stout

I got to try the stout last weekend. It's very good again, precisely what I was going for. Amazing how careful design leads to predictable results. It still needs a bit of time in the bottle (dammit, go away, Jim Croce playing in my head) to mellow out some sour tones, but right now it tastes like an austere Imperial Stout. It threatens some sweetness right at the start, but then catches itself and balances things out.

It's so black that the head is brown. That's not the most attractive aspect, for sure, but what can you do? I primed with cane sugar trying to get a white head, but no dice. If the head's going to stay brown, I may as well prime with malt. Some reading on the topic is obviously warranted.

stout

I've brewed again. It's actually a bit scary how easy it was to pick up right where I left off. I've had the recipe for this batch sitting curled up in its cozy spreadsheet for months now. Some of it didn't seem quite right, but I decided to trust my judgement from back then, as I was way more absorbed in beer design and obviously had some sort of vision I was pursuing.

What I brewed should end up being a strong (Imperial-ish?) stout, no messin around, just straight up unapologetic blackness and dryness.

For about the fourth time in a row, the guy at the brewstore looked at me funny while I was ordering up my grains. I had my spreadsheet with me, though, and I explained in vague terms how I came up with the numbers I had. He ran it through the brewing software they use there and came up with almost exactly the same result I was predicting. This was a relief, as I have given that spreadsheet out as a functional planning tool to others.

Since the lat time I brewed, we've installed a new oven and a new cooktop in our kitchen. You'd think this would have necessitated some adjustment, but aside from having to get used to everything working faster and better, no adjustment necessary. Literally. I brought my water to 170 degrees in record time using the extra-large "turbo" burner on the new cooktop, dumped in 5 1/3 lbs of pale malt, plus smaller amounts of roasted barley and black malt, took it off the heat, stuck my thermometer probe into the mash, slid it all into the oven on its dehydrate mode set to 160 degrees, and worked on getting other stuff set up. No adjustments, no messing around, just set the temp and kick back. Wow.

I have to say, it would be really easy to do a stepped mash in this oven. I think I'm going to have to give it a whirl next time. I still have absolutely no desire to do full grain. Minimashing is just too cheap, too easy, and gives too consistently good results to consider making a bigger, stickier, hotter mess in my small kitchen, especially when I'm getting mash efficiencies like 77% doing what I'm doing now.

I added a small trick to the sparging process, and slid a strainer into the bottom of the grain bag before I sparged it. This kept the bag and the mash from clogging up the entrance to the outlet. I clipped the edge of the bag to the side of the brew bucket at the top so I could pour the mash in without assistance. Two clips would have been even better, but I could only find one, so I used some rubber bands to help keep things in place. Worked great, even if it didn't look too pretty.

From there, I added short of 4 lbs of powdered extract and went into a 60-minute boil, with an ounce of Chinooks from last year's harvest right at the start, followed by an ounce of Willamettes each at 30 and 15 minutes.

It came out at about 74 GU, a little stronger than I expected, but with attenuation from the WLP007 only registering in the high 70s, it will still be on the -ish side of Imperial, maybe 6% or so. That's fine by me, as I was wanting something easy-drinking for the summer.

Special B

As you know, I brewed my last batch of beer about 8 weeks ago. I was loosely shooting toward a Trappist-style freeform strong brown(ish) ale. I had never used Belgian or Trappist yeast before, and I used several methods, such as lagering, re-yeasting, warm storage, and long secondary fermentation, that, although elementary to many homebrewers, were new to me.

Last time I tasted this beer, I was horrified by how unpleasant the flavor was. This was a labor-intensive beer, that I spent more than the usual investment on, and to have it turn out bad would have been a kind of spirit-crushing experience.

Last night, I gave it another shot, after having let it age for another two weeks (for a total of 5 weeks, which is about 3 weeks longer than any other beer I've brewed). I was overjoyed, elated even, to find that all that unpleasantness was behind me, and that by doing nothing for 2 weeks, I accomplished something, namely, the achievement of the exact flavor I was attempting to create!!

My euphoria only grew as I continued drinking, partly owing to the fact that this beer is something like 9% alcohol. It was even a "happy" beer, like other tasty Belgian ales I've tried. I'm still quite thrilled. My interest in brewing had waned over the past few weeks, but I'm finding some renewed interest now, and I may have to start planning my next batch soon.

Yay for success and good beer!

Mashup, beyond style

I brewed yesterday, marking the second session where I've used a minimash for the grains. I've been thinking about this batch for weeks now, and reading about Trappist beer. I decided to leave aside any consideration of style and just attempt to brew a big, flavorful ale with modest hop levels. I think it went just right.

I stopped by the brew store on Saturday, where I got some Trappist yeast, Tettnanger hops, 2-row malt, plus a small amount of Belgian Special B malt, which supposedly had a "raisiny" flavor. I tasted some at home, and sure enough, raisiny. I also grabbed 6 pounds of dried extract, which makes up about 60% of the gravity for the batch. When I got home, I added the yeast to the quart of wort I had whipped up that morning as a starter. I wasn't able to find a spot in the kitchen that stayed above 70 degrees, so I'm not sure the starter really did much good, but I don't think it hurt, either.

Sunday, I woke up and started the water going for the mash. I got it up to 170 degrees and added the malt. I should have added the grains at a lower temperature, I think, because the temp didn't drop fast enough, and I ended up adding some more cold water to get it back below 160. Once I got things regulated, I was able to keep the mash in the oven at a pretty stable 150-152 degrees. It was probably stabilized like that for 45 minutes out of the 60-minute mash. I don't think it ever got below 150. I sparged using my big bottling bucket and a grain bag with about 3 quarts of 170 degree water, giving me just about 2 gallons of hot sweet wort at 1.065 specific gravity.

All that must have been the way to do it, because as I calculate it, my mash efficiency was about 73%, not too shabby if you ask me. I don't see any reason I couldn't scale this up. Next time I'll go about 50/50 grain/extract and see what happens, I think.

For the boil, I got the wort up to rolling, then added 1/2 ounce Chinook hops from my back yard, then added all 6 pounds of extract. After 30 minutes I added 2 ounces of Tettnanger hops (which smelled great, very spicy and aromatic, not as sharp and floral as the chinook). After the 60 minute boil, the wort was very thick and sticky. I added it to the carboy, which had a gallon of nice cold water in it (the cold weather is good for something I guess), then topped it up with more cold water. I drew off a tube of wort with the thief after agitating and aerating it, spun the hydrometer, and the damn thing nearly poked my eye out! At 82 degrees, I was getting a reading of 1.087, which, adjusted for temperature, gives me a gravity of 1.090 or better! Holy Crap, I said.

I pitched the yeast at a high-ish temperature, about 76 degrees, and got it all set up to ferment. When I looked this morning, the surface of the beer is starting to fog up, getting ready to foam in earnest.

This was, by far, the most successful brewing session I've ever had. It was great to see such a consistent result in terms of mash efficiency (it was about73% last time, too), especially since the method I'm using is so simple and easy. I think that I could probably use the same method to brew all-grain, if I wanted to make something a bit less potent. I'll have to step up the volume and see what effect it has. It might be harder to maintain temperature, and it definitely will take longer to cool. Seems like it will be worth it, though.

new year, first beer

I'm ramping up to brew again next weekend. I'm going Belgian this time, trying for a really big beer with a modest hop profile and some fancy yeast work. I'm going to use the minimash approach from last time and hope things work out the same. My entire approach is going to be a bit more free-form, but my target gravity is 1.085 using light extract and two-row and caramel malts. I'm adding around 45 BU worth of hops, and experimenting with some European varieties, so this should be a mellow brew (although strong).

Thanksgiving menu

Grilled organic turkey with sage and garlic
Celeriac mashed potatoes with giblet gravy
Scalloped sweet potatoes
Key lime cranberry sauce
Cabbage wedges braised in butter and dry vermouth with garlic and shallots
Savory chanterelle stuffed White Swan acorn squash

That's everything we served. The celeriac mash was really the most amazing bit. It did something with the giblet gravy that briefly blew my mind (embarassing yummy noises ensued). It just wasn't the same with other gravy as leftovers, and I don't know why.

Our distinguished guests brought pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie, and some delicious olive bread with goat cheese to go with it. I had picked up some green olives stuffed with PiriPiri peppers, which were great. Some of them were really hot, others not.

I drank my way through a six-pack of my Fresh Hop IPA over the long weekend. My brother had one and was mildly complimentary. I like it a lot, still, although it disturbs me that it did not turn out precisely as I planned. I have to let such things go, I know...I'm really thrilled at the head on this beer. It's a major accomplishment, in my book. I will calulate fastidiously when priming from now on.

first taste Fresh Hop IPA

Last Friday, after a brutally disheartening commute, I came home, cooked up some steaks, had a couple of Martinis, and decided that now was the time to try my first fresh Hop IPA.

My first impression: sweet. Not sweet as in sweet, this turned out awesome, but sweet as in it hasn't fully carbonated sweet. Don't get me wrong the head on the beer was very nice for a two-week-old beer, hell even for a fully conditioned beer it was admirable. The color was beautiful, golden brown like toast, the smell was amazing, just a little hot, perhaps not as aromatic or citrusy as I would ahve liked, plenty bitter, but the taste, especially the first sip, was malty.

Once the beer warmed up (and the beer had a chance to shake hands and get acquainted with the two martinis), it really started to shine. It was nicely bitter, and the sweetness revealed itself to be a warming boozy flavor, not unlike what you would expect to find in a winter warmer. I can't say that the overall impression screams IPA, but I could perhaps fake my way into suggesting that it's a holiday ale, or even perhaps a young barleywine. I'll have to give it a second (or third or fourth)shot over Thanksgiving to see how it shapes up.

what gives?

OK, so why would it be that, right when Portland becomes a focal point for food enthusiasts across the nation, the food here starts to suck? The number of mediocre-to-revolting restaurant experiences I've had over the last two weeks or so exceeds the total number for the previous year. What gives?

Granted, half of those problems stemmed from eating at a mall food court, and therefore hardly count, but the other half occurred at establishments that I have come to count on for decent grub. The first (and only one I'll mention by name) occurred a couple weekends ago at Laurelwood. The wife and I found ourselves with a free evening, so we thought it would be good to drive over to Laurelwood's new location on Sandy.

We stepped inside to be greeted by a hostess holding one of those obnoxious flashing pagers. I was a little skeptical that such measures were really necessary for a party of two, but I took it like a good complacent customer and we went to sit at the bar. I was pleased to see that they had a Fresh Hop IPA on the specials board, and I was very excited to give it a try. If only that wonderful sense of anticipation could have lasted a few moments longer, but alas, the beer was served, and it had pretty much zilch in the way of hop aroma or flavor. It had plenty of bitterness, of course, but I could have ordered literally 75% of their brew menu if that's all I was after.

The new bar looked great, but they have added TVs everywhere you look, so the Beavers game was playing in one focal point, and the Ducks game in another, so of course, rather than looking at the digs, everybody was glued to the tubes. The brewery was visible through the back of the bar, but you could really only see one of the tanks, not even close to as cool as the surgical-gallery-like view of the operation in the old place. Sigh. Another brewpub decides to go for quantity over quality. Sure enough, I looked over the bar, and they had bottles of Laurelwood beer lined up, ready to go.

Eventually, our pager buzzed and flashed, indicating that our seats were ready. I looked around the dining room adjoining the bar, expecting, as a party of 2, to be seated at a 2-seater booth or small table. Nope. Once we were able to stand in line (what was the pager for, again?) long enough to get the hostess's attention, we were led back to a larger room with a row of tables along the wall and a bunch of roughly-shaven yuppity young parents standing around a kids' area. The waiter led us to a table where a man was standing over his kid, who was sitting in a chair wiping boogers on every available surface. The waiter actually had to go up to this guy and say, "excuse me" before the guy scooped up his brat, and moved, shooting us and the waiter a dirty look. There was, I shit you not, an actual booger sitting on the table. The waiter thoughtfully placed my menu down beside it, rather than on it, then wandered off, leving me to deal with the icky booger-removal chore. Whatever, I have kids, I can handle it. Never mind that I came here without my kids, like on purpose, just to escape for a few precious hours from having to wipe anybody's anything.

I ordered the flatiron steak with parsnip mashed potatoes. The potatoes were exactly what I was hoping they would be, creamy and parsnippy. The steak came sliced, as I would have expected. The problem was that the person doing the slicing had obviously never seen a flatiron steak before, and had sliced it the wrong way, resulting, as anyone with any meatlore would expect, in very tasty, but completely tough and chewy slices of steak. A bit of chefly incompetence would not have bothered me much, had I not been seated where I was, or had I not ordered a completely different style of beer (Hooligan)that inexplicably ended up tasting precisely like the Fresh Hop Ale I had just finished. This was not a mixup, just the way it was. By design, I have to assume. I could even have tolerated that, had we not been seated right next to a couple with two kids, both of whom did all the screaming and gobbing that my kids would have done had I chosen to bring them. EVEN THIS I could have tolerated, had I not had to use the restroom, which was a serious trade down from what they had in their old place. The bathrooms in the old restaurant did not smell like pee, even on busy evenings with lots of kids. They had more than one unisex bathroom in play, as well. You could expect to just waltz in and pee with no wait, then wash up and return to your table to finish your sentence. Bah! The new place was the opposite of that, pee-stinking, single, and tucked back inconveniently from both bar and restaurant.

The service didn't measure up, either, but once I managed to chase down the waitress, tackle her to the floor, and wrest the check from her clenched fist, ignoring her screams of protest, we were able to leave.

So, I'm sad to say that I won't be going back to Laurelwood anytime soon. I anticipated great things from their new location, but all I got was this lousy nostalgia.

IPA update

I racked the IPA on Sunday. I took a gravity reading, and it's gone down way more than I thought it would, from 1.085 to 1.015. Whoosh. Now comes the long stretch. I plan on giving it two weeks in secondary. I dry-hopped it with a modest 1/2 oz in a hop bag. The beer had a very floral aroma, with a little citrus, but was quite sweet still, with good bitterness that stopped short of that overhopped earwax flavor. Good color. It's really hard to say what the finished beer will taste like just judging from primary fermentation results, but I'm feeling good about this one.

Beer

After a long hiatus, I decided to brew again. I was running out of beer. My brother is visiting from Thailand, so despite my resolution previously always to brew alone, I invited him over to help me out. Turned out fine.

I wanted to try out some of the techniques and ideas I have gotten reading Designing Great Beers, and I had just harvested hops, so I thought I'd try making a fresh hop IPA. I had originally intended to use more grain than extract, but to simplify things and reduce the amount of new equipment I would have to buy, I decided to go about 1/3 grain and 2/3 extract. I bought about 4 pounds of Pale Malt, 1/2 pound of 60L Crystal Malt, a vial of California Ale yeast, a kitchen scale, and some bottling equipment at the brew store, along with a couple sacks of dry malt extract (instead of the goo in a can).

I have to say, the dry extract is so much easier to work with than canned. I won't be looking back on that decision, that's for sure. No waste, easily dissolved, precise measurements on the scale. Enough said.

I have never mashed this much grain before. For that matter, I've never properly mashed grain. I always just dumped it in while I was bringing the water to a boil, then scooped it out before the boil, Papazian-style.

This time, I measured out (!) 5 quarts of water (1 quart per pound, plus another because it looked like it needed it), brought it to 172 degrees in the brew pot, added the grain, and used the oven on a low setting to maintain the mash at around 150 degrees for about 30 minutes or so.

After that, I dumped the mash into a grain bag inside my bottling bucket, ran off the liquor, added 3 more quarts of hot water and ran that off, and ended up with 9 quarts or so of wort with about 53 gravity units! That's sweet enough that it could have been beer after boiling! I could easily go all grain!

I chose, at this point, to ignore my carefully calculated figures about how much extract to add, which was, of course, stupid. I added 4.75 pounds of dry extract, which should have brought the final gravity to about 72 gravity units (my target was 65). After boiling, including 3 additions of hops, one of which was fresh hops, I ended up with a final gravity of about 85 GU! I was blown away. I'm still not able to figure out where the extra sugar came from, unless the brew store gave me more malt than I asked for.

I pitched the yeast at about 75 degrees, and it's just starting to blow foam out of the hose today, 2 and a half days later. I'll have to be more patient with this beer than I have with the others. It will take 6 weeks or more to be ready to drink, and even then, I anticipate it being immature.

This was an exciting batch of beer, becuase I'm just that much closer to being able to brew with less extract and more grain.

I've been getting a lot of compliments on both the Honey Cream Ale and the Smoked Rye Porter lately. Hopefully this latest batch will be even better (enough to be worth the extra bother).

SRP

I tried my Smoked Rye Porter again last night and was very pleased with the initial impression this beer gives. Head retention was not what I would have wanted, but it's hard to tell whether that was due to something beer-intrinsic or to the 90-degree heat and resulting air movement from the fan. Once the beer warmed up (didn't take long), the licorice-like flavor was detectable, but when it was cold, it was almost stout-like in it pure, creamy, dark malt flavor. This is a very refreshing beer (as long as it stays cold). I'm still somewhat disappointed that I didn't get more smoke flavor into it, but the rye gives it a pleasing sharpness that plays well with the coffee flavors from the black malt. I declare it a success, at any rate.

racked

I racked the Urschleim yesterday. It seems perfectly fine. There were no visible goobery chunks, no actual slimy bits, no bad smell, no bad flavors. It is possible that some tartness may result, but then again, maybe not. Gravity had dropped to like 7 GU(!), but it was obviously still fermenting, probably because of the inclusion of the honey. It seems a little on the weak side, but I knew that already. Hopefully priming with malt extract when I bottle will help with mouthfeel and depth. I'm toying with the idea of adding some malt during secondary fermentation, but I should probably just count myself lucky on this one and play it straight from here on out.

So the question remains, what the hell happened, if there was no contamination? What was I seeing in there? I see two possibilities:

1. There was no contamination, but killing off the lager yeast caused a big deposit on the bottom, chunks of which were lifted by a weak fermentation to the surface of the wort, giving the appearance of a beer infection
2. There was only a very small amount of contamination, and I caught it in time. The yeast made enough alcohol and consumed enough sugar to kill off the bad bugs.

There is, of course, still the possibility that some horrible flavor will emerge after secondary fermentation or during conditioning in the bottles. Since it seems OK now, though, I'm just going to go with it. It might not be the best beer I'll ever make, but the prognosis seems good for right now.

first taste, new batch

I tried a bottle of my Smoked Rye Porter last weekend. It isn't as smoky as I had hoped, but it's pretty good. It still has some flavors from the malt that I'm hoping will go away as it ages, some licoricey homebrew flavors. It's nicely carbonated after two weeks, though, so Ima gonna start to drinking it.

The Honey Cream Ale (which I have taken to calling Urschleim) is still fermenting hard a week after pitching the ale yeast. I may let it go until the weekend, then rack it and hope for the best. I can't do anything until it gets done blowing and starts in on sedimentation.

new book

I just went to Borders to spend a gift card from father's day. I really didn't know what I wanted to get, so I headed to the beer & food section. I didn't see any food books I wanted to own, so I checked out the brewing-related titles and settled on Designing Great Beers. I think this will be a great resource for me, and I'm excited to try it out. I mean, it's all fine and well being able to throw some things together and just see what happens, but as I've just painfully learned, unless you actually control how it all goes down, you're rolling the dice. I enjoy a strong shot of chaos in the kitchen, but I've also done some studying to be able to control that chaos to my benefit (usually).

So now, when I decide I'd like to try brewing thus-and-such a style, I'll have a more thorough resource that will allow me to identify possible problems with the style and take steps to correct for them. What a concept.

beep...beep...beep...beep...

So far, so good. There's a nice violent ferment going on in the wort now. I'm not so sure that my theory about blowing out all the nastiness will hold, but at least this beer now has a fighting chance of being OK to drink. There's definitely material being ejected, hopefully there will be enough alcohol produced quickly enough to kill off anything unpleasant.

Man, this sounds like a lot of ifs. Sure, it will ferment, but will it be drinkable beer, or sour swill? Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of...Beer Hospital.

Beer ER

GET ME 50CCs OF CALIFORNIA ALE YEAST, STAT!

I had to do the equivalent of emergency surgery on my beer last night. I got home and fermentation still hadn't started. There were some suspicious-looking spots in there, as well. So I made a run to the brew store, got some ale yeast, walked around with it in my pocket for an hour, and pitched it. Hopefully, anything unsavory going on in there will be blown out with the krausen, and the yeast will produce enough alcohol to keep things under control. I figured I could spend $6.50 to try and save a batch of beer or I could compost it and start over. I have now officially entered the realm of experimental brewing.

When I left home, there was a good bit of foam already formed. Hopefully by the time I get home, the yeast will have cleaned house and there won't be too much funkiness.

Beer Buyer's Remorse

I bought some really substandard beer last night, Copper Hook. Red Hook is decent enough beer, so I figured, what the hey, I'll try their summer ale. Bad. It's what I call dead-tasting, like it got stuck in the pasteurization machine while the dude running that part of the conveyor belt went to push out the remains of his convenience store spicy burrito with extra chili and nacho cheese from the hotdog bar. Ok, maybe it's not quite that bad, and it's still better than, say, a Corona, but it has that same corny stank about it. I half considered dropping some liqueur in it or something to spruce it up.

I don't get it, honestly. A summer beer is a brewery's chance to dance around, show off, get your attention so that you're more curious about and receptive to their main lines of beer. Screw it up and you may as well wave goodbye to all but your most tongue-dead customers for at least 6 months (until your more interesting winter brew comes out, catching the attention of potential buyers). Too bad, Red Hook. There's too much good beer out there for me to ever gamble another $6 on a pack of your swill.

so...the brewing.

I brewed. Still no word on how successful it might have been. It did not go as planned. I was assisted by someone that I should have known better than to invite. I allowed him to make stupid mistakes and then failed to adequately control the resulting problems. All my bad, I'm sure. All not his fault, just the way it is. shake head, swallow rage. continue on.

Long story short: too much water means not all the wort would fit in the carboy. This was most upsetting. On my own, I would have just worked it out, but with a guest glued to my ass, I just said screw it and figured I'd let the chips fall where they may. Specific gravity ended up no higher than 1040, maybe a hair or two lower. I pitched the yeast at too high a temperature so that I could just finish up and have a moment's peace. Fermentation had not started by the time I left for work today, 16 hours after pitching the yeast. gah.

The recipe (ill-fated though it may be):
about 5 lbs light malt syrup
1/4 lb crystal malt (40l)
1 oz or so Chinook hops, the last of the hops from my plant last year (15 minutes)
1/4 oz or so Fuggles hops (15 minutes)
1/4 tsp Irish Moss (15 minutes)
1 oz pelletized Cascade hops (5 minutes)
~2 lbs raw honey (added after the wort was taken off the heat, while someone else was adding too much water to the carboy)
San Francisco Lager Yeast (liquid, pitched at about 87 degrees)

This is supposed to be a Cream Ale. The wort has a nice honey flavor. If it ferments, it might be good to drink. If I'm not getting any action by tomorrow, I might have to re-pitch.

note to self:

you brew alone. it is not a good idea to invite anyone over to observe, assist, facilitate, ask questions about, or otherwise participate in the brewing process. your response to any requests for an invitation to participate in brewing should consist of the words 'get,' and 'bent,' in no particular order.

In (my belly) with the old, in (the bottle) with the new

I drank the last bottle of my first ever batch of homebrew last Friday. It was delicious. Scroll down to see a picture of its swansong. I'm still mourning it a bit. It was some very good beer. *sniff.*

The next morning, I stiffened my upper lip, sanitized various plastic bits, and bottled the next batch. This is a funky one, my intention being to brew a Smoked Rye Porter. I have to admit that the sidelong eyerolling from the guy at the brewstore and my brother's skeptical comments had double-teamed me to create feelings of immense trepidation about how this will come out, but after tasting my test sample (gravity was at 1012), I now feel confident that it will kick much ass. It has a very toasty, aggressive malt flavor to it. It's dignified and austere. I believe it has a walrus moustache and perhaps a monocle. It wears a waistcoat and carries a cane with a raven's head for a handle. You do not screw with this beer.

Bottling went well, but I need to end up with less waste. I was short nearly a gallon due to siphon leavings, short-filling the carboy, and being only 3/4 full on the last bottle.

Next weekend, I will be making Land of Milk & Honey Cream Ale. I already have a plan. It may even come out the way I intend, who knows?