(Coffee) Oatmeal Stout

I was very happy with my last oatmeal stout and with the cold weather coming soon to the area I figured now would be a good time to rebrew it.  While I was very happy with the original it was slightly more berry/fruity and less coffee/roasty than I would have liked. I also currently have a large quantity of American 2-Row that I am using in place of the Maris Otter so a few substitutions were required. To reduce the fruity character I dropped the 4 oz. of Special B and instead upped the Crystal 80 by 2 oz. and switched the yeast from the West Yorkshire strain to WLP002.  To make up for the lack of biscuity character from the Maris Otter  I added a quarter pound of Munich malt and a couple extra ounces of Victory.  Lastly, I slightly increased the roasted barley amount to increase the coffee character that I desire in a stout.  I did make sure to keep the 2 pounds of Oatmeal which seemed to give the original batch a great nutty and silky quality.

I managed to mess up my mash temperature somehow, initially hitting only 146 instead of the 154 I was aiming for. After 10 minutes I added about half a gallon of boiling water to bring it up to 156. I'll be interested in seeing how this affects the attenuation and body of the final beer.

Cooled to 75 F then placed in 65 degree basement and added the yeast.

11/6/15
Racked one carboy to 3 gallon keg. Added .5 oz of medium toast oak cubes to the other carboy, with plans to also add coffee in the future.

11/27/15
Added .25 oz Peet's Major Dickason's Blend and .5 oz Eight O'Clock Coffee Original to the carboy with oak.  Keg kicked of straight version.

11/29/15
Racked to keg at 10 PSI.  Coffee flavor is very strong but not overwhelming in still sample.

Tasting of Coffee Version:

Appearance: Very dark black, almost entirely opaque. Pours with a moderately big head despite the slow exit from the tap. Head is tan and lasts shortly before falling to a foamy covering that sticks around.  Pretty good all around.

Smell: Roast hits the nose first and dominates the aroma with heavy face-in-the-bag-of-coffee-beans character being augmented by a sweet cream-caramel and victory malt toasty/nutty malt characters.  Just a touch of ash that may be from the malts or the heavily roasted coffee.

Taste: Subtler than the nose, the coffee is present but blends smoothly with other roast characters, light creamy caramel, and a moderate to low bitterness.  The coffee character isn't overwhelming but is certainly present.  Oak flavors aren't particularly noticeable, every once in a while I get some definite oak character but it's only just there.

Mouthfeel: Smooth and fairly dry.  The body is a bit lighter than I would like but comes in creamy and goes down easy. I'm not sure if the oatmeal or oak give it the creamy impression despite the dryness or whether that is more a factor of the moderately low carbonation, but it certainly works. The dryness is likely related to the error with the initial mash temp, but it didn't fully sink this beer.

Overall: I can't find too much to complain about in this beer, it's smooth, easy drinking, refreshing, and has just enough coffee and roast to keep things interesting.  While I think the beer could be a little better with Maris Otter instead of 2-row I don't know that I would change anything else about it. If I wanted to give more oak flavor I would probably either double the dosage or contact time, but I don't know that it would necessarily benefit the beer.

The un-oaked, un-coffeed version was enjoyable but without the Maris Otter malt character and a slightly higher attenuation and cleaner yeast profile than the previous batch it came off a tad boring. This version seems to have taken it up a notch without overwhelming the base beer.

Short Leash (aka #6) Rebrew

I first brewed a Belgian session IPA (a la Raging Bitch but toned down) in my first year of brewing as a birthday gift to my father. He liked it so much that he has regularly asked if I plan to re-brew it ever since. Today I finally decided to give it a go using a similar base recipe but converted to my current all grain setup and substituting hops as needed to use what I had on hand (Nugget in place of Warrior).

Brew Day (9/26/15)
~9 Brix (~1.035 gravity) pre-boil.
Boiled for 45 minutes, cooled to 80 degrees in under than 30 minutes with my new immersion chiller. A huge improvement over my previous ice bath times of an hour plus.
11.5 Brix (1.043 gravity) post-boil.
Wort split between two 3 gallon better bottles. One carboy was moved to my chest freezer at 45 degrees with the temperature controller set to 65 to allow for slow cooling. The other carboy was left at room temperature around 68 degrees.

9/27/15
Fermentor at room temp bubbling away, the one in the chest freezer is just barely starting to get going around 55 degrees

9/28/15
Both batches fermenting vigorously, fermentation chamber up to 60 degrees.

10/11/15
Dry hop blend added to each carboy.

10/17/15
I didn't notice a large difference between the two batches and didn't have any 3 gallon kegs available so I decided to blend them together into a single 5 gallon keg.  PSI set to 30 for 2 days, then will drop to 10.

11/8/2015
Tasting Notes

Appearance: Pours with a large head that lasts for a long time leaving thick foam on the sides of the glass as it slowly falls.  Color is a nice shade of copper with just a touch of cloudiness and some nice carbonation bubbles.  All around a pretty good looking IPA.

Smell: Floral and slightly grassy hop character mix with sweet and stone fruit-y yeast and malt characters. There's also little bit of bread and just a touch of phenolic spice. Could use a more pungent and more interesting hop aroma.

Taste: Dry and mildly spicy on the tongue with just moderate hop flavor but fairly high bitterness on the end. The overall impression is decidedly more bitter and spicy than the fruity and pungent flavors I was aiming for.

Mouthfeel: It took a while for this one to carbonate correctly but it's now at a solid level. The beer is unsurprisingly dry, but with the high bitterness it is a little too attenuated.

Overall: Like a lot of my recent IPA's this one falls in the drinkable but not very good category.  The hop flavor and aroma are disappointing and I think the yeast would have done better at a higher temperature in order to bring out more fruity esters and make it feel more "Belgian" instead of just being dry and spicy.  I am happy with the color and malt profile.

It's hard for me to tell exactly what's been wrong with my past few hoppy beers. I probably need to evaluate every aspect: the ingredients including the type, quality, and age of hops being used and the processes including how and when hops are added in the boil, steep, and dry-hop. For example: I haven't been weighting my dry-hop bags, could that be limiting the ability for the flavor to come out or increasing the oxidation rate?

For this batch I'm going to add an ounce of Amarillo hops to the keg to try and improve it, though I doubt it will get above drinkable.

Fast Lagered Oktoberfest

I haven't been very active with this blog in a while.  Part of it is that I have been busy with work.  Part of it is that I haven't brewed anything in a while. Part of it is also that I recently moved.  The main part is that I have been lazy.

Breaking the habit of not brewing and not posting, and making use of my new brewing environment all at once, I decided to set out and make my second lager beer: a traditional Marzen/Oktoberfest.

After my visit to Munich last year to celebrate at the Wiesn I knew that I needed to eventually brew a beer in the oh so quenchable yet complex style.  Taking advantage of my new barley crusher (that took me about an hour of finagling to work with my underpowered cordless drill, but hey I got it to work!) I was able to crush the grist of relatively equal parts continental Pilsner, Vienna, and Munich malts, with just a little Carahell for extra color and flavor. While I didn't do a decoction mash or anything overly interesting with the wort production I did get to try out a few new toys, using my pH meter during the mash and refractometer throughout to ensure everything was on track.

Despite my new toys, the most interesting aspect of this brew might be the lagering schedule.  Using techniques I have pulled from a number of sources, most recently Brulosophy, I set out to make a fast lager.  My last lager, a Bohemian Pilsner, turned out fairly well but took a long time from grain to glass and had some diacetyl issues. I am hoping that the fast lagering method is able to reduce off characters and fermentation time for this beer.  I'm also under some serious time constraints as I plan to serve this beer at the DC Homebrewers 4th annual BBQ in late September as part of their homebrew presentation/competition. As such this beer needs to be delicious and ready to drink in less than a month. Challenge accepted.

Fermentables:

Amount

Fermentable

Maltster

Use

PPG

Color

4.0 lb	Vienna (DE)	Avangard	Mash	37	5 °L
3.5 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	2 °L
3.0 lb	Munich (DE)	Avangard	Mash	37	8 °L
0.44 lb	CaraHell (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	34	11 °L

Hops:

Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
0.5 oz	Magnum (DE)	60 min	Boil	Pellet	12.1%
0.5 oz	Hallertau (DE)	15 min	Boil	Leaf	4.5%

Yeast:

Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Czech Budejovice Lager Yeast	White Labs WLP802	77.5%

Stats:
OG: Measured 1.055
FG: predicted 1.012, measured 1.014
IBU: Calculated 24

Notes:
8/28/15 Brewday
Added 1 tsp CaCl to 7 gallons distilled water, 1.5 gallons bottled purified water
Mash Water 3.5 gallons
Mash Thickness 1.28 quarts/lb
Strike Temperature 165.2
Mash Temperature 151.9
Mash pH: 5.19
Mash Time 60 minutes
Sparge Water: 8.5 gallons
Sparge Temperature: 169.2
Sparge Time: 45 minutes
Boil Time: 75 minutes
Cooled to ~80 degrees then transferred to 48 degree fermentation chamber. 2 quart yeast starter pitched 8 hours later.

8/31/15
No obvious signs of fermentation (airlock bubbles or krausen) after 3.5 days had me worried but gravity showed 1.038, so it should be fine.
9/3/15
Increased temperature to 63 +/- 2 degrees after 5 days. Plan to begin slowly decreasing again on 9/7 assuming FG is reached.
9/6/15
Beer is showing minimal signs of fermentation, will slowly drop.
9/9/15
Down to 7.5 Brix (a calculated 1.013 gravity) at 53 degrees. This is near the estimated FG and the beer is tasting pretty good so I will add gelatin and continue dropping in temp.

9/14/15

Moved to keg. Tasted a sample post transfer and noticed diacetyl. Tasting very similar to my Czech Pilsner in that the diacetyl it is noticeably present, though not unbearably high. Running out of time to carbonate the beer but I decided to give it 48 hours at room temp to see if it clears up at all. Pretty disappointing given that I hadn't noticed it in my previous tasting, but I will have to live with it.

9/20/15
Tasted a sample this morning, not bad but still some noticeable diacetyl so I decided to take the latest version of Maisonette to the BBQ instead.

9/25/2015
Tasting:
A- Small but resilient white head over a hazy orange body. Perfect color though clarity is disappointing, I'll have to review my gelatin addition method.

S- Diacetyl is definitely the first thing I notice with that signature butter character. There's also some malt aromas of toasted grains and caramel, giving a sweet buttered toast impression.  No noticeable hop character.

T/M- The diacetyl is much less present in flavor than in the smell, with light grassy hops and bread crust malt giving way to a dry, lightly bitter finish which leaves just a touch of buttery slickness on the tongue. Carbonation is moderate, maybe a touch lower than I would like.

O- This beer is slightly disappointing in that I was hoping to avoid the butteryness and have more malt presence, but it is still a nice, easy drinking beer that suits the weather perfectly. I will likely use a different yeast and pay closer attention to my d-rest next time but other than that I'm fairly happy with the recipe and process.

Maisonette 3.0

For the third iteration of my mosaic hopped grisette/table saison I decided to make a number of changes. While I was happy with the last version I felt it needed more hop presence, less yeast character, and a touch less wheat. For this batch I reformatted the entire grain bill swapping Spelt Malt for the wheat and Floor-Malted Pilsner for the American 2-row. I also am adding more mosaic hops to really emphasize the berry, citrus, and funk that they give. The batch will be split 4 ways with half receiving "Brett" Brux Trois and the other 3 gallons split in 1 gallon containers each with their own yeast.



An additional new feature of this version is that it will be the first beer I have brewed outside on my new Darkstar burner.

Fermentables:

Amount

Fermentable

Maltster

Use

PPG

Color

6.5 lb	Pilsner (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	2 °L
2.5 lb	Spelt (DE)	Weyermann	Mash	37	3 °L
6.5 oz	Turbinado	Any	Boil	44	8 °L

Hops:

Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
0.35 oz	Mosaic	55 min	Boil	Pellet	12.8%
1.0 oz	Mosaic	10 min	Boil	Leaf	12.8%
2.0 oz	Mosaic	0 min	Boil	Leaf	12.8%

Yeast:

Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Saccharomyces "Bruxellensis" Trois	White Labs WLP644	85%

Notes:
9/7/15 (brew day)
Added 2g CaCl, 1g CaCO3, and 8g gypsum (CaSO3) to mash
Water: 8.5 gallons filtered Burtonsville water
Mash Water 3.5 gallons
Mash Thickness 1.25 quarts/lb
Strike Temperature 168
Mash Temperature 155
Mash pH: 5.24
Mash Time 60 minutes
Mashout: 1 gallon boiling, raise to 168
Sparge Water: 4 gallons
Sparge Temperature: 155.5
Sparge Time: 45 minutes
Boil Time: 55 minutes (x2 due to wort being split into 2 halves)
Cooled to ~70 degrees in ice bath, ~30 minutes per each half. Flameout hops added after moving to ice bath.
Split wort to one 3 gallon better bottle and four separate 1 gallon jugs. 2 quart yeast starter of Trois pitched into 3 gallon batch + a little bit in a container with a little less than a gallon of extra wort.
Weihenstephan Hefeweizen yeast, Tired Hands dregs, and Lacto Del pitched into each of the other three 1 gallon containers.
Massive fermentation in the 3 gallon better bottle, with airlock shooting off after only 3 hours and replaced with blowoff tube.

9/8/15
Tired Hands and Lacto Del batches also required a blow off by morning after brew day. Hefeweizen and extra Trois batches showing slow signs of fermentation.

9/9/15
1 gallon Trois batch showing vigorous fermentation and also received a blow off tube. Hefe version finally started bubbling during the day, not as intense a blow off as the others but solid fermentation activity.

9/13/15
Early tasting notes - Trois version is quite fruity (pineapple) but not as dry as I would like. Lacto Del is lightly sour but not overly exciting. TH version is nice, similar to previous versions but with less yeast and more hop characteristics than the last two batches. Hefe version is bland without much character from hops or yeast, might need to add something to make it worth drinking.

9/18/15
Moved the main Trois batch to keg and topped off with a little of the Tired Hands version (less than a quart). Moved to keezer at 33F, attached to gas, and cranked regulator up to 30 PSI. Hopefully this will carb very quickly.

9/20/15

Served this beer at the 4th Annual DC Homebrewers BBQ at 3 Stars Brewing Company. Got lots of feedback, mostly positive, including a few votes for the best homebrew there.  People seemed to agree that this was a nice, easy drinking beer, but it didn't do quite enough to blow people away and catch their attention as some of the other beers did. Seem to have enough left to get in a full tasting.

9/22/15

Tasting:

A: small white head sits on top of a cloudy pale yellow beer. Pretty for a cloudy wheat beer.
S- moderate fruity hoppy an yeast derived aromas dominate giving an impression of pineapple and guava.
T- more flavorful than the nose implies with more tropical juicy character. Fairly clean yeast character for a "saison" and it is hard to tell where the hops end and the yeast begins. The spelt and pilsner give a light sweetness and just a touch of grainy character.
M- moderate carbonation. Very dry but with a touch of lingering stickiness on the tongue that may be from the yeast or the spelt.
O- while not really a saison, more of an interesting take on an American wheat, it's an enjoyable and refreshing light summery beer, which is exactly what I told the people I served it to at the BBQ. Maybe my least favorite of the 3 versions so far, but still a nice beer. I would love to use Trois again after this beer, just not for this specific beer.

Old Horse and Jockey version 2 Tasting

Appearance- deep dark brown, mostly black but with chestnut highlights in the right light. Small off white head sticks around but doesn't have as much volume as I would like despite a vigorous pour.

Smell- complex, lots of chocolate, roast, and oak with some of the bourbon and scotch character in the mix.

Taste- up front is chocolate, coffee and sweet malt with the middle and finish showing more of the oak and whiskey character, just balancing out a fairly high level of sweetness.

Mouthfeel- moderate-high body, moderate carbonation. Just a little denser than what I would like in a porter, but not bad.

Overall- this beer is alright, not great. There's a lot here but the high residual sweetness is only moderately tempered by the booze and oak. More bourbon and more oak may have helped, but the grain bill and mash schedule also could use some revisions to lower the crystal malt and get a little less body.

C Hops, Drink Hops

My father's favorite beers tend to gravitate toward a few common characteristics: fairly hoppy, fairly bitter, citrusy, lightly piney, with a moderate level of caramel malt backbone to keep it all in line.  In other words: the classic American IPA.  His favorite beers include Evolution's Lot #3 which is loaded with C hops and some Amarillo.  It's been a while since I've brewed a more classic American IPA and I decided to get something on tap for the summer that my Dad would be proud of.  Loaded with C hops and with just a bit of light caramel malt and oats this beer is intended to be hop forward, fairly bitter, and super citrusy, without all the exotic/tropical/fruity characters the newfangled hops bring to the table.  With my StarTropics IPA on tap this should be a welcome alternative.  I'm also aiming to make this beer super dry and crisp by mashing at just 149F, which should also offer an alternative (and advantage) over the under attenuated, overly malty StarTropics IPA currently on tap.

Updates

I managed to break my hydrometer the day of kegging, so I didn't get an FG for this beer. It was kegged with 1 oz of each of the C hops used in the recipe and has now been on tap about a month.

Appearance - pale gold, a touch lighter than the standard IPA though not extremely so. Somewhat hazy (likely from the keg hops) with a small but persistent white head.

Smell- the smell is by far my favorite par of this beer with a huge citrusy nose evoking lemon, lime, and resin with a little bit of dank, earthy and herbal mixed in. I get just a little stone fruit, though others have really pointed this out.

Taste- upfront there is some citrus but this is quickly brushed aside in favor of the dank, pine, and bitterness that last through a smooth but highly bitter finish. Again, I don't get much fruitiness though others have mentioned apricot and peach (without even knowing the yeast was Conan).

Mouthfeel- dry and moderately carbonated. The dryness likely adds to the bitterness and extent that the piney characteristics of the beer dominate.

Overall- this is a beer that I have a hard time with. It isn't all that similar to most commercial IPAs and is flawed in the one note, overly dominant hop character. Yet some people who have tried it have had nothing but good things to say and I occasionally find myself craving it (maybe if only for the amazing smell). I've also had very mixed feedback on how to improve it: more complex/less fermentative malt bill, less bitterness, less Columbus/Chinook hops. I think maybe a combination of all of the above with an increase in oats (or use of golden naked instead of quick oats), and a slight reduction in the Chinook and Columbus to let the Cascade and Centennial citrus character show more, would really make this beer exciting. As is, it's a passable but far from exciting IPA, that drinks fine on this hot rainy day.

Maisonette 2.0

After my first attempt at a Mosaic Table Saison turned out so well I decided to make a 6 gallon batch, split into two batches with different yeast strains.  Unlike my first attempt this version is an all grain batch but is designed to be very similar with just the replacement of turbinado with white sugar and a slight increase in the wheat percentage.

Fermentables

Amount	Fermentable	Maltster		Use	PPG	Color
7.0 lb	2-Row (US)	Any	71 %	Mash	37	1 °L
2.5 lb	White Wheat (US)	Any	25 %	Boil	40	2 °L
0.33 lb	Sucrose (Table Sugar)	Any	3 %	Boil	46	0 °L

Hops

Amount	Hop	Time	Use	Form	AA
0.35 oz	Mosaic™ (US)	60 min	Boil	Pellet	12.8%
0.35 oz	Mosaic™ (US)	10 min	Boil	Pellet	12.8%
1.7 oz	Mosaic™ (US)	1 min	Boil	Pellet	12.8%

Yeasts

Name	Lab/Product	Attenuation
Yeast Blend		80.0%

The 2 yeast options are my Saison blend #3 (primarily Wyeast French Saison with some Brett'd beer dregs) and the second use of the Tired Hands yeast from the last version of Maisonette.

Updates

These were bottled over a month ago, both at an FG of 1.007 and in 3 gallon kegs. The Tired Hands version is still in the keezer though the other was removed to make room for other beers.

Tasting 1- Tired Hands Version

Appearance- hazy yellow/white. Looks like a good wheat near though the head is a bit short lived, leaving just a few strange clumps on the top after a few minutes.

Smell- very similar to the previous Tired Hands fermented version: lemony, fruity, lightly spicy. The Mosaic are present but don't shine the way I would like.

Taste- the funky, lightly tart yeast are again front and center with grainy, wheaty malt character and just a touch of bitterness to back it up. The hop flavor is really subdued here, when it should be the star.

Mouthfeel- fairly thin and dry with moderate carbonation (the regulator is set to around 11 PSI). About the body I want from a saison, and it makes for a fairly refreshing beer despite the low bitterness.

Overall- this beer, like the previous version made with the Tired Hands yeast, is enjoyable enough but isn't exactly what I'm looking for in Maisonette. The yeast character is too distracting and I think I prefer the wheat percentage a little lower (it was about 25% in this iteration but closer to 20% in the original). Hopefully I can post a tasting of the other version soon.