Homebrewing Big Beers

Our homebrew club recently used club dues to buy a 30 gallon used whiskey barrel. We talked about the purchase as a club and also the brews that would go in the barrel. We decided the first brew would be a nice big, heavy and dark beer that could handle the strong whiskey flavor that's likely to come from a freshly used barrel.

We discussed putting a second clean beer through the barrel, an option I was in favor of, but some of our more experienced members have had bad experiences trying to use a barrel more than once for cleans beers so we're going to use the barrel for sours after this initial batch. If you've had success using a barrel multiple times for clean beers I'd be interested in hearing about the experience in the comments.

Our club president loves his big, rich, club you over the head with a hammer imperial stouts so he provided the recipe for this brew. We served the same beer in Baltimore on club night at this years Homebrewcon only it wasn't barrel aged. I personally thought it was the best beer on tap but it didn't win the popular vote.

We had 4 club members get together and brew their portions together yesterday and three others who are brewing at home and bringing the beer in for transfer. All together we had 7 members at the brew session to help with handling of such a large beer which brings me to the gist of this post.

Big Beer Gotchas and Tips

Cost - Brewing a 5 gallon batch of Russian Imperial Stout can be a surprisingly expensive undertaking. Instead of 10-15 lbs of grain you're likely buying around 30 lbs of grain. Even if you make yeast starters you're likely looking at $50-$75 for all the ingredients. This beer cost $59 with the 15% discount  we get at our LHBS. That means we spent $420 to fill the 30 gallon barrel.

Equipment - You can pretty much figure on needing two of everything when you're brewing a 12% beer. 2 Yeast Starters, 2 mash tuns, 2 buckets for milled grain and two brewers ;-). The yeast starters are a must. A beer this big (1.126) needs a lot of happy yeast so you need two 1.5 liter starters. You might be able to get away with 1 mash tun if you have at least a 12 gallon tun and keep your water to grain ratio at 1 qt / 1 lb of grain. This is a pretty thick mash but it will convert. I brewed an 8.5 gallon batch this time around with a 17.5 gallon tun and at 1 qt / 1 lb grain it was overflowing when I tried to stir. Tip: with a thick mash like this I found it helps efficiency to stir every 15 minutes. 

Helpers - You probably can brew a big beer by yourself but having help makes the day much more pleasant. Lifting, mashing in, boil over watching and being able to grab a bite to eat are all good reasons to have some help. If you are brewing alone a pump is the next best option!

Efficiency - Maybe this is just me but this is my second RIS and it's the second time I came nowhere close to hitting my preboil estimate. If you normally have 72% effciency you might be able to count on 60% efficiency but 55% is more likely in my experience. The first one was way off and I needed to add 3 lbs dme to hit my numbers. This time around wasn't that bad I was only off by about 9 GU but it was still around 14% off my normal efficiency. If you don't know how to adjust your gravity based on your preboil SG measurement, byo has a good article here.

Time - A longer mash and sparge are not required but help a little with hitting your numbers. You also get the most bang for your buck if you take a second runnings and produce another beer after the Imperial. I do this with any beer over 1.070 because it really only takes an extra hour to get another 5 gallons of beer if you plan the day out.

Fermentation - Big beers bring big fermentation. This means blow off tubes, blow off tubes, blow off tubes! Don't use a standard airlock, you'll regret it.

I'm sure there's more and if I think of anything I'll do a follow up post. If you have any advice I'd love to hear it in the comments.

Belgian Dark Strong Tasting Notes

BJCP 2015 Overview Belgian Dark Strong Ale:

A dark, complex, very strong Belgian ale with a delicious blend of malt richness, dark fruit flavors, and spicy elements. Complex, rich, smooth and dangerous.

Tasting Notes 1 Month: 

I brewed this beer in March 2016. After I bottled it and it conditioned for a couple weeks I had my first taste. I wish I had documented that tasting but since I didn't I'll do my best to write a paragraph now from memory.

That early tasting was very surprising to me. It was a malty beer and sweeter than expected. The most notable flavor was a very strong fruitiness, maraschino cherry mostly, from the Abbey II yeast. I was not at all pleased with the beer at this time but I read quite a bit about Belgian Dark Strong before brewing and knew to expect the beer to become better and change quite a bit with age. 9 months seemed to be the sweet spot so that's my target, December 2016.

Belgian Dark Strong Ale Brewed March 2016

Tasting Notes 4 months

Appearance - A clear beer after sitting in the bottle for 4 months. The color is on point for the style in the dark-amber area. I like the color quite a bit. The head is off white and pours about an inch thick on the first pour.

Aroma - Not much aroma, malty and maybe a little spicy if I had to categorize it but I couldn't really put my finger on a specific aroma.

Mouthfeel - This has changed a lot from my memory of that first tasting. This was a very full bodied beer a few months ago and that's not the case right now. It actually runs the gauntlet of mouthfeel. It starts out dry on the tongue and finishes with a medium body on the back end. It's hard to explain but it's like a tingling "gassy" feel at first that ends up heavier and soothing.

Taste - The taste has changed as much as the mouthfeel. The first taste is alcohol dryness bordering on astringent but that goes away almost immediately. You then get into a light malt/maraschino cherry mixed with some dark fruit (maybe prune) like flavors. It's a very interesting taste that I think would be better of that alcohol/gassy/astringent note wasn't on the from of your tongue. I'm worried this beer is going to get worse not better. Perhaps there's too much oxygen getting in at bottle time which wouldn't surpise me. I don't have a setup where I can push my beer around with co2 so between the racking cane pushing from fermentor to bottling bucket and the bottling want and not purging bottles this may very well be the problem.

Future Changes - It's a little early to tell but I really wanted those dark fruit raisin-y, prune-y, plum-y flavors to show a strong presence in this beer. While it's a little like that I think swapping out the crystal 80 addition for special B will help. Crystal 150+Special B and maybe a different yeast will result in those flavors.

Notes

While I was somewhat hard on this beer during the 4 month tasting notes it's mostly because I had very high expectations for it. I know I can't predict the future and will give it a fair shake in another 4 months. Hopefully I'm it will surprise me and turn out fantastic.

NY Pils Hydrometer Reading and Sample Notes

This is a quick note on the Pilsner I've written in the last two posts here and here.

I used a new Fermentis yeast I haven't used before to ferment this beer Saflager S-189. I'm using my standard quick lagering method which I stole from Tasty McDole and Brulosphy and which I've found to work great. I started the beer fermenting at 53F for three days then started ramping the temp up about 4F every 12 hours until the temp hit 68F to perform a diacetyl rest and clean up any off flavors. I've found this step can take 4-6 days depending on the lager yeast and original fermentation temperature. I prefer to ferment lagers at 50F but the package said min was 53 for this yeast.

After a day of sitting at 68F I checked gravity. To my surprise the beer had already fermented completely after only 5 days. While this isn't uncommon for an ale I've had different results with lagers. Usually when I use this method the beer is about half fermented or less after 3 days. I'm not sure if this is a result of fermenting a few degrees higher than I normally would or if its the S-189 yeast. I guess I'll have to brew with this yeast a few more times and try my standard German lager yeast at 54 to find out.

I also tasted the samples at this point expecting diacetyl and maybe sulfur but I had another surprise. The beer was as clean as could be already. I had my wife double check this and she couldn't find any off flavors either. I plan on double checking this tonight and if it's still clean I'll be crashing to 32 for 7 days then packaging.

There are a couple other things that surprised me with this beer. On is that the grain bill is about 25% Munich but it was not overly caramel-y or biscuit-y. It was very smooth without any flavor smacking you in the face, nice for a Pilsner. The other is that even though I had a lot of late hop additions in this beer the hops are barely noticeable. The beer is balanced but not hoppy. In fact I'm consider dry hopping it just to get some more hop presence in the beer.

I guess this is making a good point for trying new things like dumping Munich into a Pilsner and using a yeasts you haven't used before. It's all about data collection and experience :). I'll post tasting notes in a couple of weeks.

On another note the hops are coming along. Cascade, Mt. Hood, Chinook, Liberty, Perle, Centennial.

Cheers!

NY Pils, I mean Munich Pils?, Brew day

I fucked up.

I didn't check how much malt I had on hand before I started to brew the NY Pils today and it bit me in the ass. I only had 13 pounds left in a 50 lb sack of Pilsen malt. I had Munich, Vienna, Marris Otter and Wheat on had. What to do what to do. So I tossed in 5lbs of Munich malt.

So now 25% of my grain bill is Munich in what's supposed to be a Pilsner. What kind of beer do I have now? A good fried suggested it's a Munich Helles, the problem with that is how hoppy this beer is. It's 100% cascade hops, those are going to come through so I'm thinking Helles is out.

It's darker that it should be now, more like a Maibock which may very well be the closest thing this beer will come to resemble, I'm not quite sure.

Anyways the rest of the brew day went flawlessly. I hit all my numbers and had all the rest of the ingredients so there's nothing left to do but see how this beer tastes.

Double Infusion Mash, BeerSmith did not let me down.

You can see how dark this beer is.

It started raining so I had to move things indoors.

NY Pilsner, Pre Brew Day

A buddy and I went for a bike ride last weekend and ended up at a biker bar/restaurant where we enjoyed a couple beverages and some burgers. It was a hot and humid day so I was thrilled to see a Pilsner on tap from the local Steuben Brewery. I never had this beer and I quickly ordered it up.

There could not have been a more refreshing beer at that point in time. The beer was crisp but with a full body and light hoppiness that complimented it perfectly. The beer was called NY Pils and I didn't even try another beer after having this one it was so good.

So the next day I went to the breweries website where they had the grain and hops used (all from NY, cool). Bingo! I'm making a clone (even though I can just grab a growler anytime it's not the same as having it on tap!).

I had to guess at quantities and adjuncts after some quick historical pilsner research (byo.com, seriouseats.com, www.homebrewersassociation.org) this is what I came up with

The basis for a good pilsner seems to be these few items.

1. Use soft water, this will give the beer a round soft hoppiness. RO is near a perfect match for historical Pilsen water but many people seem to use a mix of RO/Distilled with tap water, meh.
2. Use Pilsen malt for the grainy taste and almost nothing else.
3. Decoction mash for the full body.

I did read an article in BYO that stated to use acid malt which makes sense to bring the pH in range since there are no crystal or other dark malts to bring the pH down. After reading this I looked at all AHA recipes for the style (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipes/?style=pilsner) and saw that maybe a quarter did use acid malt in the grain bill. With my experience with mashing I think this is a good idea.

It's hot and humid in NY right now plus I have 8 gallons of sour to bottle and another 10 gallons of ESB to keg so I'm skipping the decoction, it just takes up too much time. To try and make up the difference I've included 5% melanoidin in the grain bill and I'm mashing at a very high 161F.

So this is what I'm looking at:

View on Brewtoad.com

11 Gallon Batch, 1.047 OG

90% Pilsen Malt

05% Acid Malt

05% Melanoidin Malt

1oz Cascade @ 60

3oz Cascade @20

2oz Cascade @ 5

2oz Cascade @ 0

Mash In @ 148 for 10 min then raise to 161 for 40 min.

Cool to 50F, pitch yeast and use Fast Lagering to ferment the beer.

I've done my homework and designed my recipe. Time to clone, wish me luck!

British Bitter 2

It was only a few months ago I brewed my first British Bitter. It was an ESB that turned our very balanced or even slightly toward the malty side. It was still a very drinkable beer just not to style. It lacked any real stand out qualities, it wasn't even as sessionable as it should have been at 6%.

This time around I decided to go to the other end of the spectrum and brew an Ordinary Bitter. This should be the perfect beer for sipping all day long on hot, muggy summer days. Here are the BJCP guidelines for an Ordinary Bitter BJCP 2015 Ordinary Bitter.

I buy my grains in bulk because I live so far from the nearest LHBS and I didn't want to make a trip to buy Marris Otter so instead I used a 75% / 25% blend of Pilsen and Munich malt which should give some nice bread and biscuit malt qualities to the beer. I also pitched in a pound of aromatic and flaked rye to gain some aroma and maybe a twist of spiciness to the beer. Mostly I just had some flaked rye to use up before the Western NY summer humidity made it unusable.

I used mostly late addition Willamette hops to get a fruity hop flavor and aroma with a small .25 oz warrior charge for bittering in an 11 gallon batch.

I like my dry yeast whenever possible because it means I don't have worry about starters on a busy weeknight. Safale S-04 was the yeast of choice to ferment this beer.

It was a pretty typical brew day except it had been nearly two months since I last brewed so I was a little rusty and it showed during prep and lautering. I also forgot to add potassium sorbate to my sparge water so hopefully chlorine/chloramines don't make this beer too astringent. In my experience the mash is the most important place to have perfect water and I think I nailed that. If you have any experience with these types of fuck-ups please comment.

Recipe: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/better-bitter-596472

• Mashed at 155 for 60 minutes in 5 gallons of tap water.
• Batch Sparged in two portions with 10.8 gallons of  175F water.
• boiled for 60 minutes
• Cooled with immersion chiller, took about 15-18 minutes. Ground water temp makes a huge difference!
• O.G. 1.033

Shorty Kegs make a perfect height stand for bucket transfer!

Ended up with 10.5 gallons of wort at the end.

Fermentation at 65F for 12 hours then 68 until FG is reached.

Berliner Weiss (Kettle Soured)

I tried my hand at another Berliner Weiss about a month ago after the first attempt went horribly wrong. The first batch was a Sour Mash and ended up being infected by Butyric Acid because I had forgotten to lower the pH below 4.5 before inoculation with lactobacillus. This is a crucial step you don't want to forget unless you like the smell and taste of vomit/baby diaper.

So I learned that lesson the hard way. This time around I went with Kettle Souring just to give both methods a try. I started by designing my recipe which wasn't difficult given how simple a Berliner Weiss is.

If anyone is interested you can have a look here: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/k-berliner

I brewed the beer like any other up until time to boil. Then I let the wort cool to 115 degrees when I used phosphoric acid to lower the pH to 4.4 then dropped in .75 lbs of un-crushed Pilsen malt. I popped the lid on, wrapped a plant heat mat plugged into a temp controller around the kettle then a heavy blanket around that. I checked the taste and pH after 12 hours 24, 30 and 38 hours. I was aiming for a pH of 3.4 but when I woke up in the morning the wort had dropped to 3.2. I boiled it immediately, hopped, cooled and transferred to the fermentor.

I spent the next 3 days struggling to get a standard yeast to ferment the beer out. I tried US-05, London ale and Kolsh yeast all of which fermented a few points then died out. Finally I hopped onto the Milk the Funk facebook page and it was suggested I use Brett. All I had was Trois Vrai so I tossed that in and tada! Two days later we were at a 1.004 F.G.

 After all that yeast drama I was worried how the beer was going to turn out but as it turns out it was great! I ended up taking this beer to Homebrew Con 2016 and serving it on Club Night. What a blast! I had a ton of great feedback on it and only brought home about 1/2 gallon from a 5 gallon keg.

I purchased Raspberry and Boysenberry fruit syrups to serve with this beer. Both jars were about half gone at the end of the night. This was my first tasting of a Berliner with syrup and I was surprised at how much they cut the acidity. In fact it was nearly unnoticeable after adding the tiniest amount of syrup. Although I liked the experience I think I'll be drinking my Berliners straight.

Berliner Weiss Tasting Notes

Appearance - A very hazy yellow to yellow brown color. A light bright white head that sticks around a long time then leaves it's mark on the glass. 

Berliner Weiss - Sorry for the picture quality

Aroma - Lemon grass / lemony aroma. Also get some biscuity malt aroma.

Mouthfeel - Very dry and thin. Not in a bad way for the style because the tartness is what's left on your tongue.

Taste - Amazing! Biscuit grainy character,  some wheat, lemon citrus and a lot of tart sourness. This beer change rather quickly going from almost unbearably sour to rounded and perfectly tart.

Future Changes - I'm not changing a thing. This beer turned out better than I could have expected. I'll just start by fermenting with Trois Vrai form now on!