#41 - Hoppy Black Saison v2.0

With how successful my first black saison came out, its amazing that it took me this long to brew another.  This recipe takes most of what I liked about the first recipe with a focus on moderation and complexity. The recipe this time, just as the first, calls for moderate amounts of a complex mix of dark roasted grains, moderate crystal malt use, moderate bitterness, moderate late and dry hops, and moderate spicing (orange peel).  The recipe also calls for French Saison and Candi Syrup as it did the first time, which should again give wonderful, complex elements that can't be found in the hops and malt alone.  This is a recipe that worked out surprisingly well the last time and it seemed as though doing lots of things, but doing so in moderation, allowed each component to come through without any dominating.

The major changes between this recipe and the original version are the change from extract to all-grain, using commercial candi syrup instead of homemade, and significant changes to the hop schedule.  The hop schedule was designed to still emphasize both citrusy American hops and spicy European hops while using what I have on hand, and the change to candi syrup is mainly for convenience but also due to how happy I was with the flavors it developed in my dubbel and quad (despite the other issues those beers experienced).

In order to minimize the harshness of the roasted grains the chocolate malt, black patent and roast barley were all added right before mash out.  Because the dark malts were added so late I used a similar water chemistry profile to my last brew (a much paler saison) with 5 grams of gypsum, 1 gram CaCl, and 8 tsp 10% phosphoric acid.

Brew day hit a few snags as the initial mash in only brought the mash to 145F instead of the intended 150F. I decided to turn this into an opportunity for a step infusion mash and after 20 minutes at 145 the temperature was adjusted with boiling water to 152F for 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes at 160F and a final 10 minute mashout at 170F.

I also forgot to add the Candi Syrup late in the boil and will now wait to add in the next few weeks. The measured OG came in at 1.042, but I realized my hydrometer was off, reading water at only .995 (and was reading my Brett'd Saison at sub 1.000).  Assuming this .005 difference is consistent, that puts my OG closer to 1.047, which is only slightly less than I would expect given the lack of Candi Syrup at this point.

Wort tasted very sweet without much other flavors from the malts, orange peel, or hops showing through at this point.  The plan is to let this ferment to completion (likely around 2 weeks) before 2 short dry hop sessions.  Half the batch may end up receiving brettanomyces or a different twist depending on where the flavors stand, while at least half will likely be bottled as is.

Fermentables 

Efficiency: 67.0% Batch size: 5.0 gal

Fermentable Amount Use PPG Color

 2-Row (US) 9.0 lb 80% Mash 37 1  °L

 Candi Syrup D-90 1.0 lb 8% Late Boil 32 90  °L

 Caramel/Crystal 60(US) 0.5 lb 4% Mash 34 60 °L

 Chocolate (US) 4.0 oz 2 % Mash 34 412  °L

 Roasted Barley (US) 4.0 oz 2 % Mash 33 300  °L

 Black Malt 4.0 oz 2 % Mash 32 500  °L

Hop Amount Time Use Form AA

Palisades (US) 0.5   oz 60  min Boil Pellet 13.0%

Cascade (US) 0.5   oz 15  min Boil Pellet 7.0%

Opal (DE) 1.0   oz 5  min Boil Pellet 6.5%

Strisselspalt (FR) 1.0   oz 4  days Dry Hop Pellet 3.4%

Cascade (US) 0.5   oz 4  days Dry Hop Pellet 7.0%

Palisades (US) 0.5   oz 1  min Whirlpool Pellet 13.0%

Yeasts

Name Lab/Product Average Attenuation

French Saison Wyeast 3711 82.5%

Extras

Name Amount Time Use

Phosphoric Acid 8.0 tsp 60.0 min Mash

Calcium Chloride 1.0 g 60.0 min Mash

Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) 5.0 g 60.0 min Mash

Bitter Orange Peel 0.25 oz 5.0 min Boil

Sweet Orange Peel 0.5 oz 5.0 min Boil

Updates:
7-28-2014
Mixed the 1 lb. of D-90 Candi Syrup with about a quart of water, boiled, cooled and added to the fermentor.  Activity (which had completely died down) picked up again within an hour.

8-5-2014

Bottled with 2.95 oz of sugar. 25 of the 12 oz. bottles were bottled straight, while another 24 were bottled after adding the white pepper and a little bit of the ginger and clove tinctures.

#33 and #33B - Belgian Session IPA Double Tasting

I brewed this Belgian Session IPA/Belgian-American Pale Ale just over 6 weeks ago.  Tasting it during the time since, I have found it to be one of the best beers I have made to this point.  At a recent brewclub meeting it received rave reviews from all who tasted it including Michael Tonsmeire.  Unfortunately, it was so popular that it was gone by the time Charlie Papazian unexpectedly showed up to the meeting.  Getting such positive feedback felt great and made me want to review the half of the batch which had a green tea tincture added.  Today I'm doing a side-by-side tasting of each.

#33 - Straight

A- Slightly hazy coppery orange with a one finger bright white head.  Pretty perfect looking for a dry hopped beer in my opinion.

S- Hops dominate with tropical fruit (pineapple, mango) and light citrus (tangerine).  There is also a light fruity cherry character in the mix which appears to be from the Westmalle yeast strain.

T- Like the nose hops again dominates with the yeast seemingly lending a hand as pineapple, mango, peach and nectarine lead the way before a moderately bitter, lightly tannic, finish.

M- Relatively light but still mouthfeeling and moderately carbonated.  Like the color I would say this is exactly where I wanted it.

O- A very pleasant beer that nicely showcases Mosaic hops (most members at the homebrew meeting were able to pick this out without being told any other details).  Still, there are enough other elements to keep this complex and the low starting and finishing gravities and moderate bitterness makes this very drinkable and enjoyable.

#33B - Green Tea Version

A- Identical to the straight version.

S- This version comes off less fruity with the green tea coming into the mix as a lemon-tea character that seems to round out the other flavors nicely.

T- Like the nose, the flavors seem rounded off a bit with the tea.  Up front the flavor is again tropical fruit with light citrus, though not as pronounced as in the other version.  In the finish the tea character seems to round out the bitterness so that the finish is smoother.  The tea doesn't seem to dominate and I wonder whether someone who didn't know about it would guess it, but with the knowledge that it is there, and the immediate comparison to the straight version, it shines through.

M- Again, fairly dry but right where I would like it.

O-  Having only had one bottle of the tea version and not noticing the tea strongly at that time, this tasting really surprised me.  The tea is far from dominating, but shows through just enough to affect all the flavors around it.  While I might have liked a more assertive character from it, the experimental half came out nicely without being identical, a success by any measure.  In the end, I arrived at 2 similar, but equally good, beers.

7/7/14
Forgot to post the following blog entry on the results of this beer in a competition so I'm just adding it here.

The DC Homebrewers' (my local homebrew club) Cherry Blossom festival was the first brewing competition I have entered.  Being a BJCP sponsored event this competition holds a little weight and had almost 240 entries.  In addition to entering my Belgian Session IPA (As an American Pale Ale) I also helped steward the event.  In this post I have decided to focus on my competition results and compare them side by side with my own personal tasting to see how strongly I agree or disagree with the judges opinions.

Aroma
Judge 1- Floral hops dominate the nose. Faint citrusy notes, crowded a bit by estery sweetness, faintly perfume-y. 7/12
Judge 2- Nice pine-laden hop aroma, a bit solventy, otherwise very clean. Little if any malt aroma. 9/12

Appearance
Judge 1- Dense, fomy head. Brilliant clarity, absolutely no haze. Deep red-gold color. 3/3
Judge 2- Pale amber color, good clarity, just off white head, creamy and with good retention 3/3

Flavor
Judge 1- Low-to-moderate floral and citrus hop flavor, competing with significant perfume ester flavors. No perceptible malt flavor underneath.  Dry finish with persistent hop bitterness. Faint cardboard flavor - oxidized? 9/20
Judge 2- Minimal malt flavor or body, but a good hop flavor from the start. Bitterness is subtle, and flavor is a bit one-dimensional with the fairly simple hop flavor going from start to finish. 11/20

Mouthfeel
Judge 1- medium light body, medium carbonation. Slight astringency, likely from hops.  Very drinkable, although the body could be fuller to support hops.
Judge 2- Slightly thin on the body, medium carbonation.  No astringency or warming, but - bit lifeless due to thin body. 3/5

Overal Impression
Judge 1- A beautiful looking beer, but the estery characteristics and slight body prevent the full expression of the hops.  Try fermenting at a lower temperature within the bounds of the yeast temperature recommended range. 6/10
Judge 2- A nice hop flavor beer, but lacks the malt and nuance of the style.  Boost body with specialty grain additions, or try a higher starting gravity. 6/10

Total
Judge 1- 28/50
Judge 2- 32/50

My take:
Both judges seemed to be pretty similar here and both hit the nail on the head: this beer is too thin and too estery to be a true American Pale Ale.  The Belgian yeast (and the Palisades hops) both played into giving this beer a stronger estery and perfumey character than one expects in this style and the yeast definitely dried it out to a point where the caramel malt couldn't shine and instead the hops and yeast derived characteristics took center stage.  In retrospect I wonder whether this beer would have fared better in the Belgian Specialty Ale category though I fear it would have been deemed too clean there.  In the end both judges gave very accurate descriptions of the beer and some accurate feedback (given that neither knew the true reason for the dryness/fruitiness was the strain of yeast chosen).

If I were to enter another BJCP style competition I would likely only do so with a beer brewed intentionally to style, something that I have a hard time doing.  That said, I think it was a good event and my beer scored a pretty average score overall, respectable for my first time, especially given that the beer was far out of style.

#33 - Belgian Session IPA Version 2

One of my first very successful beers was a Belgian Session IPA.  Today I decided to play on a similar riff but with different hops and a tweaked malt profile.  This includes Belgian Pilsner malt (in order to test get a sense of it's character) and Baird's Carastan and Simpson's Golden Naked Oats (both of which I found were excellent in a previous IPA).  Another twist is that I will be making a green tea tincture alongside the beer which, if it tastes good, will be blended with some fraction of the beer.  Part of the goal of today's brewing session was to build up enough Wyeast 3787 to be able to make a few batches of much stronger beers (dubbel, tripel, quad) in the next few months.  The hop choices were inspired by recent tastes of Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin beers and a long desire to want to try out Palisades.

There were a number of difficulties due to lack of equipment and due to coming down with a cold the night before I planned to brew.  Having just moved to a new apartment, I used Arlington, VA water for the first time and am also using half a campden tablet to remove chloramine for the first time, as I am currently without a water filter.  1.75 tsp of gypsum were added to the 3 gallons of mash water being heated in my new stainless steel pot and strike temperature was brought up to 165.  In addition to not having a water filter, I had no scale to measure out my hops or grains.  While approximating half a bag of oats isn't too difficult and the difference will be minor approximating 1/32 of a pound of Palisades is much more difficult and the magnitude of error will be much more compounded since there is only a single first wort hop addition contributing the vast majority of IBU's to this beer.  On top of this I was way off on my mash/sparge water calculations and ended up with just 4 gallons of 1.058 wort.  I added one gallon of distilled water I had sitting around to bring it down to 1.048.  Initial tasting is sweet with a floral and berry character with a moderate bitterness and some citrus character also in the mix.  Should be interesting to see how this one comes out.

Brewing while I have a cold, in a new location, with new water, a new stove, a new pot, new varieties of hops and not measuring the exact weight of the hops leaves a lot of question marks for this batch, but with how cheap this beer is (under 25 bucks if you don't count the yeast), and with how much healthy yeast it will produce I am not as worried about the quality of the end result and am more worried about dialing in the new system. Getting a good beer out of it would certainly be nice though.

12-16-13

Checked on the beer today to see it had erupted. Perfumey floral beer smell and all the walls are covered in krausen and hop goop. Cleaned up and reattached the now slowly bubbling airlock.

12-18-13

Checked gravity, down to 1.009 and still fermenting.  Taste is floral with subtle citrus and a pungent, vegetal finish. Still green, not carbonated and not even done fermenting but the bitterness seems too low.

Lots of hops and candi syrup from Farmhouse brewing supplies.  The large 1 lb bag is the Palisades.

2/5/14

Tasting. Pretty happy with the way both of these came out.

7/7/14

Entered these into a competition in March where they received middling scores due to being out of style. Forgot to post the blog entry so the double tasting post was updated to include score reports and my take.