Imperial Cider – Two Ways
Well the fall, and with it cider season, is here once again. Last fall in addition to my annual batch of standard cider I did a batch of ice concentrated cider. Part of the ice cider was blended with a strong cider made by fellow homebrewer Steve Gale, which got its boost from the addition of a thick caramel syrup made by boiling down cider.
I’ve got a pretty bad flu at the moment (not sure if it is porcine or not), but I did this tasting over the weekend while it was just starting with a stuffy nose. As a results I may have missed some of the complexity. That said I though both ciders tasted excellent and I would highly recommend either method over adding sugar to your cider which adds alcohol, but does not enhance the apple flavor.
Appearance – Big initial head formation, but it drops to almost nothing in just a few seconds. The cider is a nice burnt orange, much richer than any other cider I have seen. It displays some legs in my snifter as well, a sign of both the high alcohol and sweetness.
Smell – Big caramelly apple nose with notes of ethanol. Much fruitier than a standard cider, which tend to be light on the apple character. Pretty clean overall (not much yeast character) or other aromas.
Taste – Very nice balance between sweet and tart. I can certainly taste some of those cooked notes from the apple syrup, it is similar to the sugary syrup that you end up with in an apple pie (minus any spices). A bit on the sweet side, but it isn’t cloying. Still tastes very fresh, no oxidation (either positive or negative).
Mouthfeel – The carbonation does a lot to prevent this from being too sticky sweet. The body is much bigger than a standard cider, in beer terms this would certainly be an English barleywine (but it is more sugary than that).
Drinkability & Notes – A dangerous cider to be sure, the sweetness helps to tame the alcohol, and the carbonation tames the sweetness. I think these two blended together very well, thanks to Steve for coming up with the idea to match these two.
Appearance – Almost no head formation despite streaming carbonation. This one is perfectly clear and a beautiful golden yellow (not much darker than a standard cider). Slight legs visible running down the side of the snifter on this one as well.
Smell – Moderate fresh apple aroma with some fresh bready/yeasty notes. There is also a slight sulfury character that may be from sitting on the yeast a bit too long. Not particularly complex (although that could just be the cold I am starting to develop).
Taste – Great balance, with just a touch of sweetness neither bone dry nor syrupy sweet. The apple flavor is not really that pronounced, more of a light fruitiness than a specific apple flavor. It isn’t too far off of champagne, but it has a nice apple peel character in the finish that reminds you what you are drinking. Not much alcohol to speak of, but there is a nice warmth in the finish.
Mouthfeel – Pretty thin, but not as light as I would have expected for ~93% AA. Solid carbonation, a bit spritzy but not fizzy.
Drinkability & Notes – A pretty solid effort, not exactly what I was aiming for, but a well balanced strong cider. I’ll certainly be giving something similar a try this year, not sure if I will aim for a higher gravity or not.
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Not the Anti-Chardonnay Anymore
Riesling may not be the anti-chardonnay anymore, but it’s still wonderful.
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Barrel Aged Single – Beatification Clone
With the DC Barrel Crew’s Flanders Red almost ready to bottle after a year of aging in a red wine barrel the debate began over what the next beer into the barrel should be. There were plenty of suggestions, but most people wanted a sessionable sour beer. My mind instantly went to the best beer I have ever tried, Russian River’s Beatification PH1 (aka their Belgian Single, Redemption, aged for 23 months in barrels New Belgium had used to sour La Folie before investing in larger oak tanks). That single bottle of Beatification I drank nearly three years ago was sour, but balanced; funky, but fruity; dry, but not thin; and just amazingly complex.
As a side note, after Batch 001/PH1 (001 was just aged in a different barrel) Beatification became a very different beer. It is now a spontaneously fermented American Lambic (Sonambic) aged in old oak wine barrels that have already had most of their flavor extracted by multiple batches of other more wood/wine forward Russian River sours. It is still a great beer, but neither batch 002 nor 003 were at the same level of complexity and balance that the original attained.
A few months back I saw a post on HomeBrewTalk that reported the recipe for Redemption straight from Vinnie, and having a now used Flanders Red barrel I knew what the plan should be (luckily I was able to talk the rest of the guys to go along with it). We tweaked the recipe slightly, dropping the late boil addition of Sterling hops since there won’t be any hop aroma left after the time in the barrel. We also went with a hotter mash temp than I would have for a crisp dry beer like Redemption because the microbes in the barrel will appreciate a bit of extra fermentables.
It was also my first time using my new drill to run my Barley Crusher (no more sore forearms on brew days for me). It was easy to connect, just unscrew the manual handle and tighten the drill onto the shaft.
For my portion of the batch I switched the bittering hop from Styrian Goldings to US Fuggles, which are the same hop variety just grown in a different country. I also used some extra wheat malt because I was a short on pils. Finally I used White Lab’s 500 instead of 530 because that is what I had on hand for another single I was planning on brewing. None of these substitutions should have much of an impact on a beer once it is soured.
The brew day for the beer went smoothly, and fermentation took off quickly. Now that fermentation has finished up I am giving it some cold conditioning until October 24th when we will be bottling the Flanders Red and then filling the barrel back up with this beer. It is on the right, next to a batch of extract single (left), which only looks a half shade darker (more on that one later).
If you don’t have enough friends willing/capable to brew 60 gallons of beer, or you don’t have a used wine barrel with microbes in tow then you could try brewing the beer and tossing in an ounce or two of French oak cubes soaked in red wine, add them along with the dregs from a few of your favorite sour beers to the secondary.
Barrel Aged Single
Recipe Specifics
—————-
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.50
Anticipated OG: 1.052
Anticipated SRM: 3.7
Anticipated IBU: 24.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 63 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Brewhouse Efficiency: 63 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Grain
——
9.00 lbs. German Pilsener
1.75 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.38 lbs. Sauer(acid) Malt
0.38 lbs. Vienna Malt
Hops
——
1.50 oz. Fuggle (Pellet 4.30% AA) @ 60 min.
1.50 oz. Fuggle (Pellet 4.30% AA) @ 60 min.
Extras
——-
1.00 Whirlfloc @10 Min.
0.25 Tsp Yeast Nutrient @10 Min.
Yeast
—–
White Labs WLP500 Trappist Ale Yeast
Water Profile
————-
Profile: Washington DC (carbon filtered)
Mash Schedule
————-
100 min @ 154
Notes
—–
Brewed 9/13/09 By myself
3 qrt starter (wheat DME) made ~48 hours in advance.
Mash ran a bit longer than scheduled because the burner lost its flame while heating the sparge water, due to the wind. Moved into the garage (door open of course) and the problem was solved.
Collected 7.25 gallons of runnings with a fly sparge.
American Fuggles used from my SoFB winnings, AA% adjusted down from 4.8% as they are about a year old.
Hit gravity/volume well. Chilled to 78, then placed in the chest freezer overnight to drop the rest of the way.
Pitched half of the starter in the morning at around 64 degrees. Some fermentation evident after ~12 hours. Rocking fermentation 24 hours after pitching. It threatened to blow-off, but never did.
9/19/09 Boosted the temperature up to 68 to make sure fermentation finishes out.
9/24/09 Dropped the temperature down to 35 to help clean the beer up.
——————
Based on Beatification Batch 001/PH1
Commercial Description:
Blonde Ale aged in New Belgium La Folie barrels for 23 months. Batch 001 is softer on the palate than Batch 001 – PH1. The PH1 batch was aged in one of New Belgium’s favorite barrels. Refermented in the bottle.
Notes from Vinnie on Redemption:
91 percent 2 row
3 percent acidulaed
3 percent wheat malt
3 prcent vienna malt
Bittered with Styrian Golding
Finished with Stering
OG 1.052
TG 1.012
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Free Fizz
The popularity of house-made seltzer in San Francisco restaurants is a trend that should spread.
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Local GABF Winners
The winners at the Great American Beer Festival were announced today.
Congratulations to the Virginia winners!
Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. : Gold Leaf Lager : Gold : International-Style Pilsener
Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. : Natural Born Keller : Silver : Kellerbier/Zwickelbier
Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. : Danzig : Silver : Baltic-Style Porter
Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. : Vienna Lager : Silver : Vienna Style Lager
Great American Restaurants (Sweetwater Tavern) : Crazy Jackass Ale : Gold : Rye Beer
Great American Restaurants (Sweetwater Tavern) : Wit’s End : Bronze : Belgian-Style Witbier
Rock Bottom Brewery – Arlington : Dude! Where’s My Vespa? : Gold : Coffee Flavored Beer
Starr Hill Brewery : Dark Starr Stout : Gold : Classic Irish Style Dry Stout
Special kudos to Jason Oliver at Devil’s Backbone for the impressive showing of 4 medals!.
Our friends at Clipper City and Flying Dog were among the Maryland Breweries bringing home medals.
Brewer’s Alley Restaurant and Brewery : Brewer’s Alley India Pale Ale : Bronze : English-Style India Pale Ale
Clipper City Brewing Co. : Clipper City Marzhon Vienna Lager : Bronze : Vienna Style Lager
DOG Brewing Co. : Pub Dog Black Dog Stout : Bronze : Classic Irish Style Dry Stout
Flying Dog Brewery : Horn Dog Vintage 2007 : Gold : Aged Beer
Flying Dog Brewery : Dogtoberfest : Gold : German Style Märzen
Flying Dog Brewery : Gonzo Imperial Porter : Gold : Imperial Stout
Flying Dog Brewery : Barrel Aged Gonzo : Silver : Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer
In addition to the 4 medals, Flying Dog Brewery, and brewer Robert Malone, also won the award for Mid-Size Brewing Company and Mid-Size Brewing Company Brewer of the Year.
North Carolina breweries were well represented on the winners’ podium as well.
Foothills Brewing : Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout : Bronze : Imperial Stout
The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Inc. : Duck-Rabbit Baltic Porter : Gold : Baltic-Style Porter
The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Inc. : Duck-Rabbit Barrel Aged Baltic Porter : Bronze : Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer
I’ll be sure to look for some of those North Carolina beers next weekend at the World Beer Festival in Durham.
You can see all the GABF winners here.
Photos ©2009 www.nelsoncountylife.com :
TOP: Aaron Riley (bartender @ DBBC), Jason Oliver (head brewmaster @ DBBC), Charlie Pazian (President of the Brewers Association), and Steve Crandall (owner of DBBC) accept their awards at The Great American Beer Festival.
BOTTOM: Mark Thompson (Starr Hill), Jason Oliver, Steve Crandall
Photos by Heidi Crandall.
[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]
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Blue & Gray Oktoberfest This Weekend
The 7th annual Fredericksburg Oktoberfest at the Blue & Gray Brewing Company officially kicked off this evening with the ceremonial tapping of this year’s Oktoberfest beer. A large crowd was on hand Friday evening to enjoy the LOW’n'BROWS oompah band and plenty of German food. Of course, the Blue & Gray beers were also flowing.
The celebration continues through Sunday at the brewery. There are family-friendly activities planned all weekend, rain or shine. This year’s Oktoberfest beer is very nice with a smooth, sweet malt backbone and just a touch of bitterness. Be sure to get some before it’s all gone.
[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]
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Book Review: The Everything Homebrewing Book
The Everything Homebrewing Book: All you need to brew the best beer at home! by Drew Beechum is one of the most recent homebrewing books to be published (2009), so it seemed like a good idea to pick up a copy to read and review. It is from a series of books along the same lines as “For Dummies” (books by different authors with common formatting/graphics) which might make you suspicious, but it was written by one of the most active/vocal members of the homebrewing community. This is his first book, but Drew writes a monthly homebrewing column for BeerAdvocate magazine.
Content
: As the title implies this book tries to cover just about every aspect of the expansive topic of homebrewing. Trying to cover the plethora of topics related to brewing beer at home from the simplest extract recipes through high gravity beers, equipment, process, history, etc… is a tall order for any book, particularly when there are already so many great books that specialize in a single area.The book starts out like many, with a few chapters of basic information about beer, extract brewing, hops, water, yeast, and malt. The author does a solid job giving an overview of all the major options and ingredients available these days. He also does a good job covering some basic questions that many books skip over (like how much will it cost).
The book then goes into equipment and technique. I wish the author had been a bit more opinionated about the daunting variety of options available to the modern American homebrewer. I read a book to hear what the author suggests rather than just a list of all the possibilities. For example I would have been interested to hear about which of the gear and product Drew actually uses and why, and how he put his system together (in addition to why he didn’t go with the other options).
In some places Everything tends to be a bit too anecdotal for me. For example the section on autolysis says “Conventional wisdom set a week’s deadline, but award winning brewers leave beer in primary for a month with no ill effects when using healthy yeast.” If you want to talk autolysis I think you need to get into different styles, yeasts, temperatures, and techniques etc… Just saying some good brewers don’t worry about it doesn’t give enough information to make an educated decision about your own particular situation. Similar logic is used for keg priming as well as several other “controversial” topics.
The book goes into great depth in a couple areas that are not always covered well by other books. The kegging section is especially useful with lots of tips on cleaning and carbonating. In general though I felt like several of the sections didn’t bring anything new to the table (probably because, lets face it, there is much that hasn’t been said about something like malt extract).
My biggest complaint about the content is the complete lack of pictures, drawings, graphs, or beer related graphics of any sort (although there are plenty of dopey little drawings to alert the reader to boxes that contain information that is either “Essential” or a “Fact”). I like the written word as much as anyone, but for a new brewer in particular the pictures and drawings can be the difference between understanding a point and missing it completely. The book I am reading now, Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer, puts this one to shame with beautiful design/pictures/graphs on nearly every page (even the paper feels much higher quality). I realize the lack of flair was probably part of the deal with the publishing company to keep printing costs down, but it is still a shame.
Recipes: The book is packed with recipes of all sorts (more than 100 all told). Some of the recipes are internet classics like Denny Conn’s Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter, Jamil’s Evil Twin, fellow Maltose Falcons member Jonny Lieberman’s Blackwine IV, and many of Drew’s own recipes from his website. The rest, either from the author or a variety of other homebrewers, run the gamut from simple style based beers through beers that push into areas that are too crazy even for me to attempt (like the Maltose Falcons’ Methode Champenoise series of beers). However as you can see a good chunk of these recipes are available for free online, where in many cases they contain additional information/pictures not found in the book.
Most of the recipes are all-grain with an extract substitution listed. It is unclear which beers are turned into partial-mash recipes by the extract and which become extract with steeping grain. In general it seems to leave some basemalt in for a partial-mash, but this could lead to confusion in my opinion. It would also be nice to have the efficiency listed for the recipes since it seems to vary dramatically.
I like the general layout of the recipes with the details all laid out for easy perusal. Most of them contain little asides and tips for the particular idiosyncrasies of the recipe, and overall they appear to be solidly designed and tested. I will register my standard complaint that the book doesn’t do enough to describe the specific flavors of the recipes, not even giving a short description of what generally to expect (this is really a shame considering that most of the recipes have half an empty page below them).
Accuracy: For the most part Everything was very well edited compared to many of the other brewing books out there. There are a few minor issues, things like wrong AA% listed for hops (5.25% AA Warriors in the Steve French recipe), which could throw someone off, but isn’t a big deal. My biggest complaints has nothing to do with what is in the book and everything to do with what is not. Often the book gives a brief overview/mention of something without getting into enough detail to let someone get into it without doing additional research somewhere else.
Readability: Drew’s writing may not have the same literary pop (inspirational power?) that some other homebrew books have, but it does crams a lot of concise info into its pages. I liked the way that some of the recipes were sprinkled in with each section to provide an example of the concepts being covered, with the rest tacked on at the end organized chapters by origin (Recipes from Belgium, Experiments: Recipes from the Laboratory etc…).
The use of abbreviations and symbols bothered me a little bit. For example the hops are labeled in the form “10.6 percent AA” and the malts all have “pounds” after them instead of lbs. It is a little thing, but it bothers me.
There are also some minor organizational issues. For example the last recipe in the book is for a Russian River Temptation clone which is alone in a section titled “Bacteria: The Friendly Germs”, but several pages earlier there is a section on Belgian Sour Ales which does not say much about the microbes. It just seems like if you only have three recipes with non-sacch microbes you might as well lump them all together. In a similar way the sections can seem a bit out of order, I feel like the chapter on sanitation should come before the first extract brew chapter for example.
Overall: The Everything Homebrewing Book is a pretty solid first effort from one of the staples of the online homebrewing community. With its wide scope this might be the homebrewing book you would get if you had to pick just one, but if you own (or plan to own) more than a couple it becomes much less essential. While it does cover several topics very well, for the most part it just gives you a taste of topics that are covered in greater detail in other books. I don’t think the introductory parts are comprehensive enough to recommend it over How to Brew for a beginner, but it might be a worthwhile addition to your brewing library if you are the sort of person who wants a hard copy of some bits from the ephemeral homebrewing internet.
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Ball Park Brewery in Loudon?
A proposal for a ball park in Loudon County includes plans for an onsite microbrewery. Ball Park Digest reports:
Organizers of a new Loudoun County ballpark in suburban D.C. are looking at quirky features for their new ballpark in the proposed Kincora development.That could include any number of features already found in Peter Kirk ballparks in suburban Maryland, like a water-based bumper cars and a climbing wall. It could also include a microbrewery, which organizers say would be the first in a minor-league ballpark. (Coors Field, of course, has its own microbrewery on the MLB level.)
More on the proposed development here.
Hat tip to the loudon Twitter account for the news.
[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]
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A Wine With Its Own Set of Rules
Nicolas Joly Savennières art chenin blanc wines unlike any other.
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Maltese Beer
At the end of our pilgrimage, we were excited to spend two and a half days in the island nation of Malta. Malta has a fascinating history and we visited some of the oldest pre-historic ruins in Europe; the Tarxien Temples and the Ħal-Saflieni Hypogeum. We also visited numerous early Christian sites, including the grotto where St. Paul passed his three-month captivity on the island.
Malta has an interesting beer culture. There is just one brewery on the island, Simonds Farsons Cisk, simply called Cisk (pronounced chisk). The Maltese are quite proud and fond of the Cisk beers. Before the trip, I made a query on Twitter regarding beer in Malta and received an immediate reply from a representative of the Malta tourism group regarding Cisk. The beers are everywhere. You’ll see them in two sizes of cans, in bottles, and on draft. Three different Cisk beers easily found; Cisk Lager, Hopleaf Pale Ale, and Blue Label Ale.
Cisk Lager is bright yellow with copious carbonation. The flavor is grainy and slightly sweet. This is the most popular of the Cisk beers and in every café or bar the bright yellow cans can be seen on tables. I enjoyed the ubiquitous Cisk Lager both canned and on draft several times during our short stay. The Hopleaf Pale Ale seems to be the next most readily found beer. The initial taste of the english pale ale is that of mild, bitter hops. Unfortunately the aftertaste was metallic and not pleasing at all. I only had this one once, so there’s the chance that we had an off-flavor sample, but one that was left unfinished on the table.
The final Cisk beer we had on Malta was Blue Label Ale. This one was a little more elusive. I didn’t order it the first time I saw it offered. When I asked our Maltese guide about it, he replied “It’s a dark beer.” After two weeks of pale lagers, I was intrigued. Blue Label doesn’t seemed to be offered in as many places as the other two so I went out on a search specifically for Blue Label one evening. When I found it, I was reading the can when the cashier told me “That’s a dark beer.” Well, dark is a relative term. The beer was only slightly darker than the Cisk lager, but definitely not anything I would label as “dark”. However, it was a decent English-style ale. A little nutty with a bready malt base. When we were leaving Malta, I had the chance to order another Blue Label at a restaurant in the Malta airport. This time the beer was served on draft. The beer was darker than the previous serving, with a thick, creamy head that lingered to the end. (Pictured bottom right.) I suspect the beer was served on nitro, but didn’t have time to investigate.
The Maltese beers are mild compared to the typical American craft beer. Indeed checking BeerAdvocate scores reflects that. (BeerAdvocate reviewers are generally biased towards “big” beers.) However, this only serves to illustrate one issue with review sites such as BA. It’s my feeling that they don’t take in to account the whole experience of enjoying the local foods. (Yes, don’t forget beer is food.) After walking for a few hours in the hot Mediterranean air, that can of Cisk with the ice on top was especially refreshing. All of these beers would qualify as session beers; Blue Label has an ABV of just 3.3%. The beers are as much a part of the local delicacies as any food. One morning we headed into a local restaurant for breakfast. It was just 10:00 AM and the servers were already clearing away empty bottles of Cisk Lager the locals had been enjoying. Try that with your Double IPA.
Beer isn’t the only alcoholic beverage local to Malta. We also enjoyed Bajtra Liqueur. The liqueur is made from the fruit of local prickly pears, which are the fruit of the widely-grown Opuntia cactus. Served chilled, this liqueur has a mild, watermelon-like flavor.
Cisk also makes a cola drink called Kinnie. We were given samples of this when we arrived at our hotel. The carbonated beverage is made from bitter oranges and herbs. It’s definitely an acquired taste. Both Kinnie and Cisk Lager are also offered on board Malta Airlines. If more airlines served local beer, plane travel would be more enjoyable. (Air France, which carried us across the Atlantic, offered only Heineken.)
We enjoyed our visit to Malta very much. I was also intrigued to see the enthusiastic following for local Cisk beers, and how it was so much a part of the eating and drinking culture.
[ Original content posted at http://www.musingsoverapint.com ]
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