Weisse the Hell Not

Brew sheet and starter

It had been a couple of months since my last brewday.  For the most part I've been working on figuring out what I wanted to do for a brewstand and taking the opportunity to save some money in the process.   I've made somewhat decent use of my slightly extra time by keeping the "brewery" tidy and finally bottling both of my meads (Boysenberry Riff Mead and Amy's Backyard Honey Mead aka Trilobite). Still, I was feeling the itch to brew and seeing my beer reserves tumble, especially the not 10% plus beers.

While I love all grain brewing, helping and watching Bonnie brew up a couple of her own batches (Wee Bonnie Lass and Costa del Sol b3) reminded my of a lot of the benefits for extract brewing.  To be ultra clear here, there is not a noticeable difference in flavor between a well brewed extract and well brewed all grain beer.  The benefits of all grain relay more on cost and recipe freedom than quality of the finished product. Extract brewing (when using a quality product) benefits from a shorter and less complicated brewday, perfect for someone short on time and looking to fill a keg with a quality beer.  I guess what I'm trying to say is watching Bonnie brew opened me up to the possibility of brewing an extract beer here and there while remaining primarily an all grain brewer.

It was with this more open mindset that I came across a post in the homebrewing section of BeerTrading.org - Extract - Berliner Weisse, anyone got one? I've come to really enjoy Berliner Weisse over the last couple of years.  They are a wonderful summer beer with their tart crispness and low abv (generally 2.8% to 3.8%).  I'd had desire to brew a Berliner Weisse since coming a across a video presentation by Jess Caudill of Wyeast Laboratories during National Homebrewers Conference 2012 that Northern Brewer had documented and put on YouTube.  The presentation focuses a lot on the yeast driven components of the style more than the grist (grain).  I therefore felt that this would be the prefect time to brew up an extract version and started that taking notes on the presentation.

Getting ready to boil...
for all of 15 minutes

Boy did I end up taking a lot of notes, so many that I ended up putting up them into a PowerPoint presentation containing not only my notes from the presentation but my recipe and the history of the style.  I've put the presentation online and a PDF here.  I won't summarize here but will say that putting it together definitely helped, especially in the area of recipe development.  Originally I was going with a primarily wheat driven recipe till I learned that Berliner Weisse is usually made from roughly 25 – 30% pale malted wheat. I therefore bumped down my ratio to align with what I'd learned... until I shared the presentation with the Tao of Fermentation group where Daniel pointed out that Briess' Wheat DME is 65% wheat 35% barley. He suggested that I therefore adjust my recipe to 1.75lbs Extra Light DME and 2.00lbs Wheat DME which would give me a 47% Pils, 35% Wheat and 19% Pale recipe.

Talk about the easiest brewday I've had since I moved from Mr Beer to extract. With no steeping grains and a 15 minute boil the longest part of the day was bringing it to boil. From there is a almost a mad dash to find, put together and sanitize all the pieces of my chilling equipment.  It's almost funny as the chilling worked so well, cooling it down too low for my intended fermentation cycle, that I had to speed up the run off to warm it back up.  I still think I'm fermenting it a couple of degrees to cold.  At some point this week I'll put together an additional starter for clean yeast and pitch it this weekend.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about I suggest reading my notes or watching the video.

Cheers

-SNB

Amy's Backyard Honey Mead aka Trilobite

Amy's Backyard Honey Mead
aka Trilobite

After a very long delinquent period of not posting I'm back.  Sorry for the delay but the last six weeks have been absolutely the busiest of my life, between work, home and vacation I've had zero extra time to do anything.  Part of being busy included another barrel brew on a 2 barrel brewsystem with one of my homebrew clubs Brewcommune.com, hosting a brewday for them, attempting to brew my annual imperial stout and hosting a brew demo at the shop.  This was followed by a trip out to Minnesota for work which included an overnight camp-out for Darkness Day 2012.  I've got lots of stuff to cover but let's get started with my second mead.

Back in mid-October my good friend Bryce came down from our hometown of SLC to LA with his girlfriend Amy.  She was in town at the last minute to take her Medical Licensing Examination Step 2. Besides bringing me an at least 250 million year old Trilobite (it could be up to 500 million years) they also brought with them 2 pounds of fresh honey that Amy had harvested from the bee hives she keeps in her back yards.  That's right from the bee hives she keeps in her backyard, how cool it that. 

I decided to use it to make a small batch of mead using the recipe for Joe's ancient orange mead as the recipe.  I've had mead from this recipe from several friends and it has produced some of my favorite meads.  I also had pretty much every ingredient on hand including fresh oranges from my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box.  Amy gave me 3 8oz by volume jars of honey which equated to 2 pounds by weight of honey. the standard Joe's recipe calls for 3 pounds of I scaled the recipe down based on the about of honey I had (2/3 of a gallon versus 1 gallon).

Close up for the trilobite they also brought

Violating probably a dozen unwritten rules about hosting a brewday I decide to use that time to keg up a bunch of beers, transfer some to secondary and clean everything that needed cleaning so pretty much I decided not to brew on a brewday. Like I said, it probably violated tons of unwritten rules. Not wanting to violate them all I decided that I would include making the mead on my to do list so I could at least say I made a fermented beverage.

The really nice thing about mead is how freaking fast it is to make. From warming the honey to clean up it probably took me less than an hour, probably less, almost all of it going to heating the honey to liquify it make it easier to work with. Now comes the waiting, currently it's hanging on in my kitchen for a few months as the bread yeast chews though the honey.  I have plans on when this will make it's debut but who knows when that will happen.

Cheers

-SNB

Boysenberry Riff Mead

Production at the
Brewfooery Meadworks

The other week I got the opportunity to visit my friend Chad's home brewery (known internationally as the Brewfooery).  I've been meaning to get over to Walnut to visit him for quite a while and I was determined to make it happen.  The impetus for this trip was to take part in a mead demo he was hosting.  I'd been wanting to make a mead but I was mentally holding myself back over the cost of a 5 gallon batch and personal hang ups about only making a signal gallon. Chad's demo was the perfect opportunity to get over myself and just do it.

I've known Chad for a little over a year now and the thing that has always impressed me is his open approach and creativity to fermented beverages. It seems like nothing is off limits as an ingredient (palm sugar and kiefer limes are among the more famous Brewfooery ingredients) to Chad which is help open the possibilities to anyone who has tried his beers.   

Chad started brewing several years ago but took a long period off and started back up in the fall of 2010 and go back in running.  I swear it seemed like at times he was brewing twice a week or more and soon started hosting brewing demos for friends and coworkers.  Soon their were several members of the Brewfooery School of Homebrewing turning out their own unique beers.

The MeAD Scientist showing off
one of his many in production meads

About a year ago Chad started playing around with honey adding large quanities to his beer.  This lead him to brew a bunch of braggots (sort of a cross between a beer and a mead) along with some dry hopped meads. 

On the day I visited him he had 16 1 gallon meads going with a wonderful spectrum of ingredients.  Most of Chad's meads are variations on a very classic and straight forward mead recipe known as Joe's Ancient Orange Mead.  I've had several different versions of this one and it remains a favorite recipe for meads.

I decided that I would forgo my current style of recipe development (lots of reading and research) and embrace a more free flow model similar to my approach with dry hopping some of my early beers.  I'd had a few cans of Oregon boysenberry pie filling sitting in my garage for a while that I had originally bought to use in a beer I never made.  Chad provided a multitude of other spices, juices and fruits to add.  

I started my mead by adding 3 lbs of warmed honey to a gallon jug.  Next I opened my two cans of boysenberries, that had been hanging out in sanitizer, with a sanitized can opener and added the contents to the jug.  After smelling several of the spices I opted to use a cinnamon stick, a teaspoon of Indian Sarsaparilla, about 25 raisins for nutrients and a single clove. I then added what looked like about a cup of cranberry-raspberry juice and topped it off with water.  I added some mead nutrient, the yeast (Lalvin D-47) and shook the jug to aerate.  Done in less then 30 minutes!

Looking at an online recipe builder at Got Mead I'm looking at a starting gravity of around 1.108.  It should be about 14% ABV when it's done in 6 months or so.

Cheers

-SNB