A Charlie's Brown: Thanksgiving Beer

Well I am finally back. I haven't brewed since early June. I had a slight change at work and I have a lot more responsibility. Last spring I was named principal of our new middle school. Part of these responsibilities included a pretty substantial remodel of old preschool classroom spaces into the middle school. Managing the remodel and planning the new school took up almost all of my summer. Then once school started I have been super busy. I think it is finally starting to slow down a bit. I had Veterans Day off so I decided it was time to brew. This summer I did get one chance to brew a 10 gallon batch of a basic saison, that I then split into two 5 gallon batches. In one batch I added 3lbs. of fresh cucumber into secondary and the other half got about 8 tea bags of a jasmine green tea. These both came out great and were wonderful refreshing summer beers.

Today I brewed up a batch of a brown ale. I wanted a malt forward beer with enough hop bitterness to balance it out. It is kind of a cross between a Southern Brown Ale (malty, sweet, fruity) and an American Brown (roasty, hoppy, dry). The malt bill is more Southern, but I used a substantial dose of Sterling hops in the boil.  My local homebrew store, The Homebrewer has an amazing variety of grain. I built my recipe using Beer Alchemy, but upon getting to the store I realized the store had some better options for my beer, so I called an audible on the malt bill. I built the base on a 50/50 blend of Golden Promise and Ashburne Mild. I then picked out two crystal malts to add some sweetness and added dark fruit, burnt sugar and toffee flavors. I then finished off the bill with pale chocolate malt to get chocolate flavors and color, and some coffee kiln malt to add some roasty, coffee-like flavors. I also used a American Style yeast to keep the beer dry and allowing the fruit component to come mainly from the malt bill and not the yeast.

This beer will a great beer to pair with Thanksgiving dinner.

Recipe: Golden Promise, Ashburne Mild Malt, Dark Crystal (~80L), Extra Dark Crystal (~130L), Pale Chocolate Malt, Coffee Kiln Malt. Sterling Hops @60, and US-05.

Be Back Soon....I promise

Hot Curl

I was reading an article a few months ago about the history of San Diego (a subject that I geek out on). While reading about San Diego’s surf history I stumbled upon an article about a surfer-made statue that represented as the artist put it a “crummy surfer”, loosely model after himself. The statue was known as Hot Curl was first erected in 1963 by artist and self-described “crummy surfer”  Mike Domer (now 77) and his buddy Lee Teacher. The two built the 6’4” cement, scrap iron, and chicken wire statue and placed it next to the surf shack at Windansea beach in La Jolla. The statue was subject to love and hate and was taken down by City crews, only to be built again after passing city permit tests. Finally, a disgruntled surfer bludgeoned it to pieces late one night. Although the statute didn’t last long in its original location, a replica now sits in the Surf Museum. In addition to the current replica, Hot Curl became an icon of the surf movement in the 60s and continues to represent that early age of surfing culture today. Hot Curl has also been a comic for a number of years.

I love these old nostalgic stories of San Diegans in the “old days” doing crazy, weird and awesome things. The city was so much smaller then and was much more laid back. I figured I would honor the surf culture of San Diego through a beer. Karl Strauss makes a traditional hefewiezen called Windansea Wheat. I wanted to build off their model and create a beer that is just a little more San Diegan than a German Hefe. So I built a recipe for a Hoppy Wheat Beer (an IPW if you will). It is pretty standard wheat malt bill with an American Wheat yeast and American Hops. This beer should be a great porch sipper or a clandestine beach brew. Either way it should make a great summer beer. I hadn’t brewed  a hoppy beer in a while and when I opened my bag of Amarillo hops I was inundated by the amazing aroma of this hop, which continues to be my favorite hop. Here’s to Hot Curl!

Recipe: US-2 Row, White Wheat, Honey Malt. WLP American Hefe, Zythos & Amarillo @60, Amarillo @15, Amarillo @0.

BRETTTTT!!!!!!!! #3

This is my 3rd attempt at a 100% Brett beer. I have had really good luck fermenting beer with 100% Brett. The beers have finished dry,  extremely fruity and slightly tart. My first two batches used Brett c. and Amarillo and Nelson hops respectively. The Brett c. and Amarillo worked amazingly well together and is probably the best beer I have ever brewed. I have a post here about my second batch and my thinking with these beers. I have changed my thinking a bit, and this time I decided to create a big starter before pitching. I may get a slightly cleaner finished beer but that is fine.

For this batch I used brettanomyces anomalus that I received from Al B before he opened up East Coast Yeast. He told me that this strain was a WYeast strain of Brett a. The vial was old (2009-10) so I started with a small amount and ramped it up over a number of starters. The yeast was very active by the second round of starters and started fermenting vigorously once I pitched it into the wort. I kept with the  same 100% brett strain and 100% hop varietal. In this version I used Rakua hops, which should have peach, passionfruit and mango-like characteristics. I felt that these hops would complement the fruitiness of the Brett a. well.

Recipe: 2-Row, Carapils, Crystal 40. Rakua hops @60, 20, 0. WYeast Brett anomalus.

Citrus Saison

I had a bunch of citrus (blood oranges, navel oranges, and Meyer lemons) and wanted to brew a beer for my work happy hour my wife and I will be hosting in early May. I knew that saison is a style that will be nice and drinkable and refreshing for an afternoon happy hour party. I also thought that the citrus would play well with saison characteristics. My coworker Alex came over to help me brew up this beer. His good friend and housemate just started brewing and he wanted to see what all grain was about. Alex chopped the citrus up into 1/8's and we placed them in a mesh bag and added the last 10 minutes of the boil. I used White Labs American Farmhouse blend yeast which has some funk in it. To compliment the citrus and the yeast Alex and I decided to use Motueka hops which are said to give citrus, passionfruit and tropical fruit aromas and flavors. We also added a small amount of Amarillo for that orange component. In addition I threw in a small amount of cracked black peppercorns, and 6 crushed fresh bay leaves at flameout. The bay leaves had this great fruity aroma with a slight menthol-like component. The beer is fermenting away and smells amazing!

Recipe: 2-Row, White Wheat, Vienna. Motueka and Amarillo hops at 60, 20, and Motueka alone at flameout. Blood oranges, navel oranges, and Meyer lemons, black peppercorns, and fresh bay leaves. WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend.

Napoleon's Dynamite. A Berliner Weisse: Two Ways. An Experiment in Taste and Speed.

Berliner Weisse is one of my favorite styles of beers. I had my first a number of years back at Stone Brewing's 2nd annual sour fest. It was a sweltering, humid day in July. Although many of the beers were tart and refreshing the Berliner was just outstanding at quenching my thirst and not getting me too wasted. That was before Berliner Weisse "blew up". The next version I had was the Bruery's Hottenroth. That beer woke me up to a whole new version of Berliner Weisse. In addition my homebrew buddy Pat made an amazing batch that he served at our house warming party almost 5 years ago. Since then I try and make at least one batch a year, usually in time for summer. In the past I have built up a starter of a commercial strain of lactobacillus and pitched that for about 48 hours before pitching a clean ale yeast. This has worked very well for me in the past. However, it does take some time to get sour enough. On a side note I usually brew a batch of Gose with the bacteria/yeast cake left over from the berliner.

This year I had some extra time on my hands and decided to test two methods of making Berliner Weisse. I have heard good and bad things regarding sour mashes for Berliners and so I figured I would do a side-by-side experiment. I would sour mash one Berliner (which should allow for a nice sour beer, in a much faster time frame. may have some off flavors, not as complex) and I would do a more traditional version where I pitch a commercial lacto strain and then after ~48 hours at warm temps I cool it down and pitch a clean ale yeast (which should be more complex, less chance for off flavors, be nice and sour, but takes longer). We will see how the results turn out.

Here is an overview of my procedure:
-16# of grain into the mash tun, 8# 2-Row and 8# of Wheat Malt, mashed at 150F for 35 minutes.
- Drain off first runnings and collect.
-Sparge mash and collect second runnings (this was 8 gallons final).
-I split that 8 gallons into two parts. 4 gallons went back into the mash and 4 gallons stayed in the kettle.  I then added 1.5 gallons of water to the kettle. I added a pitcher full of ice to the mash to cool it down closer to 100F (I only got it down to 125F, I tok the temp tonight and it was down to 110F, in addition the grain had risen above the liquid level and the funky aromas were starting to form.) I wish I had pictures.
-The sour mash will hold at ~100F for 48 hours. I added about a half pound of crushed grain to the mash tun as well to introduce some healthy lacto.
-Kettle Half was hopped and boiled for 15 minutes, cooled to 80F, and the lacto was pitched. after 48 hours I will cool and add clean ale yeast.
- The sour mash will get mash hops, drain and sparked to bring final volume to 6 gallons. I will boil it for 15 minutes to kill the lacto. I will then add a clean ale yeast to finish fermentation.

My hope is that the sour mash version will be just as sour, and complex as the commercial strain version, and hopefully with no off flavors. If this is the case then I would do a sour mash from here on out, since this version would get me to the same ends at a much faster rate.

Westerlies Weizen 2013

This was one of the first beers I ever brewed and it was my first beer to medal in a competition. Its a great beer for the gloomy foggy Spring/Early Summer here in San Diego (May Grey and June Gloom). Westerlies blow in from the ocean and create these gloomy conditions, I love so much. A hefeweizen is a cloudy, mirky beer perfect for this time of year.

 I typically like Hefeweizens that lean more closely to the banana versus the clove flavors/aromas. I am watching the fermentation temps closely to produce large amounts of the ester isoamyl acetate. I am aiming to stay in the high 60s to low 70s, 68-71F.

I made this batch for a good friend who will be deployed shortly to Afghanistan, it is her favorite beer I have made. I tried a year or so again to do this batch all grain with no decoction and it wasn't very good at all. I kept to simple and used DME, light and Wheat. I hope it turns out and she can enjoy some before she is deployed.

Recipe: Light DME, Wheat DME, Northern Brewer @ 60min and 20. WLP 300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast.