This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
Brew Day
The first truly cold days of the year had arrived. In order
to have my beer ready in time for the competition I wanted to put it in, I knew
I had to brew by a certain date. Unfortunately, my self-imposed deadline was
right when it got truly cold (I live in a warmer area so “truly cold” is
relative, but it was in the 30’s the night I brewed). So, I steeled myself up,
set up my brew equipment, and opened the garage door.
Everything took a little longer to heat up than what I was
used to, and while my strike water was heating up, I preheated my mash tun with
water I had heated on my stove. Once my water was at my calculated strike
temperature, I mashed in and hit my target mash temp.
I let the mash do its thing while I went inside and warmed
up for a little while. After that, I batch sparged to gather my desired preboil
volume of wort.
I brought my wort to a boil, added my first charge of hops,
and went back inside until it was time for another hop addition. Once the boil
was complete, I used my immersion chiller to cool the wort down. I then left it
to let any trub and hop matter settle out before transferring the wort to my
carboy.
The carboy went into my fermentation chamber to bring the
wort down to my desired fermentation temperature. Once the wort was at the
appropriate temperature, I pitched the yeast. There were early signs of
fermentation by the next morning, and shortly after that, the yeast began working
vigorously.
The krausen began to drop even before the 48 hour mark. At
this point, I raised the setting on my temperature controller, but with the
combination of my fermentation chamber being in my garage, below freezing
temperatures, and a heating pad that didn’t produce nearly enough heat to keep
my fermentation chamber warm enough, my beer dropped a few degrees lower
instead of raising to the temperature I wanted the beer to finish at. Because
of this, I let the beer sit a little longer than I would have otherwise before
I packaged it. I also ensured that the beer was able to get to a higher
temperature and sit there for a couple days before kegging. Nonetheless, I was
a bit worried about potential diacetyl due to the cooler temperatures at the
tail end of fermentation.
When I kegged the beer, I noticed that the yeast had
attenuated a little more than I would normally expect that strain to. I didn’t
know what to make of it, but I didn’t worry too much about it at the time.
Recipe
Iteration 4 was delightful. The only issue I had with the beer was that it seemed a little heavier than I wanted it to now that I was leaning into this being an English brown ale rather than an American brown.
I mentioned previously that slightly reducing the level of
roast might bring this beer more into balance and would have the added benefit
of lowering the SRM (to a color more appropriate for an English brown). The
more I thought about it, the more I felt that this was the right choice. I
wasn’t quite sure how much to reduce the chocolate malt though. My first
thought was to half the amount of chocolate. 5% of the grain bill wasn’t a
large number to start with though, so I worried that the differential would be
too much. After some back and forth, I ultimately decided to use 3/4 of the
amount of chocolate malt that I had used in the previous version of this beer.
These considerations resulted in the following recipe:
Mashed at 151°F
77.7% 2-row [8.25 lbs.]
9.4% Crystal 60 [1 lb.]
9.4% Victory [1 lb.]
3.5% Chocolate [0.375 lb.]
Boiled for 1 hr.
23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) [1 oz. at 5.1% AA]
Pitched S-04
Fermented at 68°F
Raised to 70°F on Day 3
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.17%
Tasting
This beer poured clear, but it honestly took forever to
clear up. It was hazy for a long time (uncharacteristically so for S-04, I
thought). The color was a light-medium brown that had a slight reddish hue.
There was a white to off-white head with moderate retention and fell to a thin
layer of foam atop the beer.
The aroma was foremost that of fruity esters—apple and pear.
There was also some roast and light coffee in the nose. A definite earthy
character came through at the end as well.
The taste was earthy and mildly reminiscent of a weakly
brewed, light-roast coffee. There was a slight fruitiness (again, apple and
pear). Bread crust came through near the end, and it finished with a slight
harshness. There’s definitely something there that I can’t put my finger
on—something off (no diacetyl, like I was worried about, but something).
Goals for the Next
Brew
Overall, I’m very confused by what happened with this beer.
I’m convinced that something was off with the fermentation. The higher than
normal attenuation for this yeast (achieved 79% with a standard max of 75%)
plus the exceedingly rapid fermentation (2 days) is enough for me to want to
point to something outside of my control (or that I can’t pinpoint) being the
cause of the strange “something” that I can’t quite pinpoint about this beer. It
also remained hazy for a long time, which was not my experience with Iteration
4 using the same yeast, making me further question the fermentation. I will
probably brew this exact same recipe again because I don’t think it’s a fair
representation of the recipe—and to prove to myself that it’s not the 2 oz.
reduction of chocolate malt that ruined this beer.
Competition Results
Since I had planned on this being my last iteration of this
brown ale due to the quality of Iteration 4, I had planned on sending this beer
to a competition. When it didn’t turn out as hoped, after some deliberation, I
decided to send it anyway since I’d already committed to the competition. I
almost didn’t include the results in this post because I knew that this beer
wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but in the spirit of transparency and the fact
that this post was the entire reason I sent it to the competition, here we are.
I’ll note ahead of time (if it wasn’t already clear) that I sent this to
competition not expecting much in terms of praise. Ok, here we go.
I’ll be commenting on what I agree with and disagree with instead of rehashing what they say.
My overall score was a 33. Not great. Could be worse, but
not great.
Appearance: I disagree with Judge 1 that the beer is dark
brown, but Iteration 4 was much darker, so perhaps it’s relative. I agree with
Judge 2’s assessment.
Aroma: Judge 1 noted slight lactose, and I’m a bit confused
on that. I definitely disagree that this beer has that quality of sweetness. He
also noted that there were no fruity esters—I definitely disagree, as that’s
the first thing I smell. I do agree that the toffee and caramel flavors are
low. I mostly agree with Judge 2.
Flavor: I agree with Judge 1’s assessment except on the lack of fruity esters. Judge 2 didn’t note roast (though Judge 1 did) and noted caramel, which I thought was interesting. I don’t get much floral from the hops, like Judge 2 did.
Overall impression: I mostly agree with Judge 1. I’m
confused as to how the roast was so pronounced in this beer since that’s what I
was aiming to lower by reducing the amount of chocolate malt in the beer
compared to previous versions of the recipe. Again—I blame a wonky
fermentation. Judge 2: I disagree about the hop flavor, but I do agree that more
caramel/toffee would be desirable. I wonder if those flavors would be more
prominent with this same recipe if brewed again. I think the accented roast
flavor is what’s really driving the balance away from caramel in this
iteration.
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
The recipes for the brown ales being compared below are as follows:
Both Iterations 3 and 4 were brown with a reddish hue and
clear. Iteration 3 poured with a small off-white head that had low retention
(which I believe was due to low carbonation because of bottling from the tap).
Iteration 4 had excellent head retention.
Aroma
Iteration 3 smelled of coffee with a hint of chocolate and roasted notes. There were also earthy and slightly floral/herbal aromas.
The first thing I noticed on Iteration 4’s aroma was the fruity esters. There was a hint of light-roast coffee, which could be due to the pairing of coffee notes with the esters. This beer also smelled earthy and slightly floral.
Taste
Iteration 3’s flavor was simply that of coffee, toasty
notes, and a slight earthiness.
Iteration 4 was toasty, fruity, and earthy. There was also a
slight coffee flavor that was much less pronounced than in Iteration 3.
Final Thoughts
Iteration 4 was certainly superior to Iteration 3. The flavors had more layers and had a depth of flavor that far surpassed the previous version. My favorite part of Iteration 4, though, was that the change in yeast accented different elements of the beer, and they were the flavors and aromas that I wanted to be more pronounced. The differences in these beers were stark, and I was pleasantly surprised that the change in yeast managed to highlight exactly the elements I wanted to highlight and downplay the elements that I wanted to be a little less present. All in all, I’m very happy with Iteration 4, and any additional changes will essentially be splitting hairs.
Posted inBrewing, Brown Ale|Comments Off on Brown Ale: Tasting Iterations 3 & 4
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the seriescan be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
Brew Day
With a day off work and the wife and kids off at a playdate,
I began what was one of the most relaxing brew days I’d had in a long time.
Over the last few years, I’ve had to adjust my brewing schedule to fit around
my family, which often means running between my boil and reading books with my
kids or helping get lunches ready while I’m waiting for a hop addition-timer to
go off. I have become somewhat of an outspoken proponent of this type of
integration of family time and brew time, since there is, after all, so much
down time on a brew day. My family comes first, so I fit my brewing around it,
and I genuinely don’t mind doing that. But man, oh man, this brew day was a
reminder of brew days past. Instead of running back and forth between brewing
and my family, I sat. And it was glorious. I sat in the garage with my coffee,
enjoying the beginnings of cooler weather, and savored the smell of hops and
barley wafting through the air during the boil. Frankly, I’d forgotten that I
used to brew to relax. Don’t get me wrong—I still have fun on my brew days, but
the added ability to relax and do things on my time was something I hadn’t had
on a brew day in years.
Everything went smoothly on this brew day. I preheated my
mash tun while my strike water was coming to temp. I mashed in and hit my
target mash temperature fairly spot on.
After a 60-minute rest, I batch sparged the mash twice and
gathered my desired preboil volume of wort.
Once I got the boil going, I added hops at the times noted
in the recipe and then chilled my wort down as much as possible. Though the
weather was cooler on this morning than it had been, my groundwater was still
sitting around 80°F, so my immersion chiller could only do so much. Once I
got the wort down to around 90°F, I left it to settle for a bit and
then transferred the wort to my carboy.
I then placed the carboy in my fermentation chamber to
continue cooling down to my desired fermentation temperature. Several hours
later, I pitched my yeast. The next morning, I was surprised at how intensely
the yeast seemed to be working based on the visible currents within the carboy.
The krausen began to drop an astonishingly quick two days later, and I raised
the temperature in my fermentation chamber to let the yeast finish out strong.
Once I was sure fermentation was complete, I cold crashed
for a couple days and then kegged the beer. I burst carbonated it and pulled my
first pint two days later.
Recipe
Iteration 3 was certainly tasty and I was fairly happy with how it turned out, but there was a slight, somewhat harsh taste to it. Although I was only using a small amount of roasted malt in the recipe, I began to feel pretty confident that was the source of the flavor I was perceiving. What was strange to me about it, though, was how little I was using and how this flavor was markedly absent in other beers that I’ve had that use a much larger percentage of roasted malt in their grist.
As I thought more about it, the more the flavor reminded me of the flavor I noticed in the Collaborative Stouts series. Originally, those stouts were using US-05, but somewhere down the line, the yeast switched, and I realized that in comparison, the beers made with US-05 had a certain harshness to them. The thing is, I didn’t notice this in those beers until I compared it directly, and since that was the only difference between those beers, I knew the yeast was the cause of it. And once I’d noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it.
Going into this brown ale series, I used a much lower percentage of roasted grains
in this recipe compared to the stout recipe. I had no reason to think that I
would get the same quality of harshness from 5% chocolate malt as I did from
~12% chocolate and roasted barley. Yet, there I was. I couldn’t help but wonder
if US-05 reacted in some way with roasted malts that was simply not pleasant to
my palate. While certainly a solid choice for many styles, perhaps US-05 wasn’t
ideal for styles using roasted malts. Perhaps some other things were at play
besides just the yeast—maybe water chemistry or fermentation temperature was
impacting how the yeast interacted with the roasted malts. Whether or not I
could fix this issue by changing other variables and still using US-05, I knew
that a change of yeast would most likely be the easiest fix for this harsh
flavor.
I had also noted previously that I thought some esters would
complement this beer, which helped direct my choice of yeast change. I wanted
something of English origin, so partially because I like the ease of dry yeast
and because I have enjoyed beers made with this yeast before, I opted to use
S-04.
These considerations resulted in the following recipe:
Mashed at 151°F
77% 2-row [8.25 lbs.]
9% Crystal 60 [1 lb.]
9% Victory [1 lb.]
5% Chocolate [0.5 lb.]
Boiled for 1 hr.
23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) [1 oz. at 5.1% AA]
Pitched S-04
Fermented at 68°F
Raised to 70°F on Day 3
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.016
ABV: 5.8%
Tasting
This beer was a medium-dark brown hue and crystal clear
(though it’s hard to tell from the picture). It had a moderate off-white head
with decent retention.
The aroma had notes of toasted bread and bread crust. There
was also a hint of coffee, though it is in the background. Some fruity esters
mingled nicely with the other aromas.
The flavor was one of bread crust, toast, and a hint of
caramel. A slight chocolate taste came through in the finish. Mild herbal and
spicy notes were also present, though this hop character was definitely
secondary to the malt flavors.
Goals for the Next
Brew
Overall, I’m pretty happy with this beer. The change to S-04
achieved what I wanted it to (addition of esters and removal of the harshness).
The yeast change really upped this beer’s game, and I would happily drink a
pint of this any day.
That said, I think there’s still a little room for
improvement. Now that the change in yeast has shifted this beer more into the
realm of an English brown ale, I think that even the modest amount of 5%
chocolate in the recipe might be a little too much. As it stands right now, the
beer drinks a little heavier than I’d like for it to now that the yeast profile
is different. Dialing back the level of roast just a touch might bring this
beer more into balance. This would also have the added benefit of lowering the
SRM to a color more in line with an English brown (though this is certainly a
secondary benefit and not my main goal).
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the seriescan be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
Brew Day
With an empty space in my keezer and two days before our
family left town for most of the week, I decided to sneak a brew day in so that
I could return to a fully fermented beer ready to keg. After getting home from
work the Friday before we left town, I gathered my volume of strike water and
lit the flame under the kettle. Just before my water reached my calculated
temperature to mash in at, my propane ran out. Since I was just a few degrees
below where I wanted to be, I pulled a small amount of water from my HLT and
put it in a kettle on my stove. Once that water began to boil, I added that
back to the water in my HLT and then mashed in.
While my attempt to bring my strike water up to the correct
temperature without having to go buy more propane was mostly successful, I
still landed one degree shy of my target mash temperature. Not the end of the
world. I then let my mash rest for about two hours while I ate, got my kids
ready for bed, and went to the store to exchange my propane tank.
Once I’d hooked the new propane tank up to my burner, I
gathered some sparge water, began heating it, and drained the wort from my mash
tun. Since I was sparging with my usual amount of water and knew what to expect
volume-wise for the amount of wort gathered, I began getting some other things
ready and wasn’t paying a large amount of attention to the wort or my kettle.
As such, I ended up gathering about 0.25 gal. more pre-boil wort than I
normally would and had to close the valve on my mash tun to avoid gathering more.
I’m not sure exactly what happened with that unless I accidently heated more
sparge water than I meant to. Either way, I knew this was going to impact my
gravity some, both with having more volume in the kettle (therefore having a
more dilute wort) and leaving wort behind in the mash tun.
To try to hit my target post-boil volume and counteract what
I could with the gravity impact I knew was coming, I turned the burner up a
little higher than normal and kept the wort at a much more vigorous boil than
normal throughout most of the 60-minute boil.
After adding the hops as noted in the recipe below and
reaching the end of my boil, I cut the flame and used my immersion chiller to
cool the wort off as quickly as my groundwater would allow (which was not very
quickly).
Once the wort was cool enough, I put the lid back on the
kettle to let the trub settle out while I cleaned up. When I began transferring
the wort into my carboy, I noticed that my post-boil volume was still a touch
higher than I was shooting for. I transferred about half a gallon of wort into
a small carboy to wake up my yeast while the bulk of the wort finished cooling
in my fermentation chamber.
At this point, I also took a gravity reading and realized that despite my best efforts to counteract the extra wort in the kettle and the wort left behind in the mash tun, I ended up with an OG that was 11 points lower than Iteration 2. Granted, the previous version of this beer came in with a higher OG than expected and desired, but that large of a discrepancy was still not my favorite thing that happened that day.
Once my wort had finished chilling, I pitched my yeast. When
I checked on the beer the next morning, I noted early signs of fermentation.
The following day, as my family was packing up the car for our trip, I checked
on the beer again and noticed that the krausen was rising a bit too high for my
liking, so I quickly rigged up a blow-off tube before we got on the road.
When I returned home four days later, I tried to open the
fridge I use as a fermentation chamber and found that it was stuck closed.
Knowing I wasn’t going to like what I found when I got it opened, I pulled
harder and the door unstuck.
Carnage. Dried krausen atop the carboy and on the top and
sides of the fridge. A puddle of yeast and beer slowly beginning to drip
outside the fridge and onto my garage floor. A soaked towel that had
fortunately caught most of the mess, but by no means smelled pleasant. The bung
and blow-off tube had clogged and popped off of the carboy. I had no way of
knowing when this happened, but a quick visual inspection of the beer seemed to
indicate that fermentation was complete (or very near to it). With no vigorous
fermentation still happening, I couldn’t quite call this a successful (even if
accidental) open-fermentation. The beer could have been sitting exposed to
oxygen for any number of days.
But there was nothing I could do at that point except be
grateful this wasn’t a hoppy beer. I quickly sanitized a new bung and airlock
and put them in place. At this point I raised the temperature in my
fermentation chamber a couple degrees to encourage fermentation to finish and
ended up kegging the beer the following day.
Recipe
Too much coffee/roast in Iteration 1. Too much breadiness in Iteration 2. So far the changes to this recipe had been about dialing back flavors rather than trying to get “more” out of the ingredients. I honestly don’t think that’s a bad place to be.
I wanted to reduce the level of breadiness I was getting in
Iteration 2, which added a quality of richness to the beer that made it less
drinkable than I wanted it to be—by no means was it a sipper, but it was also
not quite an easy-drinking beer. The obvious answer to reducing this flavor was
to reduce or remove the Biscuit malt.
The thing that confused me about this is that I’ve used a
similar level of Biscuit before in a rye brown ale that I made before, and that
was an absolutely delicious beer. Perhaps the rye in that recipe was the
difference-maker and either balanced or complemented the Biscuit malt in some
way. I can’t be sure—this is speculation, as that beer is long gone and I have
no way to do an honest comparison of the two. But for whatever reason, this
amount of Biscuit malt worked in one of my previous brown ales, but was just
not doing it for me in this recipe. Because of that, and because I was using
such a small amount to start (0.5 lbs./4.5%), I decided to remove it altogether
instead of reducing the amount.
However, I didn’t want to completely remove the bread/toast
character from this beer. I wasn’t ready to commit to replacing the Biscuit
with something with a similar, but less intense flavor like Munich, but
removing it entirely felt like it left a gap in my recipe. Since I’m a big fan
of Victory and the toasty character it adds, I decided that upping the amount
of that malt might help fill in the gap left by removing the Biscuit. I didn’t
want to overdo it, so I didn’t do a one-to-one replacement of malt, but I met
in the middle and added another 0.25 lb. of Victory to the grist (half the
weight of the Biscuit I had removed).
This removal/replacement left me with slightly less weight
in my overall malt bill than the previous iteration, but it was a fairly small
amount. That in addition to the fact that Iteration 2 came in at a higher OG
than I was really shooting for made it an easy choice to not worry about
dropping the gravity point or two I knew I would in this iteration (though I
didn’t expect the brew day events that caused an even further gravity drop).
All of these choices left me with the following recipe:
Mashed at 151°F
77% 2-row [8.25 lbs.]
9% Crystal 60 [1 lb.]
9% Victory [1 lb.]
5% Chocolate [0.5 lb.]
Boiled for 1 hr.
23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) [1 oz. at 5.1% AA]
Pitched US-05
Fermented at 68°F
Raised to 70°F on Day 6
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5.6%
Tasting
This beer was light-medium brown and wonderfully clear. It
poured with a moderate off-white head with medium retention.
The aroma was one of sweet chocolate and toasted bread from
the malt. The hops added earthy and herbal notes.
This beer had toasty notes and a caramel sweetness. There
was also a hint of chocolate roast and a slight herbal note.
Goals for the Next
Brew
The rich bready character that made Iteration 2 less
drinkable was successfully removed. The toasty character that came out in this
iteration instead of the breadiness was a pleasant replacement. The absence of
the bready flavor also allowed for the caramel flavors from the crystal malt to
come through. I count this as a vast improvement. Overall, this beer was pretty
solid.
That said, there were some things that I thought this recipe
could improve upon. I couldn’t help but note that some added esters would be
pleasant, which is something I noted when tasting Iteration 1 as well. There
was also an element of harshness present—just barely there. It’s hard to
describe what I was actually perceiving; it presented itself as harsher than an
English brown, but maybe not outside the realm of an American brown. However, I
only noticed it in this iteration, so I have to wonder if it’s a factor of the
lower ABV—that the flavors already present need a little more alcohol to
support them. Or perhaps it’s a matter of the earthy and herbal hops being used,
in particular that these flavors are not as complementary of whatever is going
on that I’m perceiving as harsh. And let me be clear: this flavor is only
mildly present, but mild as it is, I think this beer would benefit from its
absence.
Changing the hops or upping the ABV again might help balance out whatever is presenting itself as harsh. Changing the hops is not really high on my list of things I want to do though, as I think the hop character of this beer is pretty tasty. Other options include changing the malt bill (perhaps the chocolate malt is contributing to the element of harshness) or to see if a change in yeast could change the perception of this flavor. The more I thought about it, the more this characteristic began to remind me of a flavor that was present in the Collaborative Stout series when we were using US-05; I didn’t quite realize this flavor was there until we changed yeast strains. Changing the yeast made the beer much smoother, so I wonder if a similar thing is happening here. Maybe US-05 reacts somehow with roasted malts in a way that I don’t find pleasant. Maybe this is a different issue entirely. Though a yeast change could also add the esters that I mentioned might be a nice addition.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do a direct comparison of Iterations 2 & 3 like usual, because I frankly did a poor job of keeping track of how much beer I had in the keg with Iteration 2. I poured my last pints for me and a friend and tried my hardest not to show my disappointment when the line started to sputter near the end of my pour. I hadn’t bottled any off yet, and at that point there was no chance. Lesson learned. I’ve returned to tallying up my pours so that I know when I’m nearing the end of the keg so I can be sure this won’t happen again.
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
The recipes for the brown ales being compared below are as follows:
Iteration 1 was clear with a persistent, white head. The color was a medium-dark brown.
Iteration 2 was clear with a white head that had incredible retention. The color was a medium brown (slightly lighter than Iteration 1).
Left: Iteration 2 | Right: Iteration 1
Aroma
Iteration 1 smelled foremost of chocolate and coffee. There
were also notes of dark bread with a slight earthiness.
Iteration 2 had some aroma I couldn’t place that gave the
perception of sweetness. The nose was most prominently nutty and bread-like.
Additionally, there were earthy notes and a hint of fruitiness.
Taste
Iteration 1 had a full mouthfeel and tasted strongly of
coffee and chocolate. There was a bread-crust character that was also
prominent, but secondary to the coffee and chocolate notes.
Iteration 2 tasted of toasted bread crust and had slight
earthy notes to it. There was also a slight cherry flavor along with a hint of
coffee.
Final Thoughts
Iteration 1 was not clear when I had tasted it before (prior
to the keg being empty). I had bottled this particular beer from the keg, so it
had been sitting for a month or more after the keg was gone at the time of
tasting. This time to clarify is interesting compared to the fact that
Iteration 2 cleared up nicely before the keg was empty—and Iteration 1 sat on
tap for a longer time than Iteration 2.
Iteration 1 had a fuller mouthfeel than Iteration 2, and neither beer had the alcohol warmth that I had perceived when Iteration 1 was still on tap. The difference in malt flavor, though, was stark, especially considering that I didn’t change the grain bill between these beers. Iteration 1 was had a noticeably stronger roast character, and Iteration 2 was significantly more bready. Both of these characteristics were too prominent in their respective beers. If I can get each of those flavors toned down without bringing out the other, I think that will be a significant step in the right direction for this brown ale.
Posted inBrown Ale, Comparing|Comments Off on Brown Ale: Tasting Iterations 1 & 2
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the seriescan be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
Brew Day
I’ve recently taken to brewing on Friday nights instead of
my former usual of Saturday mornings—mostly at the behest of my wife so that my
Saturdays are more freed up to help her with the kids. It actually works out
really well in terms of our schedules, and this brew day was no exception.
After work, I quickly gathered my volume of strike water, treated it with a
campden tablet to remove any chlorine or chloramines, and lit the flame on my
burner. While my strike water was heating, I put a kettle on the stove and,
once that was an appropriate temperature, used that to preheat my mash tun.
Once my strike water had reached its desired temperature, I
mixed my malt in with the water and left my mash to sit while I ate dinner with
my family and got the kids ready for bed. Once my oldest was appeased with her
seemingly infinite bedtime requests, I got started with the bulk of my brewing.
I drained my first runnings into my kettle and proceeded to batch sparge until
I’d reached my desired pre-boil volume.
I brought my wort to a boil and added hops at the times
indicated in the recipe.
Once the boil was complete, I used my immersion chiller to
cool down my wort as quickly as the groundwater temperature would allow. I then
cleaned up everything else while I let the trub settle out of the wort, since I
stir the wort during chilling.
I transferred the wort into my carboy and pulled about half
of a gallon off to use as a vitality starter. I added my rehydrated yeast to
this wort and let it get acclimated to the environment while my carboy sat in
my fermentation chamber, cooling down to a few degrees above my desired
pitching temperature.
Recipe
There were a few things I noted before that I wanted to change in this beer, but I stuck to picking just one thing to change to see what kind of difference the change was truly making. One item was the alcohol warmth I got in Iteration 1, but I suspected that since I hadn’t fermented overly warm, the issue was likely caused by way I heat my fermentation chamber in the winter. Ultimately, I decided not to change anything about my fermentation regimen to see if the problem cropped back up this time around.
Another item I considered changing was the level of
chocolate/coffee/roast character. As I mentioned before, I like a little of that
character in my brown ales, but it’s a delicate balance. Too much, and it
begins to stray into the realm of porter/stout for my mental palate map. I
thought about lowering the amount of chocolate malt being used; however, the
more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder if that character was being
accented by the richness of the biscuit malt. I then considered lowering the
amount of biscuit malt used or dropping it altogether for a simpler grain bill.
The last thing that crossed my mind as a potential fix for the
slightly-too-forward chocolate roasted character was to add something else to
balance it—in this case, additional bitterness. This consideration came to mind
due to the slightly higher than anticipated OG in Iteration 1, meaning that the
beer didn’t achieve the maltiness/bitterness ratio I’d originally planned for
it to have (of course I only tasted that planned beer mentally, so we would
have to see if that was the right move).
Adding a bit more bitterness and hop character was another
item I had wanted to improve upon from last time, so this seemed the route to
go. In order to not go overboard on the bitterness but still add bitterness and
hop character, I considered keeping the whole ounce of nugget in the boil and
moving it all to the 60-minute addition; however, toying around with this in a
recipe calculator gave me more IBUs than I thought made sense for the style.
So, I split the ounce between 60 minute and 30 minute additions.
That helped with the bitterness some, but it didn’t help with
the addition of hop character. As I was tasting Iteration 1 and noting that I
wanted some more hop character, I made a note to myself to consider adding more
nugget as a late addition, East Kent Goldings, or Willamette. While I thought
some additional earthiness from Nugget might be nice, I didn’t want to have my
hop character be too one-dimensional by only adding the single variety. EKG is
also noted to be earthy, so I considered adding that as a way to bring out that
earthiness while giving a slightly different character than the nugget.
Ultimately though, I decided to add something that would be a little different.
I’ve used Willamette as a late addition in some of my dark beers before and
really liked the character. I get a little spicy note as well as some herbal
notes that I thought might compliment this beer.
These choices left me with the following recipe:
Mashed at 152°F
75% 2-row [8.25 lbs.]
9% Crystal 60 [1 lb.]
7% Victory [0.75 lb.]
4.5% Biscuit [0.5 lb.]
4.5% Chocolate [0.5 lb.]
Boiled for 1 hr.
23 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
16 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) [0.5 oz. at 13.3% AA]
3.5 IBUs Willamette (5 min.) [1 oz. at 5.1% AA]
Pitched US-05
Fermented at 68°F
Raised to 69°F on Day 3
Raised to 70°F on Day 5
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.011
ABV: 6.96%
Tasting
This beer cleared up nicely with just a little time in my
keezer, which is not something I’ve often experienced when using US-05. The
color was a medium-brown with a white head and excellent head retention. In
fact, I let the last few sips of a pint sit out for over an hour while I was
attending to other things, and I came back to a beer with a small layer of foam
still on top.
The aroma of this beer was like a sweet, nutty bread. There
were also some earthiness and slight fruity notes.
The taste was toasted, dark bread. There was a slight
earthiness present, along with a hint of cherry and the faintest whisper of
coffee.
Goals for the Next
Brew
I do believe that the chocolate/coffee notes are less than
in Iteration 1, which was my main goal for this beer. It seems that the
additional bitterness or the extra hop character did actually help balance the
flavors in this beer like I had hoped. I also did not perceive any alcohol
warmth in this iteration like I did in Iteration 1, even though this version
has a higher ABV. So overall, I accomplished my goals for improving this beer.
That said, this beer is not where I want it to be. The
breadiness in this iteration is too much—or at least the quality of breadiness
is too much. There is, for lack of a better term, a richness in the flavor that
makes it less drinkable than I want it to be. What I mean by less drinkable is
not that this isn’t a good beer—it is, and I wouldn’t be mad if I’d ordered a
pint of this out somewhere; however, I think there’s a little too much going on
in the malt that gives the perception of being too rich (in that way some
describe certain desserts as “rich”).
My goal for the next time I brew this beer will definitely be to reduce the rich breadiness that is present, while maintaining the lower levels of coffee/chocolate flavors.
This post is one in a series of making small adjustments to a single recipe in order to improve it, learn more about the impact each ingredient has on the finished product, and the art of recipe creation. The rest of the series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
An Ode to Brown Ale
I’m probably somewhat of an outlier in the beer and brewing
community. I didn’t actually have my first drink until some months after my 21st
birthday. I remember very well what my first beers and my opinions of them were.
That very first beer was a Yuengling, sipped slowly from the green bottle over
the course of about an hour as I cautiously began figuring out what to expect
from alcohol. That timeline to drink that first beer was probably equal parts
caution and not particularly loving that lager. Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t
suffering through that first beer. I didn’t hate it, but it just wasn’t love at
first beer. Honestly, I’m still not the biggest fan of lagers as a whole,
though there are some notable exceptions.
That second beer, though—oh, that second beer was what
convinced me to keep giving beer a chance. The second bottle I popped that
night was a Newcastle. Though not my first beer, it was the first beer I liked,
and for that reason it still holds a special place in my heart. It became my
go-to for quite some time while I was still exploring the world of beer and the
flavors that were possible. And so began my love for brown ales.
I wish I saw more brown ales. In a climate where IPA is
king, the malty complexity of a brown ale is often underrated, or at least
overlooked. I can’t name a time when I last heard someone say that a brown ale
was their favorite beer or when a brown ale showed up on a top 10 or even top
100 list of beers. It just doesn’t happen, and for all that lack of notoriety
and never showing up in the spotlight, brown ale has always been there lurking
in the shadows, still being delicious. Honestly, when it comes down to it, if
for some reason I were forced to choose one style to drink for the rest of my
life, I would certainly choose brown ale.
I could continue my declaration of love for a style that is
not mentioned as much as I think it deserves, but I’ll spare you. I’ve probably
brewed more brown ale than any other style; in fact, the first beer I ever
brewed was a brown ale. Ultimately, when I was considering what style to
approach next as an iterative brewing project, brown ale just seemed right to
me for all of the reasons above.
Brew Day
Having the day off work, I took a leisurely approach to brew day and let it fall as it would around what my kids were doing at the time. This meant that by the time I got my strike water heated and stirred it into my grains to get the mash started, it was an awkward interval between the one-hour mark and the time my kids normally eat lunch. Having seen no ill effects from a slightly extended mash in the past, I let life happen and waited until nap time to start lautering. This ended up giving me a mash length of right at 2 hours.
Once I gathered roughly 6.75 gallons, I brought the wort to
a boil and added hops at the times noted in the recipe below.
Upon completing the boil, I chilled the wort using my
immersion chiller, stirring vigorously to cool down the wort as quickly as
possible, and then let my kettle sit for about 20 minutes to let the trub
settle to the bottom.
I then transferred the wort into my carboy, stealing about
half a gallon to add to my rehydrated yeast while I let the rest of the wort
chill in my fermentation chamber. Once the wort had reached 71°F,
which was slightly over my desired fermentation temperature, I pitched my
vitality starter from earlier in the day. By the following morning, there was
visible fermentation activity.
Recipe
Because I’ve brewed so much brown ale over the course of my
years homebrewing, it was hard for me to find a starting place for this recipe.
That seems counterintuitive, but I’ve honestly been pretty happy with most of
the brown ales I’ve brewed, so I knew I had a challenge ahead of me to actually
continue improving a recipe.
Instead of starting with a recipe I’ve used before, I took what
I thought were the best elements from several recipes I’ve previously brewed. I
had a few flavors in mind as goals for this beer, and I hoped that these
borrowed elements would come together to create those flavors.
I like a little bit of chocolate/coffee flavor in a brown
ale, but I’m not the biggest fan of brown ales where that flavor dominates. In
my opinion, those beers almost stray into the realm of porter. To achieve that flavor
and get a majority of my color contribution, I chose to use a small portion of chocolate
malt (350°L).
I also wanted some the caramel sweetness in this beer, so I opted to use a
decent amount of Crystal 60. Lastly, one of my favorite pieces of the brown ale
puzzle is the toasty, nutty, and biscuity flavors in the malt. I used a small
portion of biscuit malt (kept small in order to avoid this malt overwhelming
the beer) to add those nutty and biscuit flavors, and I added some Victory malt
to get some of the more toasted bread notes.
As for hops in brown ales, I enjoy more of the earthy hops
rather than the strongly citrus American hops—though a little citrus character
can be nice. I did want some hop aroma in this beer, but not much, so I opted
to use a minimal charge of Nugget to bitter and another smaller charge as a
later kettle addition. I hoped that some of the earthy character from the
Nugget would come through. Though not a common descriptor for Nugget, I tend to
get some fruitiness from it, and I hoped that that would also come through to a
small extent. Other than that, I was mostly looking for bitterness with this
hop choice.
Though I like for my brown ales (actually, most dark ales)
to have more of an English level of malt intensity and more English-style hops,
I also like for them to be more of an American-style strength and without too
much ester character. To that end, I decided to use US-05 as my yeast. With all
of these considerations in place, I was left with the following recipe:
Mashed at 152°F
75% 2-row [8.25 lbs.]
9% Crystal 60 [1 lb.]
7% Victory [0.75 lb.]
4.5% Biscuit [0.5 lb.]
4.5% Chocolate [0.5 lb.]
Boiled for 1 hr.
32 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) [0.75 oz. at 13.3% AA]
7 IBUs Nugget (20 min.) [0.25 oz. at 13.3% AA]
Pitched US-05
Fermented at 68°F
Raised to 69°F on Day 3
Raised to 70°F on Day 5
OG: 1.063
FG: 1.013
ABV: 6.6%
Tasting
This beer was a very dark brown with a firm white head with
good retention.
The aroma had notes of toast and dark bread crust. There was
also a hint of chocolate and a little less of a hint of coffee. I also
perceived what reminded me of damp earth, in a positive way—like the smell of
digging in a garden after a recent rain.
The dark bread crust flavor of this beer was strong, though
not overwhelming or stealing the show. There was also some chocolate balanced
with caramel sweetness along with some alcohol warmth.
Goals for the Next
Brew
Overall, the biggest issue I had with this beer was the
alcohol warmth. I’m not entirely sure where that was coming from since I didn’t
ferment this beer at a temperature range outside of the ideal for the yeast
strain I used—though I won’t discount the possibility that the heating pad I
use to warm my fermentation chamber warmed the fermenting beer unevenly and
impacted the beer despite having a temp probe taped to the side of my carboy.
Perhaps I’ll both ferment slightly cooler next time and also lower my OG—or
maybe I’ll wait to see if the problem replicates itself since I’ll next be
brewing this beer again when it’s warmer out and I won’t need the heating pad
in my fermentation chamber.
I also wanted a little more bitterness in this beer. I could
achieve this two ways: more hops or lowering the OG. I imagine that the dark
color of this beer (slightly darker than I intended) was due to the OG being
slightly higher than intended. Going that route would be killing two birds with
one stone. However, I also wouldn’t mind a little more hop character in this
beer. There definitely was a minimal amount of hops used in this beer, so
adding another late kettle addition might help balance this beer a little more.
Or alternatively, I could get more character by using a more expressive yeast.
I mentioned above that I like my brown ales to be fairly clean, but as I drank
this, I did end up thinking that a little ester character might be nice.
Lastly, though I like a bit of chocolate character in a
brown ale, there was just a little too much in the beer for my taste—at least
with the other aspects of the beer as it stood when I tasted it. That
perception might change when other characteristics are modified, so I doubt
this would be my first change to the recipe.
This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
My first two beers in this Limitations series were certainly nothing spectacular. However, I don’t think that the subpar brews have been due to the limitations themselves, but rather my inability to work well within those defined limitations. The goals of this series, after all, was to push my own bounds of creativity by limiting what I could use without limiting what I could do. I think that these limitations were actually pushing me to find other ways to obtain the flavors I wanted without being able to use a particular ingredient that I knew would give me that effect, but perhaps I just haven’t been able to execute on the quality side of things.
This time, though, I was determined to build a recipe within
the given limitations that I would enjoy every pint of. This time, I wanted to
do something drastically different than my last two brews. This time, I decided
to go big.
Recipe
Thinking through things that I personally wanted to brew and
thinking through the ingredients that I had available, I knew I could brew a
pale ale or IPA to satisfy my own desire to have something hoppy on hand, but
several pale ales and IPAs have already been brewed in this series. So I looked
to my list of beers I wanted to brew (yes, I do actually keep a list of beers I
want to make on my phone—either when an idea hits or when I just start to get
the itch to have a particular style of beer on tap). Then I saw it: barleywine.
The fact that the set of limited ingredients were all base
malts was convenient. While wheat and Munich aren’t traditional ingredients in
barleywine, Maris Otter certainly is. It wasn’t a hard decision to have a
majority of my grain bill made up of Maris Otter, since that is typical of a
barleywine grist anyway—at least of the English variety. The other malts were
what I had to put some thought into.
A bready character is appropriate for barelywine in
reasonable amounts, so I knew I could achieve that with the Munich. That said,
I wanted to be careful not to go overboard with it. I figured somewhere close
to 15% of the grist would add a good flavor without bringing the character of
that malt to the forefront. The wheat was something that I thought could help
lighten out the overall feel of this high gravity brew, but that wheat
character was also something I didn’t want to be overly prominent. As such, I
decided to keep that closer to the 10% mark. I considered making that
percentage of the grist even less, but I did want the wheat to contribute at
least a bit of character.
With the hops I had at hand, I knew this was going to be
more of an American-style barleywine in hop character. Malt is the true star of
the show in barleywines, though, so I decided to mostly focus on using the hops
to balance the maltiness. I knew I wanted to use some Nugget early in the boil
since I would need a large charge of bitterness, and I wanted to use Amarillo
later in the boil to get some hop character in the aroma. Those hop additions
alone, though, wouldn’t get me the level of bitterness I was after, so I chose
to add another addition of both hops right in the middle of the boil to get
some bitterness and potentially some additional hop flavor. I wanted to land
somewhere just shy of a 1:1 BU:GU ratio (bitterness units to gravity units).
Given my yeast choices, it was obvious that I needed to use
WLP090 to achieve what I was after. I had never used this yeast before, but its
purportedly high attenuation, alcohol tolerance, and flocculation all seemed
appealing for this beer. I wanted this beer to land somewhere around the 10%
mark and land close to 1.015-1.020; with those goals and the level of
attenuation of WLP090, I decided to shoot for an OG of around 1.100.
I am giving these gravities in target ranges instead of a
specific target gravity solely because I had never brewed something of such
high gravity on my system, and I didn’t know how it would respond or how my
efficiencies would suffer. Therefore, when I decided on these things, I decided
on them in a rounded range of numbers. Because of that, I knew I would have to
make some on-the-fly adjustments on brew day since my hop utilization would
change depending on the actual gravity I achieved, which would probably require
some rearrangement of the timing or amount of my hop additions.
All of these considerations resulted in the following
recipe:
Mashed at 151°F/156°F (two mashes)
75% Maris Otter (16.5 lbs.)
16% Light Munich (3.5 lbs.)
9% Wheat (2 lbs.)
Boiled for 75 min.
1 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13.3% AA (36.6 IBUs)
1 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 13.3% AA (28.1 IBUs)
1 oz. Amarillo (30 min.) at 8.2% AA (17.3 IBUs)
1 oz. Amarillo (10 min.) at 8.2% AA (8.2 IBUs)
Pitched WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast
Fermented at 65°F
Raised temperature to 68°F on day 4
Raised temperature to 70°F on day 5
OG: 1.092
FG: 1.020
ABV: 10.3%
Kegged and burst carbonated
Brew Day
Because of the high OG I was targeting for this brew, I started a week ahead of time by making a starter. The packet of yeast I picked up was a little older than I would have liked and looked fairly brown (unfortunately, my LHBS doesn’t normally carry this yeast, so this was a special order and therefore the only packet available). A yeast viability calculator and the look of this yeast prompted enough concern about the vitality of my yeast that I opted to make multiple stepped starters.
The first starter I made was only 1-quart, just to make sure I had healthy yeast and to grow it a little. I then crashed, decanted, and made a 3-quart starter. The yeast starter calculator I used prompted me to want just a little more growth than this second starter would provide, so I poured off a small amount of the starter into a mason jar, crashed that, and then with much less precision than the other starters, used this unknown (but visibly small) amount of yeast to make yet one more 1-quart starter.
Knowing that I would have to use a large amount of grain to
make this brew work and get somewhere close to my target numbers, I also knew
that after gathering my pre-boil volume of wort I would have a fair amount of
leftover sugars available in the grains, I decided to make this my first
partigyle brew and try to get an ESB out of the deal too. This is where my
system’s limitations come into play, though. My mash tun is a 5-gallon cooler.
At maximum, I can fit roughly 12.5 pounds of grain with a liquor to grist ratio
of 1.25—nowhere near the amount of grain I’d need to reach the gravity I was
looking for unless I brewed a smaller batch.
To compensate for the small mash tun, I knew I would have to run two mashes. I figured I could do this side-by-side to save some time if I used my old 7-gallon kettle to hold the second mash and then transfer the mash into my cooler mash tun in order to lauter. The logistics of everything started to make me worried that I’d forget something if I went in without my plan written down, so I planned out the brew day in 15-minute increments based on my best guesses of when things should be happening.
I knew that this was going to be a longer day than normal,
and my estimated plan showed that the second mash/brew would add another 2
hours to the 6 hours that is usually my maximum time spent brewing (I usually
only spend this much time brewing and cleaning when things go wrong, e.g.,
stuck mash). I determined to wake up early, and the night before I made sure
all my equipment was clean, my water was gathered and treated, and my equipment
was staged and waiting.
The next morning I had the flame lit under my kettle before
the sun was up and at an hour I’m not usually even awake on days I have to
work. While my strike water was heating up, I preheated my mash tun with some
water I’d heated on my stove. Once the water reached the calculated strike
temperature to reach my target mash temperature, I mashed in. Unfortunately, a
quick temperature reading indicated something went awry and that I had
undershot my mash temperature by a few degrees. I quickly boiled about a quart
of water and added this to the mash to bring the temperature up to 151°F.
After this, I began heating the water for the second mash. I
heated this water directly in the kettle I planned to use to hold the mash
instead of using my HLT. I figured this would save me the trouble of preheating
the kettle and might hold the mash temperature a little better since it was not
insulated. Having never done this before, I guess the heat of the kettle itself
was more than anticipated, because this time I overshot my mash temperature by
several degrees. Not ideal, but this wasn’t part of my normal process so I
wasn’t worried about the consistency part, though I will certainly keep this in
mind if I try this method again. (I should note here that besides the
temperature, the mashes were otherwise the same. Though the mash was split, the
grain bill was split equally between the two so that each mash had the same
proportion of malts.)
At the end of the hour, I gathered the first runnings of
Mash 1, sparged, and gathered the second runnings of Mash 1; all of this wort
went into the kettle for the barleywine. I then batch sparged again and
gathered the third runnings into another vessel to use for the ESB later. Then,
I rapidfire dumped my grains and moved Mash 2 into the tun. I gave the grains
some time to settle while I did something else and then gathered the first
runnings. I added this wort to the kettle for the barleywine.
At this point, the rest of Mash 2 was intended for the ESB;
since I decided to brew the second beer outside of the constraints of the
Limitations series, I capped the mash with 1 pound of Crystal 60, sparged twice
(allowing the first sparge to sit for at least 15 minutes to ensure I got the
most out of the C60), and gathered the second and third runnings for use in the
ESB.
While the barelywine wort was coming up to a boil, I
realized that I’d gathered half a gallon more than I had intended. Taking that
and the preboil gravity into account, I decided to extend the boil by 15
minutes to get closer to my target post-boil volume and gravity. The preboil
gravity sample I took also indicated that if I hit my target volume, I would
still be a little shy of the 1.100 OG I was going for.
I also realized at this point that the small amount of extra
hops in my freezer was Magnum and not Nugget like I’d thought. I had intended
on adding that amount to the full ounce I had purchased for my 60 minute hop
addition, but that wasn’t going to happen now with the ingredient limitations
for this recipe. The missing 0.25 oz. of hops along with the slightly lower
gravity prompted me to do some quick calculations for expected IBUs. Playing
around with the timing some, I realized that I needed to move one addition
earlier in the boil to achieve my target 90 IBUs.
After this point, everything went smoothly. I added hops at
the newly calculated times noted in the recipe above and chilled the wort as
best as I could with my warm groundwater. Once I transferred the wort to my
carboy, I stole half a gallon of wort for a vitality starter; even with the
number of starters I had made in preparation for this beer, I wanted to give
every fighting chance to this yeast since I had never brewed a beer this big before.
Once the wort had finished chilling to fermentation
temperature several hours later, I shook the carboy to aerate it (I don’t have
a pure O2 setup like what I generally see recommended for big beers and
honestly don’t have the inclination to buy one), and pitched the krausening
vitality starter. An hour or two after pitching, I came back to check on things
and noticed a marked stratification of the wort and the yeast/starter (I assume
due to the density of the wort).
Within 4 days, I noticed the krausen beginning to drop, so I
raised the temperature to encourage the yeast to finish up. Once the yeast were
finished doing their thing, I cold crashed and kegged the beer.
(As a side note, the “ESB” ended up probably closer to an ordinary
bitter instead of a strong bitter in terms of gravity, landing at 1.039. I used
two ounces of East Kent Goldings in the boil to reach ~30 IBUs, fermented with
S-04, and added one ounce of East Kent Goldings as a dry hop.)
Tasting
This beer poured with a large, white head that had good
retention. The color was a copper/orange/dark gold hue. The beer ended up being
mostly clear, but retained a slight haze to it that never fully dropped.
The aroma gave the perception of sweetness. There was a
clear alcohol presence—boozy, but not solvent-like or overwhelming (i.e., not a
negative aspect of the aroma). There were definite peach, apricot, and orange
notes that were fairly prominent. The malt character was one that I can really
only describe as a generic maltiness—perhaps a hint of bread crust if I had to
pin anything defined to it.
The flavor was full of ripe peach and orange. There was a
light breadiness, but the prominent flavors were fruit and sweetness. It was simultaneously
sweet from the alcohol present and somewhat deceptive on the perceived alcohol
content—not quite easy-drinking since there was a quality of heaviness and
fullness in the mouthfeel from the sweetness, but there was no heat from the
alcohol and so didn’t feel heavy because of the booziness. In this case the booziness
and the sweetness are both from alcohol content, but I didn’t really perceive
it that way by taste alone. I guess what I’m getting at is that I think the
only reason I could tell that the sweetness was from the alcohol was because I
knew the ABV; if I went to this beer blind, I wouldn’t think it was 10.3%–just
that it was on the sweeter end of things.
If I were to brew this beer again with the same set of
limitations, I would change nothing except the hop additions. I certainly went
for a large IBU contribution, but somehow it still wasn’t quite enough for my
taste. The flavor of the hops was spot on, but I would have liked a little more
bitterness to balance out how sweet this beer turned out. One thing I didn’t
account for in my recipe was the sweetness that alcohol contributes as well as
the lower hop utilization in high gravity worts. Likely, both of those things
contributed to the slightly unbalanced sweetness.
If I were to brew this beer again with no limitations, I would definitely change what I already mentioned about the bitterness, but I would also probably drop the wheat from the grain bill since I didn’t think it contributed that much at the percentages I used it. I would also lower the Munich addition and perhaps replace it with a crystal malt for a more traditional barleywine grist.
This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.
Author: R. Goyenko
The weather was getting warmer,
which admittedly affected my choice of recipe for this round of brewing—I wanted
something on a lighter side, so after looking at the possibilities with the
limited ingredients available, I decided to go with an American wheat
beer.
Recipe
I needed a substantial wheat
bill for this beer, so after some research on the style and other recipes, I
ended up deciding to use equal parts wheat malt and Maris Otter with a
small portion of Munich.
I felt like I had a pretty good
understanding of the hops we were limited to. My perception of Nugget has been
that it provides earthy notes and pretty heavy hop aromas and flavors. I thought
that this character would clash with the light style of an American wheat beer,
so I decided to use it as a small bittering addition at the 30-minute mark. On
the other hand, I think Amarillo makes much more sense as a hop choice for a
wheat beer due to its citrus, orange, and floral characteristics. Because of
this, I decided to use it as a later boil addition as well as in the
whirlpool.
I tried both yeast options for this series (WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast) in my two previous Limitations beers, and they both produced clean beers without too much ester character. I think both yeast strains could be acceptable for a wheat beer, with my only note being that both yeast strains produced a clear beer after staying in the fermentation vessel for some time. After using each of these strains in previous beers, I harvested some yeast for later use. Unfortunately, I put them both in identical containers and failed to label the containers. Since I had no idea which container held which strain, I naturally decided to use both of them to see what the end result would be.
All of these choices resulted in
the following recipe:
Mashed at 149°F for 60 min.
46% UK Maris Otter (5 lbs.)
46% White wheat malt (5 lbs.)
8% Light Munich (0.8 lb.)
Boiled for 60 min.
0.5 oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 14% AA (21 IBUs)
1 oz. Amarillo (5 min.) at 8.6% AA (7 IBUs)
1 oz. Amarillo (170°F whirlpool for 20 min.) at 8.6% AA (23 IBUs)
Co-pitched WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast & WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast
Fermented at 68°F
Raise to 70°F at end of fermentation
OG: 1.050
FG: 1.010
ABV: 5.3%
Brew
Day
This was the best kind of brew day: uneventful. I gathered my brewing water and calculated the strike temperature to hit my desired mash temperature. I mashed in using the full volume of water and hit my desired temperatures within a degree (it was a smidge lower that my target). After that I let the mash rest for an hour and then collected the sweet wort. I measured the pre-boil gravity, and since it was right on target I started the boil without any further adjustments.
Since the yeast I was going to
use had been sitting in the fridge for some time, I opted to make a vitality
starter. I sparged the grains to get a little extra wort, and I boiled those “second
runnings.” I then added both yeast strains to the wort and set the vitality
starter on my stir plate.
As the wort boiled, I added hops
at the 30 and 5 minute marks. I also put my wort chiller into the kettle at the
end of the boil to sanitize it. At the end of the boil I quickly chilled the
wort to 170°F and
added the whirlpool addition of Amarillo, which sat for 20 minutes (I cleaned
and sanitized the fermentor during this time). Then I chilled the wort to 68°F, which didn’t take long since
my groundwater was still fairly cold despite the warming weather.
I measured the gravity, which
came in at 1.050—perfect for the recipe. I transferred the wort into the fermentor
where it waited for the vitality starter to finish. When the starter was ready,
I pitched it into the fermentor.
Tasting
Appearance: Dark gold color and
clear, though it took about a month to completely clear out. I was expecting
the amount of wheat used to result in a cloudier appearance, but that didn’t
happen. There was a big, frothy, white head that lasted a while. The color was
a little darker than typical wit beers and much clearer.
Aroma: Herbal, spicy, and floral
nose with citrus—lemon. Bready and grainy malt aromas with slight tartness.
Initially this beer had a much more intense aroma consisting of what I think is
typical for Amarillo—orange, citrus, and floral. This aroma subsided quite a
bit over time, but it was still a nice and pleasant beer.
Flavor: Citrus, light bready
notes, bitterness was on the medium-low level. There was a familiar slight
tartness that I usually get from beers with a big wheat addition. I wish the
flavor were a little lighter to make it a quintessential wit beer; it was
almost there, but was more robust and not as light.
Mouthfeel: Medium body, finished
medium to dry, with light tartness. Slight bitterness in the finish.
If I were to brew this beer
again with the same ingredients, I would increase the wheat portion of the malt
bill to about 70-80%, reduce the Maris Otter to 17-27%, and only use 3% Munich.
The beer was nice, but I think having less MO and Munich would make it lighter,
both in color and in taste. I wouldn’t change a thing about the hop additions.
If I were to brew this beer again without limitations on ingredients, I wouldn’t use Maris Otter and would instead use regular 2-row. I would probably also add about 5% Vienna malt. I would also choose a less flocculent yeast. This beer ended up being clear, even with a big wheat malt bill. I think witbeers benefit from some cloudiness, which gives it creamier mouthfeel.
This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.
Author: T. Bowen
For my third and final beer in the Limitations Series, I wanted to do something that I had not done before. But I also wanted to brew something that I felt confident I would have success with and something that I would enjoy having on tap. While talking to my wife about how I wanted something a little more sessionable on tap than my usual NEIPAs, it occurred to me that I have never brewed a hoppy wheat before.
Even with our
limited ingredients, I was hopeful I could pull off what I wanted. Normally I
would like more options in the hop bill to bring more complexity. But I like
Amarillo as far as fruity/tropical hops go, and I always get big orange and
tangerine flavors from Amarillo, which I felt would work well with this. All of
this coupled with a quick, clean yeast like WLP090 would hopefully give me the
hoppy, sessionable beer to pair perfectly with our daily temps of 100+ degrees
and smothering humidity.
Recipe
I decided to
do this beer as a 4-gallon batch. Typically for beers that are a little out of my
bailiwick, I do a 2- or 3-gallon batch to cut costs and have less volume in
case it doesn’t turn out how I’d like. But I planned on a rather heavy-handed
dry hop and knew that I would have some significant loss in the fermenter, so I
went with a 4-gallon batch in hopes of ending up with at least 3 gallons in the
keg.
I also wanted
this beer to come out nice and yellow to compliment the significant haze I was
planning on from the White Wheat occupying the majority of the grist, so I knew
I wanted to keep the Light Munich in check. Despite the higher (than I’d like)
percentage of Light Munich, Beersmith was showing an SRM I was comfortable
with, so I rolled with it.
Finally, I
planned to hop this like I hop the majority of my NEIPAs (and really any of my
hoppy beers), i.e., a small bittering charge, whirlpool, and double dry hops. Usually,
I do two whirlpools at different temperatures, but some recent research and reading
has changed that process for me, and I’m now trying a single whirlpool at a
different temp. Here’s where I landed:
Water:
3:1 Chloride:Sulfate
Mashed
at 154°F for 60 minutes
59%
White Wheat
23%
Maris Otter
18%
Light Munich
Boiled
for 30 minutes
0.25
oz. Nugget (30 min.) at 14.2% AA (13.1 IBUs)
4
oz. Amarillo (180°F Whirlpool, 15 min.) at 7.7% AA (17.6 IBUs)
Double
dry hopped
2
oz. Amarillo for 6 days (added 24 hours post-pitch)
2
oz. Amarillo for 1 day
Pitched
WLP090 Super San Diego
Pitched
at 65°F
Raised
to 68°F at the end of fermentation
OG:
1.049
FG:
1.012
ABV:
4.8%
IBU:
30.7
SRM:
5.0
Brew Day
With the
southern sun heating us north of 100°F, I did a full volume, no sparge mash to
make things as quick as possible. Although I planned to mash at 152°F, I came
in a little high at 154°F. I typically preheat my MT with a gallon or two of
hot tap water. This was obviously not necessary in the current weather, and I
wasn’t thinking.
I stirred
like crazy, tossed in a small handful of ice cubes and stirred more to try and
chill, and ultimately said, “forget it,” and let it ride. My mash tun barely
loses one degree (weather dependent) over the course of a mash, so I was
pleasantly surprised to see the mash temp at 152°F after 60 minutes, making me
think that perhaps I was closer to my target mash temp than I had originally
thought.
The boil was about
as exciting as a pot of boiling wort can be, but I will say that I am loving 30
minutes boils. Once the boil starts, you’re in the home stretch and things move
right along quite nicely.
Now came the
fun part—chilling to whirlpool temps and ultimately pitching temps with 80+
degree groundwater. I wasn’t too worried though, because I use a small pond
pump to pump ice water through my immersion chiller when it’s as hot as it was
on this brew day. I cut the flame and turned on the pump only to realize that
my little pump that had served me so well the last few years was dead. Oh
well—I already had a cooler full of ice water, so I shoved as much of the input
hose into the ice water as I could, hoping that a cold hose might somehow help.
Thankfully,
it worked fairly well, at least to get to my whirlpool temperature of 180°F. I tossed
in my whirlpool hops and recirculated for 15 minutes using a different pump.
After the whirlpool, I pulled the hop spider to let it drain while I attempted
to chill the batch as much as possible.
Chilling was
painfully slow. After who knows how long, I got it down to 90°F, racked it to
the fermenter, and put it in my fermentation chamber to continue chilling to
pitching temp.
A few hours
later, the wort had dropped to 65°F, and I pitched a 1.5L starter of WLP090.
Less than 24 hours later, a healthy krausen was forming and I opted to add my
first dry hop charge.
About six
days later, I checked gravity, did my usual soft cold crash, and racked to a
sanitized and purged keg with the second round of dry hops hanging in the keg.
Per my usual process, I did a closed transfer, bubbling CO2 into the fermenter
as the beer drained out the valve below.
After sitting
on the second dry hop charge for about 24 hours, I pulled another gravity
sample to confirm no change. The gravity was still at 1.012, making me
confident it was done.
When I do a
double dry hop this way, I typically rack to a serving keg off the second dry
hop when I’m ready to carb/serve. But often times out of sheer laziness or the
desire to see how the aroma/flavor changes in cold storage, I’ll just carb up
the dry hop keg. And that’s what I opted for here, so into the keezer it went
for carbonation.
Tasting
Appearance: Pours a medium dark golden/straw with nice foam. The color is a touch darker than I’d want, but otherwise I’m happy with appearance. So far so good.
Aroma: And
this is where things start to drop off. In a big way. I get virtually nothing
in the aroma. I pick up little to zero citrus/orange/tangerine that I typically
get with Amarillo. About all I get in the nose is some earthiness, like wet
dirt. It’s almost like all I am picking up is the Nugget, which is odd
considering my hop ratios were roughly 3% Nugget and 97% Amarillo. Perhaps this
was a subpar crop of Amarillo, or they weren’t stored optimally. I typically
bulk buy my hops online, but these hops were purchased from a local shop, and
I’ve questioned some of their hops before.
Flavor: Good
body to the beer. But that’s about where the “good” ends. There’s a heavy
earthy bitterness that lingers on the back of my palate more than I would like.
I barely, just slightly get some bitter orange in the flavor, but that’s about
it. It’s a very one dimensional, boring beer. Finally, there’s a slight bit of
astringency that I’m sure is due to the extended dry-hop-turned-keg-hop.
Overall, I’m
not thrilled with this beer. It’s certainly not a dumper, but I’m planning on
racking it to another keg with a Citra keg hop to see if that brightens it up
some to at least make the rest of the keg a bit more enjoyable.
If I were to
brew this beer again only using these same ingredients, I would reduce the
amount of Nugget used in an attempt to remove the earthy flavor I perceived. I
would also bump up the amount of Amarillo used in the dry hop to increase the
aroma, since this beer had almost none. Additionally, I would lower the Munich
to 10%, max, and I would bump the Wheat up 10 percentage points. The beer came
out a hair darker than I’d like, and dropping the Munich some would help with
this. I’d also like to see if I could get even more mouthfeel by bumping up the
wheat.
If I were to brew this beer again with no limitations, there are a few changes I would certainly make. First, I would either drop the Nugget outright or replace it with something else, like Magnum or Warrior. One thing I am certainly taking out of this Limitations Series is that I’m done with Nugget. I used to use it religiously as my bittering hop, and it always seemed fine. But now I’m thinking all those other beers with Nugget had so many other hops in them that any of the Nugget attributes I don’t like were being covered up. In this beer, though, it had nowhere to hide. I would also lower the amount of Munich and increase the amount of Wheat used, both by 10%, for the same reasons mentioned above. Probably my favorite part of this beer is having a sub-5% ABV beer on tap.
