#16 Americanized Kolsch - Brewday

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

Starter:
Friday (2 days til brewday) I prepped a starter with .4 gal of water and .5 lb of DME.  Everything seems normal, nice clean krausen the next morning and day. Sunday (brewday) the krausen seemed to be just starting to drop.  I don't like adding this much starter volume to a beer (especially a lighter one) because the starter never ferments as clean.  I usually prep the starter earlier and plan a few days to cold crash and settle out the yeast so I can discard the fermented beer, but with such a slow floccing yeast I don't think everything would settle out in a timely fashion.

Brewday:
As of this beer, I am no longer using water from our house.  While the water is definitely safe to drink, it smells and tastes like iron, and has a visible yellowish tint.  I was told it would be "fine" for brewing, but from everything I've read this is certainly not the case.  I think this could have caused played a part in some of my bad early all-grain batches, but the off flavors could have had a variety of causes.  Unfortunately I don't yet know enough about brewing water chemistry to really get the perfect water.  For this batch I'm going to buy distilled water because I know it won't have any contaminants (or any dissolved minerals for that matter), making it a conservative option and a definite improvement over my past water.

The brew proceeded fairly smoothly until it was time to transfer to the fermenter. The wort came out to 5 gal at 1.070 in the kettle after chilling, with 4 gal making it to the carboy. I topped up to around 5 gal, giving an estimated SG of 1.056. I then remembered I had to add the full volume of the starter. Somehow that means it was filled right to the top, with foam pouring over the edge. Don't know where the extra half gallon came from. I used the auto siphon to pump out half a gallon to leave headspace for the krausen and called it good. The OG should still be pretty similar (~1.051), so the 58% efficiency still seems reasonable, but the hops may drop a bit. That's not too much of a deal considering the small change and it was already highly hopped.


Fermentation:
45 sec. of 02 added.  Full yeast starter pitched at 54F.  Temp set to 59F.

3 Days:  Looks like there has been a blowoff.  About a half inch or inch of krausen, hard to tell from Hope's picture.  Though the temp was set to 59F, it looks like it was at 61F due to the thermal mass of the less active pineapple wine in the fridge with it.  Temp bumped to 62F.

1 Week: Temp bumped to 68F.

2 Weeks: Racked onto 2 oz of Simcoe leaf hops.

3 Weeks: Racked to new keg!  Stoked to have this on tap at the apartment.

#15 Pineapple Wine

Recipe     -     Tasting

Every so often inspiration strikes and I come up with a brilliant idea.  Most of the time I wake up the next morning and realize it wasn't as great an idea as I thought.  Sometimes I go ahead and do it anyway.  That's the story of this recipe.

Shortly after I started brewing, I thought it would be really cool to ferment pineapple juice.  I've always thought Caribou Lou sounded tasty until I actually tried it, so this would be an opportunity to improve on that idea and make something potable.  Nobody actually makes anything like this (except one place in Maui) so that's not a good sign, but emboldened by the success of the apple cider, I decided to go for it anyway.  To kick things up a notch (and mirror the Malibu rum) I think I'll age part of this on coconut.  Will it be raw or toasted?  I don't know maybe both.


Pineapple Wine
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal

Ingredients:
5 gal   Pineapple Juice
2 lbs   Corn Sugar (Dextrose)

.35 oz  Raw Flaked Coconut
.35 oz  Toasted Flaked Coconut
.2 oz   Amarillo Hops

4       Campden Tablets
1 tsp   Pectic Enzyme
1 tsp   Yeast Nutrient
1.0 pkg Lalvin 71B-1122

Estimated Cost: $52


I've read that many yeast strains struggle in such an acidic environment.  In fact, I use an acid sanitizer to kill wild yeast and bacteria on my brewing equipment.  This yeast strain is particularly good at fermenting the malic acid in the pineapple, breaking it down into lactic acid (the same kind found in sour beers) and smoothing out the flavor.

I added the campden tablets 24 hrs before the yeast, then the pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient 12 hrs before.


Fermentation:
Yeast rehydrated and pitched at 59F.

3 days: No apparent activity.  It was next to the more active Kolsch, so the fridge dropped the wine's temp to around 58F.  Controller bumped to 62F.

2 weeks: Looks like it had a nice healthy ferment after the bump in temp because of the yeast scum remaining on the glass.  Plenty of thin pulp settled to the bottom of the fermenter on top of the yeast.  Racked to secondary, but only got 4 gal without the lees.  Topped up with almost 1 gal of water to avoid oxidation, but thinking back, this may have been a bad idea, it already tasted great.

Racked onto coconut after a month and a half in secondary.  One gallon on raw coconut, one gallon on toasted coconut, and half a gallon onto .2 oz of amarillo hops.  Because why not.  You can see the degree of toast in the image above.  The rest of the wine was racked into a fresh carboy.  Returned to temperature control at 68F.

Bottled 3/9/14:
I bottled all of the pineapple wine after one week on the adjuncts.  The temperature in the refrigerator go screwed up, so when I went to check on it, it was all the way up to 85F.  This probably increased the flavor extraction, but after the wine chilled it tasted ok, so I doubt it was that big of a deal.  I had planned on blending the different varieties if the coconut was too much, but decided just to let it ride; I didn't get a very good read on them as I was pretty congested and the wine was too warm.  There are only a few bottles of each variety anyway, so we might have to do some blending experiments later to prepare for batch two.  Because I'm pretty sure there will be another.

#16 Americanized Kolsch - Recipe

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

I've spent the last few batches brewing pretty much by the book-- fairly basic recipes for some styles and clone recipes of famous commercial examples for others--but this one is going to be a little bit different.  It's more of the "I think this would be cool to try so I'm going to brew it" variety.  Pull up a chair and let me tell you a story about where this recipe comes from:

Once upon a time (or during Christmas vacation with the family), a man (me), was stranded in the wilderness (or eating lunch in the ski lodge in Idaho) with nothing to drink.  He wandered for days searching for something to parch his thirst (actually they recently remodeled so I did have to search a bit), when at last he stumbled upon a golden chalice...

I was excited to try some Idaho beer; the only one I had had prior was Payette Brewing's Mutton Buster and it was pretty delicious.  Unfortunately there was no more mutton to be busted, so i took the only remaining local option: Galena Gold Ale from Sockeye.  Based on the name I guessed it was just a blonde ale, but turns out it was supposed to be more of a Kolsch.  It wasn't great.  Drinkable sure, Budweiser would have been proud, but not exactly something I would order again.  I started to dream about what I would brew for that occasion and this is what I came up with:

Something cool, clean, crisp and refreshing as the Rocky Mountains (because after all I was in the Rocky Mountains), but with a little more interesting malt character, and a touch of American hops.  Nothing too bitter, but enough hops to dry it out and give it a bit of a piney aroma.  I liked the idea of using the Kolsch yeast to get a nice clean fermentation, and it fit with the alpine theme.  From Cologne, Germany, it is technically an ale strain but ferments well at cooler temperatures like a lager yeast, and produces a similar crisp beer as well.  The malt bill was roughly inspired by Samuel Adams Boston Lager, which I remember as having a nice dry yet malty character, but by the time I brewed I ended up using all different grains.  I didn't want the crystal malts to make it too sweet, so I went with Vienna and wheat for some variety, which turns out similar to an actual Kolschbier.  I have a good stash of Simcoe hops, so I decided it would be good time to do a single hop beer and really get to know Simcoe.  I ended up with a sizable hop load--closer to a pale ale here than a true Kolsch--but weighted towards the end of the boil and dry hop for maximum aroma.  As much as I've learned, this is a bit of a stab in the dark, so we'll see what comes out.  Even if I don't nail the nuances I'm aiming for, I'm sure it will be a great way to end a day of skiing.

Americanized Kolsch
--------------------------
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal
Estimated ABV: 4.7 %
Estimated OG: 1.048 SG
Estimated FG: 1.012 SG
Estimated Color: 4.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 41.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 55.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt          Name                                     %/IBU
7 lbs        Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)           53.8 %
3 lbs        Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)                    23.1 %
3 lbs        White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)               23.1 %
0.30 oz      Simcoe [14.40 %] - Boil 60.0 min         13.6 IBU
1.00 oz      Simcoe [14.40 %] - Boil 20.0 min         27.4 IBU
1.70 oz      Simcoe [14.40 %] - Boil 0.0 min          0.0 IBU
1.0 pkg      German Ale/Kolsch (White Labs #WLP029)   -
1.50 oz      Simcoe [14.10 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days      0.0 IBU

Mash Schedule: BIAB, 148F
Total Grain Weight: 13 lbs
Estimated Cost: $23.71

#11 Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout Clone - Tasting

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

I always get impatient for my bottles to carbonate and inevitably pop one open before it's ready.  It's interesting to see how the flavor changes as the carbonation changes--and with this beer it was especially apparent--but I frequently regret it.  After only two weeks in the bottle it was still almost completely flat and tasted like root beer.  I have no idea where that flavor came from (yeast maybe?), but it was very prominent.

As the beer continued to carbonate, the root beer flavor faded.  However, as I mentioned in the bottling notes, I miscalculated the priming sugar so this took awhile.  I intended to make it pretty carbonated, so the smaller dose of priming sugar it ended up being okay.  English beer--like oatmeal stout--tends to have lower carbonation levels anyway.

Besides changing the mouthfeel, carbonation also liberates aromas from the beer, carrying them to your nose and mouth.  Once this stout fully carbonated, one such aroma was a faint smokiness that was hidden before.  It's a pleasant woody smokiness--not rubbery like the IPA last summer--which works well in a dark beer like this, but not what I intended.  Since I had no smoked malt in the recipe, it is probably coming from the toasted oats that I didn't let sit as recommended.

Overall, I'm happy with how this beer turned out.  There are no major off flavors that detract from the beer, just some things that didn't go as planned.  It's a little thinner and drier than what you would expect from an oatmeal stout, but still an enjoyable beer in its own way.