On Tuesday I was enjoying some Mort Subite Kriek that a brought back from Pinocchio's Pizza in PA, with Dana and my neighbor when we heard a noise in the laundry room (a.k.a. beer storage room). I ventured in to find nothing on the floor, was about to leave when I heard dripping. Looking around I could see brown liquid running down the back wall behind my storage racks. It smelled of chocolate. Inspecting deeper I found a case of 22s, filled with scotch ale that had exploded. After opening the case I discovered that only 5 had broken, but it was a complete mess.

After cleaning up the mess I placed the remaining 7 bottles in a bucket and placed a lid on top. Later the next day I got a call from Dana indicating that two more bottles broke. To preserve the remaining beer, John and I popped the caps of the bottle. Most gushed all the beer out of the bottle, but we were able to preserve about a growlers worth.

Note to self, don’t bottle conditions beers with a high FG and lots of yeast

This beer was supposed to be the Barley Wine equivalent, but poor execution appears appears to be to blame. While this beer is not bad, its not exactly what I was going for and I think it was a bit overzealous to try and work in a parti-gyle without any real planning.

Let me describe the beer and get to the lessons learned at the end:

Appearance: Dark brown with hues of red in the light. Darker than I planned for sure. Head cascades through the beer when poured, but this could be because it was just force carbonated. Moderate size bubbles and excellent lacing.

Aroma: Slight spiciness presumably from the rye and bit of astringency. Has an interestingly sweet smell that feels off too me, but not sure what it is.

Taste: a bit of spicey malt on the front, smooth center, and growing astringency at the end that lingers. Definitely missing some sweetness to balance out the astringency, but overall smooth drinking.

Mouthfeel: Decent body but still drinks fairly smooth. Could use a tad more carbonation to beef up the effect.

Notes: Nothing really stands out in this beer as excellent. I was hoping for a bit more rye flavor coming through because not much is apparent. Things I would change next time:

• Do a full beer and skip the parti-gyle. This beer needed more gravity so the achohol could balance out the astringency and bring out the flavors of the rye. Another 20 gravity points would have been perfect.
• Mash higher to get sweeter wort. This beer is just too dry (1.013 sg) to really draw the flavors out. I wonder if the sugar in the rye is more fermentable for some reason.
• Use a different yeast. The California Ale yeast is awesome, but it feels too clean. I’d like something spicier to complement the rye.
• Stop the runnings at 1.020 sg. The rye seems overly astringent and I was certainly topping of my kettles to save sugar when the gravity was low towards the end of the sparge. This was likely a mistake and indicates that maybe rye has some artifacts that you want to avoid.
• Don’t do a beta-glucan rest. Not sure on this one because we had not sticking problems, but I can’t help but wonder if the long rest at 110 caused some negative side affects in the end.

Hopefully with some age this will improve. I was planning on bottling some of this on Brett, but now I’m not so sure.

In preparation for beer I have been wanting to make for a while (Cilantro Line Pale What), I have set out to find the best way to incorporate the aroma and flavor of cilantro into my beer.

Not really knowing how the essential oils of cilantro can best be utilized in solution, I setup a group of controlled experiments to see what worked best. My primary approach was to expose cilantro to boiling water at various concentrations and durations. This should give me an idea if cilantro can be treated like hops (early for bitter, middle for flavor, late for aroma). The secondary approach is to use a french press to mix cilantro with beer to see how well the alcohol in the beer pulls in the essence of cilantro.

Preparation

To prepare the cilantro I simply pulled the leaves from the stems, collected them in a pile, and used a large knife to rough cut them down to a moderate size. All measurements were made based on volume (e.g. teaspoon, tablespoon) because the scale I had was not sensitive enough to accurately measure in tenths of grams.

Boil Tests

For each test one pint (16 oz) of tap water was brought to a boil and prepared cut cilantro was added and boiled for the specified duration. Once complete, the liquid was run through a strainer and into a pint for cooling. The pint was recorded and placed in the fridge/freezer to cool.

French Press Tests

For each test I took one beer, poured it into a french press, added cilantro, and waited to see the affects over time.

Conclusions

It seems pretty clear that boiling does not do cilantro good, like it does for hops. The longer the cilantro is boiled the more the flavor degrades into a tea and the aroma completely disappears. The 1 min boils show that aroma is preserved fairly well if you use enough cilantro. Conversely, I seem to get the best flavor with cilantro when combined with the beer itself. The aroma does fade, but at least the flavor is preserved somewhat.

This leads me to believe that the best approach will be adding a lot cilantro to the hopback for aroma and to secondary fermentation for flavor.

Rye Wine

For a while now I have been interested in doing a rye wine. This isn’t exactly an established style, but I have always really liked the flavors that rye imparts on a beer. To date I have done two beers with rye, Hop Ryeand Ritbier, both being somewhat restrained in their utilization of rye, thus I really was looking for something to show off what rye brings to the table.

A rye wine to me should be much like its barley wine or wheat wine siblings, high in gravity (1.090 sg or greater) and have at least 40% rye to ensure that its flavor dominates. This is actually a fairly difficult thing to do on my system because rye is very high in beta glucans. Technically speaking beta-glucans are polysacharide glucose chains but there presence in brewing causes a mash to thicken, increasing the potential for stuck mashes and difficulty sparging. Malted rye is available, but it is huskless and therefore has even less material to aid in flow through the mash. Briess recommends that rice hulls be used when approaching a 20% rye malt grain bill (this is fairly common for high adjunct beers) and supplemental betaglucanase enzyme (breaks down beta-glucans) be added for bills beyond 35%. For this recipe I am trying to get as close to 50% rye, but I’m going to have to weigh that against my need for HERMS circulation to raise the temperature of the mash between rests and for mash-out. This will be difficult because the mash kettle will be filled to the max. Hopefully if the mash is thin enough, we use enough rice hulls, and we get a good beta-glucan rest going, we should have enough flow to make it work. Otherwise my only option will be direct heat, which would probably delay the start of the second beer planned for the day. More on that later.

To make things interesting and for various other reasons, I decided to plan the rye wine as a parti-gyle. This essentially means that I am planning on doing multiples mashes and running using the same grains to make at least 2 beers. In olden days many brews were designed to produce as many as 3 different beers from the same grain. The first mash/runnings would be used for a strong beer, the second for a common or table beer, and a third for a small beer. After the first mash and runnings the grain would be re-infused with water, left to sit a little longer and run through for the next beer.

The back story on the parti-glyle for me comes from multiple points. For one, I've always been fascinated by small beers and have been wanting to do one for a long time. I never really equated the concept of small beers with the term parti-gyle untill recently, so this just adds to the fun of it. 2nd, I have this Brettanomyces blend I got from NJ homebrew shop that was cultered by Al Buck. I’m interested to see what Brett can do to rye and I need to use this yeast before I starts to die (was purchased in December). Lastly, I really want to start making multiple beers from the same wort source because it’s a great way to learn the effects of different yeast and get some drinking variety at the same time.

I still have the job of figuring out how I want to portion this because I have a few options. For instance, I could do 2/3 1st runnings and 1/3 2nd second, or 1/3 1st runnings and 2/3 2nd runnings, or I could split it right down the middle. Either way I’m only going to end up with at most 15 gallons of wort. The second question is how to split the yeast. The brett yeast will be used for one and another yeast to be chosen for the other. How I partition this is still up in the air at this point though I’m leaning towards a 2/3rd 1st runnings with Sacharomyces yeast and a 1/3 2nd runnings with the Brett. Suggestions are always welcome.

Last note on this beer. I noticed a few months ago in one of my northern brewer catalogs a reference to some rye wine experiment. At the time this re-perked my interest in the whole rye wine idea. When I started researching the idea I immediately found a reference to the experiment on the northern brewer blog. As it turned out they had done a 20 gal rye wine parti-gyle, split down the middle, with too different yeasts. So this definitely had a large part in motivating me to make this to happen once in for all. In my searching I found maybe 3-4 references to rye wine including the northern brewer one, so its not something that’s really being explored that much.

Gluten Free Saison

I know this one is a little strange but I have good reasons. My mother struggles with a gluten digestion, not sure if its full bore celiacs, but she definately has a lot of trouble with gluten. Ever since I have started brewing she has asked me, “when are you going to make me a gluten free beer?” Of course I never had a good answer because the only viable option I found was doing a special mash using buckwheat, sorghum, rice, and other adjuncts. I’ve always know it was doable, but figured it would be hard to source the ingredients and that it may take a few batches to get a recipe right (I’m not going to be drinking bad GF Beer).

Since then a new product has emerged from Briess called BriesSweet™ White Sorghum Syrup. This is essentially a high maltose sorghum extract that can be used 1 to 1 like a malt extract but is gluten free. MDHB now carried the syrup so I figured it was about time. My moms birthday is coming up in April and now I have a reason to make my first extract beer, simple choice really.

My mom has always like my farmhouse style beers because of their dryness and rich flavors so I figured I would give a saison a try. My hope is that the yeast will impart enough ester compounds to help hide that the beer is actually made from sorghum. I have no idea what to expect from this one seeing as it will be made from water and this syrup alone, but hopefully the Wyeast 3711 won’t let me down.

The goal is to get this going in the boil while the rye wine is mashing. As long as the Rye Wine is able to circulate this should be doable and we shouldn’t lose any time. Otherwise the Gluten Free beer may have to wait till later in the day or even Sunday.

Just got the Belgian Fest beer list direct from the source. Casey noted that a few of the listed may not make it in time, but the list is pretty final. Enjoy!

Drafts

Bottles

Earlier this week I discovered that video from the Lambic summit that John and I attended last June during Philly beer week was posted by the Sheldon Brothers. This was a great event and a great finish to an awesome day in Philly.

Since I didn’t really post anything on philly beer week and the summit last year, I will share with you an interesting experience. The summit was running late and I had to pee, so I went to the rest room quickly before it started. On my way there there were 3 guys in front of me walking down the same hall chatting about stuff. I recall thinking I recognized one of them when he asked one of the other taller gentleman what was taking so long and when will the event start. I realized soon after that the guy complaining was Greg Koch of Stone and said something like “now I know where I know you from, hows it going.” He must not of heard me cause he walked off without a flinch. I was walking behind him, but it was a little strange that he waked off cause I thought I said it loudly. The other gentleman went into the bathroom ahead of me. We chatting a bit in the bathroom and I quickly discovered that this was Dan Sheldon (one of the Sheldon brothers) and the moderator of the event (he is in all the videos). We had a nice chat and I thanked him for doing the event. He was a very nice guy. We left and the event started shortly afterwards. When the event was over I was able to shake the hand of all the speakers. Many of the attendees were getting signatures. I tried  to encourage Armand to continue to make beer with some polite praise of his beers, but he just smiled and moved on. They were all very nice guys.

Enjoy the videos. You may see John and I up front sitting at one of the middle tables.

1st Video

Video Links:

Another Hop mystery has shown its ugly head and this time it’s affecting the Belgian IPA. As with previous hop bombs, the hop character has disappeared from the tapped keg in a weeks time. Extremely frustrating. I have my theories, but figured I would post on homebrew talkto see if anyone had a few ideas.

My post:

My last brew was a Belgian IPA, very similar to Flying Dog Raging Bitch or Stone Cali-belgique. It stayed the fermentor for 3 weeks, had a full day of carbonation and then was kegged. At the unveiling it was hoppy goodness. Full of hop flavor with balanced bitterness and decent aroma. Much of the Belgian character was masked by the hops.
A week later the beer now has little of the hop character that was in it before and don't understand what happened. Belgian character is most prominent, with the hops mostly masked.
I've made 4 Really hoppy beers thus far. Three of which (including this one) had a similar problem. The first two (Fresh Hop Ale, Double Quad IPA), were both awesome in the first week, but the hop flavor actually changed into something nasty that I couldn't drink. Since these were in the same keg that had never fully been cleaned after arrival, I assumed this was the problem. My next beer, which I called Random Hop IPA, was placed in a different keg and the hop character lasted as you would expect. No problems. Now with this one I have the problem again. The weird thing is the keg was fully disassembled and soaked in concentrated star san before use. So unlikely to be bacteria from the keg at least
What is going on? Can oxygen degrade the hops that fast? Could it be my CO2 or beer lines? Maybe my ball locks? Other beers don't seem to change, just seems to be the hoppy ones. Maybe leftover sanitizer in the keg? I'm at a loss here....
One final note. It was a 10 gallon batch and the beer is split between two 5 gallon cornies. The one on tap is noticeably less hoppy then the on in storage. Not sure if the storage one has changed (maybe a little), but there is a gap between the two.
Very disappointed and need serious suggestions. I feel like not making hop bombs anymore, which would be sad

Hopefully someone with some real insight can post. Otherwise I may send a note to one of the experts in my magazines or at the brewers association. I will continue to monitor the two kegs and see how things evolve. Check back later.

I guess its worth noting that the current Belgian IPA on tap is still really good. We brought it to Frisco 1/15/2011 and everyone liked it. I met several new homebrewers in the process. Hopefully it stays good and doesn’t get that weird flavor the first two got.

That’s right, its time for our annual Lambic brew. This will be our third installment and should allow for us to blend a Gueuze in a year with any luck.

The brew plans aren’t completely solidified yet, but the plan is to follow the same basic recipe from last year. That means a turbid mash with a mix of Belgian pilsner malt and un-malted wheat. The mash will have at least 5 rests and two transfers of mashing liquid to the boil to increase turbidity. As long as we don’t get snow again, it should be a smooth brew.

One difference I do plan on making is with the yeast. I have been saving dregs from sour beers and have added them to a second starter I made during the last brew. This along with any dregs from bottles we drink will be added to the lambic after the sacharomyces yeast in the sour blend has run its course. On top of that, I will be using the oak sticks from our first batch, which should help get the bugs growing.

One of the highlights of the Lambic brew is getting to sample some of the Lambic we have made in previous years as well as a fairly large selection of bottles that we collect for the event.

In the homebrewed category we have our:

• 2 year bottled at year one
• 2 year samples from the fermentor
• 2 year aged on Cherries for 7 months
• 2 year aged on Raspberries for 7 months
• 1 year samples from the fermentor

On the commercial side we have:

• 3 Fonteinen Schaerberkse
• Hansens experimental chassis
• Giradin Gueuze (added 1/7)
• Oud Beersel Gueuze (added 1/7)
• Lindemans Cuvee Rene
• Lindemans Faro
• Lindemans Framboise (2006)
• Iron Hill Lambic De Hill
• Iron Hill Framboise De Hill
• Iron Hill Kriek De Hill
• Rodenbach 2010
• Rodenbach Grand Cru 2010
• Rodenbach Vintage 2007
• Rodenbach Vintage 2008
• Weyerbacher Riserva 2010
• Sam Adams cranberry lambic

Check back later because this list will certainly grow. We are missing a few good bottles that definitely need to be present.

I finally had a chance to watch the first episode of the new Brew Masters show on the discovery channel and was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

The show is well produced and presents very well, but it is somewhat of a Sam fest. Don't get me wrong Sam seems to be a great guy (only met him once or twice), but I was hoping to see a show that breaks out beyond what Dogfish head is doing. Hopefully this will happen eventually, but so far it has not. I haven't watched episodes 2-4 yet, but from what I hear and read their still focused around Sam and dogfish head. I will preserve judgment until at least the first season is over. The show is still enjoyable, even for an extreme beer geek like me. Its nice to see something beer related and interesting on TV.

Now for the fun part. If you watched the first episode you would know that it revolves around how the Bitches Brew came to be. In short, Sam was asked to make a beer by Sony for the 30th anniversary release of the groundbreaking Miles Davis Bitches Brew album. The episode shows how Sam rapidly produced a test batch and then put into final production in a very short period of time, so a lot of the drama was seeing how the Dogfish head folks were able to get it done in time.

One of the key parts of this was ensuring that the test batch was ready in time for SAVOR 2010 in DC. Spare the suspense, he made it of course. The crazy part about this was that John, Bill, and I were there. We were probably one of the first 10-15 people to try the Bitches Brew. We didn't know what it was about at the time, because if we did we may have hung around a bit longer. For us it was in and out, get the beer and move on as to not be in the lime light. In fact, after getting my glass I was asked by a women if I wanted to talk about the beer on camera after I made a comment to my friends about it. I gracefully declined a few times and went away. It's only after seeing this episode now that it is clear how close I came to be one of the reviewers shown in the episode.

To prove it I have pulled a small clip from the show where I am present (I hope there are no copyright issues with this, its only a 2 second clip). John and Bill are also on video but I have excluded then for now. Have a look, its a short clip :)

The patio is FINALLY done, so we are celebrating by brewing up some Belgian IPA and drinking some select brews. I had planned to have a massive party when the patio was done, but its going to be cold and I expect most people will be very busy with the holidays. Rest assure though that we will be making this a worthy celebration. For example, if we have a good enough response I will be picking up a 6 liter bottle of St. Bernardus Abt 12.

Ok, some info about the brew. Nothing too complex, but looking for a light to moderate level of Belgium character mixed with a s%#t load of hop flavor and bitterness. Not too strong, but enough punch so that we can add a decent level of hops for balance. Maybe 7-7.5% would be nice. After looking through the white labs catalog I think that I will use either the WLP550 (Belgian Ale) or WLP575 (Belgian Style Ale Yeast Blend) yeast. These yeasts should provide the moderate Belgian flavor I’m looking for, matched with a decent level of attenuation.

Hop choice may require some investigation because its not clear yet what would work the best. We do have a bunch of homegrown cascade ready as well as a bunch of odds and ends that have been collecting. So this may turn into the Belgian random hop. One added twist with the hops is that we will be using the new Blichman Hop Rocket as a HopHack.

That’s about it. We’ll ferment this at the usual ale temperatures 68-70, and shouldn’t have any issue with chilling this round given the water should be sufficiently cold now. Hope everyone can make it out.

While I’m at it, I might as well mention a few other things on the horizon:

1. I have begun the process of developing a new brew system with more automation and larger capacity. Don’t want to spill the beans on the details just yet, but it will have a 10-20 gal capacity and be controlled digitally.
2. I plan to upgrade the blog soon to the new BlogEngine version and hopefully with a new look and/or domain to make it more beer centric.

Cheers!