Dark Rye Tasting

Appearance - Dark brownish amber. If held up to light, can detect cloudiness. Little head and head retention. The recipe should be amended for the head; maybe flaked barley, carapils, rice hulls, or some wheat malt, although some of these might battle out the clean body taste below.

Aroma - Carmel, rye and malt. No hops, no alcohol.

Taste - Clean and light body. Maltiness, caramel, light carbonation. Some hop bitterness, but I think it needs a little more. Finishes very spicy, which I love about rye beers. 

Notes and Amendments: This beer needs more time in the cellar to balance out the maltiness. It's simply not there yet. I love the rye finish, but I think I'd use more hops next time, and maybe use chinook or fuggles instead of the magnum. I think I will use a different yeast too. Something a little more tart and dry, like a belgian strain, Wyeast 1214 Belgian Ale or White Labs WLP550. Also, I'd put something in there for head retention. Of course there are things I'd change about the recipe, but all in all a pretty good beer. 

Brewing Dark Rye

Before this blog was conceived, I brewed a Dark Rye beer in November around thanksgiving. I brewed it to pair with my annual St. Patty's day homemade corned beef. I thought the spicy-smooth, malty rye would be a good option to battle out the saltiness in the beef. But I also have some sours on hand if the rye beer is no match. I guess I'll have to wait and see. 

This is my second Dark Rye. Last time was a disaster. It's difficult to count all the things that went wrong with the first beer, but I'll try. First, I was brewing outside and it was quite cold, so I left the heat on the burner as low as it would go during the sparge, and the bag burned a little. I was about to dump the beer right then and there, but for some reason I continued. I remember having to scrub the burnt nylon off the pot for what seemed like an hour. 

The next mistake was during the fermentation. I brewed the beer right before I left on a four week hiking trip. I was worried about high krausen while I wasn't around (krausen is the foam that forms on top fermenting ales), so I used a blow-off tube, which is basically a wide tube that allows for more space and ends in a bucket of sterilized water. Well, the fermentation must have been vigorous because when I came back home after the hike, the tube was out of the bucket on the ground. This means the beer was exposed to oxygen for who knows how long. 

I tasted the beer and it wasn't terribly bad, so I bottled it. But after a month there was no carbonation, so I re-opened the bottles and dropped a few particles of dry yeast in each. After another month, the beer was carbonated and ready to go. 

Despite all these mistakes, I felt like I learned an incredible amount from this batch and so I had an affinity for it. The beer, however, was absolutely terrible, although I did learn how to identify a beer with too much oxygen exposure. 

Anyway, I figured I'd give it another shot. This time I used British ale yeast instead of London ale. I did not use a secondary for the beer, but left it on the primary for about two months and bottled it in the middle of January. It's been sitting at cellar temperature for a little over a month now.

Dark Rye

5 Lb Pale Ale DME 

1 lbs Rye Malt 3L

3 lbs  Caramel 60 L

1 lbs rolled rye

2 oz. Black patent malt 580L 

1.5 oz. Tettnanger 60 min
1 oz Magnum 20 min 

Original Gravity: 1.056

Final Gravity: 1.014

Bottled with 1/4 cup brown sugar

I'll do a tasting for it next post.

Sourdough Starter and Cakes

As promised, I made a sourdough starter off the dregs of my hard cider, which I fermented using the wild yeast native to the orchard. The cider wasn't all it could've been, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun experimenting with this yeast culture.

The process is quite simple: drink a bottle of hard cider down to the dregs, leaving about an inch left in the bottle and swirl it. Drain it into a mixture of warm water and all-purpose flour. The consistency of the mixture should be watery--I did about 60/40 water to flour. Stir it up and let sit in a warm place. The next day I fed it about a 1/4 cup flour and stirred it again. When the starter starts to froth or bubble, you know you're doing well. Continue feeding every day, making sure to pour off about a 1/2 cup of the starter before feeding if you're not using it that day.

Mine was frothing within four days and I used it in a batch of sourdough Pancakes.

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup warm water
1 Egg
1 Tbsp cane sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

I substituted the water with club soda, which I had lying around. I find that the carbonation of the soda helps to fluff the cakes a bit.

I would also add that I mixed the ingredients and let them sit overnight. That way, the yeast has a chance to infiltrate the entire mixture, and result in the best sourdough.

They were pretty good for only a week old starter.

The Hard Cider Incident: Part II

The cider has been sitting in a roughly 50 degree closet in my basement apartment for nearly four months. 

Appearance -- Cloudy, golden yellow-straw colored. Initial thin white head that dissipates quickly. No clarity because I didn't bother transfering the cider into a secondary to clear it out.

Smell -- Cinnamon and faint hint of apple. Strong alcohol aroma. Lingering mustiness. 

Taste -- Very tart and a little sourness. Clean with hints of apple and cinnamon. Definitely detect some acidic flavors as well as alcohol. Very warming. 

Feel -- Thin and heavy carbonation. Really have to let the gas dissipate before you get the taste. Dry and astringent.

Overall I thought the cider wasn't a complete failure, but definitely not something I would give to a friend. This one is staying in the depths of the closet for awhile. I was surprised how much it improved over these past 4 months. Next year, I will try again and let it age in a secondary with some wood, possibly bourbon-soaked oak. Also, I'm not so sure about this wild yeast, something is still a bit off. I think I will give this strain a try on a gallon batch of beer for an experiment. I also have plans for it in a sourdough starter. 

Rating of my first hard cider: 4/10

The Hard Cider Incident: Part 1

This fall I tried my hand at hard cider. I went to Bishops Orchard in Garfield, WA where they had some old fashioned cider presses. My friends and I impressed ourselves by cranking out nearly ten gallons of cider in a half-hour. The cider was pressed from spartan and golden delicious apples, which I believe are fairly sweet. I had no idea but  hard cider is apparently better if made from tart apples.

My research recommended pasteurizing the cider by heating it up to 160-170 degrees Fahrenheit, just shy of boiling, to ensure that no wild yeast would be involved in the fermentation. But as you can tell from my first few posts, I couldn't let an opportunity to harvest my own strand of wild yeast go to waste. So, I didn't heat up the cider at all, but instead I left it alone to spontaneously ferment, which of course it did, exactly five days after I pressed it.

The unfermented cider was incredibly sweet when I tasted it. And my hydrometer confirmed this: original gravity of the cider was 1.074, which usually translates to around 6.8% ABV. My research tells me that average gravity for a cider is 1.050. So this cider was very sweet. As a result I decided not to add any adjuncts such as honey or dextrose. However, I did add some cinnamon sticks a few days before I bottled. The cider sat in the primary for five weeks and clarified pretty well.

When I took a reading at the end of the fermentation I was shocked, the final gravity was a smidgen under 1.000. To give you an idea, water has a specific gravity of 1.000, so my cider had a density slightly less than water. At first I wasn't sure this was possible, but alcohol has a lower density than water, so a fluid with a high percentage of alcohol could be under 1.000. For those of you who haven't already done the math, this cider has an ABV of 9.7%.

Before I bottled it, the cider smelled musty and tasted very dry with absolutely no sweetness, since all the sugar had been metabolized. There were a lot of off-flavors that I couldn't put my finger on. But the cinnamon was nice. I hoped that the cider would get better with age, so I bottled it with some dextrose and it's been sitting ever since. I've cracked open a few to get acquainted with the progress, but next post, I'll do a proper tasting.

The Oak Dowel Experiment

Toasted Oak Dowel 

For all of us who can't afford or don't have 
the space for a gigantic oak barrel, 
there's the dowel method. I found that 
if you have the right tools it should cost 
around five dollars, give or take. It's also
 a nice conversation starter when people 
come over and happen to catch a glimpse.

As far as I can tell, the method was developed by Raj Apte who recommends using an oak chair leg with the hardware cut off as a stopper in a glass carboy. After doing a little research and examining the pros and cons, I figured I'd experiment and see what comes of it.

Pros: Like a barrel, the dowel allows oxygen to seep into the fermenter, which help Brettanomyces create their distinctive sour flavor. Also, the dowel should impart some oak flavor, although, this reason seems secondary; oak cubes ultimately have more surface area and will impart their flavor more efficiently.

Cons: The greatest danger of using the dowel is that it may swell and get stuck. If using a glass carboy, this would turn your 5 dollar barrel project into a seventy dollar mistake, so use caution. Some people use very thin dowels, but I wanted to take the chance and see what the extra surface area can give me. 

Found this on homebrewtalk.com, not sure of the original source. 

First, I went to the local building supply and picked up a half-inch American oak dowel. I cut it down to around two-and-a-half feet, making sure to remove the colored ends. I wrapped it in aluminum foil and toasted it in the oven around 300 degrees for four hours. I did not bother charring it, which some people recommend. I hope to one day try out different temperatures for different brews. 

For those of you who have cut oak before, you'll know how aromatic the wood can be, so remember to consider this before you throw it under heat. I love the smell, but I can see how it could be overwhelming. I didn't take any chances and did it while my fiancée was out of town.

Flanders Red 

I read that brand new oak, freshly toasted, can dominate and ruin the subtleties of a brew. So, I thought I would soak it in some wine before I put it to action, diluting the flavors, and hopefully mimicking a used wine barrel as much as possible. I chose to use it in a Flanders Red style (I'll put up a recipe soon) and figured a pinot noir was the best way to go for this style. 

On the way to the store, I actually considered buying a $10 wine in which to soak the dowel, but I thought better of it and used three-buck-chuck instead. I stuck the dowel in an Erlenmeyer flask and let it sit in the wine for a week, occasionally filling the flask as the wood and evaporation claimed the wine. Then, I flipped it over and did it all over again. After a month, I thought it was ready to use.

I hollowed out a bung with a knife and stretched it over the dowel. I'm sure there was a better way to do it, since the process took me nearly two hours of trial and error. Finally I got it on and I slipped the dowel into a Flanders Red that had been conditioning in a secondary fermenter for a month. I was a little worried that air might slip between the bung and the wood so I epoxied the top of the bung to get a tight seal. 

As of now, the beer has been in the secondary fermenter for 5 months and the dowel in for 4. 
Also, a healthy pellicle has formed on the top. Last time I tasted it, the sour flavor was at full-force but with very little oak flavor. I'll let it sit for another few months 
before I give it another test.

Pellicle after four months on the dowel

Sour Blonde Wheat Ale

I figured there's no better way to start off a homebrewing blog than with a brand new beer. 


I know that I will be relocating in the next few months, so I tried to get rid of all the excess ingredients. Hence, this was what I came up with. The wort is basically the same as a Belgian white ale--akin to Allagash or Hoegaarden--but I pitched a yeast concoction I cultivated off the dregs of a Jolly Pumpkin La Roja and Russian River's Consecration ale. The gravity is a bit high for a white ale, but like I said before, I wanted to get rid of some weight. 


I almost called this a Berliner Weisse, since traditionally that's what a sour wheat ale is, but I understand that the Berliner Weisse has a distinct partial boil (some say 15 minutes, others say five), which I didn't use, nor do I think it would matter with an extract batch. The Berliner Weisse also is soured with lactobacillus yeast, whereas my yeast starter most definitely contains brettanomyces, pediococcus, as well as lactobacillus. Which means this might pack quite a pucker. Finally, the BW is quite sessionable, sometimes around 3-4% ABV. So, sour blonde wheat ale it is. 


Sour Blonde Wheat


4 lbs Wheat DME
3 lbs Extra Light DME


.75 oz Tettnanger -- 60 min
.25 oz crushed coriander -- flameout
.25 oz orange bitter -- flameout


Pitched Dregs of JP La Roja and RR Consecration.


OG-- 1.045


The boil was interrupted for ten minutes because I ran out of propane. Learn a new lesson everyday in this hobby.

Krausen but not much air lock activity

I'm hoping this beer will lighten up a little bit as the yeast metabolizes all the sugars.
I'm not sure why it's so dark.