Beer Blotter

Logsdon Farmhouse logo - one of our favorites

Note: if this is your first time reading The Homebrewer’s Brain, please check this article for a background on what we are doing here.

I’m a really big fan of saisons and due to that fact I end up brewing them often. Sometimes, believe it or not, I brew what I want to drink.
I think part of my fandom, other than the obvious flavor factor, has to do with my great fascination with farmhouse breweries. I love the history of them – brewing beer for the farm workers to drink after a long, grueling day laboring in the fields. I am also enamored with the concept of growing ingredients on brewery property to be used in the beers brewed there. It’s exciting to me to have that much of a hand in what goes into the beer. I am working toward making this sort of lifestyle a reality for myself.
But, history notwithstanding, it’s the yeast and the yeast alone that makes a saison a saison. So I guess, more specifically, you could say that I love saison yeast. I think it’s so brilliant because it has a unique quality to it that makes it distinctly Belgian (or French) but it’s more subtle than your traditional abbey style yeast that’s often just packed with esters and phenols. Saisons are very distinctive. You know you’re having a saison the very moment you take a sip, no matter what the liquid looks like, but they’re never overpowering and always very drinkable and refreshing.
With that being said, it seems to make the most sense to start with a yeast and work backwards. I’m a Wyeast guy, so taking a look at what they have to offer reveals four options. Wyeast 3711 French Saison, Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison, Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse Ale (Private Collection, available seasonally), and Wyeast 3725 Bier De Garde (Private Collection, available seasonally). 3725 just so happens to be available as I’m writing this article (Apr-Jun 2012) and I’ve never used it before so I have chosen to give it a try. I have come to learn that it was cultured from Brasserie Fantome in Belgium, which makes insanely unique saisons, so I’m really excited to try it. Bier De Garde is, obviously, a different style from saison, but shares the “farmhouse” connotation so I’m not too concerned, especially since Wyeast suggests a fermentation temperature range of 70-84 degrees (which is very much unlike a traditional Bier De Garde which is lagered).
From here I’m going to develop the grain bill. I’ve decided that I want to make this saison black or dark brown in color, perhaps around 24 SRM. I’ve wanted to use Midnight Wheat to darken up a beer style that isn’t traditionally dark for a while now. I have heard that it imparts a great depth of color without lending a roasty character. I also want to put Rye in the beer to add to the traditional spicy flavor element found in many examples of the style (most often from yeast derived phenols). Because many saisons yeasts tend to produce an extremely dry (and therefore often thin) finish, I want to add a few grains that will impart some unfermentables to increase the mouthfeel . Since I now have Rye and Midnight Wheat I thought it would be fun to do Crystal Rye and White Wheat so that I have two different types of each grain. Admittedly, this concept is somewhat inspired by a black saison brewed by New Holland Brewing from Holland, MI.

Photo cred - guysdrinkingbeer.com/

I’ll use European Pilsner as a base and a half pound of rice hulls to prevent a stuck mash due to the extensive use of wheat and rye (both grains do not have a husk). My false bottom generally does a good job at filtering but one can never be too safe. I’ll go lightest on the Crystal Rye to minimize the caramel flavor and use just enough Midnight Wheat to gain my desired color. I’ll try to keep my base grain at about 70% of the grain bill, but I’m really not too concerned with astringency since wheat and rye are acceptable as base grains themselves.
I must admit that I was pretty stumped at first with regards to the hops in this recipe. I was unsure if the standard bitterness numbers for the style would stand up to the added malt complexity. I decided that there was no harm in attempting to contact Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal and picking his brain on the matter. His Existent Black Saison is definitely an inspiration for this beer. To my surprise, or maybe not, Brian responded to my query and suggested that I go with something in the 30-35 range but no higher. I heeded his advice with a bit of conservatism and chose to go with 28. I had some Hallertauer hops in the fridge that had to be used so I chose to pitch them in at 60 minutes for bittering. I also had some Sorachi Ace that I was holding onto for a saison. I have never brewed with the hop but I have sampled quite a few commercial brews that use it and I have always been very impressed. I chose to put some in at 20 and 5 minutes to get a good blend of flavor and aroma without over doing it.
I have made it habit to filter my water for the brew the day before and let it sit out so that the chlorine has time to dissipate. I think it has helped the flavor of my beer quite a bit. After all, water is the most substantial ingredient in beer. Another practice that I feel has been crucial to the success of my recent brews is doing a starter the night before and leaving it stirring on a stir plate the entire time to make sure it’s well oxygenated. To make sure that nothing unsavory gets into the starter I put a musting cap on the top of my Erlenmeyer flask with an air filter in place of the airlock. I currently have an oxygenation system on my wish list which would allow me to have more control of the oxygenation.
I think that about covers it. Let’s hope it turns out as good as I project it to be.

Photo credit www.theelectricbrewery.com

Hey, remember us?

Yeah, we’ve been busy… babies, too many hours on the clock, building business plans, blah, blah, blah.  The fact that so much time has passed since our last post seriously burrows into our collective psyche.  It pains us.  But, sometimes life gets in the way.  What can you do?  Please allow us to apologize.  Consider it a hiatus, a time to recuperate.  And we move on…

One thing that we have absolutely not allowed to go stagnant is our endless trek down the path to better beer.  We have been homebrewing every chance that we get.  For us, brewing is not just a means to the end of having beer to drink.  It’s so much more.  We want to make the best beer in the world.  We put hours into recipe formulation.  We read, we discuss, we reflect…  This is a log of our process.

The ever sharing Eric Salazar of New Belgium (photo credit www.fairfaxbrewfest.com)

The brewing community is phenomenal.  We love being a part of it.  We always feel accepted and we almost always walk away from a brewery visit feeling like we were virtually hugged by the staff.  The one thing that we are often most surprised by is how open brewers are about what they do.  Processes, recipes, sometimes even financials are shared with us openly.  It speaks to the genuine quality of people that we aim to surround ourselves with.  Ultimately, we want to be just as open and helpful.  We want to spread the love too.

So this is our attempt to share.  We thought that it might be helpful to write down our process for recipe formulation, if not to help other all-grain brewers, to help us remember why we did what we did. This way, if a bit of time passes between the first time that we brew something and the follow up brew,we don’t have to start all over from scratch.

We urge you to share your experiences as well, for we are still figuring it all out ourselves.

I (Timperial) should, in addition, mention that I am also writing this as a means to assist one of my employers, Homebrew Heaven, get flow to their website and to create a deeper set of tools to assist homebrewers on that site.  Please check them out if you haven’t already, for they are allowing me to take time on the clock to write these articles.

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Hello brain, let’s hash this out

One of the most important things, to me, when developing and tweaking a recipe is researching the style. I often have a general idea of what goes into it, but I like to know the history of the style and what the recipes of the best examples look like. What ingredients were available and what processes were employed back when the style first came into vogue?

Before I start to peruse the internet there are two books that I almost always refer to. First, for basic history and recipe guidelines, I refer to Designing Great Beer by Ray Daniels. Then, to get an idea of what ingredients are typically used in examples that I like, I check Clone Brews by Tess and Mark Szamatulski.

I then hit the internet. I study the BJCP Style Guidelines and search for more recipe information. Ultimately though, all of this data simply serves as an informational base for my recipe. I’m generally not out to brew a beer that exactly fits the style guideline. I am, after all, an American brewer. I have a great desire to be creative and innovative. I want the end result to produce a feeling. I want he/she of whom imbibes the beverage to say to him/herself, “Yes, this is indeed a Helles, but it’s so much more”.

I have been using BeerSmith software for a while now to create and save my recipes. I also save them on Hopville.com so that I can share them with my brewing partner. It’s free to create an account and it can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. I can save the recipe at home or at work and then have him log in from wherever he is and we can talk through our ideas. It’s super convenient.

My idea with this beer is going to be loosely based off of Samuel Adams Alpine Spring. It’s an unfiltered lager brewed with 2-row and honey malts and a ton of Tettnang hops. I found it to be extremely flavorful, especially with the heavy hopping. The flavor and aroma is intensely of lemon. So much so, in fact, that I feel as though actual lemon peel or lemon juice was added, but there is no mention of that anywhere on the bottle or the Sam Adams website. I am intrigued enough by this that I plan to go heavy on the Tett in late additions and dry-hopping to see how lemony the hop actually is.

Right there, with the heavy late addition hopping, we are out of style, but I’d like to go more traditional on the grains. In looking at more modern examples of light lagers and pilsners, it seems appropriate to go with European pilsner malt as a base with some Vienna for malt flavor and some light crystal 20 and cara-pils for body. The main goals here will be to keep the original gravity between 1.045 and 1.050 with a terminal gravity of around 1.010 (obviously, no brewer can survive without a hydrometer) and to keep the color as light as possible, ideally around 4 SRM. I was able to play with the grain ratios to make this happen with 83% base, 11% Vienna and 3% each crystal 20 and cara-pils.

I, for a minute, thought about doing a step mash on this one since that is the traditional route but upon further reflection, with today’s highly modified malts, I don’t think it’s worth the added efforts.

Despite the placement of the hops in the boil, I think it’s still possible to hit the BJCP style guideline on IBUs for Helles (16 – 22). I decided to use Perle for bittering at 60 minutes and cram all of the Tett in in the last 15 minutes. I was able to hit 20 IBUs despite using 4 total ounces of hops in a 10 gallon batch. Success!

Personally, I prefer to use pellet hops in the boil and leaf hops for dry hopping. Pellet hops give you a slightly better extraction and they are much more convenient to weigh and bag. I find it super convenient to use the Escali Digital Scale to weigh out the proper quantities. Despite the fact that most brewers simply toss pellet hops into the kettle, I don’t have a good way to whirlpool the wort post-boil. I’m also afraid to clog the Kettle Screen that I use, so I bag my pellets in an 8” X 9 ½” re-usable nylon bag. I use leaf hops for dry-hopping because I feel there is slightly less chance that I’ll “muddy up” the beer with hop particulate. With this I just use a disposable muslin bag for ease of disposal.

Traditionally, soft water is best for brewing light lagers and pilsners, but soft water tends to minimize the hop experience and I, clearly, don’t want to do that, so I’ll just filter tap water with my inline water filter, as per usual. If I really wanted to soften my water, I could combine my tap water with about 50% distilled water, but then there would be some concern with the mineral content required for healthy fermentation.

The yeast I choose will be pretty crucial here. I’m brewing a lager style but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I must use a lager yeast. The key is that I minimize the yeast character… make sure the beer is super clean. I have a garage that I can keep my fermenter in but I do not have a fridge with a temperature controller. This is going to be a big factor in the route I go with the yeast. Since it’s springtime in the Northwest, I can’t rely on a consistent ambient temperature in my garage. It’s unlikely that I will be able to hold a sub 58 degree environment in my garage, so I need a yeast with a higher temperature range. I’m a tried and true Wyeast supporter, so my first thoughts are of 2124 Bohemian Lager (Bohemia is the home of Pils after all), 2112 California Lager and 2565 Kolsch. The lager yeasts have a range up to 68 degrees, which seems very do-able, so I chose to go the most traditional route… that of the Bohemian Lager strain.

And viola, a recipe has been created. We shall see how I did in a few weeks time.

Widmer Opens Up.

My prayers have been answered.  If you read my article entitled “A Brief Barrage of Beer Becomings” that was posted last Tuesday you may have noticed that I drooled a bit over Widmer Bros. latest ad campaign.  I asked readers if they could scan page 5 of the latest issue of Northwest Brewing News so that I could share a visual of what I was writing about.  On Friday, a kind soul brought the goods.

I received an email from one Ashley Stuart, Media/Account Coordinator for Sasquatch Advertising in Portland.  Sasquatch does the ad work for Widmer and this “open source” campaign is their latest attempt at showing the beer drinking public that The Bros are doing it for the people.

You may remember the “Lemon Your Widmer” campaign from a little while back.  This was also the cunning work of Sasquatch.  It allowed for Widmer Hefe drinkers to upload videos of their unique ways of adding lemon to the beer.  It seems that the site has been taken down but you can still check out one of the better videos on the Sasquatch site.

In my initial article I mentioned the ad that displays the full original recipe for KGB Russian Imperial Stout.  That is one of three recipe ads that are currently part of the campaign.  The others are Altbier and X114 IPA.  I’ve attached them below.  Clone brew anyone?

But first, some brief words from Ashley about the campaign:

 

Our “open-source” campaign is all about sharing the love for brewing. Widmer believes that by providing the public with authentic recipes and encouraging others to have fun with the brewing process, they are passing on their love for beer and brewing.

 

KGB

Altbier

X114