Raspberry Flanders Red (2017) - Tasting Notes

This is the third blend (see plain and cherry portions) from my 2017 Flanders Red blending session.  This was my first attempt at blending Raspberry with Flanders Red.  I blended it up on 12/17/17 - read my brew notes here.

Raspberries are a really wonderfully intense tasting and smelling fruit.  They are often used with Lambic but it seemed like they would go equally well with a Flanders Red.  I used 10 lbs of fruit grown in my back yard in 2017.  The base beer was a blend of two fairly mild versions from my collection.  My thought was that the beer would gain plenty of acidity from the fruit and so a complex but less acidic base would be beneficial.  I certainly was correct about the acidity - this is a very acidic beer.

I chose to backsweeten this beer as is typically done with Rodenbach to improve the drinkability.  The base was pretty close to 1.000.  The invert #3 syrup I added probably got it up to 1.010 after bottle conditioning.  I pasteurized the beer once proper level of carbonation had been reached.  I timed it pretty well with this batch as most have been pretty well carbonated.  I bottled this beer on 5/6/18.  It's been tasting great and the raspberry flavor is holding steady.

I am overdue on my 2018 batch and have a lot more raspberries this year.  Will be putting together some new blends before long.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Sweet smelling with a strong Raspberry Character.  Maybe get a bit of earthy aroma coming through faintly
• Appearance:
• Pours with a couple finger head.  Dark red in color.  Pretty murky on this pour as I dumped in most of the dregs.
• Flavor:
• Very sharply acidic with intense fruit flavor.  The finish is a little sweet and has some malt the comes through in the end.  This balances the acidity nicely.  Complex earthy and leathery Brett flavors come through in the background.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium light bodied and slightly sweet.  The acidity of the beer prickles the mouth.
• Overall:
• I really enjoy the Raspberry character of this beer.  The complex base beer has been almost completely overwhelmed by the 10 lbs of fruit but still comes through enough to provide some balance.  The acidity a bit more intense than I would preferred but is still easily within the range that I can enjoy.  The slight sweetness from the backsweetening really helped this one a lot I think.

American Brown Ale

I've been holding off on brewing another hoppy beer pending the acquisition of a keg fridge but a gift of a few oz of homegrown Cascade hops has prompted me to brew another highly hopped ale destined for bottles.  This time I'm going to try out an American Brown Ale.  Like many American versions of beers, this takes an English Base beer and uses a more aggressive hopping approach with Fruity American Hops.

I found an interesting recipe on Homebrewtalk which I've decided to brew.  I like the look of the malt bill - I think the judicious use of multiple specialty malts will probably provide some complexity.  It will be bittered to about 35 IBU and will have 2 oz of flame out and 4 oz of dry hop.  Finally, I'll be fermenting with US-05 (Chico strain) at 68 F which typically gives a pretty clean fermentation profile.

I'd planned for this beer to come in at 1.55 SG which would have gotten me around 5.5% ABV most likely (as the recipe specified).  I had an accident while cycling the mash where I let about a gallon of first runnings spill onto the ground.  I did a second mash with 4 more lbs of grain to compensate and overshot the gravity by quite a bit (up to 1.067).  Some of the numbers below aren't quite right as a result.  I may add some water post fermentation to get closer to the desired ABV.

Recipe Detail:

• Grain:
• 11 lb 2 Row
• 12 oz Chocolate Malt
• 12 oz Victory Malt
• 12 oz Crystal 40L
• 12 oz Crystal 80L
• Additional Mash after losing ~1 gal of first runnings
• 3.5 lb 2 row
• 0.5 oz Munich Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Centennial (Pellet, 8.4% AA) at 60 min
• 0.5 oz Cascade (Pellet, 5.1% AA) at 30 min
• 0.5 oz Cascade (Pellet, 5.1% AA) at 15 min
• 1 oz Willamette (Pellet, 4.8% AA) at 0 min
• 1 oz Cascade (Pellet, 4.8% AA) at 0 min
• 1 oz Willamette (Pellet) Dry Hop
• 3 oz Cascade (Whole Cone) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Safale US-05 (Chico)
• Water:
• 13 gal Spring Water
• 1 oz CaCl
• 1 oz Gypsum
• 1 oz Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal
• Mash:
• 156 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 68 F
• Primary Duration:
• 3 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• N/A

Results:

• OG:
• 1.067 (Target 1.055)
• Efficiency:
• 64% (Target 65%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 68% (Target 76%)
• ABV:
• 5.78% (Target 5.51%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/23/18 - Brewday - 10:45 AM to 4:45 PM - Including setup and Cleanup
• Heated 8 gal to 180 F
• Added 6 gal to the mash tun.  Cycled through the RIMS until the system was at 166 F
• Milled my grain.  Mixed in the brewing salts
• Doughed in.  Stirred well to hydrate everything.  Temperature was at 156 F after the mixing - right on target
• Set the RIMS to cycle at about 2 qt per minute at 156 F

• Mashed for 60 min
• Heated 7 gal of sparge water to 180 F
• Still not sure what happened but I stepped away for 10 min towards the end of the mash and came back to find my grant overflowing.  There was about a gal of wort on the ground.  The RIMS had been at an equilibrium for a good 45 min so I can't believe the rate changing was the issue.  In the urgency to get things right I stopped everything before I could really assess what went wrong.
• I drained the mash tun and got the first runnings.  Sparged with maybe a gal of water.  Ended up with 5 gal of 1.056 wort.  I decided to add some grain and do another mash.  I calculated my efficiency at about 55% for this first runnings batch.  Based on this I decided to add 4 more lb of grain (3.5 2 row and 0.5 Munich) along with 4 more gal of hot water.
• Mashed for another 60  min with the RIMS cycling at 156 F
• Took the first runnings again with a couple gal batch sparge of hot water
• Collected 9 gal which I measured at 11.5 brix (1.043).  This puts my efficiency at about 61% with the addition of the 4 lbs of grain.
• Brought to a boil
• Added the bittering hops after the hot break cleared
• Added 30 min hops
• At 15 min added more hops and the Irish Moss
• Waited until 0 min to add the wort chiller to sanitize and let the beer come back to a boil before killing the flame
• Chilled down to 180 F and then added the flame out hops
• Let the beer sit for 30 min
• Rehydraded my yeast in a cup of room temperature water
• Chilled down to 185 F
• Drained into fermenter - let it fall couple feet.  Left about half a gal of hops and cold break behind

• Moved to the beer to the fermentation chamber to chill down to 68 F
• Got 6 gal of beer.  Measured the gravity as 1.067.  So, I overshot by a pretty big margin with my course correction.  Ended up with 64% efficiency which is better than I thought I'd do.  I may add some water post fermentation (~1 gal) to get closer to the ABV I wanted.
• Pitched the yeast once the beer was at 68 F
• 9/24/18 - Airlock was showing signs of fermentation by the next day
• 10/7/18 - It has been two weeks since brewday so I'm adding the dry hops.  I used hop bags weighed down by stainless steel bolts.  Split them up into 4 bags.  The whole hops float on the surface even with the weights.  I pushed them down to saturate them a bit.  Set the fermentation chamber down to 50 F to begin the cold crash
• 10/11/18 - Chilled the beer down to 34 F
• 10/13/18 - Added gelatin to fine the beer.  Decided to give the beer 1 week to cold crash.  This is a bit longer than I planned to leave it on the dry hops but I think at the cold temperature it will be fine.  The hops had sunk to the bottom.
• 10/20/18 - Bottled today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020 which gives me 5.78 ABV.  I got 5.25 gal of beer.  I was considering adding some spring water to dilute down to the target ABV but this beer is tasting pretty nice at its current numbers.  I'll bottle as is.  Primed with 4 oz sugar.  Got 32 16 oz bottles and 8 12 oz bottles.
• 11/30/18 - Tasting Notes - This is an easy drinking and nicely balanced beer.  It has enough going on to be interesting even thought the flavoring hops have mostly gone.  I think the 16+ oz Russian River bottles I used for this were a good choice.  It has a low enough ABV (5.78%) where that much beer doesn't really effect me and that bit of extra beer over the 12 oz bottles makes for a slightly more satisfying first beer of the day.

Lessons Learned:

1. Lost quite a bit of wort after walking away from the cycling mash tun.  I think I must have turned off the pump from the grant back into the mash tun (idiot I am).  I probably spent 90% of the brew day in the house screwing around with other things.  Need to remember this for next time
2. I planned for half a gal of beer lost at transfer to fermenter due to high hopping.  This was a good estimate and I hit the 6.5 gal post boil volume as planned so I got 6 gal in the fermenter.