More Barrels! (4) French Oak Wine Barrels freshly emptied

 Well, this is a classic "Field of Dreams" type story of  "If you build it, they will come." 

This little story I'm about to tell is my own Field of Dreams, but I'm going to call it Barrel Cellar of Dreams.   Since I started writing on this blog I've had a bunch of people make comments and reach out to me with advice, or thanking me for publishing my own advice, trials, and tribulation.  Mainly trials.   Anyways, along the way I also started a little homebrew club in my neighborhood called the Nordeast Brewers Alliance.   This club has allowed me first to "stop talking about brewing to my wife", who apparently could care less about whether I batch, or fly sparge.   Anyways, along with the HBC has come some amazing experiments.  Our annual Single Hop experiment is a big draw and something you can't do by yourself very effectively.   Another project that we've done is the Barrel aged Project.   This is another thing that you simply can't do by yourself.  (You could, but who wants 59 gallons of the same beer for personal consumption).    Anyways, through writing about my experiences as the barrel wrangler for our club, our club has received a lot of local interest, as well as people reaching out to us wanting to get involved.   Luckily, somehow my blog reached, or our HBC blog got on the computer of a former San Franciscan resident (Lodi actually) getting ready to move back home to beautiful Minneapolis.    He reached out to me, and turns out he had 4 freshly emptied French Oak wine barrels.   As fate would have it, we seem to be simpatico in aspects of music (Phish, Big Wu, ect), beer, and life in general (Hockey) .   Turns out he is looking to fill these barrels up with beer, and I have just the crew to do that!  Luckily, one of our club members has the perfect "Barrel Room" in his basement and is willing to take on the responsibility of housing, maintaining, and managing our "new" barrels. 

 Here is a little background on the barrels.   Apparently Casey had become friends with some of the local Wineries in Lodi and upon leaving town, he snagged a few barrels that had been freshly emptied of their juice.

Both of these wineries employ "Native Fermentation" which means that they don't initially pitch yeast, but allow the nature local yeast to take hold in the wine adding complexity and truly embracing the terroir.   With that, it would seem that it may be tough to produce a "clean" beer with these barrels so we are looking to introduce mixed fermentation into anything we decide to put into these barrels!

French Oak Barrels
(2) from Fields Family Wines, and (2) from McCay Cellars.   The McCay cellars barrels are heavier duty barrels compared to the Fields Barrels which is interesting.  The staves must be thicker.   All of these barrels were first filled with grape juice in 2008.   McCay's were filled with their highly rated Zinfandel, and the Fields barrels were filled with Cab and Merlot.

A few notes from sniffing the bungs in order to figure out what to fill them with.

Barrel #1 - McCay Zin  - Medium/Heavy Oak, vanilla, blackberries, currants.

Barrel #2 - McCay Zin  - Medium/Heavy Oak, vanilla, fruity cocoa.

Barrel #3 - Fields Merlot - Light Oak, red fruit, cherries.

Barrel #4 - Fields Cab - Light Oak, light fruit

Here's what I'm thinking as far as filling the barrels-

Barrel #1 - Wee Heavy (clean)

Barrel #2 - Russian Imperial Stout

Barrel #3 - Flanders Style Red Ale - Awarded winning recipe

Barrel #4 - Saison or Dark Saison (Honey and Figs)

Harvest Brown Ale (Hoppy Dank Brown Ale) with Midnight Wheat and Honey

With the Harvest Moon in the night sky and the hops harvest over, it was time once again to brew my favorite beer of the year.   My yearly harvest time hoppy brown ale.   For those who lean towards a darker beer in the Fall and Winter months but lean towards IPA's in the summer, this is the perfect transition beer!   This year I decided against using locally grown hops and decided to use locally sourced Honey that I bought from the NE Mpls Farmers Market.   I love using honey in my IPA's for a few reasons.   Honey is extremely fermentable and will help dry out the beer, and I like my IPA's fairly dry.   The other added benefit is that it does leave a little bit of residual sweetness that I like instead of excessive amounts of Crystal malt.  That all being said, I started thinking more and more about honey lately because of my sons love for the cartoon movie "Bee Movie."   This movie got me thinking about honey and why and how bees make honey.  They make it to eat during the winter months.   In my research on honey I came upon this little fact..."it takes about 556 foraging bees to visit 2 million flowers, just to make a pound of honey!"   That's what went into this beer!   Some more fun facts about honey and bees....

Why do bees make honey?

We know that bees have been producing honey as they do today for at least 150 million years. Bees produce honey as food stores for the hive during the long months of winter when flowers aren't blooming and therefore little or no nectar is available to them. European honey bees, genus Apis Mellifera, produce such an abundance of honey, far more than the hive can eat, that humans can harvest the excess. For this reason, European honey bees can be found in beekeeper's hives around the world!

The Colony

Honey bees are social insects, with a marked division of labor between the various types of bees in the colony. A colony of honey bees includes a queen, drones and workers.

 

The Queen 

The queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive. She is the largest bee in the colony.

A two-day-old larva is selected by the workers to be reared as the queen. She will emerge from her cell 11 days later to mate in flight with approximately 18 drone (male) bees. During this mating, she receives several million sperm cells, which last her entire life span of nearly two years.

The queen starts to lay eggs about 10 days after mating. A productive queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a single day.

The Drones

Drones are stout male bees that have no stingers. Drones do not collect food or pollen from flowers. Their sole purpose is to mate with the queen. If the colony is short on food, drones are often kicked out of the hive.

The Workers

Workers, the smallest bees in the colony, are sexually undeveloped females. A colony can have 50,000 to 60,000 workers.  The life span of a worker bee varies according to the time of year. Her life expectancy is approximately 28 to 35 days. Workers that are reared in September and October, however, can live through the winter.  Workers feed the queen and larvae, guard the hive entrance and help to keep the hive cool by fanning their wings. Worker bees also collect nectar to make honey.  In addition, honey bees produce wax comb. The comb is composed of hexagonal cells which have walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but support 25 times their own weight.   Honey bees' wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz.\

Anywho....

I’ve tried for three years to bitter my beers with locally grown hops to very mixed results.   Instead of using locally grown hops,  I decided I wanted to really dial in my DANK hop profile.  I fell like Centennial may be the perfect match for this task with it’s burnt citrus pungency.   I’ve been trying to reach a certain hop profile in my IPA’s lately and they always seem to be overpowered by Simcoe, or Citra, or any of the very distinct American fruity varieties of hops.  I’m hoping that Centennial with my Summit/Apollo blend is the right blend for what I’m going for.  I wanted to get a nice brown color but I didn’t want huge chocolate, roast, or really much character from roasted malts what so ever.  Instead I wanted a nice big mouthfeel, a tiny bit of caramel and toffee (Maris Otter and Caramel), some sweetness and dryness from honey, and then absolutely be blasted by dank resinous hops that lean more toward pine and less on the citrus.   .   I decided that in place of Chocolate Malt, and Roast Malt, that I’d go with Midnight Wheat.   It should provide a tiny bit of roastiness, but mainly will aid in the color and mouthfeel of this beer.   In order to get a substantial enough mouthfeel I decided to mash at 156 for 60 minutes.  The idea being that the addition of honey will thin the beer out, so mashing high will balance that out.  This beer definitely looks more like a West Coast IPA, but people will say that it’s a Black IPA and that it doesn’t have enough roast flavor for a Black IPA.  Well…that’s exactly what I was going for…you can’t put me into a box.

Specific Gravity: 1.067

Final Gravity: 1.016?

Color: 26° SRM  Dark Brown to Black

Mash Efficiency: 76 %

Bitterness:  71.9 IBU

Alcohol: 6.7% ABV

Calories: 221 per 12 oz.

Malt & Fermentables

	%	LB	OZ
	48%	6	8	Rahr Two-Row	Mash
	37%	5	~	Pale Malt (Maris Otter)	Mash
	7%	1	~	Honey	Boil
	4%	~	8	American Crystal 80L	Mash
	4%	~	8	Briess Midnight Wheat	Mash
		13	8

Hops

	Usage	Time	OZ			AA
	first wort	60 min	0.7	Chinook		5.0
	boil	75 min	0.3	Chinook		5.0
	boil	10 min	1	Apollo		19.7
	boil	10 min	1	Centennial		10.0
	boil	10 min	1	Simcoe		13.0
	boil	1 min	1	Apollo		19.7
	boil	1 min	1	Centennial		10.0
	boil	1 min	1	Summit		18.0
	dry hop	7 days	2	Apollo		19.7
	dry hop	7 days	1	Centennial		10.0
	dry hop	7 days	2	Summit		18.0

Yeast

Dennys Favorite 50 (1450)

***I also took ¾ gallon of this wort and fermented it on 100% Brett Drie.  Whoa baby that is gonna be tasty!

Manoomin Knocker - Wild Rice Imperial Mild Ale

 I brewed a batch of beer on the first of October that I thought would be an amazing seasonal beer and I hope to add a Wild Rice beer to my lineup every Fall during the harvest season.   I love using local ingredients in my recipe’s whenever possible and after sampling a version of this beer and hearing that it had Wild Rice in it, I thought I had to give it a try!!!  This recipe is inspired by Tim Stuemke who is a founding member of the Nordeast Brewers Alliance.  Although typically Mild Ales are much lighter in body, lower in alcohol, and slightly roasty Brown Ales typically in the mid 1.030 range.  This beer is called an Imperial Mild mainly to be funny as historically Mild Ales have found their way up into the 1.050+ Gravity range.    The key is that a Mild Ale be very sessionable!!!  Mild ales are typically a bit thin, yet bold in flavor, and I wanted an even bolder version to go with Minnesota’s bolder version of Winter!   This beer could easily be called a Brown Ale.

Wild Rice - Experience/History - Wild Rice is an interesting plant. My first experience with it was when I was a kid on a canoe trip in the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area).   A group of us kids and a couple of dads took a week long trip up north paddling, portaging, cliff jumping, camping, foraging for blueberries, catching fish, and living with and off the land.   On one of the last days we paddled along a lazy small river in between a couple large lakes and we were surrounded by wild rice much like this picture below.

If you want to learn more about Wild Rice, go to the Wiki page HERE.   Kinda interesting...as it's not rice at all, it's actually closer related to grass.  Foragging for Wild Rice is a laborious task that intails canoeing and knocking the grain into your canoe.  Processing Wild Rice is even more interesting and time consuming then knocking the grain.  Check out this Video on how Wild Rice is traditionally processed.

All in all the Wild Rice is going to give this beer a "nutty" character that otherwise couldn't be acheived.

Cereal Mash –

The usage of Wild Rice brings up some questions.   How do I handle the Wild Rice? It’s extremely hard to break down, and how to extract the sugars from it?  Well what you need to do is a Cereal Mash.   For this beer I ground up the wild rice with my coffee grinder extremely fine in order to make the starches more accessible.  Then I put it in equal parts water…1 lb/1 gallon and slowly brought that to a boil.   Once that was boiling I kept it rolling for a good hour!   I could have also added in a bit of grain (for their enzymes) and done a quick Sacc rest at 150 degrees, but since I was going to add it to the mash I know I’d get full conversion.  By the end of the hour it essentially looks like thick cooked rice and you really couldn’t boil it any longer without adding more water.   Keep in mind that you need to be stirring throughout this time as to not scorch the rice.  Especially during the last 15 minutes. 

For mashing the other grains I decide to mash in real thick and do a quick Protein rest at 120 degrees.   It sat there for only about 5 minutes at most and then I dumped in my boiling hot cereal mash of wild rice.  This brought the temperature up to 148.  I was shooting for 150-152 so I added about ½ gallon of boiling water and then let it rest for the 1 hour.    Batch Sparged as normal at 168 degrees and I was ready to boil.  Once the boil had finished I chilled it and pitch my yeast after pouring it back and forth to oxygenate.   I fermented it at 67-68 degrees in my basement and this should create a slightly fruity fermentation and add additional character to the Toasty (Maris Otter), and Nutty (Wild Rice), sweetness and caramel toffee (Cystal 60 /120),  Earthyness of the hops,  as well as complement the small amount of darker roastier grains. (Pale Chocolate/ Black Patent).  The Melanoidin malt should give the beer a substantial body that is a little bit off for the style, but I personally enjoy.

Wild Rice Imperial Mild Ale

Mash Efficiency: 72 %

Specific Gravity: 1.052 OG

Final Gravity:     1.016 FG

Alcohol: 4.8% ABV

Calories: 173  per 12 oz.

Color: 17° SRM  Light Brown to Medium Brown

Bitterness: 19.7 IBU  Tinseth

Malt & Fermentables

%	LB	OZ
62%	6	~	Pale Malt (Maris Otter)	Mash
21%	2	~	Wild Rice	Cereal Mash/		Mash
5%	~	8	American Crystal 120L	Mash
5%	~	8	American Crystal 60L	Mash
4%	~	6	Melanoidin Malt	Mash
3%	~	4	Pale Chocolate Malt	Mash
1%	~	1	American Black Patent	Mash
	9	11

Hops

Usage	Time	OZ			AA » IBU
boil	60 min	1	East Kent Goldings ~ pellet		5.0 » 19.7

Yeast

London ESB Ale (1968) yeast in liquid form with very high flocculation and 69% attenuation

Grisette style Table Saison

Grisette is a variation of a Saison style Farmhouse ale.   Where Saisons were brewed mainly for the farmhands and typically had a lactic sourness,  Grisette was brewed mainly for the Mining community.   I thought that this beer would be a nice representation for a MN Saison since Minnesota was built on Iron Ore and grain.   In fact, the mining community in Gilbert, MN is where my Great Grandma and Grandpa Paciotti were brought to after coming to America.  

"Historically, saisons were brewed at farmhouses to serve to workers. Grisette's ("little gray") were served to miners. Although the style died out, they were described as small, refreshing blonde ales that probably lacked the lactic acid that characterized their close cousin, saisons"

Really, I wanted to brew 10 gallons of a very easy drinking, simple Saison/Brett.  I split the batch, half on Brett C, and the other half on Brett Drie.   Both of these beers have huge pellicle’s forming.

In hind site I wish I would have mashed high in the 160’s as to hopefully create a little more body in the finished product, but in the end I ended up doing a traditional Saison mash in order to get a highly fermentable wort.   This beer should be fairly thin, have some subtle fruity notes from the Brett and French Saison yeast, and have a bit of residual body from the use of unmalted wheat.

I’m planning on dry hopping this beer.  At 4% this beer should go down nice and smooth, just as it should!  I can only hope that my great Grandpa drank something like this after a long day in the mines of Northern MN.  My guess is that Luis Paciotti probably drank wine and whiskey.

I brewed this beer almost 3 months ago now.  I split a 10 gallon batch.  5 gallons on Brett C and the Bruery Rye Saison dregs, and 5 gallons on Brett Drie.  Also one half pack of French Saison yeast in each and fermented at 78 degrees!

Specific Gravity: 1.034 OG

Final Gravity: 1.003 FG

Color: 4° SRM

Mash Efficiency: 65 %

Bitterness: 26.2 IBU  ƒ: Tinseth

Alcohol: 4.1% ABV

Calories: 109 per 12 oz.

Malt & Fermentables

%	LB	OZ			°L	PPG
33%	5	~	American Two-row Pale	Mash	1°	37
27%	4	~	Rahr Pilsner Malt	Mash	2°	34
20%	3	~	Red Winter Wheat	Mash	5°	34
13%	2	~	Vienna Malt	Mash	3°	36
7%	1	~	Wheat, Unmalted (Wheat Berries)	Mash	5°	25
	15	0

Hops

Usage	Time	OZ			AA » IBU
first wort	90 min	1	Amarillo ~ pellet		7.0 » 17.1
boil	10 min	2	French Strisserspalt ~ pellet		3.0 » 5.0
boil	5 min	1	French Strisserspalt ~ pellet		3.0 » 1.4
boil	5 min	1	Fuggles ~ pellet		4.5 » 2.0
boil	1 min	1	Amarillo ~ pellet		5.0 » 0.5
boil	1 min	1	French Strisserspalt ~ pellet		3.0 » 0.3
dry hop	6 days	1	Amarillo ~ pellet		7.0 » 0.0
dry hop	6 days	2	French Strisserspalt ~ pellet		3.0 » 0.0

Yeast

French Saison (3711) yeast in liquid form with low flocculation and 90% attenuation

WLP644 Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois yeast in liquid form with low flocculation and 90% attenuation

 

***Update and tasting: Brett is nice, floral hops, the flavor is similar in the middle but very thin, and then it just falls off at the end, extremely thin and watery.   For a sessionable beer, I don't really think it's very succesful because it doesn't draw you back in for another beer.   I've experimented with adding Lactic acid to it and this makes the beer much more enjoyable.  In future iterations of this style, I will go sour as well as add a significant portion of Oats to help build and sustain some body.

Thankyou Mr. Minor,  Thanyou Mr. Hood