Sour Blonde Blend (2019) - Tasting Notes

This is a Lambic/Geuze Inspired beer I blended up back in August 2019 using three beers which had aged for several years.  I let this blend bulk age for an additional 9 months before bottling in May 2020.  I've been drinking one of these beers every couple months and, since I'm starting to consider making up some new blends, I've decided it's time to jot down some official impressions.

The experience of blending these beers (which I did based on tasting notes collected for 13 fermenters of Sour Blonde Beer of various ages and with various strains of yeast/bacteria) is a lot of fun.  It rally is amazing how many different flavors you can get from the wild yeast and bacteria used for lambic.  My goal with this blend was to maximize the complexity of the beer which I believe was a success.  This beer has turned out to be very flavorful with a great fruit character.  

Most of my beers are fairly sour and this one is no exception.  I have been working to try to reduce the lactic sourness of these beers going forward and will continue to do so in my next blending/top up sessions.

Anyhow, I'm very happy to be doing an official tasting here for posterity

Tasting Note:

• Aroma:
• Has a bold musty, earthy and leathery smell along with some overripe fruit
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that quickly dissipates down to nothing.  Dark gold in color and not quite clear
• Flavor:
• Quite fruity up front - peach and citrus like flavors.  A medium level of acidity kicks in next and this lasts into the finish.  The finish also has a bit of bready flavor along with some earthy flavors
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied with an impression of some light sweetness.  The acidity has a slight roughness to it that hits in the back of the throat on the finish (a little more than I'd like ideally but it is still a pleasant drinking beer)
• Overall:
• Boldly flavored and very complex beer.  The fruitiness of the beer and the acidity provide a very pleasing combination.  I also think the brett character of it plays nicely in the mix. It's balance is quite a bit more towards the acidic character than on Brett and I'd say it's a bit more sour than the famous Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze which has become more accessible here in Pennsylvania in the last couple years.  My beer is good but I think Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze is better

Tired Hands HopHands Clone

I'll be brewing a new recipe for my next Hoppy Beer - a Clone of the Tired Hands Brewery's flagship HopHands.  This was developed by the blogger behind Ales of the Riverwards.  HopHands is very hoppy pale ale with a fairly reasonable ABV (around 5%).  This clone recipe calls for a pretty agressive level of late hopping which seems like it has a pretty good chance of duplicating their flavor.

It's a fairly simple grainbill with Pale Ale and Flaked Oats.  HopHands is a hazy beer - I wont take any special action to try to re-create that part so it will be interesting to see if the oats are enough to cause that by themselves.  I'm going to mash in the mid 150s to try to get it to finish around 1.013

For hops, the beer calls for Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo.  These, fortunately, are all hops I have on hand via bulk purchases which will save me quite a bit of money on what would have been an expensive recipe otherwise.  I have hops from Hops Direct which were fairly inexpensive but, for the Amarillo in particular, not particularly bold or complex in character.  I also have some newer hops that I purchased from Hop Heaven which seem a bit bolder.  I've decided to use my Hops Direct Hops for the boil (Centennial and Amarillo) and then use my Hop Heaven hops for the dry hop (will substitute Mosaic for Amarillo due to this.  It will be dry hopped for 5 days per recipe

Finally, I'm using Imperial Yeast Juice for this batch which is a yeast I have saved from a previous batch.  This is a yeast that produces a very nice pale ale with a bit of ester character (same as Wyeast London Ale III).  Reusing the yeast also saves a good amount of money.

I'm really looking forward to having this hoppy beer on tap.  I'll give it 2 weeks in the fermenter before kegging.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 9 lb 2-row
• 2 lb Flaked Oats
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 0.5 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 0.5 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at 5 min
• 0.75 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at Flame Out
• 0.75 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at Flame Out
• 2 oz Centennial (Leaf, 8.7% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Mosaic (Leaf, 11.4% AA) Dry Hop
• 2 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Imperial Yeast A38 Juice (3rd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal Spring Water
• 6 gal of tap water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.75 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 155 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (Low 60s)
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.051 (Target 1.048)
• Efficiency:
• 73% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 60% (Target 72%)
• ABV:
• 4.0% (Target 4.6%)

Brewing Notes:

• 1/22/22 - Built up a yeast starter using a jar of saved slurry, 100 g of DME and 100 L of water.  Set this up on the stir plate over night
• 1/23/22 - Brewday - 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM - Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of spring water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and Gypsum to it so I wouldn't forget

• Moved 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until everything settled at 165 F
• Added the grain and stirred to eliminate all the dough balls.  Let this settle for 10 min
• Cycled the RIMS at 156 F for 50 more min

• With about 30 min left in the cycle I heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Drained the mash tun into the kettle using a manual fly sparge until 5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal and had it at a boil shortly after the first wort was collect
• Adding the bittering hops at this point
• Topped up the mash tun with hot water and let this sit for 10 min.  Then did a second fly sparge until 8 gal of wort had been collected.  Drained fairly slowly to maintain the boil
• Boiled for 60 min
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Added hops and the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min left
• Added flameout hops after chilling the beer to 190 F.  Let the hops steep for 20 min - the beer had chilled down to 140 F on it's own over that period
• Chilled the beer down to 70 F
• Transferred to my fermenter - pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected about 5.75 gal of wort.  Measured the gravity as 1.051.  Just a little above target efficiency this time.
• Set this up at basement temperatures to ferment out.
• 1/25/22 - Still have no signs of fermentation after a couple days.  I decided to add in another jar of yeast (fresher this time) to get things going
• 1/27/22 - The beer had krausen on the surface finally
• 1/31/22 - Added 6 oz of dry hops.  I put each ounce in it's own muslin sack weighed down with stainless steel hardware.  I'll let this sit for 5 days.
• 2/6/21 - Kegged today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020.  Did the normal process of purging the keg with C02 for the transfer.  I let it carbonate for a week before giving it a try
• 3/12/22 - Tasting Notes - This a very nice hoppy beer.  It has bold hop aroma and flavor and a nice level of complexity.  The level of bitterness is very nice - makes for a really drinkable beer.  It has a nice level of body and substance to it that you would not guess that it's a 4% ABV beer (kind of like the way an English Bitter doesn't drink like a low alcohol beer).  I'm drinking this after quite some time in the keg (a bit over a month) but the hops haven't really fallen off in any significant way which I'm very happy about.  This is a beer that I will make again for sure.
  
• 8/16/22 - The keg finally kicked.  I figured I was less than 1 pint away from kicking this so I delayed drinking the last of it out of laziness over the cleaning job.  It was a good beer.

Historical English Porter

I recently kicked my keg of Milk Stout.  I've decided to always have an English Style beer in one of my 4 kegs and really enjoyed having a dark, roasty beer, so I've decided to try an English Porter to refill it.  I've decided to make another historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog:  1881 Whitbread Porter.  

I have made quite a few beers based on these old recopies and have never had a bad one.  They often have some unusual ingredient choices which make things interesting  In this case, the beer is fairly aggressively hopped with low AA% hops (Hallertau and Goldings).  I guess they didn't have the strong bittering hops we have available today.  From previous beer it seems like the large amount of low AA hops produce a different effect than you'd get when bittering with a high AA hop.

The beer uses a brown malt and a black malt for color and flavor.  No caramel malts in this one.  I've used Brown Malt in the past and find it pretty interesting (most modern stouts wouldn't use it most likely).  Here post brew, I can say it produces a beer that is more of a dark reddish brown than black.  I'm shooting for a 1.055 beer here that ferments all the way down to 1.010 for a 5.9% ABV.  We'll be mashing at 150 F to help it take it down that fall.

The one change I'm making to the recipe is to use the Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale yeast rather than the Whitbread strain (S04) since I had it on hand.  This yeast is a fair amount different in flavor to the Whitbread strain but is still a very nice yeast - I don't think I can go wrong here.

Anyway, I hope to keg this beer in a few weeks and be drinking it by the end of the month.

This is how I determine my volume of wort

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 11 lb 2 Row
• 1 lb Brown
• 0.75 lb Black
• 2 oz Acid
• Hops:
• 3 oz Hallertau (Pellet, 4% AA) at 60 min
• 3 oz EKG (Pellet, 4.5% AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 2 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 Gal
• Mash:
• 150 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temperature (low 60s)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.055 (Target 1.055)
• Efficiency:
• 72% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.010)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 77% (Target 81%)
• ABV:
• 5.6% (Target 5.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/31/21 - Made a yeast starter using 100g of DME and 1 L of spring water.  My jar of yeast slurry has been in the fridge since January 2021.  Hopefully a 1 step starter will bring it back to life

• 1/1/22 - Brewday - from 12:00 PM to 4:30 PM - Including Cleanup
• Brought 8 gal of strike water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added the CaCl and Gypsum to the milled grain so I wouldn't forget

• Added 6 gal of strike water to the mash tun and then cycled through the RIMS until the temperature was down to 160 F
• Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this settle for 10 min
• Cycled the beer through the RIMS at 151 F for the next 50 min

• Heated 8 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• At the end of the mash did a fly sparge until 5 gal were collected.  Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 3 gal and had it at a boil shortly after collecting 5 gal
• Topped up the mash tun with hot water and let sit for 10 min.  Then did another modified fly sparge until we were up to 8 gal.  Kept the drain rate slow enough to maintain the boil
• Added the bittering hops once the hot break had cleared

• Added the 30 min hops
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Decided to extend the boil by 5 min to get down to the 6 gal target
• Added the wort chiller to sanitize with a few min left in the boil
• Chilled the beer down to 65 F (ground water is cold this time of year which is nice)
• Drained the kettle into the fermenter - let it fall a couple feet to aerate.  Pitched the yeast during the transfer

• Collected 6 gal.  Measured the gravity as 1.055.  Right on target.
• Left the fermenter in the basement to do it's business
• 1/2/22 - The airlock was bubbling away by late this morning (I'd been a bit worried about the health of the 1 year old yeast but it worked out for me this time).
• 1/22/22 - Kegged the beer today.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.
• 2/27/22 - Tasting Notes - A richly flavored dark beer.  Has a good amount of complexity and is fairly easy drinking.  At 5.6% I can have a couple of these and not feel too much of an effect.  I really enjoy having a dark, roasty, beer on tap.
• 6/1/22 - Kicked this keg.  Very sorry to see it go.