Belgian Strong Dark - The 8-Ball

The last time I posted, I talked about adding sugar later in the fermentation, as opposed to at the end of the boil so as to allow for the yeast to eat all of the simpler sugars (matlose?) before they got to their dessert of the sucrose. You know how lazy you get after eating dessert. Yeast are even simpler creatures.

As I also stated in that article, I performed open fermentation on this beer, another technique that I had yet to try. This is where you leave the lid off the bucket after you add the yeast. Keep animals and small children away, and you should be all right.

Here's the recipe:

8-Ball

6 gallon batch

OG: 1.078

SRM: 15.8

IBU: 26.1

12.0 lbs Pilsner Malt

2.0 lbs CaraMunich Malt

2.0 lbs Demerara sugar (I got mine at a local grocery)

0.5 lbs Corn sugar

1.0 oz Tradition (6.2%AA) @ 60 min.

0.5 oz Hersbrucker (3.3% AA) @ 30 min.

0.5 oz Hersbrucher (3.3% AA) @ 5 min.

Wyeast 1762 - Belgian Abbey II - 2 quart yeast starter

When I got the ingredients, I didn't look closely at the hops. I had the ounce of Hersbrucker, but instead of Tradition hops, Midwest Supplies sent me Tettnanger. These had a lower alpha acid %, and probably would've been all right, but I had a lot of Perle hops left over, and I thought their alpha acid % (8.2%) would've served this better, so I adjusted it to 0.75 oz of Perle instead. It turned out well.

Since I was using Pilsner malt, I also opted for a 90 minute boil. In case you haven't seen it a million times already, this is supposed to reduce the dimethyl sulfide (which can impart a "corny" taste to your beer). I haven't been brave enough to experiment with this.

The OG without the sugar was 1.058. A 2-quart yeast starter was therefore a good size starter for this beer.

After 2 days of open fermentation, I put 2 quarts of water in a pan, added all the sugar, brought it to a boil for 5 minutes, chilled it to about 70 degrees F, and added it to the fermentation bucket, and put the lid on. In about half an hour, the ferment lock was popping like a machine gun.

After 5 days of fermentation, the lock showed no signs of fermentation. Usually, you can watch the lock for 2 minutes and see a bubble, but this was DEAD. I still let it stay in the primary bucket for 2 weeks. I checked the gravity (1.008) and then transferred it to secondary. Then I lagered it for 2 weeks and bottled with 5 oz of corn sugar.

The beer has been in the bottle almost 6 months now. It has finally become very good. When I tried it during the first few months, there wasn't much of a scent on it. Now, you can smell the esters. At 25 IBU, there isn't a lot of hop bite, what shines through is a raisiny malt profile with a caramel backbone.

At 9.2% ABV, this one should've been aged at a minimum this long before opening. That's my opinion. Bigger beers need to age so they can actually become good.

I will likely make this again, but I think I will leave it sit in the bottles for a good 8 months before trying it.

A New Trick to Adding Sugar

This summer I was listening to a Jamil Zainasheff podcast about making Tripel beers, and he was asked if he’d ever had a really good, homebrewed Tripel. He stated that he hadn’t, saying that many of them were too sweet, and even cloying. He suggested that since Tripels usually have a large amount of sugar as part of the recipe bill, that brewers who wanted the beer to finish dry should add the sugar later in the fermentation process, rather than during the boil. This would require the yeast to get all the maltose provided by the malt BEFORE the yeast would convert the easier sucrose. Given the choice of the two, the yeast would spend all of their energy working on the sucrose first and THEN go after the maltose.

I have only made one Tripel, and I found that my beer did not finish as low as I wanted it to. While 1.014 was decent finishing gravity, or so I thought, I still found the beer to be a little more sweet than other Tripels I liked (not to mention the fact that I used a half pound of Crystal 20º L, which I thought would be cool, but was totally unnecessary).

A friend and I wanted to brew a beer together, and he suggested looking at Northern Brewer’s kit called The Number 8. I’m not sure if this kit was patterned after a particular commercial beer (maybe the Rochefort 8?), but it appears to be a Belgian dark strong. I made some small changes to the recipe and named this beer “Magic Eightball” and then later just “8*Ball”. I will cover this beer in another post.

I decided to try two new techniques with this beer. The first was to open ferment it for 48 hours. I was inspired by a Brewing TV episode on this subject. While I think that Dawson let his wheat beer go for more like 72 hours, I was nervous about it. I roused the yeast after about 12 hours, and it had a nice kreuzen going (big clouds of yeasty foam on top), and I did this about every 12 hours, until I was freaked out enough to boil the two and a half pounds of sugar in 2 quarts of water, chill it, and then dump it into the fermenter and pop the lid on it. Within a half hour, the 3-piece ferment lock was popping like a machine gun.

That beer finished at 1.008. Way better than I could have hoped.

For my birthday, my brewing buddy, John, bought me the ingredients for Maison, my Saison recipe. Again, this beer included a pound of Demerara sugar, so I boiled it in a quart of water and added it to the beer after 48 hours of open fermentation. Again, it finished lower than any other beer I brewed, this time at 1.006.

There may be other things at play here with me adding the sugar late. All I know is that both of these beers taste great, and I’ll be discussing them soon in further detail.

Bulldog ESB

When I made the Red Rooster for a second time, I had 3 ounces of hops left over from a half pound of Willamette pellets that I bought from Midwest Supplies. I think it was for $6, which is a great deal!

I thought about what kind of style of beer I could make with 3 ounces of Willamette, since the Rooster was going to take up 5 ounces. For some reason, I was wanting to have a Goose Island Honker's Ale. I like using Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles as a place to start, so I looked up the chapter on Extra Special Bitters. I believe I used the malt bill for the most part to make up what would become the Bulldog ESB.

I've seen that Willamette are good substitute hops for English Fuggle hops. However, the recipe did not call for Fuggles, but for Goldings. I just decided to wing it because I had Willamette.

I was also wanting to have a beer with a big biscuity-malt taste, so I opted to use all Marris Otter as the base malt. In the end, I had also just harvested my backyard hops. The trellis fell in June, so I had to rebuild it, but I didn't take the time to sort through the bines to divide the hops into respective bags. They all went in the same bag; The Magnum, the Zeus, and the Cascade. I christened them 131 Westchester hops and used 2 ounces to dry-hop the beer as an afterthought.

Bulldog ESB

OG: 1.061

SRM: 10.9

IBU: 40.7

5.4% ABV

10.0 lb Marris Otter

1.0 lb Victory Malt

0.25 lb Crystal 120*L

0.50 lb Crystal 20*L

2.0 oz Willamette @ 60 min

1.0 oz Willamette @ 0 min

2.0 oz 131 Westchester hops (55% Zeus, 44% Magnum, 1% Cascade) Dry Hop

Wyeast London ESB 1968

Danstar Llallemand Nottingham dry yeast 11 gram

A note on the yeast: I had planned to make a starter, but didn't. I figured the gravity was low enough that I could just pitch from the package, and the Wyeast smack pack blew up big, and it did it quickly. However, after 36 hours, I opened the bucket and there was no Kreuzen. I ended up pitching a pack of Nottingham I had ordered extra.

The beer turned out great - it has cleared, and has an orange hue. The nose is of the Zeus hops, and has a nice Willamette bite. As an "afterthought" beer, it has turned out to be quite a nice ale. I have added it to my list of annual beers to make.

Red Rooster Ale - This Time with Rye

I made the Red Rooster ale the first time back in November of 2009 and wrote about it here in January. I enjoyed it so much that I brewed it again in early October.

In early March, I got to be part of a surprise party in Kentucky for a friend I had not seen since I lived in Germany in the 80s. I also got to hang out with a few of my friends from that time in my life that I had not seen since. It had been 24 years since I'd seen most of them. I took a few of my beers down there, including the original Red Rooster.

I was surprised how my friends enjoyed this simple beer. The chocolate rye imparts a slight mocha aroma and flavor in conjunction with the Willamette hops. I get a similar result when I taste Sierra Nevada's Porter, but the rooster is only red, not dark like a Porter.

I don't know when the last of these was drank, but since that time, I was thinking about how I could improve upon this recipe. I decided to substitute 2 lbs of rye malt in place of 2 lbs of 2-row malt, and dry hop with an extra ounce of Willamette. The recipe looks like this:

Red Rooster Ale

5.5-gallon batch

OG: 1.063

28.8 IBU

SRM: 13.8

10.0 lb 2-Row Pale Malt

2.0 lb Rye Malt

0.5 lb Caramunich II

0.33 lb CaraWheat

0.33 lb Chocolate Rye

1.50 oz Willamette (4.5%AA) @ 60 min.

1.00 oz Willamette (4.5%AA) @ 30 min.

1.00 oz Willamette (4.5%AA) @ 0 min.

1.50 oz Willamette (4.5%AA) Dry Hop 5 days prior to bottling

Danstar-Lallemand Nottingham dry yeast, 11 grams

While I bottled the last batch, I had a kegging system set up this time around. I wasn't able to do a side-by-side comparisson, but from memory, I know that 1) I made this one stronger, since the original had a target OG of 1.046, but it ended up 1.041. In that regard, this one ended up at 1.055, so it went from 3.8%ABV to 5.93% ABV (I was hoping for around 6%). The rye gives it a bit more of a spicy taste. Unfortunately, the beer is kind of cloudy. It tastes great. It's got the same kind of mouthfeel, like it's begging for a nitrogen tap, it's creamy, and feels like a thin film of foam is left on the roof of your mouth. The aroma is kind of woody and smells of malt. It doesn't have a big hop nose like American IPAs.

Once again, I have to thank Dawson over at Northern Brewer for his Dawson's Multi-Grain Red ale. It was the inspiration for me to brew this red ale, which is more like a reddish-brown.

Bad Moon Weizenbock

I can't remember where I first read about the style of Weizenbock. I do know that I was intrigued enough that in 2007, my first year of brewing, I threw together a recipe. After some modifications this year, I brewed one.

Weizenbock is actually a style of bock beer you can make without lagering. Bocks are usually brewed with lager yeast. A wheat beer yeast (preferably one of the German varieties for brewing weizen beers) is all that is needed for this style.

As far as I know, the best example of this style comes from the Schneider brewery in Germany; the Aventinus weizenbock. I've had this a couple times. I liked it, but my favorite one was probably Heavy Seas Hang Ten. Clocking in at 10%, it's probably a bit bigger than your standard style, but I remembered that being a really good beer, and quite possibly, that's what caused me to research the style and take a stab at the recipe I mentioned above.

As a consolation prize for entering a brewing contest earlier this year, I ended up getting back, along with my results, a combined 3 packs of the Munich Dry Yeast. At first, I thought, "Awesome! A new kind of dry lager yeast!" Upon further research, I discovered that it was actually a dry weizen-style kind of yeast.

I'm not a big fan of weizen or "wheat" beers. I don't mind a couple here or there, but to brew 5 gallons of wheat beer isn't very likely for me. They're good, and in fact, I thought it might have been nice to have some wheat beer this summer, but for the most part, they don't fall into my top 10 lists of beers I want to make, unless, of course, you're talking about cloning Gumballhead.

I then remembered the Bad Moon Weizenbock recipe I had crafted. Was that a lager or could I ferment that with the dry yeast I had?

I checked the Advantageous Weizenbock kit that Northern Brewer sells, and right there it was as the dry yeast option: Munich dry yeast.

So I decided that I would use two of the packs of yeast for this beer, and then use the third to brew some kind of Dunkelweizen later. Then I found my dad wanted to make a hefeweizen, so I figure I'll just give the yeast to him.

Another reference I check is Jamil Zainasheff's and John Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles book. In their description of making weizenbock, they state that you can't brew this beer using only Munich and Wheat Malts. Unfortunately, when I read this, I already had my ingredients ready to go the next day. So I decided to not worry about it. Weeks later, I'm enjoying this beer. It tastes great, very much like a bock beer, without all the details involved with making a lager yeast starter or going through the long lagering process.

Bad Moon Weizenbock

6 gallons

OG: 1.086 (20.64)

SRM: 15.4

IBU: 28.3

Boil time: 60 minutes

9.0 lbs Red Wheat

5.0 lbs Light Munich Malt (10*L)

4.0 lbs Dark Munich Malt (12*L)

0.5 lbs Special B Malt

Hops

1.0 oz Perle (7.5%AA) First Wort

2.0 oz Crystal (4.1%AA) 15 min.

1.0 oz Crystal (4.1%AA) Dry Hop

Danstar Munich yeast (2 packs sprinkled onto wort)

Fermented at 68*F

DFK Pils

There is knowledge in the homebrew community, mind you have to search for it or stumble onto it, but it exists, that if you want to make a true Czech Pilsener beer, that you have to brew it using a decoction mash.

It's really a simple recipe; Pilsener malt, Czech Saaz hops, and your choice of Czech lager yeast. I know of three right off the top of my head, and I'm pretty sure that both Wyeast and White Labs make versions of the Budvar (original Budweiser), Pilsen (used for Pilsener Urquell) and Bohemian lager yeasts.

In the last quarter of 2009, Wyeast released the Staro-Prague (Wyeast 2782-PC) yeast. Northern Brewer also made a simple kit available for use of this yeast. If I'm not mistaken, it was called Farley's Svetle-Pivo (which translates from Slavic to "Farley's Light Beer") and for a 5-gallon recipe, was calling for 10 pounds of Pilsener malt, 5 ounces of Czech Saaz hops, and the aforementioned yeast. Also, it suggested a triple-decoction mash.

For the most part, when you do an all-grain homebrew, you get your grain. It's crushed. Then you get your water hot so that you can put your grain in it, and the grain sits at a temperature between 149*F and 156*F for at least an hour. Then you sparge the grain with hot water (around 180*F) until you get enough to boil down so that when all is said and done, you have 5 gallons of beer (the usual amount, especially if you're serving from 5-gallon kegs).

However, a decoction mash is its own animal. For this beer in particular, I started with 100*F water, put it and the grain into my mash tun for 20 minutes, and then the real fun began: It was early January when I did this, so it was like 19*F in my garage. I had the side door open and the big garage door cracked about a foot and a half to get decent air flow. So I took 2/3rds of the mash (water and grain, mostly grain) and started heating it up on the burner. You have to stir so you don't burn the mash or make the color too dark. I brought the mash to 150*F and then took it off the burner, wrapped it in a wool blanket, and let it set on a crate for 20 minutes. Then I returned the kettle to the burner, and slowly brought it to a boil, let it boil for five minutes, then returned it to the mash tun, bringing the temperature to 126*F in the mash tun, stirring it in so the temperature was uniform. I let it rest 30 minutes. I did this again, to bring the temperature of the mash to 148*F, and then again to 158*F (I didn't let it sit for 20 minutes either time after this, since it was so close or beyond 150*F anyway, just straight to boil). Finally, I drained about 4 gallons of mostly liquid wort and brought this to a boil to raise the temperature of the mash to 170*F for mash out, where you're looking to get all your "sugar water" to make the beer.

This makes for a long day. Especially in January. But I was hoping for an awesome beer. The great thing about mashing this way is that a lot of the proteins that you get from the boil kettle when you're moving the wort into the fermenter actually stay in the mash tun. The result is a clearer, cleaner beer. For more information on decoction mashing, I suggest you check out Kai's decoction mash videos. A three-part series that you can take seriously because of Kai's accent.

As for how the beer looks, here are a few photos:

This is the beer about 30 seconds after it's been poured. Burnished gold.


As the beer is drank, a swirl of foam remains. Smells of sulfur, fresh-mown grass.



It's unfiltered, so while some beers are clearer, this one is not as clear.

Of course, there is a story behind the name. Even though it's Farley's recipe, I upped it to 12 lbs of Pilsener malt and 6 oz of Czech Saaz hops because I was shooting for 6 gallons. I did the work, I get to name it.

Like I stated above, the beer pours with a decent head. Once the head is gone, lacing continues and the foam swirls on the top. It smells of sulfur and freshly-mown grass. The taste is like biting into a handful of Czech Saaz hops. It's quite wonderful. The Pilsener malt is a great vehicle for the yeast and hops.

While I lived in Germany, I had a good friend named Dan Kendall (DFK). I left during the middle of our Junior year. During the summer, Danny was to leave to go back to the states, where his dad, who was a colonel, was getting a promotion. Danny decided to impress his dad's associates by getting a mohawk. Lately, I've seen mohawks being worn as a fashion statement. But in 1986, I guarantee you, mohawks were considered pretty "1981." Hell, I don't even remember too many people wearing them in 1981. But then, I lived in Oklahoma that year.

The point is, you can take the easy way out on anything if you're smart. But to live, sometimes you need to go through all the steps just to see what it's all about. It's easy to get a mohawk when all the cool kids are doing it.

Danny did this, he cut his hair, and he knew he was causing trouble. He knew he'd take suome lumps. Why did he do it? Because fuck them.

Pitching Rate Experiment

One of the neat things about homebrewing is that you have so many people with different degrees of experience and all kinds of systems. One of the forums I frequent, over at Northern Brewer, will often have someone new to brewing asking a question. A lot of people chime in. The funny thing is, there are usually two camps that end up breaking out on any topic. Glass fermenters versus plastic fermenters is common. One that recently came up involved pitching rates.

As you can see by the introductory question, the starter of this particular thread wants to know that when it comes to pitching liquid yeast into a batch of beer, should he pitch one Activator pack, or two.

Let the shitstorm begin.

Where I stand on this opinion depends on the strength of the beer you are making. My general rule is that anything at a specific gravity of 1.055 or less I would feel comfortable throwing a Wyeast Activator into, preferably fully puffed out after you've smacked it, but still okay if puffed out just a little. Case in point: I made a Patersbier at my dad's place. The Activator pack was 3 months old. I didn't feel real good about the age of the pack, but I trusted the Trappist High Gravity yeast to be a strong one. The gravity of the beer was 1.048, so I wasn't too worried about it. Fermented it for a week at around 63 degrees, finished at 1.011. Done.

At about 1.060, I begin to make yeast starters. So I do believe in starters. In fact, I really wanted the Koelsch I just made to do really well, so I made a quart starter for it, even though the gravity was only 1.050. I moved it to secondary after 13 days. The gravity was at 1.016 at the time, which was kind of surprising; I thought it would finish lower. That starter grew for about 28 hours.

Of course, the most frustrating thing to me about homebrewer opinions, is that at times, people think that their opinion is the only way to do things. That's fine. Believe what you want. But just don't tell me it's the only way to do things. Or tell me I can't do something, especially if I've done it, or if I think it will work. See the Koelsch above as an example. Made with 95% Koelsch malt. Some dude said on the NB forum that I couldn't make a Koelsch with that malt. Guess what? Did it. Guess what else? It tastes fucking great. As my wife put it, "Reminds me of the beers I used to drink in high school." Well, maybe. It is a Koelsch.

So this guy, Sean, decided to do an experiment. As you can see, for the cost of shipping, he sent us 3 beers to try. I got my brewing friend, John, to share the tasting with me. I told him, "YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT THE BEER UNTIL WE'RE DONE!" He looked at me funny.

Here were our comments:

John (A): Cloudy. Not really amber. Hazy. Smells of alcohol. Tastes somewhat fruity, mildly hoppy, tastes of alcohol. Over-attenuated? Slightly astringent. Low mod. body, good carbonation.

Jez (A): Decent foam. Kinda light in color for an amber. Decent lacing. Hazy, smells fruity, apple-juicy, caramel, alcohol. Flavor is a bit appley, hops are nice. Very dry, not much of a malt backbone. Mouthfeel: Back bit of hops. Smooth feel. Appropriate carbonation. Seems like it's underpitched. I seem to have gotten better attenuation from a smack pack.

John (B): Thicker head than A. Same amount of haze as A. Smells slightly estery, flavor is estery as well. Less astringent than A. Is this under-pitched?

Jez (B): Bigger head on this one. A bit stronger lacing. Same haze as A. No fruity aroma, maybe some caramel nose. Very dry, nice hops for an amber ale. Same mouthfeel, nice carbonation. Guessing this one used a starter.

John (C): Same as A.

Jesse (C): Same as A.

So as you can see, I thought A&C were underpitched, John thought B was underpitched.

Overall, I think that there really wasn't that much difference in the beer. One was not really better than the other. I think that if you told me that these came from the same batch, I couldn't really tell a difference.

I'd like to thank Sean for the beer. It's always so nice to share someone else's beer. I'll be in Indianapolis in May. Perhaps I could bring you some of mine?

Also, this confirms my indifference to "amber" ales. I think I like more of an Amarillo-Zeus-Simcoe combo of hops in mine.