I needed to brew (Pecan Porter)

It's been a long time. So long that I'm forgetting things that I've learned. Brewing is a skill like any other; use it or lose it as they say. So I thought about recipies, cleaned up all of my gear, and set to work. I wanted to brew something that I'd like to drink so I thought about what I could put on tap at my new house and enjoy drinking through summer into the fall. So nothing too sweet, nothing too heavy, nothing too much... I settled on a porter since my last beer was an imperial IPA with all of the hops.

So I went to the AHA webpage and looked for inspiration. Enter the recipe for 512 Pecan Porter. It was a good jumping off point, but what I wanted to change was the potency; 6.8% is a bit heavy for a summer beer. So I dialed it back down to a more modest 5.3%. I reduced the ingredients by 20% keeping the recipe ratios the same.

(Please read more after the break.)

Pizza: Easier than you think.

We've all done it. We've paid more for a pizza than we should have; be it at the local tavern, or even at some upscale place boasting a wood fired stove; we've over paid. We're drawn to pizza like moths to a flame. We all burn for crispy warm bread covered in zesty tomato sauce oozing with caramelized cheese, and topped cured greasy meats(or fresh vegetables). For most Americans pizza is just a phone call away, for rural shoppers pizza can be purchased in the grocers freezer isle and baked at home offering a hint at how it's suppose to be.

What is Pizza suppose to be though? It's not fine dining in high society, but it's also not recycled leftover meatloaf. It's somewhere between a hot dog vendor steaming precooked links, and a restaurant where your waiter wears gloves. In my opinion pizza is best when shared and as a simple dish without too much analysis.

When you make pizza at home it gets even better. The ingredients in pizza aren't mystical and the items used in your pizza won't differ too dramatically from those used at your favorite pizza place. Pizza is something that you can have at home for a few dollars, and a few minutes of work.

(read more after the break to read just how easy pizza can be.)

Expanding my brew day.

As if a six to eight hour brew day wasn't long enough this past brewday I wanted to do more. I wanted to try to make spent grain bread. You may have heard of this and thought, can I do it? The answer is yes. It's super easy!

To start with read this primer on the Home Brewers Association's webzone. 

I modified their recipe down to a more manageable size and removed the milk because I never have milk at home; it always spoils before I drink it all.

1.50  cups spent grain (wet, but drained)

0.75  cups warm water

0.25  cups sugar

2.50  cups all purpose flour (give or take)

0.50  tsp. salt

1.0   egg beaten

0.5   packet dry active bakers yeast

When I made this it was still sticky and wet at first so I added about a half cup more flower. This will depend on the water content of your spent grain. The dough should be tacky, but not sticky or wet. It should stay together and not stick to your hands. Find the right amount of flour for your batch. 

Side note on making bread: when you're adding ingrediants at the end to get it to the right texture and consistency add them a little at a time, kneed them in and see if you need more. If you dump a half cup of flour in because it's still a little wet it might become overly dry and break apart; this can be overcome by adding water, but if you add too much you are in a cycle of fail.

So you'll do a rise until it doubles in size, this depends on the ambient temp, in a cool kitchen it could take 2 hours or more, on a hot day with no AC your time will be less.

After the rise punch the dough down and form it into whatever shape you want your loaf to be, I usually make a boule. Let it rise again for about as long as you let it rise the first time. You want the yeast to create little CO2 pockets to keep your bread light and airy.

Bake at 375 for 35 to 45 minutes, when the loaf is hard you should be able to bang on the bottom and should sound hollow, then it's done. The crust will be thick and rustic. Enjoy.

My Results

The bread was good, the crust was thick and dark perhaps a bit over cooked, but the inside of the bread was warm, moist and surprisingly sweet. The spent grains added texture as well to the bread. I'd make it again without hesitation and would enjoy trying bread made from a red or brown ale too.

Double Dry Hopped India Pale Ale

I am normally not all about getting a recipe from another source and then remaking it on my home system. Why? It's not nearly as much fun. You're standing on the backs of others trying to reach for a ring that some one has already obtained. Even if your clone is perfect you're still second in the race to perfection. Heady Topper is a DIPA that has been cloned extensively. Why? it's fantastic. The cans are hard to come by because they sell out each week and are only distributed within Vermont and to Boston. I'd love to have a keg of Vermont's finest DIPA but I'm going to leave the cloning to the clone experts. People with strict fermentation controls, well developed palates, and access to the original can have this shiny ring.

I am going to take aspects of the best clone recipes I can find and adapt them to my tastes. I'd call the an inspired by rather than a copied from.

(please read more after the break.)

Chicken Bratwurst

It's good to mix things up. In an effort to keep my taste buds guessing and my waistline in check I have made some sausages for summer. These chicken brats were the second meat to pass through my grinder which did not disappoint the second time through.

Chicken Bratwursts aren't the least traditional thing out there. Johnsonville makes them; I haven't seen them in my area. Livestrong has a totally unnecessary article on how to cook them. The Spicy Sausage (A great resource for recipes) even has a recipe. The internet agrees that this is a lighter alternative to pork. After the break I am going to include my recipe and thoughts after trying some chicken brats.

(please read more after the break)

American Lambic Style Ale 2013

Pale Wort

After the failure that was my lambic tasting I have decided to modify things slightly. First I will only be using all grain batches, secondly I will be doing primary fermentation with the bugs, and third I will be using the more complex malt bill to feed the bugs. So The malt bill will be pale malt, wheat malt, oats and dextrin malts.

Why that malt bill? It's traditional historic, everything adds something and I am trying to give those bugs a lot of food to do something; something more than nothing. Oats allegedly add mouth feel even after the beer microbes have had their fill, wheat and pale malt are also very traditional.

(Read more after the break to find out what my secret weapon is this time.)

Flanders Red Again

Third time is the charm, right? In year three I got the same Flemish ale strain as I had used in the prior two years. Al B's bugs have been working away for that length of time in my prior Flanders Reds. They have worked uninterrupted for that time. I haven't so much as moved them from their resting places since they began to settle there. These brews like many other traditional sours the Flanders Red is a blend. Blending allows you to achieve a complexity that is hard to achieve in a single batch brew. When this batch is around 6 months old I will blend the young and old Flanders Reds to produce my signature blend.

(Please read more after the break.)

Collaboration Series: New Zealand Hopped Pale Ale

I collaborated on this beer with this blog's co-author Kyle. He recently downsized his place to get more flexibility in his life. He asked me to help him get started with small batch brewing; a request I was happy to fulfill. The recipe started out as a simple request for a pale ale and after some banter about "putting more hops in it" I came to a recipe I thought would work. After some thinking and doing a little inventory on my freezer I came to the recipe for a hoppy beer with British roots and Kiwi flavor.

(please read more after the break.)

Belgian Dark Strong Ale

The flavors of a Belgian dark strong ale come from the interplay of Belgian yeast and candi sugar. Traditionally the flavors in these beers are made with a very simplistic malt bill. It has been rumored that Westvleteren 12 is made with water, pale malt, candi sugar, local hops, and yeast. Those five things combine to form one of the worlds best beers. A while back I ordered a pitch of Belgian Abbey from East Coast Yeast so that gives me another ECY to evaluate.

My plan for this beer was to explore my home made candi sugar vs. the store bought kind but I can tell you after tasting the store bought one that it is better. I'm not sure how to describe the differences. The store bought one had the same deep caramel flavors as my home made variety. I would describe these as burnt sugar. It also had a metallic but pleasing flavor and a sugary flavor that added to everything else that was going on. The multi dimensional flavors of the authentic candi sugar make me want to use it in other Belgian beers moving forward.

(please read more after the break.)

Chocolate Ale: The Return of Small Batch Brewing

In the spirit of the Mayan apocalypse that came and went on the 21st I brewed a chocolate ale. Chocolate was first cultivated by the Mayans and was a big part of their culture. The might have gotten the end of the world wrong but they got chocolate right. I had my first chocolate beer when I had a bottle of Young's Double Chocolate Stout. It was a revelation in a bottle; the flavors were of an authentic stout but also very chocolatey. I've since had Ommegang's Chocolate Indulgance, Sam Adam's Chocolate Bock, and The Bruery's Chocolate Rain. Cocoa can add a lot to a beer. It really accentuates the robust flavors of dark roasted grains. The sugar leftover after fermentation combines with the dark cocoa in much the same way as as milk chocolate. I've formulated my own stout recipe around the idea of chocolate malts and

(read more after the break.)

American Sour Double Red (Brown)

American Sour Red/Brown

I ordered a vial of the mother of funk. Al Buck must believe in Santa because he leaves vials of Bug County for all of the good little home brewers. This is his magnum opus of sour. The vial is described thusly on his facebook, "The mother bugger for sour ales. Contains ECY01, ECY02, ECY03, ECY04, and ECY05. Also includes: Brettanomyces lambicus, bruxellensis, anomulus, clausenii, custersianus, nanus, and naardenensis. Various Lactobacilli and Pediococci were added." For those keeping score this contains, Lambic Blend, Flemish Blend, Farm House Brett, Brett Blend #1, Brett Blend #9, and various additional bugs to drive the funk up. What to make from such a crazy blend? My first thoughts were to make a lambic style beer for my future gueuze blends. After making my second lambic of the season I decided on a sour double red (brown) with american funk instead.

(Please read more after the break.)

Flanders Red, The Sequel

It's that time of year again, around 14 months after my first Flanders Red went into primary it's time to go again. I'll be sampling my sours as soon as I can get a friend in spring lake to help. (hint: Derek or Kyle time to help), but before then I'll need to brew another Flanders Red before it get's really cold. Looking back at a blog post from a year ago I realize how naive I was. I honestly thought I would be drinking a Flanders Red aged on cherries by now....hahaha DOH!

To make superior sour beers blending is a must. It's not hard to see why, souring organisms are fickle and two batches pitched at the same time, from the same vial can have differing results. The following factors can have a varrying effects on your sour beer: dissolved oxygen, ambient temperature, wort PH, and Fermentor size/shape/type. A plastic bucket and a better bottle will turn out two different beers. A glass carboy with a wooden stopper could produce radically different results than with a rubber bung.

(read more after the break.)

American Lambic - Yeast Schedule.

These things make the beer!

My first lambic of the season was a turbid mash. In the spirit of discovery, and education I am going to attempt to use a more complicated inoculation schedule. The various microorganisms used to make lambics and other sour beers thrive under different conditions during the fermentation cycle. When you pitch all of the various microorganisms at once in the 'set it and forget it' method you're leaving things up to chemistry and chance. This isn't wrong; it's not a bad way of doing things.

I like experimenting and learning. My hopes are that by using a few different techniques I can begin to figure out what works for me. I am aware that the more scientific method for doing this would be to isolate one variable at a time: mash technique, yeast strain, or inoculation schedules; then to devise a series of experiments altering only one variable to discover what is best. I've decided that this isn't the best way of home brewing. One reason is that I can't replicate laboratory conditions at home; this may seem like a trivial point but each wort I produce is unique, the boil times are precise but not meticulous, my measurements are close but not exact, etc., etc.. If I could produce uniform wort, maintain exacting fermentation conditions, measure pH, dissolved oxygen, etc. it might be worth doing this a bit more carefully. I'm content making beer, and taking rough notes. Producing lambic style beers is about the art of it all, not laboratory precision.

(please read more after the break.)

Batch Fifty - Old Ale w/ Molasses & Spices

Different brewing companies support different milestones in different ways. Bells brewery in Kalamazoo, MI produces a special beer for every thousandth batch. Shorts Brewery in Bellaire, MI produces their Anniversary Ale with blood oranges each year. The Bruery does both producing milestone batches and anniversary ales.

I am brewing my fiftieth batch of beer now. This number includes both large and small batches. I want to celebrate this anniversary by making a beer that is a celebration of things which I love. I am going to be making a old stock ale with a base of maris otter, black strap molasses and Sri Lankan cinnamon. This beer is similar to one of my early failures The Cinnamon Treacle Old Ale. To improve it I am going to work with ingredients I am a bit more familiar with.

(please read more about me, and my beer after the break.)

Sweet Potato Wheat Wine

Sweet Potato 

Thanksgiving will be upon the American people soon. Thanksgiving is a time for family, feasts, reflection, and appreciation. I'd like to take that feast and replicate it inside a bottle of beer. Thanksgiving food for me is about a few things: turkey that no one likes, home made rolls that are to die for, and pies with fall appropriate spices.

Last fall I made a pumpkin ale, and it was alright. I think that the pumpkin might have taken something away from the mouth-feel of the beer. This would have happened if it was highly fermentable and threw off my calculations. Kyle liked the pumpkin batch a great deal but I wanted more. To get more I am going to re-interpret my beer as a wheat win. This will allow me to work in some body increasing ingredients as part of the base of the recipe.

(read more after the break.)

White Wine Yeast Mead w/ Spicey Peppers

I've used Redstar's Pasture Champagne yeast several times, and each time I have not enjoyed the yeast flavors it contributed. I am going to give another yeast a try to bring out different flavors in my next batch of mead. Redstar's Côte des Blancs sounded like a good choice after reading that it brings out the fruity flavors when used to make white wines. This should work as I am hoping to bring out the fruity sweet flavors of the honey and fire those flavors up with a mixture of fresh store bought peppers including Serrano, Pablano, and Anaheim.

(please read more after the break.)

Black India Pale Ale, Errr What?

Is it a black India pale ale, a cascadian dark ale, an american black ale, an East India export porter, or a NW style black ale? I honestly don't know anymore and that is the most frustrating part of these beers. It's not yet a BJCP recognized style, and yet every brewery under the sun is riding the black ipa wave for giggles or glory. Some examples of this are Stone Sublimely Self Righteous, Shorts Bludgeon Yer Eye PA, Hill Farmstead Jim, and Widmer Brother's Pitch Black IPA.

All of the best examples of this style have had two characteristics worth noting. The first is a clear hop forward presence. It can be Citra, Cascade, Amarillo/Simcoe, etc., but it must be clear and forward. Behind the hops is where the American Black Ale distinguishes itself from an IPA; this is where you'll find a unique maltiness. This malt flavor has notes of a subtle porter; not caramelly, but roasty; not harsh, but additive. The flavors of dark caramel malts, chocolate malts, and de-husked roasted malts are the flavors that work well with hops and add to the flavors. A beer advocate review of Hill Farmstead's Society & Solitude #2, an experimental american black ale, reads:

"A beautiful marriage of pine and roast. Additional notes of chocolate and citrus. Lovely malt body. Medium bodied and easy to drink too quickly."

I found this review spot on with my experience while drinking the beer. I enjoyed it immensely and it helped to challenge my paradigm of what this style was.

(please read more about this style and my beer after the break.)

Imperial Chocolate Porter II

I may have overdone my first imperial porter. The smell of the beer is intoxicating but the flavor is all cocoa. I'm committed to getting this style right. Once I have the base down I have big plans for my recipe.

This is basically a re-building of my original Imperial Chocolate Porter but with the recipe I intended. When I had gone to buy malt I couldn't find brown malt or pale chocolate. I ended up adding carabrown and adding more chocolate malt instead. I don't intend to add any adjuncts to the brew this time around so that I can get a better baseline for future brews.  I'll be using oak cubes as I did last time because I believe that oak adds a great deal to the finished product through depth of flavor.

(please read more after the break.)

Batch 002 Sour

This is my kitchen
during brewing

Batch 001 Sour Ale is finished. The blueberry sour blond ale turned out as well as I could have hoped. I was initially torn between re-brewing Batch 001 for bottling or trying something new, and something new won out. So in the spirit of something new while building on  Batch 001 I started with that base recipe and built. I want to emulate some of the great sour browns I have had, while preserving an essence of my original recipe. I also wanted to try to emulate more of a lactic sourness. I believe this lactic sourness to be the key to creating the flavors I want.

(please read more after the break.)

'Rustic' Rye Saison

An Ear of Rye

What is Rye? Rye is a cereal grain similar to other cereal grains but it differentiates itself by growing more more heartily. Rye can grow in much poorer soil and grows vigorously even over the winter. Rye is mostly grown in Europe although it is cultivated on at least three other continents. Why add rye to my beers? Because it has a delicious if not elusive flavor. Straight from Briess's webpage: "Rye has a spicy rye flavor." I learned in school that if your definition for a word includes that word than it's a poor definition. Briess has told me nothing about rye. Looking at other sources yielded little to nothing else; the answer just kept coming back to 'rye is rye'. If I had to describe it I would say that it has a stronger flavor than other grains; A sharp, crisp, earthen flavor, with bark and nut spices mixed in. I think the best way to characterize rye is that you know when it's there, and you know when it's not. Nothing can replace it.

This isn't my first rye beer; there was last winter's ginger in the fields saison. It was nice and had a great flavor. It was enjoyed by all. This time rather than making another beer that focused as heavily on the ginger I wanted to make a nice saison with rye. This isn't my first saison either, but because my apartment is quite hot during the day I wanted to work with a more temperature tolerant yeast. After looking at the suggested fermentation temperatures of 75-85° for ECY 08 Saison Brasserie I believe that I will be okay.

(please read more after the break.)