Smoked Helles '22

Smoked Helles has become my go to spring beer since first brewing a split batch that included it several years ago. This year I got a later start on it than usual but still wanted to get one going to have it on tap for the summer. Something about the low levels of bitterness, moderate crackery and bready malt, and a noticeable sweet smoke character from cherrywood smoked malt makes this one a refreshing drinker in the warm weather. It will be interesting to see how the Sugar Creek smoked malt compares to the Briess that I've used in previous versions.

Simple smoked helles:

75% (7.5 lbs) Pilsner malt (Weyermann)

10% (1 lb) Cherrywood Smoked Malt (Sugar Creek)

10% (1 lb) CaraHell (Weyermann)

5% (.5 lbs) Vienna Malt (Weyermann)

Tasting Notes:

Smell: light sweet caramel and honey like malts up front. The smoke comes through more as I drink but is fairly restrained and enjoyable giving notes of fruity sweetness and a touch of pork barbecue. No noticeable yeast or hop derived aromas.

Appearance: bright gold with a large fluffy white head. Probably a little too much carbonation making the head larger than intended but it works. The head fades fairly quickly to a thin layer but that thin layer then lasts throughout. Clarity isn't crystal clear but very good given that there were no filtrations or finings used.

Taste: leads with a lightly sweet and grainy malt character giving cracker, bread, and breakfast cereal notes that then wash slowly into a mild sweet and very lightly smokey flavor that lasts through a light but refreshing bitterness.

Mouthfeel: dry and crisp. Carbonation is maybe just a touch high but this drinks very well. Body is just the right level to let the flavors hit the entire mouth before fading away.

Overall: a very enjoyable and refreshing beer that I could happily drink multiple half liters of. The smoke is fairly low but I go back and forth on whether I would like it to be higher. Any less and it should be left out entirely but any higher and it might dominate some of the subtler character that makes the beer so enjoyable and refreshing. Even with how much I like to tweak my brews I could definitely see making this exact same recipe again with no changes. This one is probably in the top 10 beers I’ve brewed but probably wouldn’t make my top 5.

5/11/22
Planned out a vacation day to recover from the previous night's awesome The Menzingers show and brew a beer.

Mill had a couple rusty spots. Attempted to clean but couldn’t fully get them off, hopefully it doesn’t come off/carry through in the beer.

Mash started at 154 but fell to 148 by end. Mashed out with 1 gallon at 180F, ran off then batch sparged with water at 180F to reach 6.5 gallons.

Surprisingly little smoke smell during runoff. Maybe I should have upped the amount of smoked malt but at least I have 9 more pounds left to work with.

Brought to boil and added 1 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh hops and boiled for 60 minutes with an addition of Irish moss at 10 minutes. Chilled with immersion chiller to below 80F, transferred to 6 gallon plastic carboy and placed in kegerator at 45F.

After 7 hours pitched one jar of Munich lager yeast previously used for Maibock.

12 hours after pitching (19 after brewing) increased chest freezer temp to 50F. Added 1 pack of Lallemand Diamond Lager Yeast 8 hours later.

5/13/22
After 48 hours still not seeing any signs of active fermentation so increasing chest freezer temp to 55F

5/22/22
Still slowly fermenting with a decent krausen, increased chest freezer temp to 60F

5/27/22
Fermentation looks complete with just a few yeast rafts on top. Began slowly cooling.

6/12/22
After about 2 weeks at 30F the beer is still looking similar with some small yeast rafts but seems to be clearing up and looks ready for packaging soon. Gravity measurement shows it down to 1.011. Taste is fairly clean but a touch lighter on the smoke than I would like and maybe a little thinner/more watery, but both might improve with carbonation and warmer serving temperature. Will likely keg sometime in the next week.

6/17/22
Transferred to keg and set in chest freezer at 50F.

6/19/22
Poured a small sample tasting. Surprisingly clean, the smoke just barely shows up in the nose when I search for it, otherwise taste and smell is mostly clean with light herbal and honey character. I would probably use at least twice this much smoked malt, possibly more, if making this recipe with the same ingredients again. Not bad but closer to a plain helles than a smoked anything.

7/15/22
Tasting day with notes above. After about a month in the keg this one is quite nice. Interested to see what 9 pounds of the smoked malt does on its own given how subtle it is at 10% of a batch. It seems to be a bit more subtle than other cherrywood smoked malts I've used but has a very nice character to it.

Das Hund Maibock

I brewed this beer in January 2022 on my Dad's brewing setup. The recipe is posted here, tasting notes and cellaring notes from late in the process are below. A pretty simple recipe overall with ~60% pils and 40% vienna malt, a decent bittering charge of Magnum plus some small Hallertau Mittelfrüh additions late in the boil, fermented with a classic Munich lager yeast.

I can't seem to find any of the notes or photos from the brewday and have just one photo showing a temp reading a couple weeks later so I've included what process and tasting notes I do have below

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Bright gold in color, certainly darker than the average Helles but not to the amber of a Vienna lager. Not as clear as I would like for the style but not a "hazy" beer by any means. Large white fluffy head fades slowly and looks very appealing. Overall it is maybe more of a "keller" Maibock than a traditional one but looks appetizing none the less.

Smell: Lightly earthy/grassy/leafy hop and malt character quickly gives way to sweet/cookie/caramel aromas. There's a touch of cider-like/apple fruitiness that may just be a combination of the hops and malt or may be yeast derived.

Taste: Starts off with a smooth enjoyable grainy/pilsner malt sweet malt character before transitioning to a much heavier caramel, cider, and vegetal finish which lingers with caramel/cookie/vanilla and some earthy hop character.

Mouthfeel: The booziness is only slightly apparent with a thinness that underlies the otherwise relatively sweet and thick body. Carbonation is moderate but seems about right for the style. The lingering sweet finish seems to be more due to the flavors than any astringency or specific mouthfeel character.

Overall: For a first attempt at the style I'm not unhappy but I don't think this would be considered a very good Maibock. The caramel and cider characters are much too high though I'm not entirely sure where they're coming from as the fermentation was kept cool for at least a decent amount of time during the early fermentation of the beer (though an unexpected hot streak in early February may have played a part?) and the malt bill doesn't contain any caramel malt. It's possible there was some caramelization due to the high burner heat and extended boil time and the fermentation was done in a cold basement, not controlled temperature conditions, which could have fluctuated more than expected and allowed some of the fruity/apple characters to come out of the yeast. Overall the beer is perfectly drinkable, maybe even too much so given the ABV, but it's not exactly what I was going for. I'm not sure I will re-brew this style any time soon as I find a lower ABV pale lager is often what people want and a more robust and characterful doppelbock is often what I want. If I do make another Maibock I'll increase the late hop additions to balance the malt sweetness and look to control the fermentation temperature better.

Kegged on 3/2/22 and Munich Lager yeast saved in mason jars for future use. Tastes a lot like my helles recipe which I guess makes sense given it's a helles bock, but it’s thinner and less malty than I had expected. Will see how it changes with carbonation.

3/12/22
Set in chest freezer at 32F.

3/26/22
Connected CO2 at 10PSI

3/27/22
Increased pressure to 15PSI and temperature to 45F. Poured a sample. Tasting stronger/boozier and thinner than expected. Hopefully some more time and more pressure will help round it out but doubt it will change too much.

4/2/22
Probably the most popular of the 4 styles I have on tap for my housewarming. Multiple people just described it as an enjoyable German lager though some pointed out some of the sweetness and "vanilla wafer" type qualities. To my taste it is more on the sweet and caramel-y side than I would like but no major off flavors, will need to do a deeper tasting soon.

4/10/22
Tasting date (tasting notes above).

Munich Melon Hülles Lager

Nelson Version

I took a bit of a break from brewing (and even more of a break from blogging) but got back to it in January with a hoppy lager that is partially inspired by a line from Scott Janish's great book The New IPA. Specifically there's a note that Hüll Melon (sometimes written Huell Melon) is high in the 2MIB (2-methylbutyl isobutyrate) thiol which gives an apricot-like character, and can be enhanced even more with a lager fermentation. Some of these ideas are explored in this blog post by Scott. A fruity, (especialy apricot-y and melon-y) Munich Helles might not be classic but the subtle malt sweetness and graininess should lend balance and space for the hops to shine, without this coming out as a hazy IPA (or IPL). Searching around the internet it seems that a Helles with Hüll Melon has been done before by several breweries, including one of my favorite East Bay brewers, Original Pattern, with their Hella Hüll Helles Lager. I'll have to track down a can to compare with my version.



1/20/2020 Brew Day
Made a vitality starter of 8 oz DME, 1g Fermaid-k, 1800 mL water, 2 moderately old packs of Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager and a blend of lager yeast saved from my SMaSH Pils.

After several recent batches came out with a strange, harsh character I decided to not treat the water for this batch at all. While I'm not sure water chemicals are the cause of my recent issues I've narrowed it down to a few possible factors and this seemed like the easiest one to test. If this batch experiences the same issues I'll try adjusting my mill settings and do a full inspection of my equipment and review of my processes to see if there's another possible culprit. I'm including extra notes on this batch here to be able to pinpoint the cause of the issue if it happens as well too

Measured and milled 7.25 pounds Weyermann Pilsner malt and 9 oz Briess Goldpils Vienna. I planned to use Carahell but forgot I was out, should come out a little crisper and maltier with the Vienna but with a similar color.

Hit 152 on the direct infusion (a few degrees cooler than expected but close enough). Added half an ounce of hops to the first wort and began heating while batch sparging. Hit a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.039, about what was expected for the target 1.047 OG. Boiled for 1 hour then rapidly cooled with immersion chiller (added 45 minutes into boil) to 160. Added the 1.5 ounces of whirlpool hops then continued chilling for about 15 minutes to 68F (room temp). Ran off to plastic carboy through silicon tubing and moved carboy to chest freezer set to 50F. Pitched yeast a few hours later.

1/24/2020
Fermentation still going moderately with a medium sized krausen. Plan to move out of chest freezer to ~65F room temp for a few days once fermentation begins to drop. Smell from fermentation is strong with sulfur stink, hopefully that's being pushed out and won't carry to the final beer.

1/25/2020
Left in chest freezer but adjusted temperature up to 65F. Will likely take a few days to warm that high.

1/31/2020
No noticeable diacetyl on tasting and gravity down to 1.014. Set chest freezer to 32F for quick lagering.

2/6/2020
Split between 2 separate 2.5 gallon kegs, one plain one with an ounce of Nelson Sauvin hops.

2/19/2020

Plain Version

This one has been on tap for a couple of weeks and is a pretty enjoyable helles at this point. While there was a decent amount of fruitiness from the hops in the non-dry hopped version originally that has largely faded into a bready malt forward easy drinking lager. The dry hopped version was terrific early on, then seemed to experience some hop creep and had diacetyl, it was removed from the chest freezer for a few days and seemed to clear up but the hop character mostly faded as well.

3/28/20
Nelson half kicked, it was a really nice easy drinker with just enough fruity hop character to keep it interesting. The un-dryhopped version is much more straight forward, it's extremely easy to drink but is arguably too clean and many craft beer lovers would probably find it boring.

Belgian Golden Strong and Smoked Helles Parti-gyle

Just over 2 years ago I brewed a series of Belgians, including an interesting take on a Belgian Golden Strong. Belgian Golden Strong Ales (BGSAs) have been one of my favorite styles since the first time I tried Duvel Green on my 21st birthday and was opened to a whole new world of Belgian beer. With only one beer currently in my kegerator I decided I should throw together something that could be both interesting and refreshing now that spring is here. I also didn't want to solely commit to a BGSA and decided it would be a good time to perform a pseudo parti-gyle in order to get 2 different beers.

I decided that the smaller beer could be a good base for my third attempt at lagering since the kegerator/ferment chamber had space available. Playing around with the numbers I realized that by adding just a little pale malt, and some specialty malts I would be able to make a smoked Helles. While I haven't had a smoked Helles before, it seemed like another fitting beer for spring with a balance of both intriguing components and moderate drinkability.

I brewed the beers on the last day of winter in a cold mix of rain, sleet, and snow. While the weather added some difficulty and I didn't do everything quite as efficiently as I could have, the day went well overall and hopefully I'll come out of it with 2 tasty beers for only a couple hours more work than I would have had to do for 1. The addition of grains required a second mash and made this not a true parti-gyle but allowed me to give more variability to the beers produced and I plan to perform similar split batch procedures in the future. One goal moving forward will be to better line up the timing for the two batches to minimize how much additional time is required.

Designing the two recipes was a somewhat iterative process as I came up with a general idea for each recipe separately, then used a parti-gyle calculator to identify that I would need a 1.045 OG at 6 gallons, then came up with the overall malt bill, then went back and refined the individual recipes. the recipes shown below are my best attempt to show how to recreate the beers if not done together and have been adjusted slightly due to hitting higher efficiency than expected. The base malts used aren't traditional but I was making due with what I had including the last of my bags of Pilsner and 2-row and just enough Maris Otter to hit my required amounts.

Future Laws:
Belgian Golden Strong Ale

OG	1.083
FG	1.017
IBU	29
SRM	3
ABV	9%

Fermentables
Amount	Fermentable	Maltster	Use	PPG	Color
4.0 lb	2-Row (US)	Briess	Mash	37	1 °L
2.0 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	1 °L
1.5 lb	Sucrose	N/A	Boil	46	0 °L
0.67 lb	Maris Otter Pale	Thomas Fawcett & Sons	Mash	38	3 °L

Hops
Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
1.5 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	45 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%
1.5 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	15 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%

Yeast
Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Golden Pear Belgian	Gigayeast	80.00%

Mash steps
Step	Heat Source	Target Temp	Time
Saccharification Rest	Infusion	146.0 °F	30 min
Saccharification Rest	Infusion	154.0 °F	30 min

Of Greater Things:

Smoked Munich Helles

OG	1.054
FG	1.013
IBU	15
SRM	4
ABV	5.40%

Fermentables
Amount	Fermentable	Maltster	Use	PPG	Color
2.0 lb	Maris Otter Pale (UK)	Thomas Fawcett & Sons	Mash	38	3 °L
1.5 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	1 °L
1.5 lb	2-Row (US)	Briess	Mash	37	1 °L
0.5 lb	CaraHell (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	34	11 °L
0.5 lb	Smoked Malt (US)	Briess	Mash	37	5 °L

Hops
Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
1.0 oz	Strisselspalt (FR)	45 min	Boil	Pellet	2.80%

Yeast
Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
German Lager Yeast	White Labs WLP830	76.50%
German Lager Yeast	White Labs WLP830	76.50%