Märican Biere Bought and Drunk...

I just picked up their Sunny Ridge Pilsner and their Shipping Out of Boston Kellerbier today. Looking forward to trying both of those, especially the Kellerbier which is brewed to export strength. Don't see too many of those around.

 

Different schools of thoughts I suppose. I love their beers. No definite right way or wrong way to go about recipe formulation. I’ve personally never bought into the idea of covering up malt character. In our IPA’s the base is almost always floor malted Maris Otter and sometimes Weyermann Extra Pale Premium Pils. Our tasting panels were able to reliably distinguish the beers and determine those as their favorites when compared to beers brewed with domestic 2-Row, Weyermann regular Pils, or in the case of Maris Otter, modern malting vs floor malting. I think we are in the minority of breweries that use those types of ingredients for every single beer we brew and that is a likely reason of our successes here.

 

Highly kilned doesn’t have an impact on the effectiveness or necessity of a step mash. It’s the modification that matters. You can highly kiln an undermodified malt and it would require a stepped mash for proper protein/nitrogen break composition.

From what I saw while studying at Doemens, during my European brewery study tour, and from what my teachers told me, stepped mashes of all kinds are being largely phased out. A few maltsters in Germany provide under modified malts and leave final modification up to the brewer, but that is the exception rather than the rule. I’ve seen a few malts available in the USA that some people consider under modified, but even those are borderline and that’s really more of brewer philosophy as to wether or not they consider it to be under modified. Decoctions in Germany and Austria are very uncommon now, with the majority of breweries doing stepped mashes using stepped infusion with steam jacketed mash tuns or with mash kettles. A lot of the brewers do a beta amylase and alpha amylase, skipping acid/protein rests altogether. Doing a protein rest on well modified malt can kill head retention and leave a beer feeling thin. Lots (maybe even close to “all”... I think every one I toured did so) of the brewers there do a mashout step.

 

I don't care for all of their traditional lagers, but they have more hits than misses in my opinion. For example, I really dig Sunny Ridge, but don't care for their year round beers of a similar ilk like Post Shift Pilsner and their House Lager.

Their Kellerbier series has been great, although Shipping Out of Boston fell a bit flat for me. However I only split a can with someone else, and had been drinking other beers that day.

Their previous beer in this series, "Franconian Kraft" was outstanding (I'm 99% sure this was the last one I had that I really enjoyed). If you see these cans kicking around, albeit they might be a bit old by a few months, I highly recommend picking some up.

"Franconian Kraft is a kellerbier style from the region of Franconia in Bavaria. This kellerbier utilizes floor malted specialty malts from Germany, and is hopped with a noble hop, Perle. Franconian Kraft was decoction mashed and open-fermented to express the ingredients unique qualities in this recipe. It is a rustic, amber, and malty interpretation of a classic country lager. Like the rest of our Kellerbier Series, Franconian Kraft is left unfiltered."

@honkey as you can see, Jack's Abby definitely uses specialty malts in some of their beers!

Interesting, thanks for the input.

Domestic 2-row can certainly work in many IPAs that I enjoy, Celebration Ale comes to mind (coupled with caramel malts).

I wonder what type of malts some of my favorite New England IPA producers are using. I never gave it much thought, because honestly I don't get a lot of malt character from those beers, if any.

I image if I blind tasted beers in a panel such as you've done, I may pick up differences. But in the case of a Sierra Nevada, their might be real cost savings due to the scale they're brewing at.

I looked up Trillium's Congress Street (one of their best IPAs in my opinion) and here's the malts they list using:

MALT: American 2-row Barley, White Wheat, C-15, Dextrine, Dextrose

 

I had to smile at the quote from Jack’s Abbey. I have never before read that Perle is a Noble hop. It was breed from Northern Brewer, which is from Great Britain.
https://beerandbrewing.com/noble-hops-cheat-sheet/

Sorry for the digression.

 

So, that means that single temperature infusion mashing is becoming the norm? Is this change a reflection of the fact that most contemporary malts are well modified?

Cheers!

 

I've been hearing this for a few years now, but if you look at HB's web site they're still doing a variety of mashing for their beers -- including the energy-draining decoction mash.

 

What about decoction mashing in the US? Is that common?

I know of one or two local brewers (Jack's Abby and Smuttynose I think) who recently started decoction mashing for their Oktoberfests in the last few years. And in my quote above from the description of Jack's Abby's Kellerbier, they do decoction mashing.

Also another local brewery, Notch, started decoction mashing in their new brewery now that they were set up to do so (they were previously contract brewing). They specialize in Czech styles, but also do a fair amount of German styles.

Maybe they were using the word "noble" as an adjective rather than a noun?

 

At least they didn’t call it a Nobel hop.

There are some breweries that do decorations in Germany. There is one I have visited twice, that decocts their Dunkel. On the Ayinger tour a poster under the mash tun explained that for Wheat beers and Dark beers some was drawn off and cooked (boiled). They do not decoct the light colored beers.

 

Those are the smartest hops, right?

Around Christmas time?

Ok, I've reached my maximum allotment of winky faces for the day.

 

Auto-correct is a menace.

Crazy thing is, I read it as decoction... all in the gestalt.

 

I found it odd that HB decocts their Weiße Leicht -- probably just to bring out more flavor in a lower ABV beer?

 

I thought I had caught all of those.

 

It is a Wheat Beer. It has been a long time since I looked at how those are brewed, but decoctions are used for those.

Trip to Germany coming up. Maybe I can ask on a tour.

 

Their Heller and Dunkel Weizen use that "intensives" infusion mash, but the Kristal is decoction... yeah, hit 'em up!

 

My two favorite Jack's Abby beers that I've had are probably Smoke & Dagger and their House Lager. They don't distribute to NJ, but I cross the border into NY occasionally so I try to pick up whatever is available there when I can. I haven't tried Post Shift, however, I know it uses Hallertau Blanc hops and some of the newer German hops like Hallertau Blanc, Hull Melon and Mandarina Bavaria don't agree with my palate so well.

Glad to hear you liked Sunny Ridge. I'll report back on that and Shipping Out of Boston when I have them.

 

Jack's Abby beers are available in PA so if you ever cross the Delaware River...

Cheers!

 

Do you understand how the overall brewing of Notch beers is done?

For the below linked article (with emphasis in bold by me):

“The new brewery will supplement Notch’s current contract-brewing arrangements in Ipswich and in Stratford, Conn.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifesty.../08/bottles/ZN5qthPg8apwr1Eya05s1I/story.html

Do you know which brands of Notch beers are brewed at Ipswich Brewing and Two Roads Brewing vs. the Notch owned brewery? Is there information on the cans/bottles which detail specifically where the beer was produced?

Cheers!

Edit: Some more information here: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/2016/04/18/notch-salem-brewery-taproom/

 

I'm not sure myself, I do recall Chris saying there's a triple decoction mashed version of their Notch Pils at the brewery. But I don't believe that's the process for the draft accounts and cans, because they're set-up for decoction mashing only at the Salem brewery.

I do know someone who knows though... @ChrisLohring

 

Hearing about Smuttynose’s new decoction equipment makes sense, and I wonder if their recent Vienna Lager (Pinniped Special) was made to try out the equipment. FWIW, it was a good Vienna.

Not a total fan of Jack’s Abby. I’m not crazy about their House Lager or any of their Pils, which seem to have this strange one-dimensional sweet sort of taste. I do, however, really enjoy their darker stuff like Red Tape and Saxony Lager, so I think it must be something they do with their pale malts. Unfortunately I can’t find any of their recent Kellerbiers like Franconian Kraft or Shipping Out of Boston. Are those limited-distribution items?

In a similar vein, I don’t think many American brewers handle Pilsner Malt well. Most of them seem to taste off-sweet to me, or like straw.