Raspberry Blonde Tasting

A- pinkish brown with a small quickly fading head. Initial pour is slightly cloudy but due to over carbonation it becomes very cloudy with more beer.

S- earthy, fruity, acidic. The raspberry definitely shows through. A bit muddled.

T- lightly acidic and very fruity. Raspberry is noticeable with the acidity and earthiness lingering long after the finish.

M- highly carbonated with a light body. Over carbonation is probably due to a small amount of raspberry material making it to the bottle.

O- an alright beer. Very fruity and the raspberry comes through very strong. A bit muddled but similar to other raspberry beers I've had.  I will probably rack to tertiary off of the fruit next time to help the carbonation as well.

#24 Belgian Single Tasting

A- deep orange to amber hue with a one inch white head of tiny bubbles

S- spice up front, big clove and a little cardamom, some fruity banana and coconut

T- similar to the nose, cloves and allspice with overripe fruit

M- thin and highly carbonated. A touch too highly carbonated.

O- not terrible considering this was an unplanned second rubbings beer. That said the yeast was clearly stressed and gave very less than ideal flavors. Drinkable but not super appealing. Looks pretty at least.

#23 - Belgian Quad Tasting

Appearance- deep orange to rose in color with a large fluffy white head that fades to a half inch leaving splotchy lacing.

Smell- huge nose of cherries, clove, cardamom, cinnamon, tobacco, figs, vanilla and a bit of bourbon barrel booziness. It reminds me a bit of the smell of La Trappe's Quad but with bigger, spicier aromas.

Taste- the spice dominates the mouth with some sweetness and the booze quickly following. Warm clove and all spice flavors quickly subside to a lingering warmth and a slightly tingling balance of spice, bitterness and carbonation.

Mouthfeel- feels a bit syrupy and thick which fills the mouth with lots of carbonation.

Overall- this one still comes off pretty hot and boozy and could probably use another year or three to fully develop. While the nose is there and the overall drink isn't bad the depth of flavor is not up to par for a Trappist quad.  A nice try but I will probably not use homemade candi syrup next time and spend a little more effort on the yeast starter size. To reduce the hotness and finishing gravity.

#27 - Scottish Export tasting

I don't go back often enough and write down my beer results, especially with flawed batches, so I thought I would make sure to record this one.  I brewed my 27th beer, a Scottish 80 shilling over 4 months ago and have been slowly trying them out.  I often experiment in beers, trying new techniques or ingredients and rarely going "to style".  In some of those cases it doesn't turn out well, whether this is due to the new technique/ingredient or not paying close enough attention to the basics.  While it can sometimes be hard to determine the exact cause of off flavors, in this case it seems to be a combination of the malt (specifically the kiln-coffee and maybe the pale chocolate) and the yeast (likely too high a fermentation temperature for the Scottish yeast).

A- A fairly clear medium brown with a small head that never fades.
S- Aromas of chocolate, biscuit, coffee and over ripe cherries.  While not bad the fruit is a little stronger than I would have liked and seems to clash with the light roast and coffee.
T- Like the nose the fruitiness seems to stand out with a sweet biscuity coffee character also showing up.  Finishes long and slightly puckering with a lingering sweet and stale effect.
M- Medium-low in body with moderate carbonation.  This aspect is at least right on target.
O/D- While this beer is clearly flawed it really is hard to pinpoint the cause.  Maybe the coffee malt just doesn't belong, maybe fermented at a lower temperature the fruitiness wouldn't muddle the mix, maybe the pale chocolate malt was a little too old and stale, in any case this is my second time having poor results with Wyeast's Scottish Ale yeast and will likely keep me from using it again for quite some time.

Northern California Round 2

After visiting Northern California several years ago I went again this summer. I wanted to finally give a quick summary of the experience.

Breweries:

I visited 4 breweries, 2 large nationally known ones and 2 small brewpubs.

In retuning to Russian River it was obvious that craft beer is alive and well in this country, maybe even too alive and well. People were streaming out of the place carrying full cases of Pliny the Elder and the wait to be seated was over an hour, even middle of the day on a Friday! When we were finally seated we were told it would be another hour wait if we wanted to do a tasting so we passed on the flight and each grabbed a Belgian beer.

With two sour beers and two non-sour strong Belgians it was a nice mix of what RR offers, minus the hoppy Americans. As always great stuff, maybe too great.

Rather than sit around for the hour while we waited to be seated at RR we decided to walk a few blocks to Third Street Aleworks for lunch and a tasting. While the food was excellent (I had a wild boar sausage) the beers were lackluster with all seeming to be an American variant (amber, blond, IPA, pale ale, steam beer, etc) while none were awful some seemed to miss the mark with the others being mainly boring examples of the style. At least we were able to get a seat, food and tasting flight in no time.

Continuing our Sonoma brewery journey we visited the very large (and again very crowded) Lagunitas. Here we ordered 4 more beers, none of which I have seen available and with styles ranging from Brandy barrel stout to a farmhouse ale. All were interesting and enjoyable but, similar to RR, the overcrowded space and uncaring service staff didn't make for as enjoyable experience as it could have been.

One unexpected stop was Magnolia in San Francisco. This brewpub was, like most of these places, super packed and provided pretty good beer. Beers here were fairly expensive however, especially compared to most brewpubs in my area which have cheaper pints than bars. Overall, alright but not good enough to merit a return.

Bars:

The only bars worth mentioning which we visited are The Monks Kettle and La Trappe. The Monks Kettle continued the theme of small, cramped and pricy. We shuffled into tiny spaces at the bar enjoyed our beers and split. La Trappe on the other hand had plenty of space and we enjoyed several beers from their great menu and some nice Belgian food as well. Only downsides were that the service was quite slow and not very knowledgable. Would happily go again.

Wine:

I drank too many wines to remember (to the point that I slept through the 4th of July fireworks). I enjoyed the "castle" tour and tastings. Despite how touristy, cheesy and pretentious the location is, the wines are reasonably priced and fairly good. We also did an excellent food and wine tasting/pairing session at Raymond after Castello. I highly recommend both as fun introductions to wine and the wine/tourist industry that is Napa. The trip certainly added a new spark to my desire to make a wine.

While there were many other drinks consumed and hundreds of other activities enjoyed I'll keep it to these for now...and throw in a picture from one of my hikes in Yosemite.

#29 - Simple Lambic (Funky Kast #4)

Not sure what took me so long to post this but I'll finally publish...

After bottling half of my sour brown I was ready to crank out another sour. Taking half of the yeast/bacteria cake from the sour brown and adding it to an extract lambic seemed a simple, effective method.  I used just under an ounce of saaz hops for 35 minutes to keep the ibus down and also boiled half a pound each of flaked wheat and Maltodextrin combined with 6 lbs of Wheat LME. In addition to the sour blend I also added American ale yeast to ensure full fermentation and 1 oz of Hungarian medium toast oak for the full barrel flavor of a classic lambic. I plan to add dregs of various sours as this one progresses.

Updates:
7/14/2013
A little over a month in the carboy and this beer is already down to 1.002.  Light sourness but also pretty young and sweet.  Added dregs of Cantillon Geuze.

8/25/2013
A very bad outhouse smell began to develop.  Pulled a sample and it doesn't seem to be the beer, maybe mold around the top of the carboy?  Beer smells and tastes about the same as a month ago, light lemony sourness and some grainy sweetness despite the extremely low gravity.

10/04/13

Wasn't able to taste/test gravity but the outhouse smell is gone. This beer might be ready for at least some to be bottled. I will have to taste in about a month and make some determinations but it is beginning to smell fairly sour and funky and I don't want this to go nearly as sour/acetic as the Flanders red.

11/02/13

Gravity down to 1.000. Taste is tart and refreshing. It might be about time to bottle at least some of this.

11/29/13

Racked 3 gallons onto .5 oz of previously used oak and bottled the rest. Still moderately sour but not overly complex.

5-28-14

Received some positive comments on this beer from a brother and his friends.  Might be time to do a full tasting write up.

11-18-15

Beer is over 2 years old with half the batch kegged.  Decent flavors, moderate acidity, no noticeable acetic acid or other off flavors.

12-13-15

14.5 oz. Oregon Fruit Red Tart Cherries pitted in water added to the keg with about 2 gallons beer remaining. Sweet Cherry puree and juice reserved for a later addition.

#30 - Amarillo IPA

Finding myself with 3 oz. of Amarillo hops, an open fermentor and no hoppy beers sitting around I decided it was time to brew another American IPA.  While my #28 American Saison features Amarillo and was designed to have a mild hoppiness this beer was intended to be much more bitter and hop forward without yeast character.  In order to up the bitter hop character I used a much different water chemistry profile than I had and added quite a bit of gypsum with just a touch of calcium carbonate.  The simple mash (2-row with just a touch of Vienna and Carastan) made for a fairly easy brewday, though I once again missed my target gravity.  I brought a few bottles of this beer to the beach with me and they were finished fairly quickly.  It's a very pleasant beer but not one that wouldl stand out in a crowd.

10/04/13

Wanted to do a tasting of this IPA...unfortunately (fortunately?) it appears my dad really enjoyed it and there aren't any bottles remaining. Probably for the best with a beer this hoppy which deserves to be enjoyed fresh. Only wish I'd taken a little more notes to have a better sense of how to tweak it next time around. Also wish I had taken a picture since that's really all this post has been waiting on since brew day in July. As the saying goes, only the good die young, and this was a good beer.

A Brief Brew Like a Monk Book Review

I've been holding off on writing this review both because I had other things to write about an because I wasn't entirely sure how I felt. Stan Hieronymus' Brew Like a Monk can be a really interesting and fun read at times with beer and monastery histories and descriptions flowing off the page. At other times it feels as though things are a jumble, processes and facts get repeated or thrown out at strange times. While I like the way the author goes about making each brewery and its beer into a story, it sometimes feels as though there's nothing to tell.

On the actual recipe formulation side of the book some of the recipes given seem a bit off and he often utilizes brewers to come up with recipes for styles they don't brew or at the least don't specialize in. Why not ask them about something they actually know?  While I'm sure Ron Jeffries (Jolly Pumpkin) or Vinnie Cilurzo (Russian River) respective recipes for a Blonde and a Golden strong are nice, I would much rather they gave ideas for sours which they specialize in, or at least Orval clone ideas.

All around I found the book a worthwhile straight through read which I may come back to next time I brew a Trappist inspired beer and which helped in formulating my recent quad recipe. Far from the worst but also not among the best as far as beer books go.  I look forward to reading the author's other work including For the Love of Hops: The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hops but hope it is better edited and less scatterbrain.

Quad Pack

An update on my brewery status: I just added 4 new fermentors.  To be fair each of these is a 1 gallon jug so my brewing output will probably not be increasing along with the number of openings.  I do have some exciting ideas for these small jugs including beer experiments, other types of fermentation and more sour and brett beer blends.  A few items that are high on the list:

• Blending sour beers - A blend of my very sour brown with my young lambic or other future sours
• Bretted Saisons - Creating a basic Saison and bottling 1 gallon straight with the other 4 split onto different secondary yeasts/blends including a sour blend, BKYeast C2 and the dregs of a Saison de Lente bottle, and another might receive a different Saison yeast or a culture of lactobacillus)
• Wine - I am still yet to have made a wine and a recent return trip to Napa has me wishing to experiment, perhaps with a fruit wine or small batches of grape wine
• Mead - Similar to wine it would seem much easier to begin my experimentation with Mead in small containers, especially with the numerous ideas I have for spices/fruit/yeast/blends/oak that I would like to try
• Cider - I've only made one to date but would like to try many of the similar additions as with mead, and would like to have the ability to blend with mead/wine/beer without having too much.
• Spiced Beer - While my Here Be Dragons! spiced Scottish ale was largely unsuccessful spicing a beer (possibly a porter or dubbel) in secondary with a number of different flavors that I have wanted to try out seems like a much better idea with one gallon rather than a full 5 gallons.  Some flavor profiles I've been considering trying out include Speculaas (ginger, cardamom, white pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove), BBQ (brown sugar, cayenne, smoked paprika, black pepper), sage (maybe with sage honey as well) and caraway+honey
• Dry hopped - Making a pretty standard recipe and dry hopping with different hops either 4 American types (e.g. Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Warrior) or 4 non-traditional/world hops (e.g. EKG, Saaz, Sorachi Ace, Mr. Rainier) could make for a very interesting pale ale experiment

Lots of exciting ideas, some of which I'll surely attempt and others I may never get around to.  Experimentation with both classic ideas and entirely new ones is all about what this blog is about, searching for Good Beer in any way possible.

#28 - American Saison

Saison is one of my favorite styles of beer especially on hot summer days.  It is also a very versatile style that I have experimented with a few variations over the last two years. For this variation I wanted to go with something a little more traditional than my past recipes but with a slight twist, in this case influenced by Boulevard Tank 7 by adding Amarillo hops and Ommegang Hennepin by adding ginger.

http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/american-saison-15

  One important aspect of this recipe was keeping the fermentation warm to keep the DuPont strain going and to elicit the classic pepper and fruit character.  In order to try to maintain this warm temperature I wrapped the fermentor in towels and blankets and places a box over top to keep this insulation in place.

Sampled a few highly regarded beers of the style on brew day and saves the yeast (Brett and Sacc) from Saison de Lente.

Update 6/2/13

Down to 1.038, fermentation seems to have at least slowed if not stopped entirely and temperature has clearly dropped closer to the ambient low 60's than the 70s/80s it had been at for the first few. I will probably add the French Saison strain if I don't see a sizeable drop in gravity in a week.

6/9/2013

Down to 1.030, not as big a drop as I would like to see so I will purchase the French Saison yeast and add next week barring a bigger drop. Smell is black pepper, ginger and citrusy tropical hops.

7/14/2013

After 2 weeks with the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast the beer has plummeted down to a 1.002 gravity, time to bottle.  Taste is refreshing with some citrus characteristics and a surprising amount of candy sweetness despite the measured dryness.

7/28/2013

Bottled using conditioning tablets (4 tabs/12 oz or 6/22 oz). Tastes strongly of citrus with some solid pit fruits and a prickliness, and a balancing but not aggressive bitterness.