This learned group is dedicated to tasting beers that are difficult to obtain in Central Virginia, or have been cellared into rarity.  The majority of these brews will be commercial, but occasionally homebrewed beers will appear if they make sense within, or prove a nice segue between, selections.

The second meeting of the year 2010 will be loosely themed around Belgian beers. Included in the tasting will be two beers from Westvleteren Brewery, which is located inside the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. We will also visit a few sour beers and do some house-keeping in cleaning up a few lingering Winter Warmers. A Pliny the Elder will surface, as well, to keep our taste buds sharp and nimble.

As usual, coherent notes are not expected to arise from these scholarly sessions.

The March 22, 2010 docket includes (but is not limited to):

Big Sky Moose Drool (American Brown)
Three Floyds Brian Boru Old Irish Red (Irish Red)
Westvletern 8 (Dubbel)
Westvletern 12 (Quad)
Herbell Brewing Santamas Special (homebrew)
Russian River Pliny the Elder (Imperial IPA)
Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noir (Sour Saison)
Barlow Brewing Stupid Sexy Flanders (Flanders Red) (homebrew)
New England Brewing Imperial Stout Trooper (Russian Imp Stout)
Captain Lawrence Nor’ Easter (Winter Warmer)

I haven’t post anything about the tasting of these two batches simply because I haven’t bottled them yet.  (Despite the fact the Brabant version has won a silver medal in a BJCP competition. Ahhh, the joys of wine thieving….)  I will be bottling that soon, hopefully this week.

But the clear winner was the Brabant version.  It was more tart, sour and refreshing.  (More to come later) But this wasn’t a really fair race.  The Brett B version was purely a brettanomyces addition, and the dregs of the Brabant included brettanomyces, lactobacillus, pediococcus and whatever else was cultured up from the bottle.

So, never leaving well enough alone, I decided to play with the Brett B saison before bottling. I’m not a huge fan of the Americanization of Belgian and French beers, but I have had a few interesting ones of late.  I really liked the aroma hop kick of the Flying Dog Raging Bitch Belgian IPA, and seemed like it would be fun to try dry-hopping my saison with American hops.

Without look it up, it was clear to me that the dry hop aroma from the FDRB was Amarillo hops. So took 1 oz of some Amarillo hops and dropped them into carboy, which holds about 2 gallons of sour saison at this point. The look of it is disturbing.

Through the neck of the carboy

Amarillo hops and the remaining bits of pellicle.

The mixture of green Amarillo pellet hops and the remaining bits of pellicle is glorious.  But, unfortunately, it was difficult to photograph. If you aren’t familiar with what these sour beers look like, I think it might be unsettling. Honestly, it looks like some sort of tomatillo salsa verde thing.

But I am loving the look of this, and the smell is already amazing.

I’ll leave the hops on the saison for about a week, then I’ll bottle them up.

This learned group is dedicated to tasting beers that are difficult to obtain in Central Virginia, or have been cellared into rarity.

The first meeting of the year will delve heavily into the works of Boulevard Brewery Company. The next meeting will probably return to one of the Tasting Society’s favorite breweries: Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales.

At this time, coherent notes are not expected to arise from these scholarly sessions.

The January 11, 2010 docket includes (but is not limited to):

Surly Bender (Oatmeal Brown)

Boulevard Saison (Saison)

New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red (Fruit Beer)

Boulevard Saison – Brett (Sour Saison)

Boulevard Long Strange Tripel (Tripel)

Goose Island Matilda (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)

Russian River Damnation (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)

Boulevard Harvest Dance (Wheatwine)

Boulevard The Sixth Glass (Quadrupel)

Surly Darkness (Russian Imperial Stout)

Brooklyn Black Ops 2008 (Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout)

BarlowBrewing’s Homebrewed Drunken Wendigo (Bourbon Barrel American Barleywine)

Three Floyds Behemoth (American Barleywine)

BUT did they tell you which beers to pair them with?   Yeah, that’s what I thought.

And, to be clear, these are the songs and albums that I listened to the most during last year.  I not going to tell you that these were the absolute BEST discs of last year, but they are the ones that got the most airtime on my iPod.

In no order, my top 6 CDs and top 2 singles of 2009 and their beer pairings:

Them Crooked Vultures

I’m onboard with any side project from Josh Homme.  I love the Queens of the Stone Age, and the Desert Sessions are always amazing.  When you throw in John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl, this became a much more interesting no-brainer.

Them Crooked Vultures is swaggering, sweaty and fully aware of their own absurdity.  To quote a music critic, this CD probably took as long to record as it did to write the songs. But that isn’t a slight.  It is a nod to a writhing handful of creation.  It is a night of ecstasy from a seasoned lover who is good about not waking you as they leave.  

Don’t think about this one too hard. You’ll fall off the tightrope suspended between self-loathing and clueless bravado over a chasm of muscular riffs and falsettos.

These songs call for something over the top. Extreme, but following a lust to absurd ends. They are the musical embodiment of the Imperial IPA.  But a balanced Imp IPA is not in order here, no complimentary meeting of malt and hops.  Them Crooked Vultures begs for Pliny the Elder which hits you with so many hops that the resins actually take the place of a malt backbone.

A little “Elephants” is post below. The 1:28 mark is when they lock into a groove.

Grizzly Bear – Veckamist

This was one of the critic’s darlings for 2009. Knowing this, I went into listening to it months ago preparing to hate it.  I was dead wrong.

Swelling harmonies and orchestrations are the backdrop to this soundtrack of a northeastern, gothic purgatory.  “Southern Point” was their only radio single (if you could call it that) that I heard, and that is the one I’m including at the end of this review.  But “Fine for Now” is the song that slays me. It inflates and fills your ears so quickly, convincing and effortlessly.  This sort of subtle genius is beyond their years.

This is the kind of disc that makes you feel insecure about yourself. Most of the songs on Veckatimest are genius.  And the ones that aren’t?  Well, they probably are, too, you just need to work harder to get them.

This isn’t an easy CD to immediately wrap your noggin around. Sour beers were like that for me, but once I “got” them, they really paid off.  Veckatimest is a glorious pairing with a bomber of New Belgium’s La Folie. It is hard to me to score that beer, but it is amazing.  If you don’t like it, you just need to work harder to “get” it.

The Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Garage rock still lives.  Someday, even when garages are full of flying cars and jetpacks, there will still be kids who want to rock and don’t give a fuck what you think.  This duo isn’t full of rage, they are full of impulses.  In “Wet Hair” they sing “Let’s get to France / So we can French kiss some French girls.” My GOD, that is so simple and perfect.

This duo is strong, simple and fuzzy in all the right ways. If you don’t love these guys, we are breaking up and gimme back my class ring you’ve been wearing around your neck on that braided string.

When I was in the same frame of mind as the Japandroids, I didn’t drink good beer. I drank decidedly bad, lager beer. Now that I’m older, I still favor ales over lagers, but I can come back to the lagers, with an older palette, and find something that young me and the old and wizen in me can both enjoy.  The beer that pairs best with Post-Nothing is Great Lakes’ Dortmunder Gold. This beer is a perfect balance between sweetness and bitterness. The CD is somewhere between your dreams and your dwindling optimism in the world.

Young Hearts Spark Fire

Flaming Lips – Embryonic

The Flaming Lips have released some amazing CDs over the last few years that were commercial yet were also genre piercing.  But the olde school fans thought that Wayne and the band had sold out and lost their edge.

Their Embryonic CD is an unsettling return to the Lips of old. Put bluntly, this thing is a brain fuck.  Fuzzy, wobbling and furry.  It is chaos, and an endless parade of friendly stink palms.  But once you let it congeal in your brain, it begins to take shape.  This is not an easy episiotomy, but my goodness you owe it to yourself to let this one come to life.  

This is a bear of a pairing. I can only assume that only spontaneously fermented beers could stand up to this beast of primal glory.  But, in this case, I’ll take a Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura, which is a soured imperial stout.   The soured, blackness with coffee notes is a perfect echo to the swirling strange of Embryonic.  When you stare into this abyss, it stares back.  And then you two get the munchies.  And there is a certain logic to 2 am molten, hot burritos and cherry Slurpees.

Convinced of the Hex

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Yeah, this is a simple pick. You might think it is too easy.  Hell, they are using “1901” to sell Cadillacs.

I don’t care. This is pretty and hooky pop. (And from the dreaded French, no less.)  Every year I have a poppy CD that never leaves my CD changer.  If you spend months on end in my player getting sung to (very badly) by me during the summer with the windows and the sunroof open, you got something special, kid.  You’ve heard them by now. Give in to bliss, you pussy.

What goes with a smooth, summer CD?  It has to be the simple pleasure and easy going allure of a hefeweizen. For that, I’m going to go the local Starr Hill’s The Love. Both The Love and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix are unfiltered, shiny and clean.

Lisztomania

Mastodon – Crack the Skye

Did Phoenix cleanse your palette? Good, because Mastodon is here to brilliantly punish you.

You can segment the music on my iPod into many pieces, and one of them ought to be “Workout” music.  I’m not proud of these songs. One of the bands in this group may or may not be Velvet Revolver.  Let’s just say that these songs get the job done. They are driving, rhythmic, circular and, usually, a bit lightweight. When I heard the critics falling over themselves early last year to praise these metal monsters, I figured I was getting some more “Workout” music.

I suppose you could workout to these guys, but they’ve done something here that deserves much more than your sweaty attention.  There’s shifting keys and there’s danger, but it is all wonderfully balanced.   They are heavy, dense, and they are going to write songs about Czar-era Russia.  Hell, they previously released a disc based entirely on Moby Dick. They aren’t playing games, and you can actually understand what they are singing which is a rare feat in the genre.

What do you pair with a disc that is refreshing a musical genre that has long entered into self-parody? I’m putting this one with something unlikely, but my favorite of Brooklyn beers: The Brooklyner-Scheider Hopfen-Weisse. If you want to rock out to Tsarist Russia songs through the lens of an American rock band, then dig into a spicy, dry-hopped weizenbock . This is solid German brewing capped off with American Amarillo and Palisade hops. Get ready for some truth.

Divinations 

Honorable Mentions:  

Neko Case –Middle Cyclone (with a Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale), Dan Auerbach – Keep It Hid (with a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout ), Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz (with a Lagunitas Sirius Ale), and Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall (with a Three Floyd Alpha King)

And before I go, the SINGLE of the year:

White Rabbits – Percussion Gun

This is my favorite single from last year. Dueling and concurrent drums, and passionate singing.  Do they mention Lebanon during the song? Just put it on your iPod already.  And a Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Say it with me: CITRA!

Single Runner-up:

XX – Crystalised

This is my runner-up for the single of the year.  Laid back and intense. A stepchild of the The Cure and the Pixies at their most minimal.  “So don’t think that I’m pushing you away / When you’re the one that I’ve kept cloest.” Sip a Foothills Sexual Chocolate.

It’s not a secret or anything.  It is just a bit surprising since I’ve been brewing for 14 years at the time of this blog post.  Sure, I’ve hung out with someone who was brewing and I’ve had prospective brewers watch me brew before, but I’d never worked together with someone to brew beer until the big bock brewday I just did with my friend Greg.  I guess that’s a long time to have, essentially, worked by yourself. 

There’s a huge opportunity in working with another brewer and seeing their methods, peeves and shortcuts.  And I’m sure that I would be a better brewer now for working with peers and gathering some solid best practices over the years, but brewing alone has some benefits. When you brew alone, you establish YOUR method.  You get a rhythm to your day and timing down in the repetition.  Also, you get a good feel for tweaking your methods since you are the only person performing all of the brewing actions.  Put another way, if you are the only person doing everything, you are going to be a bit more consistent batch to batch. (Albeit, perhaps, consistently either bad or good.) 

But these are minor advantages and, honestly, they could be my unconscious attempt to justify why I always ended up brewing solo. 

Fast forward to October during a homebrew club meeting and Greg and I discovered that we had both had plans to brew a doppelbock in December.  This seemed like a great time to join forces.  And, of course, like all great ideas it quickly swelled from the realistic brewing of a doppelbock to the absurd idea of a marathon brewday that would net us 12 gallons of doppelbock and 12 gallons of eisbock.  This is makes the day a game of logistics, because the beers are similar but not quite the same. And you are talking about 80 pounds of grain and still unknown, once you factor in the chilling, amounts of water. 

LOTS of water

After we each bought a bag of grain (Greg bought a 55# bag of Munich and I bought a 55# bag of pilsner) and a couple of weeks of planning, I drove over to his house, in an unusual early December snow, to commence to Bockapoolza.  It started off very orderly, although our 10 gallon mash tuns were filled to capacity with the grains need for these high gravity beers. 

Greg: Mashing like it was his job

Me: Pretending to work.  What a hobo.

From the “don’t try this at home” department, we created a mash tun totem pole.  Just. Because. We. Could.

There was down time in between, of course, where I acted like I was doing something important. We, unlike a side by side brewday, we had to stagger our batches a bit. This was simply because Greg had a homegrown wort cooling system (made from a pond pump and using blocks of ice, simple but genius) that we wanted to use to get the bock worts down to below 50 degrees. 

Double Boiling

The double boil went smoothly and the heat from the burners kept his deck warm and dry from the snow. 

Extreme Yeast Starting

 Since these were big and lager beers, we needed to go strong on the yeast we were going to pitch.  Greg headed up this effort and started up two beastly batches of yeast.  After he talked to the Wyeast people, he went with the Wyeast 2206 Bavarian lager and Wyeast 2124 Bohemian lager yeasts.  The doppelbock received 100% Bavarian yeast, and the eisbock received 35% Bavarian and 65% Bohemian yeast. 

Four Carboys of Love

In the end we came out with 24 gallons of finished beer, although I think it was a much longer session than we both were expecting.  But it went by quickly due to the amount of brew (or busy) work that needed to be done and we had a few beers and a nice lunch during the session.

What did I learn? Honestly, less than I expected.  But, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have anticipated all that much knowledge would be dropped into my head because of what we were trying to do. We weren’t co-brewing a simple 6 gallon homebrew batch that we both could have done blindfolded.  We were attempting something bigger and stranger than either of us had ever done before.  This was a very cool collaboration, because of the teamwork and creative thinking we need during the day, but there were very few opportunities to swap methods.

What was interesting is that I came away with a clearer idea of what kind of brewer I was.  Greg is a big front end planner in grain and water ratios, and then he lets the beer be the beer it wants to be once it hits the fermenter.  I’m the opposite, which isn’t to say that I don’t wring my hands over recipe formulation and double checking my numbers in brewing software.  I just work in more of a zen state DURING the brewing since I’ve done this so many times, it just have a feel for it.  Put another way, when you are riding a bike you don’t actually put any thought into leaning into a turn.  It is instinct.  I don’t get obsessed with the numbers once the brewday begins.

This isn’t to imply that my fellow homebrewer is inexperienced. He’s a great brewer.  Greg just goes into the relaxed zen state during fermentation. That’s where I get bunged up, take meticulous notes and sweat the fermentation temperatures.

That’s another reason why I dig homebrewing so much.  I’ve documented before that I love that this hobby uses all of the creativity and science that you can throw at it.  Both sides of your brain can get nice workouts.  But, for me, the act of brewing is a few hours of meditation and getting in a groove.  A runner’s high.

So, in the meantime, scheme a plan and brew with a friend. Don’t wait as long as I did.

Anyway, an interesting review for me, and I’m sure it will inform my 2010 brewing.

- Number of Batches Made – 20
- Number of Gallons Made – 119
- First Brew Day – 1/3/2009
- Last Brew Day – 12/5/2009
- Number of Beer Batches – 18 (14 ales and 4 lagers)
- Number of Cider Batches – 2
- BJCP Homebrew Competitions Medals Earned – 3 Gold, 5 Silver, 5 bronze, 1 Honorable Mention, and The Dominion Cup Plato Award (Best All Around Brewer)
- Batch with Highest Alcohol – 11.21% – American Barleywine “Wendigo”
- Batch with Lowest Alcohol – 3.8% – Mild “Sonic Death Monkey”
- Average Alcohol Across Batches – 6.49%
- Favorite Brew – “Cleopatra Jones American” Brown ale (Big, hoppy brown ale riffing off McDole’s Janet’s Brown ale)
- Favorite Brew (Runner Up) – “Fritz the Cat” American Wheat ale (a 50% wheat American wheat beer hopped only with Amarillo hops, a Gumballhead clone)
- Favorite Brew – “Stupid Sexy Flanders” Flanders Red (Sours are tough to brew and age, but this Flanders Red aged was on French oak, Pinot Noire and the Roeselare blend was amazing)
- Worst Brew – “Hop Surge” American IPA (It fermented out too low, and I added malto dextrin to bring it back up. Just ended up sweet and gross)
- Worst Idea That Turned Out OK – “Bombay the Hard Way” Coconut Curry Hefeweizen (I thought this one might end up a carbonated marinade, but it did well and won a medal or two.)
- Best Idea That Turned Out Just OK – “Bad Yama Jama” Sweet Potato Ale (It was a good beer, but I should have cranked up the spices and potatoes a bit more)
- Favorite Name – “Stupid Sexy Flanders” (The Simpons are always an inspiration)
- Approximate Amount of Grain used in 2009 – 287.45 pounds (average of 15.97 lbs/brew)
- Approximate Amount of Hops used in 2009 – 56.89 ounces, or 3.55 pounds (average of 3.16 oz/brew)
- Biggest Equipment Upgrade – Converted a 15 gallon keg into a keggle (brewpot)
- Biggest Trend – Sour Ales – Batches Brewed – 4
- Biggest Trend (Runner Up) – Oak Aging – 4 batches aged on French oak

The connection between those two is that Charlie Papazian graduated from UVa in 1972 with a nuclear engineering degree.  If you don’t know anything about Charlie, do yourself a favor and read up on the father of homebrewing, and find out about the significance of his hard work for the homebrewing movement. Here’s a few of the thoughts I shared with the magazine:

When I got my first homebrew kit back in 1995, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing book came with it.  This was before the internet and, later, during the early years when we didn’t know what to do with the World Wide Web. Unless you could hang out in the local homebrew shop, or buddy up with a more experienced brewer, not having that book was like not having an instruction manual.  You were lost.

Books have come out since that time that are more technical, and go much deeper into the science of brewing, but he was the first American to write a book that taught the novice how to brew.

And he gave us the phrase: “Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew.” That might sound trite or too hippie in today’s society, but it was just what the new homebrewer needed to hear. Brewing great beer requires meticulous sanitation and attention to detail and, if you think about it too much, you become overwhelmed and paralyzed with worry.  Charlie gave you the confidence to just brew, and get better at it each time.

In the big picture, he founded the Association of Brewers, which later turned into the Brewers Association, and the American Homebrewers Association.  These are important organizations that protect the rights and interests of craft and homebrewers.

The brewing industry has changed, too. Every year the big American breweries lose market share, but craft breweries are growing in leaps and bounds.  These craft breweries were started by homebrewers who were bored by what the big boys were making.  These craft brewers went pro, which is every homebrewer’s dream, and they embody Papazian’s creativity, work ethic and sense of fun. 

He’s the father of American homebrewing, and he continues to be important to homebrewers and the brewing industry today.

But you know all this already don’t you?  Don’t you?

The University of Virginia article about Charlie Papazian

The good news is that there are experts out there and, just like with brewing, I find there is a direct correlation between the ones who know what they are talking about and their willingness to be remarkably helpful and patient with your questions.   In other words, if you are asking advice of an “expert” and he or she is an asshole to you, run the other way.

I’m fortunate enough to have a master cider maker in my homebrew club, and he is the inquisitive man behind this wonderful cider-making thread.  He has connections with local orchards, and has made cider with many types of apples, yeasts and sugars.

I thought I wasn’t much of a cider fan, but it turns out I just have a narrow window of what I enjoy right now in a cider.  I like there to still be a good amount of apple flavor and some lingering sweetness.  After trying my friend’s various batches, I chose the one that I wanted to have 5.5 gallons of.  My cider recipe and methodology is his.

So here is cider-making, from fresh-off-the-tree apples, from a homebrewer’s perspective:

This one started with 6 gallons of fresh apple juice from a local orchard.  The mix was 80% Stayman apples and the last 20% were a mixture of Empire and York for a little tartness.  As a side note, merely picking up the fresh squeezed juice is definitely a nice change from a 4 or 5 hour all grain brew day. Once I got the carboy home, it was time to go to work.

The clock starts ticking once that juice is pressed.  With homebrew, you want fementation to start as soon as possible.  If it takes too long, there are unfortunate side effects that will definitely take the shine off your beer.  With cider, you dealing with a lot of highly fermentable juice that is full simple sugars that are raring to go and, here’s the urgency, they are covered with wild yeast.  You can take all of the apples and carefully wash their skins before crushing them, but that yeast and bacteria is still there.  In order to have a controlled fermentation, with the yeast of your choosing, you need to pitch your yeast and get it fermenting quickly.  There will still be that wild yeast in there, but a healthy starter will safely outpace the spontaneous fermentation that would naturally occur.

The next step was to add some sweetness to the juice and to bump up the gravity a bit.  The starting gravity of the juice was 1.050, and I brought that up to a 1.065 with the addition of 24 ounces of turbinado sugar and 16 ounces of dextrose. Turbinado is an easy to find unrefined sugar, that adds a sweet complexity, which can be found at any good grocery store. Dextrose is the simply the same priming corn sugar you would use to bottle condition a beer.

I simply poured both sugars into the carboy with some yeast nutrient, and then I stirred it up for a minute an aeration wand attached to my cordless drill.

Next up was a pitching the yeast and, despite the fact I never rehydrate the Safale US-05, I did so with this batch just to be safe.  It seems like I’ve been using this strain a lot lately, but it is the way to go for very clean and attenuated beer.  Also, it was the recommended yeast from my cider friend and my favorite of his batches.  Once the yeast was in there, I put the airlock on the carboy and let go at room temperature.

Fermentation of ciders is a very low-key event if you are a homebrewer.  There is a krausen of sorts and CO2 is bubbling out, but it is in no way the violent creation of alcohol and flavors that beer is.  At peaking fermentation, it is simply bubbling like a soft drink.  That is as calming and charming as watching goldfish swim around a tank, but I really do prefer when things blow-up (real good).

The tricky part of a cider, at least for me, is stopping the fermentation.  Ciders are so full of simple sugars that, left to their own devices, they will ferment down to bone dryness.  The first cider I ever tried to make dropped down to a 0.990.  For those not familiar with gravities, this means that enough alcohol was produced to make the cider thinner than the density of water.  It wasn’t bad, but it was a little high in alcohol and it put a hurt on your head the next morning.

There are two main ways to halt cider: K-Meta or cold crashing.  K-Meta (more properly referred to as potassium metabisulfite) will drop out your yeast and halt fermentation, but those with more sensitive palates will detect a residual taste.  Sodium metabisulfite will work interchangeably with K-Meta, although some might have minor concerns about adding sodium to the cider.

My local expert only cold-crashes, so that was my method, as well.  The sweet spot (pun intended) for me was 1.006, so every few days I would wine thief out some of the cider and test the gravity.  Once it hit 1.010, I put the carboy in the cooler and dropped it down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit. In an act of kind chance, the cider stopped fermenting at 1.008.  That was close enough for me.

I left the cider in the cooler for another week to try to clarify and drop out anything else in suspension. I bottled it soon after and let it bottle carbonate.

(There will be a picture of the cider in a glass here in the future…..)

How did it turn out? Flavor-wise, I’m very happy.  It is slightly sweet, and a nice bit of apple flavor up front.  I will have to review it on a separate blog post at some point down the road.  Despite adding sugar at bottling time, it did not carbonate much at all.  That doesn’t really bother me, but for the next batch will pitch some fresh yeast at bottling. If you have the capability, keg carbonation is probably the easiest move.

Will I do this again?  Sure.  It is amazingly easy and cheap. ($18 for 6 gallons of juice, and a few dollars more for the sugars and yeast.)  It is a nice change from the usual brewing skills I use, so I’m flexing different muscles.

In a way, cider making seems a bit more like making wine.  With homebrewing, you need fresh ingredients and mad brewing skills to make a good batch of beer.  With cider and wine, you still need great skills, but the majority of the battle is in having the best apples or grapes.  I recommend using fresh apples if you have the ability to get them.

What’s next?  Something that is affectionately being calling “Lambicide”.  A cider made with a lambic blend of sherry and wheat yeasts, as well as brett and lacto.  Here comes the sour cider……

BTW – The simple recipe:

5.5 gallons of fresh apple juice (in this case: Stayman, Empire & York)

24 ounces Turbinado

16 ounces Dextrose

1 Package of Safale US-05 (not rehydrated)

Some Wyeast Nutrient Blend (per instructions)

I’m still moving forward with split batches, and I’m still trying to squeeze as much learning as I can out of these brews.

Sour Saison

My sour saison split is still getting funky. That was the one that I split a saison into two 3 gallon carboys, and I pitched brettanomyces B on one, and the cultured up dregs of an Avery Brabant on the other. They are still aging and they have both dropped ~0.001 in the gravity department.  The biggest difference between the two, from my infrequent visits to them, is that the Brabant is showing the signs of having some pediococcus and lactobacillus.  Neither are particularly enjoyable to taste, but these things take time to clean up. Before it is all over, I’m sure I’ll be adding the last bits of some sour commercial beers in the brett-only saison to fill out the flavors and complexities of the beer.

I might be bottling these beers in the near future. Although they have only been souring for about 3 months, I was aiming for more of “at bottling time” addition of brett than the long souring and aging variety.

Robust Porter

The robust porter split is done and bottled, and I’ll be comparing the robust porter fermented with Safale US-05 against the same wort fermented with the Safale-04 in a future blog post. I’ve tried them side-by-side once and there were slight, but obvious, differences. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find with this split, and I think I’m still better off not having expectations until after the last taste.

Belgian Dark Strong Ale

The next split was my Belgian Dark Strong Ale which is going three ways. Six gallons of the BDSA went down in a typical fashion with lots of grain, some simple sugars delivered through cane and candi syrups, and that was all fermented down with a gallon starter of the White Labs WLP530 Abbey ale yeast.  This was a relatively small BDSA, and it weighed in only (merely!) at an 1.081 OG. After that fermented down, I bottled about a gallon of that beer and then pitched the Wyeast brettanomyces lambicus on the rest, along with pinot noir & French oak. 

The third part of this brew was a gallon that BDSA wort that was fermented with Safale US-05 yeast (a clean, American strain).  What exactly is the style of a beer that has the malt and sugar bill of a Belgian Dark Strong ale, but is done with a California yeast?  A dry and malty Old Ale? I don’t know.  We shall see.

Mild

The latest split brew is a Mild, and I will probably bottle that this week.  This is a low-alcohol session ale that weighed in at 1.038 OG, and it  finished at 1.009 (and rockin’ 3.8% ABV).  I’m really happy with how this one tastes so far. It is as close to a worty, grain flavor as I’ve ever gotten out of one of my homebrews without being cloyingly sweet, as well.  The other part of the split was the same exact beer and yeast (Danstar Nottingham), but I threw in some French oak when I pitched the yeast on the second portion of the mild. I’m only leaving the wooded mild on those oak cubes for two weeks, and I will be bottling that one, too, this week.

Sour Cider

The last atypical brew that I have in motion isn’t a beer at all. It is a cider. Now, I made a cider a month or so ago under the tutelage of a fellow homebrew club member who is the cider master.  That turned out great, but I am making another batch of cider with the questionable idea of fermenting it with the Wyeast 3278 Lambic Blend. I had a plan to go brett-only, but it takes time for the brett to take off and this is fresh juice (off the tree, into the press, and into the carboy) with lots of wild and unpredictable yeast on the skins and in the press.  This mixture of two brettanomyces, a Belgian wheat, and a sherry yeast strain, as well as a lactic acid bacteria, will hopefully beat out the unknown critters.  I picked up the fresh juice last night (which was 50% Staymens, and 50% Pink Ladys) and I added the sodium metabusulfite to hold the natural yeasts at bay for a time.

A friend, in a moment of genius, has called this… thing “Lambicide”.  I don’t know how that name CAN’T stick.

The Battle of the Bocks

A few weeks from now, I have an epic brew day scheduled. My friend Greg and I are planning to do two 12 gallons batches at the same time. One will be a Doppelbock, the other an Eisbock.  At the end of the day, we should both go home with 6 gallons of each beer. No experiments or splits are planning for this. That 24 gallons should be enough.

Details of the above beers and ciders will follow….

The inspiration for the chocolate cherry brew came from the cocoa nibs I won from the Dominion Cup homebrew competition.  I won a little over 2 lbs of Askinosie Chocolate cocoa nibs (which are the same ones used by Dogfish Head for their Theobroma beer) and knew that I had to work them into a beer somehow.

I had planned to do a porter, and it seemed like a good time to combine the cherries (which I had bought months ago and frozen) with the cocoa nibs to create some sort of black forest porter.  The cherries will add some sweetness to the beer, and I figured the nibs would help balance that out.

I think this story will have a happy ending.  We’ll see.

In my continuing mission to spin out a lot of different beers out of single batches, this one started as a robust porter towards the lower end of that style.  It began as 6.5 gallons of 1.055 OG robust porter. (Definitely at the low end of the style.)

I took 1 gallon of the cooled wort and pitched Safale 04 dry yeast into it, which is a quick fermenting English ale yeast.  I let that go at room temperature, and it appeared to be done within 48 hours. A later tasting will tell me if it fermented a little too hot, but it dropped down to a 1.010 FG.

The remaining 5.5 gallons where racking into a carboy, and I pitched Safale US-05 onto that, which is a neutral Cal Ale-type yeast.  That was ramped up from 68° to 72° F degrees over primary fermentation, and it finished out at a 1.011 FG.

I racked about a gallon of the US-05 robust porter into a small jug, and I set that aside. 

Here’s where it gets interesting.  I decided to put the remaining 4.5 gallons of US-05 robust porter on cherries and cocoa nibs.

First I thawed and de-pitted 8 pounds of cherries. This always ends up being a harder and messier work than I remember from the previous time. 

Only 2 pounds when I took this shot

The pits

There are many different ways and times to add fruit to beers. If you are working with fresh fruit, it is a good idea to freeze them at some point. The freezing process will help rupture the cell walls of the fruit, making it easier to extract flavors from them. Freezing is also a good way to insure that you can capture the fruit at peak ripeness.

If you are adding fruit to primary fermentation, you’ll want to steep them in the wort at flame out, or hold them at 160° F to sanitize them.  Since I wanted the freshest fruit flavor possible, I added them to this beer in secondary.  Sanitation is important at this stage as always, but once a beer is past primary, the alcohol level is high enough and the pH level is low enough to discourage the growth of contaminating organisms.

Keeping as clean as possible, and having a sink full of a Star San mix nearby, I prepared the cherries and then pureed them in the blender.  I added that 8 pounds of cherries to the secondary carboy and, on top of that, add 6 ounces of cocoa nibs. 

6 ounces of Cocoa Nibs

With all the those additional sugars being added, I made sure to suck up a little yeast when I was racking the beer over and it promptly started to re-ferment again.

Who dumped a Slurpee in my carboy?

Yeah, it looks unsettling, but the samples I’ve taken so far taste really, really good.  Like drinking a chocolate covered cherry with liquor inside.

It is going to be hard to figure out what the ABV for this will be.  The cherry puree floats on top and the hydrometer read 1.014 right after secondary racking.  It looks like it has dropped back down to a 1.012 again which might put us in the neighborhood of a 6.3% ABV beer.  Honestly, that number is probably wrong, and I’m not all that worried about it.

This one was put into tertiary last weekend, and will be bottled soon.  More on that later.

I’m looking forward to comparing and contrasting the differences between the S-04 and the US-05 yeasts.

In the end was left with:

1 gallon of Robust Porter fermented with Safale S-04 at 6.0% ABV
1 gallon of Robust Porter fermented with Safale US-05 at 5.8% ABV
4 gallons of Robust Porter with cherries and cocoa nibs fermented with Safale US-05 (??% ABV)

I’m also still working on a name for this one. Maybe a foreign name for black forest.  Perhaps it will be Forêt Noire .

A recipe will follow with the tasting notes.