Sour Blonde Wheat Ale Tasting

Sour Blonde Wheat Ale

Brewed the Sour Wheat Ale a little over two months ago, and it should be ready for a tasting by now. This brew clocks at 4.5% ABV, and unlike the Flanders Red Ale that I fermented with this same yeast concoction, this beer never formed a pellicle; however, it was not nearly exposed to as much oxygen nor did it have a lot of time. Before bottling, when I tasted it out of the fermenter, I was very surprised at how sour it got in such a short amount of time. I also couldn't taste any of the coriander or orange.


Aroma: Clean citrus, esters and mildly sweet--almost like the smell of cotton candy. No funk or barnyard animals in this one. A bit of orange. No spice smell.

Appearance: Cloudy, as a wheat beer should be, and nice golden straw color. Head forms right away, but isn't thick and dissipates quickly. I'd chalk this up to another recipe that doesn't account for head retention but I know that the Berliner Weiss style, which this brew is loosely based upon, has a head that dissipates quickly. So I think it's just the style.

Flavor: Wheat-lactic goodness. A very pleasant, sharp, acid-tang that lasts awhile. A hint of sweetness. Some lingering esters, a bit of the orange, and maybe some spice, but really not much at all. Very clean taste. Cannot detect the alcohol over the tanginess. Lemons too. Maybe just a bit of that hay-like character that Bretts are notorious for. No hop bitterness, although I do wonder what a little more hops would do to this beer. The sour taste may be a little too aggressive for some people, but I like it.

Mouthfeel: Crisp body. Very drinkable. Dry and clean. It needs a little more carbonation for the style, I think, but that will certainly come with more time in the bottle. This beer lacks body. I've had some interesting Berliner Weisses before that had a creamy consistency, and I wonder how the hell the brewer got it that way--I think I'm thinking of the Southampton Berliner.

Overall: This is a great beer and isn't going to last too long around the house. The lack of body is definitely the weakest part. I feel like if there's going to be an aggressive wild-sour taste there needs to be some structure behind it. Otherwise it's like drinking wheat lemonade.  Then again, this may just be the style. Very refreshing beer.

Bugs, Bretts, and all kinds of stuff clinging onto the carboy glass of the Flanders Red Ale

Dry Hopping Hodgepodge IPA

This is the first time I used Chinook in an American IPA recipe. It was recommended by the local homebrew shop as what they use in their IPA. I was reluctant since I really don't like their house IPA, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

I usually use Simcoe hops in my IPA since I love the clean woodsy pine taste, and Simcoe doesn't seem--at least to me--to have all the harsh resiny flavors. Chinook, I came to learn, is the forerunner of the harsh resiny hops, which I suppose is fine for hopheads, but I prefer having a more balanced IPA. With that said, I figured I'd explain a bit about hop usage and scheduling time.

The rule of thumb is that the earlier the hops go into the boil,  the more bitterness and less aroma they will impart. The scale tilts the opposite way as the hop is added toward the end of the boil. So a hop addition at 5 minutes left in the boil will add only those wonderful aromas we love when we pour a glass from the bottle or keg.

Dry hopping is the most effective method to make an aromatic brew. All you do is add fresh hops or hop pellets to the carboy after the fermentation has calmed down and let it sit for a few weeks. Apparently, in the past, dry hopping was used to help preserve beer, too.

I prefer to use whole hops because they impart the best aroma in my opinion, but many homebrewers hate using whole flowers because they're a pain to siphon out of the fermenter when the beer is ready to bottle or keg. Instead, they prefer hop pellets, which of course work well, too. I merely attach a bit of sterilized steel wool around the end of the siphon which acts as a buffer from the whole hop flowers and allows the siphon to flow without obstruction. 

Brew in a Bag--Hodgepodge IPA

This is my first experience with the brewing in a bag technique, and I thought it went well with little complaints. This method is best for people with limited resources who like to have complete control over their grain bill. 


Brewing in a bag gives the versatility of all-grain brewing without having to buy, clean or mess with a mash tun. I found it great for the apartment brewer, although I would recommend having a place to hang it outside as it can get a little messy.




All you need is a bag large and sturdy enough to hold wet grain and wrap it around the top of the pot as shown in the first picture. Then maintain the mash temperature with some towels or a fleece blanket as I did. I brought the water to about 161°F and then added the grain little by little to avoid doughy clusters, constantly stirring. The grain dropped the temp to about 156°F and the blanket worked incredibly well to insulate the mash. At the end of the hour, the temp was about 151°F--not bad for an outside temp of 42°. 




 
After the hour mash I hung it up and let it drain. I squeezed this bad boy as dry as I could, rinsed it with about two more gallons of sparge water at about 167 ° and squeezed it all over again. Then I did a 90 minute boil with the hop schedule as planned. All in all it was pretty simple. I was a little disappointed that both my local homebrew shops had no simcoe hops--terrible I know--so I just used a bunch of left over hops I had lying around in the fridge, hence hodgepodge.

Hodgepodge IPA


Grain Bill
14 lbs 2 row
12 oz. crystal 45
12 oz carapils
10 oz dextrose


Hops
3.5 oz chinook       90
.75 oz chinook       45
1 oz centennial      30
1 oz magnum        flameout
1 oz centennial      flameout


Dry Hop in secondary
1 oz chinook         2 weeks
1 oz centennial      2 weeks
1 oz columbus       2 weeks


.25 oz chinook      5 days at end
.25 oz columbus   5 days
.25 oz amarillo      5 days
.25 oz magnum     5 days


Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast


OG ----- 1.070  (roughly 7% ABV).
60% efficiency. So the brew in the bag isn't all that efficient of a method. But maybe I am missing something here--it was my first time.

Hail during the boil. Luckily we had a roof over us.

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