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Double Grain-Brew

webmaster — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:12:11 +0000

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been making a conscious effort to branch out and brew some less traditional beers lately. This pair of porters is a good example. The base recipe is the same for both, but one has a substantial portion (30%) of the grist replaced with Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt, and the other was aged on chipotle peppers post-fermentation.

For starters, a double brew session without a shared mash and/or boil makes for a long day. I mashed in the first beer right at sunrise (9:30 AM) and wasn’t finished cleaning until after 6 PM. So if I try that again it will be on a much warmer day.

I bet chipotle vodka isn't half bad.

Anyway, on to the beers. They’re both good. Unfortunately, the cherrywood malt is quite a bit milder than its beechwood cousin, so while the balance was superb to begin with, after two months it’s fallen off to the point that it’s barely noticeable. In a beer with as much going on as this, I think a better guideline might be around 50% with a short aging period to allow for mellowing of the phenols, or 30-40% in a beer that’s destined to be drunk more quickly. I’m going to be brewing a lager using my remaining store of this malt, and it will be interesting to see how it holds up in a more straightforward grain bill.

I’m a bit happier with the chipotle porter, although it too has become a bit less balanced with age. In this case, the roasted malt character of the base beer has fallen off, increasing the perceived piquancy over time. On that subject, I should probably point out that I have a capsaicin tolerance higher than most, and also have the smoked porter available for blending. While 2.0 oz of peppers worked well for me, you might want to use less. On the other hand, the Scoville rating of chipotles varies widely, so comparisons from one lot to the next are more or less irrelevant. As when cooking with chiles, experience should be your guide.

The peppers should be naturally abiotic, and I imagine that the smoking only helps in that regard. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I coarsely chopped the chipotles and steeped them in just enough vodka to cover them. After a few days I dumped the whole mess into the fermenter, just about the time fermentation was winding down, and left them in contact with the beer for a week. In other words, I “dry-peppered” the beer. I don’t have a baseline for comparison, but the finished beer does have a wonderful chipotle aroma, so I’ll probably stick with this technique going forward.

Smoke in the Porter recipe (PDF)
Fire on the Side recipe (PDF)

Happy Holidays!

webmaster — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:33:28 +0000

I hope everyone’s trans-solstice festival period is going well. As this will be my first Xmas alone and I’m on a budget, I had to get creative with my decorations.

Fall Classic Tasting Notes

webmaster — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:52:02 +0000

Now that the holiday season is in full swing, I’m finally getting around to posting some tasting notes for the Fall Classic.

The visual appearance is really great. Deep amber with brilliant clarity, despite all the pumpkin in the mash, and an off-white head with excellent retention and lacing. The aroma is predominately of the spices, with some nice bready and toasty notes as well, although there is a hint of a green or vegetal character. I’d had the beer several times before I noticed it, but now that I know it’s there it’s frustrating. If I had to guess, I’d say you could reduce the amount of pumpkin used to eliminate the aroma impact.

The flavor is nearly perfect, if I do say so myself. The initial impression is of rich malt that manages not to be sweet, not unlike a good doppelbock. The home-toasted malt is clearly adding quite a bit of flavor. Through the middle of the palate and into the aftertaste, the spices really come into their own. The finish has a dry, graham-cracker crispness and just a hint of alcohol heat, and the spices linger, which makes each sip a lengthy and satisfying experience.

I think the overall quantity of spices is just right, although you might have to adjust the ratios to suit your own preferences. If anything, the malt complexity may be a bit overdone. I have no trouble finishing a couple pints, but that’s about it. Which is OK, because this beer is pretty much a meal in a glass. The only foods it would really pair well with would be pumpkin pie and other spiced desserts.

Does it taste like a piece of pumpkin pie? Not really. There’s next to no sugar in it, after all. Is it the best pumpkin-spice beer I’ve ever had? Yes, and by a pretty wide margin. I’ve tried every commercial example I could find (you know, for research) and the one that comes closest is Elysian Night Owl.

Ovens and Spices and Squash, Oh My!

webmaster — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:19:13 +0000

Frequent visitors will probably have noticed that I tend to be a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to beer recipes. After all, brewers are discovering new things to do with malts, hops, water, and yeast all the time. That approach does get a bit dull after a while though – especially when one starts brewing the same recipes 2-3 times/week. That’s probably a lot of the reason why I’m going to be brewing some wild and crazy beers over the next few weeks. That, and to build up some inventory before winter sets in.

First up is a “pumpkin pie” ale. The base beer is pretty straightforward, being more or less the grain bill from my American Amber, but with a single hop addition for bittering. The twists come from the addition of 58 oz (23% of the grist by weight) of canned pumpkin in the mash, and traditional holiday spices at flameout:

10 g grated ginger root
10 g whole cloves
5 g whole stick cinnamon
5 g coarsely crushed nutmeg

In addition to the pumpkin and spices, I wanted to further enhance the impression of pumpkin pie by giving the beer a pie-crust, graham-cracker finish. Biscuit malt would fit the bill perfectly, but getting some presented a problem. I do have a brand-spanking new “local” homebrew shop in Durango, but I wasn’t able to get there before brewday. The only solution was to try to make my own biscuit malt. Following Randy Mosher’s guidelines from Radical Brewing, I spread a pound of pale malt out on a tray and toasted it at 300°F. The entire house was immediately filled with the delightful aroma of non-enzymatic browning, progressing from sweet to bready to toasty to (unexpectedly) peanut butter. After 27 minutes the malt began to smell a little carbonized, so I took it out and left it spread out on the tray overnight. (Mosher mentions that some of the more odious aromas generated by the roasting process should be allowed to dissipate.) The finished product had a very nice biscuit character, although it may have been a little more “husky” than a commercial biscuit malt. Without tasting them side by side, it’s hard to say. The color did end up right where I wanted it at about 20 SRM according to the ol’ eyeball test.

Cargill Special Pale before and after toasting. SRM guide added digitally.

The brewday went off without a hitch. With such a high proportion of pumpkin in the mash, I was halfway expecting a stuck sparge or two, but my MLT handled it admirably. I did incorporate a long protein rest in order to ensure the pumpkin was fully converted, and ran off the wort a little more slowly than usual, just in case. It’s worth noting that according to the nutrition label on the cans, the pumpkin should have added ~0.8°P to the beer’s OG. BeerTools’ efficiency calculation doesn’t take that into account, hence the unusually high “mash efficiency” seen in the recipe.

Fall Classic recipe (PDF)

Reverse Mashing 2

webmaster — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:28:45 +0000

Background

Last time I toyed with the idea of “reverse mashing”, I found that an unheated kitchen isn’t a great place to do mashing experiments in the winter. Fortunately, I have a new toy available in the form of an oven with a “Warm” (170°F – 77°C) setting, and so I was able to perform two additional mashes utilizing longer rests.

Experimental Setup

For details on how the experiment was conducted, refer to the first post on the subject. Once again, the reverse mash was performed first, to determine the overall length of both mashes. Total time was 100 minutes, and the temperature profiles for all four mashes are shown below.

All other variables were kept constant between the two sets of mashes, with the exceptions of size and fermentation temperature. Since I needed starter wort for some upcoming brewing, I doubled the size of the mashes, to 1000 g of grain each. Fermentation took place in my new fermentation chamber, with the air temperature set for 20°C ± 1°C. The test worts were allowed to ferment for six days, then rested for one day at 8°C before gravity readings were taken.

Results

The reverse mash fermented from 12.0°P to 1.0093 SG, and the control from 12.4°P to 1.0068. As expected, the conventional step mash exhibited both higher efficiency and higher attenuation than the reverse mash. While the efficiency values for both new mashes are significantly improved, however, the attenuation values are similar. While increasing mash efficiency is desirable in most situations, home brewers may well find that a very short step mash provides fermentability on par with a more conventional longer mash, and that the time savings outweigh their comparatively modest financial investment. In a commercial brewing setting, however, the traditional lengthy mash with α- and β-amylase rests is clearly the better option.

Pass Creek Trail

webmaster — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:14:28 +0000

Thursday, I was able to get away from the brewery a little early, so I finally managed to get in a hike I’ve been trying to do all summer. Pass Creek Trail runs from Coal Bank Pass up to join the Colorado Trail. From the junction, there’s a quick but treacherous spur that runs most of the way up Engineer Mountain. A trail guide will probably rate the trail “Moderate-Difficult” or somesuch, but don’t be fooled – excepting the last quarter-mile, the trail is wide, well-maintained, and only a gradual (albeit continuous) climb. And compared to Rysy, which will probably forever be my benchmark for difficult hikes, even the summit is a walk in the park.

The peak itself was probably blocking a few satellites once I got near the top. While the trailhead elevation is two feet off of the published value, a look at the topo map confirms that I ran out of handholds at roughly 12,500 ft, about 500 ft below the summit. Getting accurate and timely elevation fixes continues to be a problem. I don’t know if that’s a function of the iPhone GPS chipset, the software, or both.

Name: Pass Creek Trail
Date: Aug 18, 2011 5:08 pm
Map: View on Map
Distance: 3.29 miles
Elapsed Time: 2:13:11
Avg Speed: 1.5 mph
Max Speed: 7.0 mph
Avg Pace: 40′ 26″ per mile
Min Altitude: 10,638 ft
Max Altitude: 11,864 ft

Burning Beers

webmaster — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:26:13 +0000

Oh yeah, good stuff. Especially in cans. Labels were ordered today!

Practically a Mini-Mash

webmaster — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:46:50 +0000

At 335 pounds, Tuesday’s grain bill (for our next seasonal, a Smoked Vienna Lager) was the smallest I’ve done yet. It’s remarkable how much more smoothly the brew day goes when you only have two-thirds the usual amount of grist to deal with…

Until the backflow valve on a sump pump broke and I spent half an hour up to my shoulders in sewage, trying to figure out what was wrong, that is.

They still weigh 180 lb apiece though.

Ah, Spring

webmaster — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:36:38 +0000

Why, what’s your weather like?

Actually, once the fog burns off this will probably be a really good day to ride the train. Indoor car, though.

Zymurgy

webmaster — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:46:17 +0000

If you don’t have a subscription, you might want to pick up the May/June issue, which should be hitting newsstands right about now. And maybe let them know which article interested you?

How weird is it that I'm considering framing this?