Flagship

My flagships would be my Saison w/Brett (1/2 pound of hops in a 5 gallon batch) and a session IPA. Both of those I like to have around. I keep the malt bill the same but switch out hops on both of them.

 

For 5 gallons:

8 lbs Maris Otter
1.5 lbs Flaked Oats
1 lb British Chocolate Malt
0.75 lbs British Roasted Barley
0.75 lbs British Dark Crystal Malt
0.5 Stick Brewers Licorice (NOT root)
Whatever bittering hop you want (60 min)
1 oz Goldings (5 min)
Irish Ale Yeast

Mash at 153, target OG ~1.070, target IBU ~40.

Everyone always wants to omit the licorice from my stout recipes...my advice is don't. It's a traditional ingredient in British porters/stouts, and even if you don't like licorice you're not going to taste this beer and think "there's licorice in this!". It acts more as a flavor enhancer, adding depth and richness. If you're not familiar with it, this is the product:

http://cdn.nexternal.com/hombre/images/licorice stick Medium.jpg

 

This is how you do your RIS too, isn't it?

 

I love experimenting too much to really have a 'flagship', but I do have a bourbon barrel porter that I'm on my third iteration of because its just too good to not have on tap at all times. I have rebrewed a belgian blonde for my base beer for lambics/sours that I do at least 10 times, though.

 

Yes, similar ingredients, just more of them.

 

Koelsch would be the "flagship." We brew it a lot and always have it on tap for get-togethers.
Also, lots of requests for a jasmine ale, very popular among friends.

I have had one person...beg? maybe strongly request to the point of being kind of annoying...a doppelbock.

 

For my 4 years in brewing I have never really re-brewed a recipe until this past few months. I am trying to nail down my recipes for the upcoming brewery launch. I have an IPA that I am trying to dial in. Coffee Porter is almost there, just need to nail the coffee (actual coffee, not technique). Saison is getting its first brew this weekend. I have styles I always seem to go back to, Saison being one of them.

 

My flagship beers are currently coffee fauxbraxas, and liquid Mounds bar. Soon to join the ranks are my sour blackberry and a supplication clone that just blows me away.

Summer time I always have a Hefe on tap, usually with some tweaks so I can get a few variants from one batch. The habanero watermelon variant turned out great!

 

i always seem to have an ipa on hand, but never the same ipa. I have been into saisons a bit, but never the same one twice. Variety is my flagship it seems. Gonna start lagering this summer. Maybe a nice helles bock will make its way in there...

 

If I have a flagship it is my American Brown Ale. It typically has 2-Row, medium-dark to dark crystal, biscuit and brown malt, and a very small amount of Carafa/Chocolate; Cascade hops for finishing. I usually use Chico yeast. I am always tweaking it, partly to experiment and party to converge on a stable recipe. I'll be brewing the 11th iteration of this beer this coming weekend. This version's tweaks include Briess Extra Special malt (rather than brown), California Lager yeast (to be fermented at typical Cal. Common temperatures), and some Willamette mixed in with the Cascade.

I would like to develop a stable Cz Pils and APA. Not even close yet on these two, but I do brew these style quite a bit also.

 

My flagship would have to be single hopped IPAs. I get bored brewing and drinking the same beer over and over and over again, but I love me some big hoppy IPAs, so I tend to brew a different single hop up every week or 2 (I brewed 20 different single hop IPAs in 2014) to keep it on the keg rotation. Of course, Citra, Mosiac and Centennial always make great single hop IPAs, but most recently, the El Dorado IPA was a big winner!

Besides that, I like stouts and a White Stout has become my go to flagship stout. After brewing it up a couple of times, I haven't gone back to traditional dark grained stouts...something about the White Stout that has hit my taste buds more satisfactory than a traditional stout. I'm entering 2 (a normal White Stout and either a Mexican Cake version or French Toast version) in my first homebrew comeptition at the beginning of April. I will brew this about 4-5 times year

And lastly, I just started popping tops on my first Brett DIPA and I can already tell that this (or just Brett IPAs in general) will become another flagship for me. Such a big fan of Wicked Weed and now that I have a grain bill and hop schedule figured out that delivers a similar Brett IPA, I dont see how I'll ever be without a case or 12 of these aging around the house I'd imagine I'll brew this up around 8 times a year, seeing how it goes so fast at home and with friends.

 

When are you planning on opening?

 

Hoping to have my beers flowing beginning of 2018. We have a local brewfest in early February each year, and there is a homebrew comp attached to it. In 2014 I took Best of Show in that comp with an American Sour entered as a Gueuze. When I was there this year, and everything for the brewery was just starting to blossom, I looked at my wife and said I want to be pouring here in 3 years. That's the goal, of course raising capital will take some time, and then so will finding the location, getting permits, construction, licensing, etc., etc., etc. I've chatted with a couple locals, one is a Brew Master for our second largest brewery who was really encouraging and excited, the other is local BA who is well seasoned in the Craft Beer world, trader, fest attendee, lived on both coasts, and a Mod here; he had some great feedback and likes the direction I am headed. It is all still kind of surreal, am I really going to do this...

 

My Happy Wife Pale Ale is pretty much a Kolsch style beer, very popular with the non craft beer drinkers that come over, and my beer geek friends who want something light and easy to drink. Then there's my oatmeal stout, very nice and roasty with chocolate malt, roasted barley and a little black patent. But my favorite is my porter, a novelty variation is my bourbon vanilla porter that other people are "constantly begging me for". It's a big favorite with a lot of my friends, I don't really care for more than a pint a month.

 

If you don't mind me asking, what kinds of coffees have you tried? I know people roast their coffee pretty dark on the west coast, have you tried lighter-roasted coffees? I would recommend Intelligentsia or George Howell, though both of those would be a bit expensive on a commercial scale. (I think 3 Floyds uses Intelligentsia in Dark Lord, though.) My personal opinion is that Blue Bottle and Stumptown are overrated.

Another approach that would save some money (eventually) and give you a bit more control would be to roast your own beans. This is what Modern Times does. I don't know where they get their beans, but you can get very high-quality green beans from Sweet Maria's for much less than you would pay for coffee from Intelligentsia or George Howell.

For what it's worth, my friends and I recently brewed a coffee stout using Intelligentsia's Black Cat espresso beans, and while the beer did not turn out quite the way we wanted, the coffee flavor was very good. Of course, those beans were reasonably dark-roasted, which is unusual for Intelligentsia.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I used 2 coffees so far from a local roaster in town. The first one was a wonderful Etheopian Worka with great aroma and flavor, complex. It was naturally fermented then roasted. I went back to buy more for this current batch and found out it was a one-off roast so I can't ever get it again. For this batch I used a Caturra, Catuai single origin that was supposed to be a spicy, hibiscus, cacao flavor, thinking that the spice would play well with the hops, the cacao with the chocolate notes of the malt, and the hibiscus with the Trios pineapple esters. Not as good or potent as I had hoped. I really want a strong dark coffee note with fruity complexities.

One of the cool things we are hoping to do with the brewery is to join forces with a new local roaster (a home roaster looking to open there own commercial venture just like me) and have a coffee worked up to go perfectly with the beer (feel free to BM me for the other info on what "joining forces" looks like).

 

I roast my own so I use a dark roast decaf Colombian. I don't like the competing buzzes and I don't drink decaf. I steep about 1/3 pound in 1 pint of 160F water for about an hour, then pour through a very fine stainless steel strainer directly into the keg.

 

The closest I come to a flagship is the template I use for IPAs.
OG ~1.063
Base Malt 96% (usually GP, but I've used blends with rye, wheat, pils)
Crystal of some sort 2% (anything from C10 to Special B)
Other 2% (usually biscuit or honey malt, but I've used amber, flaked grains, etc.)

FWH to end up at 55-65 IBU
.5oz at 30
(.5 to 1oz at 20 depending on AA of hops)
2oz at 10
4oz at FO/Whirlpool
4oz DH
US-05

It's pretty flexible for ending up with some very different beers that still taste like a hop saturated IPA.

 

I brew more Pilsners then anything else. I have two different recipes that I use and enjoy all year. Bitters or pale ale's would be second.

 

Congrats on stepping up! I know that a few of the microbreweries around here don't repeat beer and always have 6 new beers on tap every time I go in there.