Yes, I know it has been a while. Lest ye think I have lost the taste for the habit, i have been so busy that I have not had time to post. I have 3 on tap, 2 in wait, a Belgian in the carboy, and an Amber just waiting to be brewed.

I have upgraded from a canning pot to a proper brew pot, with a fancy thermometer that screws into place.

I even crafted some 1/4" copper tubing into a home made wort chiller.

Most importantly, the head shakes and the "oh, not again" look from the wife has developed into irritation at the impact crater I supposedly leave in my wake as I brew. To rectify this, I purchased a Brinkmann outdoor cooker. Now the birds and squirrels will exhale loudly as they think "does it ever end?"

I have also come up with some lists to remind me of what tools and buckets, etc, I need for different tasks (i.e. brew day, yeast starter, kegging and/or bottling day). I will post some of these because I periodically lose track of the binder I keep those in.

So let's start with the freezer. It turns out I was never in any risk of having the beer freeze. After lagering, I thought I would turn the cold up a little, so I turned down the temp on the thermostat. After a week or two, I thought I should probably make it colder. Another turn of the thermostat. Still not cold enough. Screw it, it's going down into the high 20's. No change.

Turns out there is some sort of freon link, and as freon has this nasty habit of dispersing the ozone layer, you cannot get it at the neighborhood hardware store. So I am evaluating options. For now I will have to deal with beer at 47 degrees. And get back into bottling.

That's all for now. Next time I'll cover what's in production and consumption phases.

Lager's Run

I've brewed many an ale in the 14 months or so that i have been brewing. I even brewed a Common. But a lager? Thanks to new technological advances (my neighbor Chris, a home brewer himself, gave me his old converted chest freezer in exchange for a regular supply of beer) I am now able to brew a true Lager.

But what to choose for the sentimental first? A lot of lagers are either too light or one dimensional. This is actually preferable on a hot summer day, but it is still cold outside and I want some flavor and complexity. I want my first time to be special, okay?

So where else would you go for inspiration but a bowling alley?

On a recent trip bowling, my friend Myron bought a pitcher of beer. The taste was crisp and light, yet had a sweetness to it. And I picked up some spices, too. When pressed, Myron gave up that it was Samuel Adams' Winter Lager. I was actually surprised to hear it was a lager from the complexity of flavors.

So when I ran out of my Iced Mocha Stout, my Smokehouse IPA and ran low on my Irish Red, there was plenty of space in the keggerator to lager.

I got this one off the web and had to modify it, due to some of the hops not being available. The recipe is at the end, if you are interested.

I have run across others on similar beer quests. My friend Jim is a more advanced brewer than I, and after a visit he sent me home with a stir plate and beaker to borrow. He gave detailed instructions on how to actually prepare the yeast starter right there in the beaker. However, I was able to find a way to have it boil over every time and extinguish my gas stove flame. Finally I resolved to prepare it in a saucepan and transfer it afterwards.

After 24 hours of spinning around in a pyrex beaker, i let the yeasties rest a bit. Then I figured that since these were lager yeast bound for a winter brew, they might like a cooler climate. So in the fridge they went.

I took them out the next day for brewing and mused that they probably would have done better just sitting out. I was left with a cake of yeast on the bottom, and some starter wort on top, wondering if I blew it or just had a dead batch of yeast.

Jim came by and confirmed that this was how it was supposed to look. He also advised pouring off most of the wort and just using the cake with a little of the remaining liquid to pitch with. Otherwise the full contents might alter the flavor a bit.

So it is sitting in the very freezer you saw abo.... what's that? freezer? no.... don't worry. I'm not freezing it. I picked up an analog regulator that the freezer plugs into. The regulator can be set to fridge temperatures by shutting off juice to the freezer when the temperature probe senses it's getting too cold. Likewise when it gets too warm, it turns back on. In this case, I have turned it up from mid 30's to mid to high 40's (there is a temperature variance of 4- 8 degrees) for the initial fermentation period.

Okay, so let's take a step back and talk about all this lager stuff. What the heck is the difference between an ale and a lager, and why would a freezer be involved? For the most part, it is the yeast. Ale yeast strains tend to strive for the top, so they can look down with self-importance and savor their hard work. And they should be proud! They are considered top fermenting. Lager yeast strains are bottom dwellers, cellar creatures, no ambition but to congregate at the bottom of the carboy and do that thing they do. They are bottom fermenting.

The difference is, that while ale yeast like warm weather (but NOT sunshine), the lager yeast like it when it's cold and dark. And they are lazy. And slow. They take longer to finish their jobs. But you know, if you leave them alone and don't nag them too much, they actually amount to something. Such as a Winter Lager.

Jim also sent me home with two more carboys. So after the first week when fermentation dies down, I will transfer the beer to one of the new carboys. The method to that madness is to get my precious lager away from the sediment for it's long journey. Unlike ale, which is ready for kegging or bottling in two weeks, the lager will require another 4- 6 weeks to maximize the crispness that sets it apart from it's ale bretheren. That sediment could otherwise eventually contribute off flavors, and we simply cannot have that.

Now I am still using the same airlock on the carboy that I always do, rather than a tube that extends out of the top and into another container to filter out C02. So I've felt almost obsessed about going out to the garage and opening the freezer door to keep pressure from building up. I have these visions of the freezer exploding from all the built up gas coming from the air lock.

And since we're having this private conversation, I even found myself huffing and puffing, trying to blow the C02 out of the freezer compartment to alleviate pressure build up. I know, it's kinda silly, huh? But let's just keep that to ourselves. Hate to have something like that show up on the internet.

Anyways, I'll let you know how it comes out. In the meantime, I am going to have another run at the Iced Mocha Stout. This time I'll add an extra Tbsp of vanilla just to see what happens. Maybe next time I will play around with the malts to see how that changes the flavors.

The first batch turned out great. The coffee was strong but not overpowering. It went really well with the stout flavors. The lactose contributed a nice mouth feel, a certain smoothness. I may consider adding another 2 oz on a future batch to see what changes. I was worried about the vanilla taking over, but it wasn't detectable. I did pick up some of the chocolate, which was the purpose of the vanilla. I am hoping my tweak brings out a bit more of the chocolate, and if not I will play with the grain mix. Heck, I'll probably do that anyways.

Without further ado, the Winter Lager recipe:

2.75lbs Light Dried Malt Extract
4lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract
1 lb Wheat malt
1.5 lbs Munich malt
1.5 lbs Crystal malt 60L

Bittering- 2 oz. Kent Goldings (60 minutes)
Flavorings added in last 15 mins:
1 oz Curaco Orange (bitter orange peel)
0.5 oz Freshly grated ginger root
1/2 tsp Powdered cinnamon
Finishing/Aroma (2 mins):
1 oz Liberty
1 oz Saaz

White labs WLP830 German Lager Yeast.

Iced Mocha Stout

As mentioned last time, I have had a cream stout, a chocolate stout and an espresso stout. But I have never had all three. In a few short weeks that will all change.



To make the Iced Mocha Stout work I wanted to make sure special attention was paid to the ingredients. I started with a dry irish stout kit from the local beer supply store.


To mocha-tize it, I examined the contents of an Iced Mocha. Ice. Chocolate. Milk. And of course, coffee.



The ice would be supplied from the outside.



The chocolate had some scientific challenges. We couldn’t just drop a chocolate bar into the boil. Chocolate has fat (I know, it turns out those rumors are true), and that does not play well with the yeast. I had tried Hershey’s special dark cocoa during conditioning on the last stout, but it added just a hint to the aroma and was lost in the other flavors.


So this time I decided on 2 Tbps that would be added towards the end of the boil. I’ve also been curious about using cacao nibs. So I decided to add 4 oz.



Neither chocolate is sweet, and I’m not trying to rot anyone’s teeth, but I did want to try to enhance the flavor a little bit. I was going to add ¼ tsp of vanilla extract, however after consulting with the resident pastry chef, I bumped it up to 1Tbps.



For the milk, you can’t just open a quart of Berkeley farms 2% and dump it in, but you can get lactose powder. So I got 4 oz of that for the milk component.



I would need to go all out for the coffee. But what to use? There are so many different varieties of coffee and so many ways to roast it to get so many flavors.



So I made a field trip to the Peet’s Coffee & Tea store in San Ramon, CA. I announced my intentions, and was enthusiastically directed to the barista, who himself was a one-time brewer. The challenge is that you don’t want a coffee that will lend a nutty, fruity, spicy, chocolatey or really any other flavor. The other ingredients will capture other flavors. This coffee should be a straight forward dark roast, and taste like….. well, coffee. The barista recommended either French or Italian roast, and I went for French. Whole bean, of course, so I can grind it right before use.



So I added twice the recommended daily allowance of fresh grinds for a pot of coffee and took 1 liter of the yield for the brew (about 32 oz).



Here’s how I put it all together: I added the lactose and cocoa powder to the last 5 minutes of the brew. I added the Peet’s French roast and the vanilla extract to the carboy, just prior to pitching the yeast.



Then when the brew had fermented for a week, I added my cacao nibs. I did a taste test just prior and so far the results are good. We’ll see what the nibs bring to the party.



This brew will go into the keg on Sunday, and I will give it a week or two to carbonate. I’ll post some pictures and the results of the taste test when it is ready to go.

Next Up: Iced Mocha Stout

There's always that dude that orders iced beverages in the dead of winter so the coffee shops have to keep the ice maker plugged in, damn the blizzard outside. That dude is yours truly.

My favorite coffee beverage is the Iced Mocha at Peet's.

As chronicled earlier, I ran an Espresso Stout and it turned out pretty good (if not a bit too strong on the coffee). That one was done on the fly, so this time i did a little research and pondering, and now I am ready to give it a go.

The premise: I've had a cream stout (Sam Adams has a nice one). I've had an Espresso Stout (Red Hook used to make one. Breakfast on camping trips when i was single and much younger). I've had Chocolate Stouts (Young's is my favorite). But I've never had all three in one beer. With all the brewers out there I'm sure it has been done, but since I've never heard of one, yet alone tried one, I'm on it.

The gist: I am starting with an extract version of a dry Irish stout. To that, I am adding lactose at the end of the boil, double strength Peet's coffee and a touch of vanilla extract to the cooling wort (before pitching the yeast), and cacao nibs in the second week of fermenting.

The plan: I will brew it this weekend, and keg it two weeks later. If it tastes as good as it sounds, I'll brew another batch and bottle it.

More to follow on brew day, including some pics.

45 Million Year Old Beer?

Bottle Washer called my bluff, and as it was near his birthday, and since he made the road trip (with brand new baby in tow, no less) I let him pick the beer we'd brew. His choice, dunkelweisen. Drunken-what? It's like at Hefeweisen, but a bit darker. It's meant to have a sort of banana flavor and be a bit richer than a Hefe.

And so it did. I was a bit worried with the amount of dried malt extract that the recipe called for, and it is a bit sweet, but it actually has a nice rich flavor with a hint of banana.

In fact, my friend David, who fancies himself a beer conniseur proved his mettle and picked out the banana without coaching.

The Espresso Stout turned out pretty good. I had added a liter of strong coffee plus about 5 Tablespoons of coffee grounds as detailed in an earlier post. I would either decrease or leave out the grounds, but otherwise I fully intend to do this one again. Some stouts have a heavy feel to them, but this one was nice and light. The coffee went hand in glove with the dry stout. At this point I find myself craving it, and I'm nearly out.

The chocolate was not dominant. My wife, the resident chocolate expert, said it had a chocolate nose. I had to explain to her that beer does not have facial features. No laughs but I did get the eye roll and almost a smile.

I may try to introduce chocolate next time to the boil, but again, the end result was quite good as it was, so I may just leave it out altogether.

******
More Beer sent me a postcard to notify me of a big event with tastings and discounts, etc. My wife intercepted it, which turned out to be a good thing, as it was handed to me with that look of resignation "I guess I know where you're going on Saturday". No groveling required. Just ingenious marketing right there.

So under the pressure of a 15% off sale, I finally broke, and came home with a Cornelius keg, a CO2 tank, and all the fittings.

However this presented yet another problem. What do I fill it with?

So my friend Rene has been living out of town, and has just moved back to the San Francisco area. We go way back, so I figured I would honor her return by letting her select the next beer to go in the pot.

"I don't know," she says. "I like ales". "And Lagers".

If you are not laughing (or at least chuckling) let me explain...

All beers are either Ales or Lagers. This is largely deliniated by the type of yeast used and fermenting/conditioning temperature. Ales use yeast that ferments on the top and brews at 65-75 degrees. Lager yeasts prefer the bottom of the bottle or bucket for fermenting, as well as a chillier temp- about 55- 65 degrees.

So I have a few options here. Then I think of a smart ass way to fill the request. A steam beer, or California Common is a lager brewed at Ale temeratures. I could give her both an Ale AND a Lager!!!

So I had a brew day this past weekend, and it is still nice and active. So next weekend, no bottles to wash (I might bottle a gallon or two to share- I am told that if kept cold and under pressure, the beer should keep about a month. i can't drain 5 gallons myself and the wife will tolerate only so many social gatherings in a week).

*******

Earlier this week I came across an article claiming someone in Northern California is brewing beer with 45 MILLION year old yeast. Turns out it's true- Jurassic Park style, found preserved in Amber. And out of 150 types of yeast, 149 would not be brewers yeast, but this one actually was!

So here is a link to the story from the Contra Costa Times. Check it out!
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_12924553?source=most_emailed

What's Good for the Bottle

It's bottling day, and I am waiting for the sanitize cycle of the dishwasher to finish so I can get this stout on to the next step of it's journey through it's short but important life.

The stuff you see on the sides are the coffee grounds, from the post-pitch shake. We are 9 or 10 days into fermentation and this wort is no longer sweet. I usually wait 2 weeks, but since it has more or less stopped bubbling, I declare it beer.

I gave it a taste test yesterday. The original recipe was modeled after dry Irish stouts, like Guiness, however this one won't have the creamyness nor the nitrogen bubbles. At least not this batch. The flavor was indeed reminiscent of a classic Irish stout, malty but dry, and the kick was complimented by the coffee.

So the bottling bucket is soaking in sanitizing solution, along with all the tubes and nozzles. This evening, I will be employing 15 swing-top bottles of various sizes and colors, 4 Martinelli's bottles and 20 or 21 12-ouncers. Yeah, I know, I swore off the Martinelli's bottles, but I had put the rest of my stash in the fridge to extend the life, and as it turns out after a couple days in the arctic, the crispness is back. To that end, I am planning to expedite the purchase of a mini-fridge, rather than wait to buy the whole kegging kit. Better to have more cold beer on hand anyways.

I had mentioned in the last post that I was thinking of it as an ice mocha stout, but the more I think about it (and after my tasting) the more I think that name doesn't fit. I have acquired some dark cocoa blended with dutch cocoa. I will add the cocoa to the conditioning sugar mixture. This is 100% cacao, mind you, so I'm not adding sweetness here. Any sugar I might add would be consumed by the yeast for carbonation, and if I tried to add more it would at best make it over carbonated and at worst send shards of glass through the air at high rates of speed. No lactose was added to the boil either, so it won't really fit. It would be more like a rich dark chocolate espresso. I don't know, how about Dark Chocolate Espresso Stout. I'll know in 3 weeks if it's worth naming.

The bottles just finished their heated dry and are freshly sanitized. They are very hot so they might kill the yeast. I'll let them cool a bit while I tell you about the cream soda.

*******

So I brewed some cream soda a few days ago to bring to my sister's birthday party. To avoid issues with unequal extract portions and the messy bags that come with splitting batches, I decided to brew the whole 5 gallons. I have been collecting the A&W Root Beer bottles that are 20oz and dark brown plastic. They are thicker than normal bottles and the texturing gives them panache strangely reminiscent of the Willie Mays Hayes VW Bug with the Rolls Royce grill.

Anyways, the recipe called for 4lbs sugar and 1lb honey. Again, it called for throwing dry yeast in. Since I was using the ale yeast-- the same ale yeast that ruined the Dr. Cherry when used as directed-- I opted to activate it in a cup of lukewarm water before pitching.

The nice thing about ale yeast is that it goes dormant at fridge temperatures, so you can keep it for quite a while. But it has a bit of a funny taste, for lack of a better term.... well, yeasty. Not great in soda. The champagne yeast has a cleaner taste and smaller bubbles, however it doesn't go completeley dormant. I found a root beer that had slipped behind a shelf in the fridge, and after 3 months, there was a noticable arc to the cap (don't worry, it was in the A&W plastic root beer bottle), and when opened half the contents bubbled out into the sink.

For the pound of honey I experimented a bit. The wife had some orange blossom honey (about 4/10 of a pound) and I added 2/10 of a pound of agave syrup and the rest was standard honey. I would probably go back to champagne yeast for this one and nix the agave. In fact, I liked the whisper of orange so i would go with a full pound of it. The extract I used was Gnome brand, in a silver pouch. It's a good extract, and comes out soda color instead of the usual cream soda beige.

*******

OK, enough vamping, back to the beer at hand. The bottles are cool enough to use, so I am going to go bottle. pardon me for about 45 minutes while I bottle.

*******

Wow, you have the patience of a saint! So I put my chocolate simple syrup into the bottling bucket and started siphoning in the wort. I can smell the chocolate, definately the beer, the coffee is there too. I have to try this. Hold on....

OK I have a small cup of the primed beer. Mind you, this will be a little sweeter than the final product, but here goes..... Wait, I'll smell it first. The aroma is mostly coffee with a subtle hint of chocolate. Now taste. Ok I'm wading through the sweetness, and I am picking up some bitterness. The stout itself has survived it's journey intact, and I can tell we have a pretty good alcohol content. On the second sip, the bitterness subsides, and I have to say, coffee and chocolate are playing great supporting roles. And I'm not talking Val Kilmer in Tombstone stealing the show type of supporting roles. They complement the stout well. Off the cuff, I think I may reduce the cocoa to 2 Tbps (I had added 3 Tbsp).

OK back to bottling. See you in a bit.

********

Another note on the cocoa. A lot of it ended up on the bottom of the bottling bucket. Not sure if that's the best I'm going to get from cocoa, or if it needed to boil a bit longer. The resident pastry chef is off duty and asleep, so I'll ping her tomorrow for advice.

I put some of the nectar in the freezer while I bottled to get a sense for the cold taste, and it did clear up a bit. So there is definately some complexity there, a roasty-ness that comes from the grains (black roasted, black patent and chocolate) and the..... enhancements.

I will check it again in two weeks. In the meantime I intend to brew again Father's day weekend. Perhaps if Bottle Washer reads the blog regularly as he says he does, he can come over for a brew day....

A Stout Challenge

My friend Frank is visiting again from Mexico, and so I thought I'd take him by the local brew store. We checked 0ut the kegging systems, and talked about different types of beer that we could brew.

Being the good host that I am, I gave Frank the option, and he chose stout. To be specific, he took the standard Irish dry stout as opposed to an Imperial stout.

As we got the boil going, my wife came in and made a request for coffee. So as we were brewing a pot of coffee, it clicked. I used to enjoy the Red Hook Espresso Stout; why not bring it back in an un-official capacity.

I do a partial boil, so once that was in the carboy, I added a liter of freshly brewed strong coffee, and then the rest of the water. Then I added about 5 tablespoons of coffee grounds into the carboy before adding the yeast.

I got this crazy idea about brewing an iced mocha stout, and had ground up some cocoa nibs, but we had a change of heart. As it turns out, adding chocolate to the primary fermentation inhibits the yeast and could spoil the beer. Luckily, Frank has culinary expertise and was there to keep me grounded. So what I might do is add cocoa powder to the priming sugar, and introduce the chocolate in the conditioning phase.

Frank and I did the brew on Sunday (yesterday), and as of this evening the yeast are exuberant. They seem to be sharing the top with the coffee grounds without complaint so far.

I'll do another post to detail the conditioning and provide measurements if I decide to go for the Ice Mocha Stout.

As my eldest son is turning 7 and having a lego party at the house, I will also brew some cream soda this weekend.

Cheers!