22nd Brew – Wild Levitation – May 2, 2009 (NHBD)

I think almost everything is finalized now for the May 2nd brew on National Homebrew Day. Inspiration for the beer choice came from the Victory Wild Devil and a long standing beer we have wanted to brew, so its a hybrid. I am calling the beer Wild Levitation because its essentially a clone of Stone Levitation, but fermented with 100% brettanomyces.

Stone Levitation is a light in alcohol beer (4.4%) with a lot of malt and hop flavor for how little malt is used. The trick is getting all that flavor into such a light beer. As I mentioned, the wild part come from the use of 100% brettanomyces for fermentation. This will be a first and is no doubt going to be interesting.

I decided to go with the bruxellenis brett strain because a rep at Victory told me this was the strain that is used. I’ve looked into the different strains and the other good option would be claussenii, which is supposedly much milder and originates from old english barrel stock. Bruxellenis is considered a medium intensity strain and is often the strain found in lambics. My plan is to use the bruxellenis but keep the temperature on the lower side so that I don’t get strong esters imparted in the beer. It is a relatively light beer after all.

To celebrate this event I figure we would take a walk through the history of my brews. I don’t have extras of every beer, but just about all of them. That and I will have a few brett beers to sample in honor of the brew. Who knows, maybe I will feel like doing another mead as well.

I have registered my house on the AHA site as a Big Brew site, so please come and brew with us. Chuck is coming for sure. I’m was hoping maybe Steve, Adam K, and Adam C might come and brew, but the jury is still out on that.

Here is the recipe as I have it now. Let me know what you think:

Wild Levitation

10-B American Amber Ale Author: Jaime Date: 5/2/2009 Size: 11 gal Efficiency: 86.0% Attenuation: 78.0%

Original Gravity: 1.050 (1.045 - 1.060)	|=============#==================|
Terminal Gravity: 1.011 (1.010 - 1.015)	|===========#====================|
Color: 14.72 (10.0 - 17.0)	|==================#=============|
Alcohol: 5.11% (4.5% - 6.2%)	|=============#==================|
Bitterness: 59.0 (25.0 - 40.0)	|================================|

Ingredients:

3.0 tbsp 5.2 pH Stabilizer - added during mash

14.0 lb 2-Row Brewers Malt
1.50 lb Caramel Malt 60L
1.50 lb Caramel Malt 80L
1.00 lb Wheat Malt
0.50 lb Acidulated Malt

1.0 oz Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
1.0 oz Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
1.0 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 15.0 min
2.0 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 oz Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 5.0 min

3.0 ea White Labs WLP650 Brettanomyces Bruxellensis

Schedule:

00:14:59 Dough-In - Liquor: 5.78 gal; Strike: 160.74  F; Target: 148.0 F
01:45:00 Mash - Rest: 90.0 min; Final: 148.0 F
01:55:00 Mash Out - Heat: 10.0 min; Target: 170.0 F
02:40:00 Sparge - Sparge: 7.61 gal sparge @ 168.0 F, 45.0 min; Total Runoff: 13.39 gal