Top Cropping

Above is the picture of the krausen on top of the tripel right now. The foam that you see is all yeast and top cropping is a method utilized by commercial(especially Belgian) and homebrewers alike. The yeast in the krausen is very healthy, active yeast and brewers will skim the krausen off the fermenting batches and use that for the next batch. Since we only have 1 batch going at a time, we will save the yeast and make a starter with it later to grow it a little more and then use it again. By doing this we are saving money by not having to spend $7.75 per vial of yeast, and maybe more importantly (depending on how cheap you are) you are ensuring that you have very healthy viable yeast for the next batch of beer. The picture below is the jar of yeast, and overtime it will settle into a small layer on the bottom. It may look small, but there is probably 100 billion or more yeast cells in the jar which is the amount that comes in the vials from the homebrew store. Not enough for a typical brew we make (the Tripel required 300 billion cells) but enough to make a simple starter from.

In the previous post about the tripel, specifically Westmalle, I just found out that the Belgian yeast strain we use is actually the Westmalle strain. Hopefully our brews will be very similar to the originals, but if they are close, I know they'll be good. We are also planning on making a Dubbel in the beginning of June, so we should have a decent amount of Belgian beers ready by the Fall time.

Raspberry Time

Today we added the canned raspberries to the imperial stout and decided to taste a small tasting as well. The beer finished at 10% alcohol and the sample was very very good. It has a good body and a nice roasty finish but hides the alcohol well.

We had to use the hydrometer to push the raspberries through the funnel as the raspberries would clog the neck. In between cans, the hydrometer was sitting in sample, so when we tasted the sample after we were finished we were able to get a taste of the beer with some raspberry in it. The raspberry, right now, was very understated but noticeable in the finish and very pleasant. We plan on aging the beer for 10 days on the raspberries but will taste it at 7 and 10 days to see how it is progressing to make sure we dont over do it.

Joey's Tripel

We all know Joey likes 2 things about her beer. 1) Alcohol >7%- without even knowing the alcohol percentage, she will taste a beer and if she doesn't like it, there is a 90% chance that it is <7% alcohol. 2) Belgian Flavor. Put a Belgian beer in front of her and she'll like it; almost guaranteed.

Tripel is her favorite style, with Tripel Karmeliet being her favorite. We thought we would try our hand at making this classic style of beer but taking a more traditional approach to the style. The Belgian Trappist brewery Westmalle is credited with inventing the style and is considered as the benchmark by which other Tripels are measured. They use a very simple recipe, only base malt, sugar, and hops. Elise wrote this recipe a while ago and it contains Belgian Pilsner malt, a very small amount of American 2-row, 2 lbs of sugar and hops.

Now that we have the fridge set up to heat if needed, we should have a much better beer compared to the Belgian Pale Ale (which was fermented too cold). We will start at 68 degrees for 2 days and then ramp it up to 75 to finish fermentation. By increasing the temperature after 2 days we will eliminate the chance of yeast throwing off flavors resulting from the high temperature and we will also ensure good attenuation. Belgian breweries very commonly get +85% attenuation which is very high. For comparison most of our beers attenuate 75-80%. The warmer temperature will deter the yeast from flocculating and dropping out early so they will be fermenting longer. That, combined with the 2 lbs of sugar should leave a very dry, high alcohol beer.

The picture is of the gravity sample taken and as you can see it is at 1.090 (click on the picture to make it bigger). If it attenuates to what we are expecting we could end up close to, if not over, 10% alcohol. The beer is ligher in color than it appears in the picture and should be a nice golden color. Due to the high alcohol content, this beer probably wont be drinkable for about 4-6 months, but will hopefully make a nice Late Summer/Fall brew.

We were planning on making 7 gallons of beer and fermenting the other 2 gallons with Brett L, but since we only have 1 brett bucket we decided to scratch that plan. In about 4-6 weeks we will bottle the Brett B beer and then use the Brett L in another batch. We are planning on blending a small portion of the Brett B beer with the Biere de Garde and age that for 6 months or so to impart some Brett characters into the beer. Hopefully that will turn out well, and if it does we might do a whole batch that gets some Brett in secondary.

Next week we will be adding the Raspberries to the RIS and will bottle that as well as the Anniversary Barley Wine at the end of the month. After we are done bottling the BW we will have 2- 3 gallon carboys that we will use for a series of Pale Ales utilizing only 1 hop. Both 3 gallon bottles will fit into the fermentation fridge at the same time, so we are planning on doing 2 differnent 2.5 gallon batches at the same time. The grain bill will be the same for all of the beers, so after mashing we will split the wort into 2 kettles and make 2 different beers. We hopefully will do single hop beers with Amarillo, Centennial, Chinook, Columbus, Simcoe, and Cascade hops. By doing single hop beers we will be able to learn what each hops smells and tastes like and can formulate future recipes to which hop flavors/smells we like best.

We've got the funk

Today we brewed 7 gallons of Biere de Garde. Biere de Garde is a French style of beer that originates from the French part of Belgium. They were usually brewed in the winter months and then cellared to drink during the summer months (bieredegarde.com). We are making 5 gallons of traditional Biere de Garde using California Lager Yeast which is capable of producing clean lager flavors at ~58F. Hopefully this will turn into a nice summer beer, but we mostly made this style of beer because we want to use this yeast in a Schwarzbier (black lager) and then make a Elkie's First Snow with it to make it into a Baltic Porter style of beer. The other 2 gallons are being spiked with Brettanomyces B.

Brettanomyces comes in 3 strains, bruxellensis (B), lambicus (L), and claussenii (C). Brettanomyces is very common in Belgian beers like lambic and gueze and contribute "funky" flavors to the beer. Each strain is slightly different and has different flavors imparted. Below are some bits of info from yeast manufacturing websites:

Clussenii: low-intensitiy brett character, more sublte flavors than Brett B or Brett L; more aroma than flavor contributions, aromas of pineapple and fruit are common.

Lambicus: High intensity brett character; horsey, smokey, and spicy flavors. Produces a pie cherry-like flavor and sourness with distinct brett character.

Bruxellensis: Medium intensity brett character. Produces the classic "sweaty horse blanket" flavors distinct to brett

We have both brett B and brett L in the house right now and in two weeks will make 7 gallons of Tripel, of which 2 gallons will be inocculated with brett L. This way we will try to determine which strain of brett we like and we may also consider blending strains of brett in the same beer. We plan on almost always having some sort of brett beer going as we now have a "brett-specific" fermentation bucket. Brett is harder to clean off of equipment than normal brewers yeast as small amounts of uncleaned brett can ruin future batches of beer; therefore they get their own bucket. We really enjoy the complexities of brett beers and hopefully we can make some good examples.

We made a starter last week with the brett B and it smelled like dirty grape juice. Elise and I wondered why we would want to drink a beer that is described as "dirty," leathery," and our personal favorite "wet dog in a phone booth?" You just have to try your first funk beer to know. These descriptions are not the dominant flavors, but there are hints of them in the beer but not to overpowering levels which would make them undrinkable. Brettanomyces yeast can also eat a lot more sugars than can normal brewer's yeast so these beers will be much drier and higher in alcohol than normal. Brett yeast works very slowly so we will probably not bottle these beer for 2-3 months and can then hopefully drink them 2 months after that.

Last week we bottled our brown ale, and 10 bottles received varying amounts of hazelnut extract. Hopefully those turn out well enough to repeat again in the future. We also bottled the IPA today during the brewing session. It smelled very hoppy and is ligher than previous attempts so hopefully we can finally make an IPA that we are proud of.

Info

Several beers in primary and secondary at this point, so I thought I would provide an update on some of the stuff that is going on as well as some plans for the near future.

Imperial Stout: We racked the beer to secondary and are still planning on adding raspberries to the secondary for about 3-5 weeks. Oregon Fruit Puree makes fruits, usually used in pies/desserts, that many homebrewers use for their beers. We were having trouble finding the fruit at the grocery stores that we normally go to, but today I was finally able to score 3 cans from a nearby store. We might bottle a couple of bombers before we add the raspberries so we can do a taste comparison with- and without raspberries. Fermentation was good and we finished at 10% alcohol. The hydrometer sample tasted very good and looked very dark. Should be good.


Brown Ale: The last batch of brown ale finished at 1015 which is a little higher than the previous batch of 1011. The higher final gravity is attributable to the higher mash temp and more long-chain sugars which are not fermentable by brewers yeast. Hopefully, the higher gravity will result in a matlier tasting beer. We dry hopped it today and will bottle it in 2 weeks.

Experimental Batch: I havent said much about this beer, as I dont really want Elise to know what is going on before she tries it (swish and spit of course) but we did do a few things we havent done before. First, we used a malt called Carafa. Darker malts are made by kilning them and essentially controlling the "burn" on the husk creating a darker husk (darker the longer it is kilned) and different flavors. Color of malts is measured in degrees Lovibond (L), and for a comparison brown sugar is 50L, chocolate malt is 350L, and Carafa III is 525L. We used a decent amount in the beer, so it is a very dark color. Longer kilning can also lead to a harsher/bitter flavor which is common in a malt called black patent. However, Carafa malts are de-husked, so that the bitter flavor and some of the roasty flavor is removed resulting in mostly color additions with a slight amount of roast. This was also a 2.5 gallon batch (that I boiled on the stove) just in case it doesnt taste very good, I wouldnt be as mad about wasting the money, and time to drink, on a full 5 gallons. We are dryhopping with a full ounce of hops, which by 5 gallon standards would be fairly high. This is more dry hopping than we have done with any beer at this point and we are also going to let the hops sit for ~10 days before we cold crash. At best, the beer will turn into a sort of "black IPA"-type deal with a twist. The twist I wont reveal now, but when I am able to finally taste the bottled version I will share the info.

IPA: while my parents were in town, we were able to brew together so they could see the process. We made an IPA and based the recipe on our previous attempt. The first time we tried to write our IPA recipe it was way to complicated. We were trying to get a beer that had some body along with some malt complexity. To make the beer "complex" we tried using several differnt specialty malts that added up to being a decent portion of the grist. The result? Partly due to underattenuation, but mostly from the amount of malts, was a beer that was way too sweet. The sweetness masked all of the hop bitterness resulting in a very bad example of an IPA. The color was nice looking and if you were to tell people it was a hoppy Red Ale, then it might be good.
For this batch, we only had a total of 5% crystal malts (compared to 8.5% previously) and a little bit of CaraPils for head retention. The beer attenuated very well and ended up at 7.1% alcohol. I think this is just a little too high, but that is an easy fix for next time. The picture above is the gravity sample we took a few minutes ago. It looks darker in the picture than it acutally is, which is a good thing as we though previous attempts were too dark. The sample tasted pretty good with a decent citrus twang from the amarillo, centennial, and cascade hops.
We also "built" the water for this beer instead of using our tap water. The chloride:sulfate ratio helps either accenuate malts (high chloride) or hops (high sulfate) in a beer. Carbonate ions are good pH buffers that are helpful in dark beers as the darker malts are more acidic and can lower the mash pH too low. Carbonates help buffer against this and are therefore commonly seen in local water where dark beers are traditionally made (think Dublin and Guinness). Aurora water is very high in carbonates and has an average chloride:sulfate ratio. To deal with this, we only use 30% of our home water and the other 70% was distilled water which has no ions in it. We then used some brewing salts and stuff from the house (kosher salt and baking soda) to build our water to the specifications we wanted. Hopefully, this combined with the better recipe results in a much better IPA that we can then start to make small tweaks to for our House IPA.


Future
We wont be brewing for a few weeks until my Spring Break. During which we plan to brew our Gatorbait Pale Ale (~5.8% and 60 IBUs) as we have not made that in a long time and are completely out. The following week I have a test on Monday and Thursday, so I am off Tuesday so we are going to try our hand at another strong Belgian ale, the Tripel. Tripels are insidious little beers as they look and taste tame from their golden appearance and drinkability, but they pack a punch at about 9% alcohol. Now that we have a temperature controlled fridge we will be able to keep the beer nice and warm which is needed to get the nice Belgiany yeast characteristics that makes Belgian beers famous. This was the problem with the latest batch of Belgain Pale ale in which I think we feremented it too cold, ~68, as that was the hottest I could get the beer in the house.
Future brews may include a series of beers using a yeast called California Lager, which is used to make the beer Anchor Steam. It is a lager yeast that can be feremented warmer (58-60) instead of normal lager temps (46) but is still very clean. We would make an Anchor-type beer, a schwarzbier, and a Batlic Porter.
We are also tinkering with the idea of doing single hop beers. We would make 2.5 gallons of pale ale hopped to the same IBU rate, but use only 1 kind of hop in each beer. This will help us identify what each type of hop brings in terms of flavor and aroma and should be fun to see how different hops really are.

Brown Again

I had a test on Monday, and another on Thursday, so I was off today and decided to brew our Brown ale again. After dropping the chocolate in half for the last batch I thought it was a pretty good beer. It was a little drier than I wanted and therefore lacked the malty-ness that I want in the brown. So today, same recipe, and we just mashed higher (154 instead of 151)so hopefully it isnt as dry as the previous batch. We normally dry hop, but this time I am going to dry hop for 7 days (we used to only do 3-4 days)to hopefully get more out of the dry hops and increase the aroma. This batch should only be slightly different from the previous batch, but hopefully the changes will make it better.

When we eventually do get a house we are going to start kegging our beer. We will probably end up with 6 taps at a time since we like such variety of beer. Because of this we are going to have several "house" beers in which there is usually always one on tap. I was thinking that there will be be about 4 house beers so that we have 2 taps that can be rotated out as seasonals, special occasion beers, etc. The 4 house beers that I am thinking of will probably be a brown ale, IPA, porter, and then either an American pale ale or the Belgian pale. We are going to brew these beers a lot between now and then so that we can perfect the recipes to our tastes. This is the 3rd batch of brown ale, and over Spring break I am going to brew the 2nd attempt at our IPA as well as the American Pale ale.


On another note, I racked the barley wine to secondary and while I think it will still ferment a few points more, we are currently at 11.5% alcohol. Less than last years 12.6%, but still high. The gravity sample also tasted very good, so hopefully next January this batch will be as good as the first one. It will sit in secondary to bulk age until the very end of April when we will bottle and wax dip it.

Russian Imperial Stout

In honor of the coming baby we brewed a Russian Imperial Stout (RIS) today. We had some issues initially with mash temp being too low and then the mash not draining properly. But after those were fixed the day went pretty smoothly and the OG was 1093; hopefully we'll end up at a little over 9% alcohol. We are planning on aging the beer on top of raspberries in attempts to make a beer that is similar to chocolate raspberry soufle. This beer has a lot of dark malts (Crystal 120L, roasted barley, black patent, and chocolate) that will hopefully lend a big-bodied, roasty/chocolately flavor that will be balanced by the sweet acidity of the raspberries. As you can see in the picture from the mash, the foam on top already has a nice creamy-brown color, and hopefully that will stay into the beer as well. We dont plan on drinking this beer until about next February/March when Elise can start drinking again. The age will help mellow the beer and blend all the flavors together as well as tone down the alcohol. Hopefully it turns out as good as it sounds.





This other picture is of our fermentation fridge. In the winter our garage is about 54 degress which is too cold for ale fermentation, and the fridge will usually be within about 1-2 degrees of the garage temp. Our temperature controller has heating and cooling settings on it, unlike some others which only have a "cold" setting. With the barley wine we tried using a heating pad to keep the fridge warm enough, but the heating pad has an auto-shutoff, so that didnt work as well for fermentation. The next idea was to get a lightbulb to heat up the chamber and so far, that has been working out pretty well. Whenever the fridge gets below 63, the light will turn on and heat the chamber back up again, and then turn off. Eventually when fermenatation ramps up, the beer will raise the temp by 3-8 degrees, so we might have to switch back to the cold setting and have the fridge on to make sure it doesnt get too hot in there.