Dark Mild - Multi-Yeast Experiment

A little while ago, Greg, a fellow CAMRA club member, and I started talking about doing a cooperative brew. We share a number of common interests: brewing, breadmaking, cooking, kids; so it seemed a great idea to share a brewing session. We both enjoy English session ales, so we figured we would brew a dark mild, as they are not commonly available here in the U.S. and are best drunk fresh. Additionally, to make things interesting, we decided to do a yeast experiment.

I have often heard people state that the liquid yeast products that brewers pay a premium for are far superior to the dry yeast equivalents. Some things about the two yeast forms can definitely be attributed to fact. Liquid yeast strains can be designated as pure and without contamination, which means with proper sanitation, a brewer has very little chance of getting wild yeast contamination. Dry yeasts always have some wild yeast contamination as part of their manufacturing process. This is minimized, but how great is the risk of infection? Several podcasts and homebrewing magazines have done experiments on the dry versus liquid yeast packages, but Greg and I wanted to do our own.

The plan was to use one common wort source, split in half, and then to use two different yeasts to determine the yeast form's impact. Further, we wanted to use dry and liquid yeast strains that came from the same historical source. So, we picked Wyeast 1968 London ESB and Safale S-04 Dry English Ale. Both of these strains are based on the Whitbread yeast strain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitbread). This should provide us with a situation where the dry versus liquid yeast difference would be maximized, if any existed at all.

The following stats applied to both beers:
SG: 1.039 (both yeasts)
FG: 1.011 liquid, 1.012 dry
Starter Size: 1 L liquid, no starter dry (10 gram pack)
Pitching Temp: 72 F (both yeasts)
Fermentation Temp: 68 F (both yeasts)
Fermentation Length: 4 days liquid, 3 days dry

The results were extremely close. The liquid yeast beer (Duval glasses in picture) was slightly lighter in color than the dry yeast batch. The liquid yeast beer also had a slightly more definable aroma, but it came from a keg, so the aroma could well be from a slightly higher carbonation rate. The most definable difference was in the intensity and length of flavor. The liquid yeast batch's flavor lasted longer and was more intense than the dry yeast, but not by a large factor. I did not get any off flavors from the dry yeast, and I think it was quite comparable to the liquid offering.

Bottom line was that they were VERY close. Given that the dry yeast is much cheaper and it is easier to use, I think I would recommend using dry yeast when a version that has been well received by the brewing community is available.

Thanks for a great brew day and tasting, Greg. It was a lot of fun.

90 Seconds of Goodness Imperial IPA

Spring, for some unknown reason, has gotten me into a hoppy beer mood. I am normally a English session beer kind of person, if I were to pick a favorite set of styles. However, with winter starting to loose its hold over Central Virginia (compared to where I grew up in New York, winter never has a "hold" over Virginia at all), I am feeling in the mood for hops. So, when I had the opportunity to get some commercial Chico yeast from Starr Hill Brewing Company, I decided to go hog wild and make an Imperial IPA.

One of the biggest challenges that you face when doing big beer recipes is to get full attenuation. Because there is so much sugar in the wort for these beers, it is absolutely crucial that you have a HUGE slug of yeast to get the resulting beer down to a reasonable terminal gravity. If you don't, you risk having a sweet and unpalatable beer. The Starr Hill yeast samples we got were HUGE slugs of very active yeast. They gave me the perfect excuse to try one of the biggest beers I have ever contemplated (ABV of 8.5%).

This beer recipe is from a series of clone brews done by Brew Your Own Magazine. 90 Minute IPA by Dogfish Head is one of my favorite big hoppy beers. It has a great hop nose and a complex flavor, but is dangerously drinkable because it finishes dry. Even with all the alcohol, it does not leave a lot of sugar on the tongue, so you can easily finish a pint. This clone brew recipe was done in colaboration with the brewers at Dogfish Head, so I definately wanted to give it a try.

So, without further a do, here is the review:

Brewed: 2/15/2009

Kegged: 2/24/2009

Original Gravity: 1.083

Final Gravity: 1.016

IBU: ~92

Alcohol By Volume: 8.5%

Carbonation Volume: 2.8 (15 psi at 40 degrees F)

The beer pours a dark orange color with huge coarse white head. The most immediately apparent thing is the aroma. The beer is a hop aroma bomb. The aroma is complex and multi-dementional. It starts off with an herbal quality and then moves to a slightly sweet citrus orange/lemon smell. The dry hopping (2.5 ounces of amarillo, millenium, and simco) is really pronounced and I find myself just sitting and smelling the beer for a good while.

The initial flavor is a hint of sweetness. This is followed by some of the hop complexity with flavors of orange, pineapple, and mint. I then get a bit of bitter bite on the tongue, which is followed by a slickness that I attribute to the simco hops. The taste ends with a drying quality similar to belgian tripels or other very low terminal gravity belgian beers, though the IPA also has a twinge of burnt sugar. I do also get a very faint warming from the alcohol, though nothing like drinking a scotch or other whiskey.

All and all it is a very good beer, certainly my best so far this year. I took it to a homebrew tasting recently and was strongly encouraged to enter it in the National Homebrew Competition (NHC). So, we shall see how it does and what feedback I receive. Regardless, this is a beer I will definately make again.

Cheers.

Congratulations to Jeff - Gold Medal

Just a quick note of congratulations to my brother, Jeff. His first brew ever (discounting the Mr. Beer kits) won a gold medal at the 2009 Boston Homebrew Competition for his Irish red ale! I previously reviewed this beer on the blog. I am very proud my brother and hope that he continues to enjoy this wonderful hobby.

http://www.wort.org/bhc/winners.shtml

Brother Brews

One of the coolest brew-related things that have happened to me this year is that my brother has started homebrewing. He first did this a while ago with a Mr. Beer kit that I gave him for Christmas. As with many Mr. Beer experiments, it did not go well and my brother did not repeat his Mr. Beer experience. I am not sure exactly what got him to try it again, but part of it is probably our repeated trips to Beers of the World, while visiting our parents in Rochester, NY. It is a great bottle shop with so many neat beers to try, as well as a homebrewing section that we would browse through. In addition to our frequent conversations about homebrewing, which I find a lot of fun and very interesting, I know that part of Jeff's interest in the hobby has been a result of finding a local homebrewing club near where he lives. The club members have provided an outlet for my brother's questions, as well as providing tasting samples and an interest in a common hobby.

Jeff was nice enough to send a sample of his first batch, an irish red, for me to taste. I appreciate it and I wanted to review it here.

The beer pours a delightful deep red color, almost scarlet. The beer is slightly cloudy, but I can still see my hand through it when the beer is held near a strong light. A frothy white head sits on top of the beer and remains while you consume the pint. It leaves a nice lacing on the sides of the glass. The beer has a very clean and neutral aroma, with a hint of caramel sweetness at the back of the nose.

The beer tastes very clean and balanced. It has a crisp malt character, somewhat akin to a german pilsner in its dry maltiness. The beer is nicely balanced with the hops and it creates a very drinkable beverage that leaves no sweetness build up on the tongue. The only recommendation I would make with the beer would be to carbonate it a bit less. The beer became more malt forward once I swirled it in the glass a bit to shake out some of the carbon dioxide. The flavor became more like some of the other irish reds I have had in the past and a little less pilsner-like. I will definitely say that I could drink several pints of this beer, which, in my opinion, is the most important judgement on a beer's quality.

Thank you for sharing, Jeff. I hope that you find as much enjoyment in this hobby as I have over the last 10 years or so. The community of homebrewers that you will interact with, both online and in person, really make this such a unique and wonderful hobby to be a part of.

Pissed Black Cat Pale Ale - Yet Again

This is the third time I have brewed a version of this pale ale. In general, I really like how it has turned out in the past. It is a beer halfway between a pale ale and an IPA. Hoppy, but not over the top. It has a nice amber/pale orange color and was the crowd favorite at Mr. Baker's Crab Fest last year.

All that aside, it did not turn out as well this time. This recipe is the first one where I tried to recreate a beer that I brewed and really liked previously. With it, I begin to understand how hard it must be to be a professional brewer, who must constantly turn out a high-quality product that varies little over time. I am also definitely not my harshest critic, so I can't imagine what a sharper tongue would do to my attempts to replicate my previous success.

I think what went wrong with the beer is hop choice. Previous versions of the beer used nugget/columbus and millenium/centennial, with the millenium/centennial turning out the best. This version used warrior and amarillo, with warrior being used for a lot of late addition hopping. I have subsuquently read that warrior is best used as a bittering hop and does not lend itself well to flavor or aroma additions. I think these hops must have clashed to create the undesirable flavors that I mention below, as I hit all of my other numbers (OG, FG, fermentation temp., fermentation time, etc.).

Regardless, here are the stats and the review . . .

Brewed: 1/17/2009

Kegged: 1/25/2009

Original Gravity: 1.048

Final Gravity: 1.012

IBU: 47

Alcohol By Volume: 4.8%

Carbonation Volume: 2.8 (15 psi at 40 degrees F)

The beer pours a crystal clear pale amber color, with a white pillowy head. The hops in this beer provide for a nice long lasting head, that follows the beer all the way down the glass, leaving a nice lacing pattern on the sides of the glass.

The beer has a strong herbal aroma too it. The aroma borders on medicinal in nature, which is not flattering to the beverage. I remember previous renditions of this recipe having a more citrus or floral scent, which I liked better. The medicinal quality of the aroma seems to strengthen as the beer warms.

There is definitely an off flavor of some sort to the beer. It is immediately present when you take your first sip and it lasts throughout the entire taste. Perhaps my mind is wandering towards our medicine cabinet, but it is vaguely reminiscent of an herbal cough drop. I am thinking about a Ricola-style cough drop, though not quite as strong. There is a biscuity flavor there too, which might be pleasant on its own, and reminds me of the previous versions of the beer. The off-flavor diminishes as you drink your pint, but that is likely due to your taste buds becoming used to it.

As I mentioned above, I think the off flavor is likely due to hop choice, particularly the warrior hops, which I used as a late addition to the kettle. My friend, Jamey, thinks the beer tastes slightly old or stale, and we have actually had some fun becoming "beer-sleuths" and trying to figure out what went wrong. I will definitely brew this one again, but next time I will go back to the original hopping regimen of millenium and centennial.

Happy Birthday, CAMRA!

Just a quick note to say that the homebrewing club I helped found, the Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale (CAMRA), celebrated its first year birthday last week. What began as an idea hatched amongst three friends who loved to make beer, grew in the first couple of meetings to standing room only crowds at a local bar. Since those first meetings, we have contracted into a core group of about 15 to 20 people. Meeting attendance varies some what, but we usually have a dozen people come out to talk beer styles and brewing.

Tastings have proven the most popular events, and so to celebrate our birthday, we had a combination homebrew tasting and a tour of the largest brewery in the area, Starr Hill (http://www.starrhill.com). We had a blast touring the brewery and talking with Master Brewer Mark Thompson. The difference in scale at a professional brewery is truly staggering. Equally impressive, though, was watching one of his brewers take a starting gravity reading before pumping the wort into a 50-barrel fermentation tank. While the scale is truly different, that act is one I have done on every brew day of my homebrewing journey. Watching this one step really hit home for me both the similarities and differences between homebrewers and professional brewers.

All of the CAMRA people who turned out for the tour and tasting had a great time. I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Cheers, CAMRA, and I wish you many more birthdays as rewarding as this first year has been for me.

Partigyle Brewing - Trying to Get Two Beers from One Grist

Partigyle is the practice of making multiple batches of beer from one grist. This means that you mash once and run the "first runnings" off of the mash and make one "big" beer. Then you run more sparge water through the grains to get a second "small" beer. The idea is that the first beer will be of high strength and high malt character, while the second beer will be a small beer that is much milder. Historically speaking, this was done all the time, as brewers would extract as much sugar solution from each grist as they could. Partigyle is responsible for many different styles of beer that we have today, including Belgian Doubles and Tripels, English Barlywines and Milds, etc., as brewers made different strengths of what was basically, the same beer.

I had read about this practice in several books and heard about it on at least one podcast, so I wanted to give it a try. I was planning on brewing a big weizenbock and figured it would be the perfect time to try the technique, as there should be some sugar left in the grist, right? Well, it did not really work out as expected, as you will see below.

First, a review of the beers themselves.

Big Daddy Weizenbock

Brewed: 11/25/2008

Kegged: 12/6/2008

Original Gravity: 1.077

Final Gravity: 1.020

IBU: 24

Alcohol By Volume: 7.5%

Carbonation Volume: 2.5 (13 psi at 40 degrees F)

This beer was the real reason for the brew day. It is the color of dark brown, bordering on black, though deep red highlights show through if you hold the beer near a strong light. The weizenbock pours with a thick tan head that lasts for about 5 minutes as you drink it. The beer has a strong banana aroma, almost like banana bread. It also has a slight hint of clove in the aroma, but no bubblegum at all. The aromatic qualities of the beer are directly related to the yeast strain I used (hefeweizen ale - White Labs WLP 300), and it is fermentation temperature of 62 F.

The beer has a very pleasant taste, with a malt forward presentation on the tongue. I taste a little biscuit on the tip of the tongue, followed by a caramel and molasses flavor. The beer finishes with a hint of carbonation and hops, but they are definately in the background. There is a slight bit of molasses that stays on your palate before the next sip, but it does not seem to build too much as you work through the pint. Finally, there is a warming feeling from the beer. This is not any kind of hot alcohol, but a pleasant feeling in the throat that occurs several seconds after finishing a sip.

I am very happy with this beer, and I would definitely consider making it again. It is sort of like a dunkleweizen on steroids, and dunklewezien is one of my favorite beer styles. I would hope to have the beer attenuate a couple of points lower next time, but otherwise I am pleased with it and its yeast character after it had aged for about a month in the keg.

Baby Bock - Little Weizenbock

Brewed: 11/25/2008

Kegged: 12/6/2008

Original Gravity: 1.027

Final Gravity: 1.009

IBU: 14

Alcohol By Volume: 2.6%

Carbonation Volume: 2.5 (13 psi at 40 degrees F)

The small beer is a dark honey color with a thick off-white head. It has a neutral aroma, though I do detect a hint of astringency that smells vaguely of plain oatmeal. The head remains a while on this beer, as with many wheat beers.

The flavor of the small beer is definitely lacking. Thin is the word that comes to mind, though watery is also applicable. Next to its big brother it is down right plain. It also has an mildly unpleasant astringent flavor. I think this came from the fact that I tried to get all of the sugars I could from the beer. This dropped the sugar levels in the grain bed too low and I started to pull tannins out of the grain husks. There is little yeast character in the beer, but I expected that using dried California ale yeast. The hops are a little overbearing in bitterness, but otherwise clean with little herbal hop character or aroma.

The little beer is definitely that . . . little. I increased the boil time on the beer to 90 minutes with the hope of getting a higher starting gravity, but it did not happen. It seems that most of the flavor had already gone out of the grist, so the beer just tastes plain. However, it is not really bad, just uninspired. The astringency has aged a bit out of the beer, so that it is not that objectionable now.

Observations

I can see how this process was used frequently in the past. I effectively got two beers out of one set of ingredients, minus some extra hops and a package of dry yeast. However, the little beer was almost not worth the trouble. I suppose that perspective comes from the fact that I don't sell beer for a living, but this is something that I will probably not do again. If I were to consider a second partigyle, I would take the following into account:

- You should not really worry about the volume of wort for the bigger beer. Just drain your mash tun and use whatever you get. I made sure to get enough wort to make a full 5 gallon batch of the main beer. This left too little sugar for the second beer.
- Start with a larger grist than you would normally. I would definitely have added a couple of extra pounds of base malt to ensure there was sugar left for the second beer.
- Pay attention to the specific gravity coming out of your mash tun on the little beer. If the SG drops below 1.008, make sure to stop so you avoid the grain husk tannins.
- Take a pre-boil gravity of your small beer and use that to determine your hopping. Seeing how you cannot predict how much sugar will be in the small beer, if you pre-plan your hops, you could significantly over hop the little beer.
- Be happy with what you get and be glad that the sale of the little beer does not directly correspond to how much food your kids have to eat.