Southeast) is capable of reproducing. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I keep updates on the experiments!
Running out of Citra actually did come as a bit of a surprise since we did have it on contract for a few years. However, the reason for the shortage was made apparent recently. With the release of New Belgium's Citradelic, I ran some quick math. Using some very generous estimates, I estimated that they would be using between 50,000-100,000 lbs of Citra in the coming year. There was already a shortage before they began brewing Citradelic, so while it is unfair to point the finger only at New Belgium, the truth is there are hundreds of breweries that would have loved to have Citra available to them that would have brewed beers that are much more exciting than Citradelic is.
As a result, we have had to face some really difficult questions... Should we stop brewing Weedy's (one of our most popular beers)? Should we try to find a hop substitute? Is it time for a full on recipe change?
In regards to stopping brewing the beer, we would be forced to do so if we couldn't come up with a recipe that was better than the original. Just being as good as the original would not be enough. Finding a hop substitute is not a real option either. Galaxy is a hop that is very similar to Citra (and arguably, Mosaic is similar as well) but neither of those hops are more readily available than Citra now.
The idea of changing a successful recipe is always a difficult thing to wrap our heads around . Many breweries (even large craft breweries) will change recipes for this exact same reason as we are now, but instead of being open about it, they try to hide it. As consumers, when we notice the change, it is all too often that we are disappointed. For that reason, if we are going to change the recipe I decided that the beer can't just be as good as the original, it needs to be better. In addition, I want to be very open about the fact that we have changed the beer. I really believe our consumers deserve to know that.
Sidetrack rambling: Something interesting about the original recipe is that we never intended for it to become a regular beer when we first brewed it. I wanted to brew a small batch of a Double IPA for the taproom back in 2011. I used a recipe that was very similar to some recipes that I had brewed at home when I was 19 years old and the beer sold shockingly well. A 1 barrel batch was soldout in 3 nights. Naming the beer was also pretty funny... When I kegged the beer and put it on tap, we didn't have a name for it. I suggested putting it on the board without a name and just calling it "Double IPA." Doug thought I should get credit for the beer and he put my name in front of it. After seeing how well it sold in the taproom, Pants and Chris (Alabama sales rep) decided we should put it in bottles and Chris suggested keeping the name as it was. So there I was, 21 years old with a Double IPA with my name on it available in bottles at grocery stores.
So now we are faced with the task of giving a very popular beer an upgrade. Over the next few weeks, I will be brewing some homebrew batches (breaking out the old homebrewing equipment!) and experimenting with a few theories I've been working on. In the last few weeks, I've tried about 20 different Double IPA's and I've been taking notes on specific things that I think are good and bad about each beer. In addition, I've been reading reviews on BeerAdvocate, RateBeer, Untappd, and on other blogger's posts.
Through my research, I've learned some very interesting things about hop varieties and some specialized yeast strains. I believe completely that with the experiences I've had in the last 4 years, education from brewing school, and with the new products available to brewers today that I will be able to develop a recipe that blows the original out of the water. This is going to be a wildly fun project for me and in addition to experimenting with new hop varieties and yeast strains, we will be experimenting with different fermenter shapes and designs which will allow us to utilize flavor compounds that no other brewery in Alabama (or that I know of in the Southeast) is capable of reproducing. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I keep updates on the experiments!
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
The Return of the Pils!
Last year was the first time we brewed our Spring seasonal Pilsener. When it came out, I made the statement that I thought it was the best beer we'd made. I still believe that even though we have improved our processes and techniques, that the Pils is the best beer we have in our portfolio.
It was funny when we released it a year ago, we had no clue how popular it would be. We had concerns that too many people would see "Pilsener" and be reminded of Lite American "Triple Hops Brewed" beers... The thought was that craft beer drinkers would pass over it thinking it was supposed to be a light beer and light beer drinkers would complain that it was too hoppy.
To combat the lite beer conception, we made sure that we always referred to it as "German Style Pilsener" and then we tried to stress that we used all German ingredients and that the concept for the beer came from Augustiner's Pils. We used a hop schedule very similar to Augustiner, which is a fairly unique schedule in which all the hops are added in the whirlpool... It is essentially a hopbursted Pils recipe, instead of the more common technique used by Germans where they have a bittering addition and two flavor additions. When I first had the Augustiner Pils in Germany, I couldn't believe how much fresher the beer tasted than all the other Pilseners I drank in Germany. The hops came through with a little bit of a spicy, grassy, and lemony flavor.
My only complaint with the beer was that the hop flavor felt incomplete without a little bit of bitterness. That's a fairly common trait of German noble hop varieties, so when I developed the Pils recipe last year, I did have a very small bittering addition of about 5 IBU's. The other 28 IBU's comes only from a whirlpool addition of a blend of hops from the Hallertauer region of Germany.
A lot of people seem to remember that we insisted on using a specific type of Pils malt that wasn't available through our supplier, but we felt strongly enough about it that we spent almost $4,000 just for the shipping of the malts (Normally for the same amount of malt, our shipping cost would be closer to $300). We bought all that we could of the Pils malt and it only allowed us to brew 180 barrels of the beer. This year, we ordered a full truckload of malts from Weyermann and we will be able to brew either 360 or 420 barrels, plus 60 barrels of an Imperial Pilsener to follow in late Spring.
The funny thing about how happy I was with the beer last year though, was that it wasn't actually the recipe that I really wanted to brew. I wanted to use Hallertau Mittlefreu hops, but they are not widely grown and we could not find any available. I ended up settling on a blend that included a Mittlefreu substitute, Hallertau Tradition. Even with settling on other hops, we had to order some hops last year that were two years old due to low availability. Knowing that it would be a problem when we needed to brew more this year, I went ahead and got all the hops that we thought we would need on contract for this year's batches. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate however, we got word that Germany's hops had a terrible yield this year and our contract for next year was rejected. It doesn't impact this year's hops, but we knew we would need to do some experimentation to come up with a good substitute for next year.
Funnily enough, a friend at a hop supplier called me and told me that he would let us contract for the original hops that I wanted to use last year and that he could also get us the Mittlefreu for experimentation for this year. So while we are brewing the same recipe as last year, we also are getting to experiment with what would have been the original recipe so that we can work out next year's beer without any dip in quality. I actually anticipate liking the Mittlefreu version a little bit better, especially since the hop supplier uses a low temperature pelletizer which allows more hop oils to be retained in the pellets, which means an even fresher flavor which more closely resembles whole leaf hops. The flavor of the different hop varieties will be very similar to the original, and it actually may not even be noticeable in a blind taste test that the hops are different. That said, the experimental batch will not be released on its own and what will be shipped in bottles and draft will be the same as last year's recipe, but I probably will pull a keg or two for the taproom for those interested in trying it.
I think of all the beers that we have brewed recently, this is the one that I still look forward to the most. At the end of today, we will already have brewed the first 180 BBL of this year's Pils. In about 6 weeks, I fully anticipate my personal productivity level to take a severe nosedive. Prost!
It was funny when we released it a year ago, we had no clue how popular it would be. We had concerns that too many people would see "Pilsener" and be reminded of Lite American "Triple Hops Brewed" beers... The thought was that craft beer drinkers would pass over it thinking it was supposed to be a light beer and light beer drinkers would complain that it was too hoppy.
To combat the lite beer conception, we made sure that we always referred to it as "German Style Pilsener" and then we tried to stress that we used all German ingredients and that the concept for the beer came from Augustiner's Pils. We used a hop schedule very similar to Augustiner, which is a fairly unique schedule in which all the hops are added in the whirlpool... It is essentially a hopbursted Pils recipe, instead of the more common technique used by Germans where they have a bittering addition and two flavor additions. When I first had the Augustiner Pils in Germany, I couldn't believe how much fresher the beer tasted than all the other Pilseners I drank in Germany. The hops came through with a little bit of a spicy, grassy, and lemony flavor.
My only complaint with the beer was that the hop flavor felt incomplete without a little bit of bitterness. That's a fairly common trait of German noble hop varieties, so when I developed the Pils recipe last year, I did have a very small bittering addition of about 5 IBU's. The other 28 IBU's comes only from a whirlpool addition of a blend of hops from the Hallertauer region of Germany.
A lot of people seem to remember that we insisted on using a specific type of Pils malt that wasn't available through our supplier, but we felt strongly enough about it that we spent almost $4,000 just for the shipping of the malts (Normally for the same amount of malt, our shipping cost would be closer to $300). We bought all that we could of the Pils malt and it only allowed us to brew 180 barrels of the beer. This year, we ordered a full truckload of malts from Weyermann and we will be able to brew either 360 or 420 barrels, plus 60 barrels of an Imperial Pilsener to follow in late Spring.
The funny thing about how happy I was with the beer last year though, was that it wasn't actually the recipe that I really wanted to brew. I wanted to use Hallertau Mittlefreu hops, but they are not widely grown and we could not find any available. I ended up settling on a blend that included a Mittlefreu substitute, Hallertau Tradition. Even with settling on other hops, we had to order some hops last year that were two years old due to low availability. Knowing that it would be a problem when we needed to brew more this year, I went ahead and got all the hops that we thought we would need on contract for this year's batches. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate however, we got word that Germany's hops had a terrible yield this year and our contract for next year was rejected. It doesn't impact this year's hops, but we knew we would need to do some experimentation to come up with a good substitute for next year.
Funnily enough, a friend at a hop supplier called me and told me that he would let us contract for the original hops that I wanted to use last year and that he could also get us the Mittlefreu for experimentation for this year. So while we are brewing the same recipe as last year, we also are getting to experiment with what would have been the original recipe so that we can work out next year's beer without any dip in quality. I actually anticipate liking the Mittlefreu version a little bit better, especially since the hop supplier uses a low temperature pelletizer which allows more hop oils to be retained in the pellets, which means an even fresher flavor which more closely resembles whole leaf hops. The flavor of the different hop varieties will be very similar to the original, and it actually may not even be noticeable in a blind taste test that the hops are different. That said, the experimental batch will not be released on its own and what will be shipped in bottles and draft will be the same as last year's recipe, but I probably will pull a keg or two for the taproom for those interested in trying it.
I think of all the beers that we have brewed recently, this is the one that I still look forward to the most. At the end of today, we will already have brewed the first 180 BBL of this year's Pils. In about 6 weeks, I fully anticipate my personal productivity level to take a severe nosedive. Prost!
Friday, November 20, 2015
New Beer Brewday: Brett Fermented Pinstripe
Today we are working on the Pinstripe variant that I have been looking forward to the most. While people love the flavored variants, my favorite thing with brewing has always been experimenting with malt, hops, and yeast. It is somewhat unfortunate that yeast is the most commonly overlooked ingredient in the brewing world since fermentation accounts for over 90% of the flavor compounds in every beer we drink. Our twist on this Pinstripe variant will exploit that statement in a pretty extreme way... Today we are brewing the first 100% Brettanomyces fermented beer to go in bottles in Alabama.
One of the fun things about Brett is that it seems to have a mind of its own. Even the brewers most experienced with Brett fermentations will tell you that it is unpredictable. Even when brewers repeat beers with the exact same recipe, temperatures, pH levels, water chemistry, etc. Brett seems to behave a little bit differently every time you brew with it. The unpredictability combined with the fact that brewers get concerned about cross contaminating "clean" beers is the main reason that we don't see more beers on the market.
I am hoping that by brewing this beer we can clear up a few common misconceptions about Brett beers. I was a huge fan of Yazoo's naming of their recent beer "Brett... Not Sour." So many people think of Brett beers as sour beers because Brett is a common component in sours. Brett on its own though does not produce *much* lactic acid. In fact, when used on its own, a lot of times Brett resembles normal Saccharomyces fermentations as far as flavor goes. The Brett strain that we chose for this Pinstripe variant is well known for its pie cherry flavor.
Another common misconception is that Brett beers have a horse blanket flavor. However, when Brett is used on its own, it does not have another yeast strain to compete with and it is unable to re-esterficate another yeast's byproducts. It is possible to still get a little bit of barnyard funk, but the dominant flavored typically involve more spicy flavors, or (my preference) fruity flavors. In some cases, Brett flavors can even be confused for fruity hop characters.
Lastly, people always expect Brett beers to take years to be ready to drink. In actuality, Brett fermentations can be done in the same amount of time as most lagers (12 days or so). Some of the confusion comes because Brett has the ability to ferment much larger chains of sugar than Saccharomyces can. When Brett is added to a clean fermentation, the Saccharomyces strain will only leave behind the larger sugar chains and the Brett works slowly to metabolize them. She used on its own though, the Brett is much more active and will tear through the larger sugar chains with ease. However, the timeline that Brett follows is very different from Saccharomyces... Instead of having a lag phase, log phase, stationary phase, and death phase, it will go through a lag, log, lag, stationary, and then a very long lag phase before dying.
Because of this unique timeline, Brett can live for a very long time. It will also continue to evolve the flavors in a beer for its entire lifespan. For this reason, I recommend buying several bottles and collaring them to experience all the different flavor profiles that Brett can develop. A lot of breweries will age Brett beers before sending them out, but we want you to be able to enjoy a fresh bottle, as well as aged bottles. If everything goes well with our fermentation, this beer could be ready to drink in as little as 4 weeks. I will be cellaring a case myself and I plan on drinking a bottle fresh, one at 3 months, another at 6 months, another at 12 months, and then one every six months afterwards. The maximum amount of pie cherry flavor should be present in the 3-6 month age range.
This should be a very unique beer for our area and even pretty unique for beers brewed in the U.S. New Belgium and Lost Abbey are frequently credited with being the first breweries to brew 100% Brett beers and that was only in 2004 that the first batch was brewed. Since then, very few breweries have taken the risk to brew 100% Brett beers, and I am very excited to be included in that group after today!
One of the fun things about Brett is that it seems to have a mind of its own. Even the brewers most experienced with Brett fermentations will tell you that it is unpredictable. Even when brewers repeat beers with the exact same recipe, temperatures, pH levels, water chemistry, etc. Brett seems to behave a little bit differently every time you brew with it. The unpredictability combined with the fact that brewers get concerned about cross contaminating "clean" beers is the main reason that we don't see more beers on the market.
I am hoping that by brewing this beer we can clear up a few common misconceptions about Brett beers. I was a huge fan of Yazoo's naming of their recent beer "Brett... Not Sour." So many people think of Brett beers as sour beers because Brett is a common component in sours. Brett on its own though does not produce *much* lactic acid. In fact, when used on its own, a lot of times Brett resembles normal Saccharomyces fermentations as far as flavor goes. The Brett strain that we chose for this Pinstripe variant is well known for its pie cherry flavor.
Another common misconception is that Brett beers have a horse blanket flavor. However, when Brett is used on its own, it does not have another yeast strain to compete with and it is unable to re-esterficate another yeast's byproducts. It is possible to still get a little bit of barnyard funk, but the dominant flavored typically involve more spicy flavors, or (my preference) fruity flavors. In some cases, Brett flavors can even be confused for fruity hop characters.
Lastly, people always expect Brett beers to take years to be ready to drink. In actuality, Brett fermentations can be done in the same amount of time as most lagers (12 days or so). Some of the confusion comes because Brett has the ability to ferment much larger chains of sugar than Saccharomyces can. When Brett is added to a clean fermentation, the Saccharomyces strain will only leave behind the larger sugar chains and the Brett works slowly to metabolize them. She used on its own though, the Brett is much more active and will tear through the larger sugar chains with ease. However, the timeline that Brett follows is very different from Saccharomyces... Instead of having a lag phase, log phase, stationary phase, and death phase, it will go through a lag, log, lag, stationary, and then a very long lag phase before dying.
Because of this unique timeline, Brett can live for a very long time. It will also continue to evolve the flavors in a beer for its entire lifespan. For this reason, I recommend buying several bottles and collaring them to experience all the different flavor profiles that Brett can develop. A lot of breweries will age Brett beers before sending them out, but we want you to be able to enjoy a fresh bottle, as well as aged bottles. If everything goes well with our fermentation, this beer could be ready to drink in as little as 4 weeks. I will be cellaring a case myself and I plan on drinking a bottle fresh, one at 3 months, another at 6 months, another at 12 months, and then one every six months afterwards. The maximum amount of pie cherry flavor should be present in the 3-6 month age range.
This should be a very unique beer for our area and even pretty unique for beers brewed in the U.S. New Belgium and Lost Abbey are frequently credited with being the first breweries to brew 100% Brett beers and that was only in 2004 that the first batch was brewed. Since then, very few breweries have taken the risk to brew 100% Brett beers, and I am very excited to be included in that group after today!
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Alalambics!
In the last year, every new beer that we have brewed at Blue Pants has had a "New Beer Brewday" blog post written about it. The exception to that is one batch of beer that I tried to keep secret for a while. Normally, I am very open about our recipes and beers in planning, but in this case, I really didn't want to tell too many people about it until the beer was closer to ready. This is a beer nearly two years in the works... Our first long term sour. Unlike our summer seasonal Wheat with Peach, these beers received extensive aging for secondary fermentation with bacteria to sour it.
The idea to brew this beer came from an idea to brew a series of local beers, which would feature local ingredients. The Apple Ale we brewed was the first one released, but this was actually the first one brewed.
The base beer was a very low IBU Amber Ale fermented with American Ale Yeast. After primary fermentation, we used Brettanomyces Lambicus and Pediococcus in oak barrels for aging. The use of American Ale yeast could be seen as a strange choice because typically, brewers would use a more flavorful, estery fermentation profile. However, my thought was that with less esters for the Brettanomyces to re-esterficate, we would keep the barnyard funk (flavors such as leather, horse stable, etc.) to a minimum, while still getting cherry pie flavors from the Brettanomyces. This was an experiment without being able to rely on other brewer's experience, and it seems to have worked. There is still a pleasant funkiness, but it is not over the top the way a lot of Brett beers tend to be.
The Pediococcus was the scary thing for me to experiment with. I have used lactobacillus in the past with success, but Pediococcus is more prone to converting alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar). Great care has to be taken to eliminate any oxygen from dissolving into solution any time a barrel is sampled, moved, or has beer transferred from it. Pediococcus also can produce diacetyl and, unlike yeast, can not reduce the diacetyl content once it has been produced. It also requires that the beer is sampled regularly when aging in the barrel because the oak does allow some oxygen to pass through. Some acetic acid will be produced as a result and a small amount can be seen as desirable and is an important part of the flavor profile of a sour beer, but it needs to be kept to a low level. Once the beer is getting close to displaying acetic acid, it is time to add the fruit.
The fruit... I could go off on a multi-page rant about how much of a pain in the ass it is to deal with fresh fruit. We used peaches, grapes, and cantaloupes from Isom's, in these beers. For the peaches we had 800 lbs of peaches that had to be pitted (25% of the pits did get added to the barrels), and chopped into cubes small enough to fit through the barrel bung hole (about 1.5" diameter). That took 5 of us an entire day to chop up, and then it took Kara and I almost a whole other day to stuff the barrels and transfer beer on top of. The grapes had to be de-stemmed and smashed and the cantaloupe had to be skinned, chopped, and stuffed into the barrel. I think the last day, we worked for about 16 hours getting the grapes and cantaloupe stuffed into the barrels. The bright side, was that the work was mindless enough that Kara and I got to watch about a season's worth of Friends episodes while at work.
The amount of fruit used was approximately 3 lbs per gallon of beer. The beer then fermented the fruit for another 3 months, and is being bottled this week. One common complaint I have with fruited sours is that they are frequently carbonated to medium or high volumes of co2. In my opinion, the carbonic acid enhances the harsher acidic flavors from acetic acid and ethyl acetate and covers up the nice fruity flavors. As a result, I decided to leave the carbonation at a medium low level and the lactic acid tickles the palate in a similar manner to carbon dioxide. As a result, the carbonic acid is not able to diminish any of the fruit, or Brett flavors, and the beer is slightly easier drinking. These beers are very limited in supply, so if you see bottles on the shelves and you want to try them, I suggest not passing them up. They won't last long. Cheers!
A few fun facts:
-The Brett and Pediococcus were grown up from Wyeast homebrew packs. It was going to take too long to get them from Wyeast, so I propagated the cultures in my office at home.
-The cantaloupe was probably the 5th or 6th fallback plan since the fruits we wanted were not available. It is also my favorite version
-After the 16 hour day, I was at the brewery until 2:00 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. that morning and set off on a 2,400 mile motorcycle trip. The first day, I rode 600 miles in 12 hours. I suppose adrenaline got me through it,
The idea to brew this beer came from an idea to brew a series of local beers, which would feature local ingredients. The Apple Ale we brewed was the first one released, but this was actually the first one brewed.
The base beer was a very low IBU Amber Ale fermented with American Ale Yeast. After primary fermentation, we used Brettanomyces Lambicus and Pediococcus in oak barrels for aging. The use of American Ale yeast could be seen as a strange choice because typically, brewers would use a more flavorful, estery fermentation profile. However, my thought was that with less esters for the Brettanomyces to re-esterficate, we would keep the barnyard funk (flavors such as leather, horse stable, etc.) to a minimum, while still getting cherry pie flavors from the Brettanomyces. This was an experiment without being able to rely on other brewer's experience, and it seems to have worked. There is still a pleasant funkiness, but it is not over the top the way a lot of Brett beers tend to be.
The Pediococcus was the scary thing for me to experiment with. I have used lactobacillus in the past with success, but Pediococcus is more prone to converting alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar). Great care has to be taken to eliminate any oxygen from dissolving into solution any time a barrel is sampled, moved, or has beer transferred from it. Pediococcus also can produce diacetyl and, unlike yeast, can not reduce the diacetyl content once it has been produced. It also requires that the beer is sampled regularly when aging in the barrel because the oak does allow some oxygen to pass through. Some acetic acid will be produced as a result and a small amount can be seen as desirable and is an important part of the flavor profile of a sour beer, but it needs to be kept to a low level. Once the beer is getting close to displaying acetic acid, it is time to add the fruit.
The fruit... I could go off on a multi-page rant about how much of a pain in the ass it is to deal with fresh fruit. We used peaches, grapes, and cantaloupes from Isom's, in these beers. For the peaches we had 800 lbs of peaches that had to be pitted (25% of the pits did get added to the barrels), and chopped into cubes small enough to fit through the barrel bung hole (about 1.5" diameter). That took 5 of us an entire day to chop up, and then it took Kara and I almost a whole other day to stuff the barrels and transfer beer on top of. The grapes had to be de-stemmed and smashed and the cantaloupe had to be skinned, chopped, and stuffed into the barrel. I think the last day, we worked for about 16 hours getting the grapes and cantaloupe stuffed into the barrels. The bright side, was that the work was mindless enough that Kara and I got to watch about a season's worth of Friends episodes while at work.
The amount of fruit used was approximately 3 lbs per gallon of beer. The beer then fermented the fruit for another 3 months, and is being bottled this week. One common complaint I have with fruited sours is that they are frequently carbonated to medium or high volumes of co2. In my opinion, the carbonic acid enhances the harsher acidic flavors from acetic acid and ethyl acetate and covers up the nice fruity flavors. As a result, I decided to leave the carbonation at a medium low level and the lactic acid tickles the palate in a similar manner to carbon dioxide. As a result, the carbonic acid is not able to diminish any of the fruit, or Brett flavors, and the beer is slightly easier drinking. These beers are very limited in supply, so if you see bottles on the shelves and you want to try them, I suggest not passing them up. They won't last long. Cheers!
A few fun facts:
-The Brett and Pediococcus were grown up from Wyeast homebrew packs. It was going to take too long to get them from Wyeast, so I propagated the cultures in my office at home.
-The cantaloupe was probably the 5th or 6th fallback plan since the fruits we wanted were not available. It is also my favorite version
-After the 16 hour day, I was at the brewery until 2:00 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. that morning and set off on a 2,400 mile motorcycle trip. The first day, I rode 600 miles in 12 hours. I suppose adrenaline got me through it,
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
New Beer Brewday: Triple IPA with Wet Hops
Today, we are brewing a super exciting new beer... To celebrate our 5th Anniversary of operations, we are brewing a Triple IPA with wet hops. This is the first time we have brewed a wet hop beer and I'm pumped up about these hops. They were picked in the middle of the night in Michigan, immediately placed on a refrigerated truck, and driven directly to the brewery, arriving about 13 hours after being harvested. We had delayed mashing in our first batch by a few hours so that the hops would be able to go immediately into our wort, straight off the truck.
Unfortunately, brewing with wet hops has provided several problems. The first was obviously the logistics of scheduling a hop delivery for a brewday, knowing that we wanted to brew with the hops upon arrival. But the less obvious problem came from brewing techniques... At what point did we want to add the fresh hops? In the past, we have only used dried, pelletized hops as that is what our system was built to handle. Even just using whole hops would have provided a problem, but we decided to use whole wet hops for this beer. If we were to add them to our kettle, we would not have been able to get much of the wort to transfer through the heat exchanger since the flowers would have clogged our plumbing.
To overcome this problem, we decided that we would brew a batch as normal, but after boiling he wort, we pumped all the liquid back into our mash tun, which we filled with 120 lbs of wet hops and allowed the hops to steep in the hot wort. After 5 minutes of sitting on the hops, we used our mash tun false bottom to filter the hops out as the wort was pumped through the heat exchanger. Having never brewed this way before, I was horrified at the prospect of the false bottom clogging and not allowing any wort through, which would have resulted in the loss of nearly $6,000 of raw materials. Luckily, our makeshift "Hopback" method worked well and we were able to have a normal yield on our first batch of the day.
However, the next problem arose from having to use the mash tun for a hop addition... We were then unable to mash the second batch of the day until after the time that we were finished brewing the first batch completely. Normally, we would have two batches going at once, but in this case we couldn't have the overlap. That, combined with a delayed start, has resulted in what will likely be a nearly 20 hour day. Even with the annoyance of the prospect of being here late into the middle of the night, I still can't wait for this beer.
In addition to the Chinook wet hops, we used Mandarina Bavaria hops (discussed in my previous blog post about Hoptoberfest) and Cascade hops. The beer will be around 11% ABV, and as all of my hoppy beers are brewed, there is no bittering addition of hops, but rather, gratuitous amounts of late hop additions and dry hops. Look for the beer to hit the shelves in early October and DO NOT AGE this beer. Buy fresh, and drink fresh for maximum lupulin enjoyment!
Unfortunately, brewing with wet hops has provided several problems. The first was obviously the logistics of scheduling a hop delivery for a brewday, knowing that we wanted to brew with the hops upon arrival. But the less obvious problem came from brewing techniques... At what point did we want to add the fresh hops? In the past, we have only used dried, pelletized hops as that is what our system was built to handle. Even just using whole hops would have provided a problem, but we decided to use whole wet hops for this beer. If we were to add them to our kettle, we would not have been able to get much of the wort to transfer through the heat exchanger since the flowers would have clogged our plumbing.
To overcome this problem, we decided that we would brew a batch as normal, but after boiling he wort, we pumped all the liquid back into our mash tun, which we filled with 120 lbs of wet hops and allowed the hops to steep in the hot wort. After 5 minutes of sitting on the hops, we used our mash tun false bottom to filter the hops out as the wort was pumped through the heat exchanger. Having never brewed this way before, I was horrified at the prospect of the false bottom clogging and not allowing any wort through, which would have resulted in the loss of nearly $6,000 of raw materials. Luckily, our makeshift "Hopback" method worked well and we were able to have a normal yield on our first batch of the day.
However, the next problem arose from having to use the mash tun for a hop addition... We were then unable to mash the second batch of the day until after the time that we were finished brewing the first batch completely. Normally, we would have two batches going at once, but in this case we couldn't have the overlap. That, combined with a delayed start, has resulted in what will likely be a nearly 20 hour day. Even with the annoyance of the prospect of being here late into the middle of the night, I still can't wait for this beer.
In addition to the Chinook wet hops, we used Mandarina Bavaria hops (discussed in my previous blog post about Hoptoberfest) and Cascade hops. The beer will be around 11% ABV, and as all of my hoppy beers are brewed, there is no bittering addition of hops, but rather, gratuitous amounts of late hop additions and dry hops. Look for the beer to hit the shelves in early October and DO NOT AGE this beer. Buy fresh, and drink fresh for maximum lupulin enjoyment!
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
New Beer Brewday: Hoptoberfest
I'm starting to get really pumped up about brewing a bunch of new beers again. For a while, it seemed like we just kept brewing the same things over and over (Which looking back, really isn't far from the truth ever since we released our new core beers and seasonals). Now, it seems like we have nothing. But new beers coming up and not enough of our core beers to go around. Today, we are brewing 60 barrels of a beer that hadn't even been discussed at the brewery until last Friday... Hoptoberfest.
To be honest, I'm not sure if this beer started out as a joke or not. The way it works for me when I'm coming up with a new beer is not to brainstorm a bunch of beers that I'd like to brew, but rather to blurt out whenever a new beer comes to mind. Typically this happens pretty spontaneously without any reason that the thought crosses my mind. So last week as we were brewing our Oktoberfest and the brewery was a little too quiet, I turned to Mike and said that I thought we should brew the same basic beer, but with a ton of hops and call it Hoptoberfest next year. I got the typical non-committal "I like it." response that I typically get when these situations pop up.
Then we got to yesterday... We were planning on prepping to brew our last batch of Oktoberfest for the year when we realized that the batch wouldn't be ready until the first week of October... Too late to release 60 barrels of an Oktoberfest. We had thought for a moment that we would just skip the Brewday and gradually we would use all the ingredients in other beers. It wasn't until after deciding to skip today's brew day that we realized we had the opportunity to brew the Hoptoberfest a year sooner than we had discussed just four days previously. In a happy twist of fate, we realized that we had the perfect hops for the beer...
Due to a few upcoming beers, we needed to order some new hops and the suppliers needed for us to buy very large quantities all at once in order to be able to purchase the necessary varieties. This lead us to having an abundance of Citra and a newer, very hard to find hop varietal from Germany: Mandarina Bavaria. Mandarina Bavaria is notable for being a German hop varietal that has many of the qualities that American brewers desire in IPA's. It has a very distinctive mandarin orange flavor and aroma, that would normally be absent from hops grown in Europe where the common hop flavors are grassy, spicy, and lightly floral, but rarely fruity, tropical, or citrusy.
So that brings us the main hop component of our Hoptoberfest; a lager brewed with the same malt base and yeast as our traditional style German Oktoberfest, but utilizes enough hops in the boil to be on par with the extreme hoppy IPA's of the U.S. breweries, dry hopped twice with Citra and Mandarina Bavaria, and lagered for just as long as any of our other lagers to create a crisp, clean, refreshing finish. Be on the lookout for it in the first week of October in bombers!
To be honest, I'm not sure if this beer started out as a joke or not. The way it works for me when I'm coming up with a new beer is not to brainstorm a bunch of beers that I'd like to brew, but rather to blurt out whenever a new beer comes to mind. Typically this happens pretty spontaneously without any reason that the thought crosses my mind. So last week as we were brewing our Oktoberfest and the brewery was a little too quiet, I turned to Mike and said that I thought we should brew the same basic beer, but with a ton of hops and call it Hoptoberfest next year. I got the typical non-committal "I like it." response that I typically get when these situations pop up.
Then we got to yesterday... We were planning on prepping to brew our last batch of Oktoberfest for the year when we realized that the batch wouldn't be ready until the first week of October... Too late to release 60 barrels of an Oktoberfest. We had thought for a moment that we would just skip the Brewday and gradually we would use all the ingredients in other beers. It wasn't until after deciding to skip today's brew day that we realized we had the opportunity to brew the Hoptoberfest a year sooner than we had discussed just four days previously. In a happy twist of fate, we realized that we had the perfect hops for the beer...
Due to a few upcoming beers, we needed to order some new hops and the suppliers needed for us to buy very large quantities all at once in order to be able to purchase the necessary varieties. This lead us to having an abundance of Citra and a newer, very hard to find hop varietal from Germany: Mandarina Bavaria. Mandarina Bavaria is notable for being a German hop varietal that has many of the qualities that American brewers desire in IPA's. It has a very distinctive mandarin orange flavor and aroma, that would normally be absent from hops grown in Europe where the common hop flavors are grassy, spicy, and lightly floral, but rarely fruity, tropical, or citrusy.
So that brings us the main hop component of our Hoptoberfest; a lager brewed with the same malt base and yeast as our traditional style German Oktoberfest, but utilizes enough hops in the boil to be on par with the extreme hoppy IPA's of the U.S. breweries, dry hopped twice with Citra and Mandarina Bavaria, and lagered for just as long as any of our other lagers to create a crisp, clean, refreshing finish. Be on the lookout for it in the first week of October in bombers!
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
New Beer Brewday: Cream Ale
Yikes... It has been too long since my last blog post. We've been busy brewing 360 Barrels of Oktoberfest, while trying to keep up production of our year round beers. As a result, I haven't had much time to brew new beers or do blogging about other happenings in the brewery. Today however, we were able to sneak in a new 30 barrel batch of Cream Ale. For several reasons, I am super excited about brewing this beer.
Many people don't realize that just about every American style of beer has roots that harken back to other countries' brewing traditions. In fact, the California Common is the only style that I can think of that is truly an American invention. In the case of American style ales, most of them stemmed from English Ales and evolved to be what they are now. However, it surprises a lot of people to hear that cream ales really evolved from German style lagers (and the hybrid style Kölsch).
In Germany, when Pilseners first became popular, the style took off. At the time, it was revolutionary to have a beer brewed with such a light color and full hoppy flavor. Several styles evolved from the Pils, including the Helles, which was a result of consumers liking the light color and body of Pils, but wanted less bitterness. When brewing lagers in America gained popularity, American brewers found that with North American ingredients, they were unable to brew a beer as light as the Germans. In an attempt to brew lighter colored beers, brewers began using adjuncts like corn and rice and the American Adjunct Lager was born.
The Kölsch is another style that evolved from the Pils and is also moderately hoppy. Similar to Kölsch, cream ales are fermented with ale yeast and go through a short lagering period. The idea is to produce a beer that is as highly drinkable as light lagers, but to have more flavor. The original cream ales were really pretty subpar as a result of using American 6-Row Barley (as opposed to 2-Row), inferior American hops, and bland yeast strains. In an effort to brew the type of beer that the original cream ale brewers would have wanted to brew if they had the resources available, we are using German Premium Pils Malt and Kölsch yeast.
Recently, cream ales have gotten a bit of a bad reputation as not being a crafty enough beer for craft beer drinkers and having too much flavor for light beer drinkers. A large reason for this I think is that a lot of craft brewers don't put the time into the style to lager it correctly, or they use yeast strains that are really intended for clean ales that showcase hops. However, using Kölsch yeast, a significant part of this beer's character will come from fermentation and will have light fruity esters which taste somewhat similar to Riesling wines.
The biggest reason that I am excited about this beer is that when I first decided to start brewing, it was because I wanted to make a beer as good as my (at the time) favorite beer. The first beer that I had ever drank was a cream ale from New Glarus in Wisconsin; Spotted Cow. I got hooked on craft beers when I was spending my summers in Madison, WI. Spotted Cow was always my go-to choice. Coming back to Alabama for college, I went to my first keg party and tried my first lite beer. That day I decided that if I couldn't get craft beer in Alabama, I would just learn to brew it myself. I always wanted to brew a Spotted Cow clone.
Early in my home brewing days, I was reading BeerAdvocate and saw a post from New Glarus Brewmaster Dan Carey. He rarely ever posted and he is pretty secretive about his recipes. I sent him a private message with my attempt at guessing their recipe. He was very kind to tell me to change one of my caramel malts to a darker caramel malt and that other than that, it was good to go. Looking over the recipe now, and knowing that Dan Carey was trained in Germany as well, I realized that the correct way to brew this beer is to use more of a German approach to the beer.
On two occasions I tried brewing that recipe. The first time, the beer was ok, but I didn't have a good fermentation temperature control in my apartment at the time and I thought it could have been better. The second time was actually about 3 years ago at Blue Pants, I brewed a 1 barrel batch and it was way over gravity. Now that I understand the German brewing traditions of Kölsch a lot better, I am
very excited about this batch that we are brewing now. While the recipe has changed a bit so as not to be an exact Spotted Cow clone, I do think that fans of Spotted Cow will see the relation between the beers.
Many people don't realize that just about every American style of beer has roots that harken back to other countries' brewing traditions. In fact, the California Common is the only style that I can think of that is truly an American invention. In the case of American style ales, most of them stemmed from English Ales and evolved to be what they are now. However, it surprises a lot of people to hear that cream ales really evolved from German style lagers (and the hybrid style Kölsch).
In Germany, when Pilseners first became popular, the style took off. At the time, it was revolutionary to have a beer brewed with such a light color and full hoppy flavor. Several styles evolved from the Pils, including the Helles, which was a result of consumers liking the light color and body of Pils, but wanted less bitterness. When brewing lagers in America gained popularity, American brewers found that with North American ingredients, they were unable to brew a beer as light as the Germans. In an attempt to brew lighter colored beers, brewers began using adjuncts like corn and rice and the American Adjunct Lager was born.
The Kölsch is another style that evolved from the Pils and is also moderately hoppy. Similar to Kölsch, cream ales are fermented with ale yeast and go through a short lagering period. The idea is to produce a beer that is as highly drinkable as light lagers, but to have more flavor. The original cream ales were really pretty subpar as a result of using American 6-Row Barley (as opposed to 2-Row), inferior American hops, and bland yeast strains. In an effort to brew the type of beer that the original cream ale brewers would have wanted to brew if they had the resources available, we are using German Premium Pils Malt and Kölsch yeast.
Recently, cream ales have gotten a bit of a bad reputation as not being a crafty enough beer for craft beer drinkers and having too much flavor for light beer drinkers. A large reason for this I think is that a lot of craft brewers don't put the time into the style to lager it correctly, or they use yeast strains that are really intended for clean ales that showcase hops. However, using Kölsch yeast, a significant part of this beer's character will come from fermentation and will have light fruity esters which taste somewhat similar to Riesling wines.
The biggest reason that I am excited about this beer is that when I first decided to start brewing, it was because I wanted to make a beer as good as my (at the time) favorite beer. The first beer that I had ever drank was a cream ale from New Glarus in Wisconsin; Spotted Cow. I got hooked on craft beers when I was spending my summers in Madison, WI. Spotted Cow was always my go-to choice. Coming back to Alabama for college, I went to my first keg party and tried my first lite beer. That day I decided that if I couldn't get craft beer in Alabama, I would just learn to brew it myself. I always wanted to brew a Spotted Cow clone.
Early in my home brewing days, I was reading BeerAdvocate and saw a post from New Glarus Brewmaster Dan Carey. He rarely ever posted and he is pretty secretive about his recipes. I sent him a private message with my attempt at guessing their recipe. He was very kind to tell me to change one of my caramel malts to a darker caramel malt and that other than that, it was good to go. Looking over the recipe now, and knowing that Dan Carey was trained in Germany as well, I realized that the correct way to brew this beer is to use more of a German approach to the beer.
On two occasions I tried brewing that recipe. The first time, the beer was ok, but I didn't have a good fermentation temperature control in my apartment at the time and I thought it could have been better. The second time was actually about 3 years ago at Blue Pants, I brewed a 1 barrel batch and it was way over gravity. Now that I understand the German brewing traditions of Kölsch a lot better, I am
very excited about this batch that we are brewing now. While the recipe has changed a bit so as not to be an exact Spotted Cow clone, I do think that fans of Spotted Cow will see the relation between the beers.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Oktoberfest
This morning I started milling for our first batch of Oktoberfest of 2015. It got me thinking back to this time last year... Holy crap has a lot changed? Last year, we brewed 180 Barrels of Oktoberfest and there was no way we could have brewed more. However, this year we knew that 180 barrels wouldn't be enough, so in anticipation of the Oktoberfest coming up, we got 2 new 60 barrel fermenters a few weeks ago. Now we will be able to at least double last year's production.
When we first started talks again about the Oktoberfest this year, I was excited to finally be brewing a seasonal that we had brewed before, and that we didn't have any plans to tweak the recipe or procedures. In doing so, that would make this the first seasonal offering that has stayed the same as the previous year's version in 2 years. All that to say, that plan fell apart and I decided to make one last really small tweak. Although, this change is one that no one would ever know that we made unless told that a change had been made.
One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that this is actually our 3rd year brewing the Oktoberfest. The first year, we did just 30 barrels and it was draught only in a few places. To be honest, that first batch was one of the beers that I was really disappointed in. At the time, our kettle gave us a lot of issues during our boils and as a result, the first year of Oktoberfest had a noticeable amount of DMS (vegetal flavor). Thankfully, not too many people had the opportunity to try that beer, and the majority of people that did try it did not pick up the DMS flavor.
By last year, we had our kettle issues fixed and we brewed the exact same recipe with a minor tweak in regards to the water chemistry. Using softer water, we were able to brew the beer with more of a crisp, clean finish. Without the DMS and with the better mouthfeel, the Oktoberfest was a huge success. In addition to those changes, we were in the middle of making a change to a new maltster. Since we brewed three batches of the beer last year, we were able to see the evolution of the beer as we converted the beer over to using malts exclusively from Germany. By the time we brewed our last batch a year ago, we had made the switch completely and the improvements in the beer really showed.
So that brings us to this year... The one that we here at the brewery have all been looking forward to. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, this beer was supposed to be the first seasonal that we could look forward to doing exactly the same as the previous year. For us, that feels really big because we have made so many changes and introduced so many new beers that have been really popular. We've been kind of fantasizing about what it would mean to brew the same beers, but to have a following for them before they're released. For us it means greater predictability of our brew schedule, easier sales pitches to restaurants and bars, and the ability to forecast the necessity for expansion with greater precision than before.
So here it is... The last minor tweak to any of our seasonal beers. Last year, I loved the clarity of the filtered beer, the color was a nice golden color comparable to the Oktoberfests most commonly served in Germany, the aroma was great, the flavor was nice and bready, and the mouthfeel was exactly as we wanted it. But, the one thing I thought could be better was the size of the head. The foam had the appropriate white color and it had great retention, but it did not have the huge fluffy head that you see in German steins. Last year, I kept wanting to use hop extract for bittering as it provides a smoother, cleaner bitterness and is more common in Germany than hop pellets. The extract is made with supercritical CO2, which extracts all of the desirable compounds that we want from hops, but leaves behind a lot of the polyphenols and vegetal matter. It is also more consistent from year to year than hop pellets are. In addition to the hop extract for bitterness, there is another advanced hop product (hexahydro-iso-alpha acid) which helps to greatly enhance beer foam and retention. When the beer is released, there will be no noticeable change in the flavor of the beer, other than it will feel more easily drinkable as a result of the the softer bitterness and the appearance will be better.
For those of you that did not have the opportunity to try the beer last year; our Oktoberfest is indicative of a Helles-Marzen (Pale Marzen) like what would be found most commonly in Germany, which is a contrast to the type of Oktoberfest most commonly brewed in America. The result is a crisper, less sweet, and lighter colored beer, while still being full bodied and malty.
Prost!
When we first started talks again about the Oktoberfest this year, I was excited to finally be brewing a seasonal that we had brewed before, and that we didn't have any plans to tweak the recipe or procedures. In doing so, that would make this the first seasonal offering that has stayed the same as the previous year's version in 2 years. All that to say, that plan fell apart and I decided to make one last really small tweak. Although, this change is one that no one would ever know that we made unless told that a change had been made.
One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that this is actually our 3rd year brewing the Oktoberfest. The first year, we did just 30 barrels and it was draught only in a few places. To be honest, that first batch was one of the beers that I was really disappointed in. At the time, our kettle gave us a lot of issues during our boils and as a result, the first year of Oktoberfest had a noticeable amount of DMS (vegetal flavor). Thankfully, not too many people had the opportunity to try that beer, and the majority of people that did try it did not pick up the DMS flavor.
By last year, we had our kettle issues fixed and we brewed the exact same recipe with a minor tweak in regards to the water chemistry. Using softer water, we were able to brew the beer with more of a crisp, clean finish. Without the DMS and with the better mouthfeel, the Oktoberfest was a huge success. In addition to those changes, we were in the middle of making a change to a new maltster. Since we brewed three batches of the beer last year, we were able to see the evolution of the beer as we converted the beer over to using malts exclusively from Germany. By the time we brewed our last batch a year ago, we had made the switch completely and the improvements in the beer really showed.
So that brings us to this year... The one that we here at the brewery have all been looking forward to. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, this beer was supposed to be the first seasonal that we could look forward to doing exactly the same as the previous year. For us, that feels really big because we have made so many changes and introduced so many new beers that have been really popular. We've been kind of fantasizing about what it would mean to brew the same beers, but to have a following for them before they're released. For us it means greater predictability of our brew schedule, easier sales pitches to restaurants and bars, and the ability to forecast the necessity for expansion with greater precision than before.
So here it is... The last minor tweak to any of our seasonal beers. Last year, I loved the clarity of the filtered beer, the color was a nice golden color comparable to the Oktoberfests most commonly served in Germany, the aroma was great, the flavor was nice and bready, and the mouthfeel was exactly as we wanted it. But, the one thing I thought could be better was the size of the head. The foam had the appropriate white color and it had great retention, but it did not have the huge fluffy head that you see in German steins. Last year, I kept wanting to use hop extract for bittering as it provides a smoother, cleaner bitterness and is more common in Germany than hop pellets. The extract is made with supercritical CO2, which extracts all of the desirable compounds that we want from hops, but leaves behind a lot of the polyphenols and vegetal matter. It is also more consistent from year to year than hop pellets are. In addition to the hop extract for bitterness, there is another advanced hop product (hexahydro-iso-alpha acid) which helps to greatly enhance beer foam and retention. When the beer is released, there will be no noticeable change in the flavor of the beer, other than it will feel more easily drinkable as a result of the the softer bitterness and the appearance will be better.
For those of you that did not have the opportunity to try the beer last year; our Oktoberfest is indicative of a Helles-Marzen (Pale Marzen) like what would be found most commonly in Germany, which is a contrast to the type of Oktoberfest most commonly brewed in America. The result is a crisper, less sweet, and lighter colored beer, while still being full bodied and malty.
Prost!
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Slip Rose Alterations
For the last three summers, Slip Rose Strawberry Saison has been a popular summer beer among our loyal followers. Many people that didn't like fruit beers found that they were fans of the saison because the strawberry flavor was so subtle. However, the subtlety of the strawberry flavor threw off a lot of first time buyers and having the word "strawberry" in the title scared off a lot of beer drinkers who refused to try fruit beers. As a result, Slip Rose never managed to achieve the level of success that our new seasonals have enjoyed. We realized that it was time to move on from Slip Rose as our main summer seasonal. We replaced it this year with our Wheat with Peach berliner weisse. Despite the new beer though, we wanted to give Slip Rose another shot. Yesterday, we brewed 15 barrels of an updated recipe which will make the beer quite different from what it was in the past.
It is a fairly unique situation to be able to brew a smaller batch of an old recipe and say "If I were to do it again, this is how it would be done." But that is essentially what we are doing now. We have gone back to the drawing board and given the Slip Rose recipe a major overhaul. We narrowed down what we believed to be areas that needed improvement. In addition to the strawberry flavor being too subtle, being a saison, Slip Rose used a French Saison yeast strain which left the beer extremely dry. There was no residual sweetness to support the flavor of the strawberry. Additionally, the beer left a little bit of a harsh mouthfeel on the back of the tongue.
To address these issues, we have made several changes. Firstly, we were previously using a fresh strawberry concentrate. We have now made the switch to a strawberry puree. That first little change would bring strawberry flavor out more on its own, but in addition to that, we have also bumped up the usage rate. The new Slip Rose recipe will now use 1.5 lbs of strawberry puree per gallon of beer... That is close to 700 lbs of strawberry puree for our small batch of beer.
Secondly, to address the mouthfeel issue, we decided to change out about 1/3 of the malted barley for wheat. Wheat will provide a softer, fluffy mouthfeel and should also increase head retention, body, and drinkability.
Lastly, the biggest change we have made is our yeast selection. We decided to utilize our house Kolsch yeast for this new recipe. The French Saison yeast that we used to use was one of the most efficient yeast strains I have ever used for fermenting high molecular chains of sugar. The beer was very dry, and for my tastes, a little too phenolic. The big thing that seems to be working with our customers lately has been cleaner fermentations and crisper, more "sessionable" beers. Using our house Kolsch yeast, the phenols will not be present and the yeast strain will leave some higher molecular sugars to provide body for the beer. In addition, the Kolsch yeast provides a pleasantly tart ester profile and a crisp, clean finish.
Since Slip Rose was only brewed as a 15 barrel batch, the plan for this year is to keep it as a draft only option in select locations. However, I am looking forward to seeing all your reviews on BeerAdvocate and Untappd!
It is a fairly unique situation to be able to brew a smaller batch of an old recipe and say "If I were to do it again, this is how it would be done." But that is essentially what we are doing now. We have gone back to the drawing board and given the Slip Rose recipe a major overhaul. We narrowed down what we believed to be areas that needed improvement. In addition to the strawberry flavor being too subtle, being a saison, Slip Rose used a French Saison yeast strain which left the beer extremely dry. There was no residual sweetness to support the flavor of the strawberry. Additionally, the beer left a little bit of a harsh mouthfeel on the back of the tongue.
To address these issues, we have made several changes. Firstly, we were previously using a fresh strawberry concentrate. We have now made the switch to a strawberry puree. That first little change would bring strawberry flavor out more on its own, but in addition to that, we have also bumped up the usage rate. The new Slip Rose recipe will now use 1.5 lbs of strawberry puree per gallon of beer... That is close to 700 lbs of strawberry puree for our small batch of beer.
Secondly, to address the mouthfeel issue, we decided to change out about 1/3 of the malted barley for wheat. Wheat will provide a softer, fluffy mouthfeel and should also increase head retention, body, and drinkability.
Lastly, the biggest change we have made is our yeast selection. We decided to utilize our house Kolsch yeast for this new recipe. The French Saison yeast that we used to use was one of the most efficient yeast strains I have ever used for fermenting high molecular chains of sugar. The beer was very dry, and for my tastes, a little too phenolic. The big thing that seems to be working with our customers lately has been cleaner fermentations and crisper, more "sessionable" beers. Using our house Kolsch yeast, the phenols will not be present and the yeast strain will leave some higher molecular sugars to provide body for the beer. In addition, the Kolsch yeast provides a pleasantly tart ester profile and a crisp, clean finish.
Since Slip Rose was only brewed as a 15 barrel batch, the plan for this year is to keep it as a draft only option in select locations. However, I am looking forward to seeing all your reviews on BeerAdvocate and Untappd!
Friday, April 3, 2015
Summer Seasonal: Wheat Brewed with Peaches
I suppose it is time to talk about another new beer! As many of our followers have noticed, there have been a lot of changes to Blue Pants' offerings in the last year. Going all the way back to last August, we bottled our Oktoberfest for the first time as our Fall seasonal. Then, we threw a curveball into our winter mix and offered our Chocolate Oatmeal Porter. After the success of those two and our need for a Spring seasonal (which had previously been Spare Pair before it was promoted to a year round beer), we introduced our German Style Pilsener. With the success of all of our new seasonal beers, we realized that it was time to make a change to our year round line up and we recently introduced our Hopbursted IPA, a much improved Pale Ale, and an Amber Ale (which shipped this week). The feedback we have received on all our new beers has been fantastic, but it made us realize a flaw in our rotation, and possibly the biggest challenge that we have seen in my 3 years with the brewery... The summer seasonal.
Slip Rose Strawberry Saison had been our summer seasonal since my first day at the brewery. In fact, it was the first beer that I helped bottle on my first day of work. It has always had a really unique fan base and we have always had some people that have been extremely passionate about their enjoyment of Slip Rose. However, it has also received a lot of criticism for its subtle strawberry flavor. The strawberry was fermented in the beer and the contribution from the fruit was mostly a light tartness. Without using artificial strawberry flavoring, we don't have the capability of leaving a sweet strawberry flavor in the beer due to equipment constraints, but we have always been against the use of artificial strawberry flavoring in the beer. We realized that with how well respected our other seasonal's have been, that it might be time to explore other options for our summer beer.
At first, we thought we might just tweak the Slip Rose recipe and make a new strawberry wheat beer, but the concern was that we would still have the same issue with people expecting more strawberry flavor. So when we scratched that idea, we realized that the challenge was much greater than expected. After all the beers we have released in the last year, we realized that we wanted to brew another beer style that is associated with high quality, but is still easy drinking for the hot summer months, excites the craft beer enthusiasts, and doesn't scare away the casual beer drinker. We discussed hoppy wheat beers and saisons, but thought they would scare away casual drinkers. We then discussed cream ales and blondes, but thought the craft beer geeks would scoff at them as if they were macro beer alternatives not worthy of a try.
After spending many hours discussing the merits of various summer seasonals that have proven to be commercially successful, we discussed the idea of a wheat beer, brewed with peaches, that is lightly tart. Essentially, a Berliner Weisse brewed with peaches. The idea originally scared the sales team as they thought that I was telling them I wanted to brew a sour beer (which would never sell in very high volume, but would be great for limited releases) However, a traditional Berliner is not assertively sour, but rather it is pleasantly tart, which is perfect for a thirst quenching beverage on a hot summer day. The use of peach would give an extra dimension of flavor to the beer with just a hint of peach flavor. Once the sales team jumped on board, I realized what a mess I had gotten the brewing team into.
The big challenge from the brewing side was to develop a method to acidify the beer in a way that would not contaminate the rest of the brewery. Most brewers would take the easy way out and just use food grade lactic acid post-fermentation to achieve the desired level of acidity. I hated that idea because it felt a little like cheating, but a beer brewed that way does not yield the full range of flavors that is found in a lacto fermentation. In a sense, I think beers brewed that way taste artificial. The other common way would be to do a sour mash, but then we would be severely limited in our production capability and the results would be likely inconsistent. The other way would be to do a lacto fermentation in the fermenter with a normal yeast strain working together... No way in hell I was going to do that.
To solve the problem, I decided to utilize a sour wort technique where I did a mash and sparge like
normal. I then pasteurized the wort by boiling for 10 minutes and chilled it while transferring into food grade IBC totes. In the tote, we added lactobacillus using lacto that is naturally occurring on grains. 14 hours later, I am now able to move the wort back to the kettle, boil, and proceed pretty much like normal for any other Brewday, with the only exception being that we will be adding nearly 500lbs of peach puree to the fermenter. Now, when we rebrew it next week, I will need 8 IBC totes filled with wort for souring.
Sounds like a good plan right? Remember the mess for the brewing team though? Using this method, we will be constantly monitoring the pH of the wort, coming in throughout the night all summer long. This time it took us 14 hours to acidify, but next time, we might not be so lucky. If the wort is ready to be boiled at 2:00 a.m., we come in and brew at 2:00. I won't lie, it is going to suck. But what fun would brewing be without a challenge once in a while?
Slip Rose Strawberry Saison had been our summer seasonal since my first day at the brewery. In fact, it was the first beer that I helped bottle on my first day of work. It has always had a really unique fan base and we have always had some people that have been extremely passionate about their enjoyment of Slip Rose. However, it has also received a lot of criticism for its subtle strawberry flavor. The strawberry was fermented in the beer and the contribution from the fruit was mostly a light tartness. Without using artificial strawberry flavoring, we don't have the capability of leaving a sweet strawberry flavor in the beer due to equipment constraints, but we have always been against the use of artificial strawberry flavoring in the beer. We realized that with how well respected our other seasonal's have been, that it might be time to explore other options for our summer beer.
At first, we thought we might just tweak the Slip Rose recipe and make a new strawberry wheat beer, but the concern was that we would still have the same issue with people expecting more strawberry flavor. So when we scratched that idea, we realized that the challenge was much greater than expected. After all the beers we have released in the last year, we realized that we wanted to brew another beer style that is associated with high quality, but is still easy drinking for the hot summer months, excites the craft beer enthusiasts, and doesn't scare away the casual beer drinker. We discussed hoppy wheat beers and saisons, but thought they would scare away casual drinkers. We then discussed cream ales and blondes, but thought the craft beer geeks would scoff at them as if they were macro beer alternatives not worthy of a try.
After spending many hours discussing the merits of various summer seasonals that have proven to be commercially successful, we discussed the idea of a wheat beer, brewed with peaches, that is lightly tart. Essentially, a Berliner Weisse brewed with peaches. The idea originally scared the sales team as they thought that I was telling them I wanted to brew a sour beer (which would never sell in very high volume, but would be great for limited releases) However, a traditional Berliner is not assertively sour, but rather it is pleasantly tart, which is perfect for a thirst quenching beverage on a hot summer day. The use of peach would give an extra dimension of flavor to the beer with just a hint of peach flavor. Once the sales team jumped on board, I realized what a mess I had gotten the brewing team into.
The big challenge from the brewing side was to develop a method to acidify the beer in a way that would not contaminate the rest of the brewery. Most brewers would take the easy way out and just use food grade lactic acid post-fermentation to achieve the desired level of acidity. I hated that idea because it felt a little like cheating, but a beer brewed that way does not yield the full range of flavors that is found in a lacto fermentation. In a sense, I think beers brewed that way taste artificial. The other common way would be to do a sour mash, but then we would be severely limited in our production capability and the results would be likely inconsistent. The other way would be to do a lacto fermentation in the fermenter with a normal yeast strain working together... No way in hell I was going to do that.
To solve the problem, I decided to utilize a sour wort technique where I did a mash and sparge like
normal. I then pasteurized the wort by boiling for 10 minutes and chilled it while transferring into food grade IBC totes. In the tote, we added lactobacillus using lacto that is naturally occurring on grains. 14 hours later, I am now able to move the wort back to the kettle, boil, and proceed pretty much like normal for any other Brewday, with the only exception being that we will be adding nearly 500lbs of peach puree to the fermenter. Now, when we rebrew it next week, I will need 8 IBC totes filled with wort for souring.
Sounds like a good plan right? Remember the mess for the brewing team though? Using this method, we will be constantly monitoring the pH of the wort, coming in throughout the night all summer long. This time it took us 14 hours to acidify, but next time, we might not be so lucky. If the wort is ready to be boiled at 2:00 a.m., we come in and brew at 2:00. I won't lie, it is going to suck. But what fun would brewing be without a challenge once in a while?
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Whiskey!
The first question people were asking me when we announced that we would be distilling was if we would just be making moonshine or if we would be making more spirits. Early on, I told everyone that I don't have much interest in making moonshine, but that I would like to focus on high quality whiskies in addition to our vodka, gin, limoncello, and creme liqueur. We actually have had some unused 5 gallon charred oak barrels sitting at the distillery since Christmas time, just waiting to be filled, but with all the new beers that we've released in the last 6 months, I haven't had a whole lot of time to focus on new spirits. I've been looking forward to the day that we would start our first whiskey batches for a long time now and I'm really excited that I finally got to do our first mash for whiskey yesterday. So at long last, I wanted to share some of my plans for whiskey since I have been holding back on talking about it for a while now. I'll try to start with some of the common questions I've been asked and then talk a bit about the specific whiskies I'm working on.
"Will you be making moonshine?"
-The simple answer to that question is that it is not in our plans to produce moonshine, or clear whiskey at this point. Moonshine is kind of a niche market, and honestly, there are enough moonshiners in this area that make great products. We want to focus on barrel aged whiskies for now, and maybe if we have any leftovers that can't fit into a barrel, we could potentially serve small amounts of it, or use it for whiskey education in the taproom.
"Are you going to make that really strong stuff?"
-I think this question is asked a lot because a lot of people know moonshiners around here that don't dilute their product. I normally like whiskey in the 84-98 proof range and we will most likely be keeping to that range for our whiskey. I have always felt like whiskies diluted all the way to 80 proof tend to feel watery, where the whiskies that are about 104 or so typically have a bit too much of a burning sensation to really enjoy the flavor.
"Are you going to have to age it for years before it is ready?"
-The amount of time that whiskey gets aged in a barrel is directly related to the size of the barrel itself. The typical rule of thumb is that you age approximately one month for every gallon that the barrel holds. For us, we will be using 5 gallon barrels, and the whiskey will age for 5-6 months. We can get away with the shorter aging time due to the amount of surface area that is in contact with the liquor being higher in a smaller barrel.
"Why don't big distilleries just use small barrels then?"
-Small barrels do not produce the exact same flavor as larger barrels. Some reactions take years to take place. In the small barrels, we will be extracting the oak flavor and getting some vanilla character from the wood. Due to the char, the whiskey will also mellow, or smooth out, to a comparable level of the traditional large barrels, but there will be some different flavors. I think there will come a time when people label their whiskey as either large or small barrel whiskey. I don't think that either one is inherently superior to the other. Corsair for example makes some of the best whiskey I've drank using small barrels. On the other hand, my favorite Bourbon comes from Buffalo Trace where they only use traditional large barrels.
So yesterday I did our first mash and it is going to be a bit unique for what many people are used to because the only ingredient in the mash is corn. Most American Whiskies (including Bourbons) that are commercially available use no more than about 80% corn (By law, Bourbon has to be at least 51% corn). The reason that higher amounts of corn aren't frequently used is because the enzymes that break down starches into simpler sugars are not found in corn. Distillers have to add other grains with large amounts of enzymes which will take the starch from the corn and break it down. However, I found some enzymes that are available in liquid form which will allow me to break the starches into sugars without using other grains. As a result, our first whiskey is going to be a 100% corn mash using local corn. A lot of the sweetness of Bourbon comes from the corn that is used, so our Bourbon should have a decent amount of sweetness. Being that we are doing small batches, each batch will be Single Barrel Young Bourbon and each barrel will taste slightly different from the others.
We are working on a few other whiskies as well, but we have been trouble getting some of the ingredients that I want to use. Specifically, I want to make a whiskey that takes some of the characteristics of Scotch and Rye and blends them into one. For that whiskey, we will be using Peated Malt (the signature malt of Scotch), Rye, and Beechwood Smoked Malt. The time I did a test batch of this, I aged it on oak spirals for two weeks and really enjoyed it. It was a little sweet, but the spiciness of the rye and the peat flavors really complimented each other well. The idea with it was that my favorite types of whiskey are Rye and Scotch (Specifically, I like Laphroaig 10 and 13th Colony Rye) and I wanted to see what happened if we blended the main ingredients of the two into one whiskey. We should be making the "Double Smoked Rye" as soon as we can get our malt supplier to send some Peated Malt.
I know a lot of people will be excited about trying these whiskies, so if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer any that I can!
"Will you be making moonshine?"
-The simple answer to that question is that it is not in our plans to produce moonshine, or clear whiskey at this point. Moonshine is kind of a niche market, and honestly, there are enough moonshiners in this area that make great products. We want to focus on barrel aged whiskies for now, and maybe if we have any leftovers that can't fit into a barrel, we could potentially serve small amounts of it, or use it for whiskey education in the taproom.
"Are you going to make that really strong stuff?"
-I think this question is asked a lot because a lot of people know moonshiners around here that don't dilute their product. I normally like whiskey in the 84-98 proof range and we will most likely be keeping to that range for our whiskey. I have always felt like whiskies diluted all the way to 80 proof tend to feel watery, where the whiskies that are about 104 or so typically have a bit too much of a burning sensation to really enjoy the flavor.
"Are you going to have to age it for years before it is ready?"
-The amount of time that whiskey gets aged in a barrel is directly related to the size of the barrel itself. The typical rule of thumb is that you age approximately one month for every gallon that the barrel holds. For us, we will be using 5 gallon barrels, and the whiskey will age for 5-6 months. We can get away with the shorter aging time due to the amount of surface area that is in contact with the liquor being higher in a smaller barrel.
"Why don't big distilleries just use small barrels then?"
-Small barrels do not produce the exact same flavor as larger barrels. Some reactions take years to take place. In the small barrels, we will be extracting the oak flavor and getting some vanilla character from the wood. Due to the char, the whiskey will also mellow, or smooth out, to a comparable level of the traditional large barrels, but there will be some different flavors. I think there will come a time when people label their whiskey as either large or small barrel whiskey. I don't think that either one is inherently superior to the other. Corsair for example makes some of the best whiskey I've drank using small barrels. On the other hand, my favorite Bourbon comes from Buffalo Trace where they only use traditional large barrels.
So yesterday I did our first mash and it is going to be a bit unique for what many people are used to because the only ingredient in the mash is corn. Most American Whiskies (including Bourbons) that are commercially available use no more than about 80% corn (By law, Bourbon has to be at least 51% corn). The reason that higher amounts of corn aren't frequently used is because the enzymes that break down starches into simpler sugars are not found in corn. Distillers have to add other grains with large amounts of enzymes which will take the starch from the corn and break it down. However, I found some enzymes that are available in liquid form which will allow me to break the starches into sugars without using other grains. As a result, our first whiskey is going to be a 100% corn mash using local corn. A lot of the sweetness of Bourbon comes from the corn that is used, so our Bourbon should have a decent amount of sweetness. Being that we are doing small batches, each batch will be Single Barrel Young Bourbon and each barrel will taste slightly different from the others.
We are working on a few other whiskies as well, but we have been trouble getting some of the ingredients that I want to use. Specifically, I want to make a whiskey that takes some of the characteristics of Scotch and Rye and blends them into one. For that whiskey, we will be using Peated Malt (the signature malt of Scotch), Rye, and Beechwood Smoked Malt. The time I did a test batch of this, I aged it on oak spirals for two weeks and really enjoyed it. It was a little sweet, but the spiciness of the rye and the peat flavors really complimented each other well. The idea with it was that my favorite types of whiskey are Rye and Scotch (Specifically, I like Laphroaig 10 and 13th Colony Rye) and I wanted to see what happened if we blended the main ingredients of the two into one whiskey. We should be making the "Double Smoked Rye" as soon as we can get our malt supplier to send some Peated Malt.
I know a lot of people will be excited about trying these whiskies, so if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll try to answer any that I can!
Friday, February 20, 2015
New Beer Brewdays: IPA's and Hopbursting
What a week it has been! At the end of this week, we will have used about 5 tons of malt and 600 lbs of hops as we wrap up a week of brewing 4 different IPA's. 2 of the IPA's are new to us and one of them, we hope to make a year round beer. These 4 IPA brew days have given us the opportunity to brew Weedy's Double for the second time in a month (a first for us with that beer), revisit the Peach IPA that we brewed a year ago, and we've been given the challenge of creating a India Session Ale as well as a new American IPA. These new beers have given us the opportunity to use some new products, do a lot of testing, and use some production methods that are pretty advanced for a brewery of our size.
Brewing an IPA has been a project that we have been working on for the last 2 years. From the day we discontinued Corduroy Rye, I have bugged Mike about wanting to introduce a year round IPA. However, we wanted to make sure we got it narrowed down and great from the day of its release. There are so many good IPA's that, at this point, any commercial IPA has to be truly great to really succeed. We knew that this style was one that we really wanted to perfect before releasing it. A lot of challenges presented themselves along the way in the development of the recipe and we have had to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way.
First, what happened to all the hops that were available when I was homebrewing in 2009? There are so many varieties that I had used as a home brewer that I fell in love with and are now unavailable in large quantities due to high demand from craft brewers. Luckily, many new varieties exist, but the problem is, I hadn't used many of them and most of them were only available in low quantities as the hop growers adjust their acreage to support all the new hops. We have been lucky to get samples of some of the hops that were available and brew some 5 gallon batches to test out what we could get.
Using a 12 member tasting panel that we have been training for the last 8 months, we got our hands on 12 different IPA's that have experienced a significant amount of success and we tried to narrow down just what it is that makes those IPA's more special than others. Using their results, we were able to narrow down the balance that is most desirable between malt and hops, as well as the flavor profiles that were most desirable. Then, using our test batches of single hop experimental beers, the tasting panel was able to tell us which new hop varieties were favorable, or unfavorable for the perfect IPA. With their help, we ended up selecting a recipe that will feature a blend of 17 (yes, I said 17) different hop varieties. The varieties include, Amarillo, Simcoe, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, Citra, Crystal, CTZ, and more.
Once we had the flavor profile in place, it was time to start actually building the recipe. We knew from our tasting panel results, that people favored a clean tasting, smooth bitterness, with a lot of hop flavor and aroma. To achieve that smooth bitterness, we decided that this IPA would be hopbursted. I discussed the hop bursting technique a little bit in a different blog post on our Double IPA, but for those that missed it, hop bursting is a technique where all the hops are added towards the end of the boil. The hops are in contact with the boiling wort for a lesser amount of time, and as a result, the acids in the hops do not fully isomerize (which is what causes hoppy bitterness) and the essential oils which gives the hoppy aroma and flavor gets trapped in the beer. For this beer, all the hops are added in the last 15 minutes of the boil and dry hops. The total amount of hops used in this beer will be 4 lbs per barrel (for you homebrewers doing the math, that is about 11 ounces of hops for 5 gallons). I believe that anyone that has tried brewing a hopbursted beer will love the results, but I think most brewers opt to do a more traditional hopping schedule as it requires less amounts of hops to get to the same bitterness levels... However, I don't want to use less hops. I want to use MORE hops... Much more. One of my favorite IPA's is Firestone Walker's Union Jack which is brewed in a similar manner and is one of the few commercial IPA's that I know of which is hopbursted. In fact, the only others that I know of are Stone's Enjoy By and Go To IPA's.
In addition to the massive amount of hop pellets, we wanted to augment the flavor as much as possible. In an effort to do so, we are using a pure form of the essential oils found in cascade that has been steam distilled. The hop oils can effectively add flavor without adding any bitterness as there are no acids to isomerize. In addition, there are no polyphenols to create harsh flavors and no vegetal matter to give grassy or earthy flavors. It is just pure oils with a very citrusy, floral taste, used in a very small amount. The hard part of using the oils in this form is to not over do it. That is why about 95% of our from hop pellets and then the oils will be used just to help the beer get to its maximum hoppy flavor and to give the hoppy aroma a longer lifespan.
For the malts in this beer, we found that even a little bit of caramel malt could wreak havoc on the hoppy flavors, so this beer used Weyermann's Pale Ale Malt, Vienna Malt, and a small amount of Wheat Malt to aid in head retention. Weyermann's Pale Ale Malt has a more full flavor than the more common American 2-Row and it will provide a better stage for the hoppy flavor to dance on as it will leave a nice smooth finish. Without any caramel malts, this IPA will be nice and dry, making it more easily drinkable and will help to showcase the hops. The color of the beer will be light orange.
So today is the brewday and in about 3 weeks, we will get to see the culmination of 2 years worth of research, test batches, and tastings come to fruition. Is there anyone as excited as I am right now?
Brewing an IPA has been a project that we have been working on for the last 2 years. From the day we discontinued Corduroy Rye, I have bugged Mike about wanting to introduce a year round IPA. However, we wanted to make sure we got it narrowed down and great from the day of its release. There are so many good IPA's that, at this point, any commercial IPA has to be truly great to really succeed. We knew that this style was one that we really wanted to perfect before releasing it. A lot of challenges presented themselves along the way in the development of the recipe and we have had to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way.
First, what happened to all the hops that were available when I was homebrewing in 2009? There are so many varieties that I had used as a home brewer that I fell in love with and are now unavailable in large quantities due to high demand from craft brewers. Luckily, many new varieties exist, but the problem is, I hadn't used many of them and most of them were only available in low quantities as the hop growers adjust their acreage to support all the new hops. We have been lucky to get samples of some of the hops that were available and brew some 5 gallon batches to test out what we could get.
Using a 12 member tasting panel that we have been training for the last 8 months, we got our hands on 12 different IPA's that have experienced a significant amount of success and we tried to narrow down just what it is that makes those IPA's more special than others. Using their results, we were able to narrow down the balance that is most desirable between malt and hops, as well as the flavor profiles that were most desirable. Then, using our test batches of single hop experimental beers, the tasting panel was able to tell us which new hop varieties were favorable, or unfavorable for the perfect IPA. With their help, we ended up selecting a recipe that will feature a blend of 17 (yes, I said 17) different hop varieties. The varieties include, Amarillo, Simcoe, Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, Citra, Crystal, CTZ, and more.
Once we had the flavor profile in place, it was time to start actually building the recipe. We knew from our tasting panel results, that people favored a clean tasting, smooth bitterness, with a lot of hop flavor and aroma. To achieve that smooth bitterness, we decided that this IPA would be hopbursted. I discussed the hop bursting technique a little bit in a different blog post on our Double IPA, but for those that missed it, hop bursting is a technique where all the hops are added towards the end of the boil. The hops are in contact with the boiling wort for a lesser amount of time, and as a result, the acids in the hops do not fully isomerize (which is what causes hoppy bitterness) and the essential oils which gives the hoppy aroma and flavor gets trapped in the beer. For this beer, all the hops are added in the last 15 minutes of the boil and dry hops. The total amount of hops used in this beer will be 4 lbs per barrel (for you homebrewers doing the math, that is about 11 ounces of hops for 5 gallons). I believe that anyone that has tried brewing a hopbursted beer will love the results, but I think most brewers opt to do a more traditional hopping schedule as it requires less amounts of hops to get to the same bitterness levels... However, I don't want to use less hops. I want to use MORE hops... Much more. One of my favorite IPA's is Firestone Walker's Union Jack which is brewed in a similar manner and is one of the few commercial IPA's that I know of which is hopbursted. In fact, the only others that I know of are Stone's Enjoy By and Go To IPA's.
In addition to the massive amount of hop pellets, we wanted to augment the flavor as much as possible. In an effort to do so, we are using a pure form of the essential oils found in cascade that has been steam distilled. The hop oils can effectively add flavor without adding any bitterness as there are no acids to isomerize. In addition, there are no polyphenols to create harsh flavors and no vegetal matter to give grassy or earthy flavors. It is just pure oils with a very citrusy, floral taste, used in a very small amount. The hard part of using the oils in this form is to not over do it. That is why about 95% of our from hop pellets and then the oils will be used just to help the beer get to its maximum hoppy flavor and to give the hoppy aroma a longer lifespan.
For the malts in this beer, we found that even a little bit of caramel malt could wreak havoc on the hoppy flavors, so this beer used Weyermann's Pale Ale Malt, Vienna Malt, and a small amount of Wheat Malt to aid in head retention. Weyermann's Pale Ale Malt has a more full flavor than the more common American 2-Row and it will provide a better stage for the hoppy flavor to dance on as it will leave a nice smooth finish. Without any caramel malts, this IPA will be nice and dry, making it more easily drinkable and will help to showcase the hops. The color of the beer will be light orange.
So today is the brewday and in about 3 weeks, we will get to see the culmination of 2 years worth of research, test batches, and tastings come to fruition. Is there anyone as excited as I am right now?
Monday, February 9, 2015
Pilsener Follow Up/Weedy's Double Improvements
Yikes! It has been a while since my last blog post. I have been busy doing a lot of research on some new products that we've been testing (blog posts coming soon!) and I've been having to keep a little bit quiet about them, so that hasn't left me with much to talk about. However, now we are about to have our Pils release in a week and the most recent batch of Weedy's Double is a few days away from making its way into pint glasses near you.
So for those of you that read my Pilsener post a few weeks ago, you might remember that I hadn't finalized a recipe yet and I was waiting on some lab results from our other beers before I attempted to brew the first batch. I wanted to know our exact utilization of hops so that when I did my calculations for the hops, I could use accurate formulas and use the recipe development methods that I had learned in Germany. Some of the results were shocking.
For a long time now, we have been backing off the bitterness level of all our beers. We've been doing so slowly and gradually so that there isn't any one batch that tastes significantly different from the previous. When we sent in some of our recent beers for lab analysis though, we found that the IBU's measured were still significantly higher than what our theoretical calculations were calculating. Spare Pair in particular we learned gets about 30 IBU's just from whirlpool hops... Almost 25 IBU's more than what you would normally expect from a flameout addition of hops. But knowing that was the case, we were able to nail down a Pilsener recipe with nearly an exact amount of IBU's in mind.
So brewing the Pilsener, I knew that I wanted to have the same hopping schedule as Spare Pair (which made calculations a lot easier) with much less IBU's. So we did our Spare Pair hop schedule (A small early bittering addition and a whirlpool addition) with hops that have significantly less Alpha Acid percentages to create a Pilsener with 33 IBU's, 20 of which come from the whirlpool addition. Brewing the beer with that hopping schedule, the idea was to create a Pilsener that is low in apparent bitterness, but high in German hop aroma and flavor. The hops we used were a blend from the Hallertau region of Germany which gives our Pils a distinctive lemon-grass hop character with light floral and herbal aromatics.
There is just enough Pils malt to give the beer the classic biscuity malt character that is typical to German Pilseners and the color is very light. In fact, one of the goals was to brew the lightest colored all-malt beer we possibly could and I believe we succeeded well. I can't imagine that we could have done anything to make the beer lighter in color without using adjuncts (and since the goal wasn't to produce a generic American style "triple hopped" Pils, there was no way adjuncts would have been used in this beer). We will be filtering the Pils at the end of this week and it should be shipping out a week from today!
The other exciting upcoming beer is the beer that I probably get bugged about the most... Weedy's Double IPA will be making its return late this week and I am really excited about it. One thing about the Double is that it has actually gone through a few alterations in the few years that we have brewed it. In my opinion, the best batch (until this one) was the first one that we brewed. It used a lot of Citra and Chinook in the boil and dry hop. However, as Citra became scarce, we gradually had to back off the Citra in favor of Centennial. With the amount of Citra that we were using at the time, we would have burned through a year's allotment in 2 batches of Double IPA. I still used Citra in a small amount in the dry hop (Which is really where most of the flavor in this beer comes from anyways), but I missed the effect of the full out Citra. I also felt that the bitterness of the Double was still higher than it should be even though I backed off the IBU's on every batch.
So now I got the chance to brew it for the first time in 9 months a few weeks ago and I knew I wanted to bring back some of the original flavor. I found some more Citra and used it in greater quantities in the dry hop and I'm very pleased with the results. To address the bitterness, I went ahead and cut out the bittering addition completely. We now have a true hopbursted Double IPA (all of the IBU's come from the last 20 minutes of the boil and whirlpool) that has a cleaner flavor from a slightly cooler fermentation, a nice dry mouthfeel like it always has had, and a huge hop aroma with a lot more of the tropical fruit hoppiness that I felt we were missing on some of the most recent batches. I can't wait to release this batch and drink a few pints with guests in the taproom!
So for those of you that read my Pilsener post a few weeks ago, you might remember that I hadn't finalized a recipe yet and I was waiting on some lab results from our other beers before I attempted to brew the first batch. I wanted to know our exact utilization of hops so that when I did my calculations for the hops, I could use accurate formulas and use the recipe development methods that I had learned in Germany. Some of the results were shocking.
For a long time now, we have been backing off the bitterness level of all our beers. We've been doing so slowly and gradually so that there isn't any one batch that tastes significantly different from the previous. When we sent in some of our recent beers for lab analysis though, we found that the IBU's measured were still significantly higher than what our theoretical calculations were calculating. Spare Pair in particular we learned gets about 30 IBU's just from whirlpool hops... Almost 25 IBU's more than what you would normally expect from a flameout addition of hops. But knowing that was the case, we were able to nail down a Pilsener recipe with nearly an exact amount of IBU's in mind.
So brewing the Pilsener, I knew that I wanted to have the same hopping schedule as Spare Pair (which made calculations a lot easier) with much less IBU's. So we did our Spare Pair hop schedule (A small early bittering addition and a whirlpool addition) with hops that have significantly less Alpha Acid percentages to create a Pilsener with 33 IBU's, 20 of which come from the whirlpool addition. Brewing the beer with that hopping schedule, the idea was to create a Pilsener that is low in apparent bitterness, but high in German hop aroma and flavor. The hops we used were a blend from the Hallertau region of Germany which gives our Pils a distinctive lemon-grass hop character with light floral and herbal aromatics.
There is just enough Pils malt to give the beer the classic biscuity malt character that is typical to German Pilseners and the color is very light. In fact, one of the goals was to brew the lightest colored all-malt beer we possibly could and I believe we succeeded well. I can't imagine that we could have done anything to make the beer lighter in color without using adjuncts (and since the goal wasn't to produce a generic American style "triple hopped" Pils, there was no way adjuncts would have been used in this beer). We will be filtering the Pils at the end of this week and it should be shipping out a week from today!
The other exciting upcoming beer is the beer that I probably get bugged about the most... Weedy's Double IPA will be making its return late this week and I am really excited about it. One thing about the Double is that it has actually gone through a few alterations in the few years that we have brewed it. In my opinion, the best batch (until this one) was the first one that we brewed. It used a lot of Citra and Chinook in the boil and dry hop. However, as Citra became scarce, we gradually had to back off the Citra in favor of Centennial. With the amount of Citra that we were using at the time, we would have burned through a year's allotment in 2 batches of Double IPA. I still used Citra in a small amount in the dry hop (Which is really where most of the flavor in this beer comes from anyways), but I missed the effect of the full out Citra. I also felt that the bitterness of the Double was still higher than it should be even though I backed off the IBU's on every batch.
So now I got the chance to brew it for the first time in 9 months a few weeks ago and I knew I wanted to bring back some of the original flavor. I found some more Citra and used it in greater quantities in the dry hop and I'm very pleased with the results. To address the bitterness, I went ahead and cut out the bittering addition completely. We now have a true hopbursted Double IPA (all of the IBU's come from the last 20 minutes of the boil and whirlpool) that has a cleaner flavor from a slightly cooler fermentation, a nice dry mouthfeel like it always has had, and a huge hop aroma with a lot more of the tropical fruit hoppiness that I felt we were missing on some of the most recent batches. I can't wait to release this batch and drink a few pints with guests in the taproom!
Sunday, December 21, 2014
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!
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!
Thursday, December 11, 2014
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!
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!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
2014 Bourbon Barrel Wee Heavy
It's back! We just pulled our first barrel of this year's Bourbon Wee Heavy and it is hands down the best batch yet! It will be debuting at Fall Festivale this weekend and I can't wait to hear what people think about it. I wanted to take some time to tell everyone how it is different this year.
The first year we released the Wee Heavy was in 2012. It was a really good beer with a lot of bourbon flavor, but we didn't know that our yeast supplier had shipped us a contaminated slurry of yeast which lead to over carbonation in bottles that were kept warm.
Last year, we were really excited to brew it again, but we waited a little bit later into the year. The beer was still good, but the bourbon flavor was more subtle due to the colder climate that the barrels were aged in. The beer still got a nice oaky flavor, but I always missed the bourbon flavor from the first year.
So this year we learned our lesson and we brewed the beer during the summer so that the barrels would age in similar conditions to the 2012 batch. We also made sure to get a specific type of Buffalo Trace barrels so that we would get the vanilla bourbon flavor that the first batch had. It was definitely successful as we now have a ton of bourbon flavor.
Both of the previous batches were originally carbonated to a low volume of carbonation. Historically, Wee Heavys were carbonated at 1.2-1.5 volumes of co2. The low carbonation helps to make the beer a little more drinkable since you are less prone to feeling bloated. However, with such a low level of co2 in solution, we have had complaints that customers have thought the beer was flat. This year, we will be carbonating the beer to a higher level, but it will still be relatively low to keep the drinkability. Typically, bottled beers are around 2.4 volumes of co2, so we will be carbonating to 1.9 volumes.
So if you are at Fall Festivale this weekend, post reviews in the comments section. I'm looking forward to getting consumer feedback!
The first year we released the Wee Heavy was in 2012. It was a really good beer with a lot of bourbon flavor, but we didn't know that our yeast supplier had shipped us a contaminated slurry of yeast which lead to over carbonation in bottles that were kept warm.
Last year, we were really excited to brew it again, but we waited a little bit later into the year. The beer was still good, but the bourbon flavor was more subtle due to the colder climate that the barrels were aged in. The beer still got a nice oaky flavor, but I always missed the bourbon flavor from the first year.
So this year we learned our lesson and we brewed the beer during the summer so that the barrels would age in similar conditions to the 2012 batch. We also made sure to get a specific type of Buffalo Trace barrels so that we would get the vanilla bourbon flavor that the first batch had. It was definitely successful as we now have a ton of bourbon flavor.
Both of the previous batches were originally carbonated to a low volume of carbonation. Historically, Wee Heavys were carbonated at 1.2-1.5 volumes of co2. The low carbonation helps to make the beer a little more drinkable since you are less prone to feeling bloated. However, with such a low level of co2 in solution, we have had complaints that customers have thought the beer was flat. This year, we will be carbonating the beer to a higher level, but it will still be relatively low to keep the drinkability. Typically, bottled beers are around 2.4 volumes of co2, so we will be carbonating to 1.9 volumes.
So if you are at Fall Festivale this weekend, post reviews in the comments section. I'm looking forward to getting consumer feedback!
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