All according to plan

Wow. Talk about an unprecedented event. I can say that I am proud to have been around, alive and an active participant in the process that helped to put the first African-American in the White House. I’ve always wished… felt… that I would be alive to see this moment happen. I just never expected it to happen so soon. Still, as much of a triumph as that was, there were some disappointments as well. As they say, you can’t win them all. The title of this post refers more to the content below but I felt I needed wanted to follow up on my last post. Now that this is out of the way, let’s get back to beer!

Well, not exactly according to plan but my first attempt at Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day went exactly as I thought it would: alone and with a hangover. Sammy and I attended a Halloween party the night before on Halloween night. We slaved until 9pm that same evening finishing up my costume but it was worth it as Sammy and I ended up winning “Best Couple Costume” for our homemade “geisha” and “samurai warrior” outfits. We beat out another couple who dressed as the main characters from the movie Juno. Sammy’s friends showed up to the party dressed in a Batman-themed costume that featured Batman, “Nurse” Joker, Harley Quinn, Bane, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Catwoman and Penguin. Had they stayed, they would’ve swept all the awards. There were some very impressive individual costumes (Sammy won “Best Female Costume”) as well as some sexy costumes. As soon as I get some photos, I’ll post them up.

Sorry, I get sidetracked. This is a beer blog and I was talking about my failed attempts at teaching the art of homebrewing to my friends. Sure it didn’t help that most of my friends were as hungover as I was. Plus it was raining. Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting anyone to take me up on the offer but that didn’t stop me from brewing anyway. Instead of having a marathon brew day where I planned to brew two beers, I decided to brew one beer on Saturday and the other one on Sunday.

I planned to start brewing around 12pm but my hungover ass didn’t wake up until almost 12pm. I made the drive to Beer and Winemakers of America, my local homebrew shop, to pick up my ingredients. Normally I’d stay a bit longer and hang out or get brewing tips from Rich (the owner) but I was on a schedule and needed to keep my time there productive.

Raspberry Wheat Ale

I had planned on brewing this beer as a BetterBeerBlog seasonal beer only, brewing twice: once in spring and once in summer. I like drinking this beer but not during the winter, it’s just not the right temperature. But my sister-in-law just gave birth to her little baby girl and her husband requested I brew this beer to commemorate the occasion.

This is a simple beer to make with a simple ingredient list. The base beer is a German-style hefeweizen that is later flavored with raspberries. I may not have taught any friends to homebrew on Saturday but that won’t stop me from sharing with you.

Malt:

• 6 lbs – Bavarian Wheat dry malt extract (DME)

Grain:

• 1 lbs – Bamburg Wheat (1.6L)

Hops:

• 1.25 oz – Mt. Hood (4.0)

Yeast:

• White Labs Hefeweizen Ale (WLP300)

Adjunct/Extras:

• 1 tablet Servomyces (yeast nutrient)
• 3 lbs, 1 oz Oregon brand seedless raspberry puree

Process

1. Steep 1 lbs Bamburg Wheat for 30 minutes at 155° F.
2. Bring water to a boil and boil 1.25 oz Mt. Hood hops for 60 minutes.
3. At the 30 minute mark, add 6 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME.
4. At the 40 minute mark, add wort chiller.
5. At the 50 minute mark, add servomyces.
6. Chill to 60° F to 70° F, pitch yeast and aerate. That’s it!

Original Gravity: 1.054

Final Gravity: 1.010

ABV: 5.5%.

Tasting Notes (wort): Cloudy, dark gold with slight green midtones and shadows. Some hop particulate in suspension. Wet bread/bread crust, soggy Cheerio’s aroma. Full body, sweet malt characteristics like Honey Nut Cheerios. Slight green/grassy flavors. Slight bitterness in the finish, grain-like.

Tasting Notes (after primary): Just racked this off to secondary today (11/9/2008) and so far, so good. Cloudy, opaque, dark gold in color. Banana esters and clove phenolics in the aroma with the balance leaning towards the banana, very slight bubblegum. Chewy, slightly grainy, maybe even wort-ish wheat flavors with banana and clove notes, very low bitterness. I just added the raspberry purée today and the beer is starting to get a little bit of that color. I took a gravity reading and the beer dropped down to 1.012, which would give me approximately 5.5125% ABV. I anticipate a slightly higher final gravity as the yeast will still be able to munch on the sugars from the raspberry purée.

Tasting Notes (after secondary): Cloudy/murky, lots of fruit particulate matter floating about. Dull caramel with reddish tint. Still, no head. Lots of fruit esters in the aroma. Banana, raspberry, slight clove, slight tartness. Raspberry flavors up front, yet not overpowering. Banana and clove-ish flavors in the middle with slight tartness in the finish. Fully attenuated, medium-low/medium body. Looks like the fruit took to the beer pretty well.

Tasting Notes (final): This beer is opaque and cloudy with suspended yeasts and fruit particulate. The color is a muddy, reddish caramel color with about 1/2″ inch, off-white, pinkish color. The aroma is very raspberry forward supported by banana esters, slight clove-ish notes and low tartness in at the end. The beer is on the sweet side, moderate amount of raspberry flavor, followed by some banana flavors and slight clove-ish, phenolic character with slight tartness in the finish. Often times, how a beer smells will be very indicative of how it tastes. Hop bitterness is medium-low/low. This beer is medium-low/medium in body (could seem to be fuller because of all the particulate matter floating around) with a medium/medium-high level of carbonation.

Sweet (Milk) Stout

This is my attempt/homage/clone of Left Hand Brewing’s Milk Stout. This beer won Silver in the Sweet Stout category at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival. Not only was this an award-winning beer, this was a damn good tasting beer. I told Mike and Bonnie that I would make this beer and here I am attempting it.

The biggest problem with making a commercial beer is knowing what’s in it. If you at least know what style of beer it is, that’s better than nothing. Still within each style, each brewhouse has it’s interpretation of that style and things can vary greatly. Some brewers will make their beers as close to the BJCP style descriptions as possible while others really push the envelope. Short of asking the brewer directly for their recipe, reverse engineering a beer just from tasting it is difficult at best.

Lucky for me, Left Hand Brewing publishes the ingredients of their beers on their website along with alcohol, IBU and specific gravity/plato numbers. This made it a little easier to reverse engineer. I’m not sure why they would publish that information but I’m not complaining either. Maybe they did it for the homebrewing community. Whatever their reasons, as a homebrewer, I appreciate it to no end.

Even with the ingredients list in hand and numbers to shoot for, I still had other problems. I had to convert their all-grain recipe to work for extract brewing. I have 32 batches under my belt but I am still learning with every batch I make. As much as I think I know about beer, I know enough that I don’t know it all. Not by a longshot.

Thank goodness for Rich at Beer and Winemakers of America. With over 3 decades of homebrewing experience, Rich is my “go-to” guy for homebrewing. All of my recipes are basically his suggestions. If they turn out well the first time, I keep them but if I’m not too happy, I’ll change them up to fit my palette (so I guess some of these are my recipes after all). I came to Rich not only to purchase my homebrew supplies but to ask him to help me formulate Left Hand Brewing’s Milk Stout.

As complex as I’ve made reverse engineering a beer sound, at the end of the day, it’s nothing but a guessing game. Even with all of his experience and an ingredient list, the recipe Rich came up with is nothing but his best guess. At the end of the day, I’d much rather go with Rich’s best guess than my own.

Malt:

• 6 lbs – Coopers Light DME

Grain:

• 1 lbs – Bamburg Munich (6L)
• 1 lbs – Flaked Barley
• 1 lbs – Hugh Baird Crystal (35L)
• .5 lbs – Belgian Chocolate (450L)
• .5 lbs – Hugh Baird Roasted Barley (550L)

Hops:

• .5 oz – Magnum (13.1), bittering hops
• 1 oz – UK Kent Goldings (4.0), finishing hops

Yeast:

• British Ale Yeast (WLP005)

Adjunct/Extras:

• 1 tablet Servomyces (yeast nutrient)
• 8 oz lactose

Process

1. Steep all the specialty grains for 60 minutes at 155° F. In order to get the correct color, a longer steep time is required.
2. Bring water to a boil and boil .5 oz Magnum hops for 60 minutes.
3. At the 30 minute mark, add 6 lbs Coopers Light DME.
4. At the 40 minute mark, add wort chiller.
5. At the 45 minute mark, add 8 oz lactose.
6. At the 50 minute mark, add 1 tablet servomyces.
7. At the 59 minute mark, add 1 oz UK Kent Goldings to finish.
8. Chill to 60° F to 70° F, pitch yeast and aerate. Like the Harvest Ale, I used a yeast starter as well. Fermentation began within hours. I’ll be using yeast starters from now on.

Original Gravity: 1.066 (a little higher than my target but not too bad nonetheless).

Final Gravity: 1.029

ABV: 4.86%.

Tasting Notes (wort): Nearly opaque, dark brown, like Indian Rosewood. For whatever reason, I’m picking up day old, slightly stale veggie pizza aromas along with a wet grain/cereal aromas. Hints of roastiness as well. Wort is sweet, like Honey Nut Cheerios with roasty flavors and bittersweet chocolate undertones. Hops are “green” and raw tasting. Hop bitterness is medium-low/medium in level.

Tasting Notes (after primary): Dark brown with red highlights. Still smells “wort-ish”, medium-low/low fruit esters in the aroma. Sweet flavor, maybe slight fruit, lots of residual sugars left, finish is roasty and chocolatey. Bitterness is “OK” for the style, medium/medium-low. Body is medium/medium-high, only slightly creamy.

I took a gravity reading and it’s on the high side: 1.030. Current calculations would put this beer at 4.75% ABV. While within the tolerances for the style, I think it’s lower than what I was shooting for in both final gravity and targeted ABV. I understand this beer is supposed to have some residual sugars left to give it a sweeter flavor but I think I can still attenuate a little further. Sammy also said that she tasted a low level of tartness. The low level of tartness may be from an infection but if this beer were infected, the final gravity would be much lower as the little baddies would’ve eaten all the remaining sugars. I think the tartness may be from some of the specialty grains I’ve used. Historic porter and stout recipes were slightly tart so it’s not too worrisome. I’m thinking I might have to pitch another vial of yeast but I’ll have to ask Rich at Beer and Winemakers of America what he thinks. Worst case, I don’t do anything and let this sit in secondary for two weeks or more.

Tasting Notes (final): Finally. A little over two months after starting this beer, I am finally able to tap it and drink. My Milk Stout pours out an opaque, black with off-white bubbles are are more soapy than fine. The aroma of this beer is of roasted malts, with coffee and slight chocolate notes. The flavor is similar, it is sweet, roasted with coffee notes and slight chocolate flavors. The hops definitely take a back seat to the malt flavors and are enough to let you know this is a beer. This beer if full-bodied, chewy almost, with low/medium-low carbonation. I do pick up trace levels of sourness in the finish.

When I compare this to the BJCP guideline for the style, I would have to say my beer is pretty close to style. It’s right there for aroma  (9) and color (3) but I think misses the mark somewhat in flavor because of the slight sourness I detect (12). It’s right there for mouthfeel (5) and, although I’m biased, think this is a very enjoyable beer overall that hits many of the main points for the style (8). Doing the math, I’d have scored this beer a  37/50. But like I said, I’m pretty biased about this beer. : )

Hopefully you’ll still be reading when these beers are ready. I am excited about both beers but even more so about the Sweet Stout. This is a style that I’ve never made before and as such, I get that “new beer” feeling. As I’m writing this, I hear my fermentors bubbling away. Ah, the sweet sound of fermentation.

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