Munich Dunkel - Take III

This is my third attempt at the Munich Dunkel Style (read about the first and second).  This is one of my favorite styles of beer - I really love the bready malt character in these as well as the great drinkability.  

Like with my last 2 attempts I will be executing a decoction step mash for this beer.  With this procedure you pull grain from the mash, boil it, and then add it back to the main mash.  This provides a controlled way to raise the temperature of the mash through the conversion range.  Additionally the boil is thought to create some of the color and malty flavor elements in the beer.  This could probably be achieved with specialty malts but the process is kind of fun and it worked well last time so I'll do it again.

Like with my last beer I'll be using only Munich Malt.  I'm going to make 10.5 gal this time to fill 2 kegs with beer (the second 5 gal will have an extended lager time while I drink the first so it will be interesting to see if that changes the character at all).  The last beer came in at over 6% ABV as my efficiency was better than expected and it attenuated a higher percentage than I'd hoped.  I intend to bring this beer in at 5% ABV.

I'll be using low AA Tettnanger hops like last time and will try to bitter to about 22 IBU.  This style is balanced towards the malt so the hops are largely in the background offering just a slight bit of bitterness to offset any sweetness.

I'll be using Wyeast's Munich Later strain (my first attempt with it).  This will be started at 50 F.  It supposed to be supportive of malt forward beer.  I look forward to reporting on the results.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 20 lbs Munich
• 4 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 3 oz Tettnanger (Pellet, 3.9% AA) at 60 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager Yeast
• Water:
• 16 gal spring water
• 2 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 12 (Target 10.5 gal)
• Mash:
• Triple Decoction:
• See Brewing Notes
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 50 F for primary
• 65 F for Diacetyl Cleanup
• 35 F for Lagering
•  Primary Duration:
• 4 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 4 weeks (second fermenter will get as much time as it takes to kill the first keg)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.052 (Target 1.050)
• Efficiency:
• 85% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.017 (Target 1.012)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 66% (Target 75%)
• ABV:
• 4.6% (Target 5%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/30/22 - Prepared a yeast starter and set this up on a stir plate to propagate over night
• 12/31/22 - Brew Day - 11:00 AM to 4:30 PM - Including setup and cleanup
• Brought 13 gal of spring water to 160 F
• Milled the grain and added CaCl to it so I would forget
• Moved 7 gal of strike water to the mash tun.  Added the grain.  Stirred well to eliminate dough balls.  Let this sit for 15 min.  Temperature settled at 146 F
• Moved 14 quarts of the mash (getting mostly grain and leaving behind most of the liquid) to a separate pot for the first decoction.  Heated this up to the high 150s and let it sit for 15 min.  Then brought this to a boil for 10 min
• Added the first decoction back to the main mash.  The temperature had fallen to 143 F.  This raised it up to 153 F.  Let this sit for 15 min
• Moved 10 quarts of the mash to a separate pot for the second decoction.  Boiled this for 10 min.
• Added the second decoction back to the main mash.  The temperature was still 153 F.  This raised it up to 156 F.  Let this sit for 15 more minutes.
• Heated 8 gal of sparge water to 180 F
• Moved 10 quarts of the mash to the separate pot for the third decoction.  Boiled this for 10 min
• Added the third decoction back to the main mash.  The temperature had fallen to 153 F .    Let this sit a final 10 min.  The mash fell to 151 F over this period.
• Fly sparged until 12.5 gal of wort were collected.  Started heating the wort after 4 gal were collected and had it at a boil shortly after sparging was complete
• Added the hops shortly after the hot break cleared
• Boiled for 60 min
• Added the Irish Moss at 15 min
• Added the wort chiller at 5 min to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to 60 F
• Transferred the beer into 2 fermenters.  Let the beer fall a foot to aerate.
• Moved the fermenters into my chest freezer and chilled them down to 50 F.  Pitched the yeast onto the beer at this stage
• Collected 9.5 gal of beer.  Measured the gravity as 1.066.  This is an 85% efficiency when I only planned for 71% (highest efficiency I've ever gotten.  I'm going to top up the beers to 12 gal which should lower the gravity to about 1.052

• 2/11/23 - Time got away from me a bit.  I'm letting the beer rise up to the 60s for a diacetyl rest for a few days.
• 2/25/23 - Chilled the beer down to 35 F for lagering
• 3/25/23 - Added gelatin to help clear the beer
• 4/22/23 - Transferred the first fermenter into the keg.  Measured the gravity as 1.017
• 7/16/23 - Kicked the first keg and added the second fermenter of beer
• 7/29/23 - Tasting Notes - I really love the Munich Dunkel style.  I think this is a pretty good one.  The flavors are nice and it has a good bit of complexity.  It is also very drinkable and refreshing to have on tap here during the summer months

Mexican Pulled Pork

This is one of my favorite recipes.  It is based on a Carnitas recipe by America's Test Kitchen.  Carnitas are traditionally deep fried over a long period of time.  The America's test kitchen has a novel approach to replicating this by brazing the pork in a flavorful liquid until the fat has rendered out and the pork can be shredded, reducing the brazing liquid down to concentrate the flavors, and then crisping the meat up under the broiler with the brazing liquid used as a glaze.  

I've probably made this half a dozen times.  I've made some changes to it and the ATK recipe is hidden behind a paywall so I thought I'd document it here.

One of my favorite things about the recipe is that it is very good as a meal prepared in advance.  I freeze 1 meal portions of the meat (about 2 lbs worth).  To prepare the meal I just thaw them during the day we'll eat them and just have to perform the final, broiler crisping, step that evening.  The meat comes out as good as the day it was prepared this way.

With this in mind I've purchased a 16.5 lb pork shoulder butt to prepare several meals worth of Mexican pulled pork

Ingredients:

• 16.5 lb Pork Shoulder Butt

• 1 Bunch of Garlic - peeled and crushed
• 3 Small Onion - halved
• 2 Oranges - halved
• Juice of 3 limes
• 1 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 7oz Cans Green Chillies
• 3 tsp Salt
• 3 tsp Oragano
• 3 tsp Cumin
• 2 tsp Black Pepper
• 1 tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 3 Bay Leaves
• 4 Cups of Water (to cover the meat)

Process Details:

• 12/17/22:
• Cut my meat up into 2-3 inch square blocks.  Wasn't at all careful about this cutting step.  I did remove some of the biggest pockets of fat but left a lot of it in since the rendered fat is used to provide a fried character when the sauce is used as a glaze during the final broiler step

• Moved the meat to a large pot (5 gal in my case) and then added the other ingredients to it

• Pre-heated the oven to 300 F
• Brought the pot to a boil on the stove top
• Covered the pot with aluminum foil to minimize evaporation of the liquid at this step

Lid is upside down here because it wouldn't fit into the oven otherwise

• Moved the pot to the oven and ended up cooking it for 6 hours (3 hrs would probably have been enough but 6 hrs had no ill effect)
• Confirmed the mead was easily shredable with two forks and then moved it to another container while next steps were performed

• Scooped out all the other solids and threw them away

• Boiled the remaining liquid until it was reduced by about 50-75% (maybe 3/4 a gal left).  This is a step I feel could use some refinement

• Tasted the reduced brazing liquid and decided to add 2 more tsp of salt
• Put 2 lbs of meat, shredded into "bite sized" pieces, on a roasting pan lined with foil and poured 1/2 cup of the glaze over the meat

• Put the meat under the broiler, at the top slot of the oven, for a couple minutes and then flipped.  Repeated the process a couple times.
• Added another half cup of the glaze over the meat, did a bit more shredding, and then broiled for a couple more cycles until the meat had a nice crispy outside on all sides.  You have to get a feel for this as more time under the broiler makes the meat better but if you take it too far the meat will become dried out.  I'm thinking a third or fourth round of glazing could have improved the meat further.  Having a better feel for how much of the glazing liquid will be available for the leftovers is a tricky thing.

• The meat is now ready to be served.  We made taco with cilantro, red onion, avocado and lime.  The meat was very good.  Ended up with about half as leftovers which I ate over the next couple days

• Separated out the meat into 3 2 lb servings each in a freezer bag.  Saved off the remaining liquid into another gallon freezer bag.  Got a bit less than half a gal of liquid (although did spill a good amount which was heartbreaking).
• Moved the leftovers to the freezer to but eaten later

Updated Recipe - 12/26/23:

This is a large batch of pulled pork which should provide many easy week night meals for us.  I'm going for something very similar to what we made last time but am going to salt a bit more aggressively up front (am going to try adding 0.6% salt per weight of the meet.  I'm also changing up the spicing levels slightly and adding Chipotle Peppers which will give a bit of spice and the nice smokey flavor

Ingredients:

• 21.8 lbs of Pork (this is pretty close to 3 pork sholders)
• 59 g of Kosher Salt (this is 0.6% of 9888g of meat)
• 1 pork shoulder bone roasted at 425 for 45 min (completely option but used since I had it)
• 3 cups Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1.5 tbs Cumin powder
• 1.5 tbs Oragano Leaf
• 1.5 tbs Garlic Powder
• 1.5 tbs Black Pepper
• 1.5 tbs Green Chile Powder
• 3 bay leaves
• 7 oz can of Chipotle Pepper
• 3 oranges halved and juiced
• 3 onions halved
• 4 cups of unsalted beef stock which was just about enough to cover the meat

Process Details:

• Mixed the ingredients

• Heated up to a boil on the stove top
• Cooked in the oven at 250 F - let it go for about 8 hrs and it was fork tender

• Removed the meat from the pot and gave it an initial shred.  Discarded the other solids
• Reduced the sauce from maybe 1.5 gal to 8 cups on the stove top

• Prepared a 2 lb portion of the meat that night and used 2 cups of the reducing liquid for the glaze
• Prepared 7 1.5 bags of leftover meat.  Moved the meat and the 8 cups of sauce to the freezer for use later.  This will be 1 cup of the concentrated sauce per meal

Results:

• I think the salt level in this one was very good - definitely not too much and pretty much enough
• The Chipotle peppers add a nice flavor and a bit of heat but I think the recipe is just as good without them (might try something different next time)
• I was pleased with the large amount of leftover we got from this.  Cooking a 20 lb batch isn't really any more work than a 7 lb batch.  I think I'll do this again next time.  Also happy to be getting a better grip on how to manage the glazing liquid with this batch

Historical English Brown Ale - Tasting Notes

This is an English Brown Ale based on a historic recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog (1928 Barclay Perkins Doctor Brown).  I brewed this back in September and have had it in the keg for almost a couple months now.

It was an interesting recipe in it's use of a lot flaked corn and a couple different sugar varieties (invert #3 and brown sugar) as well as brewers caramel for color.  It ended up more of a dark copper color than a Brown Ale

It leveraged the Whitbread yeast strain (I used Wyeast 1099) and I fermented it fairly warm.  It ended up with a pretty strong fruity ester profile for me.

Finally, I used some American hops in the beer.  They were fairly herbal and English-like in character so I thought they'd fit the beer nicely which I'd say they did.

Anyway, this beer is very nice to have on tap since it's not super high in alcohol (4.5%).  I'm drinking it pretty quickly and have been half-expecting the keg to kick with every pint I pour.  Happy it's lasted long enough for me to capture these notes:

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Very fruity yeast ester character - apple and maybe a bit of peach.  Pretty close to a Belgian beer in yeast aroma.  Get a bit of herbal hop character in there as well.  Maybe some bready malt cutting through as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 3 finger head that dissipates over several minutes.  It is a dark copper color and pretty cloudy.
• Flavor:
• Fruity with caramel malt up front.  I get a bit of hop herbal hop flavor in the middle.  The finish some light bitterness along with some malty sweet flavor - pretty well balanced.  The estery flavors linger for quite some time in the finish.  Also get a bit of toasted bready malt in the flavor.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and slightly sweet.  Smooth drinking
• Overall:
• This beer provides some bold flavors and is pretty complex.  I like the ester character but would have preferred it to be a little more restrained - I think its balance it a little further towards ester than I think an English Beer ought to. 

Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take IV

This is my fourth attempt at making a clone of the famous Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout (read about First, Second, and Third attempts).  This is a big Russian Imperial Stout (14-15% ABV) which is aged in freshly emptied Bourbon Barrels.  Bourbon Barrel aged RIS are pretty common these days but BCBS is the most Bourbon forward version that I've tried - it is really awesome.

The first three attempts made tasty beers but they all fell short of the mark as clones (read about my most recent vertical tasting here).  I have taken a few key lessons from these beers:

1. This beer finishes at around 1.038 which is a challenge to hit.  Coming in much higher than this is going to result in a beer that doesn't match the balance of the real thing
2. Aging with a ratio of oak to beer which matches the oak surface area to beer ratio in a 53 gal bourbon barrel (56 sqin per gal) is necessary to match to potency of the booze character
3. Preparation of the oak is a critical factor in order to get the bourbon flavor of BCBS.  I am aging with Everclear diluted down to Barrel Strength spirit (~63%).  The toast and char levels are the key factor in determining the flavor of the spirit.  Bourbon is a mix of Vanilla and Caramel flavors and getting the correct balance of the two seems to primarily be a function of how much the oak is toasted. 

I will be brewing the same recipe at the previous versions.  The difference this time is how I choose to address the lessons learned above.  I ran a 12 sample experiment on the toast and char level which can be read about here.  This has guided me on how much I should toast and char my oak in order to get a flavor that is primary vanilla with hints of caramel (a balance like Bourbon).

Like with previous beers, I will be doing a primary fermentation to get down to FG and then will age the beer on my bourbon soaked oak for about a year in a non-climate controlled attic.  This will allow for better exchange between beer and oak.

This is a challenging beer to make in all regards (lots of work to create such a sugary wort, challenging fermentation to get such a high ABV, and difficult to approximate the character of a freshly drained bourbon barrel) but I still love making the attempt.  I look forward to taking more lessons from this latest version.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 22 lbs Pale Ale
• 8 lb Light Munich
• 2 lb Crystal 60L
• 1.5 lb Chocolate Malt
• 1.5 lb Roasted Barley
• 12 oz Black Patent
• 4 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 3 oz Chinook (Leaf, 12.2% AA) at 60 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (3nd Pitch)
• White Labs 099 - Super High Gravity Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• While Labs 090 - San Diego Super Yeast
• Water:
• 20 gal Spring Water
• 2 tsp CaCl
• 2 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6.5 (Target 6.5 gal)
• Mash:
• 152 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 4.5 hrs (Target 4 hrs)
• Fermentation Temp:
• 68 F (Ambient Basement Temps)
• Primary Duration:
• 4 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 8 to 12 months

Results:

• OG:
• 1.128 (Target 1.128)
• Efficiency:
• 66% (Target 66%)
• FG:
• 1.042 (Target 1.038)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD (Target 68%)
• ABV:
• TBD (Target 12.1%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/4/22 - Oak Preparation:
• Cut 12 1x1x6 inch pieces of oak which I had seasoned outside for a couple years
• Toasted these on a cast iron pan on 2/3 above low temperature (Low +2)

Toasted - A bit of variability to the toast levels here

• Charred the oak with a propane torch until black (3 pass char)

L to R - 3 Pass Char, 2 Pass Char, and 1 Pass Char

• The oak weighs:

• Made a barrel strength spirit using 95% alcohol Everclear and spring water.  This is about 62% ABV.  Prepared 4 half gal jars

• Put three sticks in each jar

• Moved the jars up to the hot attic to extract the flavors
• 10/1/22 - Brewday - 12:30 PM to 9:00 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 12 gal of spring water up to 185F
• Milled half my grain.  Added half the CaCl and Gypsum to the grain
• Added 7 gal of strike water to the mash tun.  Cycled through the grant and RIMS until the system stabilized at 162 F
• Mixed in the grain - stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let the mash sit for 10 min to settle out then cycled through the RIMS at 152 F for 50 min
• Fly sparged the mash until 7 gal of wort was collected in the mash tun.  Started the heat after collecting 4 gal of wort.  Started the 2 hr boil

• Collected a few more gal of wort from the mash tun to use as strike water in the next mash and set this aside before cleaning out the mash tun
• Heated 10 more gal of strike water, for the second mash, to 185 F
• Milled the other half of the grain and added other half of Gypsum and CaCl to the grain
• Added remaining previous mash water and strike water to the mash tun to get 7 gal.  Cycled this through the RIMS until the temperature reached 162 F
• Stirred in the remaining grain and made sure there were no doughballs.  Let this sit for 10 min and then cycled the rims for 60 min
• At the end of the 2 hr boil I had about 3 gal of wort
• Fly sparged the second mash until 10 gal of wort had been collected.  Continued the boil while doing this collection
• Boiled the beer for 2 more hours

• Added bittering hops at 60 min
• With 15 min I added the Irish Moss
• Added the wort chiller with 5 min left to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to about 80 F
• Transferred to a fermenter - let the beer fall a foot or so to aerate

• Moved the fermenter to my chest freezer to chill down to 68 F
• Collected about 5.9 gal of wort which measured in gravity as 1.142.  This is just about on target for efficiency but I over reduced.  Added spring water to get to 6.5 gal
• 10/2/22 - Split the beer across 2 fermenters and pitched my yeast.  Left them at ambient basement temps to ferment
• 10/17/22 - Gravity is down to 1.052 after 2 weeks of fermentation.  Transferred the beer into one fermentor and pitched my White Labs 099 - Super High Gravity yeast to try to get down to 1.038.  I still have about 6.5 gal
• 10/30/22 - The gravity is measuring 1.054 today - it hasn't dropped at all in 2 weeks.  I am going to get some more High Gravity yeast to finish this up
• 11/3/22 - Pitched a starter of WLP 090 (San Diego Super Ale Yeast) built with a fresh pack.  Hopefully this will drop it another 15 points - fingers crossed
• 11/12/22  - Measured gravity again - it is now down to 1.052.  I stirred up the yeast cake and put some heating pads next to the fermenter to try to kick fermentation back up
• 11/20/22 - Moved the beer up to the main house in front of a heating vent.  Started seeing some bubbling soon after this.  The the beer is now down to 1.047 so I'm encouraged.  I gave it a stir with the auto-siphon as well.
• 11/27/22 - The gravity is now down to 1.045
• 12/18/22 - The gravity is now down to 1.042.  It doesn't taste overly sweet to me.  I'm 4 points higher than target but I think this is going to be close enough.  Transferring the beer onto the oak for secondary now
• Measured the weight of the oak post aging on spirit.  It had been 2 lbs and 2.7 oz.  Now it is 3 lb 5.7 oz.  This is an increase of 19 oz by weight and 20 oz of spirit.  This is about 1.6 oz of spirit per stick of absorption.  A fair bit lower than the 2.5 oz per stick I had received last time (the attic, where these had been sitting, has gotten down to the 30 F range so maybe that's why the wood isn't currently holding as much spirit as before).  Adding 10 oz of the spirit to the fermentor as well to compensate for this

• Transferred the beer onto the oak in a large bucket fermenter.  Got about 6 gal of beer at this stage.  Moved the beer up to my attic to age for the next 10 months

Rye Pale Ale with Cascade Hops - Tasting Notes

This is Pale Ale I made back in late August using Rye Malt and a large amount of home grown Cascade Hops.  I planned this as a low alcohol (less than 4% ABV) and easy drinking beer such that I could have a few a night.  After drinking it for a few weeks I can say mission accomplished.

I hadn't intended this to be a hazy beer but it's turned out to be pretty cloudy.  I suspect the flaked rye as being the cause for this.  I think it looks good but it doesn't impact the flavor of course.

This beer is going quickly so it is time to make some official tasting notes before it's gone.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Hop aroma most prominent (citrus, grassy, and herbal tea-like).  Some fruity yeast ester.   A bit of sweet malt.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 2 finger head that slowly fades and leaves lacing on the glass.  Straw yellow in color and cloudy.
• Flavor:
• A bit of sweetness up front along with some fruity ester character.  Get a fair amount of hoppy flavor up front as well - grassy, herbal and citrus.  The finish has medium bitterness and is balanced somewhat by a malt sweetness.  Bitter is in the lead in the finish.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium light bodied and just a little bit sticky.  Easy drinking and smooth
• Overall:
• This is a nice easy drinking and flavorful hoppy beer.  The hop flavor is nice and it pairs well with the English yeast ester.  It definitely has the flavor of an American Beer rather than English with fruity yeast.  It has a nice balance between malt and hops and the bitterness is firm but tasteful.

Historical English Brown Ale

I'll be brewing an English Brown Ale to fill one of my empty kegs. I decided to use another historical recipe from the Shut Up about Barclay Perkins Blog: 1928 Barclay Perkins Doctor Brown.  It has been a while since I made a Brown Ale and this is my first attempt at an English Brown Ale.  These historical recipes always seem to turn out nicely so I'm excited to give it a try.  A brown ale is, of course, a malty beer with some toasty and caramel like flavors rather than the roast flavors you get from a Stout.

This, like most of the Historical English Beers, has some interesting ingredient choices.  It uses a pretty small amount of Pale Malt, good amount of Caramel 60L (1 lb) and then adds in over a pound of Corn.  It then uses Brown sugar and Invert #3 to account for quite a bit of the OG.  Finally, it uses a small amount of Brewers Caramel for Color.  As with previous beers I'm making my own invert and brewers caramel for this batch which is easy and saves quite a bit of money.

Brewers Caramel

I am fermenting the beer with the Whitbread Strain (Wyeast 1099) which the recipe calls for.  I really like the ester from this compared with S04 which is supposed to be the same strain.

Finally, the recipe has this as a fairly lightly hopped beer and called for small amounts of Cluster, Fuggle, and Golding English hops all in the boil.  Rather than purchase these in small amounts I decided to use Willamette and home grown Cascades which have a somewhat English Character (similar to Goldings).

I am going to give this beer  couple weeks in the fermentor and then a couple more weeks in the Keg to carbonate before drinking.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct
• 5.5 lb 2 Row
• 1 lb CaraMunich III (Crystal 60 L)
• 1.25 lb Flaked Maze
• 1 lb Brown Sugar
• 0.75 Invert #3
• 2.4 oz Caramel
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Willamette (Leaf, 5.7% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Cascade (Leaf Unknown AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 15 gal Spring Water
• 2 tsp CaCl (one in mash and one in boil)
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 153 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 80 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 Week in Keg

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.046)
• Efficiency:
• 71% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.014)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 73% (Target 69%)
• ABV:
• 4.5% (Target 4.2%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/17/22 - Built a yeast starter using 100 g DME and 1 L of water.  Set this up on a stir plate to propagate.  The starter showed good activity by the evening
• 9/18/22 - Brewday - from 1:30 PM to 6:00 PM- Including setup and cleanup
• Prepared the brewers caramel/dry caramel
• Started cooking the Invert #3 syrup (0.75 lbs of Sugar in the Raw and Light Brown sugar, 1/4 tsp of citric acid and 1 cup of spring water.  Let this simmer on low.
• Heated 7 gal of spring water up to 185 F
• Milled my grain.  Added the CaCl and Gypsum to the milled grain so I wouldn't forget
• Added 5 gal of spring water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS to get down to 163 F
• Halted the cycle through the RIMS and added the grain and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this sit for 10 min for everything to settle.
• Cycled the RIMS for 50 more min at 153 F

• Heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Fly sparged until 8.5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collected 4 gal.  Had it to a boil shortly after the end of the sparge
• Added the bittering hops when the wort was just about at a boil

• Added the brewers caramel - did this by adding boiling wort to the pan to dissolve it.  Went through many cycles of this to dissolve it all 
• Added the 30 min hops
• The invert is cooked to approximately #3 level so I took it off the heat and added some boiling water to keep it in a liquid and pourable state
• Added Irish moss with 15 min left in the boil
• Added the Invert#3 and Sugar to the kettle with 15 min left

• Added an extra helping of CaCl to the kettle for this beer
• Found that volume wasn't down to target so I extended the boil by 20 min
• Added the wort chiller with 5 min left to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to about 85  F which was as far as the ground water would take me
• Drained the wort into the fermentor - let it fall a couple feet to aerate

• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046 - right on target.
• Chilled the beer down to 64 F in my chest freezer
• Pitched the yeast once cooled to target
• 9/19/22 - Fermentation was well underway by this afternoon
• 10/1/22 - Kegged the beer today.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.  It hasn't dropped clear yet a couple weeks in the keg should probably do the job

• 11/29/22 - Tasting Notes - This beer provides some bold flavors and is pretty complex.  I like the ester character but would have preferred it to be a little more restrained - I think its balance it a little further towards ester than I think an English Beer ought to. 

Rye Pale Ale with Cascade Hops

It has been several months since I brewed up a hoppy beer and I've had to resort to buying commercial which sucks.  Time to brew a new hoppy beer I guess.  This will be another Pale Ale which will use a small grain bill to get an ABV of around 4% for easy drinking and a generous amount of late flavoring hops.

I have a lot (several lbs) of home grown Cascade hops from a friend of mine which I plan to use for this batch.  These are a bit more on the herbal/tea-like side of things than citrus and they have pretty bold aroma.  I'm going to bitter with some high AA Columbus, use a combination of Centennial and Cascade for flavoring (via a large 0 min hop) and then go very agressive in the dry hop with the Cascade (6 oz).  These amounts have made for a very hoppy beer previously.

6 oz Dry Hop

To try to get at least a little balance to the beer I'm using a lot of flaked malt in this beer (4 lbs with most being Rye) and will mash at 160 F.  I'm hoping the beer will stop fermenting at 1.013 or higher.  I'm adding a small amount of light crystal for color as well.

Finally, for yeast I've decided to use the English Whitbread strain which produces a good amount of fruity ester character - this is a second pitch from my recent English Barleywine (which makes the yeast "free" for this batch which I always like).  I am going to give the beer 2 weeks of primary fermentation.

So, this beer, with English yeast and hops that have a somewhat English-like character, may straddle the line between and American and an English Pale ale.  That is fine for me though since I very much enjoy both American and English pale ale.  I can't wait to get it into the keg.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lb Pale Ale
• 3 lb and 6 oz Flaked Rye
• 10 oz Flake Wheat
• 6 oz Crystal 10
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 2 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 2.3 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 0 min
• 2 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at 0 min
• 6 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 14 gal spring water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 160 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 80 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 weeks in keg

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.043)
• Efficiency:
• 73% (Target 68%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 56% (Target 69%)
• ABV:
• 3.4% (Target 3.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 8/20/22 - Built a yeast starter with 100g of DME and 1 L of water
• 8/21/22 - Brew Day - 3 PM to 7:30 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 6.5 gal to 185 F for strike water
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and gypsum to the mix so I didn't forget

• Moved 5 gal to the mash tun and cycled through RIMS and Grant until the system was at a stable 170 F
• Added the grain.  Stirred in well to eliminate dough balls.  Let this sit for 10 min to settle
• Cycled the RIMS for 50 min

• Heated 6 gal sparge water up to 185 F
• Fly sparged until 8 gal was collected.  Added some extra unheated spring water to the sparge to finish up

• Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 4 gal.  Had the wort to a boil after collecting about 6 gal.  Added the bittering hops during the heat up
• Boiled for about 8 min to get down to 6 gal (forgot to add the irish moss this time)
• Added the wort chiller to sanitize
• At the end of the boil I cool the wort down to 180 F with the flame still on and added the flameout hops.  Let this steep for 20 min.  Temperature held at about 180 F the whole time

• Chilled the wort down to 90 F
• Transferred this into the fermentor - let the wort fall a foot to aerate
• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046
• Moved the fermentor to my fermentation chamber and chilled down to 66 F over night
• 8/22/22 - Pitched the yeast
• 8/23/22 - Fermentation is underway
• 8/29/22 - Added the 6 oz of dry hops
• 9/5/22 - Kegged today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020.  The beer is pretty bitter with a bit of grassy hop and fruity yeast character.
• 9/30/22 - Tasting Notes - This is a nice easy drinking and flavorful hoppy beer.  The hop flavor is nice and it pairs well with the English yeast ester.  It definitely has the flavor of an American Beer rather than English with fruity yeast.  It has a nice balance between malt and hops and the bitterness is firm but tasteful.

Oak Preparation Experiment

I have been attempting to recreate the Bourbon character achieved by Goose Island in their Bourbon County Brand Stout through their use of recently emptied, second use, bourbon barrels, by seasoning, toasting, and then charring my own White Oak prior to soaking it in barrel strength spirit.  My most recent attempt at doing this (which was the first attempt that I used something close to enough oak) turned out to have a very rich oaky character but missed the mark quite a bit on the oak character of bourbon (or BCBS).  I believe my treatment of the oak is the reason for this failure.  This post will be used to document some experimentation with different oak treatments

In my previous batches I have toasted my oak in the oven and then charred the oak with a propane burner or torch (see a post on my previous oak preparation here).  In retrospect, after tasting the beer made with the oak, I suspect that these levels of toast and char (or some combination of each) was too high as my whiskey has a flavor profile much more slanted to caramel than vanilla (while bourbon is more vanilla than caramel to my palate).  I'd like to test different levels of toast and char and how these impact the flavor of the spirit.  Unfortunately, I find my notes are also a little too vague and that the process used was a bit cavalier so that replication of exactly what I did isn't possible.  I need to find a way to do some testing in a more repeatable way as part of this experiment as well

Some thoughts:

• Barrel makers toast their barrels in front of an open flame for relatively short amounts of time (I understand something on the order of 30 minutes although this seems to be treated as a somewhat closely guarded trade secret).  I would expect this would lead to a varying degrees of toast within the oak and the exposure of spirit to oak cooked at different levels.  The oven doesn't seem like a great tool to replicate this as the oak most likely toasts more slowly at oven temperatures and then you have to leave it heated longer that creates a more even toast in the internal parts of the oak.  Based on this, I've decided to try to toast the oak via a cast iron pan.  This will apply greater toast to the outside of the oak than the inside and, although the temperature levels aren't as measurable as they are in the oven, we can get a repeatable set of results using the various heat levels of the range
• For charring the oak I have been thinking mostly about the look of the charred piece of wood (getting an 'alligator char' for example).  Thinking about it in terms of the number of quick passes of the flame over the wood seems like a better way to get varying degrees of char and to do it in a more repeatable way

Based on this, I have decided to test how oak prepared with 4 different levels of toasting and 3 different levels of charring does in recreating the bourbon oak character in a spirit

• Variable #1:
• Low Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on the range's low temperature)

• Low +1 Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on 1/3 of the way between Low and Medium)

• Low +2 Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on 2/3 of the way between Low and Medium)

• Med Toast (on the rage's medium temperature)

• Variable #2:
• 1 Pass Flame (1 pass per side)

• 2 Pass Flame (2nd pass over all sides)

• 3 Pass Flame (3rd pass over all sides - effect similar to alligator char)

Experiment Notes:

• 7/9/22
• Cut white oak that seasoned outside for a year and a half into 1 inch x 1 inch x 1.5 inch pieces.  This size was chosen to roughly match the ratio of oak to spirit used in a bourbon barrel given that I'll be use 16 oz mason jars to do this aging
• Toasted 3 pieces of wood at each of the toast levels specified above
• Charred the 3 pieces of each of the 4 toasting samples at the various levels of char from variable 2
• Mixed the 95% ABV Everclear with Spring Water to get a 62% spirit and put this in my 12 mason jars (used 10.5 oz Everclear to 5.5 oz Spring Water for this)

• Added one piece of oak to each of the jars and labled the lids

• Moved these to my attic where they will experience nightly temperature swings which will speed up the aging process
• 7/23/22 - Color extraction has varied quite a bit after the first two weeks of aging:
• Low Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Low +1 Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Low +2 Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Medium Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• 1 Pass Char:

Left to Right:  Low, Low+1, Low+2, and Medium

• 9/3/22 - It has been almost 2 months since I started aging this oak in my hot attic.  Color seems to be pretty much done changing over the last month.  So, I'm thinking it is time for a taste and aroma evaluation:
• I have decided to do the evaluation against a barrel strength bourbon and selected the Maker's Mark Cask Strength Bourbon for this purpose.  This is a 56% ABV product while my spirit is 62-63%.  These strength differences will impact the Taste test so I will water down my sample slightly to try to match the makers mark (1/8 tsp of spring water to 1 tsp of my whiskey should do the trick)
• I am going to evaluate the color, aroma, and flavor of my samples with this test.  The goal here will be to find which oak treatment produces a flavor most like a real bourbon (which comes down to the right balance between vanilla and caramel flavors).  I'm going to use a school letter grading scheme for these.  I will consider a lack of vanilla to be a defect and an excessively high degree of caramel, roast, or smoke to be a larger defect in my scoring.
• This is going to be a bit of an endurance test to drink 56% spirit but hopefully I'll be able to assess these with just tiny sips
• Here is my scoring:

• To summarize the findings:
• The Low+2 Toast and 3 Pass Flame sample creates a flavor profile that is very similar to the makers mark (thus, an A-).  It has a very good balance between vanilla and caramel flavors which are just slightly less bold than the real thing.  I think this sample is close enough to allow me to proceed with aging more oak using this preparation method.  My assessment of the next Bourbon County Stout clone with this Oak Preparation Method will tell me if I need to expend more energy improving the A- to an A with more experiments
• The medium toast produced quite a bit of acrid and charred flavors in all cases.  Toasting to a point where the wood is smoking is a mistake to be avoided.  These were all a fair bit darker than the real thing as well.
• The low toast didn't produce much flavor at all regardless of the level of char.  I believe this confirms the importance of the toast to getting the good flavors.
• Low toast +1 produced some good flavors but they were less bold than the higher toast.  Toast levels are definitely a variable to be considered carefully
• The Low+2 Toast samples with more char were better than the 1 pass flame ones in color, aroma, and flavor so char is clearly also a very critical component to the whiskey
• 2 months in the attic seemed to be enough time for the flavors to be extracted nicely at this scale.  I will do another sample in a month or two to see if more time does any good