Milk Stout - Tasting Notes

I brewed up this Milk Stout back in July based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog:  1939 William Younger Nourishing Milk Stout.  A milk stout is brewed with Lactose, which can't be fermented by brewers yeast, in order to get a beer with a bit more sweetness than normal (it's also called a "Sweet Stout").  Lactose is the sugar found naturally in milk - it is sweet in a very mild way - and was traditionally marketed as sort of a healthful and fortifying addition to beer (sometimes for nursing mothers  - old marketing being shameless in that way)

I've had this beer on tap at 50-55 F for the last 4 weeks and it's drinking very nicely.  Time for some tasting notes before it's gone

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Roast, coffee, and a bit of overripe fruit.  Maybe some honey in there and some sweet bready malt.  Maybe some herbal and grassy hop aroma in there as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with couple finger head that lingers for a couple minutes and leaves some lacing.  Black (dark reddish brown when held to the light) and a little murky
• Flavor:
• Sweet, roasty, and slightly fruity up front.  The finish has a mild level of bitterness which comes pretty close to balancing a sweet character that lingers.  The sweet flavor has a depth and complexity to it - there's an initial up front mild sweetness which I'd credit to the lactose and then an even more mild caramel-like flavor.  I think I pick up on the Licorice as well although it is very subtle (contributing to the slightly fruity character - not really anything like the candy).  May have a slight bit of herbal flavor in the background.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium-light bodied.  Sticky sweetness.  Pretty easy drinking - goes down very smooth.
• Overall:
• Richly flavored and sweet (but in fairly restrained way) - aroma and flavor are really lovely.  Has a good bit of complexity with a lot of flavors to pick out and quite of interesting notes.  Goes down very easily and I find that 1 glass is never enough

El Dorado & Zappa Pale Ale

I am finally getting smart with my beer management and brewing up a new hoppy beer before the last one has kicked.  This will be another 3-4% ABV pale hoppy beer loaded up on dry hops.  This is really the wonderful style of beer in my opinion - so flavorful & complex and easy drinking enough to have any many as I want.  These are beers you can't buy commercially and, even if you could, getting them as fresh as you can get homebrewing would be a huge PITA, and then they'd be ridiculously expensive

For this one, I'll be using 6 oz of El Dorado, which impart a sweet fruity character, and 2 oz of Zappa which make a really reach piney and earthy character.  I think two hops will get along well together and at this ratio they'll likely give similar level of character (since the Zappa are so powerful while El Dorado are a bit more mild).  The 8 oz of dry hops get a really bold character - I imagine this is very close to saturation point.

Like the last several pale ales I'll be using about 20% of the grainbill as flaked grain (this time wheat and corn) to try to provide a bit more malt presence.  I'll also mash at close to 160 F to help finish with more body.  These also help keep the ABV relatively low.  With this much hop the malt is so far in the background it doesn't really cut through but I'd like to imagine this could help a bit.  This will probably be clear beer like the others but if it ends up a bit hazy that's fine too.

Finally, I'll be using Imperial Yeast Juice for this beer.  This is probably my fifth beer using this pitch of yeast and a third re-pitch.  It is a good yeast that makes some subtle fruity character.  It also seems to be continuing to ferment out nicely after extended time sitting in jars in the fridge.  This is a really good way of saving some money since yeast is so expensive.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 8 lb Pale Malt
• 1 lb Flaked Corn
• 1 lb Flaked Wheat
• 5 oz Crystal 10L
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 2 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 5 min
• 2 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 5 min
• 1.7 oz Cascade (Homegrown Leaf) at 0 min
• 2 oz Zappa (Leaf 5.3% AA) at Day 7
• 6 oz El Dorado (Leaf, 14% AA) at Day 7
• Yeast:
• Imperial Yeast A38 Juice (3rd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal
• Mash:
• 158 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA 

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.045)
• Efficiency:
• 72.5% (Target 71 %)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.015)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 73% (Target 66%)
• ABV:
• 4.5% (Target 3.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 8/14/21 - Made a starter using a saved jar of yeast, 1 litre of spring water, and 100g of DME.  Set it up on the stir plate to propagate over night
• 8/15/21 - Brewday - 12:15 PM to 5:00 PM - Including setup and Cleanup
• Heated 9 gal of spring water to 185 F
• Milled my grain - mixed in brewing salts along with this
• Added 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until it had reached 168 F
• Stopped the RIMS and mixed in the grain until there were no more dough balls
• Let the Mash settle for 10 min.  Then started the RIMS cycle and let it go for 50 more minute
• Heated 7 gal of sparge water up to 185 F
• At the end of the mash I did a modified fly sparge until 8.5 gal of wort had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collecting 4 gal and had it at a boil shortly after the end of the sparge.

• Added the bittering hops after the hot break cleared
• Ended up having to adjust the burner strength to keep boil over
• Wth 15 min left I added the Irish moss
• With 5 min left I added more hops and the wort chiller to sanitize
• At zero minutes I chilled the beer a bit with the heat still on to settle the beer near 175 F and added the 0 min hops
• Let the beer sit and steep at 175 F for 30 min
• Chilled the beer down to 80 F

• Drained the brew kettle into the fermenter.  Let the beer fall a couple feet to aerate.  Pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Moved the beer to the chest freezer set to 67 F to chill down to fermentation temperature to and to start fermentation
• Measured the gravity as 1.048.  Collected 5.75 gal.  Added water up to 6 gal
• 8/16/21 - The beer is fermenting aggressively this morning
• 8/22/21 - Added the dry hops in muslin sacks weighed down with stainless steal.  The beer still had a bit of krausen on the surface.  I pressurized the fermenter with CO2 prior to adding the hops and again after to try to displace the O2 that got in

• 8/26/21 - Cold crashed the beer down to 40 F.  Pressurized the fermenter with C02 to protect from oxygen during this.  I ran out of C02 part way through this.  Hopefully that doesn't cause any harm.
• 8/27/21 - Added gelatin to fine the beer
• 8/28/21 - Transferred the beer to a keg backfilled with C02.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.  I'm going to let this carbonate for a week before trying it out.
• 9/20/21 - Tasting Notes - This is another nice hoppy pale ale.  Easy drinking with delicious hop derived flavors.  This one is fairly boldly flavored but not quite as bold and bright as the last one that used Zappa only.  The El Dorado is a more mild hop and I think the 6 oz used were somehow out competed by the 2 oz of Zappa here.  This beer is certainly no chore to get through but I'm not sure I'd call Zappa and El Dorado a winning combination (at least these crops in these proportions).
• 10/19/21 - Keg kicked today.  The beer was still very nicely hoppy at the end

Pilsner Take II

Today I'll be brewing a Pilsner destined for one of my four Kegs - this will be my second attempt at the style (read about my first attempt).  I very much enjoy the light, crisp, and hoppy flavor of Pilsner (my last two cases of hoppy beer were Victory Prima Pils) - this beer is somewhat inspired by this clone recipe.  I couldn't get the right hops for that one so I've used Saaz and Tettnang for this batch.

This is a very simple recipe with just Pilsner malt.  I've done Decoction mashes for my German inspired lager previously but this time I'm going to see how it does with a single stage mash which will make for a quicker brewday.  I'm shooting for an ABV for around 4.7% for a bit easier drinking on this one.

I'm going to give a few weeks to ferment out and then will do a short (2 week) lager period before kegging.  Looking forward to having this one on tap.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 10.5 lbs Pilsner
• 2 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Hallertau Blanc (Pellet, 9.4% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Saaz (Pellet, 2.8% AA) at 30 min
• 1 oz Tettnang (Pellet, 3.0% AA) at 30 min
• 1 oz Saaz (Pellet, 2.8% AA) at 5 min
• 1 oz Tettnang (Pellet, 3.0% AA) at 5 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal
• Mash:
• 152 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Primary at 50 F
• Diacetyl Rest at Basement Temps
• Lager at 40 F
• Primary Duration:
• 1.5 weeks
• Diacetyl Cleanup Duration:
• 1 week
• Lager Duration:
• 2 weeks

Results:

• OG:
• 1.048 (Target 1.047)
• Efficiency:
• 72% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.008 (Target 1.011)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 81% (Target 76%)
• ABV:
• 5.1% (Target 4.7%)

Brewing Notes:

• 7/31/21 - Built a yeast starter using 100g of DME and 1 L of boiling spring water.  Let this cool and then pitched my jar of yeast and set it up on a stir plate to propagate over night
• 8/1/21 - Brewday - 1:20 PM to 5:20 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 9 gal of spring water to 175 F
• Milled my grain.  Added brewing salts to the grain
• Moved 6 gal of spring water to the mash tun and cycled until it had settled to 164 F
• Stirred in the grain and let this sit for 20 min.  It settled to 154 F
• Cycled the RIMS at 153 F for 40 min more

• Heated 9 gal of spring water to 185 F
• Did a fly sparge until 8 gal had been collected.  Started heating the beer after collecting 4 gal and had to a boil just after finishing the sparge
• Added the bittering hops at the start of the boil once the hot break had settled a bit

• Added the 30 min hops
• Added Irish Moss with 15 min left
• With 5 min left I added the wort chiller and some flavoring hops.  Let the beer come back to a boil
• Chilled the beer to 80 F
• Collected 5.5 gal and measured the gravity as 1.052.  Topped it up with 0.5 gal of spring water to get to about 1.048
• Moved the beer to the fermentation chamber to chill down to fermentation temperature (50 F)
• 8/3/21 - Airlock finally started bubbling today
• 8/15/21 - Moved it out of the chest freezer for diacetyl rest
• 8/28/21 - Moved the beer back to the chest freezer set at 37 F for a couple weeks of lagering
• 9/5/21 - Added gelatin to fine the beer
• 9/6/21 - Transferred to a C02 purged keg to carbonate.  I'll give the beer a week or so before trying it.
• 10/16/21 - Tasting Notes - This is a really nice flavorful and easy drinking beer.  Tastes like a pilsner - no doubt about it.  I really enjoy the smoothness of it and the balance between the malt (which is more present than an IPA) and the very satisfying bitterness.
• 11/3/21 - The keg kicked today.  I'm going to miss this beer.