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.