The Quad Of My Dreams Tasting

After 3+ months of waiting, our Belgian quad is finally ready to drink - mostly. In the last few weeks we've opened about a half dozen bottles and been about 50/50 on whether they're carbonated. I'm not sure what's causing the inconsistent carbonation with the bottles. Maybe we just tried opening them too soon and in the last week or so they're finally starting to be more reliably carbonated. It'll be interesting to see going forward if any of the rest of the bottles are also not carbonated.

The first one we opened was definitely not carbonated, and an uncarbonated beer has a significantly sweeter taste due to the unfermented sugars, in addition to obviously being flat. Amy's assessment of that first tasting was "This is not the quad of my dreams."

Since then though, the bottles that have been carbonated have actually turned out pretty well. The beer absolutely tastes like a quad, and finished up just over 10% ABV. Initially I was worried that some of the sweetness or alcohol sharpness that I first tasted in our quad were off flavors, but after tasting other quads since then I've realized that those are just normal properties of the style. This has been one of the unexpected side-effects of making our own beer - that tasting the different flavors of a beer we make in a particular style makes me more aware of different flavors present in that style even in commercial beers.

As of this writing, we have our saison in the fridge ready to be tasted for the first time and our breakfast stout only a week away from being ready. They're our first beers with starters and with start-to-finish temperature control, so I'm really excited to see how they turn out. Stay tuned!

[ Westvleteren Abt 12 Brew Day ] <---

Saison Brew Day

I'm falling behind on blogging, but a couple weeks ago now (March 28th), we brewed our lightest-colored beer ever - a saison! We were looking for some variety from all the dark beers we've brewed, plus with the weather getting better we wanted a nice lighter flavored refreshing beer. There aren't a ton of great Spring seasonal beer styles, but Amy and I both love saisons and found a good recipe online.

This was our second attempt at using a yeast starter. It was much smaller this time, despite the same batch size, because the saison is so much lower gravity than the breakfast stout. We used Fermcap this time and there was no foaming over while boiling the starter!

The biggest problem with the brew day this time was the mash temperature. We used the auto-calculated strike temperature in BeerSmith of 160F, but ended up with the initial mash temperature of about 157F instead of down around 149F. I had to mix in some ice to the mash to get it down to temperature. The biggest concern with the temperature being too high is that it would result in a lower-attenuating wort. The recipe calls for a starting gravity of 1.040 and a final gravity of 1.008 for an ABV of about 5.5%. The low final gravity is from a highly attenuating wort. If the mash is too hot then the wort won't get to as low of a final gravity, resulting in a lower-alcohol (and potentially sweeter?) beer. Our starting gravity ended up at 1.036 instead of 1.040 too, so that will also contribute to a possibly lower alcohol. We'll have to wait and see what gravity we reach after fermentation to see how much of a problem the temperature was.

After the brew day, I spent some time adjusting the numbers in BeerSmith to hopefully calibrate it better to what we're seeing in reality. I changed the grain absorption rate slightly to match the water we're losing during the mash so that we're better at hitting our pre-boil wort volume. I also changed our brewhouse efficiency so that we should get closer to our intended starting gravity. The third thing I changed was the mash tun temperature, which was listed as 71F originally. Since we're doing BIAB, the "strike" water is actually in the pot getting warm along with the pot itself, so it's not getting poured into a mash tun and losing temperature from the cool mash tun itself. By making BeerSmith think the mash tun temperature was actually around 155F, it looks like it'll give us a more accurate strike temperature, so that after we pour the room-temperature grains in we're at the target mash temperature. I'm looking forward to brewing our next beer and seeing if the number adjustments help us get closer to the targets in the recipe.

---> [ Une Autre, SVP! Tasting ]

If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Crap

Back in mid-January we cracked open the Oatmeal Stout we brewed with Craig and got our first taste of the finished product. The regular stout is a tiny bit on the sweet side, but does have a little bit of roasty malt character. The bourbon-oaked version seems to have lost all the real "bourbon" flavor that it had when we bottled and only the oak and some vanilla remain. The result is a beer that tastes more like a really oaky chardonnay than a roasty (let alone bourbon-flavored) stout. Still, both beers are totally drinkable and hopefully Craig had fun being involved in the brewing process.

The name was all Craig's idea and I absolutely love it. It's based on a quote from the Simpsons episode "Burns, Baby Burns." Our non-bourbon version is "If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Crap," with the bourbon version being "If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Bourbon Barrel Aged Crap." Super-long names for sure, but every time I see them on untappd I smile.

[ Oatmeal Stout Bottling ] <---

Founders Breakfast Stout Brew Day

This weekend we brewed a clone of one of my all time favorite beers: Founders Breakfast Stout. We found the recipe from another home brewer here. The brew day went smoothly and smelled fantastic. The combination of chocolate, coffee, and dark malts were just intoxicating.

One of the big changes for this brew was our first use of a yeast starter. After reading all about yeast and pitch counts recently, it seemed like the obvious next step for our brewing. I used the Brewer's Friend Yeast Pitch Rate and Yeast Starter Calculator to determine the starting viability of the yeast based on its age, the desired number of cells based on batch size and gravity, and the size starter we would need to reach the right pitch count.

The big lesson learned coming from the starter was that we absolutely need Fermcap-S to inhibit the foaming while boiling the starter. As soon as the wort would start boiling in the Erlenmeyer flask, it would foam up like crazy, get foam up into the foam stopper, and have wort seeping over the sides and onto the stove.

Other than the foaming issue, everything else with the starter seemed to go well. We had it on a StirStarter stir plate for 48 hours in our temp-controlled freezer at 72 degrees, then refrigerated for 12 hours to drop the yeast to the bottom.

On the morning of brew day, we went to Ceremony Coffee Roasters in Annapolis to pick up fresh local coffee beans for our brew. We also picked up all the ingredients from Annapolis Home Brew that morning. We started the mash as soon as we got home, but it made for a bit of a hectic brew day because we were trying to do all of our recipe adjustments and measurements at the same time as the brewing itself.

When the boil was finished and the wort was cool, we ran into a minor issue moving the beer to the fermentor. There was so much ground coffee in the wort that it was clogging up the siphon and messing up the seal. Luckily it was only with a few cups left to be transferred, so we managed to force the siphon the rest of the way to get the desired batch size into the primary fermentor.

In addition to the our first time using a yeast starter, it was also our first time using our new clear Big Mouth Bubbler for primary fermentation, as well as our first time using the temperature controlled freezer for primary fermentation. Through some combination of the starter and the warmer temp in the freezer, it seemed like there was very little lag for this brew. By 11pm the night of brew day it was already foamy and bubbling away in the airlock.

We're planning to go two weeks in the primary fermentor, then rack to a secondary and put more coffee into the beer. That'll go for two more weeks before bottling, and around May 1st we should be tasting. If the smells from brew day were any indicator, this is going to be one fantastic beer!

---> [ Early Starter Tasting ]

409 Tasting

This weekend we tasted all three versions of our "6x dry hopped" Black IPA. We accidentally put three times as much hops in each secondary for dry hopping, and for twice as long as the recipe called for. From the moment we realized the mistake, I've been worried that the beer would end up as just undrinkable hop juice.

As it turned out, the beer was quite tasty! The hop presence was certainly strong, but not undrinkable by any stretch. Of the three, the Sorachi version was my favorite. The Galaxy was lighter in flavor and crisper. The Cascade surprised me. I expected the flavor to be harsher but it had some interesting complexity and was really pretty good. Behind all those hop flavors was a nice dark malt base that made for good Black IPA flavors in all three.

Even beyond the specific hop and dark malt flavors though, the actual quality of the beer seemed really good. There were no off flavors I could detect. This was our first beer using our new temperature controller, and also our first beer using dry malt extract for carbonating rather than corn sugar. Of the two, I would imagine the steady fermentation temperature had the bigger effect. Regardless, it's exciting to see some improvement in our beer quality given all the changes we've made to our process and equipment since that first batch.

As for the name - if you're a Penn State fan it requires no explanation, but for the rest of you, we brewed this beer in mid January just after the news came out that Penn State's 112 wins from 1998 to 2011 were being restored, bringing Joe Paterno's total back to 409 - the most for any coach in NCAA Div 1 Football history. For all the players involved in those wins, and for all the devoted fans of the University and of Paterno himself, the reinstatement of the wins represents a tiny victory in the face of the vilification that has taken place over the last three years.

[ Black IPA Racking ] <---

Black IPA Racking

Tonight we racked our Black IPA and did the dry hopping for the secondary fermentation. We had a three gallon batch and decided to rack into three separate one-gallon carboys so that we could try different varieties of hops. Normally I don't bother with a blog post because racking is usually smooth and uneventful. Though not our most epic racking disaster, tonight still had enough twists to warrant the post.

When we took the lid off the primary fermenter, the krausen still hadn't fallen in the beer, so that was a little concerning. Ideally we would wait for the krausen to fall before racking, but with the plastic bucket there's no way to know without opening the lid and risking contamination. I think we're going to get a clear plastic fermenter so that in future brews we can see what's going on during primary fermentation. I don't know why the krausen still hadn't fallen after a week - maybe it was too cold in the room we had so the fermentation was slow. The gravity was down to 1.021. Ideally it would still drop a few points, but it is up to 8% ABV so at least that part is good.

We're using Cascade, Sorachi Ace, and Galaxy for our three hops. Since the three hops have different levels of alpha acid, I adjusted the amount of hops added to each carboy to balance them out. The goal is for each beer to have roughly the same level of hop aroma and flavor from the dry hopping. The alpha acid numbers are used to adjust bitterness levels when using hops during the boil. I'm not actually sure it will translate to the levels of aroma and flavor from the dry hopping, but that's all I could think of.

The original recipe called for 21.8g for each hop addition during the boil, then 21.8g of Cascade for the dry hopping. Based on the different alpha acid levels, 21.8g of Cascade translated to 13.1g of Sorachi Ace or 10.5g of Galaxy hops, which were the amounts we used. The only catch - those numbers were for the whole batch! I should have divided by three, giving 7.3g of Cascade, 4.4g of Sorachi Ace, and 3.5g of Galaxy in their respective carboys.

Not only did we use three times as much hops for the dry hopping as we were supposed to, I also forgot that we were supposed to do the dry hopping a week before bottling, not right at the start of racking to the secondary. I even have it on my calendar to do the dry hopping next Tuesday then bottle the following Tuesday.

I'm not sure what to do next to avoid totally overpowering the beer with the hops, since now we have three times as much hops sitting on the beer for twice as long as it was supposed to. Maybe we can rack the beer off of those hops in a week, or just go ahead and bottle in a week and give it longer in the bottle to continue the conditioning process. Or we can leave the hops in there for the next two weeks and possibly create some seriously face-slapping hoppy beer.

[ Black IPA Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ 409 Tasting ]

Black IPA Brew Day

Today Desert Penguin ventured into a type of beer I never thought we'd brew - an IPA! To change it up and make it not all about the hops, we decided on a black IPA. It's the brew recommended for January by our new 2015 home brew calendar. We also wanted the ability to experiment with some flavors and see if we could come up with something different and interesting. The black IPA recipe we're using requires some dry hopping during secondary fermentation. We picked up a new 1 gallon carboy and we're going to do a different dry hop in each of 3 different carboys. Hopefully each gallon will have different qualities given the different hops that we chose.

Brew day went very smoothly again. We headed to Annapolis home brew in the morning and got all the supplies. They were out of some of the grains we were hoping to get, but Paul saved the day with some quick rework of the recipe. The combined grains weighed about 10 lbs.

We started brewing at 4:30 pm and were all finished at 8:30 pm. This recipe is another all grain brew using brew in a bag. The new pot and brew bag worked perfectly again. We started off with 5.7 gallons of water and we brought it up to the strike temp of 159. When the water was at the ideal temp, we added the brew bag and grains. About 5 min after we started the mash, we remembered to add the pH stabilizer to help improve the efficiency. It was a 90 min mash. After the mash finished, we pulled out the bag of grains and let it drain in the strainer while bringing the wort to a boil. We were just a little shy of the ideal amount of water after the mash. We added about 2 cups of water strained through the grains.

It was a 60 min boil and we added hops at 5 different points. At the start of the boil, we added summit hops. The summit hops had a really nice smell. With 15 min left, we added chinook hops; then at 10 min left, we added centennial hops; with 5 min left, cascade hops went in; and finally more centennial hops went in at the end of the boil.

With the outside temp keeping the incoming water very cold, it only took 12 min to cool the wort to 70 degrees. We racked the wort to the primary fermentation bucket, pitched the yeast, and took it downstairs to begin the alcohol making process.

The efficiency of this batch was slightly higher (66%) than our previous BIAB brew (60%), so it resulted in a higher gravity than expected. Not a bad thing in my book. :) The goal is to hit 8.16% ABV, but it might come in slightly higher. Another very fun and successful all grain brew in a bag experience!

---> [ Black IPA Racking ]