Today, at the recommendation of Bill Hincks, former CT-RI Brewery Correspondant for Ale Street News, I went up to Willimantic (or Windham or whatever) to visit Zok's Homebrew Supply.
Since I found Pre-Cut to be sour, I immediately suspected every single piece of equipment in my brewery to be full of lactic Brett yeast, and in need of replacement. I soon realized that probably only the bottling stuff and fermenting bucket were likely infected, if that much, and headed out to pick up some new stuff.
I got a bottling bucket, auto siphon, blah blah blah - a bunch of bottling and other plastic stuff. But the best part was meeting the famous Zok. For those of you that don't know, Paul Zocco is Zok. He has a homebrew shop in Willimantic CT, and his knowledge and experience are vast. He does annual trips to Belgium to visit Lambic breweries and blenders as well as other great Belgian brewers. Probably does other trips, too. He writes for BYO, has a bit in Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing book, knows people like Stan Hieronymous, and probably even more things I don't even know.
Yet with all this awesomeness, he's the easiest guy in the world to talk to. Honestly, I was pretty nervous heading up there. Fortunately, I had 51 minutes (according to MapQuest) to get over the nerves, and by the time I got there, I was excited to see the place and meet the man. I ended up spending upwards of an hour chatting about everything brewing and picking out all the stuff I needed.
Turns out Zok's passion really is with brewing. He seems particularly involved in Lambic brewing, and even has two (soon to be three) wood casks of Lambic in progress in his store. The store's sort of scattered, but there are so many cool things there. You can buy 1/4-bbl brewhouses and 1/2-bbl brewhouses from him, as well as plastic conical fermenters. He had on display a bottle of Utopias (vintage not noted), as well as empty bottles of all sorts - the ones I noticed were Newport Storm annuals from 2000-present.
Another cool thing about Zok is that he has some firm opinions, but at the same time, he's willing to let you do your own thing. A perfect example is fermenting. I used to do secondary fermentation, but stopped when I had all those flat batches. I now bottle every beer - big or small - a day or two after it's done bubbling the airlock. Zok is traditional and always does secondary, often for months. I just don't have the patience, but he respectfully stated his opinion and reasons, listened to mine, and agreed to disagree - no judgement, no arguing, not even a sigh and head shake. A perfect gentleman.
It was a real pleasure to talk with someone so well-versed in brewing, and loving it, doing it day in and day out for his work. Just an inspiration, really. I am glowing inside just thinking about it now. Even though I only ended up with just over $60 of odds and ends, I was given the royal treatment. I am hooked. I want to go back tomorrow to get my copy of Extreme Brewing signed, share some of his Lambic, and get his opinion on my Pre-Cut sour taste. I'll even bring my Mean Giant Double Stout to see what he thinks about it.
So besides a tribute to Zok, I guess the message is: try something new. You might find something awesome.
1.16.2008
1.15.2008
Pre-Cut is Sour
Did I say "sour"? I meant "acidic". There was something wild in there. I bottled it about four days ago, and today it is sour. It was verging on funk at bottling time, but today it is funky. Funny thing is, with this mild dose of acid, it is pretty tasty. Doesn't exactly blend with the fir that well, but at the same time, it isn't horrible.
But now I am worried about my bottling equipment and even the bucket I fermented this in. Are they infected? I don't think I want to risk souring the Big Slick 2 by bottling with the same equipment. Lucky me that Big Slick 2 is still bubbling away in there, unaware of the buggy risks that it has just avoided.
To-do tomorrow: go to Rob's and get a new bottling bucket, siphon, and bottling wand.
Hey, this frees me up to go ahead and make "Lambic Imprint" (a takeoff on Limbic Imprint - yes, we are going to do a natural homebirth.) Lambic Imprint will be a 100% Brett B. beer! But according to Vinnie Cilurzo, it will take about six months before it's ready.
But now I am worried about my bottling equipment and even the bucket I fermented this in. Are they infected? I don't think I want to risk souring the Big Slick 2 by bottling with the same equipment. Lucky me that Big Slick 2 is still bubbling away in there, unaware of the buggy risks that it has just avoided.
To-do tomorrow: go to Rob's and get a new bottling bucket, siphon, and bottling wand.
Hey, this frees me up to go ahead and make "Lambic Imprint" (a takeoff on Limbic Imprint - yes, we are going to do a natural homebirth.) Lambic Imprint will be a 100% Brett B. beer! But according to Vinnie Cilurzo, it will take about six months before it's ready.
1.11.2008
Mean Giant Tasted (Twice)
Yesterday was my wife's Birthday. I made for her a dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. The perfect excuse to taste the Mean Giant Double Stout that has been conditioning since 1/3/08. I can tell by squeezing the barometer PET bottle that it isn't really ready yet, but sometimes I just can't resist dipping in anyway.Yesterday morning I put a bottle in the fridge. When I popped it at cake time, it was flat. So it tasted the same as the bottling sample, just colder and flat. A bummer, for sure. Not to say it wasn't good. It is very strong, with tons of roasted flavor, really big and strong tasting, like a Mean Giant should be. It was just flat. Flat. A little bit of bubbles for looks and a bit of palette lifting would be nice. But flat it was.
Tonight, I couldn't resist again. I took a warm conditioning bottle, from the temperature controlled fridge at 62°F, and put it in the fridge for like literally two minutes. More of a gesture of goodwill than anything else. This one popped like a beer. It poured with a small, but present head that left a ring around the edge of the glass til the last sip. See the photo above for the immediately post-pour shot. Awesome. I think now that a beer like this was meant to be had at a warm temperature like that.
I think with a few more days conditioning, it will be slightly bubbly like this even cold, but in the mean time, I am happy to sneak samples from the warm fridge.
Pre-Cut Bottled
Pre-Cut Ale with Fir has been done fermenting for about a day. That is, the airlock no longer re-rises when I push the lid of the bucket to get the CO2 out of there. Done enough for me.
I bottled it today. I am...um...how can I say this...curious to see how it will come out. The FG is 1.007. BeerSmith told me it would be 1.011. Maybe the 0.50 lbs of Honey gave it that extra burst of fermentability. The flavor is sort of sourish, and thin. It reminds me of the Sparkling Maple Wine I made this summer, which had a FG of 1.000. It was gross. At least this has a smell and taste of piney fir bough to keep it interesting beyond the pure alcohol of the rest of the flavor. I am considering the possibility that there is contamination. I used a half an open packet of dry yeast from a few months ago, so it could have been contaminated. This would explain the low FG, since wild yeast are a bit less picky about what they'll eat. It could also explain the sour-ish taste, since the notorious characteristic of wild yeast is an acidic fermentation byproduct.
At any rate, I got about fifteen 22-ounce bottles out of it. I dosed it pretty good with corn sugar - 3.25 oz, to get around 3 volumes of CO2. In a word, fizzy. Think Champagne or cellared Gueuze. Time will tell, but I expect to have this one around for a while waiting for it to "mature" in the bottles.
I bottled it today. I am...um...how can I say this...curious to see how it will come out. The FG is 1.007. BeerSmith told me it would be 1.011. Maybe the 0.50 lbs of Honey gave it that extra burst of fermentability. The flavor is sort of sourish, and thin. It reminds me of the Sparkling Maple Wine I made this summer, which had a FG of 1.000. It was gross. At least this has a smell and taste of piney fir bough to keep it interesting beyond the pure alcohol of the rest of the flavor. I am considering the possibility that there is contamination. I used a half an open packet of dry yeast from a few months ago, so it could have been contaminated. This would explain the low FG, since wild yeast are a bit less picky about what they'll eat. It could also explain the sour-ish taste, since the notorious characteristic of wild yeast is an acidic fermentation byproduct.
At any rate, I got about fifteen 22-ounce bottles out of it. I dosed it pretty good with corn sugar - 3.25 oz, to get around 3 volumes of CO2. In a word, fizzy. Think Champagne or cellared Gueuze. Time will tell, but I expect to have this one around for a while waiting for it to "mature" in the bottles.
1.01.2008
Brew Day!
I have really been on a roll these past few months. I made CornucopIPA on 11/7/07, Christmas Presence on 11/15/07, Little Bear’s Brown Beer on 12/11/07, Mean Giant Double Stout on 12/20/07, and now today I made Big Slick 2 and Pre-Cut!
I don’t normally make two beers in one day, but this was a special recipe. Big Slick was the first big beer I ever tried to make. The grain bill to achieve a starting gravity of 1.095 for 5 gallons was just over 20 lbs of grain. I knew I could mash at most 12-15 pounds of grain in my little 5-gallon Rubbermaid cooler mash tun, so I had to get creative.
I decided to do two mashes, each with half the grain bill, and each mash I would collect half the wort I needed for a single big batch. The result was pretty good in terms of hitting a high gravity, but the end product wasn’t so hot. The finishing gravity never really got as low as I wanted, and I kept messing with it, and it ended up with a flavor that I believe to be DMS.
I have a lot more brews under my belt now, so I decided it was time to try again with the old Big Slick. It is an Imperial IPA, with the full range of American C-Hops: Chinook, Centennial, and Cascade. Big Slick 1 stalled at 8.5%, but I just made Christmas Presence to be 8.8% with no sweat at all, so I am sure that I can outdo Big Slick 1 with this Big Slick 2.
You might wonder, “why do two mashes, why not just use DME to augment the gravity”, and that is a good question. For one, DME costs a lot more than grains. For two, I like mashing a lot more than I like stirring in powder – it feels more authentic to me. Finally, I don’t know what’s in that DME – it might be a lot less fermentable than a comparable amount of malted barley would be.
Another benefit of doing the two mashes is the opportunity to PartiGyle. This basically means making two beers from one set of grains. Since I only need about 3.5 gallons from each mash, that leaves gallons worth of useful wort that I could make beer with. I think of this as an opportunity to experiment. So I did.
I put branches cut from our recently discarded Christmas Tree (a Fraser Fir) into the wort and boiled them for about 20 minutes in there. I put in two little branches to three gallons, such that the smell was very apparent after the additions were done. My intention is to have the fir act as all the spice I need. The smell of a Christmas tree is so luscious, I figure the taste must be nice, too. Furthermore, the whole piney family of plants has a lot in common with the aroma and taste of some of our favorite hops varieties.
The resulting wort has a strong Christmas Tree aroma, and a distinctive Christmas Tree flavor (not that I tried to eat the tree, but the flavor follows the aroma). It is even almost minty. I didn’t use any hops in this beer, called Pre-Cut, but I did use a half pound of DME and a half pound of local honey to boost the gravity to produce a beer at about 4.5%.
Here’s the recipe and label art for Pre-Cut.
Back to Big Slick. There are almost five ounces of hops in there, and you can tell it from the taste already. Plus I had to clean the strainer three or four times to get them all out while pouring from brew kettle to fermenter to aerate.
Here’s the recipe and label art for Big Slick.
In addition, Little Bear’s Brown Beer is fully conditioned and out of temperature control. The taste is great! Mild, but still hoppy. I consider it an American Brown Ale. It is also low alcohol, clocking in at 4.3%, as intended.
Also, Mean Giant Double Stout is still chugging away, slowly bubbling every minute or so. That’s good news, because it means that it should be well attenuated, and thus plenty powerful, as intended. With any luck, it will even go further than predicted and end up over 10%. Then we’ll cross our fingers for proper conditioning in the bottles.
I don’t normally make two beers in one day, but this was a special recipe. Big Slick was the first big beer I ever tried to make. The grain bill to achieve a starting gravity of 1.095 for 5 gallons was just over 20 lbs of grain. I knew I could mash at most 12-15 pounds of grain in my little 5-gallon Rubbermaid cooler mash tun, so I had to get creative.
I decided to do two mashes, each with half the grain bill, and each mash I would collect half the wort I needed for a single big batch. The result was pretty good in terms of hitting a high gravity, but the end product wasn’t so hot. The finishing gravity never really got as low as I wanted, and I kept messing with it, and it ended up with a flavor that I believe to be DMS.
I have a lot more brews under my belt now, so I decided it was time to try again with the old Big Slick. It is an Imperial IPA, with the full range of American C-Hops: Chinook, Centennial, and Cascade. Big Slick 1 stalled at 8.5%, but I just made Christmas Presence to be 8.8% with no sweat at all, so I am sure that I can outdo Big Slick 1 with this Big Slick 2.
You might wonder, “why do two mashes, why not just use DME to augment the gravity”, and that is a good question. For one, DME costs a lot more than grains. For two, I like mashing a lot more than I like stirring in powder – it feels more authentic to me. Finally, I don’t know what’s in that DME – it might be a lot less fermentable than a comparable amount of malted barley would be.
Another benefit of doing the two mashes is the opportunity to PartiGyle. This basically means making two beers from one set of grains. Since I only need about 3.5 gallons from each mash, that leaves gallons worth of useful wort that I could make beer with. I think of this as an opportunity to experiment. So I did.
I put branches cut from our recently discarded Christmas Tree (a Fraser Fir) into the wort and boiled them for about 20 minutes in there. I put in two little branches to three gallons, such that the smell was very apparent after the additions were done. My intention is to have the fir act as all the spice I need. The smell of a Christmas tree is so luscious, I figure the taste must be nice, too. Furthermore, the whole piney family of plants has a lot in common with the aroma and taste of some of our favorite hops varieties.
The resulting wort has a strong Christmas Tree aroma, and a distinctive Christmas Tree flavor (not that I tried to eat the tree, but the flavor follows the aroma). It is even almost minty. I didn’t use any hops in this beer, called Pre-Cut, but I did use a half pound of DME and a half pound of local honey to boost the gravity to produce a beer at about 4.5%.
Here’s the recipe and label art for Pre-Cut.
Back to Big Slick. There are almost five ounces of hops in there, and you can tell it from the taste already. Plus I had to clean the strainer three or four times to get them all out while pouring from brew kettle to fermenter to aerate.
Here’s the recipe and label art for Big Slick.
In addition, Little Bear’s Brown Beer is fully conditioned and out of temperature control. The taste is great! Mild, but still hoppy. I consider it an American Brown Ale. It is also low alcohol, clocking in at 4.3%, as intended.
Also, Mean Giant Double Stout is still chugging away, slowly bubbling every minute or so. That’s good news, because it means that it should be well attenuated, and thus plenty powerful, as intended. With any luck, it will even go further than predicted and end up over 10%. Then we’ll cross our fingers for proper conditioning in the bottles.
Big Slick 2 Imperial IPA
BeerSmith Recipe Printout - www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Big Slick 2
Brewer: Keith Brainard
Asst Brewer:
Style: Imperial IPA
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0) Wort is very sweet and cleanly bitter. Perhaps a tad too bitter - may need some aging.
Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 7.33 gal
Estimated OG: 1.085 SG
Estimated Color: 8.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 82.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 57.5 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
10.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 47.7 %
10.50 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 47.7 %
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 4.5 %
1.00 oz Chinook [11.00%] (60 min) Hops 30.4 IBU
0.75 oz Magnum [10.00%] (60 min) Hops 20.7 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40%] (60 min) Hops 13.4 IBU
1.00 oz Centennial [6.00%] (30 min) Hops 12.7 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.40%] (30 min) Hops 5.2 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.40%] (0 min) Hops -
1.00 items Immersion Chiller (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs US-05/US-56 (Safale #1056) Yeast-Ale
Mash Schedule: My Mash
Total Grain Weight: 22.00 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Mash-In Add 27.50 qt of water at 162.5 F 151.0 F 60 min
Notes:
------
Two separate mashes, but not reiterated. Partigyle the second runnings. First mash was 63% efficient, but the second was apparently only 53%. The grains were floating in the MLT when I opened it at the end of the mash for the second mash (the maris otter mash), so that may be the problem - many of the grains weren't in solution for the mash.
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Pre-Cut: Ale with Fir
BeerSmith Recipe Printout - www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Pre-Cut
Brewer: Keith Brainard
Asst Brewer:
Style: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
TYPE: Partial Mash
Taste: (35.0) Smell and taste of wort are of christmas tree. Of course, the taste has some sweetness. This should be interesting!
Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 3.00 gal
Boil Size: 3.75 gal
Estimated OG: 1.045 SG
Estimated Color: 5.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 0.0 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 58.0 %
Boil Time: 20 Minutes
Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
0.50 lb Amber Dry Extract (12.5 SRM) Dry Extract 9.2 %
2.10 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 38.8 %
2.10 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 38.8 %
0.21 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 3.9 %
0.50 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1.00 items Fraser Fir Bough (Secondary 7.0 days) Misc
3.00 items Fraser Fir Bough (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
0.50 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 9.2 %
1 Pkgs US-05/US-56 (Safale #1056) Yeast-Ale
Mash Schedule: My Mash 2
Total Grain Weight: 4.41 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Mash In Add 5.51 qt of water at 162.5 F 151.0 F 60 min
Notes:
------
Second runnings of both mashes of Big Slick 2. Grains are approximation of gravity of this wort. Extract and sugar added to achieve normal gravity beer. Used the open, half-pack of US-05. Fir boughs got all black and nasty looking after being boiled.
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