We were lucky enough to have this beer turn out amazing! It literally tastes like liquid gold and for a RR - Temptation clone, it tastes very close to the real thing! Click on the image above to go to the original recipe, or click HERE.
9.26.2013
Nothing better then bottling your first ever Barrel aged Sour beer!
We were lucky enough to have this beer turn out amazing! It literally tastes like liquid gold and for a RR - Temptation clone, it tastes very close to the real thing! Click on the image above to go to the original recipe, or click HERE.
The Great Brett Experiment is about to begin! (has already begun)
So.... I really like Brettanomyces, and in many ways it's the "unknown" about Brett that I really love. It's the artist in me that enjoys using Wild yeast and not the scientist. When most people think of Brett they think of flavors and aroma's of cheese, horse-blanket, wet dog, etc and some people really enjoy those flavors in their beer. In my quest to understand this wild yeast I've come across some examples that have huge fruit characteristics and are described as passion fruit, pineapple, strawberry, stone fruits, and pie cherries. I really enjoy the fruity strains of Brett as opposed to the funky strains and it's these fruity Brett stains that I lean towards utilizing in my beers. It's to that artistic end that I decided to join a scientific project dubbed The Great Brett Experiment.
The Great Brett Experiment is the brain child of a mad scientist in Switzerland with a yeast blog called Eureka Brewing but also is a home brewer that him and his brother call Blackwell Brewery. Back to the experiment....The experiment is based on understanding the flavors, aroma, and fermentation characteristics of Brett strains that Sam has isolated from various commercial bottles. Some bottles of Cantillon have had up-to 4 or 5 different Brett strains. He shipped me 20 different varieties of Brett in these tiny little vials...see picture on the bottom of the post. Unfortunately 3 of the varieties didn't make the long transport from Switzerland so I'll be doing 17 different varieties. (Keep in mind that a few of these 17 varieties may be the same strain, just from different breweries, or they may have been the same at one point, and are now mutated and are now a unique strain.)
I'm hoping to find additional Brett strains that have those amazing unique fruity flavors that only certain strains of Brettanomyces can provide. We'll then be able to mapped those strains as either great 100% fermenting strains, or great strains for complementing Saccharomyces strains in mixed fermentation (ex. Saison Brett!)
I'll take these small samples and build them up until I have enough to 100% ferment a half gallon. Here is my plan taken from Jeffrey Crane's blog Beers Bikes & Adventure
Recipe:
I created a simple recipe that I thought would be interesting enough for us to enjoy the taste of the beer, but not too complex to distract us from the yeast derived flavors. For the recipe, I added some wheat to help with mouthfeel (protein) and long term food source (long chain carbohydrates). Then a small percentage of acid malt was added to give the Brett strains some lactic acid to convert and to also lower the pH for the mash and Brett fermentation.
Logistics:
Sam will be sending the yeast in 1.5 mL vials (mostly to help with international shipping costs). These will need to be built up. I've read that you should build up about 10x each step. I'm planning to brew wit hall 20 strains at once. My goal is to have 20 - .5 gal trials going all at once - here is how I plan to do that.
First Starter Step - 15 ml (~.5 oz)
15 ml Sterile Centrifuge tubes (~$15 and great for saving dregs)
Second Starter Step - 150 ml (~5 oz). Here are my ideas:
250 ml flask w stopper/airlock or foil (laboratory way), but expensive
12 oz beer bottles w stopper or foil (pretty cheap, but the stoppers/airlocks would be pricey)
12 oz water bottles w 1/8" blow-off tubing sealed into cap or foil (cheap)
Main Batch - 1.5 l (~50 oz) - maybe a bit more to get 4 beers worth
64 oz growlers w stopper/airlocks (homebrewer friends have extras - especially with CA laws)
2 liter water bottles w 1/8" blow-off tubing sealed into cap
Evaluation:
We wanted to make sure we standardized the evaluation of the strains. We thought it was best to taste at Month 1 (uncarbonated at bottling), Month 2, Month 6, 1 Year. I have created a Brettanomyces Evaluation Scoresheet (based on the AHA Scoresheet). We will compile the tasting notes, scores and sour/funk ratings.
Brettanomyces Evaluation ScoreSheet (pdf)
I'm hoping to find additional Brett strains that have those amazing unique fruity flavors that only certain strains of Brettanomyces can provide. We'll then be able to mapped those strains as either great 100% fermenting strains, or great strains for complementing Saccharomyces strains in mixed fermentation (ex. Saison Brett!)
I'll take these small samples and build them up until I have enough to 100% ferment a half gallon. Here is my plan taken from Jeffrey Crane's blog Beers Bikes & Adventure
Recipe:
I created a simple recipe that I thought would be interesting enough for us to enjoy the taste of the beer, but not too complex to distract us from the yeast derived flavors. For the recipe, I added some wheat to help with mouthfeel (protein) and long term food source (long chain carbohydrates). Then a small percentage of acid malt was added to give the Brett strains some lactic acid to convert and to also lower the pH for the mash and Brett fermentation.
Logistics:
Sam will be sending the yeast in 1.5 mL vials (mostly to help with international shipping costs). These will need to be built up. I've read that you should build up about 10x each step. I'm planning to brew wit hall 20 strains at once. My goal is to have 20 - .5 gal trials going all at once - here is how I plan to do that.
First Starter Step - 15 ml (~.5 oz)
15 ml Sterile Centrifuge tubes (~$15 and great for saving dregs)
Second Starter Step - 150 ml (~5 oz). Here are my ideas:
250 ml flask w stopper/airlock or foil (laboratory way), but expensive
12 oz beer bottles w stopper or foil (pretty cheap, but the stoppers/airlocks would be pricey)
12 oz water bottles w 1/8" blow-off tubing sealed into cap or foil (cheap)
Main Batch - 1.5 l (~50 oz) - maybe a bit more to get 4 beers worth
64 oz growlers w stopper/airlocks (homebrewer friends have extras - especially with CA laws)
2 liter water bottles w 1/8" blow-off tubing sealed into cap
Evaluation:
We wanted to make sure we standardized the evaluation of the strains. We thought it was best to taste at Month 1 (uncarbonated at bottling), Month 2, Month 6, 1 Year. I have created a Brettanomyces Evaluation Scoresheet (based on the AHA Scoresheet). We will compile the tasting notes, scores and sour/funk ratings.
Brettanomyces Evaluation ScoreSheet (pdf)
8.26.2013
Homebrew Competition with two (2) specialty categories. American Wild Ale and 100% Brett
It's that time of year again where the Nordeast Brewers Alliance put on our 2nd annual Nordeast Big River Homebrew competition.
Click Here to Register
Check out our Chop N Brew promotional video here by our good friend Chip Walton
Like last year we have two specialty categories for America Wild and 100% Brett! I'm gonna throw this out there right now because I know that a lot of Wild ale brewers are anti-BJCP judging competitions and I was the same way. My Wild Ales, and 100% bretts didn't fit into any BJCP category. Well, that is why we created our specialty categories. We, the uber funk freaks of america (and the universe for that matter) are inspired by these wild beers, whether they be 100% fermented with brett, or whether there was a mixed fermentation of some kind. I personally love Brett IPA's, and Saison Bretts, and Stout Bretts, etc, as well as barrel aged beers that have souring bacteria like Pedioccocus, or lactobacillus. We are a unique band of brewers and we don't have a lot of outlets to understand how our beer compares to others. I highly encourage you to have our carefully selected BCJP judges sample your Wild beers! Make sure that you give a solid description of the base beer, whether it was aged on oak, or fruit, and whether it was fermented with bacteria. This information is considered by the judges before tasting and then they will give honest feedback on if you achieve what you were going for and if there are any off flavors. Now keep in mind, if you brewed a Lambic too-style, then compete it as a Lambic, but, if you brewed a Sour Dark Saison with Brett aged on Currants, then that would probably be best in the American Wild category. If you brewed a 100% brett fermented beer like I do quite frequently....please submit that to the 100% Brett category with a description of the base beer! Rant over.... now let's see how you're Wild shit stacks up to all the rest!
A couple of things that you should know about our competition:
A little bit about what is going on with the club.
Our club in Minneapolis, the NBA, has been growing in numbers that are pretty exciting (85+ members). On any given month we have 30-40+ members show up to our club meetings. The last couple of months have been focused on Hops as July was our Single Hop experiment where we sampled 30 different single hop beers side by side. The wort was produced at North Gate Brewing in Mpls and then we all boiled our wort separately with our hop of choice. That was a ridiculously fun experiment and we can't wait to do it again next year. Then in August we had hop specialist (guru) Charlie Rohwer who told us that Brewers Gold is the mother of all high alpha hops and that pretty much every high alpha hop today is a derivative, or has genealogy linked to Brewers Gold! Pretty cool. Charlie looked at all of the hops we did in our tasting and talked to us about its lineage which was just a crazy amount madness because he know it all by hear, he wasn't even looking at notes.
Our club will be at the State Fair helping out in the Land of 10,000 beers station in early September. Also in late September to early October we will be emptying our Red Wine barrel aged Russian Imperial Stout and filling it back up with a Barley Wine!
Cheers!
Click Here to Register
Check out our Chop N Brew promotional video here by our good friend Chip Walton
Like last year we have two specialty categories for America Wild and 100% Brett! I'm gonna throw this out there right now because I know that a lot of Wild ale brewers are anti-BJCP judging competitions and I was the same way. My Wild Ales, and 100% bretts didn't fit into any BJCP category. Well, that is why we created our specialty categories. We, the uber funk freaks of america (and the universe for that matter) are inspired by these wild beers, whether they be 100% fermented with brett, or whether there was a mixed fermentation of some kind. I personally love Brett IPA's, and Saison Bretts, and Stout Bretts, etc, as well as barrel aged beers that have souring bacteria like Pedioccocus, or lactobacillus. We are a unique band of brewers and we don't have a lot of outlets to understand how our beer compares to others. I highly encourage you to have our carefully selected BCJP judges sample your Wild beers! Make sure that you give a solid description of the base beer, whether it was aged on oak, or fruit, and whether it was fermented with bacteria. This information is considered by the judges before tasting and then they will give honest feedback on if you achieve what you were going for and if there are any off flavors. Now keep in mind, if you brewed a Lambic too-style, then compete it as a Lambic, but, if you brewed a Sour Dark Saison with Brett aged on Currants, then that would probably be best in the American Wild category. If you brewed a 100% brett fermented beer like I do quite frequently....please submit that to the 100% Brett category with a description of the base beer! Rant over.... now let's see how you're Wild shit stacks up to all the rest!
A couple of things that you should know about our competition:
- Only Beer! No cider, no mead.
- Two specialty categories (American Wild and 100% Brett)
- Half of our profits will go to the East Side Neighborhood Services to their community programs.
Our club in Minneapolis, the NBA, has been growing in numbers that are pretty exciting (85+ members). On any given month we have 30-40+ members show up to our club meetings. The last couple of months have been focused on Hops as July was our Single Hop experiment where we sampled 30 different single hop beers side by side. The wort was produced at North Gate Brewing in Mpls and then we all boiled our wort separately with our hop of choice. That was a ridiculously fun experiment and we can't wait to do it again next year. Then in August we had hop specialist (guru) Charlie Rohwer who told us that Brewers Gold is the mother of all high alpha hops and that pretty much every high alpha hop today is a derivative, or has genealogy linked to Brewers Gold! Pretty cool. Charlie looked at all of the hops we did in our tasting and talked to us about its lineage which was just a crazy amount madness because he know it all by hear, he wasn't even looking at notes.
Our club will be at the State Fair helping out in the Land of 10,000 beers station in early September. Also in late September to early October we will be emptying our Red Wine barrel aged Russian Imperial Stout and filling it back up with a Barley Wine!
Cheers!
7.22.2013
Rolling out the Barrels!!!
This is a bookmark for what I need to write about.
- Partigyles that I've done as of late and why I do them.
- RIS for Whiskey Barrel / Mild Ale (tastes really smoky)
- Rye Barley Wine / Rye Pale Ale (tastes like orange marmelade and apricots)
- Year old Sessionable Saison Brett (way better then the new version), but enhanced with a bit of lactic acid.
- Single Hop IPA experiment - Pacifica Hops (wort brewed at NorthGate)
- Tasting notes of the 15 month old Belgian Blonde in the Honey Wine Barrel. (We emptied it, and filled it back up!)
- Video done by Chip Walton of Chop N Brew and Summit and the video he did of the Nordeast Brewers Alliances Barrel Aging Program. (see below, it's pretty awesome)
4.23.2013
Flanders Red Ale | American Amber Ale | Funky Split batch
Yes Yes, I brewed another Flanders Red ale and this time I did 13 gallons. 5 gallons saw some ECY02 + Wyeast Roseleare. 5 Gallons saw some ECY02 and the White Labs Lambic blend. The other 3 gallons was fermented clean with Cali V ale yeast!!! Our red wine barrel need more beer in it to be completely full and for topping off so I gave 5 gallons of this beer to that. The other 5 gallons I'll age long term in a better bottle carboy. It should be a good comparison to the difference between barrel aging and carboy aging.
For this recipe I decide I'd try and tackle the issue that many sour beers have in my mind, they are typically very thin and because of this, we blend in young beer at the time of bottling to give the beer the desired body. This is an attempt to create a beer that doesn't need to be blended. First I took and award winning Flanders Red recipe that one of my homebrew club members has won with, then I added a bunch of Caramunich (essentially crystal 60 malt. Upon sampling, it definitely had a nice thick mouthfeel and I have high hopes for this.
Batch Size: 13 gallons
Specific Gravity: 1.054 OG
Final Gravity: 1.005 FG
Color: 20° SRM Light Brown to Medium Brown
Mash Efficiency: 83 %
Bitterness: 9.9 IBU
Alcohol: 6.5% ABV
Calories: 174 per 12 oz.
Malt
& Fermentables
|
%
|
LB
|
OZ
|
°L
|
PPG
|
|||
|
27%
|
6
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
4°
|
36
|
|
|
27%
|
6
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
2°
|
34
|
|
|
13%
|
3
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
10°
|
34
|
|
|
13%
|
3
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
60°
|
34
|
|
|
7%
|
1
|
8
|
|
Mash
|
26°
|
36
|
|
|
4%
|
1
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
3°
|
37
|
|
|
4%
|
1
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
220°
|
30
|
|
|
4%
|
1
|
~
|
|
Mash
|
2°
|
34
|
|
|
22
|
8
|
Hops
|
Usage
|
Time
|
OZ
|
AA
» IBU
|
|||
|
boil
|
60 min
|
2
|
Hallertau ~ pellet
|
3.1 » 9.9
|
||
Yeast
|
ECY02 Flemish Ale
yeast in liquid form with low
flocculation and 90% attenuation
|
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