Maisonette ‘22

After recently moving to a new house back on the east coast it seemed like a good idea to do a simple, easy, tried and true recipe for my first batch in a new environment and with new equipment. While most of my brewing gear from San Francisco made the trip with me I now have a yard and so am able to brew outside on a burner again for the first time in about 5 years. In addition to buying a Bayou Classic burner I also needed to adjust to other variable including a new (leaky) hose for providing water to the wort chiller, a new location for fermenting, and a new-ish water source (still WSSC water so it should be similar to what I used at my parents’ house)

In addition to a few new variables I also chose to make this specific recipe due to being super busy moving in and preparing my new house. In addition to brewing this beer today I am also building the collar for my keezer, assembling a grill, prepping for painting, and moving furniture in multiple rooms this week. Productive but exhausting work that only left room for an extract brew day with minimal interaction.

The recipe is pretty similar to a doubled volume version of the very first batch I made of this beer: dry malt extract, mosaic hops, saison yeast. One big change is that in the first version I made it used only about one third wheat DME whereas this really upped the wheat content with 100% Briess Bavarian Wheat DME. It will be interesting to see how this beer turns out with this high of a wheat content, I expect it to be fine but maybe not quite as enjoyable as the ~20% I usually aim for.

Tasting Notes:

Appearance: Light gold with moderate haze. Large white head with great retention. Looks somewhere between where this beer usually falls and a classic hefeweizen, darker and hazier than ideal but within range for a farmhouse style beer and pretty appealing all around.

Smell: Fruit and spice from the yeast dominate giving an even balance of banana and bubblegum with Christmas/baking spice aromas of clove and allspice. Moderate malt presence then shows with sweet honey and breakfast cereal character. Hard to pick up the hops specifically but the mosaic character seem to be just there, blending into the fruit and spice character giving slight berry and herbal characters.

Taste: Fruity up front with banana/bubblegum/berry character that quickly blends into a mix of honey-like malt notes, leafy bitterness, and a lingering peppery and clove like spice that lasts into the finish. As it warms the Mosaic hop character comes out a little more but is still largely drowned out by the pepper/clove and banana from the yeast.

Mouthfeel: Moderately low in body and moderately high in carbonation, keeping this one very drinkable. There is a touch of astringency in the finish but it isn't off putting.

Overall: This beer is a fine grisette/saison but lacks some of the subtlety of yeast character and complexity of hop character I go for with this recipe. The hops don't show through to the normal level I look for and the yeast seem to have produced both more clove like esters and more banana/bubblegum than the more subtle "Juicy Fruit"/Chamomile/pineapple characters I aim for. Part of that may be the temperature conditions being lower than expected in the beginning then fairly high, and part of it may be due to adding the hops at warmer temperatures in the hop stand than usual. Next time I will likely go back to all grain, cut down the wheat percentage to my usual ~20% and add most or all of the post boil hops closer to 140F. 

3/6/22
Brewday:
Measured out 6.5 gallons of tap water, added half a campden  tablet, then began heating on my new bayou classic burner. Added DME and stirred as much as possible until dissolved. Added .35 oz mosaic hops at boil. Added 1 oz at flameout and began cooling. After ~10 minutes stopped cooling and added another 1 oz hops at ~180F. Let sit for 10 minutes before cooling again. Added 1 oz at 150F and stopped cooling again for ~20 minutes. Cooled to 95F and moved to 2 separate 3 gallon carboys, each with half of remaining .65 oz of hops. Pitched half a pack of Wyeast Belgian Saison in each. Plan to add Wyeast French Saison to dry it out after giving the Belgian Saison a few days to create character.

3/11/22
Pitched an inflated pack of Wyeast 3711 French Saison split into each carboy. Yeast appeared to still be active but very slow. Ambient temperatures are far below ideal for saison strains in the low-mid 60’s.

3/16/22
Still showing slow signs of fermentation. The beers were placed next to the actively fermenting oatmeal stout in hopes the heat generated by those carboys would help kick start these but while those are overflowing with yeast activity these continue to just very slowly bubble with a thin layer of krausen.

3/17/22
Hydrometer reading shows this is only down to about 1.030 so it has hardly fermented. Taste is very sweet with a surprisingly high hoppy bitterness. Moved to an upstairs bedroom at around 72F (instead of the 62-64F basement). Hopefully the warmth re-ignites the fermentation but if not I'll probably add a yeast more capable of fermenting at the cool to moderate temperatures in a few days.

3/21/22
Gravity reading shows this has fallen to 1.015 so the higher heat definitely seems to have helped, but it should have a few more points to go. Sample is very tasty with lots of juicy fruit gum and grainy sweetness finishing with a pronounced but not overly strong bitterness. I don't think this will be one of my best batches yet but has shaped up nicely over the past few days and should be ready to keg soon.

3/24/22
Bubbling very slowly, seems about ready to keg.

3/26/22
Gravity down to 1.014, doesn’t seem to be going any further. Transferred both carboys to a single 5 gallon keg. Didn’t do a great job avoiding the trub and got more yeast and hop particulate than desired, hopefully that will settle out. Set keg to 10 psi in keezer at 32F.

3/27/22
Increased PSI to 15 and keezer temp to 40F.

3/30/22
Dropped temp back down to 33F and lowered PSI slightly. Seems fairly well carbonated. Taste is fairly fruity but a bit more bitter, rough, and hazy than usual. I think the higher percentage of wheat and adding a large amount of the hops as high as 180 may be part of the issue. Hoping a couple more days at cold temps clears some things up but doesn't seem like a bad beer as is.

4/2/22
Probably the most or second most popular of the 4 beers on tap for a housewarming party. Overall it's not my favorite version of this beer but is definitely a Saison with fruity and spicy characters and a touch of the things I like most about Mosaic hops.

4/13/22
Tasting night, notes above.

Wheat Beer Split Batch (Green Spree Hoppy Wheat and Pink Dream Fruited Gose)

I love doing split batches when I homebrew. It allows me to double (or more than double) the number of beers I'm able to create with almost no increase in effort or time. Another proponent of splitting batches is Michael Tonsmeire who spoke about this very topic on the Experimental Brew's Brew Files podcast. This was perfect timing given that I was making a similar split batch (1/2 hoppy, 1/2 sour) and using the grain bill from one of Mike's recipes (Fortunate Islands) to do it.

Green Spree is inspired by both Mike/Modern Time's Fortunate Islands recipe and Mike's business partner Scott Janish's flavor descriptors for El Dorado hops as tasting like "Green Spree" candy. To up the green (in my mind this means sour apple but also lime, grass, and pine) character I added Warrior (which I found to have pine, grass and lime) and Centennial (resinous and citrusy) hops to the bill. The goal for this recipe is to sit somewhere between the light-to-moderate bitterness and hop character of my Pilsner and the heavily hopped West Coast NEIPA I have on tap, while still giving a chance to explore some new hops that I've been holding onto for a long time.

Pink Dream is a take on the classic Leipziger style featuring salt and a lactobacillus driven sourness but with the twist of orange peel instead of coriander plus an increased sweetness and darker color from the Caravienne malt. I also plan to add a hibiscus tea and possibly lychee or passionfruit to the beer to up the fruitiness and quenchability. The gose formulation (especially in terms of salt levels) and hibiscus addition (in terms of dosing and method) were inspired by Mike's Gose and Hibiscus Wit.

Not surprisingly the two beers appeared very different in the fermenters with the Green Spree half being hazier and having a more vigorous krausen while the Pink Dream half had little foaming even during the peak of fermentation and was much clearer and looked darker due to this.

Green Spree (Hoppy Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.053
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 85%
Expected FG: 1.012
Actual FG: 1.015

12/18/17
Added dry hops to Green Spree. Gravity down to 1.015 (7.5 Plato refractometer reading). Tastes fairly sweet but also moderately hoppy and tasty.

12/22/17
Transferred to 3 gallon keg. Tasting hoppy but a bit grassier and harsher than expected.


Pink Dream (Gose Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.042
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 70%
Expected FG: 1.013
Actual FG: 1.010

I pulled off 3 gallons for this half just after the combined wort hit a boil. This was then cooled to 100F and Lactobacillus Delbrueckii was added. Prior to pitching the Lacto I pre-acidified the wort with 3 tablespoons of 10% phosphoric acid in hopes to minimize the protein denaturing. After 12 hours I pitched a GoodBelly Straightshot due to concerns with the Lacto Del's souring capacity. 24 hours later I pitched a pack of S-04. I left my pH meter in Maryland so I had to just use taste of the sour wort and other people's experience to determine timing.

12/18/17
Pink Dream half down to 1.010 (5 Plato refractometer reading). Moderately sour with a noticeable but not overwhelming saltiness and some sweetness.

1/2/18
Added hibiscus by adding 1.5 cups of nearly boiling water to 1 oz. hibiscus poured into carboy. 1/2 oz each Amoretti Lychee Compound and Passionfruit Swirl added to keg with the beer then racked on top. Has good color, strong fruitiness, but it comes off slightly artificial. Hopefully the first pour just had more of the extracts than the rest of the batch and with some time the flavor will meld more.

1/16/18
Brought a swing top bottle of this to a San Francisco Homebrewers Guild meeting. Mostly positive response with several noting low salt levels (intended but below style requirements) and a mixed response to the hibiscus levels (some saying too high, others thinking it was a subtle enough touch to not overpower the beer).

Wedding Beers

I've brewed quite a bit in the last few months (I did 6 batches between late March and early June). The main reason for this is a single cause: beer for my wedding. I'm getting married in North Carolina in early July and wanted to provide a large supplement of homebrew to add to other beverages to be enjoyed. In planning for the big day I took a look at this useful blog post to get some ideas on how to go about brewing, transporting, setting up, and serving the beers at the wedding. While I did not brew nearly as much beer as some of the people I read about during my research, I was able to put together 4 batches with each one netting about a full 5 gallon corny keg. These beers were all brewed between April and June with details below. I was also able to convince one of my homebrew buddies to kick in a 5 gallon keg of his own NEIPA.

My car loaded with 4 kegs and supplies to serve them

While brewing four ~5 gallon batches wasn't much of a difficult task given the timeline, having the beers be at their peak and having (almost) nothing else on tap for a few months made the project tough. The fact that the wedding was outdoors, near the beach, in North Carolina, and in July also posed numerous challenges with getting, and keeping, the beer cold and making sure the bartenders would be able to pour it.

Last minute prep/icing down for the 5th time

Beach Formal Belgian Tripel - Brewed in April in order to have some time to age, higher than expected extraction rate led to this beer being stronger than planned (despite reducing the amount of sugar added). The beer started as 2 separate 3 gallon batches, one brewed with BE-256 and the other with S-33, before being combined to one fermentor after several weeks. While it came off fairly boozy at first, a few months has brought it together to a nice example of the style.

Shoreline Summer Ale - Loosely modeled off Big Wave Golden Ale from Kona Brewing Company this is intended to be a moderately hoppy blonde with tropical fruit forward character. The grist is somewhat of a trimmed down version of my most recent StarTropics NEIPA while the hops emphasize the classic combo of Citra and Mosaic. At kegging in early May this was one of the fruitiest, tropical, exciting beers I have made and I was disappointed I needed to wait so long to drink it (and worried that the character would fade). While the fruit flavors transformed over time the beer still retained some tropical fruit salad goodness, just leaning a little more towards overripe fruit than the super fresh mango and papaya it started with.

Lighthouse Little Saison - A variation on my go-to Maisonette Grisette the beer features mosaic hops and saison yeasts in a small platform that always excites. Not my best batch of this beer, and it picked up some accidental brett along the way (for better or worse), but a tasty and refreshing beer none the less.

White Wedding Wheat Ale w/ Orange, Ginger, and Chamomile - This one was the least based on previous recipes with just mild input from my Summertime Rye beer. Instead of remaking a previous beer, I wanted to brew something of a Blue Moon clone with more interesting fruit/herb/spice character. The end result is surprisingly chamomile forward with light orange and almost no ginger but is a refreshing and easy drinker. This beer (along with the Shoreline Summer Ale) used my house Inglés culture, a slowly evolving blend of British yeast strains that I occasionally add new yeasts to during pitching.

Hazy Gudenius NEIPA - Guest brewed by Scott Janish, of his awesome eponymous blog and the soon-to-be-awesome Sapwood Cellars. Brewed with Citra Cryo Hops, along with Otto Supreme and Amarillo, this one is an obvious crowd pleaser.

Serving at the wedding, fortunately someone knew how to operate ball lock kegs and CO2 to get the beers to pour while I was taking photos

Post wedding updates:
At the wedding the Lighthouse saison and Hazy Gudenius NEIPA were clear favorites and both were near empty at the end of the night while the others were somewhere between 1/3rd and 2/3rds full. The White Wedding and Shoreline had become a bit oxidized and were not as good as they had been when fresh but still drinkable and they got the least love. Overall I think one less beer or switching one for something super different (like a dark beer) might have been a good idea but none of the beers turned out bad and they were much more popular than the light beers we had the bar serve for those who didn't want homebrews. I wish I had taken photos of each of the beers when pouring them, but there was honestly way too many other things going on.

Maisonette v4.0

Between Two Succulents without Zach Galifianakas

Here once again is the latest take on my little house beer. Maisonette is a beer I first brewed in March 2015, which means that in less than a year it has gone from an extract batch brewed on a whim to by far my most rebrewed recipe. Part of what keeps me brewing this beer is that it consistently comes out enjoyable regardless of the variations applied. Maybe even a larger part is just how terrific my very first mini batch of it was and how difficult it has been to emulate. With that in mind I set out to once again split this batch 2 ways but with yeasts that should be closer to the yeast blend I initially used.

Brew notes: Pulled 8.75 gallons straight from the sink. Added 1/2 of a campden tablet, then 1 g Gypsum and 2 g CaCl. Missed my mash-in temp hitting just 144° before raising to 149° after 10 minutes. 50 minutes later I ran off, batch sparged with 170° water (to bring to 165° let sit for 15 minutes then ran off slowly over the course of half an hour before moving the wort to the burner.

Added .35 oz. hops and 6 oz turbinado at boil, 60 minutes later I cut the heat and added 1 oz. for 10 minutes before applying cooling. Applied cooling to 145° then added additional 2.65. Applied additional cooling after 20 minutes only to have the wort chiller begin leaking. A small amount of the chilling water made its way into the beer, and I had a hard time deciding whether to reboil or just move ahead but was on a time constraint so I tightened the loose connection after about 15 minutes of cussing and yelling at it and continued the chill. Reached 80° degrees after about 15 more minutes.

Split evenly between two 3 gallon carboys and pitched yeast. One full packet of Danstar Belle Saison and a quarter cup of BKYeast C2 Brett slurry in one half with a pack of Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison in the other.

8 hours after pitching both carboys had fallen to near room temperature at 65° with the Belle/C2 version showing vigorous fermentation and the Belgian Saison just starting to bubble. 8 hours later both versions are actively chugging along nicely. Moved the carboys next to each other and wrapped in a blanket to allow them to maintain some heat.

12/20/2015
Belle/C2 version down to 1.004 gravity, while Belgian Saison version is still slowly bubbling away and only down to 1.029. Belle/C2 version kegged with 2 oz. bagged Mosaic hops.

1/17/2016
Belle/C2 version still on tap, pretty good, super fruity gooseberry/kiwi character from the hops, but not much else. Belgian Saison version down to 1.003 but still showing weak signs of fermentation (krausen and occasional off gassing). Tasting pretty great! I'm super excited to keg this one soon.

1/18/2016

Tasting:

Appearance- very pale in color, moderately hazy, with just enough clarity to make out some shapes behind it. Small but fairly stable and sticky white head. 

Smell- big sweet fruity hop aroma giving lots of gooseberry and a touch of mango and spice.

Taste- the hops are more subdued than in the nose with grainy, lightly sweet malt leading and the hops just giving a faint fruit salad character over top. Bitterness is cleansing but slightly spicy/astringent and stronger than I would like.

Mouthfeel- moderately thin mouthfeel, fairly low carbonation after a couple days in the growler.

Overall- a drinkable, likable, super fruity beer that isn't exactly what I'm going for. This beer seems to be heading more in the direction of an IPA without the bitterness than the juicy grisette I'm after. A fine beer, but off target. The Belgian Saison seems like the much more exciting option than this fairly clean/lightly spicy Belle Saison.

1/31/2016

Kegged the Belgian Saison version with the Belle/C2 version kicking.

2/6/2016

Brought a growler of the Belgian Saison version of this beer to the annual JamBEERee homebrew meeting between several DC/Northern Virginia area clubs (BURP, Grist, WortHogs, and DC Homebrewers). Received a lot of positive feedback mixed with a lot of confusion on what a Grisette is. I'm pretty pleased with how this batch turned out and plan planned to submit it to a few competitions.

2/19/2016

Tasting of the Belgian Saison version:

Appearance: Surprisingly clear pale golden yellow. A few weeks in the keg have done wonders for this beer. High carbonation (nearly 15 PSI) gives it a large head, that recedes to a small film after a few minutes.

Next to a Fern without Zach Galifianakis

Smell: The wonderful, almost artificial (makes me think of juicy fruit gum) fruitiness that I want in this beer leads the way. There is also some lemon, pine, coriander, banana taffy, and cranberry. The hops and yeast seem to work harmoniously to produce the big bouquet.

Taste: Light grainy sweetness fills the first sip with a myriad of tropical fruit and citrus flavors coming in later. A moderate bitterness lingers on the back of the tongue with a touch of pepper.

Mouthfeel: Super dry and crisp. After a few weeks in the keg this beer seems to have become even drier, bringing it closer in line with a traditional saison.

Overall: I am very happy with the way this one turned out. While it isn't quite as fruity and delicious as the first couple days on tap it seems to have developed into something more akin to what someone would expect from a saison. This beer is impeccably light and drinkable, enjoyable enough in a small taster or pint after pint. This is a good beer.

5 Way Berliner (and My First Competition Ribbon)

Not strictly a "split batch" or formal experiment (or should I say ExBEERiment) I nonetheless wanted to taste test 5 variations on sour wheat beers side by side to see which method I liked the most.  While 3 of the beers were started at the same time and used identical worts, the other two were made earlier and one used a very different wort (the extra runnings from my Hefeweizen).  The breakdown of each beer is listed below.  Each batch was a little less than 1 gallon.

1. "B" Hefeweizen 2nd Runnings w/ Lactobacillus Delbrueckii followed by British ale yeast
• The 1st version was fermented on the Lacto Del for 3 days before being moved to secondary with the British ale yeast.
• OG ~1.040, FG 1.003
2. "C" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii only
• Pitched on the lacto cake from version 1.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.002
3. "X" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii, British ale yeast, and Brettanomyces (BKYeast C2)
• Pitched with the final slurry from Version 1 with Brett added 5 days later.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.002
4. "Y" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and wild microbes (my Sunroom blend)
• 1 pint pitched with my Sunroom blend (of wild microbes harvested from my Sunroom) before receiving a small amount of the Lacto slurry while being stepped up from an to 1 gallon.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.003
5. "Z" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and Brettanomyces (BKYeast C2)
• Given a pitch from the Lacto slurry before being given Brett 5 days later
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.005

Appearance:

B- cloudiest, light pale color, short lived white head

C- darkest by far, longest lasting head, most carbonated, fairly clear

X- 2nd cloudiest, almost no head

Y- 3rd cloudiest, 2nd biggest head

Z- clearest, smallest head

Smell

B- fruity, light citrus,

C- medicinal off smelling, especially as it warms

X- lots of Brett funk, fruity citrus

Y- lightly fruity, vanilla, maybe a touch of butter, very interesting

Z- light fruit, berries, light Brett

Taste:

B- fruity and tart, sourness is moderately high

C- lightly medicinal, just lightly tart

X- funky, light to moderate sourness

Y- moderately sour, some definite diacetyl butteriness, a little fruit

Z- light grain, lightly tart, fairly restrained

Mouthfeel:

B-Super dry, lightly carbonated

C- medium body with medium carbonation

X- dry with low to medium carbonation

Y- a slightly slicker mouthfeel (diacetyl?) medium low carbonation

Z- medium low in body (the Brett and lacto don't seem to have attenuated as well as the lacto and yeast combos) medium carbonation

Overall:

B- my favorite of the bunch, moderately sour but with some nice banana, lemon, and wheat in the mix

C- my least favorite by far, just using the lactobacillus is clearly not an advisable option as it surprisingly is under sour and very medicinal

X- my second favorite, and the second most sour. Brett character is a little too high and sourness a little too low

Y- while it was cold this one was really interesting and enjoyable, as it warmed it seems that diacetyl is the most dominant character and the sourness isn't quite high enough

Z- an alright beer, this sort of feels like a bland saison with a light Brett touch. The sourness of the lactobacillus and Brett alone isn't high enough.

Thoughts:

This small test has made me think that lactobacillus followed by saccharomyces is the best option for quickly fermented sour beers. I'm a little disappointed in how buttery the wild fermented beer came out and learned to never do lacto only beers, but otherwise the results weren't overly surprising.

Updates
3/8/2015
Spoke to a brewer at Tired Hands in Ardmore Pennsylvania and was told that they use a very similar process as version "B" for their sours: lacto for 3 days followed by British ale yeast.

3/23/2015
Happy to say version "B" received a score of 35 and third place in the Sour Ales category at the DC Homebrewer's Club Cherry Blossom Competition.  Sure, it was only out of 6 beers in the category but for a beer not brewed to style and with no expectations it still did well enough to receive a ribbon.

"To Style" Hefeweizen Recipe and Tasting

When I decided that I wanted to brew a "to-style" beer for this year's DC Homebrewers Cherry Blossom Competition I was tossing around a few different ideas: British Bitter, American Pale Ale (the category I entered last year), Berliner Weisse, or a Witbier.  I was going through my inventory of hops, spices, and washed yeast and going back and forth when I decided to ask my girlfriend Alyssa for a recommendation.  Her answer: make a Hefeweizen.

There are a few beers that I accredit my love for the craft to. Allagash White and Duvel were two of the first Craft/Import beers which truly opened my eyes to the range of beer flavors and styles when I had both on my 21st birthday.  St. Bernardus Abt. 12 made me say "Oh my God this is the best beer" a few years before the similar Trappist Westvleteren 12 overtook that place on my list. Then there is Weihenstaphaner Hefeweissbier.

While craft beer (and to some extent even the imported beer) industry is constantly changing, with some hot new thing getting all of the hype, this Hefeweizen, from the oldest continuously functioning brewery in the world, never goes out of style and currently holds the highest rating of any Hefeweizen style beer and the 138th overall position on Beer Advocate.  While at any time a new IPA or Russian stout could be better than the last greatest thing, this beer is simply perfection that all other Hefeweizens should attempt to follow.

Frankly, I don't remember when I had the beer for the first time.  My very first homebrew was a hefeweizen and used the Wyeast 3068 Weihenstaphen Weizen yeast strain.  That beer turned out remarkably well and I searched down the source of the famed yeast.  While I don't remember when or where it was, I do remember thinking: this is a perfect hefeweizen.  While I have only brewed one other Hefeweizen influenced beer (my tasty but unfortunately explodingly carbonated LimeWeizen) the hefeweizen style has been one of the most influential in my brewing experience.

As my tastes have changed over time, hefeweizen has faded from a favorite style to more of a situational/seasonal beer for me.  I haven't made a light, refreshing, low hopped wheat beer in a long time and I had much better success with my to-style weizen than my to style wit, so, very long story short: I went with Alyssa's choice.

In order to attempt an award winning hefeweizen (also known as Weissbeer) I went with Mino Choi's recipe featured on Chop and Brew.  I did decide however to not go with the traditional decoction (or in this case triple decoction) and instead did a step infusion and added a half pound of Vienna malt to up the malt character.  The recipe ended up being exceedingly simple:

6 lbs. Wheat Malt
4 lbs. 2-Row
.45 lbs. Vienna
1 oz. Tettnanger hops
WLP 300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast


2/6/2015
With the gravity down to a stable 1.008 for a week now I decided the beer was done.  Flavor is underwhelming and there seems to be a strange clumpiness to the yeast.  I decided to keg 3 gallons as a krystallweizen and bottle the rest.  Bottled portion received 1.30 oz. of sugar blended in 1 cup of filtered water, ended up with only a little more than a gallon of bottles (11), a little worried about over carbonation.

Bottled "hefe" version on the left and kegged "krystal" version on the right.

2/26/2015
Side by Side Tasting
Appearance-
Bottle: Cloudy, almost no head.  Looks like a hefeweizen except for the lack of carbonation.
Keg: Mostly clear but with some small specks floating throughout.  A much nicer head of a couple inches that fades to a thin layer.

Smell-
Bottle: Bananas, butterscotch, vanilla, light spice, apple.  Pretty classic hefeweizen aromas but fairly low on the clove.
Keg: Much cleaner/lighter without the proteins and yeast added. Banana, light grain, fairly clean.

Taste-
Bottle: Some light banana and spice followed by a light snappy tart apple character.
Taste: Cleaner and brighter than the bottled version.  Light banana and spice, but almost Pilsner like in its cleanness.

Mouthfeel-
Bottle: Moderate to high body with very low carbonation.  Hopefully the bottles continue to carb up some, I was actually worried it would be too high so I'm surprise it's so low at this point.
Keg: More moderate to light in body with a much higher, but still only medium, carbonation level. Seems to be better in both categories, though this doesn't save the low level of yeast derived character.

Overall-
Both: All around this is a fairly disappointing though not offensive attempt at the style.  The low fermentation temperatures (~68F) didn't produce enough yeast character.  The bottle conditioned version with all of the extra bottle dregs poured in definitely had a small increase in flavor, but also didn't have as nice of a carbonation or look.  Were I to make this again I would increase the fermentation temperature slightly and likely do a decoction.

Other Variants:
Second runnings were turned into a sour (Berliner Weisse? too high gravity and wheat content. Gose? no salt or coriander. So I don't know). WLP677 Lactobacillus Delbrueckii added for 3 days prior to pitching a British ale yeast.  Bottled with 0.60 oz of sugar for 9 bottles (and a half bottle that I drank). Wheat Extract wort pitched on top of straight Lacto and fermented fully, bottled with 0.40 oz of sugar for 7 bottles.  The beer fermented with both lacto and ale yeast was much tastier with a much stronger lemony sourness and a nice wheaty and malty backbone while the purely WLP 677 version is pretty mild and bland, not bad but nothing exciting, probably similar to Mike Tonsmeire's experience with a 100% lacto fermented beer with this same strain.

#38 - American Rye

With the warm weather finally setting in here in the Mid-Atlantic I've turned my mind towards warm weather, quaffable beers and this low alcohol, hoppy, American style beer using both wheat and rye seems as summery as I'm going to get.  The goal here is to have a highly hop flavored, but only lightly bitter, light beer that can quench my thirst through the next few months as the area turns from a beautiful, cherry blossom filled oasis to an unbearably hot and humid swamp.

While the recipe has been changed a number of times some of the main ideas were to use wheat and rye and to retry Citra after less than stellar results a few years back.  The final iteration also uses the experimental HBC342 hop varietal and a little Palisade. Rubbing and smelling each hop separately is an eye opening experience, especially considering their somewhat similar descriptors.  HBC342 has a strong damp, decaying leaves, earthy, woody, canteloupe, black pepper and black currant smell that reminds me of Styrian Goldings more than any American hops.  Citra has a strong fruit salad smell with mango being the most obvious component with pineapple, guava, papaya, grapefruit and aggressive, bitter citrus peel all in the mix as well.  Palisade, as displayed in my Belgian American Pale Ale, is floral and perfumey with light apple, pear and cedar notes in the rubbed smell.  Some of the reports I have read of HBC342 have stated that the aroma doesn't come through very strongly, also a common complaint with Palisade, which might make them more backing parts to the Citra.

The brewday went long due to having to run errands in the middle, single infusion mash began at 150 and lasted nearly 2 hours falling to 144 before mashing out at 168 and batch sparging at 175.  Hour long boil was mostly quiet since I only added all the hops at the same time that I cut the temperature.  With this many hops and the amount of alpha acids pulled during the post boil not super accurate it should be interesting to see just how bitter (or not) this one turns out.  OG is just 1.040...once again well below my already low projections.  (Note: reviewing the recipe again I see this isn't as far below as I had originally thought but is still only about 60%).  In this case I'm almost certain it is due to the milling since all the grains, and the rye and malted wheat especially, seemed to have a large number of unthreshed pieces.  This might be the batch that finally prompts me to buy a mill.

5/2/14

Popped one open to test. Very flat and cloudy with a heavy citrus and moderate bitterness but not a lot of hop flavor on the tongue. Hopefully the carbonation kicks in and brings this beer more together.  As it currently stands, it looks and tastes quite a bit like grapefruit juice.

6/9/14
Tasting notes.  Still very cloudy with high drinkability but nothing too exciting in the flavor and something seems a touch off other than just the appearance.