Overdue

So, I let a cold winter all but pass, without making use of the gloriously cold ground water for wort chilling. Ah well. Up next, I will retackle the British ordinary bitter using Maris Otter and US Goldings hops...a little concerned about the US origin Goldings, but we'll see. Then its time for another pilsner, methinks.

That is all.

St. Crispin's Day 2009

...and there was much rejoicing.

To Sleep, Perchance to Lager

Oktoberfest is approaching at rapid speed (approximately one thousand miles per hour at the equator, the usual speed for the passing of days by the rotation of the Earth) and in my lagering fridge I have a good German Oktoberfest lager. Last year my first draught brew was a "mocktoberfest", using alt ale yeast instead of lager yeast, but this year I should get a bit closer to that delightfully subtle amber lager of autumnal Munich, perhaps a month or two late, but such is what happens when one puts off brewing sessions for too long.

Still, lately I've experimented with sauermalzen (in low increments, undetectable), and have a patersbier in the fermentor, to be followed with a bottled tripel, which I shall consider trying to reserve for longer aging, to herald the return of spring.

Poetry of Beer

A haiku in honour of what turned out to be a really very excellent first attempt at lager brewing, a simple golden pilsner that is now sadly gone:

Is that CO2
Sputtering up the dip tube?
Farewell, my sweet beer.

The Bi-Annual Brog Update

As I inch towards six months of inactivity, I feel the bi-annual instinct to brog.

The draft system is up and running, as of last month! I've been enjoying my Oktoberfest, finally, after lagering it for many months. Slated to replace it is a low-strength pyment, made with Chablis grape must and honey, for a lighter mead champagne. After that, my first true lager will have finished a good long lagering phase. It was a very simple recipe...about 9 lbs of American pils malt, bittered to 10-20 IBUs, and finished with an ounce of Saaz at the end of the boil, and fermented right around 50 degrees F with a dry lager strain, Fermentis S-23. I'm not expecting brilliance, but it should be a nice drinkable beer, likely with some obvious defects that will show me where I need to shore up my technique and process. Mild beers like that are excellent for exposing flaws...no huge flavours to hide behind.

A pumpkin ale that I threw together a few months ago has proven to be somewhat ill-advised. It was fairly basic, the remainder of my British pale malt with mashed pumpkin, lightly hopped, spiced with the usual spices, and (here may be the big mistake) fermented with some extra weizen yeast I had on hand. The result is phenolic. Quite unpleasantly phenolic. Likewise, the malted/oaked cider might have pulled too many tannins out of the oak...its a bit less drinkable than I'd hoped. Oh well, win some, lose some.

The doppelsticke altbier is delicious though, a great example of a big, bold, and bitter German beer, although there are not many of them, admittedly.

At least I have learned some lessons; save the weizen yeast for weizenbier. Fair enough!

August Update

Last Saturday, I brewed a Doppelsticke Altbier, a big, heavily bittered dark German ale. Original gravity was 1.082, and it is fermenting at approximately 60 degrees.

The previous weekend I laboriously juiced a 5 gallon bucket full of small, underripe Granny Smith apples from my backyard tree, to make just under a gallon of juice. I sulfated this juice, and then later pitched a white wine yeast. This weekend, I decided to dilute these very tart apples with some plain sweet apple juice, and I did so with 3 gallons of juice. I may make up the final 1 gallon of volume with another gallon of acidic Neufeldian apples, but if I get lazy another gallon of storebought juice should do the trick, albeit make for a more insipid, bland cider. A 2 to 3 ratio of tart juice to sweet juice should make a great fermented cider.

Last night, I bottled my kirschweizen, which has a sort of cherry pie character now, between the tart acid cherry juice and the rich malty sweetness of the crystal and pale malts. It is somewhat on the strong side at 7% ABV thanks to a secondary refermentation caused by the addition of the cherry juice, but it is smooth and quite drinkable at this stage, even pre-carbonation.

I'm backing off the idea of the soured wort experiment, and I may try using the acidulated malt from Weyerman to approximate the sour character in a weizen, Belgian, or fruit beer, without actually developing funky bacterial cultures. One of my new ideas (actually an older idea, but rejuvenated) is to brew a Chocolate Coconut Porter. First I would brew a basic porter around 1.060, using lots of chocolate malt and maybe some extra crystal malt to ensure sweetness and full body. Then in secondary, I would add a bottle of coconut rum (an easy way to add coconut flavor without the oils) and a 1/2 pound of cacao nibs for extra chocolate flavor. German Chocolate Cake in a glass!

Words of Wisdom

Give a man a beer, and he'll waste an hour.
Teach a man to brew, and he'll waste a lifetime.
-Anonymous