Kviek Strains

I recently received several new Kveik strains from a gentleman named Ivar in Norway. We traded some yeast that I had for several strain that he had collected.

#1 Gjernes (Voss)
#4 Muri (Olden)
#5 Hornindal (Raftevold)
#9 Ebbegarden (Stordal)
#10 Framgarden (Stordal)
#15 Nornes (Voss)
#16 Simonaitis (Joniškelis, Lithania)
#17 Midtbust (Stordal)
#22 Stalljen (Hornindal)
#38 Aurland (Aurland)
#39 Marina (Kshaushi, Russia)
#40 Rima (Kshaushi, Russia)
#43 Opshaug (Strandadalen)

I am planning on brewing with each strain over the next year  and comparing the results.

I will be using a standard recipe for each batch that is made up of...

71% Pilsner
23% Munich
6%  Rye

I will be doing 3 gallon batches with 10 grams of Juniper added.

The plan is to use a step mash starting at 120 for 30 minutes, 140 for 30 minutes, and 160 for 30 minutes. The wort will be boiled for 10 minutes with a small addition of hallertau added just before starting to lauter the mash.

Picobrew Zymatic

I recently purchased several PicoBrew Zymatic systems for the Regis Applied Craft Brewing Certificate program. These are fully automated hot-side brewing systems for homebrewing. The systems have a lot of awesome features, you can manage the mashing cycle from your phone, have it run while you are gone, and have precise temperature control.

I decided to take one of them for a test drive and see how it performed.

The system shipped in three boxes and is rather heavy, I was hoping that it would be a little more mobile than it is. If you were pulling it into and out of storage a lot it would be a bit of a pain. The boxes included a keg, the outside system, and the insert for the system full of all the miscellaneous pieces. I was pretty excited to see that it also came with a recipe kit so that you could start brewing as soon as you opened the box.

The system was very easy to get set up and had you start by running a simple cleaning cycle. A few more pictures would have been nice in the user guide, but is was pretty simple to figure out how everything went together.

After the cleaning cycle had ended I loaded up the insert with the grain and the hops that came in the kit. This was all very straightforward but made one draw back very clear. You are limited to brewing 2.5 gallons of beer in a time. Not a huge issue for me as I usually brew smaller batches anyways. However, for $2,000 being limited to 2.5 gallons at a time is kind of a downer.

I set the system up, made my water additions in the keg, and fired everything up. Since the system is fully automated I decided I should be fine to go and paint the outside of my house. I came back in after about an hour and noticed that there was a slow drip in the system somewhere. I tried pushing the insert farther back but that did not make a difference. I ended up with a bucket under the system as it slowly dripped the rest of the brew.

It was very cool to be able to pull up the system while I was painting outside and see the progress. There is a chart that is slowly constructed as the brew occurs that highlights when you move to boiling and hop additions are made.

After the boil finished the beer has to be cooled down. Here was another let down of the system. Even after paying $2,000 you have to figure out how to cool the wort. There is no heat-exchanger included. I ended up sticking the keg (that now contained all the wort) into a bucket of ice to cool down. In the future I am going to try to hook up a heat-exchanger inline so that I can avoid this issue.

After the beer cooled down, I added the yeast and placed the keg into my fridge with a temp controller set at 65F. In a week or so I should be able to transfer it and bottle it up.

I later went and played with the online recipe creator. It is cool for someone who always follows the rules. However, for an advanced brewer there are a lot of limitations. For one, you can only pick from a limited catalog of yeast to add to the beer, and it forces you to pick from one on the list instead of being able to add your own. This was particularly frustrating for me who likes to play around with yeast! There were also only 4 water addition options and you had to use teaspoons as the value, so anyone who wants to use grams is out of luck.

Overall it is a cool piece of equipment. I am looking forward to the precise temperature control and hopping additions that I will be able to set. I also really like that you can run a rinse and a cleaning procedure on the equipment. The 2.5 gallon limitation will likely be a downer for some people, but it does not really matter all that much to me. What I would like to see changed is the online recipe builder. It needs to include more options for building out your recipe.

BJCP Exam

I recently passed the BJCP exam (right before the new guidelines came out). I thought I might write a short post based on how the test went in case anyone else is thinking of taking the exam.
The first part of the process is to pass the online multiple choice exam. It is a 200 question open book timed exam. I thought that the test would be a lot harder than it was. I picked the option of paying $20 to take the test 3 times instead of $10 per time figuring I would not pass the first time and need to take it again after some additional studying. As it turns out I passed on the first attempt. If you know a decent amount about the geography of beer and fermentation you will do fine. For example, English styles of beer use English hops and yeast that are generally fruity, somewhat sweet, and produce byproducts such as diacetyl. So when a question asks "What is the hop characteristic of such and such ENGLISH BEER STYLE" the answer is going to be floral/spicy. If the question is asking about an American style of beer the answer is going to fit American characteristics (Piney/Citrus hops, clean fermentation profile, etc.). If you don't know anything about a certain style, say Bock, as long as you know the beer style is from around Germany you know that it should have German hops, German malt profile, and German fermentation characteristics. By knowing about what ingredients are located where you automatically know a lot about the beers in that area.
After passing the online exam you can now take the in-person part of the exam. The consists of tasting 6 beers and filling out judging sheets for them. You do not get to use the style guide while you are tasting the beers. Your score is then compared to that of three judges who are also tasting the exact same beers. The result is based on how closely you scored the beers to the professional judges with some leniency if the majority of the people taking the test disagree with the professional judges.
The first beer was a German Pils, it ended up being my best review for the exam.
The second beer I tasted was a Cream Ale. I was certain that it had been spiked with DMS as it tasted terrible. I scored the beer low as did most the people I spoke with after the exam. It turned out the beer was a gold medal winning beer at GABF. I assume this is where I lost the majority of my points. It is a little frustrating that the professional beer judges get to take the exam with the tasting guidelines and confer with each other as they take notes.
Third beer was a Northern English Brown, I learned later that it was Ellie's Brown Dog Ale from Avery. I scored the beer well and mentioned that it would fit better in an American Brown Ale category.
Forth beer was an American Pale Ale (Dale's Pale Ale). I scored well on this beer and it was a very enjoyable sample.
Fifth beer was a Belgian Golden Strong (New Belgium's Trippel). I missed some points here but did note that the beer would be better placed in the Tripel category because it lacked the fruitiness of a Golden Strong.
Sixth beer was a Robust Porter (a home brew). This was my second lowest scoring beer. My remarks apparently disagreed with those of the professional judges.
What I learned is that several of the beers were really high quality beers (Trippel, Dale's, Ellie's Brown Dog) entered into the wrong category to see if you could identify what was required for the category. Being forced to take the exam without the style guidelines requires you to really know your stuff. I did not score low in any of the five area (Perceptive Accuracy, Descriptive Ability, Feedback, Completeness, Scoring Accuracy) but rather did poorly on two of the beers (Cream Ale and Robust Porter). I am not all that surprised as I have never had a Cream Ale before and do not drink much porter let alone compare it to Stout and Brown Porter. In order to improve my score I simply need to drink and review more beer!
Overall my final score was a 74, I would have liked a higher score but it will at least allow me to achieve the "Certified" rank after I have some judging points.

Belgian Beer History: Peter Bouckaert

I had the pleasure last week of listing to a lecture by Peter Bouckaert, the Brewmaster at New Belgium, on Belgian Beer History. I thought I should write down some of the key points he made before I forgot.

He started by having everyone shout out what their own impression of Belgian Beer was. He got responses like "Trapist", "Sour", "Wild", "High Alcohol", etc. He then pointed out that in reality the majority of the beer made in Belgium is pilsner. In addition he mentioned that ~10% of the market is "beer for kids" and had us taste Avril, a Dupont table beer. A style traditionally made from the last runnings.

Peter went on to talk about the history of beer in Belgium and the surrounding area, all information that you could read about elsewhere. What I want to record are some side notes that he made.

1. American Malt is too high in protein. This came about because the Macro Brewers need all that protein so that when they cut their wort with corn and rice there is still enough Free Amino Nitrogen (FAN) and enzymes to convert the starch. He mentioned that the protein is too high to make a big beer without needing to add sugar.
2. 1554 is actually from a 1447 book and by the sounds of it only loosely based on what was found in the book, he even had to decide if it should have hops or not.
3. Peter's Reinheitsgebot has only 3 ingredients, Experience, Knowledge, and Creativity
4. American brewers should not use the word Lambic, it takes away for the authenticity of real Lambics.
5. Keep beers simple, he showed a panel for a trapist brewery with 3 buttons, one for each of the beers that they make. The irony is how complicated the beers are from such a simple process.

He finished by telling us that despite all that he just went over here and now are the best time and place to be a brewer. Made me very proud to be in the Colorado Craft Beer community.

Triple Chocolate Coffee Milk Stout

Triple Chocolate Coffee Milk Stout

Winter is in full swing in Colorado. We just set a record for February snow fall and the temp is 15 F outside. Know what that means? Time for some Stout! I was talking with my buddy John and we were both reminiscing about a Chocolate Stout he had brewed last year. He also mentioned that he had coffee from a local rooster, Coda Coffee. With that in mind we set out to brew a Chocolate Coffee Milk Stout. The only problem was deciding what yeast we wanted to use. Last year the Stout was brewed with Ringwood yeast, which I personally hate because of the aromas it produces in the finished product. Long story short we decided to brew a 12 gallon batch and split it into 3 carboys with 3 different yeast strains, and so Triple Chocolate Coffee Milk Stout was born!

The recipe was the same as last year but with a bigger batch size.

2 of the 3 strains we were using

Recipe:

OG: 1.050

Grains:

15 pounds 2-Row Base Malt

2.5 pounds Chocolate Malt

1 pound Flaked Barley

Hops:

2 oz East Goldings @ 30 minutes

Yeast (Bought from local company Inland Island)

INISBC-361: Continental (Ringwood)

INISBC-315: English Ale V (Listed as good for ESBs)

INISBC-316: English Ale VI (Not sure but has to be better than Ringwood!!)

At 14 hours all three were already fermenting away.

Pumpkin Beer 2014

It has been an unusually long and warm fall in Colorado. The leaves are slowly falling from the trees, the temperature is still in the high 70s, and it is the perfect time of the year to brew a pumpkin beer. If everything goes as planned I should have carbonated bottles by the time Thanksgiving is here to share with family and friends.

I have been using a similar recipe for several years now, about 90% pale malt and 10% 20L caramel malt. This gives the beer a nice orange color. I also add 3 pounds of pumpkin for a 5 pound batch to the mash. In the past I have always toasted the pumpkin in the oven before adding it to caramelize it. For spice I add 1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice per gallon of wort 5 minutes before the end of boil. This level of spicing is slightly less than I would like so I add some vanilla and additional spices right before bottling.

This year I decided I wanted to mix things up a bit and deviated from past years. I happened to have some molasses on hand and wanted to experiment with adding some to the boil for both color and flavor. I also had some fresh cascade hops picked by a friend that I hope will make a nice addition to the beer.

The recipe that I settled on looked like this.

3 gallons
6 pounds Pale 2 Row
1/3 pound special "B"
1 pound molasses
2 pounds toasted pumpkin

1 oz Fuggles at 60 minutes
1 oz home grown Cascade at 15 minutes
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice at 5 minutes

1 vial of Inland Island Oregon IPA Yeast

I mashed the pumpkin with all of the grain at 148 F for an hour with a batch sparge for 20 minutes at 175 F. The molasses was added at the start of boil.

Update 10/27/2014
12 hours in fermentation is raging, yeast took right off.

Baby's Barleywine Ale

3/30/2014

My wife and I recently welcomed a new addition to our family, a beautiful little girl. In celebration of her birth I brewed a Barleywine to share with friends and family and a few extra to age for when she is older. I based the beer on a past recipe "Barley Wine 2012" which turned out fantastic. It was so good in fact that the bottles I intended to age ended up in my belly before the year was out. Using this recipe as a guideline I decided to up the roast, toffee, and chocolate and dial back on the hops to make it more of an English Style Barleywine. I also wanted to test out a yeast blend that I had acquired to the Brewing Science Institute labeled BSI-85. The blend includes a variety of English ale strains to create a diverse ester profile and California Ale Yeast to make sure that the fermentation does not stall out.

This is the recipe that I settled on:

Grain Bill:
71% Maris Otter
11.5 % Malted Wheat
7% Caramel 60
7% Caramel 80
3.5% Special "B"

Hops:
90 minutes  Magnum 32 IBU
30 minutes Magnum 21 IBU
5 minutes Challenger 5.5 IBU

I mashed at 148 F for an hour to create a highly digestible wort
Starting Gravity 1.088
Final Gravity 1.020
ABV ~10%

Pitched BSI-85
Primary Fermentation 2 weeks
Seconday 3 months at 65 F
Aged 3 months at 50 F
Bottled with table sugar and fresh yeast


Tasting Notes:
Beer turned out great, carbonation is subtle which really lets all the flavors come through the beer as well as the body. Sweet and warming, well balanced at the finish. The roast really comes through as does the caramel, toffee, and chocolate.