Krausen Rising

So sad, my last brew day was September 25th of last year. I made a saison. I wrote about it. At the time, I’d just bottled, and I was worried that it wouldn’t carbonate. That turned out not to be a problem. The problem, and this one is particularly tragic, is that the recipe called for spices, and I really should have used them. I’ve popped a few since I bottled them, and there’s a slightly too honeylike maltiness that I don’t like. I was hoping it was a problem with attenuation, and that once the bottles were fully carbonated, the flavor would go away, but I’m not so sure now.

I’d never noticed that honey malt flavor in saisons before, but one of the double-edged benefits about homebrewing for me is the tasting experience I gain from my mistakes. Since I’m an autodidactic brewer, I make weird recipe altering choices, or I brew under less than optimal circumstances - uncontrolled fermentation temperature, poor sparge efficiency due to equipment and user malfunction, untested hop strain additions because I buy what’s available - and due to these variables, I often end up with unbalanced beer. I’ve made IPAs so grapefruity they seemed like beer cocktails*, learned first-hand about oxidation after allowing my fermentation temperature to hit 92+ degrees F, uh… I forget what else. I don’t really want to dwell. But after each of these experiments, failed or otherwise (my first partial mash, a poorly sparged, super low gravity wit, was awesome), I suddenly find myself able to pick out small amounts of flavors I previously hadn’t noticed. I’m pretty good at tasting oxidation in beers, for instance, and after my grapefruit IPA, I can’t handle certain hoppy beers with that fruit’s trademark sharp citrus flavor that I used to dig (Green Flash’s Le Freak is one example). So now that I underspice my saison, I’ve found a malt flavor I don’t particularly like when it is too prominent - this honey thing. It would work under different circumstances, I’m sure, but it’s not working in my saison.

But what makes this saison, and my knee-jerk spice stinginess in the brewing of it, so tragic is this: tonight, before pouring myself a small glass from the ole tap-a-draft in the fridge, I first ground a tiny bit of black pepper and one single coriander seed and sprinkled them in a freshly rinsed glass, swirled it around a bit, then removed the obvious chunks. I sniffed the glass to be sure I could smell a bit of spice, then poured about six ounces of the saison in there. It was great. I loved it. The black pepper and coriander balanced out the overly malty flavors and brought out the character of the yeast perfectly. Motherfucker. This is, however, great incentive to brew another batch, and soon.

* I’ve heard that complaint about West Coast IPAs before - “Eww! It tastes like I’m drinking grapefruit juice!” Yeah, well, you should try my IPA (brew #07 - I still have a few bottles left) before you shoot your mouth off about unbalanced commercial IPAs. My fuckup makes those beers seem balanced.

On September 25th, 2008, I brewed a Saison.  I bottled it March 1st, 2009. ‘Sokay, it’s 7% ABV, it can handle five months and some change in secondary. I took the recipe from Zymurgy. There was an article, “A Saison for Every Season”, a lovely article, written, I believe, by one of the members of the Maltose Falcons down in Southern California. I decided against using spices, though, and I ended up adding extra malt extract, out of fear of a low gravity, so it’s a modified recipe.

Saisons seem to usually come with spices. I decided against it because I was in a particularly knee-jerking mood. I think it had something to do with drinking too many overly spiced wits. Also, I wanted to see whether spices were necessary with a Saison-specific yeast.

Here’s the recipe:
9 lbs. Belgian Pilsener malt
3 lbs. white wheat
0.5 lbs. Vienna malt
0.25 lbs. acidulated malt
2 lbs. light dry malt
1.5 lbs. Belgian Candi Sugar (added 5 minutes from flameout)

2 oz. Sterling pellets - 6.0% AA for 60 minutes
2 oz. Vanguard pellets - 4.4% AA for 5 minutes

White Labs WLP568 (Belgian Style Saison Ale Yeast Blend)

13.4 quarts of mash water
17 quarts sparge water

Protein rest @ 120F for 20 minutes
Mashed at 150-155F for 1 hour
Ended up with 6.5 gallons of wort at 1.048

Boiled, adding additional extract and candi sugar.

Aerated with a stone for 30 minutes

Pitched a 20oz starter (made at 12:30am that day), wort was at 80F

SG: 1.076

October 12th, gravity was 1.024

January 29, 2009, gravity was 1.022
Added 1 packet of Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast that I’d mixed with about 2oz of unfiltered, warm tap water.

March 1, 2009, FG was at 1.022
Bottled into 1 3.5 gallon plastic bottle (tap-a-draft system), 9 12oz bottles, 3 16oz bottles, and 7 22oz bottles.

Tasting notes as of bottling:
Light amber in color
Some residual sweetness, though not too strong
Nice malt flavor like malted-milk kind of malt (as opposed to cereal or biscuity)
Somewhat citrusy

We’ll see if the bottles carbonate. I used the regular amount of sugar, so the tap-a-draft thing could get ugly.

This morning, I received notice of the 2009 AHA National Homebrewers Conference, to take place this year in my home, Oakland. I’ve never been to this Conference, and I feel like it’s a must-go, but it’s an astounding $175 - $230 to get in.

But then, look at the speakers. I’ve picked out just the most interesting ones (to me). I left out a bunch of events I’d still like to see. The full list is at the previous link, so you should check it out for yourself.

All About Proteins…or how to get great head retention and more
presented by John Palmer, Author of How To Brew

Blending Beers
presented by Sean Paxton, The Homebrew Chef

The Equipment Geek
presented by Kent Fletcher, Maltose Falcons

Extreme Fermentables
presented by Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

First Runnings: A mind dump from Vinnie
presented by Vinnie Cilurzo, Russian River Brewing Co

Maintaining Ideal Yeast Health: Nutrients Yeast Need
presented by Tobias Fischborn, Lallemand, Inc.

Malts: New specialty malts, base malts, and extracts—How to make the most of them
presented by Bob Hanson, Briess Malt and Ingredients Co.

Mead Panel
moderated by James Spencer, Basic Brewing Radio, with Charlie Papazian, Brewers Association, Author of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing; Byron Burch, The Beverage People; Harold Gulbransen, AHA Governing Committee, QUAFF; Curt Stock, AHA Governing Committee, St. Paul Homebrewers Club

Quality: In the Eye of the Brew Holder
presented by Dr. Charles Bamforth, UC Davis Extension, Dept. Food Science & Technology

Squeaky Clean: How to ensure a clean, sanitized brewery
presented by John Herskovits, Five Star Chemicals

Wood Aging
presented by Matt Brynildson, Firestone Walker Brewing Co.

Yeast: Build Your Own Library
presented by Maribeth Raines, Great Beer Co.

Yeast: Taking It To The Next Level
presented by Dr. Michael Lewis, UC Davis Extension, Dept. Food Science & Technology

Previous presentations can be found here.

Then there’s the Hospitality Suite:

While visiting the Hospitality Suite, conference attendees have the opportunity to sample homebrews from local and out-of-state homebrewing clubs as well as meet fellow homebrewers from across the country. Homebrew clubs take turns hosting the suite and serving club beers. A small trade show is also set up inside the suite for conference attendees to interact with business vendors. Conference participants are invited to visit the Hospitality Suite during session breaks as well as before and after conference events. Visiting the suite provides a great opportunity to socialize with other brewers, clubs, and beer enthusiasts from all over the country.

Finally, there’s Pro Brewers Night. I assume lots of commercial beers will be poured.

I’m torn about this event. Pricey as all get out, but most likely worth the money. And it’s probably the cheapest year for me that I’ll ever see, unless it comes back to the SF Bay Area. At least I have nearly a month to decide.

I’ve been a little down on brewing for a few months, now. A couple beers I made turned out disappointing, and one of them (#07, the IPA) may have had some minor infection that made it taste way way too harshly grapefruity. My Imperial Stout hung at around 1.032SG (between 8-9% ABV, I think). I was just having no luck at all. Then I made a Hefeweizen and never got it into secondary (see previous stuck fermentation in my only other carboy). My friend and great homebrewer, Nate helped with good advice and positive comments, but I was starting to get very discouraged, though I didn’t want to admit it. Friends and fellow Beercrafters Christy and Brad have been brewing up excellent extract-only brews, and sampling their craft has been encouraging me to get my hands back in the boiling wort again.

With the goal of re-entering the brewing world, yesterday I bit the bullet, did a bunch of cleaning and taking stock of my brewing equipment, sanitized my wine thief, and took me a sample of my hefe. It’d been sitting in the primary since March 22 (that’s five months it sat there), and looking very glum. Shockingly, it wasn’t bad. Maybe it was bad, but not as bad as I thought, but I dunno - it tasted like a mellow but definitely German-style Hefeweizen to me. Banana phenols and all. I ended up bottling it in two 3 Liter plastic bottles (Tap-a-draft system), a 22oz bottle, a 16.5oz bottle, and a 12oz bottle. If all goes well, I’ll enter it in the Punk Rock Homebrew Contest/Festival/Party thingamajig coming up on the 30th.

After sampling the Hefeweizen, but before bottling it, I tried out my Imperial Stout, previously stuck at 1.032, last checked March 22nd (the day I brewed the Hefeweizen). It’s now down to betwee 1.023 and 1.025, which puts it at around 11% ABV, pretty much what I’d hoped for. It’s incredibly smoky (that was a lot of Rauch malt), with chocolate undertones and a bit of tamari. It reminded me somewhat of a smoky, less tamari-laden Old Viscosity. I’m in love with it, but it’s definitely a sipping beer. I hope to bottle it in the next week.

Now I’m planning my next beer… maybe another all-extract Hefeweizen, just bottled without sitting in the primary for five fucking months.

My imperial stout still languishes in secondary. I swear I will bottle it, some day, and brew again.

Life has been with beer lately, as usual. Jen and I went to the Bear Republic beer dinner a couple weeks ago, then we took off for Reno, where no beer was had, but I lost a whopping $35 after having first won an entire $5. Fortunately, fellow Beercrafter Susie had brought along a bottle of Laphroig, which was comforting, along with the Three Philosophers. Both were last second additions to our luggage, and both were great to have along with us. Not a lot of fancypantsedness in Reno. At least, not much that I could afford.

Not long after that, Tuesday the 22nd, Jen and I took off for that horrible Hollywood-ruined debacle known as Comic-con, in San Diego. We drove from Oakland to Carlsbad Tuesday night. We’d been planning to drive to around the Grapevine then get a hotel, but we were making good time, and so continued on. Our hotel was about three blocks from Pizza Port, but we showed up around 10:00, which is just after they stopped serving food. And we’d been driving nonstop for about six hours, so that wasn’t going to cut it. The next morning we got up bright and early, found a couple trashy ’80s genre books from the Paperback Exchange across the street (an awesome bookstore of the type I thought had died out completely by the late ’90s), by which time 11:00 had rolled around and Pizza Port had opened, so we walked across the street and got some Beer Buddies and I had a Black Lie IPA. I’m a sucker for dumb jokes, and however it’s meant to be taken, a black IPA just seems funny to me, so I couldn’t avoid it. Also, it was delicious.

After Pizza Port, we moved on to the Stone Bistro, which has a longer title involving gardens, but I don’t remember it and I don’t care to look it up. I saw a lot of bitching and moaning about Stone’s restaurant on Yelp, something about bad attitudues and high prices with mediocre food, but I’ve found that advice from Yelp should be treated like a bit of spilled salt - grab a bit, regard it with hostility, then throw it behind you and forget about it. This was no exception. The grain of truth lies with the high prices - $5.00 for their own beers - but the food was priced appropriately for its deliciousness, and it was interesting. Stone had just put on their sour beer festival, so there were 21(!!) sour beers on tap, but they’d also recently started pouring their new Chocolate/Oatmeal Stout and, better yet, the Cali Belgique. I started off with the Cali Belgique, and fell in love. Similar to one of the West Coast-inspired Belgian beers that have been popping up, but from the other direction. Delicious and fresh. The stout was another great treat. Unfortunately, we had to check in to our hotel in San Diego, so that was the last beer I had at Stone.

The Comic-con was a muddle. We were both pretty broke, but found a decent chain pub called the Yardhouse that has about 90 beers on tap, and half priced appetizers during happy hour. We ate there most nights during Comic-con, revelling in sub-$20 meals that included a few beers for me and one or two for Jen.

I don’t remember if I mentioned that Comic-con isn’t so fun. It’s grown to take up at least three times the space it did when we started going, back in 1999, but I’m almost positive there’s about half the number of comics-related goings-on. I don’t count Hollywood versions of superhero comics in comics-related goings-on, because I’m being a jerk. Even with that, though, toys seem to be a bigger focus than comics. It’s a craven, horrible mess, and fuck it. So we left Saturday morning, after hanging around for about an hour at the con.

On our way north from San Diego, we hit Lost Abbey, and I picked up my bottles of the latest Patron Sinners release, a beer for which brewer Tomme Arthur refused to offer any description. The beers on tap were delicious - I had an Amazing Grace (I think that’s the name) and their new whit to name a couple - and they had some bottles for sale, including a Saison brewed together with a Belgian brewer whose name escapes me and Inferno, Lost Abbey’s strong golden. I bought a bottle of each, and regret having only purchased one bottle of Inferno (the strong golden). The saison still sits in the fridge. I don’t want to use up all my special beers.

After Lost Abbey, we hit Stone and I tried a sour - Eric’s Ale, from New Belgium. As I needed to drive at least most of the way home afterward, that was the only beer I had at Stone. We then made our way home, up through the traffic of LA and the heat of the Central Valley, finally to the cool, golden hills of home.

Okay, man, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. I haven’t been less beery, though, just less inspired to write. Also, brewing’s been on hold due to a horrible case of procrastination. I’ve got five gallons of smoked Imperial Stout sitting in secondary, and I keep not wanting to bottle it. Since it’ll happily sit there for months, even a year, before it’s be ready to drink, I find it hard to prep for that most hated of brewing tasks - bottling. Yet I desparately want to brew some saison, or maybe give the smoked strong dark a second try. This blog reminds me of my procrastination, so I haven’t been here. But stuff’s been happening. Beer dinners, Beercraft shows, awesome nights at the Trappist, Russian River’s Anniversary Party (we left before it started, but the right side of the board was entirely full, and we took advantage). On top of that, another Beercraft member started brewing (that makes three of five), and I had the privilege of tasting some of the best homebrew I’ve ever had, brewed by my friend Nate - a double IPA that’s been getting Best in Show at homebrew competitions.

I just haven’t been writing about it.

Assuming I manage to kickstart this thing back to life, I plan to start a new series, on beer hikes. Jen and I have been taking beer hikes for a couple years, now. It started when we went hiking in Black Diamond Regional Park and needed some food afterward. We found a decent little pub in Clayton with a respectable beer selection and pub food. After that, we started planning hikes based on nearby breweries and pubs. The hikes are pretty much entirely confined to the greater Bay Area, but if we ever manage to get out of town together for a vacation, we’ll have more to add, I’m sure.

On the Beercraft front, we just played open mic night at The Bistro in Hayward, a small bar with a small but well-chosen tap selection and a good list of Belgian bottles to choose from. I’m hoping it worked as a kind of audition, as we hope to eventually play shows there, or better yet, a festival or two (Barrel-Aged beerfest!). From the audience reaction, I think it worked. Some of the people there seemed put off by the racket, but I think the under 35 set was into it. There was a lot of clapping, a good amount of cheering, and demand for an encore that didn’t come entirely from the people who were there specifically to support us. Even our friends seem pleasantly surprised when they hear us. I’ve heard it more than once, “not that I thought you’d suck, I just wasn’t expecting that.” Not sure exactly what people expect, but I think the amount of “joyful” in the noise may be the surprise. It’s hard not to make happy music when you are writing songs exclusively about beer.

I’m going back to pre-sparge days for this week’s brew - an all-extract hefeweizen - from a kit, no less! Awesome! The kit’s just 6lbs. of “wheat” DME (60/40 wheat/barley), a couple ounces of low-alpha hops (I’ve already forgotten the strain), and a bottle of WLP300 - hefeweizen yeast.

I’ll be making an all-grain whit some time in late April/early May. This is for simplicity and fun. I keep upgrading my equipment and complexifying my process with each brew, which is the reason I’m making an all-extract beer this time. I’ll still have a yeast starter, and it’ll be a full boil, but other than that, it’s back to my first four beers. Not that I’ve come all that far. It’s #11 because it’s the 12th beer I’ll have brewed (the count starts from 0).

I made my Imperial whatsit. The recipe looks like this:

8 lbs. light DME
5 lbs. rauch
3 lbs. caramunich
2 lbs. chocolate
2 oz. Centennial (10% AAU) bittering (90 minutes in the pot)
1 pint WLP530 (Westmalle) starter

Rather than do a real mash/sparge, I mashed the grains for 30 minutes in 4 gallons of water (at 149-152 F), then drained it all into the kettle, added another 4 galons of water, and drained it all again. I ended up with about 6 to 6.5 gallons of wort at 1.029 or something. Very inefficient, but I was mostly hoping for color and some smoky flavor to come out of that.

Adding all that DME was annoying, but the whole thing went off pretty much without a hitch. I used my new aquarium stone to aerate the wort for an hour, pitched the yeast, then went off to The Trappist for some delicious beers. I got back three hours later and the fermentation had begun. Now I’m going to try to keep the wort above 70 F (preferably up near 80), to get some good yeast flavors in the beer.

I’ve been planning to brew an Imperial Stout for my next beer, but maybe with a Belgian yeast, and all extract except for some steeping grains, because I want something easy, and the stronger the beer the more it holds up to extract, sayeth Daniels. After cracking the smoked brown, I decided on a slightly different angle. I’m using 9lbs. of DME, 5lbs. of rauch malt, 2lbs. of chocolate malt, and I think it was 2lbs. of Munich. Or something like that. I forget. It’s written down, just not here.

The folk at Beer, Beer, and More Beer, where I picked up the ingredients for this batch, were wary of my 5lbs. of rauch malt, the same way I’m wary of the elderly woman who dresses all in purple, pink, and lavender and roams the streets of my neighborhood Witnessing for Jehovah all over anyone she sees. But like her, I have found my savior, and I don’t care if everyone knows it, or what they think about it. In fact, when this Imperial Stout turns out to rule the universe, I will bring a bottle of it to the unbelievers, and they will acknowledge our lord and savior, the Roach Malt.

Or it will be undrinkable, and I’ll dump it.

I have a theory about rauch malt (I say rauch rather than smoked because peated malt is different and more dangerous to use) - I think smoked malt is an acquired taste in a way similar to hoppy beers. Something happens when you taste a very smoky, great beer like Schlenkerla’s Urboch, a Lupulin shift-like adjustment of the palate. I’ll test that theory with the beer I brew Thursday.

Okay, so my porter is not a porter at all.  It’s a smoky, brown ale with Belgian yeast.  So, a  smoked brown, I guess.  I opened a bottle after having bottled a bit over a week ago, and it was a little flat, but delicious.  Smoky, a little sweet, malty, not much obvious hoppiness at this point, with a delicious belgian yeast character, though not much in the way of fruitiness.  Maybe some spice.  There’s a bitterness that doesn’t seem hop-related to me, and that’s probably the weak point.  It could also use a little more body, but like I said, I bottled it a week ago.  I’m expecting it to be perfect in a couple weeks, and I can’t wait to brew a stronger version of this same beer.