What's Brewing: March 2018

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YungCoolship

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I brewed a 10 gallon batch of mosaic/citra neipa for my wife's upcoming birthday party. Pictured is a sample I pulled roughly a week into fermentation whilst pulling the dry hop bags.



The recipe is 74.1% 2 row, 11.1% white wheat, 3.7% acidulated malt, 1.9% c20, 1.9% flaked oats. Water profile is 150ppm Calcium Chloride/75ppm Gypsum. 5ml Hopshot at the beginning of the boil, 1oz citra @ 10, 1oz ea @ 5 of Mosaic/Citra, 3oz Mosaic/Citra whirlpool for 30 minutes, and dry hopping on the 2nd day of fermentation and in the keg with 3oz ea of Citra/Mosaic. I also added 2lbs of sucrose at 5 minutes to bump the gravity and dry the beer out a bit.

I also decided to bottle one of my mixed-ferm saisons that i brewed back in April. After tasting it for the past few month I thought it had a really pleasant balance of stonefruit tartness and barnyard funk. I was able to cork and cap about 18.5 750ml bottles and in a few months they'll hopefully bottle condition nicely (if my calculations are correct). Pictured is the half bottle, I couldn't resist drinking some flat beer.

 
Brewing an IPA today with all Southern Passion hops, which is currently whirlpooling before I rack to the fermentor.

I was meant to keg a BSPA today as well, but for the second batch in a row the yeast crapped out at around 1.020. The sample tasted a little funny so I'm not even going to bother trying to finish drying it out with another yeast. At least my mango mead managed to ferment all the way out, I'll start the process of stabilizing it tonight and then keg it on top of some more honey in a few days.
 
Brewed 12 gallons of a 1.073 saison yesterday with mecca grade malt I picked up while in Oregon last weekend. Recipe is about 75% pils, 10% white wheat, 5% each of vienna, acidulated, and flaked oats hopped with whole cone BKG (saison bernice recipe). I pitched a variety of yeast with the goal of developing a mixed culture for future use. Lab strains are WY3711 and WY3724 with a starter of Sahalie dregs (had to since they use mecca grade malt) and dregs from HF, DG, and HM.

Today I did a 6 gallons of a 1.032 table saison with 68% pils, 16% unmalted wheat, 12% flaked oats, and 4% acidulated. I tried a turbid mash for the first time (detailed here) and of course had a hard time hitting temps. One hop addition of aged saaz and pitched imperial citrus yeast. I have too many beers aging and want to have something to drink soon so I'm planning to dry hop this with either nelson or huell melon and have it in a keg by the end of next week.
 
I had vials of both TYB-282 (lactobacillus brevis) and TYB Amalgamation that had been in my fridge for WAAAAAYYYY too long (6+ months).

Last week I decided to make 2L starters of both to see if they were still viable (they were) and brewed up five gallons of 1.040 wort from 65% pils, 20% flaked wheat, & 15% vienna yesterday. Chilled that to 80°F, racked it into a keg purged with CO2, and let the lacto start to go to town on the wort.

Tomorrow (assuming a desirable pH/level of tartness has been reached) I plan to boil for ~15 minutes, let 2oz of Moasic enjoy that sweet-sweet-flame out wort for ~30 minutes, then chill to 75°F and pitch the Amalgamation starter. I'll likely dry hop with another 2oz of mosaic about a week before kegging, but I'm going to wait and let the beer tell me when that is.

Hoping to have this kegged up and on draft right around the time the warmer weather starts rolling in to Chicago.
 
Drinking my Cocoa Cinnamon Cognac RIS (11.1%).

Aged on 0.4 oz/gal American oak for about a year, which was an experiment compared to my typical 0.25 oz/gal. At first I thought I oaked it to hell and ruined it, but after some time to meld with the other ingredients its working really well. A friend straight up thought it was a coconut stout and I think that flavor must be coming from the wood.

yYgLPv0.jpg
 
There was a talk at NHC about oak (chips, cubes, spirals) that mentioned that the oak character will peak early but will mellow out with more time. The guy recommend to go longer than you think.

My method has been less oak & more time. Now I'm starting to think more oak & more time could be the way to go. I was worried because it tasted pretty harsh and dry for the first couple weeks on tap, then one day it magically rounded out.
 
There was a talk at NHC about oak (chips, cubes, spirals) that mentioned that the oak character will peak early but will mellow out with more time. The guy recommend to go longer than you think.

I had the same experience with small (5 gallon) barrels. Way over my preference of oak level after 1 month of aging. But it mellowed out in bottle.
 
Brewed 12 gallons of a 1.073 saison yesterday with mecca grade malt I picked up while in Oregon last weekend. Recipe is about 75% pils, 10% white wheat, 5% each of vienna, acidulated, and flaked oats hopped with whole cone BKG (saison bernice recipe). I pitched a variety of yeast with the goal of developing a mixed culture for future use. Lab strains are WY3711 and WY3724 with a starter of Sahalie dregs (had to since they use mecca grade malt) and dregs from HF, DG, and HM.

My house sour culture is mostly de Garde and Ale Apothecary dregs. It has a wonderful flavor with a little acetic acid character like its parents but too much oxygen and it gets heavily acetic, especially if it's a little slow to take off at the start of fermentation. You may not have that problem with lab saison yeast in the mix but I tend to pitch my sour culture at lager slurry volumes to avoid that problem.
 
I had the same experience with small (5 gallon) barrels. Way over my preference of oak level after 1 month of aging. But it mellowed out in bottle.

Same. I bottled an English Barleywine that sat on bourbon soaked cubes for about a month, initially I thought it tasted over-oaked but has rounded out a bit since.

I'm newer to using oak cubes, but I have found that boiling the cubes to pull some of the tannins out prior to soaking them has benefitted the end product. I don't know if this makes much of a difference but I've also been using barrel proof bourbon. My train of thought is that when brewers are filling 2nd use barrels, they aren't filling barrels that held 90 proof whiskey, why should I?
 
My house sour culture is mostly de Garde and Ale Apothecary dregs. It has a wonderful flavor with a little acetic acid character like its parents but too much oxygen and it gets heavily acetic, especially if it's a little slow to take off at the start of fermentation. You may not have that problem with lab saison yeast in the mix but I tend to pitch my sour culture at lager slurry volumes to avoid that problem.

I've been wanting to use de Garde dregs for some time, should I be concerned with champagne/wine yeast?
 
I've been wanting to use de Garde dregs for some time, should I be concerned with champagne/wine yeast?

I never have and I've used dregs with wine yeast for years. I know there's the killer enzyme issue but I've never had a problem. My guess is that the wine yeast only produce the enzyme when they eat and they run out of food pretty quickly as they tend not to metabolize malt sugars very well.
 
Looks like I've got my first dumped batch in years. RIP imperial smoked stout. After over a year of oak aging, it is sour as **** :(
 
Good news is I let a gallon of smoked stout age separately in a 1 gal carboy and it is not infected. Even better news is that its getting blended with gallons I set aside from my last three strong ales. It'll be an imperial stout, RIS, imperial smoked stout, English barleywine blend.

pY64z9D.jpg
 
Good news is I let a gallon of smoked stout age separately in a 1 gal carboy and it is not infected. Even better news is that its getting blended with gallons I set aside from my last three strong ales. It'll be an imperial stout, RIS, imperial smoked stout, English barleywine blend.

pY64z9D.jpg

Cooooooooovvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!
 
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