Burns Ale Fail

You know what sucks? Spending hours and hours not to mention the money involved in making a special beer only to have it suck. My 1933 Drybrough Burns Ale tastes thin, flat (body, not carbonation) and slightly like wet cardboard.

I know where the problem lies and you are probably way ahead of me based on that last descriptor... "wet cardboard". It's oxidation. 

I used my brand new, untried SS Brewtech 7 gallon Chronical for the first time and it worked like a champ. The Chronical did not come with a fitting for the racking valve so I bought a barbed fitting. I didn't pay much attention to what size and it turned out to be for 12" ID tubing which is larger than any other racking tubing that I have used. I am pretty sure what happened is that a lot of air was allowed to enter my keg during transfer because the beer was coming out with more force and volume than normal. I was concerned about it at the time and here we are three weeks later and my first sampling confirms it. 

For about 60 bucks I can buy the parts from SS Brewtech to do pressurized, closed transfers. That sounds like money well spent if it helps me avoid dumping another beer.

Guinness 200th Anniversary

 

I am about 2 years late to this birthday party. The 200th anniversary of Guinness being exported to the United States of America was October of 1817.

I found a six pack while shopping at Oppermann's Cork 'n' Ale in Saginaw, Michigan. Oppermann's is arguably one of the best beer and wine stores in my local area. I can spend a good hour or more just browsing.  As usual, I went in for one thing and by the time I left I needed a cart to carry it all. I was on my way to the check out counter when I spied a label I had not seen before. Guinness 200th Anniversary Export Stout!

As their story goes an order for several hogsheads was ordered from the U.S. in 1817. When Guinness decided to commemorate the occasion in 2017 they went back to their log books and discovered that the recipe was slightly different. There was no roasted barley which Guinness is known for. Instead they used black patent malt which in itself was rather special because black patent was nearly a brand new malt in 1817. 

The first thing you notice on the label is that this a 6% ABV beer. Compared to Guinness draught which is 4.2%. Then there is the color of the head. Everyone who has quaffed a Guinness draught knows the head is very light, almost white in color while the beer itself while still very dark is not as black as draught. This one is a creamy tan color. The aroma is roasted coffee and chocolate. You know you are not in for your average Guinness experience right away. The taste is much more roasty and complex than the draught version but still smooth. 

20 or more years ago I drank Guinness Draught all the time. It was one of the more "exotic" choices on the shelves. With the boom of craft breweries and more imports than ever available, Guinness had dropped off of my radar. This however has put them right back up there. I can't wait to hunt down Extra Stout (5.6%), Foreign Extra Stout (7.5%) and... cross my fingers... Antwerpen Stout (8%).

It pays to take your time and dig around the backs of the shelves when shopping for beer!

Beercation!

One of the benefits of being retired is that you don't have to wait for the weekend to do weekend stuff. So one Monday morning I said to my wife, 'let's take a beercation!"

Our first stop was a trip to Marshall, Michigan. Home of Dark Horse Brewing. The brewery that had it's own reality TV show on the History Channel. However upon learning that they closed their restaurant and the whole reason for going to Marshall was to meet with family for lunch, Dark Horse was out.

So instead we paid a visit to Grand River Brewery. Grand River is situated in the heart of downtown Marshall in an early 20th century brick building that I am told used to be a mercantile or general store. It looks the part and is quite quaint with a modern flare.

My plan was try new-to-me styles but a few old favorites called loudly. The first being (l-r) Summer Night Tree, a 5.6% Stout... then Black Penny Porter with an ABV of 6% and finally Sleeping Bear Scotch Ale at 8.4%. All were very nice representations of their style. Forced to chose between them, the Scotch Ale wins my vote.

Next came the two I had never had before. A Brut IPA called San Fiasco. It's 7.8% ABV and is crystal clear. It is so dry that it tastes to me like a hop tea. Not my favorite but I will try another somewhere else.

My palate has never like wheat beer but I keep giving them a chance. This time with Blanc Stare, a 5.5% Witbier. I am still not a fan. However the food was very good and the beer selection varied enough to satisfy any beer lover. Grand River is definitely worth a return trip.

After leaving Marshall we took a short trip west to Kalamazoo where of course a stop at Bell's was required. They have a production facility in town that offers tours but not on the day we stopped in. So we visited the brew pub and had lunch.

Bell's beers are not difficult to find in Michigan. You can find Two Hearted Ale, Porter, Oberon, Hop Slam and several others at the grocery store. What they had on tap that was new to me was a limited edition Session Lager. This one I liked enough to buy a six pack to take home. There is a Bell's store next door to the restaurant and to my surprise they also had six packs of Bell's Expedition Stout so I brought one of those home too.

Expedition is a Russian Imperial Stout (10.5% ABV) and except for Founder's KBS is my favorite big beer.




The plan that day was to also visit HopCat which is right across the street from Bells General Store but we didn't think the whole thing though. If we had, we would have ordered something small at Bell's along with a beer... they sell 5oz glasses for just two bucks!... and then go across the street and order another small dish with a beer.

Ahh well, lessons learned and a plan to put into place next time. Besides, a stop in Grand Rapids is also on the docket and they have a HopCat there too! But that's not our next stop.

Next is a jaunt north by north west to Holland, Michigan. My wife has had an urge to visit somewhere new on the Great Lakes that we haven't been before. Holland fits the bill seeing as it has a beautiful State Park beech with the famous Big Red Lighthouse protecting the harbor.

Since this stop was for my wife's benefit I really had not given much thought to breweries or brew pubs. I wrote it off as a decompression day at the beach. I had forgotten totally about New Holland Brewing. Oh. My. God!

First off, Holland, Michigan just as you might imagine was settled by the Dutch and Dutch heritage is wholeheartedly embraced by the town. There is so much to visit we didn't get to see it all. Sadly one of the sights we missed was the Windmill Island Gardens with its 200 year old, authentic Dutch windmill. Again, something for us to do next time.

New Holland Whitefish Po Boy with Fries

For those who aren't familiar with Michigan foods, we are as much a seafood culture as anywhere near the oceans. Instead of crab, shrimp or halibut we value Walleye, Perch... and Whitefish! So when I saw they had a Whitefish Po Boy on the menu I didn't bother looking at anything else. And I was right. The food here is awesome!

This time, a majority of my samples were things that were new to me. Just like Brut IPA, I have read an awful lot about Kombucha. New Holland's Kombucha IPA is 5% ABV and is made with lemon and ginger. It is a bit tart but not as tart as the next offering, Sour Ale with Mango. It has an ABV of 4.5% and tastes both sour and sweet like Sweet Tarts candy.

The next was a real surprise. Dragon's Milk White Stout. It is only 6% ABV compared to traditional Dragon's Milk which is 11%.  The white has all the rich, creaminess of a good stout without any acrid character associated with dark and black malts. I found it disarming and quite delicious!

Brewing display inside New Holland Brewing

The fourth sample in my flight was New Holland Dragon's Milk. It is a bourbon barrel aged stout which is very good and one that I buy often at my local grocer. What I really wanted to try was their Triple Mash Dragon's Milk which was released this past April. It was a limited release however and was all gone by the time I got there. Story of my life. it clocks in at a whopping 17% ABV!

All of this occurred on Monday and Tuesday. Our plan was to swing by Grand Rapids on our way home Wednesday but all that was thwarted by an endless hike in search of the beach at Saugatuck Dunes State Park and the bear.

It was an endless hike, seemingly all uphill, from the parking area to the beach, which we never found. We never found it because at the crest of a dune where we stopped to catch our breath we spotted unmistakable bear tracks on the trail. With still no sign of the beach and bear in the area it was time to call it a day.


Wednesday came early and we were pooped so the trip to Grand Rapids was scratched. Our plans there were to visit Founders Brewing and HopCat and since we have been to Founders a couple of times already it wasn't a difficult choice.

We left with a plan for for the future... when we go next to visit our family in Marshall we will start in Grand Rapids and hit the breweries that were left behind. Then since we missed the Windmill gardens in Holland we will visit there again and possibly make a more concerted effort to find that Saugatuck beach. Or at least track down Saugatuck Brewing Company ;) Then on to Marshall where I hope to include a visit to Dark Horse Brewing. Restaurant or no restaurant.

Length of Brew Day

How long is your brew day? Four, five... six hours? I began thinking about this as I was making some invert sugar for an upcoming brew and I realized my brew day has already begun! Or had it?

Recipe Creation:                                                                                                                                                    It starts days, weeks or maybe evens months in advance when the recipe is decided upon. In the case of 1933 Drybrough Burns Ale pictured, the seed was planted while reading Ron Pattinson's book, Scotland Vol. II.                                                                                                                                               Following the failure of my Dirty Bastard Clone attempt I decided to retrace my steps and begin with an historically accurate Scotch Ale and it doesn't get much Scotch-ier than Robert Burns right?                                                                So I scoured Ron's book looking at several strong Scotch Ales and settled on this one. Then I sat down with Beersmith and created a recipe using Mr. Pattinson's published version as a baseline. Everything in mine is the same except my invert sugar came out looking more like #3 than #1. Plus the turnover of Imperial Yeast at my LHBS is greater than many other brands they carry so I get fresher yeast and bigger cell counts to start with. Boom! Day One - recipe created.

Invert Sugar:

I don't always use invert  sugar but this recipe calls for it and I had the ingredients on hand. So I count this as Day Two. If you Google invert sugar you will find several different versions. The recipe I use comes once again, from Ron Pattinson. He is after the English beer historian. Here is what I do:

1 lb cane sugar. (not table sugar) Turbinado or Demerara are good choices. Brown sugar, molasses and Belgian or candi sugar are not. Anyone who tells you they are are not worth talking to so just walk away.

1 pint water

1/4 teaspoon citric acid

You will need a candy thermometer and a sauce pan.

Bring the water to a boil in the sauce pan. Turn the heat off once it starts boiling and slowly stir in the sugar until it has completely dissolved. Add 1/4 tsp of citric acid. I use the same stuff that my wife and I used when canning and preserving tomatoes and vegetables. Turn the heat back on and bring this mixture up to 230 degrees F. Stirring is a necessity during this whole process as is keeping a close eye on the candy thermometer. Once 230 F is reached I stir less frequently but here you want to continue ramping the temperature up to 240 F but do not let it go higher than 250 F. 

To make Invert #1 heat for 20 - 30 minutes. The SRM should be around 12 - 16

To make Invert #2 heat for 90 - 120 minutes or until you get an SRM of 30 -35

For Invert #3 heat for 150 - 210 minutes until the SRM is 60 -70

And Invert #4 heats for 240 - 300 minutes. It's SRM will be 275 - 375

Shopping for Ingredients:

So where were we? Oh yes, figuring out exactly how long a brew day actually is. In my case the only ingredients I keep on hand are those that have some shelf life. I buy my base malt in bulk and keep some hops in the freezer but specialty grains and yeast are something I buy on an as needed basis. Today was one of those days. A trip to my local homebrew store for some flaked maize, black malt and Imperial A31 Tartan yeast. Day Three - hanging out at the LHBS, Hop Craft Supply Co., and chatting with Brandon. Who by the way just got a shipment of homebrew sized, table top beer can sealing machines. Only $499... hmmm.

Yeast Starter:

A couple of days before brew day I will make a yeast starter. Traditionally I would make my starter and put it on a stir plate 24 to 36 hours ahead of time. Lately however I have been making a Shaken Not Stirred starter just 12 hours before pitching. Using the traditional method this counts as Day Four.

Brew Day Prep:

When ever possible I like to do some things the day (or evening) before the burners get lit. All of my equipment and utensils will get cleaned. I will measure out my water.... grind my grain and lately make my SNS starter. If that is the case, then this is Day Four. If I had used a traditional stir plate starter this is Day Five.

Brew Day:

And here is the day I used to think of as "Brew Day". Not all of these steps take an entire day but if you add up the hours it dawns on you that brew day is a lot more than mashing and boiling. Now let's see... today is Friday that means tomorrow is prep day and bright and early Sunday morning I'll flip the switch on the HLT heating element and hopefully be done before the heat of the day sets in.

Summer Doldrums

Summer is here and I feel lazy. I have been making beer and have plans to make more but for the moment I have run out of steam. Probably because there is plenty of steam outside! Daytime temperatures are expected to be in the 90+F range for the next four or more days. 

I did manage to produce three beers by brewing on three consecutive Sundays. Something I haven't done in a long time. Sunday, June 30th I made a Kentucky Common. Sunday, July 7th another Cream Ale and on the 14th I made one of Ron Pattinson's recipes from history... the original Russian Imperial Stout made by Barclay Perkins in 1848. 

Maybe it's not lazy I'm feeling. Maybe it's exhaustion.

The Kentucky Common is interesting in that it was almost lost to history. A beer that was produced in Louisville Kentucky right around the turn of the 20th century but then lost a few short decades later when prohibition was enacted. It is often cited as being one of a handful of styles that are truly American in origin. It was craft and homebrewers who stumbled across references to Kentucky Common and through their research have been able to tease out the recipe. 

One of those homebrewers posted her findings and resulting recipe in the homebrewtalk.com forum and that discussion has been one of the most active threads on the site since 2011. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/kiss-yer-cousin-rye-kentucky-common-ale.290419/

The grain bill will seem a bit unique to modern homebrewers. In it's simplest form there is only 6-row malt and corn grits. Some recipes include a bit of rye. If you can't find 6-row feel free to substitute 2-row but expect a slightly different flavor profile. Using corn grits will require you to perform a cereal mash. If you don't want to go through the bother you can use flaked corn instead. The rye is up to you. Keep it under 10% if you use it.

Here is the recipe I used. It comes from a craft brewer in Long Beach California called Ten Mile Brewing. They are said to produce the absolute best commercial example of the style in the U.S.

Mine is currently carbonating in a 5 gallon corny keg and it should be ready to tap. And with the temperature topping out near 95F today that sounds like a grand idea!

Dirty Bastard Fail!

A while back I made my first attempt at cloning one of my favorite craft beers, Founders Dirty Bastard. It has been in the keg and ready to tap for a week now and the verdict is...

The only thing remotely close to Dirty Bastard might be the color but even that is hard to say for sure because the beer is so damned cloudy! The aroma is almost unpleasant. The flavor is nothing like Dirty Bastard or anything close to being rich an malty. The only thing it has going in its favor is that it isn't completely undrinkable. At around 8%ABV, if you can get through the first half pint then you don't notice the flaws any longer.

My first thought was that it was the recipe. And I'm still not convinced that it isn't a crap recipe. The major disappointment I had when searching for a clone is that there is basically only one recipe to be found on the interwebs.... and it can be found everywhere. I don't know where it originated but some of the earliest postings of this exact same recipe come from website forums dating back to 2005. There was even a homebrew store selling a Dirty Bastard Clone kit at about that time that used the exact same grain bill. My theory is that this single recipe went viral with brewers copying an pasting it in every website, forum and recipe discussion until, just like a virus, it eradicated every other version that my have existed. 

So I decided to start from scratch with a proven, historic recipe from Ron Pattinson's book, Scotland vol. 2. I have my eye set on one called Burns Ale from Edinburgh's Drybrough brewery. It is a classic strong Scotch Ale and the ABV is close to Founders Dirty Bastard.

Problem solved right? Blame it on a rubbish recipe....but, to paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, it may be my own damned fault.

The ingredients I used were just as written in the clone recipe. The mash wasn't so far off as to have affected the outcome. However the boil might not have been vigorous enough. I discovered, and may have even mentioned in the brew day video that the Blichmann Boil Coil seems to hold a boil even with the power setting turned down to 50 percent. That may be enough to keep the wort boiling but it might not be vigorous enough to achieve volatilization to help drive off any or enough DMS. 

The thing that flipped the switch was a completely random press of a button at the gym today. While on the treadmill I decided to listen to a podcast . The one I arbitrarily chose was from 2016 with Brad Smith of Beersmith podcasts talking with Dr. Charlie Bamforth on the topic of boiling home-brewed beer. And it hit me... the almost unpleasant aroma is somewhere between wet seaweed and creamed corn. 

So now I have two paths to take. Either start from scratch with the Burns Ale and begin tweaking it to achieve Dirty Bastard status. Or re-brew the clone recipe I've already used but take greater care during the boil. I may just take both paths.

1880 Whitbread Porter 1.1

This aim of this brew session was to get the previous 1880 Whitbread Porter, which I really liked the first time around, to have just a bit more malt backbone. So a few changes were made to achieve that goal. I added some Roasted Barley. I mashed a few degrees higher than before which should give more body to the beer. And I used a different yeast which is supposed to give a marmalade character found in many English pub ales.

One other change to the making of the beer itself was that I used a different yeast starter making technique called the Shaken Not Stirred method which I wrote about in the last post. Oh, and I also made a tweak in how I heated my strike water.

The recipe is very similar to the previous version:

However looking at it now I wonder why I increased the black malt from 12 oz to 1 lb? And if that was a mistake should the roasted barley also have been 12 oz? The yeast I used was Imperial Pub A09 and I mashed at 154 F. 

I can see right now that I am going to have start taking more detailed notes and paying better attention to details.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Tomorrow is brew day. Version 1.1 of the 1880 Whitbread Porter. Normally I would like to have had my yeast starter started two days before brew day but I had read about a technique called Shaken, Not Stirred for making yeast starters and decided to give it a try.

My normal starter routine is to calculate how much cell growth I need for a given beer's OG and then make a starter of the recommended size. Full disclosure... I don't make the calculations, I use the starter tool in Beersmith 3. The SNS method however says forget cell count and concentrate on pitching healthy cells that are ready to go to war. Those being the words of the man who pioneered this method.

That person is Mark Van Ditta, AKA yeastwhisperer, AKA S. Cerevisiae on the American HomeBrewers Association forum. Mark's research has shown him that pitching a smaller amount of robust yeast who are, again as he puts it, ready to go to war is much more advantageous than pitching a large amount of tired yeast cells that are more inclined to take a nap than storm the beaches.

A link to Marks in depth explanation follows but here is my synopsis and the steps I took just this afternoon.

The idea is to prepare a starter as usual. The size of the vessel you use must be four times the volume of the starter medium. Here is where SNS takes a left turn; instead of using a stir plate you shake the the starter medium for a minute or two to fill the vessel with as much foam as possible hence the name. Also, instead of a couple of days sitting on the stir plate you will pitch the yeast at high krausen, usually within 12 to 18 hours.

After shaking for 1 minute

My Steps: 

1.   Gather all the equipment needed

- 1 Gallon jug with cap. The cap is necessary during the shaking

- A little more than a quart of water (enough extra to account for boil off)

- 3 to 4 ounces of DME

- Funnel

- Scissors

- Airlock

- Yeast

- Sanitizer

2.   Prepare and boil starter wort for 15 minutes; chill when compete

3.   While chilling; wash and sanitize jug, funnel, and other equipment

3.   When starter medium has chilled transfer it to the cleaned and sanitized vessel

4.   Cap jug and shake for at least one minute. 

5.   Let starter medium rest in the capped vessel for 15 minutes

6.   Sanitize scissors and yeast package, open package and pitch into starter vessel

7.   Pitch starter medium into fermenter at high krausen.

For the last word on the Shaken, Not Stirred method read what Mark wrote back in 2015.

https://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum

Don't miss my brew day update coming soon.

Brewery Graphics

 

I've been working on some graphics for my brewery. The first brew system I owned that earned a name was the "Front Porch Brewery". So named because I always set it up on the front porch. It was all gravity fed so using the front steps was a natural fit and worked very well. With my new electric brew system however I thought something a bit more grand was needed. Certainly something better than the "Garage Brewery".  Backing out of the driveway one morning it occurred to me, "you know, Gabel Road is not a bad looking little lane". And so the Gabel Road Brewery was born.

Next up I designed a basic shield beer label. It's been sitting on my computer for months now and with a pretty good first version of the 1880 Whitbread Porter on tap I sat down today to mock up a label for it. Any resemblance to another Porter label is purely coincidental. Nothing very fancy about it, I just played around with various fonts until I found one close to the look I was after and flooded the background with a brown gradient.

Still in the fermenter but soon to be transferred to keg is my Dirty Bastard clone. Using my blank label template I chose a new font for the name. My photo editing software does not have a tartan pattern. So I made one.

I started with a green gradient background and rotated it 45 degrees then chose to "repeat" it a dozen or more times. I used the flood tool to fill the background of my template. Next I duplicated that background and mirrored it. I reduced the density of that mirrored image by 50% to get a tartan-like checkerboard but it was still all green. So I flooded the white lines with a rusty red color and added some blur effect to soften the edges and bingo! An acceptable tartan background.



Next up I plan to keg the Filthy Bastard within the next day or so and I will be brewing version 1.1 of the 1880 Whitbread Porter. I was going to leave that one alone since it turned out so well but I have decided to make a few tweaks after all. A blog update and Youtube video is forthcoming to reveal those changes.

Founders Dirty Bastard Clone

Brew Day! 6.7.19


One of my 2019 goals is to develop a clone of one of my favorite beers, Dirty Bastard from Founders in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I began with two trains of thought. One was to start with a standard Scotch Ale of similar properties to Dirty Bastard. Then to tweak and modify that recipe until I reached an acceptable approximation.

The second was to find an existing clone recipe as my starting point. That is the path I chose. Hopefully someone else has already done the experimentation saving me time and money.

I had hoped to find one or two... maybe three different recipes so I could compare what was common to them all and maybe weed out the unnecessary ingredients. Homebrewers have a habit of using every type of specialty grain they see on the shelf... or leftovers they have on hand and want to get rid of. 

Brew day was not without its issues. Once again I missed my mash temperature by nearly 9 degrees. One of three things is happening... maybe a combination of all of them. I either do not have my equipment profile correctly constructed in Beersmith. The temperature probes on my kettles are not calibrated properly giving me false readings. Or the system is losing  more heat than I am used to between the transfer of water between the hot liquor tank and the mash tun.


Another issue is the gravity readings. I was getting varied readings from my refractometer ranging from exactly what I expected to very, very low. I chose to record the ones that I expected. Upon taking the OG just before pitching yeast however I was getting consistently low readings. Making me doubt everything else during the brew session. Nothing sucks more than not being sure you hit your targets.

The recipe: Some changes were noted during brew day... The East Kent Goldings were labeled as 6% alpha acids and the Perle 7.6%. Instead of a single package of Wyeast 1728 I used two packs in a 2.25 liter starter made the day before. Note: the measured gravity and alcohol content were not recorded. Those below are just what Beersmith thinks they are going to be.

 

I shot video on brew day but as I write this it is still uploading. You can watch it here with other brew day videos.

1880 Whitbread Porter Tasting

A serious sinus infection delayed the kegging of this beer for two weeks! Meaning it was in the primary fermenter for 4 weeks. For new homebrewers who may think this is terrible believe me, it is not.

You may have read books or blog posts in the past saying that after fermentation is complete you must get your beer off the yeast cake or you risk off flavors and/or ruining your beer! Friends and other homebrewers may have told something similar. The thing about brewing is that we are learning all the time and some of  what we learn today contradicts what we thought was true not that very long ago.

The trouble here is that the printed word lasts a long time. Couple that with the viral nature of the internet and you have two forces at work to revive outdated information. The third leg in this axis of ignorance is that we as human beings find it very hard to let go of long held beliefs. Even when those beliefs are proven wrong.

I kegged this beer  six days ago from this writing. It probably could use another day or three but I couldn't wait. The first pour happened just a moment ago and I am sipping a beautiful and silky smooth porter at this very moment.


First of all, I set my CO2 regulator to 9 PSI and my keezer is at 40 F which should give me 2.2 volumes of CO2 in my beer. A bit on the high side for an English Porter but within limits. The initial impression of the beer is, yes, it could do with three or so days more on the gas before drinking. The carbonation is low and the head is thin and does not last long. This will improve.

Next is the color. A rich, dark chocolate hue that is everything a porter should be. The nose is very pleasant with the aroma of roasted coffee and chocolate. Upon tasting I get more of that roasty, coffee, chocolate character with a hint of dark fruit... plumb or raisin.

The final gravity came in lower than predicted and that is noticeable. Not in the extra alcohol but in the lack of extra sweetness. While the beer does have a sweet aspect it is in no way too sweet. The same can be said of the hops. The hint of hop bitterness is there but not up front. Both malt and hops have found their perfect Goldilocks zone.

This beer is silky smooth going down. The first thing I want before even finishing this pint is to have another. But I will hold off knowing that this beer will get even better given a little bit of time.

Time. Four weeks of time spent on the yeast cake in the primary fermenter. Something that would have been unthinkable when I started brewing 20 years ago. Then again, back then I would have beer expected to transfer this to a secondary fermenter to "clean up" before bottling or kegging and we all know that's a load of bollocks these days don't we.

Gabel Road Cream Ale 3.0

 

A day off from rehearsal on the eve of opening night lends the opportunity to brew some more on my new electric brew system. Which I am now calling the "Gabel Road Brewery". Why not.

The first batch at Gabel Road was a five gallon batch of porter recipe from 1880. Today will be a ten gallon batch of the Cream Ale I began working on last summer. I produced about 40 gallons of it over the course of about 3 months playing with grist combinations and IBU's. Fairly quickly I settled on Lemondrop hops because of the tropical "shandy" like flavor character it produced and everyone who tried it gave it a thumbs up.

As popular as the Lemondrop hops were however I always wondered how Saaz would work? Hoping for a Pilsner/Lager character in my Cream Ale, this is the plan for today's brew! During the planning of the recipe I read that Saaz combines well with Styrian Golding so why not try that too.

Look over the recipe and note the AA (alpha acid) percentage of the hops in the recipe and the predicted IBU then I'll tell you where the wheels came off...

 

I have specific parameters for Cream Ale: the grist should be near 80% base malt with adjuncts, if any, contributing the remaining 20%. The OG should be no higher than 1.050 to 1.052. And the IBU's should be no higher that 20... 18 to 20 IBU being ideal in my estimation. All of these boxes are checked or close enough in the this recipe

The while shopping for ingredients I failed to check the AA percentage on the packages of hops that I bought. Instead of the Styrian Goldings being 5.25 they were 1.8%! And the Saaz were only 2.8% instead of 3.75! I quickly rummaged through the refrigerator crisper drawer where I store hops and yeast (my wife loves that) and found a package of Hallertau at 3.6% AA. That will fit in well with the Pilsner/Lager hops flavor profile I'm after and using those in the bittering addition will boost my IBU to almost 17. Crisis averted but not the end of my problems.

When I first crafted this ten gallon recipe I was using my previous brew rig made of converted 15.5 gallon beer kegs. If you note the boil size at the top of the recipe it is 14.24 gallons of wort into the boil kettle. That barely worked in those keggles but now I'm using 15 gallon stainless steel kettles that have ports punched through the sides near the top... making the effective total volume of them about 13+ gallons.

First came the sound of liquid splashing on the table top. Then came the unavoidable boil-over. And now the realization that I'm leaving behind one and a quarter gallons of wort in the mash tun. What are you going to do? Those are the things you have to contend with when making beer.

With about 30 minutes left in the boil the volume in the kettle had reduced through evaporation and I took a chance and added some of that wort still in the mash tun into the boil kettle. Otherwise I was going to be short of my 11 gallon batch size. When all was said and done I ended up with just under 11 gallons into the fermenter.

Fingers crossed this will come out OK. Here's the video evidence of all that calamity...

1880 Whitbread Porter

The bad news is that I did not brew the Founders Porter clone. That means my Glengarry Glen Ross cast-mates did not get their "Coffee (Is For Closers) Porter. The good news is that I did finally get to brew on my new electric brewery the other day but instead of attempting the Founders clone what I brewed was a nearly 140 year old porter recipe found in Ron Pattinson's blog... or one of his books I can't remember.

The Brew Day!
With a small break in the weather last week and the last of the tweaks finished on my brew system it was time to dive in. Mistakes were made but all of them minor... I miscalculated my strike temperature and my mash began lower than planned. Better to start low and ramp up to the desired temp that start too hot and denature your grains, right. There were ball valves that were not turned on when they should be and others that were left open when they shouldn't. And one or two others which did not affect the outcome of the beer at all. My volumes all ended up where predicted and the gravity readings were only off by a few points (1.053 instead of 1.051 OG) due to me intentionally setting my mash efficiency a bit low for the firs run through.

In the end I finished with 6 gallons of Porter in the fermenter and it is chugging along happily as I write this. The recipe follows but keep reading to watch the video!

The plan is to compare this with the Founders clone recipe and see how they compare with the goal of developing my own "house" porter to keep on hand on a regular basis. Meantime, the "house" ale that I worked on last summer needs to be brewed again soon. I'm thinking that within the next week or two I need to make another batch of my Gabel Road Cream Ale. Until then, here is the video I shot of the 1880 Whitbread Porter session...

Frozen!

It's that time of year in Michigan when snow melts a bit during the day then freezes at night. That's how my garage turned into an indoor skating rink.
The problem is the drain in the floor... it has frozen solid and snow melt is seeping in under the door but  not draining. Then it's freezing solid!

So much for brewing anytime soon.

Brown Ale!

 Ahh Brown Ale! I've always had a soft spot for brown ale. The first beer I had other than Budweiser or Miller as a young man in the late 1970's was a brown ale at a pizza joint in Ann Arbor Michigan. It was served in pitchers and I never learned its name but it was delicious. Any connection I had with big commercial beer was severed at that point.

Many years later my first homebrew equipment kit came with an extract brown ale kit. I made it according to the recipe not know exactly what the hell I was doing. The kitchen smelled wonderful and it turned into beer but it was nowhere near the deliciousness I had experienced all those years ago in Ann Arbor.

Today I read an article Ron Pattinson's blog; Shut Up About Barclay Perkins about a double brown ale brewed by Whitbread in 1939 and my nostalgia kicked into overdrive. My impulse is to brew this right away. But that doesn't fit with my plan for the coming year. I will put it on my list but it will land somewhere below at least three other styles I am working on. (see my resolution post)

You can read all about Whitbread's Double Brown on Ron's blog. It's a very interesting read as are most of his daily posts. I like to brew beers in the 5% ABV range and that's right where this one lands. If Ron doesn't mind I'd like to share his recipe. And for those who are unfamiliar with Ron Pattinson, his recipes are derived from historic brew logs and records from the period.

1939 Whitbread Double Brown Ale
(5 gallon batch. Efficiency unknown)

Grist:
Pale Malt               78%
Crystal 60              20%
Invert Sugar #3        2%

Hops:
Fuggle 75 mins     1.75oz
Golding 30 mins   1.75oz

OG = 1.055
FG = 1.018
IBU = 39
SRM = 18*

Mash at 150°
Boil time is 75 mins
Yeast = Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

*Ron's recipe contains brewers caramel to darken the beer which was commonly done by English breweries but not a product that is easily obtainable to US homebrewers. If you can get some great! If not you can try using Sinamar which is easier to get. Or if you don't mind changing the profile of the beer a tiny bit you can try a small amount of darker malts. Be careful what you add though or you may add unwanted burnt flavors.

edit: upon examination of some other Whitbread Double Brown recipes on Ron's blog I see that some of them used chocolate malt. A 1954 recipe uses a little over 1% in the recipe and a year later in 1955 that has been reduced to 0.55%

I Won't Brew That!

To paraphrase Meatloaf; I would do anything for beer. But I won't brew that. Not that any of these beers are bad or that I "hate" them. They just don't appeal to me. And yes, I have tried them.

• New England IPA's. The ones I've had are just too sweet for my taste.
• Milkshake IPA. I like a good Milk Stout but the Milkshake IPA thing escapes me.
• Wheat beers. As much as I've tried I just can't bring myself to acquire a taste for them.
• Gose. Again, it's something I'd like to like but just haven't gotten there yet. 
• Anything with breakfast cereal, candy, or other nonsense that has no other purpose but to be more outlandish than the last nimrod who made something this spectacularly stupid. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
• Black IPA. C'mon! It's a Stout.

Those are all I can think of at the moment. If I offended too bad.

Let's Brew Founders Porter!

Let's Brew It! - Founders Porter Clone Recipe

Maybe not now or even this weekend but soon I hope to brew this. As laid out in a previous post, my New Years resolution is consistency. To brew small handful of recipes multiple times until I hone my system and process so that every batch of any given recipe tastes just like the one before.

But it is (still) freaking freezing outside! We've come off multiple weeks of winter weather warnings, advisories and polar vortexes. And there is no end in sight.

I've boxed myself into a corner however. I have been cast in a play in our local community theatre. I am in rehearsals for Glengarry Glen Ross and I will portray George Aaronow, the character played by Alan Arkin in the movie version. Our Stage Manager, knowing that I make beer, cornered me into making 5 gallons of something for the opening night cast party. I have a pretty solid idea of what I want to make and it falls right into line with my New Years Resolution.

Number one on that resolution list was a Porter. It only follows that the cast and crew of Glengarry Glen Ross will be sipping on... Coffee (Is For Closers) Porter! If you don't get the reference watch the movie or at least Google it.

With that, here is the recipe I had planned on making all along. A robust Porter which I hope ends up being a clone of my favorite Porter from Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (I don't plan on adding any coffee whatsoever but don't tell my cast mates)

The recipe comes from an email sent by Jeremy Kosmicki, head brewer at Founders Brewing Company. The recipe above was constructed from the information contained in the email. I played around in Beersmith 3 with the percentages and other data provided until I came up with something that fit his description. I am really looking forward to bringing this one to life. Jeremy's email follows...

We use a large percentage of specialty grains in this one… try about 10% Chcolate Malt, 7% Munich, 5% Carapils, and 3% Crystal Dark. I also throw in a little bit of black malt for a slightly burnt character. Mash in around 155-degrees and target and OG between 17 and 18 Plato. We use Nugget hops for bittering and Willamette and Crystal for flavor/finishing hops, targeting 45 IBUs. Ferment with an American Yeast and it should terminate between 5 and 6 Plato, leaving you with 6.5% ABV and a full bodies robust Porter. Good Luck, hope this helps.
Cheers,
Jeremy Kosmicki
Head Brewer
FBC

How do you make beer (if you brew outside) when the actual air temperature is double digits below-zero?

Before I answer that I must back up a few months. When my brand new, still unused, electric brew system arrived archery deer season had just started. For all of October and half of November I was in the woods every free hour that was available. Mid November here in Michigan marks the beginning of firearms deer season. An unofficial state holiday. Of course I took part right to the last day. Archery season picks up again at that point plus a 10 day black powder season so time to shove some powder and lead down the barrel of my Hawken plains rifle and hunt until the new year begins.

That takes me to January and cold weather which has only gotten colder in recent weeks. So cold schools have been shut down for an entire week. So cold salt and de-icer can't work. So cold the United States Post Office stopped delivery for days.

So the answer to the question; how do you make beer when the air temperature is double digits below-zero?
You don't.

Now four whole months have gone by and except for putting together and setting up, I haven't touched my new, expensive, fancy brew system.

PS. The photo above is someone throwing a cup of boiling water into the air where it freezes instantly at those temperatures.

End of the Road!

In 1979 I was going to school at the University of Michigan ~GO BLUE!~ Dearborn campus.

I was in my third year but since day 1 I was involved in the school's radio club. There was no broadcast curriculum at that time but I found myself spending so much time building up this club organization that I knew I had to do something about it. So I left UofM-Dearborn without graduating and enrolled in the nearby Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts not too far down the road.


After completing the 6 month course I was immediately tossed into the world of broadcast radio. And when I say immediately I mean I was on the phone with my first employer arranging a job interview while the commencement speaker at our graduation was still talking. That was on a Wednesday, my interview was two days later on Friday and I was on the air in Bad Axe Michigan 130 miles away.

I was there at WLEW for just 18 months when I ran across a want-ad in Radio And Records Magazine for an opening in nearby Saginaw, Michigan 66 miles to the west. Little did I know when I drove to Saginaw that I was taking a first step into a very long career at one radio station.

A lot has happened in my 40 years in radio. I have met stars, sports figures and politicians. I have interacted with tens of thousands of our listeners. Given away tens of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes during various contests. Helped collect truck loads of relief goods for those in need both near and far. Made lifelong friends and close connections and it all comes to an end in just a few months.

Right now, I can't say I'm going to miss it. Maybe later I will feel that way but I've honestly had my fill. It's time to let someone else drive the bus. Now I can spend more time making beer. I can now grow more than just a small square-foot garden. And oh, did I say can spend more time making beer!

Fullers ESB & London Pride Recipe

Let's do a partigyle. One way to partigyle commonly known by homebrewers is to take just the first runnings of a mash and make a strong beer... then sparge and use the second runnings to produce a second beer of lesser strength sometimes called the small beer.

Then there is how commercial brewers have done it for hundreds of years and that is to take the first runnings, boil and hop it as if it were a single beer. Then take the second runnings (maybe even the third or more) then boil and hop those separately. So far so good and here is where homebrewers would stop calling each gyle a separate beer. But the old way blends those different strength beers into the fermenter at varying percentages to make many different beers. Here is how former Fuller’s brewer Derek Prentice describes the process..."They all share a common malt and hop grist. Dark malts typically will be readily solubilized and hence more prevalent in first worts. Once the wort streams are blended into the fermenter, they will impart unique characteristics into the final beers.”

You may be surprised to learn that some of your favorite beers all come from the same malt bill, hops and mash tun. Another former head brewer from Fullers, John Keeling, explains the beauty of the process... “Parti-gyles are the most efficient way of using a mash tun both in terms of speed and in terms of extract. It is not complicated and is rather simple and elegant.”

Fuller's uses a single grist to produce four distinct beers... London Pride, ESB, Golden Pride and Chiswick Bitter. Those beers even share the same hops. Some of these are blended and some are not.

The two that are not are Fuller's ESB and London Pride. You can make both in the same brew day using the partigyle method common to homebrewers where the first runnings will be your ESB and the second runnings will be London Pride. Or you can brew each one separately. The recipe and details all come directly from John Keeling in an interview conducted by the Brewing Network in 2010.

The recipe is quite simple:
95% Pale Ale Malt
5% Crystal 150
Target hops for bittering
Challenger, Northdown and Goldings hops in the last 5 minutes of the boil. Note that Goldings should be only 5% of the total late addition hops.
English Ale Yeast.

The OG of ESB is around 1.058 with an ABV of 5.9%
London Pride has an OG of 1.047 with an ABV of 4.7%

The color of ESB should be about 16 SRM
London Pride will be around 12 SRM

If you treat your water Mr. Keeling says Fuller's says to use a standard Burton-ization treatment.

A single infusion mash is used at 148 F. Fuller's does not use a mash out. Sparge temp is 168 F. Remember, if you are brewing both using a partigyle method the sparge is to collect the second runnings for your London Pride.

The boil time is a standard 60 minutes and Mr. Keeling says their evaporation rate is 7 to 8%. If you want to get into that level of detail.

While the boil kettle additions of hops are identical for both ESB and London Pride, there are dry hop additions used in ESB but not LP. Keeling stated that ESB is dry hoped in the fermenter and then during conditioning which lasts four weeks. However, he did not say which hops are used or in what amounts.

Both beers are fermented at the same temperatures. Yeast is pitched at about 62 F and then let rise to 68 F. Hold there until half the final gravity is reached. At that point chill back down to 62 F until 1/4 of final gravity. Then they chill it to 42 F and let it stand for 2 days before moving it to conditioning.
If you want to simplify you could pitch at 62 F. Let it rise to 68 and hold it there for up to 4 days and then dry hop for another 2 or thee days. 7 days total primary fermentation. Then cold crash and package.

Once again, you could brew each beer one at a time on separate brew days. Just build a single batch recipe to match the OG, ABV, IBU and SRM's described. However, if you do decide to partigyle start with the ESB recipe below and design so that you get enough wort from each of your runnings for the batch size you choose. My recipe below is for a single 6 gallon batch. I would scale that up for the partigyle.

Note: This recipe includes a bit of black malt to get the color needed. This is perfectly fine because the 2018 Fullers recipe does include a small amount of black malt. An image of the more recent Fuller's recipe is provided below.

Oh, and as for which maltster to use, John Keeling said any English standard pale ale malt that homebrewers have access to will work fine. He says that they have contracts with Muntons, Baird, Simpson and Thomas Fawcett to name a few. Sometimes they use 100% from one maltster and sometimes a blend of two or more. Use whichever is available. Cloning a beer accurately is often more about good brewing technique as much as it is about the specific ingredients.

Fullers ESB
Strong Bitter (11 C)
Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 7.77 gal
Boil Time: 90 min
End of Boil Vol: 6.04 gal
Final Bottling Vol: 5.00 gal Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage
Taste Notes:

Date: 02 Nov 2018 Brewer: Kevin58
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: 01A e5 Gal Ale Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 79.1 % Taste Rating: 30.0

Ingredients

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU	Volume
11 lbs 3.0 oz	Pale Ale Malt, Extra (Simpsons ) (1.8 SRM)	Grain	1	94.0 %	0.87 gal
9.4 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 150L (Bairds) (150.0 ...	Grain	2	4.9 %	0.05 gal
2.0 oz	Black Malt (Simpsons) (845.9 SRM)	Grain	3	1.1 %	0.01 gal
1.00 oz	Target [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	4	36.8 IBUs	-
0.50 oz	Challenger [7.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	5	2.5 IBUs	-
0.50 oz	Northdown [8.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	6	2.8 IBUs	-
0.25 oz	Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	7	0.8 IBUs	-
1.0 pkg	English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) [35.49 ml]	Yeast	8	-	-

Est Original Gravity: 1.059 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.019 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.3 % Bitterness: 42.9 IBUs
Est Color: 17.7 SRM
Mash Name: 03 e Light Body (148F)
Sparge Water: 5.33 gal
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F 

Mash Profile
Total Grain Weight: 11 lbs 14.5 oz Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Target Mash PH: 5.20
Mash Acid Addition: None Sparge Acid Addition: None 

Here is a look at the 2018 log book as posted on Twitter by Hayley Marlor who is a brewer at Fuller's. https://twitter.com/FullersHayley/status/946762356914352133