Bitter Sweet Symphony

I created a Bitter Sweet Symphony
iTunes Genius playlist to listen to
It needed A LOT of editing

Every couple is suppose to have a "song" and I assume most of the time it's probably some happy-sappy love song.  That's not the case for Bonnie and I.  We first started dating in December of '97 while going to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma Washington. This happened to be right around the time when a little song called Bitter Sweet Symphony started getting airtime on the main alternative station I listened to. There was something about that song that we both really identified with which lead to it getting some pretty heavy playtime on my computers playlist.  It soon became apparent that it was our song, which was fortunate as given the time and young love it was something that could have gone very wrong.    Bonnie notes: "I have a lot of memories associated with that song and time in our lives; eating your special sandwich from the sub (the student union building), snuggling in the worlds smallest bed, hanging out in your dorm room etc."

So what does any of that have to do with beer?  Here's the story, I'd been thinking of retooling the BIG IPL recipe for a while, really spinning the concept of a Single/Double IPL into a new beer, but had not really been inspired by anything. Well, one day I was in the car listening to an old CD and rockin out to Bitter Sweet Symphony (which I often do) when it hit to me.  Bitter Sweet Symphony would be an incredible name for a beer, especially a hop heavy one like an IPL.

As soon as I had the name recipe ideas started flying through my head; would it be a IPA or IPL? Double of Single? What about an American Double Stout? For a while I had narrowed it down as a single IPL with the hop schedule of Sydnie IPA with the grist of BIG IPL scaled down.  That idea pretty much hit a brick wall one evening while I was enjoying a pint of Surly Abrasive.  The massive Citra flavor and aroma hit me like a freight train - Bitter Sweet Symphony needed to be a Citra forward IPL.  I knew that I had tons of Citra stockpiled so I hit the internet to see if I could any reasonable Abrasive clone recipes to use as a foundation to build Bitter Sweet Symphony from.

Cracked my last on hand can of
Abrasive to drink during cool-down

I found what looked like a pretty successful attempt on the Northern Brewer forum and with the notes on Abrasive on Surly's website I started to nail down what I wanted to do. I also reviewed the Surly Furious Pro Series Recipe to gain insight on Surly beers.  For base grain I would use the 2-Row I had on hand with a generous helping of Golden Promise.  I'd also included a couple pounds of oat to give it a smooths mouthfeel. To pull a little of my personality and brewing style into the beer I decided that instead of including Crystal malts, which would have been in the form of Crystal 20L, I would use a dash of Carared and in place of the brewers sugar I would use Rice to bump the ABV while keeping it light.  

Days before brewing I came across an interesting discussion on late hopping and the concept behind whirlpooling. The basic premise is to add hops at flame-out whirlpool and let sit for 80 minutes.  I wasn't fully on board with adding 80 minutes to my brewday but figured I would give it a shot with 30 and slowly creep up from there depending on if I'm pleased with the results.

If you saw the horrible chill plate setup that I jerry-rigged together for the 34 brewday you'll be pleased to know that I have gone back and made a few adjustments.  I'm still not fully where I want to be and will soon be picking up a router speed control to slow the flow of fluid through the pumps.  Shawn uses one on his chill plate setup.  Once in place I should be able to have more control over the temperature of the wort. 

I will now leave you with a little entertainment that helped inspire this post.  Recipe and pictures after the break as always.

 

Cheers

-SNB

Halvtreds - Soured Red Lager

Halvtreds aka Batch 50

The day after Thanksgiving I set up my system early in the morning (6:30) and set to working brewing my 50th beer.  It was coded named Batch 50 for so long that when it came time to write this post I knew it by nothing else so in a last ditch effort to not call it Batch 50 I translated fifty into Danish and got the name Halvtreds.  I think Halvtreds is a pretty suiting name for a red colored beer. 

When I set out to craft a recipe for my 50th batch of beer I had a few critria for myself: 

1. It should have the ability to be aged
2. It could be an ale or a lager but should be brewed with the house yeast (WLP007 for Ales and WLP840 for Lagers)
3. The hops used should be northwest hops
4. It should include ingredients that are indicative to me

I made a 3 pint starter with
some amber DME

I decided along the way that Halvtreds should be a mile stone in another way and decided to make it my first full on sour beer. I've been playing with funk in BeanyTink Farmstead Ale, SNB can be CynicAle and DG' Peach Farm but had yet to venture into anything over the top sour.

Venturing back to my list of criterion here's how Halvtreds fits the bill.

1. A 6.8 sour will not only take over a year to develop but should last well beyond
2. I decided to make it a lager and pitched a lager starter made with second pitch of WLP840
3. Cascade for the bittering plus some Citra and Cascade for flavor with an ounce of  Columbus at knockout. 
4. It's a partial mash that incorporated some of my favorite malts (Victory and Carared) and a lb of Rice extract a la Scott's BIG IPL.  The grain bill itself is almost identical by percentages to StarRaptor

A few things I learned while researching sours that I figure I would pass on;  1) IBUs are keep light for a reason, too much above 20 IBUs will hamper the bugs as hops are a preservative.  2) Some styles of sours are initially brewed clean then soured with bugs after primary while others are given an overnight souring mash at 120 degrees.  For Halvtreds I kept the IBUs minimal (20.5) and scheduled a clean lager fermentation.

Transferring to the fermentor

For the bugs I'm going to try to get my hands one of the sour strains from East Coast Yeast.  I missed the last round while out shopping over the weekend but with a month or more of clean fermentation I have time to try again.  Worst case I'll pitch a White Labs sour blend with some bottle dregs.

Brewday itself was pretty smooth, I had to go into work at 4:00 AM then hit up some Black Friday sales so I was able to get an early start.  

I mashed high at 156 because I wanted to give the bugs some extra food to chew on.  I initially missed my mash temperature so I drained some of the liquid and heated it up in a small pot allowing me to nail the 156 temp I was looking for.  I'd been trying to shorten my mash time to 20-30 minutes but for this round I set it initially at 40 so I could keg up Scott's BIG IPL w/ Citra.  It took me a little longer and by the time I heated my sparge water the mash ended up being around 55 minutes.  Oh well next time.

Cheers

-SNB

Updates
Transferring Halvtreds to Secondary
Souring Halvtreds
Souring Halvtreds Part 2

Stone Ruination IPA Double Dry Hopped with Centennial and Citra

I stopped by Stone Brewing to pick up a growler fill of 2009 Old Guardian for an upcoming trade.  While there I stopped by the cold case and was pleasantly surprised to find bottles of Stone Ruination IPA Double Dry Hopped with Centennial and Citra Hops.  As part of Stone's new Quingenti Millilitre Series it comes corked and caged in a beautiful 500 ml bottle.  Word on the street is this run was done to test out the new bottling line for the Quingenti Millilitre Series, if that's true I'm very happy they decided to do it with this beer. 

500 ml bottle opens with a pop and is poured into a Bruery Tulip.  Reviewed 17-Sept-11 

Appearance: The beer is a gorgeous pale golden color and when poured creates a nice inch tall fluffy white head.  Good level of carbonation is presents and it forms a solid lace down the side of the glass. Swirling the glass reinvigorates the head to a beautiful fully cloud.

Aroma: Literally smelled like I opened a bag of citra hops. Very pronounce citrus smell, primarily drive by the citra, the centennial hops do form a nice counter.   Bonnie Notes - oh my lord, light hop note to the smell, very pleasant

Mouthfeel: Light to medium bodied, fills the mouth well, sits nicely on the palate. 

Taste: Citrus! Very slight passion fruit, key lime rine. Still has the classic Ruination bitting bitterness but highlighted by a citrus rine bitterness… some lemon and grapefruit notes are present. Very bitter on the back end but as a lupulin addict I'm very ok with that though I do have to say the dry hopping has softened it slightly.

Overall:  Absolutely fantastic. When I spotted it in the store my heart stopped I was so excited.  I love citra hops especially as a dry hop and have always appreciated Ruination. As I grew in my craft beer journey I started to feel like Stone was stuck in a past era, this beer has changed that option of them.  This is probably my new favorite Stone beer, hopefully this won't be the only time they make this.

 

Upon further investigation I learned additional facts about this beer from Jacob McKean, Communications Specialist at Stone.

1) It was done to test out the line.

2) It was bottled back on 6/22 (held up really well)

3) It was intended to be given away to Team Stone members only.

4) Super rare = Whale! I;-{)]

Scott's BIG IPL w/Citra

Well here it is, for the first time ever in one place, the full recipe and story behind Scott's BIG IPL.  Well, sort of anyway...

I've brewed this beer three times now (four if you count my brewday with Karl Strauss), each time I do there is a slight change here and there to the recipe.  

Recipe sheet

Batch 1

The first time I brewed it was for a demo at Addison Homebrew Provisions.  It was an adaption of my Scott's BIG IPA recipe that had recently won the store's competition.  The main hop bill was the same but the malt bill was modified greatly to play off the lager aspect adding plisner DME and rice DME.  I was inspired to brew this beer after having a pint of Humulus Lager at the Bruery several weeks prior to the demo.  Not only was this beer my inspiration of doing a lager IPA but is also the origin of the rice addition. 

When it came time for the demo I got distracted and combined a couple of additions and missed a time here and there, but this is the reason you should always notes and I wrote down and tracked all these modifications.  This is also the reason that only people who were at the demo and tracked these changes would have the recipe to that point.  

Final changes to batch one against the recipe came with a second dry hopping into tertiary.  There is a lot of good information out there when to how long to keep hops on a beer and because this is a lager it takes longer and I grew concerned that I would start to get off flavors so I decided to move it a tertiary with even more hops.  

Some of the water agents used

I fortunately keep the progress of this beer updated on the AHP forum which worked out very well for me as later I needed to track the progress and write down when I did things.  

Batch 1 came out incredible and we flew through the keg, in fact I was shocked how quickly I went through 5 gallons of wonderfully hopped lager.  I think it might be Bonnie's favorite of my beers as she was constantly sneaking out to get some.

Batch 2

With an empty keg on my hand and a cool winter in place I decided in January of 2011 it was time to brew it again.  I went back and forth with whether I would brew this beer a my next brewing demo in mid January or do it at a club brewday the week prior.  In the end I opted to do it at the brewday and do up a batch of Smoked Pepper Porter at the demo to be served at the club booth at the SCHF 2011.

I went back to my notes and review my posts on the forum to create batch 2 of the recipe.

The mash

As much as I like brewing with people and hosting brewdays i really hate doing both at the same time.  For the most part everything went well, despite a boil over.  I also picked up a couple of cool new tricks and once my beer was safely tucked away in my fermenting cube I was able to relax, grill up some sausages and have a great time.

It was early on in the fermentation cycle that I noticed a post on facebook about Karl Strauss holding a contest where the winner would get a chance to brew their beer that the main brewery and have it entered in the Pro-Am competition at the NHC 2011 in San Diego.  Having been a fan of Karl Strauss in the past I decided I wanted to enter, the question was what.  I knew I had enough time to to an IPA but sorta wanted to enter the still fermenting IPL.  As fun as lagers are and how good the results are they're not the type of beer one can rush.  Still I thought it would be a good beer to enter but would it be done in time.

153 for 1 hour

There was only one way to answer that, a timeline.  I cut up a couple of calendars and mapped out the cycle for the original batch, I then took another calendar and starting with the brewday transferred all the milestones from the first batch calendar to the second one.  I also marked the deadline for the Karl Strauss competition.  As luck would have it the IPL would be finished and kegged just in time to BeerGun and enter.  

As some know I did enter it and ended up winning it.

Batch 2ish the Karl Strauss Version

I guess I ended up brewing it again between Batch 2 and the latest Batch 3 with Karl Strauss, however this was not my recipe but rather their take on it.  

I'm not going to go into much detail on it, but if you are interested you can review the full story on the AHP forum here and here.

I will say this, in retrospect I have a few issues with their version of the recipe that I'll quickly sum up; no pilsner malt, not enough rice and too few hops.  I also feel that fermentation might have been rushed as it didn't have the same lager crispness as the original.

Still it was a very well done beer that went over well.  It scored ok on BeerAdvocate scoring mostly A's except for one guy who even admits it he might have gotten a bad pour.

Mashing

Batch 3

Brewing up this beer again had been on my mind for awhile, but with a 15 gallon keg of the Karl Strauss version in the Crate I was in no big rush.  The two month brewing hiatus also didn't help and I was soon running low on beer. I have big plans for the beer in 2012 and felt that time was running out to make and test changes to the recipe.  It is after all a 10 week batch cycle for this beer.

I had in stock or had access to all the key hops I would need for this beer with the exception of Amarillo. I decide to play around with the recipe and substitute the Amarillo with Citra, one of my favorite hops.  I also wanted to incorporate it into a flavor addition and I didn't want to just add it and change the IBUs so I adjusted some of the other hops to keep everything in line.

The biggest change I made was skipping moving the recipe to Partial Mash and going all out and converting it to All Grain.  Good idea? Bad idea? I'm always telling people there is no reason to rush the process until you are ready to make the jump to the next step, yet here I am with only 5 Partial Mash and 1 All Grain under my belt taking the recipe for my best known beer and converting it up.  In retrospect I really haven't decided either way.  I know I have a lot still to learn on water and steps to increase my efficiency but it was fun.

My mom stirring the mash during the sparge

The brewday itself was pretty good.  I got an early start with preheating my tun and setup complete around 7:30 am. My mom was in town so she helped off and on in between helping my wife out with our daughter.  Originally I was going to opt for a shorter mash after having had a conversation with Brad that for the most part conversion occurs around 20 minutes due to increased efficiencies in the malting process of the grains.  I ended up mashing for over an hour as I decided to take my daughter and BrewDog for a walk to the park for a game of chuck it and fun on the slides.

Hop lineup

I was pretty off on my gravity so I need to do some additional research on steps to improve it. Other than that it went pretty well, I did apparently buy a pound of light DME instead of a pound of rice DME so I sent my wife over the shop to grab it while I sparged.  In retrospect I should have tossed it in to make up for the lower gravity.   I hit all my hop marks and was down cleaning up in time for a late lunch.   

Given the time involved and the house demand for it I'll probably only have this available at the brewery.  I'll plan a release tasting sometime in December if it comes out good.

Cheers

-SNB

First Wort Hops

Scott's BIG IPL w/Citra

Double IPL

Type: All Grain 

Date: 9/18/2011

Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal 

Brewer: Scott Bennett

Boil Size: 7.65 gal 

Asst Brewer: Marianne Bennett and DG (BrewDog)

Boil Time: 75 min 

Equipment: Brew Pot (15 Gal) and Igloo/Gott Cooler (10 Gal)

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 % - ended up much lower at 60.3%

Fermentation: Scott's IPL Lager 

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.082 SG 

Measured Original Gravity: 1.071 SG

Est Final Gravity: 1.017 SG

Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 8.7 % 

Bitterness: 108.5 IBUs

Est Color: 6.7 SRM 

Ingredients

Malt

8 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)

4 lbs 12.8 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)

1 lbs Rice DME (7.0 SRM)

8.0 oz Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)

8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 15L (15.0 SRM)

8.0 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)

Hops

0.70 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min

0.70 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min 

0.75 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 17.0 min

0.75 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 17.0 min

0.75 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 17.0 min

17 minute addition

0.70 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 7.0 mi

0.75 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 5.0 mi

1.00 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min

Dry Hops

1.00 oz Columbus (1st Dry Hop) [14.00 %]

1.00 oz Cascade (1st Dry Hop) [5.50 %]

1.00 oz Citra (2nd Dry Hop) [12.00 %]

1.00 oz Simcoe (2nd Dry Hop) [13.00 %]

Yeast

1.0 pkg American Lager Yeast (White Labs #WLP840)

Other

1.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60.0 mins)

10.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins)

5.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins)

1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)

1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins)

7 minute addition

Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge

Total Grain Weight: 15 lbs 4.8 oz

Sparge Water: 5.52 gal

Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F

Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps

Mash In Add 18.59 qt of water at 164.3 F 153.0 F 60 min

Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (1.29gal, 4.22gal) of 168.0 F water

Fermentation Schedule

Primary for 10-12 days at 55.0 F until fermentation slows

Diacetyl Rest for 2 days at 65.0 F

Secondary for 14 days at 50.0 F ending at 45.0 F

Tertiary for 21 days at 45.0 F ending at 40.0 F

Knockout

Cooling down

Moving to the fermentor

Leftover hot break and spent hops

Good amount of yeast

I hit it with O2 three times in 6 hours

StarRaptor – Double American Red Ale

Before I left the Mr Beer Forums I decided to participate in a recipe collaboration program with another brewer, Chris aka mnstarzz13. 

Weighting the Hops

Originally I tossed out the idea of using the same base wort recipe but pitch two different yeasts.  This is something that I have done recently in my collaboration with Shawn and plan on doing more in the future when I move to 10 gallon batches.   To me it is a fascinating exercise in understanding the various flavors and aromas that are completely yeast driven.  My initial thought was to do two porters and make my version a Baltic Style with lager yeast. Along these same lines I had thoughts of using my American Farmhouse Blend (WLP670) to funk up an IPA or Pale Ale.  My counterpart however wasn’t that game for the funk.

We tossed out a few more ideas before deciding on taking the same base recipe, in this case Red Velvet (link) a red ale recipe from Donny Hummel that took a Gold Medal in the GABF Pro-Am 2010, and each tweaking it slightly for our own tastes.  For Chris that meant dialing back the IBUs to make it less bitter and for me moving the IBU/SG Ratio closer to 1.  We also each made slight adjustments to the malt and hop bills, for example with Amarillo being in short supply here I subbed it with Citra.  Understandable Chris had a hard time nailing down some Simcoe and planned on subbing it with Northern Brewer. I couldn’t allow that as there is no one to one sub for Simcoe and I’ve never seen Northern Brewer on any of the searches I ran.

Better brewing through chemistry

Originally I was calling the recipe MB Collaboration Red but became inspired into thinking it would make a great beer to name after my screen name StarRaptor.  At one point I was calling it an IRA (India Red Ale) fortunately the absurdity caught up with me and I came to the light deciding the style would be a Double American Red.

The New Rig

Brewing the beer was not without its challenges and actually took two goes at it to complete it.  This was my first brew in over two months and I was a little rusty not to mention the first time I would be using my cooler mash tun and keggle brew pot.  The first round I decided to take a pre boil gravity reading and misread the BeerSmith (Link) instructions and believed I had massively messed up the mash which resulted in stopping the boil and dumping 4 hours of work.  Later after consulting some other brewers I determined that it was an interpretation error on the brew steps and not a mash issue.

Never one to quite I simple bought more of the ingredients I used before dumping.  Fortunately I had decided to dump prior to the flavor addition so I didn’t loss that much hops.  The second round was not without its issues; I was a little low on my mash temp, had cooling issues (it was a really hot day) and only collected 4 gallons of wort.

Still it was nice to brew again and the beer is chugging along in one of my many temperature controlled chest freezers.

Cheers

-SNB

They see me boilin...

StarRaptor

Double American Red Ale

Type: Partial Mash

Date: 8/27/2011

Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal (only captured 4)

Brewer: Scott Bennett

Boil Size: 6.93 gal   

Boil Time: 60 min

Equipment: Brew Pot (12.5 gal) and Igloo Cooler (10 Gal)

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %

Beer Profile

Measured Original Gravity: 1.092 SG

Est Final Gravity: 1.019

Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 9.1 %

Bitterness: 94.5 IBUs

Est Color: 17.0 SRM 

Ingredients

Malt

4 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM)

4 lbs Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)

2 lbs 8.0 oz Rye Malt (4.7 SRM)

1 lbs Rice Dry Extract (7.0 SRM)

1 lbs Carared (20.0 SRM)

13.6 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM)

8.6 oz Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)

8.0 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)

2.6 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)

One of the keys to great beer

Hops

0.50 oz Magnum [14.40 %] - First Wort 75.0 min

1.00 oz Simcoe [12.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min

1.00 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min

1.00 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min

1.25 oz Centennial [8.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min

Dry Hops

2.00 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop

2.00 oz Centennial [8.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop

Yeast

1.00 Starter San Diego Super Yeast (White Labs # WLP090)

Other

1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) -

1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins)

1.00 Tbs 5.2 pH Stabilizer (Mash)

Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out

Total Grain Weight: 14 lbs 8.8 oz

Sparge Water: 6.44 gal

Grain Temperature: 72.0 F

Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F

Mash Steps

Mash In Add 7.53 qt of water at 175.0 F 152.0 F 75 min

Sparge Step: Fly sparge with 6.44 gal water at 168.0 F

Kräusen Porn

3 Hours In

12 Hours In

24 Hours In