Lagering

Just a quick update for today: I'm fermenting my Doppelbock at 50 degrees in my skeezy garage lager fridge. It had a nice fermentation going just 7-9 hours after yeast was added. I did do a stepped yeast starter for this one.

I have an old analog temp probe along the outside of the fridge to keep temps even. I plan to let this go until fermentation slows, then raise up for a diacetyl rest at 67-69 for a day or two. Then I'll transfer to a secondary and lager at 34 for a month or so. Serious delayed gratification on this beer!

Whiskey!

So this is not a beer post, but is related to beer!  This tasty treat comes to Minnesota for the first time from New Holland, maker of great beers including Dragon's Milk.  I first tried this at the Happy Gnome New Holland beer dinner last month and was blown away by how drinkable this spirit is.  Very powerful vanilla notes, and quite smoothly sippable.  I'm just getting into Scotch and whiskeys and this is a great one for the newbie.  This bottle was from the Four Firkins and is one of the few non-beer items they carry.

The copy from New Holland's website is this:  "Zeppelin Bend Straight Whiskey is a culmination of New Holland’s brewing roots and a growing passion for distilling. A straight-malt whiskey, it begins with a brewer’s mash coaxing sugars from malted barley into a liquid wash. This wash is twice distilled and aged in new American oak with a heavy char. Notes of vanilla and clove arise from the slightly caramelized spirit leading to a classic American-oak finish."

I would agree with the description entirely.  I would love to try some of their other Whiskeys if they become available here.  I do have a bottle of the gin they make and will review at a later time.

Double Decoction

As a homebrewer, one of the holy grail styles to be able to brew correctly is a German doppelbock using a decoction mash.  Yesterday I attempted this epic feat. 

For most beer styles you add hot water to the crushed grain and let it mash for an hour or so while the starches in the gain are converted into usable brewing sugars.  In this day and age most of the grains we use are highly modified, meaning they have enough inherent enzymes to do this conversion on their own.  If you are using a large amount of adjunct (corn, rice) or older style European pilsner malts you may need to do some fancier footwork to get all the sugars out of them.  This is where the decoction method arose.  By boiling part of the grain/water mix you can break down some of those starches mechanically and then add back to the whole mash for easier conversion.  The boiling will also encourage the Maillard reaction of browning, resulting in more complex flavors that are difficult to get in other ways.  I attempted a Doppelbock recipe a few years ago that skipped this decoction process, but had several judges in competitions pick up on that lack of complexity and mouthfeel that comes from decoction.

For my Skelator Doppelbock I modified Gordon Strong's recipe from his new book Brewing Better Beer. 

5.25# Dark Munich
5.25# Light Munich
5.5# Weyerman floor malted pilsner
1# Carapils
1# Caramunich
1# Caravienne
0.5# Crystal 80 (English)
1.6 oz Crystal Hops 2.8%AA at 60 min
1.25 oz Tettnang Hops 3.7%AA at 30 min

1) Protein rest at 124 degrees for 25 minutes by regular infusion of warm water.
2) Recirculation of wort to get up to 144 degrees for 20 minutes.  Might be tough is your system can't recirculate or direct fire your pot.
3) First Decoction!  Thick mash:  Scooping out about 1/3 of the mash and boiling it for 15 minutes.  Stir pretty constantly to prevent scorching.  I did do a slightly thinner mash than usual, which can make this step easier.

4) Add the boiled mash back into the mash tun.  The goal was to get this to 154 degrees for 45 minutes.  I came out a bit low and had to recirculate a bit to get up to the right temp.
5) Second Decoction!  Thin mash:  Run out about 1/3 of the wort (3 gallons) into the kettle and boil for 15 minutes.  Sometimes you will do a triple decoction where you basically repeat the first decoction step.  Lighter beers like pilsners and hefe will often just use this type of thin mash decoction.



6) Add this back into the mash tun to get to a mash-out temp of 170.

7) Sparge as normal to rinse all the sugars out of the grain and into your boil kettle (about 30-45 minutes.)

8) Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops per recipe above.

9) OG is 1.094

All in all this added about 1 1/2-2 hours to my brew day, but everything seemed to go well.  I hit most of my temps, or was able to fix it easily.  The recipe call for this being a 5 gallon batch with 70% efficiency, but I did a 6 gallon and hit all my gravity numbers.  My efficiency is around 78% typically and hit that perfectly here.  The proof of how usefull all this extra work is will not come until the fermentation is done and the beer is tasted.  The suspense is tough!  I will post about the next few stages of the process.





Tap Handles May Be Out Of Control

With the plethora of amazing craft brews out there these days, there come a corresponding amount of wicked looking tap handles.  I started my collection even before I had a functioning kegerator, with a Shell's Snowstorm handle several years back.  More recently I discovered the wonders of ebay and the availability of many cool tap handles that are not commercially available.  I'm sure Sj wishes I had not discovered this.  Actually she has been very permissive of my collecting habit, with the caveat that they are displayed tastefully.  And that I get rid of the Magic Hat neon pink Lucky Cat handle that she hates.  Yes, I can make that sacrifice for the ability to do the above display in the basement.  I also have space on 6 taps for more handles to function as they are supposed to.

So the wonderful guys who finished our basement designed these awesome shelves that match our window trim in the basement!  They have a wooden dowel poking up to fit the base of the handles.  There is some variability in the bases of the handles, so some fit better than others, but with ingenuity, (and electrical tape,) one can make them fit snugly.  I'm really impressed with the way this looks.  My current favorite handle is the Dogfish Head rotating handle on the second shelf--that thing is a work of art!

So if you the reader happen to have easy access to cool handles, I'd love to expand the collection!

Nationals Update

Since this is the first time I've attempted to put beers into the National Homebrew Competition, I figured I'd chronical all the cheers and tears associated with the process.  About a month ago the judging for first round took place in the basement of a shady VFW, (but thanks to those guys for allowing us to judge there!)  I helped judge several flights and since I'm a light-weight had to have Sj come pick me up...in St. Paul.  Big categories with up to 14 beers judged by each table, the cap on the total for our region was 750 beers.

Just this last week I recieved notice, first by e-mail then by snail mail of my placings.  The actual score sheets and places were actually released earlier so there was no huge suprise here.  Two of my beers are going on to second round, which will take place at the National Homebrewer's Conference in Seattle in late June.  I recieved these ribbons and certificates in the mail.  Interestingly, the certificates are based on your score, and not the place of the beers.  Front and center in the above pic is my Gold Certificate for my Imperial stout with a score of 39--yet that one didn't even go on to second round!  I'm thinking of wallpapering my basement walls with these, since I'll probably get more in future years...

Next step is mailing three bottles of both my beers that placed.  This will include the last three bottles of one batch and I'm finding it hard to give them up!  There are quite a few concerns with shipping beers: how much trauma and shaking will occur; will they break or leak; will they sit in a hot warehouse or truck for two days before delivery; etc.  I'm leaning towards sending them second day or next day to minimize the time in transit, but that will not be cheap.  When the competition was held in Minnesota, this would have been so much easier, but I wasn't comfortable competing with the big guys at that point in my brewing career. 

Once my beers make it to Seattle, they will be judged for the final round.  With 10 regions all sending in about 750 beers, they came out with nearly 8000 beers total for the first round.  The top three beers in each category then move on to second round, making my odds about 1 in 30 for each of my beers in that round.  I'll have to wait until the Awards Banquet on Saturday the 23rd of June to find out if I have The Stuff.  Luckily I do get to go to NHC this year, so I will be present to enjoy the anticipation!  I've got several other friends with beers going on to second round that I can cheer for too.

Sour Tasting

Jack Of All Brews organized its very first commercial sour tasting for this last Saturday.  Andrew and Janelle were kind enough to host in their wonderful back yard and furnish us with plenty of cheeses, breads, crackers, meats, and of course sour beers!  This was a pretty laid-back and small group, but the day was perfect and there were plenty of amazing beers to share amongst those present.  You can see the grape vines and garden in the background of the picture above, also ripe with plenty of gooseberries and future raspberries for future brewing endeavors.

Let us talk beers.  Andrew cracked two beers from The Bruery:  Filmishmish (subtle apricot,) and Oude Tart (amazing Belgian Red.)  I wish we could get this brewery's beers here in Minnesota, as they also make the best Imperial stout I've ever had.  One of my favorites of the day was Goose Island's Lolita, seeming much more complex with raspberry than I remember it from last year's batch.  I think my personal favorite was Odell Friek, a combination of cherry and raspberry with just a hint of sweetness.

Two sour golden ales were opened, including TPS Report from Trinity and New Glarus R&D, both very refreshing and tart.

All the way from Italy came the Panil Barriquee from 2008 (thanks Steven!)  Aged in cognac barrels, this beer was sweet with hints of dark fruit.

Then we get some real Belgian beers!  Goudenband from Liefmans was very smooth and had some fruity complexity, almost coming off as a sour dark strong.  For something truly unique we tried the Cantillon Mamouche, golden and light, made with elderflowers.    Also from Cantillon was an aggressively sour gueuze Cuvee des Champions, with  black pepper and parmesan cheese notes.  Better than it sounds!  Another of that style was the rare Girardin Black Label.

Our least favorites of the day were the Monstre Rouge which tasted somewhat sweet and hoppy, and the HaandBryggeriet Wild Thing.  The Wild Thing was very strongly phenolic with hints of bandaid and smoke, also lots of black chunks.  Not a big fan.  Stick with Sahti you crazy Norwegians!

The foods and fruits we had to clear the palate certainly changed the character of these beers.  The brie and blue cheese were the biggest hits.  

We need to do this again next year with a bigger showing, more people means more beers to try.  I'm hoping we can get to try some of Andrew's sours that are currently in process, especially ones made with the dregs of yesterday's winners!

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