Nooby Dånbær

My two favorite 'types' or 'kinds' of beers are anything brewed with coffee or fruit. My favorite of the latter kind is anything sour. So I decided it was time to finally get my first sour going. I did a bit of research and thanks to Mikes blog I got a lot of useful information about where to start. I found his Brewing Sour Beer At Home post exceptionally helpful and decided it was time to dive in (plus a few emails from Mike back-and-forth answering a few more specific question). I also started reading Wild Brews but haven't got through it yet. I mean I only have to wait a year to decide if it's good or not right?

On my search to find a suitable recipe I decided I wanted a very light Lambic base so that I could add plenty of fruit at a later date. Which fruit? I don't know yet. After the beer sours up I'll try it this summer and decide which fruit(s) will go best. I can almost guarantee one will be peaches though. I loves me some peaches. For the initial base I think I'll use some Pilsen and Wheat. Why exactly? I'm not sure but I have to start somewhere.

My Saccharomyces choice was fairly simple to start with since the end result isn't going to have any actual yeast character. The little bugs will take care of that. So I just went with Safale US-05 since it's cheap, easy and produces a fairly clean end palate. The bugs were a fairly simple choice as well. I went with Wyeasts Brettanomyces Lambicus 5526 blend since it has the full bevy of Brett and Lactic Cultures along with more Saccharomyces. Also, to make sure the beer really sours up nicely, it's recommended to pitch the dredges of a bottle of a commercial beer. Mine happens to be Cantillon Blåbær Lambik since I just happened to trade for (hence the name of the beer). I drank it 4 days before I brewed so pitched the dredges into a starter that I made to give the microbes something to do for a couple days. Since there is this sort of oxygen/non oxygen thing that each particular culture likes/dislikes (great description of these differences on the how to brew to brew sours link above) I decided I'd aerate the beer as normal, pitch the US-05 and give it a 6 hour head start before I tossed in the bugs.

I plan on letting the beer ferment and settle out for about 2-3 weeks before racking to the secondary for it's extended stay. I will be adding a Oak Spiral to the secondary as well. And then come this summer when the fruit is nice and fresh at the farmers market, I'll split the batch accordingly. This will be a fun first go at a Lambic and it should be a good learning experience. I'll probably brew up another in a couple months so I'll have a steady flow of sours to play with and blend. Need more carboys though!


Recipe
--------------------
Batch Size - 5 Gallons
Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons
Total Grains - 11.67lbs
Anticipated OG - 1.063
Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
--------------------
8.33lbs Pilsen (36ppg, 1L) - 71.4%
2.5lbs Wheat (38ppg, 2L) - 21.4%
0.42lbs CaraPils (33ppg, 1.5L) - 3.6%
0.42lbs Vienna (33ppg, 14L) - 3.6%

Hops
--------------------
0.5oz Saaz (4% Pellet) - 60 min

Yeast
--------------------
Fermentis - Safale US-05 (75-80%, 59-75F)
Wyeast Belgian Lambic Blend 3278 (--, 63-75F)
Cantillon Blåbær dredges

EDIT: The yeast blend above is correct, I originally posted that I used the Wyeast Brett Blend and that was incorrect.

Extras
------------------
1tsp Irish Moss - 5 min


Brewed January 9th 2010

1/9/10
Cold as shit, probably not the best planning ever. It's literally so cold that when I pull the lid off the brew kettle, the condensation on it freezes within less than 10 seconds. Brew day went really well, actually the most efficient day I've had in terms of brewing time and not forgetting one thing or another and slowing down the whole process. I mashed a bit hotter than usual to give the microbes a bit more num num's to munch on. I'm definitely more interested in sour than alcohol. Once the beer cooled and was aerated I pitched as normal. This is the first time I've used dry yeast in years so it was weird just sprinkling it on top. After about 6 hours the yeast had already starting doing it's thing so I dumped in the Wyeast packet and the Blåbær dredges. It's amazing how purple the starter is from just a ounce or so of the beer. Hopefully it doesn't girly up the color of the Dånbær!

OG measured in at 1.050. Slightly smaller than expected but definitely okay. This should put my ABV around 5.5% which is perfect. I think if it ended up at 6% with better efficiency, that would be a bit much. Although with the higher temperature mash who knows what the real ABV will end up being. Looks like this puts my efficiency at about 60%.

1/30/10

Transferred to secondary today and the beer has a nice Lambic nose. It smells sour but the taste isn't at all. It basically tastes like a totally unhopped, super dry wheat beer. Hopefully in the end, it tastes like it smells! The FG is down to about 1.009 or so already.

I boiled the oak spiral for about 10 min and it's amazing how intense the wood smells and how dark the water got. The recommendation on the package is one spiral per 3 gallons. I'm not 100% sure if that's for beer or wine but either way I'm going to be safe and only use one for the entire 5 gal batch. Now we wait...

Tasting: Langs Lil' Smokey

Appearance- Pours a super dark brown that borderlines on black with a small dark tan cap that’s fairly small even with a aggressive pour. A nice thick collar and thin cap is maintained the entire beer as is a bit of spotty lacing.
Smell- Chocolate and bacon. The smoke is very strong and has almost wet ashtray like traits. Very intense and exactly what I was hoping for. Notes of tobacco and leather are fairly prevalent as well and as the beer warms the chocolate fades. Mostly just intense smoke.
Taste- Crazy intense. A big rush of smoke hits my mouth immediately as its super intense and almost ham like. Notes of raw cocoa nibs hide underneath with a dry bit of chocolate. It’s a bit too bitter though as a light citric tone from the hops is noticeable but I don’t think the majority of the bitterness is the hops. I think it’s from the char of the roast and the intensity of the smoked malt. The alcohol is noticeable as well. Some coffee notes, tobacco and more smoke lingers and lingers.
Mouthfeel- Awesome feel. It’s thick and rich with velvety smooth body as the carbonation is light and spot on. I wish all my beers had this body.
Overall- Not bad. This will definitely tame up a bit over the next couple months and become much more drinkable. For now though, it’s very intense and about the manliest brew I’ve ever had. It’s slightly too bitter for the style though and the alcohol is slightly too high. This brew will get better and better though and that applewood will meld nicely.

Tasting: Simcoe and Chinook Single Hop IPA

Chinook Single Hop IPA

Appearance- Slightly chill hazed but pretty good clarity overall, great head with tons of staying power. Looks like it might be slightly over carbonated.
Smell- Fairly piney and sappy, intense, not very fruity, earthy, a bit of caramel pops through as it warms
Taste- Holy bitter, resiny, pine tar and grass, dandelion stem, almost no malt to speak of. I’d say overly bitter but as it warms a bit it’s just really hoppy. Probably could have used a bit more caramel malt.
Mouthfeel- Great carbonation, spot on, heavy body, numbing feel. Somewhat dry.
Overall- Needs more of a malt backbone. A touch more crystal might have helped a little and prob 1/3 less hops. Chinook is pretty intense as I might have gone slightly overboard. It was a good example of what Chinook tastes like though as it’s basically all you can taste.

Simcoe Single Hop IPA

Appearance- Pours a beautifully clear reddish orange with a big fluffy off white head with serious staying power. A cap and collar is maintained the entire beer along with a ton of sticky lacing.
Smell- Very earthy and piney with a bit more of a citric nose than the Chinook. Some orange peel and lilac add to the really nice nose. A touch of caramel is noticeable as a light grainy undertone is detectable. Much more malt makes it way out than it did in the Chinook.
Taste- Starts slightly bitter with a big rush of caramelly malt. A pine and dandelion like bitterness steps in and like the Chinook, not really any citrus. The bitterness really lingers as does some grass and a touch of alcohol in the finish.
Mouthfeel- Perfect carbonation with a nice big feel and somewhat oily/slick feel. The bitterness actually gets numbing after a few sips.
Overall- Like the Chinook it bitterness is almost too much as a touch more malt (or less hops) could have helped. Saying that, it is a bit more balanced than the Chinook and I do enjoy this one much more. Next time maybe more malt but the Simcoe’s really were the showcase here.

Minneapolis Town Hall's Three Hour Tour Clone

Looking back on 2009 and all of the great beers that I sampled, one stands out in my mind. Minneapolis Town Hall's beer called Three Hour Tour. It's a Milk Stout brewed with raw coconut and some chocolate malts. The beer is lightly chocolaty and lightly coconuty and tastes a lot like a Mounds candy bar. I'm not the hugest Milk Stout fan but the sweetness is very light in this one and it works well with light chocolate and coconut.

After talking to the bartender, she said that 165lbs of coconut was used in the brew. According to our half assed (and somewhat buzzed) calculations, that comes out to about 1.88lbs per 5 gallon batch. I want mine to have that nice coconut flavor that the original does so I'll round up and use a full 2lbs. Another question of mine was whether or not the coconut was raw or toasted. She assured me it was just raw shredded coconut. We'll see... Turns out raw coconut is not all that easy to find. In fact, it's impossible to find if you wait until the last minute (literally, I was all set to brew and "ran" out to grab a bag). I'm sure specialty or ethnic stores carry it but just a regular grocery store does not. Everything is sweetened. So after checking every grocery store within a couple mile radius I gave up and just bought a couple bags of the sweetened stuff. I figured if I just soak the coconut in some water for a couple minutes and rinse it really well, that should get all that sugar off. Hopefully it doesn't change the flavor in the coconut.

Since Milk Stouts aren't my favorite I didn't exactly have a go to recipe to brew up. I did a bit of research and patched together a couple different recipes that I found on the internet. I wanted that light bit of caramel and chocolate but definitely didn't want them to overpower the coconut. I settled on what I thought would work well with a pound of chocolate malt and a couple pounds of crystal. I also wanted to add a bit of oats to aid in the silkiness of the mouthfeel but since I'm retarded, I forgot to add them to the mash. I also decided to hopefully get maximum flavor out of the coconut, I'd add it to the boil with 5 min left along with the Irish Moss and Lactose. Fingers crossed!


Recipe
--------------------

Batch Size - 5.5 gallons
Boil Size - 6.4 gallons
Total Grains - 14.25lbs
Anticipated OG - 1.076
Boil Time - 60 min


Grains
--------------------

10lbs 2 Row Base (37ppg, 1.5L) - 70.2%
2.0lbs Crystal 50-60L (34ppg, 30L) - 14.0%
1.0lbs Chocolate (29ppg, 350L) - 7.0%
0.75lbs Wheat Flaked (36ppg, 2L) - 5.3%
0.50lbs Black Patent (27pp, 500L) - 3.5%


Hops
--------------------

1oz Challenger (8% Pellet) - 60 min
1oz Kent Goldings (5% Pellet) - 15 min


Yeast
--------------------

Wyeast 1084 - Irish Ale (71-75%, 62-72F)


Extras
--------------------
2 lb Coconut - 5min
1/2 lb Lactose - 5 min
1tsp Irish Moss - 5 min


Brewed December 5th 2009

12/05/09
Minus not finding the raw unsweetened coconut and forgetting to add the oats to the mash, everything went fairly well. After I had added the coconut, I let it come back to a boil for about 2 min before adding the wort chiller. I aerated the beer as best as I could from my racking cane but the coconut was plugging everything up. So I just poured the entire pot into my fermenting bucket. I was going to add the coconut trub to the primary anyways so no worries. Original Gravity clocked in at 1.060. Shit, missed my target by 0.020... Gotta slow down when I drain the wort from the mash.

12/20/09
Racked to the secondary and seriously left a TON of crap in the bottom of the bucket. The yeast, hops and coconut looked very weird together. The Final Gravity came out to about 1.020. That puts me at around 60% efficiency. Lame Dan, lame... The taste had a nice milk chocolate aspect to it with a light sweetness. Definitely didn't add too much Lactose thank the lord. The only thing that sucks is that coconut is fairly light. I'm hoping once it sits and conditions and is bottled the coconut will be a bit more pronounced.

1/18/10
Bottled this today and got exactly two cases of delicious beer. The gravity was still sitting at 1.020 so I probably should have bottled this a few weeks ago. The sample that I tried was MUCH better than what I tried out of the fermenter. The coconut was much stronger and almost had a vanilla/coconut like flavor. The body is a bit weak but I can't wait for this thing to carbonate.

Surly AHA Rally

I've been brewing now for somewhere around 4 years. I started in Boise, ID as a simple extract brewer and slowly worked my way up from there. Now that I'm finally brewing good beers I decided it was time to take the plunge and join the American Homebrewers Association. Upon doing some research about joining I discovered that the AHA was throwing a huge rally at Surly Brewing. Score! Even better, Surly was giving all the homebrewers a free 5 gal batch of a Imperial Brown Ale that they brewed up. Double score! Sun shines on a dogs ass every now and again huh?

The day was a great time. My girlfriend and I showed up fairly early in order to 'beat the crowd' but we weren't the only ones with this bright idea. I'd say we were at least 75-100 back in the line by the time we arrived. Everything was extremely well organized though and luckily we only had to stand outside for 15 minutes or so before we got into the brewery.

Upon entering we were given a free AHA/Surly pint glasses and all the homebrewers were allowed to walk around the brewery and explore at our leisure. Tons of cans on palates lined the walls as did rows and rows of huge stainless steal fermenters. If only I could swim in a giant batch of delicious Furious. After a bit of exploring we made our way down to the tasting room/gift shop for some free Surly brews and a T-shirt or two. If the free wort wasn't generous enough Surly had 5-6 brews on tap and another on cask. They had Furious, Bender, Coffee Bender, Wet, CynicAle and maybe SurlyFest (can't remember exactly). Plus they were pouring Oak Aged Cask Bender from a firkin.

After a few brewski's and hitting up the gift shop we made our way up to get the free wort. Omar (Surly's owner) and one of the AHA guys gave a nice speech about craft beers, thanked everyone for coming out AND gave away free schwag. Generous organization and generous brewery. I was impressed all around. We waited in line for about 2 hours before we got our wort but it was well worth the wait. Had a few more tasty brews and shot the shit with some other homebrewers that were next to us in line. Saw a couple guys drop 6.5 gallon glass carboys while waiting but luckily none were full of wort. Man I'm glad I brought my plastic fermenter bucket.

When I got home I immediately pitched my Wyeast 3533 - Belgian Ardennes activator pack. This is definitely a higher gravity wort but I totally spaced and didn't make a starter. I was just going to pitch and pray that the yeast did it's thing. The wort was also aerated so I didn't have to worry about that. I decided that I'd keep the wort around a medium temp of about 70 degrees. I didn't want to ferment it warmer because I didn't want a crazy amount of those Belgium phenols to dominate the beer. I just wanted enough to give it a slight fruitiness underneath what I'm guessing will be a nice nutty toast in the beer.

From Zymurgy (a free brewing magazine I received for joining AHA. Yet another great reason to join for anyone who may be waffling):

"AHA director Gary Glass developed the following recipe using the wort provided by Surly"

Recipe

--------------------

Batch Size - 5 Gallons

Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons

Total Grains - 15.67lbs

Anticipated OG - 1.084

Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
--------------------
13lbs Pale Ale Malt (38ppg, 3L) - 83.0%
1.67lbs Brown Malt (38ppg, 65L) - 10.7%
0.5lbs Liquid Dark Candi Syrup (32ppg, 80L) - 3.2%
0.25lbs Crystal 120L (33ppg, 120L) - 4.8%
0.25lbs Crystal 80L (34ppg, 80L) - 3.2%

Hops
--------------------
1.25oz Columbus (15% Pellet) - 60 min

0.50oz Willamette (5% Pellet) - 0 min

Yeast
--------------------
Wyeast 3522 - Belgian Ardennes (72-76%, 65-85F)

Extras
-------------------

30z Hungarian Oak Cubes - Medium Toast (soaked in Gentleman's Jack for roughly a day)

11/01/09
Transferred to the secondary the same day I bottled the Chinook and Simcoe Single Hops. My final gravity came in at 1.016 after some ridiculously aggressive fermentation. I started out with a airlock on the bucket but after it filled with krausen a couple times I had to plug the lid hole with some plastic tubing for a makeshift blowoff tube. This thing fermented HARD for at least a week. I had constant bubbles for at least 2 weeks.

Since the whole idea of this brew was to be original and use whatever yeast/aging process you wanted, I decided to age this brew for a few months on 3oz of Hungarian Oak Cubes that I soaked in approximately 4-5 shots of Gentleman Jack. I racked the beer on all 3oz of the oak cubes and all 4-5oz of the Jack. I'm hoping it doesn't overpower the beer, but I want it to be fairly noticeable. Should definitely be interesting.

When I tasted the sample that I took the gravity from it was EXACTLY what I was hoping it would be. The yeast was barely noticeable at this point and the beer was nicely toasted and beautifully nutty. I really hope the oak and Jack don't overpower the beer. At almost 9.0% ABV though it was a little too hot for the overall beer and a bit of time is definitely needed

Lang's Lil' Smokey

For brew #2 in Minneapolis I talked to a buddy (this guy: Adam) and asked if there was anything that he thought I should brew up. Without much hesitation he said a Smoked Stout. Okay...

So I did a bit of research on the interweb and found a fairly nice recipe that looked pretty tasty. I wanted something on the lightly bitter side with a nice chocolate tone and super intense smoke. Minneapolis Town Hall made a Smoked Porter that I tried at the Great Taste of the Midwest and it was intense. Like REALLY intense and honestly at the time it wasn't my favorite. Once they tapped it at the brew pub it had mellowed slightly and was much more drinkable. According to the waitress their beer was aged about 6 months before they even thought it was drinkable. I have no idea whether or not this was before or after the GTotM.

So it turns out the smoked malt used was Apple wood smoked. Thank the lord Midwest Brewing had some in stock! The smell was super intense and I know it's going to be perfect for this brew. Hopefully this turns out stout-y enough. The original recipe calls for Northern Brewer hops and unfortunately they are fresh out. So I decided since I'm just using it for bittering I'll toss in Warrior instead. I also had a bit of help brewing this one as you can see to the picture on the right.

And the name is probably fairly self explanatory. It's named after my friend pictured at the start of the post.

Recipe -
--------------------

Batch Size - 5 Gallons
Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons
Total Grains - 15.75lbs
Anticipated OG - 1.067
Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
--------------------
8lbs Maris Otter (38ppg, 4L) - 50.8%

5lbs Apple Wood Smoked 2 Row (25ppg, 0L) - 31.7%
1.5lbs Crystal 60L (34ppg, 60L) - 9.6%
0.75lbs Chocolate (29ppg, 350L) - 4.8%

0.50lbs Roasted Barley (28ppg, 500L) - 3.2%

Hops
--------------------
1.5oz Warrior (16% Plug) - 60 min

Yeast
--------------------

Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (73-77%, 60-72F)

Brewed November 20th 2009

11/21/09

OG turned out a bit higher than expected at 1.079. Not sure what I did different this time but since I originally had too much wort I had to boil it quite a bit longer. I overshot it slightly and had just a touch less than 5 gal of wort. So my efficiency is somewhere around 75%. Much better. The smoke is fairly pungent and smells GREAT. The wort actually smells a bit like honey smoked chocolate ham. Mmmm... Honey Smoked Chocolate Ham.

12/05/09

Racked into secondary and ended up with a FG of 1.022. This puts the ABV somewhere around 7.3%-ish. Still don't know what my final boil volume was so I guess I can't get a accurate ABV.

12/21/09

Bottled with Munton's CarbTabs and used 3 this time. One less than I used in the Simcoe and Chinook Single Hop. We'll see. The taste is pretty nice but a little more bitter than what I wanted. Nice chocolate tones and TONS of smoke. Not Town Hall Smoked Porter ashtray smoke, but enough.

Simcoe and Chinook Single Hop

So for my first beer after moving to Minneapolis (and getting the rest of my brewing supplies that my buddy in Chicago had) I decided I'd brew up a nice light bodied beer and split the batch to single hop with Simcoe's and Chinooks. I wanted Simcoe and a buddy suggested the Chinooks. I'm usually more of a fruity hop type guy (C-Hops) but these both sounded like nice choices that I'm not as familiar with.

Since I still hadn't bought a full sized pot that I could boil a entire 5 gal batch in, I did this inside on my stove. I did have two stainless steal pots though that could handle a split 4 gal batch since they were 5 gal and 4 gal respectively. The base of the recipe was something I found online that was someones made up version of Pliny the Elder (I wish I could find the link to give credit but I didn't realize I'd be doing this half-assed blog). I decided it would be a good recipe to really showcase the hops off.

My brew day was a little shaky since I wasn't 100% sure how I was going to evenly split the batch split. I decided that after I vorlauf I'd just evenly pour the wort into each pot about 4 cups at a time. I did the same with the sparge water and that seemed to work okay. It was hard to tell if the batches were even though since one pot was 4 gal and the other was 5 gal. From there, everything went fairly smoothly.

Recipe -

--------------------

Batch Size - 4 Gallons

Boil Size - 5.3 Gallons

Total Grains - 12.8lbs

Anticipated OG - 1.092

Boil Time - 90 min

Grains

--------------------

11.2lbs 2 Row Base (37ppg, 1.5L) - 87.5%

0.8lbs Sugar - Cane (42ppg, 0L) - 6.3%

0.4lbs Crystal 40L (42ppg, 40L) - 3.1%

0.4lbs Wheat (38ppg, 2L) - 3.1%

(Batch Split)

Hops

--------------------

(1/2 Batch)
1oz Simcoe (13% Plug) - 90 min

1/2oz Simcoe (13% Plug) - 60 min

1/2oz Simcoe (13% Plug) - 30 min

1/2oz Simcoe (13% Plug) - 5 min

1/2oz Simcoe (13% Plug) - Dry Hopped 7 days

(other 1/2 batch)

1oz Chinook (13% Plug) - 90 min
1/2oz Chinook (13% Plug) - 60 min
1/2oz Chinook (13% Plug) - 30 min
1/2oz Chinook (13% Plug) - 5 min
1/2oz Chinook (13% Plug) - Dry Hopped 7 days

Yeast

--------------------
Wyeast 1056 - American Ale (73-77%, 60-72F)

Brewed October 10th 2009

10/10/2009

Original gravity of both beers were way lower than expected at 1.060. Again my efficiency continues to suck and ended up around 50% (uggghhh....). I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong (grain crush? channeling?) and quick. Since I just split up the batch I don't exactly know how much wort I started with but it should be somewhere around 2.65 gallons per pot. The 5 gal pot is a little wider though so I know I got a bit more boil off on that particular batch (the Simcoe was in the 5 gal pot). This whole thing is by the seat of my pants though so I'm not too worried about it.

10/24/2009

Final gravity checked in at a unbelievable 1.012. Racked both beers and added a 1/2oz of the respective beers hops. Starting to rethink this whole plug hop idea considering I lost quite a bit of wort when racking.

11/1/2009

Racked into my bottling bucket and again lost probably another 1/4 to 1/2 gallon of wort from the massive swelling of the plug hops. The gravity even fell another point or two to somewhere between 1.011 or 1.010. Crazy, I screwed something up that it ended up this dry. I used the small Munton's CarbTabs for the first time on this beer because I've had problems with even carbonation using just dissolved sugar.

Welcome!

Howdy to anyone who may have stumbled upon this Half-Assed journal! After taking a page out of a couple other homebrewers who's blogs I follow very closely, I thought I'd start my own. Plus, friends ask me a lot about what I'm brewing and now they can take a look for themselves.

So over the next couple days/weeks I'll be inputting a couple brews I did over the last month and a half and get this thing up and running.

Cheers!