Getting Closer to Gueuze

18 months ago I had grand ambitions about a series of lambics, brewed at one year intervals and then blended to make gueuze and fruit lambic.  In October 2012 I brewed the first in the series, decoction mashing for the first time, and naming it Surranes Lambic.  A year-and-a-half have passed since then, and I'm a little behind schedule.  Earlier this week I brewed the second version of Surranes Lambic and suddenly I'm all excited about gueuze and blending and sour funkiness again.

A few small things have changed since the plan was hatched back in 2012.  Besides the extended timeline, I originally planned to use the remaining 20 pounds of cabernet grapes from my friend Steve's family grapevines in some way.  Instead they've been utilized in the making of a Cabernet Pyment (along with an Oaked version).  I also thought I might alter the recipes of each of the three batches to provide more variety of flavor and enhance complexity when blending.  This has worked well in the past when brewing and blending Flanders Reds.  You can use different ingredients in a variety of combinations and different fermentation techniques and processes to get to a proper version of a Flanders Red.  That variation makes blending them together all the more enjoyable as the final product can take from a lot of different flavors and the result can be all the more complex and interesting.  Instead of altering the base recipe, I decided instead to change up the yeast.  With so many different yeast products available (even in the last 18 months) it seemed like an interesting idea to change just that one single variable and get variety from the most important ingredient in any beer.

So, I brewed Surranes Lambic 2 and followed the same process as before.  I relied on a decoction mash to enhance the fermentability of the wort.  After much deliberation I decided to pitch a portion of a a culture I built up from HaandBryggeriet HaandBic Lambic.  My hope is that I'll get to taste a beer that retains many of the characteristics I associate with HaandBic even without the barrel aging: floral, tart, fruit forward (berries), light vanilla, plenty of yeast character.  This version will likely get the fruit, but I'm not sure what I'll use.

Surranes Lambic (Year 2)*

Specifics

Style: Straight (Unblended) Lambic   Brew Date: April 4, 2014 Yield: 5 gallons Color (SRM/EBC): 3.3/6.5 Bitterness (Calc): 10.2 IBU (Daniels)

Batch No: 138 OG: 1.046 Target OG: 1.047 Status: Primary

General Information

Method:

All Grain

The second in a series of three lambics (brewed at roughly one year intervals), meant to be blended into gueuze and also used in conjunction with fruit.  Perle hops have been aged over five years.

Malts and Grains

6.00 pounds	Belgian Plisen Malt	61.5% of grist
3.75 pounds	American White Wheat Malt	38.5% of grist
9.75 pounds	Total Grain Weight (Water Amounts)	100% of grist

Hops

2.00 ounces	Perle .5% Pellets @ 240 minutes  Type: Bittering Use: First Wort	1 AAUs
2.00 ounces	Total Hop Weight	1 AAUs

Fuzzy Little Foreign Extra Stout + Bugs

"I'll slack you off you fuzzy little foreigner..."

Whenever people talk about stouts, Guinness invariably comes up in the conversation.  It's one of the most famous beers in the world and is THE example of a dry stout.  Guinness famously sours a portion of their beer in oaken tuns remaining from the early days of the brewery.  These tuns have Brett, lacto, pedio and doubtlessly a bunch of other organisms, and provide the unique taste of Guinness.  I wanted to try something similar, but on a homebrew level.  Plenty of homebrewers have done this before by adding acidulated malt or lactic acid.  Some have soured portions of their wort and then added it to the finished product.  As someone who likes making Dregs Beers, I thought I'd try a different approach and add the dregs of a sour beer to my homebrewed stout after a primary fermentation with a traditional ale yeast.  My thought is that the English ale characteristics essential to a traditional stout will be established in primary and the remaining bugs and bacteria from the dregs will provide just enough sour bite to make the beer a little more interesting.   I like Draught Guinness, but really prefer Foreign Extra Stouts, and they come in two sub-styles: Export and Tropical.  Here are some thoughts about each with a short sensory evaluation of two representative beers.

EXPORT
While travelling in Scotland I had a chance to try Guinness Foreign Extra Stout in a bottle.  It has a higher alcohol content, plenty of dryness and a smooth creaminess to it that I liked immediately.  It's a deep opaque black, and not as bitter as some others I've tried.  There's almost no sweetness-it's the Guinness you know and love times two.

TROPICAL
I tried a Lion Stout for the first time when travelling in Peru.  It pours a deep dark brown, almost black and has plenty of roasted malt and coffee aromas.  Lion retains a sweetness and a hint of alcoholic bite that serves a nice counterpoint to the bitterness associated with a lot of roasted barley.


Fuzzy Little Foreign Extra Stout was brewed in the Export style.  Here's the recipe:

Specifics

Style: Foreign Extra Stout   Brew Date: March 24, 2014 Yield: 5 gallons Color (SRM/EBC): 31.4/61.8 Bitterness (Calc): 58.4 IBU (Daniels) Conditioning: Bottles and Cask

Batch No: 137 Target OG: 1.075 Status: Primary

General Information

Method:

All Grain

Higher gravity stout brewed in the export (as opposed to the tropical) interpretation of the style. Brettanomyces to be added mid-fermentation.

Scale Recipe

Enter desired final yield (volume):

gallons

Malts and Grains

8.00 pounds	American Pale Malt (2-Row)	54.2% of grist
1.50 pounds	British Maris Otter Pale Malt	10.2% of grist
1.00 pounds	American Wheat Malt	6.8% of grist
1.00 pounds	Flaked Barley	6.8% of grist
0.75 pounds	Crystal Malt 120L	5.1% of grist
0.75 pounds	American Roasted Barley	5.1% of grist
1.00 pounds	American Chocolate Malt	6.8% of grist
0.75 pounds	American Black Patent	5.1% of grist
14.75 pounds	Total Grain Weight (Water Amounts)	100% of grist

Adjuncts

0.50 pounds

Brown Sugar, Dark

Hops

1.00 ounces	Centennial 9.2% Pellets @ 60 minutes  Type: Bittering Use: Boil	9.2 AAUs
0.50 ounces	Centennial 9.2% Pellets @ 30 minutes  Type: Flavor Use: Boil	4.6 AAUs
0.50 ounces	Challenger 6.9% Pellets @ 15 minutes  Type: Flavor Use: Aroma	3.5 AAUs
2.00 ounces	Total Hop Weight	17.3 AAUs

Boil

Total Boil Time:

60 minutes

Yeast

Name:	Dry English Ale
Manufacturer:	White Labs
Product ID:	WLP007
Type:	Ale
Flocculation:	High
Attenuation:	75%
Temperature Range:	65–70°F
Amount:	35 ml

I plan to sour this beer slightly with Wyeast Brettanomyces Lambicus. This beer will spend some time fermenting out as the bugs do their job slowly.  Need more?  Check out the BrewBlog posting here.

You can't end a post that references Carl Spackler without including this:

"A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Calyx Cyser

8 hours after pitching.

Some ideas take a while to play out completely.  I've been tossing around the idea of making a cyser for the past couple years, but despite (or perhaps because of) the simplicity of the process, it just never happened.  I had the honey.  I had access to the cider.  I had picked the brains of cider makers and (re)read information online and in The Compleat Meadmaker.  But for some reason I just never set aside the time and made it.  Then, two weeks ago I had the chance to judge on the Open Category Mead (26C) panel of the America's Finest City Homebrew Competition put on by Quaff.  It's an interesting category to be a part of because none of the offerings can be considered "out of style" which means that basically anything goes.  Prior to the judging the pessimistic and optimistic sides of my personality clashed with one another over this fact.  Would the meads be terrible, with random ingredients disproportionately added, or concoctions that didn't make the cut elsewhere being thrown in for a lack of other options?  Or would the brewer's creativity and instinct carry the day, with unique combinations and techniques making for completely original meads that changed my ideas about what a mead could be like?  I honestly had no idea what to expect.

7 ounces of chopped dates.

Luckily the goblet was half full and I was blown away by the quality and crafstmanship of the meads that I had a chance to drink.  I was surprised by the range of ingredients and the ways that they were incorporated.  Berries, spices, herbs and a variety of other additions accentuated the beauty of honey in liquid form and snapped me out of whatever malaise was keeping me from making my cyser.  So yesterday I went ahead and put everything together.  This is my first cyser, so I played it relatively safe and borrowed heavily from Ken Schramm's Falls' Bounty Cyser recipe in The Compleat Meadmaker.  The result was Calyx Cyser:

Calyx Cyser

Specifics

Style: Cyser   Brew Date: March 8, 2014 Yield: 4 gallons

Batch No: 136 Status: Primary

General Information

Method:

Other

Informed by Ken Schramm's Fall's Bounty Cyser in the Compleat Meadmaker.

Ingredients

3 gallons	Juice - Apple Cider
0.75 pounds	Brown Sugar, Dark
0.40 pounds	Fruit - Dates, pureed
6.20 pounds	Honey - Orange Blossom

Boil

Total Boil Time:

0 minutes

Yeast

Name:	Lalvin
Manufacturer:	Lallemand - Lalvin
Product ID:	71B-1122
Type:	Wine
Flocculation:	High
Attenuation:	75%
Temperature Range:	59–86°F
Amount:	12 gr

Water Profile

San Diego, CA

Calicum:	68 ppm
Bicarbonate:	590 ppm
Sulfate:	205 ppm
Chloride:	94 ppm
Sodium:	94 ppm
Magnesium:	26 ppm
PH:	7.9%

Procedure

No heat method.  Mixed honey and brown sugar into the apple cider.  Chopped the dates and added them to the carboy.

I omitted raisins and went with some different ratios and yeast, but the basics of Schramm's recipe remain intact.  I chose Lalvin 71B because I like its aromatic-enforcing qualities and the smoothness it produces from the high metabolization of malic acid.  I followed the staggered nutrient addition schedule that's worked well for me in past meads:

1.  During yeast rehydration:  5 grams of Go Ferm
2.  When visible signs of fermentation are evident:  .75 tsp Fermaid K; .75 tsp of DAP (+ aeration)
3.  Roughly one week later:  .5 tsp of Fermaid K; .5 tsp of DAP  

Click here for the BrewBlog link.

Getting Reacquainted With My Old Friend Mead

Dry as can be.

Last September I made a mead using some beautiful orange blossom honey and Lalvin 71B (aka Narbonne).  For the last 150 days I watched it painstakingly ferment to absolute dryness and clear out as the yeast dropped out of suspension.  I did my best to forget about it and let it go about its business without me meddling, and I almost did too well, forgetting to transfer it off the lees into different containers when I should have.  Mead can be like an old friend that you haven't seen for a long time.  When you don't see that person face-to-face with regularity, the effects of time can be surprising.  With mead you hope that the results of time reveal that it's aged more elegantly than that old high school friend who has put on too many pounds and has six kids.  

Half of the 12 pounds.

Luckily, this mead developed beautifully, with a pale straw color and a super dry finish that's a perfect canvas for adding additional ingredients and trying something different.  The mead has a distinctive citrus flavor as a result of the orange blossom honey and the esters imparted by the yeast.  Narbonne is supposed to impart a nice rounded flavor due to its neutralization of malic acid, and I'm counting on it to do its job throughout tertiary.  Today I added 12 pounds of cabernet grapes that were gifted to me by my friend Steve last year.  The frozen grapes were added in equal portions to two different fermentation buckets and the mead was racked on top.

One of the two buckets will be allowed to do its thing undisturbed for the next month or so, while the other is going to get a few inches of medium toast American white oak in honeycomb form courtesy of Lewy.  I want the oak to add nuanced background flavor but definitely not be overpowering so I'm taking his advice and adding about two inches of the honeycomb.  I'll be tasting it often to see how it impacts the flavor.

I'll be brewing the second in a series of three lambics later on this month with the intention of blending all of them into a (hopefully) passable gueuze when they are done fermenting and aging.  I'm a few months behind schedule.  It'll be some variation on the first one, Surranes Lambic.  Need some background?  The original post can be found here.  

Big Dipper IPA | Competition Beer

I haven't been brewing a whole lot lately, but I have a few small things to share.  I made an IPA with my friends Adam and Lewy a few weeks back that's ready to drink for the first time tonight.  So I'm sipping on a taster and posting for the first time this calendar year.

Big Dipper IPA

It came out amber, hazy (despite using gelatin) and danky in the nose with a nice cream-colored head that lingers for about 2 minutes.  The Simcoe and Centennial dry hops are pretty assertive in the nose.  It comes in hoppy and pretty dry when tasted, with a little hint of astringency in the final taste.  I get plenty of fruit and malt-forward flavors and even though it doesn't finish perfectly clean it leaves a nice hop residue flavor on the tongue.  This was my first time using Denny's Favorite 50, a yeast that's supposed to be a good all-around yeast and accentuate a lot of the fruit and malt character without being too sweet.  It seems to do as advertised, but it doesn't mute the hops like I expected it would.  I've heard that it's the same as Brewtek's CL-50, a yeast that you can't still acquire otherwise.  As for the name, well, when I go thru hiking with Adam we always go to new and different places.  We've done the whole John Muir Trail, high country in Zion, and the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island.  Every hike has different scenery and experiences, but one thing is always constant.  Adam has to find a body of water and dip himself in it.  Without showers and with days worth of sweat and dirt clinging to you, conditions are ripe for a nasty case of jock itch.  Hence the name, Big Dipper IPA.

I want to give a big thank you to Jeff from Bikes, Beer, and Adventures (Oxford comma, really Jeff??) for inviting me to be one of a few lucky tasters at his Brett tasting session at KnB Wine Cellars a few weeks back.  Jeff put some serious time into brewing and cataloging a bunch of new Brett strains and I felt honored to be included.  Looking back I realize that the quality of my tasting observations deteriorated pretty significantly after the first six or seven tasters-sorry-I'm just happy to have been a part of it.  You can (and should) read more about it here.

This past week I signed up for San Diego's biggest homebrew competition (the America's Finest City or AFC).  I'll be judging and entering both competitions.  My Nordic Porter is the only beer I have in bottles worth submitting and I'll be entering the same beer to the National Homebrew Competition early next month.  I'm hoping for success with a beer that I put a lot of thought into and took some serious time to brew.  It came out clean and dark with almost no real yeast character and a nice even helping of dark roasty goodness.  The hops are muted properly, the ABV is right on and it drinks way too well.  Hopefully the judges agree.

134 Beers Brewed. What's Next?

As a homebrewer, you always have the ability to branch out and try something new or different.  You don't really have to please anyone except yourself, so the rewards of successful experimentation far outweigh the risks.  If a particular beer comes out different than expected then you learn something from the process that you can manage for the next time.  If it's absolutely unpalatable then you pawn it off on brewing friends and dump the rest down the drain; you're only out of pocket an average of $20.

I've been slowly cycling through the many beer styles in the style guidelines and every once in a while I like to look back and take stock of what's been brewed and make decisions about what's to come.  Here's a breakdown of all 134 beers I've made in the past decade:

	STYLE					TIMES BREWED
2B	Bohemian Pilsener					1
3A	Vienna Lager					1
3B	Oktoberfest/Marzen					1
4B	Munich Dunkel					1
4C	Schwarzbier (Black Beer)					1
5B	Traditional Bock					1
6D	American Wheat or Rye Beer					1
7A	California Common Beer					1
8A	Standard/Ordinary Bitter					1
8B	Special/Best/Premium Bitter					2
8C	Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale)					1
9D	Irish Red Ale					1
10A	American Pale Ale					10
10B	American Amber Ale					8
10C	American Brown Ale					7
11A	Mild					3
11C	Northern English Brown Ale					1
12A	Brown Porter					2
12B	Robust Porter					9
12C	Baltic Porter					2
13B	Sweet Stout					1
13C	Oatmeal Stout					3
13E	American Stout					2
13F	Russian Imperial Stout					3
14A	English IPA					1
14B	American IPA					18
14C	Imperial IPA					7
16A	Witbier					3
16B	Belgian Pale Ale					3
16C	Saison					6
16D	Biere de Garde					2
16E	Belgian Specialty Ale					5
17B	Flanders Red Ale					4
17D	Straight Lambic					1
17E	Gueze					2
18B	Belgian Dubbel					1
19C	American Barleywine					2
21A	Spice, Herb or Vegetable Beer					1
23	Specialty Beer					6
24A	Dry Mead					1
24C	Sweet Mead					1
25B	Pyment					2
26B	Braggot					1
28D	Other Specialty Cider or Perry					2

It's easy to see that my focus has been on American beers, especially IPAs and Pales.  There are also plenty of beers and styles I haven't even started to explore.  Likewise, I should mention that I've included Dregs beers that I've made (10 so far) which are either approximations of styles or complete anomalies depending on what base beer and yeast are combined together.  Some of my favorite homebrews have been lagers, which is interesting because I rarely seek out commercial examples.  Maybe it's all of the time and effort it takes to make them come out right.  I realize that I need to make more beers with fruit and spend more time working on mead and braggot recipes-drinks that I really enjoy.  

For the last weeks of 2013, I plan to make a blackberry cyser, a lambic (number 2 in a series meant for a gueuze), a hibiscus metheglin and a barleywine (recipe to come).