Yin Part Three - Draining the Barrel

After seven months

A lot has happened since I first started talking about the large batch of Baltic Porter the Tao of Fermentation planned on aging in an used red wine barrel.  To start with, the beer became known as Yin with its brother Yang starting to take shape quite recently. I also started referring to the Tao of Fermentation as the Fellowship of Tao Brewers. Since putting the beer into the barrel in mid January (13.13.13 if you recall ;) ) I'd made it a point to taste it once a month to see how it was going.  In the May time frame I felt it was getting pretty close to being ready and my June I was convinced of it so we started talking about ways to get it out of the barrel.

One of the beers I opened

It was decided that we would set the date for exaction to occur at our August meet up.  Shawn had a long rod of stainless steal which he fashioned into a racking cane and Daniel procured a self priming pump.

In addition to collecting the beer I thought it would be fun to watch Beer Hunter the Movie while drinking some beer off of Shawn's beer engine in honor of Michael Jackson in addition to opening some Michael Jackson worthy beers.  Unfortunately the draining of the barrel, drinking of beer and general comradery was too load to really hear the movie so I'll have to check it out at a later time.

The beer itself came out really well and measured 1.014 FG. When you consider the overall group average gravity of was right around 1.095 SG we're looking at an ABV of 10.76% with an apparent attenuation of 83.82%, pretty outstanding.  The flavor was fantastic and we noticed there was some stratification that the different levels with the first pull being very different from the last pull.  

I ended up with three vessels pulled from the around the beginning, middle and end totaling around 11 gallons. I believe the extra couple of gallons kegged is really Shawn's as he only brought a single keg with him so I prepped a keg for him that was filled with the last couple of gallons.

The barrel crew and the fruit of our labor

Instead of leaving the beer how it is I plan on dividing what I have into three beers.  The batch I already have kegged I'll leave as is and rotate in as a spot on the crate becomes available. The 4.5 gallons I collected in a carboy I'm adding three vanilla beans to and will let it sit for a couple of months.  To the last keg I am also adding a vanilla bean and half a cinnamon stick, once this is done I planning on BeerGunning it to share with Shawn.

I'd like to see what everyone does in the next few months and try to organize a tasting where we can taste the different directions everyone went.  I'm also interested in see if a grand cru blend can be created.  

From here the barrel needs to be cleaned, sanitized and sealed until the next round.  In my head I'm torn between an imperial oatmeal stout (Imperial Rhino) or an old ale.   

Till then στην υγειά σας

-SNB

Sour Citra Saison - Same Grain Same Style Different Brewers No.1

The OG beer signal 

A few months back Steve J and Daniel F came up with the idea for "a different kind of 'collaboration'". One that involved brewing the same style of beer and the same grist percentages.  After that, every other aspect (gravity, hops, yeast/bugs, spices etc) was up each brewer. The style for what I am assuming/hoping will be the first of many rounds was determined to saisons. The grist percentages were set at 86% Belgian Pilsner, 11% Spelt and 3% Rye As I've mentioned before saisons aren't my favorite style as they tend to have a wide range of flavor and aroma profiles considered to be "in style" however certain saisons, such as Fifth Element from Squatters, are among my favorite all time beers.

I knew right away that I wanted to team up with Shawn O on this one.  My idea for how I wanted to collaborate with Shawn was pretty simple, 1 mash and 2 kettles.  Basically do the mash for around 11 gallons of wort production and split it into two kettles.  This would allow each of us total control on hops, spices etc.   Initially I figured that he would brew a clean to version while I would sour it in some way.  It quickly became apparent that he also wanted to play around with some bugs, which I was in no way surprised by.  

After a couple of weeks of swapping ideas between each other over various conversations, calls, texts and emails we settled on plan of attack.  Each of us would do our own sour starter which we would combine and add to the mash when we got together.  I would take 6 gallons of wort and add 1.5 gallons of RO with a 60 minute boil targeting a 1.048 SG. Shawn would take the balance adding slightly more RO and do a 90 minute boil looking have 1.037/8 SG.

If you are going to brew a sour saison...

To prep for brewday I made a gallon starter with pilsner DME which I split between two vessels.  The first vessel was a quart mason jar with a half a cup of raw unmilled grain. This became my sour starter as lactobacillus is naturally present on the hulls of grain.  I tried my best to keep it at 120°F using an old Polystat Constant Temperature Circular I had rescued from the trash at work.  Unfortunately the reason it was tossed was that it couldn't cool, which at the time I wasn't concerned about, however as I learned this meant that it would continue to drift up over time.  I was able to remedy this by setting an upper limit which shut it off if it was above, this was accompanied however with a nice alarm. The remaining gallon became the start for an old pitch of ECY04 Brett Blend #1

ECY04 Brett Blend #1 - Three individual Brettanomyces isolates from lambic producers combined to give an aggressive brett presence in any beer. Vigorous, funky, and acid-tolerant, the blend can be added at any stage of fermentation and is excellent for priming or re-yeasting. Contains B. anomala, B. clausenii and B. anomulus

A new saison that I approve of

For the hops I decided I wanted a BIG Citra presence so I planned to hop burst with a good amount of at 20 and 0 while keeping the IBUs contrained (more pale ale level than IPA).  For the bittering hop I decided to go with some Cascade given it's dual use potential.

Brewday itself was a blast.  I headed over very early to find the mash water almost at temp and Shawn waiting for me to mill.  After getting everything set to go we tasted and tested our sour starters.  Both had a pleasant sour bite and combined for a 3.63 pH so we tossed the liquid into the mash.  My brother Ryan (who recently moved to Cali from MN) soon arrived to hangout and help me brew.

In the end we both beat our target gravity with me coming in at 1.051.  It was great to brew with Shawn again as every time I do I learn so much.  The beer is currently fermenting in a poor-man fridge and smells absolutely incredible, I can't wait!

Santé 

-SNB

Dueling Brews

My girls all hanging together

On the Fourth of July, Bonnie and I celebrated the birth of our homeland by brewing two beer side by side... at the same time!  This momentous event was made possible by the generous trade of a pretty full tank of propane for some future beers by my buddy Ryan O! I have to tell you it was great to be able to do and nice to know have a backup tank for normal brewdays.

For her beer Bonnie went with the Petite Saison d'Ete kit from Northern Brewer that'd we'd picked up during the Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. She followed the recipe pretty straight forward but instead of brewing it with the recommended yeast we instead tossed it on the very thin yeast cake from Weiss the Hell Not.  This should give it a bready slightly sour character which will be further refined by aging it on some canned raspberries.  The name given to this beer therefore will be Petite Framboise d'Ete and it should be ready by the fall.

For my beer I decided to take the Dead Ringer kit that came in the promotion and turn it into an IPL using washed yeast from Bonnie's latest batch of Costa del Sol.  I think it's pretty cool that to ferment our beers this round we used the yeast (and bugs) harvested from each other's previous batches. The Dead Ringer kit is essentially a pretty spot on clone of Bell's Two Hearted which is a highly rated all Centennial IPA.  It also happens to be the beer that my brother Ryan B bought for Darkness Day and shared with whomever in line wanted some.  Once it is done I plan on washing the yeast once more for a second run at Bitter Sweet Symphony.

That's it, nice, short and straight forward, probably a sign of posts to come.  Recipes below

Enjoy,

-SNB

Pilgrimage for the Tao Brewers Fellowship

The pilgrims

I mentioned in my post on Societe Brewing that the Tao Fellowship (one of the many brewing groups I'm in) was planning a pilgrimage down to see them.  A couple of weekends ago a group of us (Steve C, Steve S, Greg N, Daniel F and myself) got together and headed south in a rented mini van (complete with a free screw in a tire).  Our journey south of the Orange Curtain took us to several destinations, some good, some bad and some outstanding.

We met up at the historic home of Greg Nagel (world renown beer blogger) to assemble and try a few beers.  Once Daniel and his lovely wife HsiHou (who had graciously volunteered to be our DD) arrived we loaded into our "screwed" minivan and took off to sit in traffic for nearly three hours.

Pizza Port Bressi Ranch

Our first stop of the day was the brand new Pizza Port Bressi Ranch location which sometime this year will become their production location canning Pizza Port beers.  Hopefully one of the first through will be Poor Man's IPA but I highly doubt it.  It was a gorgeous and shiny facility, I want to say that they were still in the middle of a soft opening as I'd not seen any official grand opening announcement.  The only reason I knew it was open was cyber-stalking some of my beer buddies on Untappd.

I got two beers while I was there and split a pizza with Greg.  The first beer I had was El Toronado an IPA they brewed up for the San Diego location's 5th anniversary.  Overall it was a solid IPA loaded with pine and citrus aromas and a clean bitter taste.  The next beer up was a half pint of RuinTen from Stone.  I really enjoyed Ruination Tenth Anniversary last year, I even split a bottle with Bonnie to celebrate our Tenth Wedding Anniversary.  I therefore wanted to give RuinTen a try, however tracking down a bottle was proving tough so I was jazzed to find it on draft. Another top shelf dank IPA with even more resiny pine and citrus resin.  The pizza I paired the beers with was a brilliant jalapeno and pineapple that Greg suggested.

After filling up on pizza and beer we set out for our next destination. 

White Labs Tasting Room

I've been using White Labs yeast almost exclusively for the last couple of years and enjoyed what I've read in the Yeast book co-authored by Chris White.  I'd also noticed on their site for their new tasting room that they were offering pours of beers brewed with different yeasts.  I thought that was a great way to really understand the effect yeast could have on a beer.  It was therefore on my recommendation that a group of homebrewers stop by... unfortunately nothing that I drank there lived up to the promise of the concept.  

The biggest problem was the quality of the base beers did little to highlight any noticeable differences produced by the different yeast strains.  Overall it tasted like mediocre homebrew that was fermented without temperature control or water profile adjustments.  While I was glad to have gone it's definitely not a place I can recommend and if I was to do the trip again I've opt to go to AleSmith or Ballast Point instead.  

Leaving disappointed we headed to our next and final destination... 

Societe Brewing Co

There's not much more to say on Societe outside of my previous post but once again Societe proved to be one of the highlights of our journey.  I enjoyed a glass of the latest Bachelor, which is their series of single hopped IPAs this one with Mosaic hops. I also had half pours of Pupil, Apprentice and the Widow and got two fills to send to my Minnesota buddies.

Overall it was a great trip and I would love to do it again soon.

Skål

- SNB

Costa del Sol b4

To say that Bonnie's batch of Costa del Sol hit it out of the park would be an understatement.  After few weeks on tap it hit a point of maturation that just made the hops sing!  From that point on people couldn't get enough of it.  It became on of those beers at a tasting that people would appear with a full glass of it in loo of a small taste.  I myself helped myself to plenty of weeknight pints based largely on it's low abv however the good times were not to last as just like all great beers that you only have 5 gallons it wasn't long till you poured air...  Fortunately we have the ability to make it again and set out to do just that over the weekend.

The only change in the recipe was changing the first wort hop (and primary bittering) from Centennial to Simcoe solely because I "thought" we still had enough however when I went through my bags of hop bits in the freezer Centennial was nowhere to be found.  I'm interested what effect, if any, this change will have.

We decided to run a double brewday with me brewing up Weiss the Hell Not.  So as with her the previous batch, I left her mostly on her own.  After I set everything up, I answered only a few questions here and there before heading to the gym.  I returned at the very start of her boil to see she still had things well at hand.  Since we only had one propane tank I transferred 34 to a keg (see the pictures in Weiss the Hell Not)  while I waited.

Now comes the hardest part, waiting the required 6-8 weeks till I can drink it again. For her next batch we bought the Petite Saison d'Ete kit along with some others during Northern Brewer's Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. We are thinking of taking the kit and tossing it on the yeast and bugs from Weiss the Hell Not along with some raspberry puree.  It should be fun.

Cheers

-SNB 

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

Firestone Walker Invitation Beer Festival 2013 #FWIBF

Hanging out with my favorite brewer Todd Haug of Surly

I've been to a bunch of beer related festivals over the years and my hands down favorite is the Firestone Walker Invitation Beer Festival held annually in Paso Robles.  This is actually the first year I could use the word annually in the correct context as last weekend happened to be it's second annual.  It really is a fantastic fest both in concept and in execution with one of the greatest selection of breweries I've ever seen at a fest.  The basic concept is that Matt Brynildson, Firestone Walker's head brewer, reached out to brewers he knows and respects from across the country and invited them to participate by bringing a minimum of two beers, something rare and something session (low abv generally below 4%).  Also included with the ticket is a great selection of food offerings

For this year I was joined by my stepfather Hugh Hamm and my good friend Daniel Fernandez. Once inside we headed straight to Surly were I had hoped to bump into Todd and Linda Haug however they we're out and about doing their own exploring. While I was enjoying my first beer, Schadenfreude (a dark lager and one of the few Surly beer's that I'd never had) the OC's premier beer blogger Greg Nagel of the OC Beer Blog found us.  The four of us then set out to explore the tremendous offerings that had been selected.

My beer of the day
Brandy Barrel Hunahpu

The first time I lost Hugh was when I stopped by to talk to Linda at the Surly booth.  While I was catching up she asked if I had ever met Mikkel Borg Bjergsø (Mikkeller) and Tore Gynther (To Øl), when I said no she asked if I wanted to. I've had a lot of really cool experiences over the years but having Linda introduce me to Mikkel and Tore was pretty damn awesome.  To it top off Mikkel himself grabbed me a glass of Lil' Mikkel and let me have my picture taken with him.  He also took a picture of me with Linda.

After I found Hugh we headed over to listen to Todd's Behind The Beer Session hosted by the Brewing Network. Ok I'll admit it, with Surly being one of my favorite breweries Surly, while not the main focus, was a big part of this years fest for me. Also, I did get to ask Todd a brewing related "homebrewer nerd" question on the difference between mash hoping and first wort hoping which I had been interested in for some time.  You can see the whole interview here with my question coming in at the 14:08 mark.

For the rest of the day we worked our way around the fest trying tons for great beers and food.  I lost Hugh again when he took off to use the restroom while I manned the abandoned Dogfish Head booth which I used to serve up "barrel aged high fives".  Once I found him we tracked down Greg and Daniel to finish the fest.  We ended up hanging out in the back with Linda and Todd culminating with me talking to Gabe and Julian of Beachwood BBQ & Brewing.  I'm trying to get Julian to be a part of QuadFest 2013 as his  Jean-Quad Van Damme is a nice clean example of the style.

Greg Nagel of the OC Beer Blog on assignment

It should come as no surprise by now that one of the highlights for me was getting to visit and hang out with my friends from Surly Brewing.  I love that in true Surly fashion they brought two of the lower abv beers to the fest; Bitter Brewer (a great american style bitter) and Schadenfreude.  Hopefully next year they'll pull out some Surly Mild and some Bender variants, who knows maybe even some Darkness? On the beer side, my favorite of the day was Brandy Barrel Hunahpu.  There was some much wonderful stuff going on in it with tons of vanilla and cinnamon mixing in and out with the brandy and the wood aromas, truly a wonderful beer. The main highlight however was bumping into and hanging out with friends within the community some of which were in from out of state.  There are two breweries I would love it see invited next year, Squatter's and Noble. I think they would be a prefect fit and I might even put up a post in the future outlining why.

I really can't wait for next year!

Cheers

-SNB