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!

Belgian Pale & Hefeweizen & Coffee Stout Tasting, Beer & Campfires

I posted about brewing these beers a couple weeks ago here and I had the chance to enjoy them recently so I thought I would go over some tasting notes.

Belgian Pale

Appearance - Fairly clear beer, especially for a Belgian. Nice orange-amber-rusty color with a white 1/2 head that dissipates pretty quickly and doesn't leave much lacing on the glass. I'm very happy with the color.

Aroma - Not much for aroma on this beer. Even though it includes ingredients like coriander, bitter orange peel and grains of paradise it most smells of malt with a very small hint of orange citrus.

Mouthfeel - Light-Medium Light body and mouth feel. Not crisp and dry but just what you would expect for a pale ale. Almost slick/oily like a good oatmeal stout, not sure what's causing this.

Taste - There's a definite orange citrus flavor coming through on the front and back of my tongue which leads me to believe that both the coriander and bitter orange peel are in play here. There's a spicy note but not really peppery so like this is from the yeast rather than grains of paradise.

Future Changes - This beer is pretty good the way it is but I think it needs more spicy/phenolic/yeast character than it has. Ramp the temperature up to encourage yeast character. Fermented at 65 this time around, 75-80 should improve this beer.

Hefeweizen

Appearance - Hazy yellow color that reminds me of a banana Popsicle. Large foamy head that laces sticks around a moderate amount of time and leaves a nice lacing.

Aroma - Smells of banana. Not like a real banana but like a banana Popsicle, there's a theme forming.

Mouthfeel - Light body but not thin. Supports the beer perfectly.

Taste -  Very banana forward Hefe! There are some nice phenolic notes behind the banana but they're hard to put your finger on. This beer is so good but overwhelmingly banana so I assume it would not do well in competition. I would have said you wouldn't want to drink pint after pint of this beer but I've already proven that wrong.

Future Changes - None. I've brewed this recipe before with the Fermentis Wheat yeast and it came out much more balanced between phenol and fruity esters but just as good. I would not make this beer to have on tap all the time but it's a wonderful beer every now and again.

This beer is also great around a campfire:

Chocolate Coffee Stout

I brewed the bertusbrewery Chocolate Coffe Stout about a month ago for our annual memorial day party. My father-in-law loves the stouts and a strong cup of coffee so I thought I'd give this one a go.

I pretty much followed the instructions are recipe on bertusbrewery blog so have a look there if you're curious about any of that. Here are some pictures of the brew day.

Appearance - Moonless midnight black. You can't see through this beer even on the edges, very nice for a stout. Beautiful tan thick head that sticks around forever.

Aroma - Coffee! A tiny whiff of chocolate that eludes most of the time.

Mouthfeel - Medium-Medium Light and dry. This is definitely an american stout. It finished at 1.013 and with the roast and other dark malts + Coffee it finishes very dry on the tongue.

Taste - Great! I can't keep my hands off this beer which is a problem since it's earmarked for a party. It went over pretty well when I took it to our clubs big-brew-day as well. There is no chocolate taste in this beer at this point. There was a tiny amount when it was fresh out of the fermenter but the coffee has completely taken over at this point. It's still a great beer, amazing coffee flavor from the cold steeped kona and roast malt. 

Future Changes - First I would change the name to just Coffee Stout. The chocolate is barely noticeable. I would skip the cocoa nibs entirely, they're too expensive to waste on a beer where they're barely noticeable, I would split this beer into two. Leave the recipe as is for the stout removing the nibs and designing a chocolate porter minus the roast malts and coffee so the nibs can shine. I would also switch the yeast to WLP013 London Ale. This is a clean fermenting yeast that will leave a little more body in the beer which is how I prefer my stouts.

Homebrew Practices that Matter

1. Clean your equipment at the end of every brew day, sanitize before use on your next brew day! You don’t want to give any nasty critters the chance to start growing and embedding in your equipment so don’t leave it laying around with the perfect environment for this to happen. You also don’t need to use PBW to clean your equipment, dish detergent will do unless it’s a carboy you can’t get your hands into. Just make sure you clean it when you’re done using it for the day. This goes for Kettles, Mash tuns,pumps,hoses, flasks, hop bags etc… etc… etc...
2. Control your fermentation temperature and know the yeast you’re using. Some yeast perform best at 65, others 72 and still others at extremes one way or the other. Know your yeast and control that temp!
3. Know your equipment! Take the time to figure out the efficiency of your system so when you’re formulating a recipe you scale the ingredients to hit the numbers! This is important for future batches and adjustments otherwise your variables are too numerous to nail down what’s causing a certain flavor or lack thereof.
4. Know your water and the role it plays in each beer style! I know my water is high in alkalinity and total hardness. I can use my tap water for dark beers. Pale beers get RO water with gypsum and chloride added in with even ratios for malty pales, 2:1 for hoppy pales. Amber beers are just a mix of tap and RO water. Do yourself a favor and have your water tested. https://producers.wardlab.com
5. Make sure you’re not drunk by the end of your brew day! Drinking too much during the brewing process, next to ignorance, is probably the number one contributor to bad beer. It can cause you to forget to pitch your yeast, clean and sanitize an item, add hops during the boil etc... etc… etc…
6. Do not bag your hops in a beer you want to have great hop flavor and aroma. The loose hops rolling around in your boil seem to release more oils into the beer contributing more hoppy goodness.
7. Allow your hops into the fermentor. Long term contact with the hops also help in flavor and aroma contribution. Not all hops have to enter the fermentor but a significant amount will help the flavor and aroma of your beer.
8. After fermentation avoid allowing oxygen in your beer if you want it to last. If you have beer that’s going to be sitting around for a while then take extra care to avoid any splashing, vigorous stirring, air pockets in your auto-siphon etc.. etc.. etc… Oxygen is terrible for finished beers and will cause cardboard flavors, loss of hop flavor and aroma and staleness.

So says FerventBrewer

Belgian Pale & Hefeweizen

It's been awhile since my last post, mostly because the weather in my neck of the woods has gotten so nice and the honey-do-list is in full effect. That hasn't stopped me from brewing though. I still managed to fit in several brews in the last couple of months which I'll use for the next couple of posts.

My homebrew club  signed up for club night at this year's NHC (HomebrewCon) in Baltimore (look for the SLAM booth - Western Theme) but there are only four of us going so I felt the need to bring quite a few beers plus fill my own kegerator. I received a bonus day off from work when my fencing contractor called and said he needed to see the yard and the plans so I used the opportunity for a double brew day.

The first beer was 11 gallons of a Belgian Pale Ale I made up on the fly. It's about 70% pilsner, 20% munich, 5% caramunich and 5% crystal 60. I bittered with Warrior and flavored with saaz hops. There is also bitter orange peel, coriander and grains of paradise to Belgianize the beer :). I used White Labs WLP550 Belgian Ale which I've used several times and absolutely love.

The second beer was another 11 gallons of a German Hefeweizen that I've brewed before. The recipe is the same but I swapped the Safale Hefe yeast out for White Labs WLP 300 which is supposed to have more banana characteristics. I'm not competing with this beer so rather than balance I wanted it to stand out a bit more. I also added coriander and orange peel to this beer only I bagged it after clogging the kettle valve on the Belgian Pale ;-).

These beers are currently fermenting and both Hefe fermentors exploded on me. One was a bucket and the lid blew clean off. The other oozed all over my hardwood floor. Ahhh the price we pay for good beer.

The Barrel Program Begins...

While we had a beautiful day (in February in Western N.Y.!) this past Sunday I used the opportunity to build some 10 gallon barrel rails. It was a pretty simple procedure since I doubt I will ever go beyond two levels and more than 50 gallons of sour beer.

I currently only have two barrels (one of which isn't even mine) and it looks a little sparse but I will build on it as time and money permit. The spacing isn't perfect but I can make then up with different size blocks for the second tier. I used scrap wood, screws and cinder blocks I had laying around so I don't have any extra investment in the racking system.