Wild Brewing: Savage Tasting

For anyone who has been following what is going on I recently completed 4 barrel aged sour beers with the help of two friends. The barrels are all bottled and I will be posting tastings of them one by one. Here is the recipe for the first beer, code name Savage.

Savage:

Beer pours a slightly hazy golden color with a thin head that becomes a lacing on the glass. The golden hues of the beer make it appear very refreshing and go to show how simple the original recipe for this beer was.

Aroma is very crsip,  the first thing that hits you is sour and funk balanced on the side of lactic acid. There is a little bit of barnyard but it is very subtle and helps to support a roundness in the aroma.  There is a hint of lemon or of lemon grass at the finish of the beer.

Flavor: The beer is sour. The first thing that hits you is a lemon like sourness, the middle is bright and warming, with a sour puckering finish. There are not a lot of individual flavors throughout but the sourness really makes the beer refreshing.

Mouthfeel: The beer is very crisp, medium in body. The sour really cleans the palate.

Overall: The beer is a great example of what a sour beer should be. The beer is tart without being harsh or vinegar like. The sourness is very bright and plays well with how light the beer is in color. A perfect display of sourness in a beer.

Spring Time in the Rockies!

Last weekend the crew of Wild Brewing got together and with the help of some friends and family bottled the remaining 3 barrels of sour beer. It took almost an entire afternoon but by the end of the day we had a pile of freshly labeled sour beer. In case anyone is curious about how we bottled our sour beer I have included the directions at the bottom.

 

The three beers that we bottled were a Flanders Red, Flanders Sour Pale, and a Cherry Saison. Early on I noticed that the Saison had some kind of bacterial growth in the barrel and based on how ropey the growth was I guessed that it was pediococcus. I had read somewhere that Brett can break down some of the proteins that are produced by pedio. I inoculated the barrel with several strains of Brett and within 2 months the ropey layer on the top of the beer had disappeared. What could have been a very unpleasant barrel of beer turned into a very tasty sour.I will post reviews of how the beers taste as they finish their bottle conditioning period.

Bottling Sour Beer:

I have now used this method for 5 batches of beer and it has worked out very well each time. I would like to note that the beer that I use this for is almost completely flat and has no fermentable sugars left. I use freshly cultured champagne yeast because it is both acid and alcohol tolerant. It may produce a tiny amount of fruity aroma but I have not noticed it in the bottles. For 5 gallons I dissolve 3.5 ounces of table sugar in 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil. I then add the sugar water to the bottling bucket along with about 5 milliliters of Champagne yeast slurry (the slurry is fairly liquid). After a quick and gentle stir it is ready to bottle!

 

Home Brew Competition

My local home brew store recently had a homebrewing competition. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that two of my entries had placed. The first, a Flanders Red that I brewed well over a year ago came in 3rd with a final score of 40 (Excellent). The other beer, a Farmhouse Ale, placed second with a score of 39. Both of the beers moved onto the mini best of show.

I thought I would share the judges comments so that if anyone wanted to brew either of these beers they would know what a judge thinks of them. The recipes for both can be found using the above links.

Flanders Red:

Aroma: "Great Nose" "Tart Fruit, Berries, Currant"

Appearance: "Copper-red, Clear, poor head retention. Bubbly" "Nice color a little light"

Flavor: "Nice Tartness. Not Overwhelming - or underwhelming" "Tart balanced, fruity overtones - well balanced. Tart Aftertaste. Food phenolic balance"

Mouthfeel: "Medium body, moderate carbonation, tart." "Nice and Dry. Good carb level."

Overall Impression: "I enjoyed this beer!" "Very nice beer! Well balanced, tart, and refreshing with good complexity."

Farmhouse Ale:

Aroma: "Pleasantly sweet, wheat malt dominates, a subtle tartness of hay is perceived, a light fruit (pear) is noticed, something almost spicy as it warms." "4-ethyl phenol is good, nice spicy character, sweet smell."

Appearance: "Pale straw, hazy and had mild head that faded quickly" "Hazy, golden in color, minimal carbonation"

Flavor: "Wheat malt balanced with refreshing carboxylic sting, hops have a balancing and excellent bittering effect, finishes pleasantly dry with a little hint of phenolic (pepper and clove)." "Nice barnyard flavor, good grainy taste with a little citrus pop in it as it warms also pepper flavors."

Mouthfeel: "Medium body )appears very light because of high carbonation) no warmth, no astringency" "Nice body, needs more carbonation"

Overall Impression: "A very pleasant wheat based beer, It had all the right characteristics of saison. I do not perceive individual accessory spices but I can taste something different. Try colder bottling procedures and keep transfers as cold as possible." "Really enjoy this beer, really good for the style, love the spicy character in this but feel it could use more carbonation"

Belgium

I just got back from an awesome beer tour of Belgium. I though I would share a little bit about what I learned and saw there.

First, it was great to be somewhere where great craft beer was available at every restaurant. Colorado certainly has it fair share of eating establishments that have craft beer on tap or a couple in the bottle, but nothing like Belgium. Every place that we ate had several beers on tap and a bottle list so that you could pair whatever you were eating with a great beer to have along the side.

Second, I was able to visit some awesome breweries, such as Cantillon. Cantillon is one of the last producers in Belgium of authentic lambic and is the last brewery left in Brussels. On a self guided tour you got to see their old brewing equipment and barrel after barrel full of lambic. What I enjoyed that most was seeing the coolship and the roof that it was under. The slits in the tiles allowed for amble air circulation and I could just imagine the wild yeast populating the cooling wort.

Third, I made sure to hit up as many of the Trappist breweries as I could. This included Rochefort and Chimay who make some of my favorite beers. The trip also included a stop at Maredsous where cheese, beer wurst, fresh bread, and beer were available... all of which were delicious.




Finally, to ensure that I would remember my trip I stuffed a suit case to the brim with beer to take home!

Rocky Mountain Microbrew Symposium 2012

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend for the 3rd year in a row the Rocky Mountain Microbrewing Symposium (RMMS). This is event gives brewers the opportunity to hear talks from experts in the brewing industry and share knowledge between scientists who are doing brewing research and the people who are actually making the beer.

This year talks were given on brewing weiss beer, yeast flavors, marketing, distribution, gluten free brewing grains, and creating Lager beers. I thought I would go ahead and share some of my notes with anyone that is curious.


The first talk was by Dr. Chris White (White Labs). For someone who already knows a lot about yeast it was a little dull. The big highlight was a focus on Acetyl-aldehyde. White showed a chart that outlined the amount of this nasty compound produced at different temperatures. I was pretty shocked to see that at 65 F only 8ppm are produced but that at 75 F 153 ppm are produced! Another good reason to control your fermentation temps.

The second talk was by Bill Eye of Prost Brewing. Bill knows a ton about brewing beer and in particular about making great wheat beer (he won a gold medal at GABF while at Dry Dock for this category). Bill outlined two separate directions to go when brewing a wheat beer, phenolic or banana. Here are his suggestions for creating a beer that is focused on one or the other.
Phenolic

• Use well modified malt
• Stick with 50% wheat malt
• Do a ferulic acid rest at 111 to create more of the phenolic precursors
• Boil the beer longer (120 min-150 min)
• Use Eric's Rule (The knockout temp in Celsius + the fermentation temp should equal 30 C)
• Bill suggested knockout at 12 C and fermentation at 18C

• Pitch a healthy amount of yeast into a fully oxygenated wort

Ester (Banana)

Malted Buckwheat

• Use undermodified malt
• Use 60 % or more wheat malt
• Mash with a single infusion to create a highly fermentable wort (150 F)
• Do not fully oxygenate the wort, do about half the usual amount
• Ferment at 68 F or higher
• Underpitch (Bills uses 2 million cells/mL)!!!
• Add zinc which helps boost the amount of isoamylacetate

The final talk I thought people might find interesting was one on Gluten Free Malts produced by Colorado Malting Company. The grains that they malt include buckwheat, millet, quinoa, Amaranth, Coix Seed, Sorghum, and Teff. All the malts are low in diastic power but can still be used to brew beer when amylase is added. I took some sample bags home to play around with and will be ordering some of the grain in bulk from them to play around with.

Farmhouse/Saison

As I mentioned in my post about Essens Wheat I brewed 5 different beers for Christmas. For the 4th and 5th beers I wanted to play around with yeast a bit more. I had two strains that I wanted to compare, the Dupont Saison strain (White Labs 565) and a strain from the Brewing Science Institute labeled "S-26 Farmhouse Ale".

The plan was to brew one 5 gallon batch of beers and split it into two equal parts. I could then add 565 to one carboy and S-26 to the second. The recipe was very basic...

11 # Malted 2-Row (Rahr)
1 # Malted White Wheat
1/2 # Unmalted Wheat

Mashed at 148 F for 1 hour at a grist to water ratio of 1/3 (pounds)
Sparged with 3.5 gallons of water at 178 F.

First runnings 1.082
Second runnings 1.038

Hops
60 minutes 3/4 oz Challenger 8.8%
25 minutes 1 oz German Hallertau 3.3% (2011 crop)
5 minutes 1/2 oz Hallertau 5.5% (2012 crop)

Original Gravity was 1.055 (14 Plato)
Oxygenated with aeration stone

12/6 Brewer
12/12 Moved to Seconday (Both beers at 1.010 (2.5 plato))
12/16 Bottled S-26 portion (1.010) with 40 grams sugar. Moved 565 to keg to force carbonate (gravity still falling and now at 1.008)

As you can see the 565 portion finished a little drier than the farmhouse portion. Now onto a tasting of the two.

1/27 Farmhouse S-26

Appearance: The beer is very hazy. A lot of yeast is in suspension along with some haze from the unmalted wheat. The beer is impossible to see through despite being very light in color. A wonderful head sits atop the beer for the entire tasting and just refuses to go anywhere.

Aroma: The aroma is a mixture of so many different flavors. There is banana, strawberry, bubble gum, some clove, wheat, yeast, bread, and ripe fruit. Very pleasant.

Taste: The beer starts of sweet, like a wheat beer. The finish is dry but not bitter. The beer tastes mostly of bread and yeast.

Mouthfeel: Medium, and medium in body. Not cloying or silky. Fairly typical.

Overall: I am very pleased with how this beer turned out. The aroma is just wonderful and makes for a very pleasant drinking experience.

1/27 Saison

Appearance: At first glance the Saison is not near as hazy as the farmhouse ale. The head retention is also not as strong. It does form lace around the glass which the farmhouse did not.

Aroma: The aroma is very different. There is still some bread but the beer is more spicy. Some fruit aromas are present but they are subdued.

Taste: The beer is fairly similar. Sweet to start but with a more bitter finish. The spice of the hops come through better in this version.

Mouthfeel: A little more crisp and refreshing than the farmhouse, maybe due to a lower terminal gravity.

Overall: This is certainly a saison. It is crisp, refreshing, and the hops come through. Still a very tasty beer.

Blending

Flanders Red

I recently attempted my first beer blending. About two years ago New Belgium released a beer called Clutch. It was an awesome combination of sour and stout. It was a tasty combination of chocolate, coffee, and something lying just at the edge of sour. I decided to save a gallon of my Flanders Red to try to recreate this beer.
I had two hurdles to overcome 1) create a base beer that would include the flavors that would transform the Flanders Red into Clutch without conflicting with it and 2) find a way to keep the bugs in the Flanders Red from turning the stout part of the blend into a bomb as they slowly ate all the sugars that the primary stout yeast left behind.

I decided to use a tame stout recipe to create the base beer using a yeast strain (scottish ale) that would create few esters and leave the beer malty. Here is the recipe I used...




4.5 gallons

OG 1.075

72.5% Belgian Pilsner
10 % Cara Vienna
10% Cara Munich
2 % Caramel 80 L
5 % Chocolate Malt

Mashed at 155 F

Bittered to 50 IBU with 60 minute boil of zeus hops.

Used 1056 yeast

Flanders Red in pot with blanket of CO2

I then took the gallon of flanders red that I had and purged a 1.5 gallon pot with CO2. I added the flanders red to the pot and then added more CO2 over the top. I heated it to 170 F for 30 minutes to try to kill all the bacteria in the beer.

A weird foam formed over the beer as I heated it

After the brown ale finished I added the two beers together and bottled them.






Tasting:

Beer pours a very hazy brown color with amber highlights. A strong fluffy head sits atop the beer for the entire tasting session, never falling back into the glass.

The aroma is a mix of the fruit, funk, and sour of the Flanders Red with a little bit of roast from the Stout half. No notes of chocolate of coffee as I anticipated.

The beer is sweet, malty, and sour in the finish. I can pick out some chocolate and roast at the end but the sour kind of overtakes them.

The mouthfeel is wonderfully full and very creamy.

Overall the beer is a curious creation. It is certainly tasty but it was not what I was going for. The sour seems a little over the top and I am suprised that at 20% it is able to dominate the finish.

Note: I have had a couple of bottles since the original tasting and they are continuing to develop more sourness, so I am not sure I held the beer at a high enough temp for long enough to kill all of the bugs. That being said the malt and sweetness is still present so at least the desired affect has been achieved. I have moved all the bottles to the fridge to prevent much further change in the beer.