Glass Mountain American Lager

American Lager

Recipe:

5 lbs Rahr 6-row
2 lbs flaked maize
2 lbs flacked rice
.5 oz hallertau mittelfruh (60 min)
.25 oz hallertau mittelfruh (15 min)
2 packs Diamond lager yeast (1 per 3 gallon carboy)
Came in just under expected OG at 1.044

Brew date: 12/10/22
Chilled to 60F, pitched yeast and moved to 50F chest freezer.

12/15: increased chest freezer temp to 55F to finish primary fermentation and move towards diacetyl rest

12/16: increased chest freezer temp setting to 65F for diacetyl rest

12/17: moved out of chest freezer into room in the mid to upper 60s to finish diacetyl rest

12/20: Gravity reading 1.006, lower than expected but not too low. Taste is pleasant and mild with some light corn and grain character but is also a little more fruity and flavorful than expected, possibly due to the diacetyl rest being too early/warm/long or the late hop addition coming through more than anticipated. Hopefully it cleans up and loses some of that character during the lagering period. No diacetyl detected so it was moved to the chest freezer currently set to 55F. I plan to lower temperatures further over the next few weeks once the other beer (a 100% cherrywood smoked lager) currently fermenting in there finishes primary fermentation.

12/23/22: began lowering temperatures by 5 degrees

12/25/22: lowered to 32F. Will stay at this temperature for a few days before kegging.

12/29/22: Racked both carboys into a single 5 gallon keg and harvested yeast. Keg was placed in chest freezer at 32F and 30 PSI to burst carbonate overnight. Flavor is still a bit fruitier than intended and has a touch of sulfur but not bad.

1/12/23: tasting notes

Appearance: pale and bubbly, maybe just a touch darker than I would expect for the style but that might have more to do with the clarity being less than crystal clear. If I brew this style in the future I’ll need to either add gelatin or use another means to clarify it. Head is big, fluffy, and white initially and quickly fades to a small layer that leaves nice lacing.

Smell: Smell isn’t very strong, especially when initially pouring in the low 30s. Some light sweet graininess that seems malty without much noticeable corn or rice character. There is a slight cider and pomme fruitiness with just a whisper of herbal character. Apple aroma increases significantly as it warms up giving more green apple (probably acetaldehyde).

Taste: Like the smell (and as expected) the flavors are subtle. Sweet and subtly grainy malt dominates with a slightly herbal and earthy character in the middle and a very light bitterness on the finish. Some light apple like fruitiness shows more as it warms, possibly acetaldehyde but possibly yeast derived ester fruitiness due to the diacetyl rest occurring earlier and warmer than it should have. The fruitiness increases as it warms but so do the grainy and herbal characters to keep it from overwhelming.

Mouthfeel: This may be the area this beer is most off from the style as it feels more full bodied and round than I would expect. The beer is fairly highly carbonated though I was having some foam issues initially and have lowered the CO2, but even with the high carbonation it feels surprisingly full and rounded on the palate. If I was to brew this again I would likely mash lower and use a different yeast.

Overall: I’m really enjoying this beer for what it is. In some ways it feels between an American Lager and a German Helles, perhaps due to the Hallertau hops and use of German yeast. The rice and corn (and 6-row) don’t stand out as obvious ingredients to my palette but I wonder if others would be able to tell it apart from a beer made entirely with Pilsner malt. If I were to try brewing this style again I would make a number of changes but this recipe delivered an enjoyable, if flawed, beer.

1/28/23: Keg kicked less than a month after packaging. It was pretty enjoyable and easy drinking and with a few parties at the house this one went very quickly. Not a style I'm dying to brew again but something I'll probably come back to in the future and aim to brew more to style.

Ube Wit

Ube is a type of yam that has a very bright purple color that is often used as a sort of natural coloring, in addition to being used for its flavor, mainly in the Philippines but also in other South East Asian countries and increasingly around the world. It is typically eaten as a dessert in ice cream (including the sundae type dessert halo-halo), halaya (a sort of jam), and many types of pastries including cakes, rolls, cookies, and polvoron (shortbread). The best description I can give for ube is a nuttier, earthier, coconut. In addition to coconut, other descriptors I've seen are pistachio, white chocolate, and sweet potato.

Last spring I was at a party and tried ube ice cream for the first time. I'm typically not a big dessert person and have disliked seemingly savory foods that are used in desserts in the past (taro and red bean come to mind) so I had always passed on ube dishes but decided to give the ice cream a try. After a small scoop I wanted to eat the entire container because the flavor was so delicious, new, and interesting. Since that day I've consumed ube in just about every format I can find and taking my honeymoon in the Philippines and Bali meant there were a lot of opportunities!

Since the first time I tried ube I've wondered if the flavors would come through in a beer. While I've seen a few examples of ube beers they certainly aren't very common and I haven't found a recipe. I decided to make up my own using a Belgian Witbier as the base style due to it's dessert like creaminess and citrus characters that should meld well with the ube's flavors. 

Wit is also a style with a light enough color that (may) give the ube a chance to show up. Like many blue/purple colored fruits and vegetable ube gets its color from anthrocyanins. Unfortunately, anthrocyanins degrade with pH, which tends to cause beers with these fruits and vegetables to turn red or pink, not vibrant purple and blue.

The recipe was roughly an amalgamation of potato beer recipes I've found and some recipes I've seen for Allagash White. I used three pounds of pre-cooked frozen ube (I would have liked to have found fresh ube it seems to be hard to come by in the US) which seemed like a decent but not overwhelming amount. I also added a pound of basmati rice that I boiled prior to the mash. Other than that the beer was a pretty typical wit with half of the rest of the ingredients being malted wheat and the other half being 2-row. I went on the low end of hops and spices with just one ounce of saaz and a quarter ounce each of bitter orange peel and Indian coriander added at flameout.

1/23/18 Brewday

I had intended to brew this beer earlier but suddenly had to work over the weekend and postponed it to today. Mash had a slight purple hue but gave a beautiful medium purple color during runoff and after the boil the beer still showed a light violet tone. This was my first time using my new mantis chiller from Jaded Brewing and I was able to chill to pitching temps in about 15 minutes just using a kitchen sink for the water supply, so I'm very happy with it so far. OG measured at 1.043, about what I expected despite not knowing what to expect for the ube's gravity contribution. 

2/5/18

This beer has gone through a bit of a strange fermentation, with a quick and aggressive first krausen that quickly faded with the beer only down to 1.030. After a few days with slight fermentation it suddenly burst back to life, blowing off the blowoff tube on multiple occasions before slowing after another couple days. It's now down to 1.010 which is hopefully as far as it falls but I will give it a few more days given the previous resurgence. Taste is pretty good, citrusy and on the sweet side, but the ube is subtle and the color has faded to the point of being a red color in the carboy but just a pale magenta in the hydrometer tube.

3/3/18
I've been sitting on this one for a while, making slight alterations in hopes of bringing it to where I want but at this point I'm going to call it what it is: a fine beer but nothing special. After kegging the beer was a bit lacking in both ube and wit character. I made a few different extracts (trying both vodka based and hot water "teas") of coriander, orange peel, and ube powder. Despite adding what seemed to be large amounts of each of these extracts the beer only had very minor increases in perceived flavor and color. In the end, adding a little of a vodka based ube tincture to the glass seems to give the best combination of flavor and color.

3/11/18
Tasting:

Forgot to take a picture until halfway through the tasting. d'oh!

Appearance: Moderately hazy with the slightest of pink/orange hues that seems to come from the ube, though I might just be biased. The color, haziness, and a medium sized white head with good retention make for an appealing beer

Smell: There's an earthy and potato smell that leads the way, mixing with some more complex vegetable, herbal, and floral components to give the impression of a fresh tilled vegetable garden. That said, the smell is fairly soft and subtle and the classic wit citrus aromas don't stand out as intended.

Taste: Less earthy than the smell, the flavor leads off moderate sweet with some light dough and spice. The ube seems more hidden in the background with just a little earth and vanilla/coconut noticeable on the swallow. The finish is semi-sweet with just a light lingering bitterness and tough to describe herbal characters.

Mouthfeel: Fairly full bodied and creamy with low carbonation. These levels don't help the spice/yam characters pop but make the beer super easy drinking and go well with the subtle characteristics of the flavorings. The mouthfeel is probably the best part of this beer.

Overall: I haven't given up hope for an ube beer but this one doesn't quite do what I had hoped for. Using ube extract, adding vanilla, and/or moving the ube to a later addition than the mash all seem like possible ways to increase the flavor and potential of this unique ingredient and using fresher coriander and orange peel, and maybe adding some chamomile, should increase the wit character. I went fairly subtle in a lot of aspects of this beer thinking that I would be able to correct post-fermentation but that may not have been the case in this case. There's nothing bad about this beer but with a few other pale, subtle, moderately interesting beers on tap (kveik blondes and my latest maisonette) it doesn't do anything to call me to it.