What's brewing September edition

A very gracious Village Brewing (Calgary) hooked me up with about 2 pounds of freshly picked Cascade hops today. The brewery plants Cascades (the only hop that will typically produce around here) in community gardens all over town, then gets a crew of volunteers to pick them for use in their annual 'community brew' made with all local ingredients. They had a massive surplus so they invited homebrewers or other local microbrewers to come down and help themselves.

I mashed in at 330, went to the brewery for 4, picked up the hops, came back home, lautered , boiled with some pellet nugget, then dolloped a crap load of wet hops into a pale ale wort.

1.052 OG
40 BU

49% 2 row
41% white wheat malt
9% acid malt

0.5 Nugget @ FW
6 oz wet Cascade @ 15

Chilled to 165, added 1lb of wet Cascade

Pitched wyeast Denny's fa

 

.... Not sure what happened there, but meant to say,

pitched Denny's Favorite 50 , and thinking about dry hopping with as many hop cones as I can fit in the fermenter. Anyone have any experience dry hopping with wet hops, or should I look into dehydrating them?

 

Yes I do as do others here, make sure , if they are wet hops, that they are fresh. Hops don't keep unless they have been dryed and stored properly. Having said that, I have used about half a fermenter full of fresh cascade chinook and Columbus in a pale ale for 4 days.

It was a bit grassy, but very nice. Personally, now I dry 95 % of my hops and on occasion, add a but loadin the fermenter. Especially the first 2 months after they have dryed.

 

Botled a Weizenbock today


(75% attenuation, spot on)

bock with banana flavour

 

So I had to dump my very first beer yesterday, out of 30+ batches. It was a Bitter, of all things. It was modeled after a previous recipe, very close overall. However, something went off in this batch and I am not sure I know the source of it.

First, for being 3.4% or whatever it was, it was like rubbing alcohol (it was fermented via temp control at around 65F). Then this intensely bitter, pungent flavor that eventually picked up a bandaid like note. From my research, the bandaid could be a Brett contamination(?) but not sure about the fusel’s. I tapped this months ago originally but just thought it was green. Put it in my lagering freezer for two months and just tried it again last night before deciding to dump it.

Another weird thing. The entire keg was foam… Not dispensing, but also when I opened the keg and poured it down the sink. The strangest thing… I didn’t check what the gravity was to see if it kept fermenting.

Anyway, it was a bummer but what can you do! So I got that keg (along with two others) soaked in Oxyclean for a few hours and rinsed well.

Tonight I will be kegging my Vietamese Coffee Stout (7.8% ABV) which was aged on Madagascan Vanilla Beans, Cocoa Nibs and Vietamese Coffee. I have about 2-cups of cold brew coffee ready to go into the keg before racking the beer in. So far, it’s tasting delicious. I think the second coffee addition will really make it pop even more, balancing some of the vanilla and maple sweetness (used maple bourbon as the tincture solution…).

Also will brew another Pilsner this week with a Saaz and Mittelfruh hop combo.

 

Brewed my prickly pear/cranberry Gose this weekend. I opted to create the base beer then experiment with the ratio of PP/CB once the beer is ready to drink. First time with a Gose, so I am excited to see how it goes!

Also helped the neighbor brew a cream ale. He asked to borrow my brew pot, but then it turned out to be a full brew day for me...

 

Is it possible that this character was "nail polish remover" and not "rubbing alcohol"?

If so, your contamination theory is probably correct. Though it probably wasn't brettanomyces, but a wild sacch. species or another yeast species, as many wild yeast have strong esterase activity which can lead to a large amount of ethyl acetate production.

Do you share porous equipment between clean and funky/sour beers?

 

It’s very possible… From what I recall, I could imagine it being a bit nail polish like, haha.

I do not do any funky/sour beers, all clean beers in two different fermentation buckets. Thing is, I did a clean Pilsner afterward in that fermentation bucket with no issue/contamination and as clean as ever. So whatever it was, I don’t think it’s hanging around anymore.

The only other hunch I have is I used a harvested yeast strain that was probably 6 months old. I did a two-step starter, but it did take a while. I wonder if the yeast was overly stressed or something as well? Not sure… I did have yeast growth, although it wasn’t anything crazy. It was only a 3.5% beer anyway.

Appreciate the feedback on my issue!

 

Certainly possible that your contamination happened there. Care to share details of how you harvested said yeast?

 

I always harvest straight from my yeast starters... Never had an issue before. Perhaps the vial or something I put the yeast slurry into was contaminated or something, as the beer I fermented that yeast starter with turned out fantastic (the first iteration of the same bitter).

 

Made a starter today for upcoming top secret brew that will hopefully be submitted to Averagely Perfect Homebrew Competion.

 

Today it was Oaked Arrogant Bastard that had to be bottled

 

Bottling a smooth nut brown kit beer.

 

On Sunday I brewed one of my favorite recipes, a vanilla coffee porter. This was my first all-grain batch, utilizing new equipment as well. Things went smoother than expected. My efficiency was 70% (down from 75% expected per the recipe), which may have been due to the LHBS crush being a little less than desired. Probably should've been milled twice. I compensated by boiling a little longer and did hit my expected OG of 1.064, albeit collecting 4.75 gal rather than 5 gal. My favorite part of the day was filling this little guy up for the first time.

 

I'll be brewing this coming Friday and Sunday.

On Friday, it'll be a Baltic Porter; Jamil's 'Zek's Porter.' This will be my first attempt at this style, AND my first time using lager yeast. Wish me luck!

On Sunday, I'm brewing The Wise ESB, using Northern Brewer's instructions: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-ElysianTheWiseESB.pdf. ESB? I suppose, but it looks like an IPA to me. Regardless, it just looks delicious.

In other news:

I bought a barrel.



My Russian Imperial Stout from August just doesn't have quite the bitterness I would want for a RIS, so it's a bit more like a standard imperial stout. I figured I'd try my hand at barrel aging, and see how it goes. Again, wish me luck! Ha ha!

 

I take it that you haven't used these barrels in the past? If not, here's a good read on them:

https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/09/rumble-barrel-belgian-strong-dark-recipe.html

https://www.themadfermentationist.com/2013/03/rum-barrel-aged-quad-tasting.html

Take away? If they are fresh/second use (first use for you), you don't need to age the beer very long in those barrels to get good spirit and barrel character, as they have a greater surface area to volume ratio than 55 gallon barrels.

 

Yesterday, I kegged my new stout which is just amazeballs... Like, completely unreal how good it is so far even so young/green. I think I will cold condition it a few weeks and tap it without a huge delay. It won't need much time to age.

So this is a new stout recipe for me... With Coffee, Vanilla, Chocolate and (trace) Bourbon. Flame out addition of Vietnamese Coffee that a friend got from his Vietnamese friend on a trip back home... Extremely oily, amazing looking coffee beans. I threw in about half at flame out, saving the other half for the cold brew to be added into the keg.

I did a tincture for cocoa nibs and Madagascan vanilla beans (3 of them) in maple bourbon for about two weeks before adding to primary once FG was hit. I also took the remaining Viet Coffee and added one vanilla bean that the beans could condition with for a little over a week before grinding and cold brewing - adding right into the keg, which I did yesterday.

Final ABV was 7.8% ABV.

Mouthfeel is fantastic. Mashed a bit higher (FG was around 1.018?) to keep body along with the oats. Right up front, big rush of smooth, delicious coffee and chocolate. Vanilla is there, adding a really delicious sweetness. You even can detect hints of maple, which I didn't expect. Not too roasty, a really nice balance of all the flavors going on. This one greatly exceeded what I had expected, honestly.

I figure i'll let it sit in my 32F lager keezer for the next 2-3 weeks before moving up to my serving keezer for another 2-3 weeks for carbonation and further conditioning before tapping.

 

No bottles? BOOOO!

 

Haha, I have not bottled for a long time now and definitely don't miss it... I even prefer kegging for styles such as this (and bigger) stouts when I can just pull 2-4oz and not open 12/22oz'ers. Plus, takes up a lot less room!

 

I've found this to be one of the biggest advantages to kegging over the last few years since I started. I still have bottles of big beers in my basement that don't get opened because they're 10% ABV and 22 oz. But I love a nice 6 oz pour of a stout as a nightcap.