English Barleywine XII

As per my yearly Memorial Day tradition, I will be making an English Barleywine today.  I haven't brewed in something like 10 months so very good to be getting back to it.

I have brewed one of these every year since 2014 (read about 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024).  It is a complex style of beer that features a combination of malt, hop, yeast, and alcohol flavors in varying degrees and it ages well with it's high ABV, high hopping rates, and residual sweetness

I brew a different recipe each year for the most part.  This year I'll be making one based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog:  1879 William Younger No. 1.  It is an interesting recipe as it uses all base malt.  It also has a heavy dose of bittering hops and quite a bit of flavoring hops.  I like the simplicity and weirdness of these old recipes and they typically make a really nice beer

These beers would have been aged historically before consumption and Brettanomyces would likely have been present.  I am going to try to replicate a historical Brett character in this beer through the use of Orval Dregs in Secondary (a beer that is reported to contain a couple strains of wild yeast).  I will age the beer at least through December before bottling.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 10 lb 12 oz Pilsner
• 7 lbs 4 oz Golden Promise
• 4 lb Munich
• Hops:
• 6 oz Cluster (Pellet, 7.4% AA) at 180 min
• 2 oz Hallertauer Mittelfruher (Pellet, 2% AA) at 30 min
• 1 oz East Kent Golding (Pellet, 4.3% AA) at 0 min
• 1 oz East Kent Golding (Pellet, 4.3% AA) as Dryhop
• Yeast:
• 2 packets Windsor
• Orval Brett Culture in Secondary
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 5 gal tap water
• 2 tsp Gypsum
• 2 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp citric acid
• 1 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)

Process details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 156 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 180 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps
• Primary Duration:
• 1 month
• Secondary Duration:
• 6 months

Results:

•     OG:
• 1.106 (Target 1.100)
• Efficiency:
• 78% (Target 74%)
• FG:
• 1.024 (Target 1.025)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 76% (Target 73%)
• ABV:
• 10.9% (Target 10.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5-26-25 - Brewday - 12 PM to 6:30 PM - including setup and cleanup
• Measured and milled my grain.  Added half the CaCl and gypsum to the grain and the other half to the boil kettle just so I wouldn't forget.  Also added the Citric Acid to the malt
• Heated 8 gal of strike water to 185 F
• Moved 7 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled it through the RIMS until the temperature had settled at 166 F
• Added the grain to the mash tun and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let the mash sit for 10 min prior to starting the RIMS cycle
• Cycled the RIMS for 60 more minutes
• Heated 10 gal of sparge water up to 185 F
• Slowly fly sparged - started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal.  Had it near a boil after collecting 8 gal or so.  I ended up collecting 12 gal of wort which will make this a 3 hr boil

• Added the bittering hops once the hot break had cleared
• Boiled for 3 hrs

• Rehydraded my yeast in room temperature spring water
• Added flavoring hops at 30 min
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Put in the wort chiller with 5 min to go to sanitize
• Added the flame out hops
• Chilled to 75 F
• Drained into the fermenter - let the wort fall a foot or so to aerate.  Pitched the yeast during this transfer

• Got 6 gal and measured gravity as 1.106 which is a little high but close enough
• Set the fermenter in my utility sink in anticipation of a mess
• 5-27-25 - The beer was fermenting agressively by the next morning and pushing krausen up and out of the airlock
• 5-30-25 - I cleaned up the airlock a couple days ago.  No more airlock activity today
• 7-26-25 - Transferred the beer to secondary.  Added the 1 oz of dry hops and 2 cups of a malt starter I inoculated with Orval dregs a couple months ago - this beer is sour and quite fruity which should be very interesting.  I measured the gravity of the beer as 1.044 at transfer
• 1-4-26 - Bottled today using a pack of Red Star Premier Cuvee champagne yeast and 5 oz of priming sugar.  Measured the FG at 1.024.  The beer has a bready malt character along with a subtle fruity character.  It is a little sweet and has a medium bitterness along with a alcohol flavor.  I think it's going to be a good one.  I ended up with about 5 gal of beer which got me 49 bottles.
• 2-28-26 - Tasting Notes: It's an interesting beer with it's fruit forward character - I think the Brett delivers a character very much in line with what you might expect from an English Barleywine.  The malt is nice but is pretty much overshadowed.  I like the level of bitterness in it.  I think it's a reasonably complex beer and it's pretty light and easy drinking for a ~10% ABV beer - hides the alcohol well and is a bit dryer than many I've made in the past.  Also, appearance is the least concern but I think the color is very nice on this beer - I don't think I got the priming sugar evenly distributed when bottling this batch so this one had little carbonation and I may have some surprises opening the later ones 

Smoked Corned Beef

I purchased some inexpensive corned beef at the supermarket after St Patrick's Day and thought it might be fun to experiment some more with Cold Smoking.  This is a technique where meat is smoked at a temperature low enough where the meat isn't cooked (below 90 F is the typical limit).  My hope is that this makes a nice meat for use in sandwiches

I have purchased 2 corned beefs for this.  They are about 3 lbs each.  It is very high in salt so I will plan to limit my consumption of it - I will package it in 4 pieces after the smoke but before braising.

I think I will try doing the salting of the meat myself when I try this again

Process details:

• 4/6/25:
• Removed the meat from the package and rinsed with cold water to wash away excess salt
• Covered the meat with pepper and garlic powder

• Moved the meat to the fridge on a wire rack to dry out a bit before the smoking
• 4/8/25 - Smoking the meat - this was a night where it was supposed to get to freezing so the meat should stay relatively cold through the cooking process which helps keep pathogens at bay.  Setup the smoker with hickory chips and smoked the meat for 10 hrs over night

• 4/9/25 - Cut the meat into 4 pieces.  Froze 3 and let one chill in the fridge for a near term meal

• 4/10/25 - Braised one of the pieces over night in beer

• 4/11/25 - Cooled the meat the next day and had a nice sandwich.  The meat is very tender and has a pretty firm smokey flavor even after the braising.  It doesn't have an overly salty flavor - I think the braise ends up pulling a lot of salt out of the meet.  I got 3 sandwiches out of this piece of meat

Raspberry Wine (2020 Version) Tasting Notes

This was my second attempt at a Raspberry Wine.  This time I increased to 52 lbs of raspberries and 10 lbs of sugar which got me 5.5 gal of wine at 12.5% ABV.  I oaked this version lightly (2 sticks of oak I had soaked in port).  I back sweetened it to 1.021 and then killed the yeast with campden tablets before bottling.  This was successful as the wine has been stable in the bottle for over 3 years now

I don't drink these very often but they are quite tasty.  It is high time I captures some notes on it

Tasting Notes:

•  Aroma:
• Rich and strong raspberry character.  Quite pungent.  I has a bit of a yeast character to it as well and you can smell the alcohol in it.  It smells quite a bit like a typical grape-based wine
• Appearance:
• Dark red and a little murky (got some of the junk from the bottle into the glass)
• Flavor:
• Rich fruity character with a very light sweetness.  Quite different than eating a fruit as the flavors seem so much more concentrated.  A little tart on the finish.  Has a fairly firm but nice booze character to it - alcohol is in the background compared with the fruit character.  I feel like there is some yeast character in this as well - a bit of a estery and slightly funky note.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and a little sticky on the palate.  It has a bit of astringency.
• Overall:
• Very tasty.  The fruit character is very nice, it has a pleasant level of sweetness and booziness to it, and the balance is quite pleasant.  I think it is quite complex to sip and actually is fairly refreshing with the tartness.

Raspberry Wine (2019 Version) - Tasting Notes

This was my first attempt at a raspberry wine - made back in 2019.  I used 40lbs of raspberries and 10 lbs of sugar to make 5 gal of this raspberry wine.  It was fermented with wine yearst and got up to 13% ABV.  I then backsweetened this up to 1.022 prior to killing the yeast with Campden Tablets

This has been aging down in my cellar for almost 5 years now.  I had missed that I didn't a do a tasting of this version long ago - better late than never.  This version made me excited about making more of these - which I have done in the years since.  Time to capture some notes

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Strong, concentrated, raspberry character along with a boozy and yeasty note
• Appearance:
• Dark red pretty clear
• Flavor:
• Concentrated raspberry flavor up front.  It is slightly tart up front and then a bit of a sour bite.  There is a mild sweetness to it.  There is fairly firm alcohol presence in the finish along with some yeast ester character.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied with a slightly sticky character on the pallet.  It's got some astringency
• Overall:
• This has a strong flavor.  It is quite a bit different than the experience of easting a raspberry in that the flavor is quite a bit more intense.  I'd say it's of a similar level of fruit character to a grape-based wine.  It has a nice level of sweetness that counters the acidity and the alcohol character.  I think this works nicely as a desert wine

Chicken Salad From Scratch

This is a recipe that my mother has been making me since I was a kid (and was also made by her mother) for a Chicken Salad I very much enjoy.  I have trying to cut down on the sodium in my diet and so I'm converting this into a scratch recipe for better control.  I've tried a couple variations on this now and feel like I have something worth capturing for posterity.

We use the chicken salad for sandwiches typically.  It stays good for about a week so it make sense to make many sandwich's worth (continues to improve with a bit of aging as the flavors meld better).  I think this recipe I'm about to lay out is enough for a couple people to have a sandwiches several times over the week - I've tried making larger amounts which are tough to finish.  This was just about enough

As you'll see below the main actions being taken here to reduce the salt are cooking my own chicken breast (as canned chicken has quite a bit of salt for preservation) and making my own mayonnaise which is actually pretty easy.  Other than this, it is basically my mother's recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 Chicken Breasts (about 800g)
• 2 Celery stalks
• 6 Green Onion
• 1/2 Yellow Onion
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp Celery salt
• 1.5 Cups Mayonnaise
• 1 large egg
• 4 tsp white wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• 1.5 cup vegetable oil

Process:

• Cooked the chicken breast with a Sous Vide water bath to 142 F.  This makes for a moist chicken breast.  Let this cool before chopping into one half to quarter inch squares
• Finely chopped the vegetable ingredients and mixed the meat and chicken well

• Mixed the mayonnaise in my blender.  Added all ingredients other than the oil.  Turned on the blender and slowly drizzled in all the oil.  The mayonnaise comes together very well.  Used the whole batch for this

• Mixed the mayonnaise and spices into the meat and vegetables 

Oak Preparation Experiment - Part II

Over the last several years I have been making attempts to replicate the Bourbon Character of Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout on a small scale using oak cubes rather than a second use Bourbon Barrel (which are difficult to come by).  I have felt like my results have continued to improve as I've refined my process.  Some details on how I proceed with this:  

• I buy my own White Oak lumber for this and age it outside for a year or two to allow the wood flavor to be "softened" - this is traditional in barrel making but I have not tested this claim myself.
• I believe that a critical part of the bold Bourbon Character in BCBS is due to bourbon remaining in the barrel which is Cask Strength (58-63% alcohol).  To get a white spirit at this strength I have been using 95% ABV Everclear which I water down to 62% ABV.  I age the oak in this spirit (this also creates a product that I find worth drinking as a Bourbon Substitute)
• Bourbon makers toast and then char their barrels to make Bourbon.  The exact process is a guarded trade secret.  I did an experiment a couple years ago where I assessed various levels of Toasting and Charing of oak cubes to get a Bourbon-like character (more vanilla forward than caramel).  I found that a particular level of toasting followed by charring to "alligator" char levels was necessary to get close to the flavor profile (not toasting enough or over toasting produced flavor profiles wide of the mark).  This was a very helpful discovery.  Check out this experiment for the details
• Aging the beer with enough oak to approximate the surface area exposure from a barrel (56 sqin per gal) is critical for getting the flavor profile right in terms of intense Bourbon Character.  For 5 gal of beer this is 280 sq inches of oak (11 sticks of 1x1x6 inches).  In preparing the oak, I have been aging at a 3x higher oak to spirit ratio than is the case in a Bourbon Barrel in an attempt to not use as much Everclear.  This creates a spirit with a different flavor profile than real Bourbon and that this contributes to the beer tasting unlike a real Barrel Aged Beer.  I believe this is an area where I might improve my process and is the reason for this new round of experimentation
  

I hypothesize that doing a pre-boil of prepared oak could reduce the flavor intensity of aging the oak with 3x higher amount of oak as is used in real Bourbon Making.  How much of a boil would need to be performed is the variable I would like to test.  Additionally, I will test whether dehydrating the boiled oak (assuming the oak absorbs a meaningful amount of water during the boil) makes any difference.

So, I will test as fallows (all prepared per the results of the previous experiment's winning method):

1. Age 1 piece of oak (1x1x1.5 inches) with 16 oz of 62% white spirit (Everlear) - 56 sqin per gal ratio of oak to spirit.  This is to repeat the previous experiment's results hopefully
2. Age 3 pieces of oak with 16 oz of the spirit.  This is the method that I used to create the oak in my last Bourbon County Clone which is not bottled yet but which I feel the Bourbon Character is a bit off the mark still
3. Boiled 3 pieces of oak for 5 min before aging them in the spirit
4. Boiled 3 pieces of oak twice, for 5 min each time, before aging them in spirit
5. Boiled 3 pieces of oak for 5 min and then dehydrated them for 1 hr before aging them in spirit
6. Boiled 3 pieces of oak twice, for 5 min each time and dehydrating them after each boil for 1 hr before aging them in spirit

I will age these samples in a cold place in the house which is also near a heater that will cycle off and on through the day.  This will help the spirit travel in and out of the wood and speed up the maturation of both.  I expect it will take a couple months for the samples to be worth tasting

Experiment Notes:

• 12-28-24
• Cut up 16 pieces of aged White Oak for the test (all about the same size but with a bit of variability)
• Toasted the oak for 5 min on each side on a cast iron pan at 2/3 of the way towards medium
• Charred the oak in three passes to get an alligator char
• Did the first boil in 1 gal pot with 12 wood samples.  I waited until a rolling boil was achieved before adding the wood and then boiled for 5 min.  The liquid has a fairly dark yellow color after this
• Dehydrated 6 of the samples for 1 hr
• Did the second boil with 6 of the samples following the previous process.  The liquid wasn't as dark this time but it still had a fair amount of color left
• Did a final round of dehydrating on the remaining 3 samples for 1 hr
• Added spring water to Everclear at a ratio of 10.5 oz of spirit to 5.5 oz of spring water to get the 62% ABV spirit for aging.  The amount of spirit was approximately the same for each sample but I didn't go to the trouble of accounting for the wood volume differences between the sample with the 1 piece of oak and the others

Sample 1-6 L to R - Boiled sample 3 and 4 are all sunk (interesting)

• 12-31-24 - I have been aging the spirit on the kitchen counter the last few days.  Moved them into their final aging place.  The samples are already getting a fair amount of color.  The differences in the samples are interesting:

Sample 1-6 L to R - sample 2 and samples 5 & 6 a bit darker

Results:

I tasted all the samples side by side with Makers Mark Barrel Strength Bourbon as a basis for comparison.  I also included the winner from experiment 1 for comparison.  This was in September so they'd been aging for about 9 months

Original Winner to the lefts and then Sample1-6 L to R:  

• Original Winner:
• Color:  A
• Aroma:  A-.  Has primarily vanilla but not as bold as the Makers Mark
• Flavor:  A.  Very close to the Makers with a vanilla character

• Sample 1:  1 Stick (this is an attempt to recreate the experiment 1 result)
• Color:  B.  A bit lighter than Makers
• Aroma:  B.  Quite a bit weaker than the real thing.  Light Vanilla
• Flavor:  B.  Vanilla flavor but quite a bit lighter than the makers

This one surprised me to be so far off the original.  Maybe it just needed more time to age (it was the same amount of oak treated the same way)

• Sample 2:  3 Stick, No boil
• Color:  B.  Darker than the makers
• Aroma:  B.  Has an acrid and woody character along with vanilla
• Flavor:  B+.  Bold flavor with a nice vanilla but also that acrid character

• Sample 3:  3 Stick, 1 Boil
• Color:  B+.  A little darker than the makers
• Aroma:  A-.  Close to the boldness of the makers.  Nice vanilla and a bit acrid
• Flavor:  A-.  Bold, good vanilla character but slightly wood and acrid

• Sample 4:  3 Stick, 1 Boil and dehydrate
• Color:  B.  Darker
• Aroma:  A-.  Bold with nice vanilla and slight acrid
• Flavor:  A-  Nice and bold.  A bit acrid

• Sample 5:  3 Stick, 2 Boil:
• Color:  B.  Darker
• Aroma:  A-.  Bold with a vanilla flavor and slightly acrid
• Flavor:  A.  Nice vanilla flavor and almost as bold as the real thing.  Not getting the acrid character from the nose

• Sample 6:  3 Stick, 2 Boil and dehydrate
• Color:  B+.  A little darker
• Aroma:  A-.  Bold Vanilla - just about at the level of the real thing with a slight acrid character
• Flavor:  A-  Bold vanilla and slightly acrid

So, comparing these, I think the boil is a pretty good approach when oaking at the higher ratio compared with normal bourbon.  I think the 2 boil results were better than 1 boil.  I don't feel like the dehydrate did enough to justify this step.  I will proceed with doing the 2 boils for my next batch of oak

• 
  

Bacon

My recent success in making cured meats has given me confidence and excitement about the prospects of trying new things.  One of the most delicious cured products is smoked pork belly cooked in slices as bacon.  Store bought bacon is delicious but it contains quite a bit of salt (which I'm trying to limit in my diet) as well as sodium nitrate which has flavor contribution that I think is to the detriment of product.  I believe I can make a product that is cheaper, more convenient, and more in line with my dietary needs/tastes.

Costco sells full pork belly at what seems like a very good price (3.99 per lb).  This is a skin on belly.  The skin is edible and, although I've never had skin on bacon, it is reported as producing a nice bit of crispness when left on for bacon.  I intend to leave it on for this first attempt.  I picked up a 13 lb belly and will be preparing half of it for this first attempt (and will freeze the remainder for later).

My plan is to salt the belly with 1% salt (equilibrium method) and store it in the fridge for a week for the salt to absorb.  I will then add spices (will do 2 different spice mixes to evaluate the differences) and then wrap and dry them in my temperature controlled curing chamber/cheese cave until they have lost 15-20% of their water weight.  This drying will help protect the meat from pathogens (like Listeria).  I will then cold smoke the meat for 10-12 hrs.  There is much discussion about nitrates being needed to ward off botulism pinioning.  Botulism requires an anaerobic environment to create spores - I have confirmed that my smoker does not create an anaerobic environment by setting up candles in the smoker - the candles have enough oxygen to continually burn during smoking.  So, based on this, I feel comfortable that I am not creating a botulism risk by smoking the bacon.

My intention will be to cook the bacon up crispy in small batches and then use it on my nightly salad (goes very nicely with avocado and blue cheese)

Ingredients:

• Version 1:
• 1333g of pork belly
• 14g of salt (1%)
• 2 tsp Black Pepper
• 1 tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp Chipotle Pepper Powder
• Version 2:
• 1310g of pork belly
• 14 g of salt (1%)
• Splash of Balsamic Vinegar
• 2 tsp Brown Sugar
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1 tsp Black Pepper

Process Details:

• 11/1/24
• Got a large pork belly from costco and cut it into 4 pieces of roughly equal size.  I am going to use two of these today

• Measured the weights of the belly and salted the meat side at 1% by weight

• Put these in 1 gal zip-lock bags and stored them in the fridge for the salt to absorb.  I evaluated the progress every couple days after this
• 11/9/24
• The meat surface was fairly dry after a week in the fride which indicated to me that the salt had been drawn in

• I spiced the meat, wrapped it up in muslin sacks and trussed it up with string to hang in the curing chamber

• Collected the starting weight for the drying (I'm looking to lose 15-20% of the water weight).  Version 1 was 1360g and Version 2 was 1340g
• Moved to the curing chamber set between 50 and 60 F.  It is sitting at about 60-80% humidity with the meat in it
• 11/15/24
• One week later the meat had dried to within my target:  Version 1 was down to 1133g (17% weight loss) and Version 2 was 1119g (17% weight loss)

• I moved them back to the fridge over night to smoke them the next day
• 11/16/24
• Set the bacon up on a rack in my trash can smoker.  I used hickory wood chips in my soldering iron based cold-smoke generator.  I started at 6 PM anticipating a night in the low 40 to high 30 F range

• Added a temperature monitor just for curiosity
• I smoke with a lid on, of course, but it is slightly ajar.  The smoke generator produces a good amount of very nicely smelling smoke
• 11/17/24
• The smoker was still producing smoke when I checked on it at 6 AM so I let it peter out on it's own which took until 8 AM
• The max temperature achieved was 79 F (it was at that point when I opened the lid at 6 AM).  The meat had no signs of being cooked (no drippings).
• I brought the bacon in the house and cut off 2 sample strips from each.  It is a a bit difficult to cut with the tough skin so you need a sharp knife
• I fried it in a pan.  It tastes very smoky and the lower salt content is very apparent.  I am quite happy with this first tasting.
• Between the smoke, salt, and bold meat flavor, I can't say there was a meaningful difference between the two version of bacon.  The spice flavors don't really come through much at all here actually.  I think I would skip the spices in the next version
• 11/29/24 - Baked up some bacon on a sheet pan and collected some nice pictures of it.  This was fairly thick cut and turned out very nice and crispy - it is very good tasting bacon.  I' really happy with this project