Hefeweizen

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I want to make sure I have a couple options on tap at the house this summer so I am trying to keep the rotation going.  The other day I decided on a Heffy for a number of reasons.  One being that they are inexpensive.  Being a pretty low gravity brew to begin with, only about 12# of grain was needed.  I had some yeast saved from a prevous batch last fall so that saves me another $8 that a fresh vial of WLP320 would have cost.   Secondly, they are quick to make.  The same all day Saturday is required for brewing, but a week in primary and it will be ready to keg.  We are talking about 10 days from brew to glass.  So, I got that going for me…which is nice.  Oh and another thing.  It is one of the few styles that my wife will drink.

Hefeweizen literally is Hefe (yeast) meaning the beer is cloudy with the still suspended yeast swimming around, and weizen (wheat) so basically a cloudy wheat beer.

So there.

The details on the beer are this:

Grain Bill:

  • 6#  Wheat
  • 5#  Pilsner malt
  • .5# Melanoidin
  • .5# Honey Malt

The latter 2 were just to add a little something to make it less boring, even if I did break out of the norm a bit.

Mashed at a relatively cool 151F so as to maximize ferment-ability.  It is more complicated than that, but suffice it to say this is to prepare the resulting sugars to be more readily consumed by the yeast resulting in a more attenuated or dryer finished product.  1oz of Domestic Hallertauer leaf in a nylon stocking supplied the slight hop bitterness that this style needs.  Fermenting with a resurrected 1.5qt starter from a half pint of yeast slurry from the same kind of beer form last October.  The yeast strain I am using, as I mentioned before is White Labs WLP320.  It is a Hefeweizen strain but produces much less of the classic banana and clove flavors that are characteristic of the classic German Hef’s.   I like the milder flavor and it is easier to share with other non-beer-geeks.  It is sometimes called an American Wheat or and Oregon Hefeweizen.  I wasn’t sure if being in the fridge for 9 months would hurt it, but after nearly 24hrs the starter got going and pitching that in to this batch got things going in a hurry.  I managed to keep the fermentation temp down to 68-70F to keep the production of fruity tasting “esters” in control.  A T-Shirt covering the fermenter, wetted down with a fan on it, does the trick nicely.  Probably not the first time the words “Wet T-Shirt” and “Beer” were in the same sentence.

Anyway, the fermentation activity has peaked I think and in a couple more days it will be pretty much done.  This one also will likely be entered in the home brew contest next month at the Western Idaho Fair

——-

After 1 week in Primary, the airlock is letting out 1 bubble every 30-35 seconds.  I am hoping for a good final gravity of about 1.012 or so.  The last Hef I made was a bit too heavy and sweet.
By tomorrow afternoon it should be down to about 1per min.  Which is about my threshold for moving a beer into secondary, or in this case, straight to the keg.   Hefeweizens are OK, even preferred to be young and cloudy so secondary, which is usually meant for settling and clarifying is not needed here.  This will also work out well because the next beer I am making will use the same yeast.  Literally the same yeast.  As in,  after cooling the freshly made Weizenbock, I will put it in the same fermenter that the Hefeweizen was just removed from.  With the leftover yeast “cake” still in there.

1.  Less cleaning of carboys.  (a good thing)

2. A rather large colony of live and hungry yeast right there and ready.  (another good thing)

——

Well, airlock activity held steady at 20-30 bubbles per minute so I didn’t want to keg it just yet, but I wanted to use all that nice yeast sludge on the bottom for the batch I brewed today so I transferred it to a 5G carboy.  Nearly an additional  gallon was transfered to a growler and a 2l soda bottle with a pressure cap that I can attach my CO2 system to.  I will chill and force carbonate that one for some early taste tests in a day or two.

The gravity on this Hefeweizen stands currently at 1.014 which is where it will finish I’m sure.  I’m happy with that I guess.

A few days or a week in secondary and then the keg.

Father’s Day Pale Ale

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Well, it is kegged and after a few days to get it carbonated it will be ready.     The first few samples were decent but not quite what I had hoped.   Terrific fresh citrusy hop aroma, but a sharp, harsh medicinal fumey bitterness.   It seemed to be getting  better as it continues to condition at 34F or so but still not quite there.   I still plan on entering it in the fair about 6 weeks from now though.   I think I can dry-hop it some more with the same nylon stocking hop bag method that I used in the boil but I need to weight it down so it will at least partially sink in the keg.   I thought of a lead fishing weight, but since I plan to actually be drinking this stuff, maybe I will use something that doesn’t have a poisoning method named after it.

Pale Ale (Un-named)

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After 9 days in Primary, I just racked the Pale Ale I made in to Secondary fermentation, along with a few ounces of Amarillo and cascade leaf, floating hoppily on the top snug in there nylon stocking “hop-bags”.  They are a bit too buoyant though as I think the knit or weave used is so tight that air cant get out of them very easy, so I am concerned I am not getting as much beer-hop surface contact.  Probably need to add some kind of ballast to them somehow.

Gravity is 1.0 even and after adjusting for a 75F sample that is about 1.002.  It started at 1.048, so that gets me a 4.8% ABV fairly dry brew.  That sample I took during the transfer tasted very good.  IBUs a litle on the high side for a Pale but nice fresh citrusy hop flavor, bot at about the level I was shooting for.  It’s still early but this is looking pretty good.

A week or so dry-hopping and I will keg it, possibly with another smaller DH addition.

Clearing out the “Cellar”

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A couple few years ago I began fancy-ing myself a bit of a beer snob and began accumulating decent craft beers from around the country  Mostly Imperial Stouts and Barley Wines.  Now that I look back it was just as much out of a desire to “posses them” that it was to drink them.    lately I have been going over my modest inventory and thinking…this Stone 6th aniv (2004)   Porter is definitely NOT getting any better.   So I pulled several items and put them in the fridge and invited a couple friends over to help me cull the herd, as it were.

One attendee is a fairly experienced beer geek and the other, not so much.  But to the credit of the latter, he was open to trying new things, and I expect when he got the call to come over, he knew it would be something fairly interesting.

Started off with something fairly light and of a style that I knew would be new for the rookie.    New Belgium’s Eric’s Ale is a sour ale that is brewed with peaches.  It is dry and tart, but as far as the style goes, pretty mild.  It was a hit.  that was just an introductory to the La Folie that I brought out immediately after.  More consistent with the traditional style of a “Sour” it was still pretty popular.

A couple of my own home-brews were next, an Eisbock I made about 2 years ago that turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself, and was the favorite of the evening to our newcomer.   A raspberry wheat that was one of the few left over from a late last summer wedding that I made it for.

Lastly was the 12th anniversary North Coast Old Rasputin.    The 500ml corked and caged top was a classy touch and the beer was very nice.

Beatles and Led Zeplin on itunes and good friends and good conversation for a couple hours on a Tuesday nite is really going to help me get through the week.

Good times…

Drink by “Faith”

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Since New Belgium unveiled their “new” line of specialty beers and packaged then in their own special bottle/lables I have been spending more of my time and effort thatn I should, trying to determine if each one is a new beer, or just froofed up version of something existing.  This “Lips of Faith” thing is a case in point.  No I don’t know the story behind it, well, I do now as I just popped over to NBs site and read up on it.  They are taking there somewhat more experimental offereings and putting them in consistent labels/packaging and marketing them that way.  Fine, but the Bierre de Mars and the La Folie are not new, even though they are part of this “new” series.

I picked up the “Eric’s Ale” tonight after I saw it was a Sour and a few seconds after I realized that La Folie was a Sour as well..  Already this little item was on my good side.  It pours a very nice lively copper-orange with a spritely off white head that quickly evaporates under  several lines of streaming microscopic bubbles.   Sour but fruity aroma of soft spices, apples, peaches, bubblegum and bananas.  Very nice actually.   The flavors it delivers is not so dry and tart as I expected.    Sour, sure, but still a little sweet and flavorful.  Barely peach, but other mild soft fruit notes are here.  Pear, apple, banana, and a modest, even faint musty barnyard note.   The oak aged character is very subtle, which I love.   At 7% ABV, it is disguised well.    Even though the purists out there would want to lynch me for even suggesting it, I am a little surprised that NB didn’t drop the “L” word on any references to this sour, fruit, oak aged beer. (Lindemann’s, I’m talking to you)

This a very drinkable example of the “Sour” style.

I would reluctantly agree with the cheesy marketing dribble on their site… “A sour beer for those who don’t like sour beers and a fruit beer for those who don’t like fruit beers”   I see what they are trying to say and I agree.

Beer and Cheese

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I am getting ready for a nearly 2 week road trip to Mexico (that is another blog, or at least should be) and was too busy for dinner tonight getting ready.  By 10PM I realized my oversight and made what turned out to basically be a beer run.  Rick’s place,  ‘Brewforia’ was a bit far and I would have spent nearly an hour getting there, picking out something lovely and getting back, so I caved and hit up my local Albertson’s, who actually must have recently hired someone who’s  beer IQ slightly higher than his hat size as there were more than a few options that looked interesting.

The New Belgium, Lips of Faith “Eric’s Ale” looked intriguing and when I saw that it was a sour Ale and made with Peaches, it somehow found it’s way into my basket.  NB will always have a place in my heart for what they did with La Folie and how that opened my eyes (and taste buds) to the style.

I was looking for somehting a little more “blue collar” to go with what I was putting together for a late dinner and so I went with the Lagunitas IPA also.  Both in the 22oz super size.  Cuz, I mean, it’s a better deal that way..  ahem.

I couldn’t just have beer for dinner…well, not again, so I made my way to the deli section.  I had always admired a bit the nice (for a supermarket) selection of small and over-priced wedges of impiorted cheeses.  Sudenly it struck me, a beer and cheese tasting sounded like a great way to end the day.

Not knowing what most of what I saw tasted like, or even how to pronounce many of them, “Hickory Smoked” rang a bell and I picked up a 5oz chunk of Rambol Fume’

Basically it is  smoked Gruyere’ and is quite tasty over the Fire Roasted Tomato & Olive oil Triscuits that transported them unto my gaping maw.  s I read a little more about what I am stuffing in my face, I find that actually it is a processed Gruyere “style” cheese that is smoked.  Oh well, this is where I pull out the “I may not know much about art…but I know what I like” bit and load up another cracker.

As far as a “pairing” I would say that the IPA blows out the fairly subtle creamy smokiness of the fermented curd, which in turn is also more than matched my the herbal spices of the crackers.  Not exactly a symphony of flavors, more of a drunken bar fight where each combatant takes it in turn to deliver a wild “hay-maker” to the other and fall to the floor only to get back up again for his turn.  With 4-1 odds on the cheese… to show.

The brew was as expected.  Plenty of “west-coast” hop flavor and just enough bitterness to give it that lip smacking dry pucker power that draws me to the style.   I am sure I have said it before but it bears repeating.  Lagunitas has an excellent “bang for the buck” factor and while very few (that I can think of) of theirs are top tier, very few are disappointing.  And almost always 3-4$ for a 22.  It’s like a trusted friend in the cold-box at the store.

A good effort though on my maiden endeavor at haute-cuisine, and a nice late night snack.

Southern Tier

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I must say,  this beer is already at a dissavantage in that my hopes and expectations are riding pretty high.   I have had a dozen Souther Tier offerings over the last few yeare and have loved all but a few of them.  The Pumking, Jah-Va, Imperial Oat and Creme Brule Stout,  all were fantastic.

Picked this up yesterday at Brewforia’s new Meridian, ID location and it’s label  claims to be simply “A Stout Brewed with Chocolate”

While I respect craft beer, I still find it a bit pretentious when I notice a blurb on the lable telling me how cold or warm it should be when served.  The reputation that this brewer has with my tastebuds, demands compliance however.  Turns out, Iam about 5 degrees over the RST.   Deep brown/black with a lively and disappointingly short-lived, tan head.   This quickly settles out to just a thin ring around the circumference of my snifter.

Aroma is unlike anything I can remember.  My first thought is of Tootsie Roll-Liqueur or Fudge Brownies and Kahlua.  But the tootsie-roll thing keeps coming back.  I can even imagine the wax paper wrapper they come in.  Or used to anyway.   Whatever classic dark roasted aromas that are otherwise common for an Imperial Stout are pretty much sacked by the sweet chocolate and subtle mocha notes.

At 11% ABV the “burn” does cut through a bit, but it’s not too much and goes well with the bold roast  and chocolate.  After a few sips, the smooth roasted, slightly charcoal flavors are really working well with the bittersweet chocolate.   It smelled like it was going to be biting off a chunk of Toblerone, but this is nice.  As it warms up a bit more I can taste vanilla, hazelnuts and a bit of  leather tag-teaming my taste buds.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be a great match for this.

The label says 27 degrees  Plato.  This translates to an original gravity of about 1.135 ! !  and if my calculations are correct, and they sometimes are, the claimed ABV of 11% means the final gravity of this thing is about 1.035.  That is quite a bit of residual sugars.  But I suppose if it was not sweet enough, the chocolate thing just wouldn’t fly.  Even still, the feel is smooth, almost silky, but not very heavy.  The rather soft carbonation is just right for this brew and the late lingering bitterness is a touch sharp, but not hoppy.   More like bitter chocolate or a little espresso.

Well done, Southern Tier.  Not my favorite of theirs, but that claim would be a tough nut to crack as their line up, as I mentioned earlier, is terrific.  At $10 for this 22oz bottle, I am glad that I won’t be buying it again soon, but even gladder that I got to have it tonight.   A great way to cap a Friday night and kick-off the weekend.

New Pale Ale

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New Belgium’s most recent, and current “Spring Seasonal”, “Mighty Arrow” is a Pale Ale, and I suppose lives up to expectations.  My expectations anyway.  NB is a Micro-Brewer that I am not so sure I consider very “Micro”.  No, I do not know what the barrels per day production rate limit is for micro vs non-micro classification, (Wikipedia does apparently) but they just seem to stay within the envelope of beers that try to keep from offending anyone, rather than going all out as if to say “We think this is good, and if you don’t, then it’s your loss”.  One or two Southern California breweries  readily come to mind on that.

So my fears, or expectations were more or less confirmed as I knocked down this “Mighty” Arrow. It has a quite nice, fresh west coast hop aroma. Actually, I was glad to affirm my senses when I saw on the label the description of Cascade and Amarillo hops used. That was my guess. One of my favorite beer thing, in my several years of beer-geekdom is that bright, fresh, mostly citrusy and slightly pine aroma. Kind of like when you peel a tangerine or a grapefruit and take one of the pieces of peel and crease it so the oils come out. (hopefully not in your eye) That smell. This little number has it. Not very big and bold, but it is there, and it is the bright spot for this beer.

A nearly crystal clear light orange-amber, with a nice fairly coarse off-white head. This lasts very well as I drink this down, leaving stubborn traces of spider-web lacing down the sides of my Lost Coast souvenir pounder.

There is some light bready, slightly sweet malt notes as well. NB refers to “Honey Malt” which is the name of a barley variety they could have used, or simply a description of what they think it smells like. Not sure I would call it “Fetching” like they do, but it’s nice. Either way, I get it and I agree.

I am not as excited about the flavor. It has a slightly stale, papery, malt flavor and the right amount of bitterness for the style. Kudos to NB for keeping the IBUs up a little. I’ve had a few IPA’s that were similar to this. Posers. That lovely fresh hop number that I was extolling a few moments ago is not here on the tongue however.  Often that happens.  Flavors and aromas frequently do not share the same wavelength, as it were, and it is common to get some serious turn-arounds or no-shows when you try that first sip.  Especially in fruit beers and coffee/chocolate porters for example.  I have many times smelled what seemed to be a big juicy raspberry, only to taste what I could best describe as the lingering foulness of “Red Dye # 5”

Fairly light, attenuated nicely, slight sweet maltiness but not overly so. Keeping the final gravity down a bit, helps to show off the hops and there bitterness. A fact which I’m sure is not lost on the accounting department of these breweries, when considering the still high prices of hops these days.

As I get through this, I notice the papery flavor a bit more and find my self reaching for the Frito’s a little more often.

This not so “Mighty” Arrow doesn’t exactly miss the mark,  I’d have it in my fridge…right behind the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that has already established prominence as my stand-by, go-to, always have on-hand beer.

-Cheers

Local Bottleshop

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I don’t know what took me so long to notice, but I stumbled upon a “new” bottleshop in Boise this weekend.
Brewforia is located on Miluakee near Carls Jr and he’s been open for business since November. They are currently preparing their new site in Meridian near the Overland and Eagle intersection. A little birdie told me there will even be a modest menu when the new location opens.
At aproximately 350 beer selections currently, they have a nice range of choices. I picked up a Sierra Nevada 30th aniversary Imperial Stout, and a couple from 21st Ammendment. (how could I NOT bring home something called “monks blood”)
They have a few rotating taps as well for samples and pints as well if you are so inclined to sit and have a full glass. Which I was…
I realy think that Brewforia fills a niche or a gap in the bottled beer retail landscape in Boise. The Co-Op does well and has a decent selection but is not very conveniant for us west enders. New Vintage is a wine shop that has a few regional beers but I have witnessed the effects of them being pretty low on their distributors priority list due to the relatively low volume they move.
It will be good to have a real bottle shop in Meridian/West Boise. The usual suspects are represented, Sierra Nevada,

IPA out the door

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So, the IPA I made last month was technically a “contract brew” for a friend. As it neared completion I was a bit concerned as it tasted a little off. The Hop bitterness I thought tasted perfumy or soapy and it didn’t ferment down as far as I had hoped leaving it a bit too heavy and sweet.
I needed to have it done before Christmass as the person I was making it for, planned to give them out as presents. That realy added to the pressure and stress.
I mean, if you make something for yourself and it doesn’t turn out quite right its no big deal. But when you get it all finished and bottled up and hand it over and say “…here you go, oh by the way it’s not that great…” it takes a lot of the fun out of the whole process.
My little bottling apparatus, worked very well and the carbonation was maintained, just right. Maybe even a little too much, which is an OK problem to have.
He picked up the beer (nearly 2 cases of it) and mentioned that he was going to be sharing some with some friends at a dinner party that night. Now I was really worried. I can see it now. “Hey check out this awesome beer a guy made for me…here have some…”
However in the end, I got a text message a few hours later about how much he liked it and that it went over pretty well.
I guess I’m just a nervous Nellie. I still feel like I owe him some of what I consider a better effort.