Brew U

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.

Brew Day

Take a step back. Regroup. Try again.

After the outcome of Iteration 3, that’s exactly what I had to do. That’s what this brew day was about. I knew it was likely to happen eventually in this process. If I kept every change I made to this recipe, instead of implying that they were all the right decisions, it would more likely indicate that I wasn’t actually learning from my experiences but just going with the flow. Yes, this brew day was a step back, but I went into it hoping it would allow me to step forward in the right direction this time.

What would a brew day be without some sort of misstep, though? This particular misstep was a repeated error. Just as I did with Iteration 3, I gathered too much wort and ended up with a lower than expected OG. I gathered 6.5 gallons of wort to boil, which is what I gathered last time. I would have sworn, though, that this was the volume I always collected.

A few possibilities crossed my mind. I recently started using a wort chiller instead of an ice bath. Because of the more rapid cooling process, I wondered if the wort wasn’t experiencing as much evaporation as it had before with the (much lengthier) ice baths I used previously. The length of time the wort spent at a high enough temperature for evaporation to occur had certainly been significantly shortened; however, I can’t imagine I was truly losing a half gallon of wort to post-boil evaporation prior to buying an immersion chiller. I also have to deal with the fact that I did hit my OG in Iteration 2, and I feel somewhat confident that I collected the same amount of pre-boil wort for all of the batches in this series.

However, gathering more wort pre-boil than I had in the past seems like an obvious possibility. I suppose this is possible, but I can’t guarantee it because I have never written down my pre-boil volume. I had just always gathered the same amount (or so I thought). But perhaps I misremembered somewhere along the way and became convinced that the misremembered number was the correct number. I just don’t know. Up to this point I thought I took good notes, but this has proven me wrong.

The other possibility I considered was a change in my boil-off rate. I boiled with the same vigor that I always have, so perhaps the humidity was higher these last two brew days. It is getting into the warmer days in South Carolina, so the humidity can get a little out of hand.

Thoroughly confused, I solemnly vowed to begin keeping track of the pre-boil volume collected and humidity level. And then I realized that I had my recipe calculator set to a 5 gallon batch instead of 5.5, which is what I’ve been gathering to account for trub loss across the process. That was just me being careless. However, I know for a fact that the recipe calculator has always been set to this, so the other factors still came into play. At least it wasn’t all because of my stupidity. If nothing else, I’ve learned I do need to take notes on a few more aspects of my brewing if I ever want to be consistent.

Recipe

As was my goal in Iteration 3, I hoped to bring a certain complexity and a deeper richness to this beer this time around. While I had achieved richness and complexity in the last version of this red IPA recipe, the raisin flavor I got was not something I wanted to keep around. The Special B in Iteration 3 added a level of complexity that was good, but the quality of that complexity was not in keeping with my end goal for what this brew should be. I do want dark fruit notes to be fairly prominent in the malt flavor, but I want these to be cherry and plum flavors. The raisin notes from my last brew clashed with the citrus hop character and overpowered it. The dark fruit character should be rich and deep, and it should be complimented by the bright citrus character of the hops. That said, the Special B had to go.

This left me with two questions from the last brew:

• What grain should I use in place of the Special B that will yield richness and complexity when combined with the C120?
• Should I keep the amount of C120 the same, return it to its former amount, or use more than I have before?

This opened up a world of options, so I returned to those malts I had considered before. To add the complexity I was looking for, I thought about adding some Victory, Munich, or Vienna. I also considered replacing some of the 2-row with Marris Otter. As I considered the flavors I wanted to add, Victory quickly dropped to the bottom of my list. I generally like Victory, but the biscuit-like character wasn’t something I thought would help me achieve my end goal.

Marris Otter was next on the chopping block. I’m not against bringing some into this recipe to see what it could add, but the deciding factor here was the strength of flavor. The Special B in my last brew lent a strong character to the beer, and although it wasn’t the flavor I wanted, the strength of it was what I think yielded the complexity of Iteration 3. Perhaps the Marris Otter would give me this, but I decided to try something with a more pronounced flavor first—and also, I had to have some reason to decide, so this may have ended up being a decision based on a whim more than anything.

For the same reason as above (strength of flavor) I decided to try Munich over Vienna. My LHBS had a floor-malted dark Munich that sounded promising, so I decided to give that a shot. For the record, I’ve seen other malts listed as “dark Munich” that were 20⁰+ Lovibond. This particular “dark” Munich is listed as 8⁰L. That’s only one degree darker than the specs for the “light” Munich my LHBS also sells, so truthfully, it was the floor-malted preparation of this malt that sold me.

The final piece I had to decide was the amount of C120 to include. I wanted to have at least the same amount of dark fruit flavor I got from Iteration 2, but decided that I’d try to get just a bit more of that flavor. To do this, I kept the same weight of grain I had in the first two iterations and moved 0.25 lbs. from the 2-row to the C120. I then replaced 1 lb. of 2-row with the Munich. I hoped that this would give me the complexity I wanted with just a bit more plum/cherry character than Iteration 2 gave me.

• Mashed at 150⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 9 lbs. 2-Row
  • 1.25 lbs. Crystal 120
  • 1 lb. Dark Munich
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at 5.0% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.7% AA
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.052
• FG: 1.010
• ABV: 5.5%
• Dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 5 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

Tasting

Outside of being fairly disappointed that what was intended to be IPA strength ended up at 5.5% ABV, I tried to go into this tasting concerned with the flavors that were present instead of worrying about the strength. I’ll deal with that on the next brew when I attempt to fix this efficiency issue I’ve had on the last two iterations.

Although this beer was an estimated 17 SRM, it seemed lighter in color than Iteration 3, which was estimated to be 16 SRM. Estimates and one degree SRM aren’t items I’m going to be overly confident about, but I assumed that these beers would be similar in color, or at least darkness. Whatever the reason, this beer is red, but it leans more copper and amber than the dark red of Iteration 3.

The aroma of this beer had the familiar citrus and floral hop notes I’ve become accustomed to with this combination and hop schedule that I’ve yet to change throughout the various versions of this recipe. The difference this time was in the malt aroma that accompanied the hops. There was a definite breadiness in the nose.

The flavor mimicked the aroma with citrus, floral, and bready character being the first things I noticed. The next thing I noticed was the absence of the dark fruit character that I’ve come to expect from C120. However, as the beer warmed up, I did begin to get hints of plum, although it was fairly subdued amongst the other flavors. What surprised me the most from this beer was a roasty flavor cutting through the otherwise bready flavor of the malt.

Goals for the Next Brew

I knew Munich had a strong flavor, but what I was not expecting was that it would cover up the dark fruit flavors I have gotten before from the C120. The bready character was nice, but it was far too much to work with the end goal of this recipe. I truly want the plum and dark cherry notes I’ve gotten before to be the highlight of the malt character, but they also need to be balanced and supported by some complexity. The Munich malt added, but it simultaneously subtracted by covering over the flavors I want. It’s not a bad flavor for this recipe, but the breadiness needs to be toned down, and the C120 needs to be allowed to shine through.

Regarding the C120, I’ve not gotten roastiness from this malt before, but I think this time I added too much of a good thing. At 120⁰ Lovibond, it seems reasonable that this roast flavor could come from this malt, and as I have no other dark malts in this grain bill, it was really the only possible place this flavor could be coming from. This leads me to believe that the extra 0.25 lbs. of C120 I added pushed it over the edge. Perhaps this is another reason I didn’t get much of the dark fruit character from this malt this time around. It’s possible with the additional percentage I included that the roast became more prevalent and covered the other flavors that were present when the C120 was used in smaller quantities.

In addition to these malt characteristics, this beer also lacked some of the richness that Iteration 3 had. I would like to bring that back without adding the raisin character I got from the Special B in that version’s recipe.

The questions I’m left with as I go forward are these:

• How do I tone down the breadiness while maintaining the current malt complexity?
• How can I make the malt character richer without it clashing with the hops?
• How do I eliminate the roasted character of too much C120 while getting more dark fruit flavor than I got before?

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.

Brew Day

Iteration 3 was a brew I was particularly excited about. Going into this brew day, I felt confident that this iteration would at least come very close to achieving the more complex dark fruit malt character I desired from this brew. The other complexities of the malt would be forthcoming, but I felt I was close with at least what I consider to be the most important aspect of the malt profile.

This brew day was like any other: I mashed in at my correct temperature and sparged accordingly. However, something strange happened this time that I can only guess at. When I got to the point of taking my hydrometer reading, I was disappointed to find a reading a full 10 gravity points lower than expected. Things began to come into focus when I finished transferring my cooled wort to the carboy. I had collected around half a gallon more than I had on my last brew day.

There are some aspects I’m still guessing at though. I measured out my mash/sparge water beforehand and collected as much as I had last time, accounting for grain absorption, etc. Actually, I should have collected slightly less (almost negligibly, though) due to the fact that I had 0.25 lbs. more grain in my mash tun than my last brew, and I didn’t change the volume of water collected. At least, I don’t think I did. I collected my water in vessels with known volumes, so that shouldn’t be a factor; however, I’m left with the fact that I collected more wort than I should have. I either measured incorrectly or wrote down my volume collected incorrectly from last time. Or some witchcraft that I cannot account for happened inside the mash tun. But, you know, science, I guess.

Whatever the reason, I’m left with two realizations. The first is that I need to be more careful when I measure my water out beforehand. The second realization is that it’s still incredibly disappointing to miss your target OG, even when the end result is extra beer.

Recipe

My main goal for this iteration was to build more complexity into my malt profile. As I didn’t want to change too much so that I could truly appreciate the impact of the variation, I knew going into this recipe that I was only going to add one malt to my grain bill. Iteration 2 certainly contained more of the dark fruit character that I wanted, but the flavor was missing something. Although the plum/cherry flavor was there, the beer almost tasted thin either because of the percentage of C120 or because I only used C120. I initially leaned towards the latter, and as I continued to drink Iteration 2, I became convinced that this was the case.

Due to this conclusion, I did end up addressing both of the questions I had from last time, which were:

• What malt do I add to the grain bill?
• Should I keep the percentage of C120 the same?

To determine which malt to add into the mix, I had to figure out what exactly was that elusive “something” that was missing from my last attempt at this recipe. I began by addressing the “thinness” I mentioned before. I certainly questioned my low mash temperature and low FG playing a part in this, but this truly was not a matter of mouthfeel. Rather, it was actually a “thinness” in the flavor. To clarify, I’ll try to explain what I mean when I describe this beer as being somewhat “thin.” I think it stems partly from expectations. What I want this beer to be eventually is rich and full in flavor but still have a light body. Where Iteration 2 landed was a one-dimensional addition that was not enough to stand out against the amount of 2-row employed in that recipe. For a pale ale, the 2-row/specialty grain ratio would be fine; however, this beer needs more malt character than that.

I had a few options before me. I considered adding some Victory or Munich to get some other flavors in the mix. I also considered exchanging some of my 2-row for Marris Otter. The other option I considered was to add some complexity surrounding the flavors I had already achieved by adding Special B. In the end, I decided that since I really want the dark fruit character of the grains to be the main focus in my malt profile, perhaps I should try to add complexity there to see if I could improve that before turning my focus on the supporting players. And truthfully, I’ve had Special B recommended to me so many times during the course of this process that I was really interested to give it a shot, so that may have swayed me some in my choice.

Once I had settled on using Special B, I had to decide if I wanted to do a simple addition to the recipe as it stood before or if I wanted to play around with my percentages some. I wanted to add complexity, but I was also concerned that too much would be overpowering. In light of that, I compromised and exchanged 1 lb. of C120 for 0.75 lbs. of C120 and 0.5 lbs. of Special B, giving more specialty grains total, but lowering the amount of C120 from the previous recipe.

• Mashed at 150⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 10.25 lbs. 2-Row
  • 0.75 lbs. Crystal 120
  • 0.5 lbs. Special B
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at 5.0% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.7% AA
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.056
• FG: 1.008
• ABV: 6.3%
• Dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 5 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

Tasting

The one thing I got right on this beer was the color. It may not look like it from the picture of the hydrometer sample above, but a full glass of this beer has a delightfully red hue. Like I said though, that’s perhaps the one thing I got right.

The aroma had a hint of citrus mingled with raisin. The flavor started with citrus and plum and held a rich maltiness. Although the citrus came through clearly up front, the raisin flavor of the finish at first clashed with the citrus and then masked it entirely, fading into a strong raisin and burnt sugar flavor.

Mistakes were made. In short, the Special B was not the right choice for this beer. It is certainly a flavor I might play around with in the future in, say, a strong ale, but its strong raisin flavor is not right for this red IPA.

Goals for the Next Brew

The citrus hop aroma and flavor of this beer (at least up front) seems to be the strongest of all the recipe iterations so far. I’m not entirely sure why that is, as I haven’t yet changed my hop regimen. The only thought I have on this is that the lower OG (from Iteration 2) was more appropriate for the amount of hops I added, thus allowing them to shine through. If this is true, it tells me what I already knew: this beer needs more hops to reach its potential. But again, I’ll save the hops until I’ve nailed the malt.

One aspect of this beer that is simultaneously positive and negative is the complexity. I wanted malt complexity, and I achieved a richness in the malt that was lacking in both Iterations 1 & 2. The problem, though, was that the flavors in this complexity weren’t quite right (as I mentioned, the raisin clashed with the citrus of the hops). I want to keep that level of complexity in the malt flavor without keeping this exact complexity.

The questions I’m left with for next time are:

• What grain should I use in place of the Special B that will yield richness and complexity when combined with the C120?
• Should I keep the amount of C120 the same, return it to its former amount, or use more than I have before?

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.

Brew Day

I recently began working for a company that observes all the federal holidays—even the ones schools don’t get off. This means that another seemingly random Monday holiday showed up on my calendar, and so, not knowing what else to do with myself, I decided to take proper advantage of it and brew.

All in all, this was perhaps the most uneventful brew day I’ve ever had (in a good way). I started early, so I replaced my standard brew-day beers with mugs of coffee. Everything went smoothly: I hit my target mash temperature; I didn’t have any boil-overs (which is a constant concern for me due to the size of my kettle); and I even shaved some time off my process. The latter was done by switching from fly to batch sparging. After some reading and hearing some of the equipment considerations for determining which method would be best practice, I figured I’d give it a shot. Not only did it save me time, but my efficiency actually improved by 5%. This means that my OG actually matched the original recipe for this brew, so I would call that a double win.

The only thing that threw me off was the fact that I decided to heat my strike water in my kettle due to the volume initially needed. I do have a pot I usually use as an HLT, but it’s smaller, and the amount of water I needed for my second sparge—well, in retrospect, it would have fit. The point is that I began heating my sparge water in my kettle too, not thinking that I needed my kettle to collect my first runnings. Long story short, I had to collect my first runnings in my HLT and then juggle my wort and some other pre-gathered water between containers. It certainly wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, but this was a new process for me, and now I know for next time.

After all was said and done, I collected my wort, let it settle into fermentation temperature, and pitched my yeast. Within five hours, I already had signs of active fermentation.

Recipe

Of the goals I had set for this iteration, the main focus was to achieve a richer flavor of dark fruit from the malt. Having used crystal 80 in my last brew, I determined that this didn’t give me enough of the flavor I was looking for and that even adding more C80 wouldn’t get me where I wanted to be. I had a few questions after tasting my last brew:

• What grain do I replace the C80 with?
• Regarding the grain I replace it with, should I increase the percentage in the grist?
• Should I not replace the C80 and simply add to it?
• If I add to it, do I keep the same percentage of C80 or do I lower it?

I began by thinking through the question of adding to the C80. As I’ve continued to drink through Iteration 1, I’ve decided that the flavor of C80 was just not what I was looking for at all. It felt too light with what might be a toffee flavor. Although I love toffee and would enjoy this flavor if it were my end goal, it simply wasn’t the taste I was going for with this brew. If I eventually decide that I want more of that lighter caramel flavor in addition to that as-of-yet elusive dark fruit flavor, I believe a lighter crystal malt would be a better option than keeping the C80 and adding to it. Answering this question also resulted in the fourth question above becoming irrelevant.

The next question I tackled was that of the replacement grain’s grist percentage. There were a few possibilities to consider here. First, because the C80 didn’t pack as much malt character as I wanted, I had to consider that it was possible that the amount also affected this somewhat lackluster flavor. The alternative I had to consider, though, was that perhaps increasing the percentage in addition to changing the grain would yield a fuller maltiness than I desired. Therefore, I decided to do a strict replacement of C80 for this iteration. The primary reason for this was to limit variables and give as direct of a comparison as possible between the flavors of the C80 and what I chose to replace it with. This left the final decision to be the grain choice itself.

I’ve been given many suggestions on grains, including Crystal 120, Special B, and CaraAroma. All of these are purported to yield the dark fruit flavor that I’m looking for, so maltster descriptions didn’t get me very far in making this choice. The deciding factor between these grains ended up being the recipe of another beer that I know has an incredibly deep cherry/plum flavor from the malt. That particular recipe uses C120, so I decided to trust the flavors of something I know I’ve tasted before and hope that it turns out the same way for me.

• Mashed at 150⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 10.25 lbs. 2-Row
  • 1 lb. Crystal 120
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at 5.0% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.7% AA
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.064
• FG: 1.010
• ABV: 7.1%
• Dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 5 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

Tasting

The color of this beer is closer to the red hue I hope to achieve; however, it’s still more dark amber than it is red. But, as the color is less important to me than the flavor, I’ll move forward.

The aroma holds a citrus nose. More surprising to me, though, is how strong the malt character came through here. There is a definite plum scent, which is pleasant and boded well for this iteration. A hint of tart cherry was also present, if slightly.

The flavor has a strong raisin flavor mixed with plum. As the beer warms, though, the raisin flavor fades and melds into a stronger plum flavor. The finish is bitter, but there is not much hop presence to speak of, save a slight floral note and, as it warms, some citrus. The alcohol presence is somewhat heavy—much more so than I expected it to be. Unfortunately, that isn’t a great thing for this beer as it stands right now. The alcohol flavor is too prominent is the absence of other flavors to balance and complement it.

Goals for the Next Brew

There was one thing that I overlooked in my excitement about my increased efficiency allowing me to hit the OG of my original version of this recipe: BU:GU ratio. While the hop presence of Iteration 1 wasn’t as intense as I would have liked it, this version is less so due to the increased gravity without compensating with additional hops. For some reason, this didn’t even occur to me until I tasted it. So, a new goal for hop character (in addition to those already decided by Iteration 1) is to find a more appropriate and hop forward BU:GU ratio. I think this will land me at a ratio of 1:1 or higher. That said, it’s worth repeating that I plan to begin changing the hops in this recipe only after I have the malt profile where I want it.

I also want to find a way to maintain this ABV, but balance it more. The booziness is prominent because there is some level of complexity missing. I am unsure at the moment if that is due to using less hops than this recipe truly needs or if it’s because of a lack of malt complexity. Even if the alcohol could be best complemented by a livelier hop presence, I think the malt bill also needs some more character to it than the C120 alone. It has yielded the plum flavor I wanted, but it needs something else.

The questions I will try to answer for next time are:

• What malt do I add to the grain bill?
• Should I keep the percentage of C120 the same?

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.

Brew Day

There’s something refreshing about the first brew of the new year. The high for the day was in the 60s (yes, in January) and it was cool and overcast, which definitely helped create the atmosphere of an ideal brew day. The fact that I took the time to create a checklist for myself prior to this brew day also helped things feel a little smoother. I usually have this leering sensation hanging over me that I’m forgetting something, and the effort it took to think through my process ahead of time was minimal. I’ll reproduce my checklist below for anyone interested in my process or borrowing my efforts.

Another thing that I’ve been doing to help the day run smoothly is to gather everything the night before, including gathering my water and mixing up a batch of Star San. Things like this helped me get the flame under my strike water by 8:30, coffee in hand.

Although things felt like they went smoothly, it didn’t take long for the first mistake of the day to show up. I miscalculated my strike temperature and landed a little low with my mash temperature at 148⁰F. As I was shooting for 152⁰F, I quickly boiled some water and mixed it in my mash. Unfortunately, this only rose my mash temp to 150⁰F, and since that took up the rest of the headspace in my mash tun, that’s where it was going to have to stay.

Over the course of 1.25 hours, I opened up the mash tun and gave it a stir every 15 minutes. This was the first time I’d stirred my mash, and while I didn’t think it would matter, I tried it anyway and was pleasantly surprised to see an increase of 5% in my brewhouse efficiency (up to 73% from the usual 67%). This meant that I was closer to my targeted OG, though I still missed it by four points.

I also attempted to measure the pH of my mash since I was concerned it might be a little too high for a beer of this color. I dipped in the pH strips I had bought (specifically with a small range of 4.7-6.2). The strip had a pale yellow testing element at the end, and after I dipped it in my mash, it was only a slightly darker yellow, mostly from being wet. Quickly comparing this color to the included reference guide, the strip indicated a pH of 4.7. Vastly confused and a little concerned for my brew’s well-being, I tried again and got the same result. Then I tried our tap water, which I knew to be 6.8 from a recent water report. Same color. I consulted with my wife, who actually remembers things from her high school science classes, asking what liquids we had around the house that were very basic. Dish soap, apparently. Dipping the next test strip in some soapy water, I got the same reaction—or rather, no reaction. This bad batch of test strips was a bummer, but at least my mash pH wasn’t too low (probably).

A big plus of the day was that I got to use the new immersion chiller I built for the first time, and that went without issue. It worked beautifully, and I already don’t know how I lived with using ice baths for so many years.

A couple hours later, when my wort had settled into fermentation temperature, I pitched my yeast, and it was bubbling happily within a few hours.

Recipe

The recipe I used for this brew day was the original. Since I’m trying to replicate the first time I made this recipe, I plan on using this as a baseline for my adjustments.

• Mashed at 150⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 10.25 lbs. 2-Row
  • 1 lb. Crystal 80
• Sparged at 170⁰ F
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at 12.2% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at 5.0% AA
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at 9.7% AA
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.059
• FG: 1.008
• ABV: 6.69%
• After 8 days, dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 5 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

Tasting

All in all, this beer is not quite what I remember it to be—which was honestly expected. I think part of that is due to my changing palate, additional experience as a homebrewer, and therefore my higher standards for what I produce and consider “good.” The aroma is not as present as I’d like, but there are some floral notes to it, as well as a bit of “green hop” aroma, which might be due to how young this beer is at the time of tasting.

Although the hop aroma isn’t where I’d like it to be, the potential is there. There is certainly some citrus in the flavor, especially as the beer warms—more of what I was hoping for.

I was hoping for rich, dark fruit flavors from the malt, but this falls short to say the least. While there are some dark cherry and plum flavors, there is not nearly as much as I want. This iteration is more pale ale than red ale in terms of the malt. However, the malt backbone of this beer balances the hops pretty closely to how I’d like it balanced in its final version. At an estimated 55 IBUs, this beer is pretty close to a 1:1 BU:GU ratio. Yet, somehow the malt is coming through well enough to balance the bitterness and not let it be overwhelming.

Goals for the Next Brew

Something I realized as I was bottling this beer is that for a red ale, it wasn’t very red. In fact, it wasn’t red at all. It was orange. Revisiting my recipe using an online calculator, it turns out that my estimated SRM for this beer was 12. I would like to land somewhere around 16 next time, hopefully yielding a redder hue. Obviously, the color isn’t as important to me as the flavor, but if “red” is in the name, the beer should be red.

While I want to adjust my hop profile to be more prominent in both aroma and flavor, I’m going to focus on getting the malt right first. Not only do I want more of the dark fruit flavors that were minimally present in this beer, but I want them to be richer. Based on the flavor of this beer, it seems to me that even increasing the amount of crystal 80 in this recipe would not yield quite the depth of flavor that I’m shooting for. The questions I’m left with for next time are:

• What grain do I replace the C80 with?
• Regarding the grain I replace it with, should I increase the percentage in the grist?
• Should I not replace the C80 and simply add to it?
• If I add to it, do I keep the same percentage of C80 or do I lower it?

The Checklist

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.

I’m Going to Brew the Same Beer for a Year

There it is. That’s my plan. I’m going to take one recipe and tweak it over the course of a year.

“But why? Won’t you get tired of drinking the same beer for a whole year?” you’re probably asking, as I already asked myself. The answer is a solid and firm, “Probably.” I’ve thought about it, and decided that with the changes I’ll make, it may not be that bad. Mostly, though, I want to get this recipe where I want it more than I want to not drink the same thing for a year. And so that you don’t have to drink the same beer for a whole year (and to give myself some accountability for when I want to give up and brew something different), I’m bringing you along on this journey.

How I’ll Do It

The plan is to walk through my process of the conception of this beer, the thought process behind its various iterations (which will include reviews of various commercial examples of the style), and even the end result of taking it to a BJCP/AHA competition. I’ll post recipes, how I create and decide to change my recipes, and my tasting notes. And, since I’m no BJCP judge and you’re having to take my word for how good my own beer is, I’ll post my scores and comments from the competition at the end of all this—even if it proves that I wasted a year and made a crappy beer.

I’ve been brewing for a little over five years at this point, and I’ve made some good beers and some pretty terrible beers. I don’t pretend to be an expert on recipe creation or knowing how to tweak recipes. What I do know, though, is that experience is often the best teacher. The next best thing is witnessing and learning from somebody else’s experience—seeing their process, their mistakes, and the results of each. What I’m offering is not my wisdom on the topic; rather, you can see my reasoning, my process, and my mistakes as I’m trying this out for the first time, and hopefully you can use it to improve your own process as well.

Side Note

I entered a beer into a competition for the first time this last year. I scored a 31.5. It’s not a terrible score, but it told me what I already knew: my beer is just kind of okay. Part of doing all this is to change that. Also, I’m letting everyone know this here and now so that there are no misconceptions. I’m an average brewer with average beer, and this is my attempt to improve my end result.

For Starters

Every now and then, a beer comes along and haunts me. The thought of that beer—the flavor and the complexity (or simplicity) of the interplay of the hops and malt—follows me around. There are times where I can vividly remember the malt profile for days. This type of response doesn’t happen often, which is part of what makes it so exceptional when it does.

I think it matters less which beer lingers in the mind like this and more that it happens at all. That said, one of these beers, for me, was Sierra Nevada’s Flipside Red IPA. From what I understand, this beer was released in 2013 as a fall seasonal, produced for one or two years, and that was it. No more Flipside. We’ll just say that I was a bit disappointed when I went looking for it that next fall.

In terms of my notes on the beer, I have a measly few words written down from that first tasting, which surprised me when I looked back through my notes for this beer. I thought this beer was fantastic, but all I wrote was, “Dark caramel, hint of plum. Citrus and fruity hops. 9/10.” Although sparse, this description still captures what I loved about this beer: the dark fruit flavor of the malt mingled with the big hop flavor. It was enough to inspire me. I didn’t want to clone it. I wanted to make a better version of it. I wanted to capture certain aspects of the malt character and pair it with some of my favorite hops. So, in short, I did.

The First Attempt

The first element I tried to tackle was the grain bill. I knew I wanted that dark fruit/plum character. I also knew from my research (and no experience using this malt before this) that crystal 80 was probably my best bet to get this flavor. I really wanted that to shine through and not build an overly complex grain bill, because I didn’t want my hops to be hidden amongst the complexity. It was an IPA (of sorts) after all. So I left it at that. 2-row and crystal 80. I had never used such a simple grain bill before. I was two years into brewing, and I was doing the typical throw-it-all-in types of recipes before this. This is one of the many reasons this brew was a game changer for me.

With the grain bill down, hops were next on my list. I don’t really remember my thought process on this (since it was three years ago), but I know I used some hops that I as familiar with and had really enjoyed before. I do, at least, remember that I wanted a fairly big citrus flavor. I also probably wanted some pine in there, because that was a flavor I loved in pale ales and IPAs at the time (still is). Somehow, I landed on Cascade, Centennial, and Simcoe for my hops.

I had my basis, and I plugged all of that into some recipe software to get the desired color, bitterness, and gravity. I was shooting for a red color, IPA-level bitterness, and around 6.5% ABV. I used these general guidelines and moved things around until I got some nice, round numbers that fit these parameters. As for my other decisions (mash temperature, yeast, boil length, hop additions), well, I just did the same as I always did. That was where I was at in my brewing: dough in at 155⁰ F (which I mistook for the actual mash temperature at the time), US-05, and bittering, flavor, and aroma additions for the hops.

When I put all of that together, it looked like this:

• Mashed [doughed] in at 155⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 10.25 lbs. 2-Row
  • 1 lb. Crystal 80
• Sparged at 170⁰ F
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.063
• FG: 1.011
• ABV: 6.8%
• After 10 days, dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 14 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

I remember being pleasantly surprised at how well this turned out. For some reason, though, I didn’t write down tasting notes until three months after opening the first bottle. Here was my impression: “A little stale by this point with more alcohol coming through. Still a nice hoppy presence. Citrus mix of hops with dark fruit in malts. Nice balance. Hoppy. Hint of spiciness.”

Frustration

Fast forward two years, and there I was trying to decide what to brew next and remembering this beer with fondness. I decided to brew the same recipe. It was great the first time; why wouldn’t it be great the second time?

Because my process is/was apparently inconsistent. That’s why.

My notes from the second batch look like this:

• Mashed [doughed] in at 160⁰ F for 1.25 hrs.
  • 10.25 lbs. 2-Row
  • 1 lb. Crystal 80
• Sparged at 170⁰ F
• Boiled for 1 hr.
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (60 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 0.5 oz. Simcoe (30 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 0.5 oz. Cascade (15 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min)
  • 0.5 oz. Centennial (5 min) at [failed to write down AA%]
• Pitched US-O5
• OG: 1.045
• FG: 1.01
• ABV: 4%
• After 5 days, transferred to secondary and dry hopped 0.5 oz. Cascade and 0.5 oz. Centennial for 13 days.
• Bottled and primed with 4 oz. of priming sugar.

I did not take tasting notes on this beer, but I do remember that because of unexpectedly low OG, the amount of hops that I put in there ended up yielding a harsh bitterness. In retrospect, an item of note is that I bought from a different LHBS for this brew, and I do not own a grain mill. A few brews I made with grain bought from this store ended up with a lower than expected OG, and I have a suspicion this was partly due to the crush of my grain. I also believe that I lautered too quickly, thereby robbing myself of some gravity points.

All in all, I was disappointed. The first time I brewed this beer, it was the best beer I had brewed to date. The second time, it was the worst beer I had brewed to date (at least since moving away from extract brewing). So if you want an answer to the question, “why this particular beer?”—the answer is frustration. Part of the answer is that I think there’s great potential for this beer, but mostly it’s frustration.

What Next?

I guess the last remaining question is, where do you start? Since this is about the process as much as it is about the product, I plan to start by brewing the same recipe above and see if I can replicate the original flavor. This will hopefully give me a true starting point for not only the process (seeing where I went wrong last time), but also the recipe. I don’t have a strict plan yet for changing the recipe. In fact, my plan is to be as reactive as possible. I won’t know my next step until I get to taste the latest iteration. This will put me at brewing about once a month this coming year.

Even though I don’t have a strict plan, I do know that I’ll probably start toying with the grain bill first, then the hops. The dry hopping will likely be my last element. I do plan on trying to tweak only one thing at a time, but we’ll see how well I can tell what needs adjustment.

In the interim, I’ll be drinking some commercial examples of red IPAs and noting what I like and may want to bring into my own beer.

A Final Note

I did manage to find the following specs on the beer that started all of this, and will likely bring this into consideration as I figure out how to adjust the grain bill.

(The above table is reproduced from Sierra Nevada’s website.)