Hefeweizen was one of the first styles I was exposed to when I first started exploring good beer at the Iron Hill in Newark, Delaware. It’s a sweet German wheat beer brewed with a strain of yeast that produces lots of banana and clove flavors. This particular strain does not readily settle out of suspension, and the beer is served unfiltered, giving hefeweizen a cloudy appearance and a thick, bready body. It’s a great springtime beer, but the big body and above-average alcohol (depending on the brewer) make it less suitable for hot summer days, making it more appropriate at sunset. Or, well, sunrise, too. I’m not here to judge.

We got adventurous again with this recipe. We’d wanted to explore dried fruit for a while, so we’ll be adding raisins and dried cranberries to the beer during a two-week secondary fermentation. We’ll then transfer the beer to a tertiary fermenter, wringing the raisins and cranberries out to reclaim all of the beer that gets absorbed into them, and age it with orange peel and a lot of coriander. There’s going to be a big danger of oversweetening the beer with all of that fruit, so we’re using a bit more bittering hops than you’d normally see in a hefe (actually, we’re doubling it).

3 May 2009
Hefe the ORC
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
4.0 lbs Wheat Malt Extract (60 min)
2.o lbs Orange Blossom Honey (15 min)

0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (15 min)
0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (1 min)

1.0 lbs Raisins
1.0 lbs Dried cranberries

2.0 oz Sweet orange peel
2.0 oz Crushed coriander

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs Hefeweizen Ale yeast (WLP380)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Turn off heat, add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add 60 minute hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add orange blossom honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add 15 minute hops.

At 1 minute, add 1 minute hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer over raisins and dried cranberries to secondary fermenter. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to tertiary fermenter. Recover raisins and cranberries from secondary fermenter and squeeze absorbed beer into tertiary fermenter. Add orange peel and coriander. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 weeks.

The hopping schedule is needlessly complicated because we had a bunch of leftover hops that we just wanted to use up. Normally you’d just use something neutral like Sterling for all of your hopping.

We weren’t able to find dried cranberries that did not have added sugar. You may have better luck, but after consulting with our adviser, we concluded that the small amount of sugar on the cranberries would have no significant impact.

You might be wondering why we’re adding the coriander after fermentation is complete instead of during the boil. We’ve boiled it in the past, but the flavor has always been nonexistent in the final result. We’re guessing that the coriander flavors are volatile enough to be carried away by the CO2 released during primary fermentation, so we’re going to wait until all of that destructive effervescence is done first.

This will be a HUGE morale boost for us if it’s successful. Our previous attempts at getting a little trippy with our recipes have been a bit disappointing, but we have a really good feeling about this one. Neither one of us is especially crazy about adhering too strictly to the established styles, though we certainly understand how important it is to know them to give you a metric to hone your skills against. I guess this is just what happens when you put two creatives together and tell them to have fun. We could fart out a Reinheitsgebotized hefe if we wanted to, because proven recipes are so easy to come by, but isn’t it a bigger test of skill if you can make a train cross the continent without even touching the rail?

Regardless, we’ve got a pound of crow ready to roast if this does end up exploding in our faces.

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So I decided to take a walk on the tame side, and write a recipe for a beer that didn’t have 18 adjuncts, 5 varieties of hops, and a tribal good luck dance. I went easy this time, and this is where it got us:

1.040 OG; 1.012 FG; 3.7% ABV; 30 IBU

Appearance: Slightly hazy golden orange with a foamy white head.

Nose: Slight grass and citrus, some fruity sweetness; overall very subtle and inviting.

Taste: Very balanced and refreshing. Some caramel and fruit sweetness mixed with citrusy hop bitterness. Toasty.

Mouthfeel: Very smooth, medium bodied. Leaves the tongue fairly dry.

Overall: Extremely refreshing while still having a nice malt heft to it. We’re both really happy with how the kölsch came out, and enjoy the subtly and the interplay between the sweetness and bitterness.

I’m glad I scaled things down a bit and just tried to conform to a style. Ray thinks we nailed it, but I have slight reservations after comparing with a bottle of Reissdorf Kölsch, which is supposed to be a standard example of the style and is much lighter colored and crisper than ours. Our version is probably darker because we use malt extract (an all-grain version probably would have been lighter), and I think lagering the beer for a month or two would have also put us closer to the reference beer. Nonetheless, I know Ray has been enjoying it, and Steph and Tim paid it high compliments this past weekend. Can’t beat that!

I just realized we didn’t take a picture of the kölsch, and both of us are already half-way through our pints. Hopefully you’ll forgive me and I can post a picture later … maybe an action shot!

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Our Hoppy Dubbel experiment proved to be another case of the end result not matching the original vision, while still being successful in its own right. We were going for a hoppier and slightly lighter version of the classic Belgian style dubbel, but came out with what I would probably call a Belgian amber ale.

1.046 OG; 1.006 FG; 5.3% ABV; 23 IBU

Appearance: Brownish, reddish orange; very clear. Foamy, off white head.

Nose: Fresh and floral, with a hint of fruit and a nice balance of caramel malt.

Taste: Very balanced. Slight hop bitterness with subtle spicy hop flavors, complemented by hints of caramel. A subtle chocolatey finish emerges as the beer warms up.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, dry, and very clean. Leaves a tingling on the side of the tongue that says, “Yeah, drink some more.”

Overall: “Wildly refreshing,” as Mel put it. This is definitely a very satisfying quaff, and we can’t deny that hit our goal of making a hoppier and lighter dubbel. There is nothing but success in this beer.

Nevertheless, I feel like we took it too far from the base style. The use of saison yeast in particular was a big mistake. There are almost no fruity esters or residual sweetness whatsoever, which, yeah, we should have expected that. There is some chocolate there, but not enough. Same goes for caramel. Next time, I’d like to see a darker, smoother beer. We’d probably double the doses of chocolate and caramel malts, and switch to a Trappist yeast strain.

Regardless, Mel is correct in her adamance that we made a good beer here. It’s delicious and refreshing, perfect for springtime. The only complaint I have is that there isn’t enough “dubbel” there, and that’s easy to fix.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

I’m sure a number of you do not have fond childhood memories of bee stings. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of them are horrifying, or at least they were when you were 5.

Nevertheless, I have come to terms with bees — in spite of being stung numerous times. I don’t plan on going all “Lil’Kim Queen Bee” anytime soon, but the reality is that my name — Melissa — is Greek for “honeybee.”

Couple my newfound interest in bees with the recent March/April BYO article I read — “Club Profile: Barossa Brewers Club” — I came across Barossa Valley Brewing’s Bee Sting, which is a honey wheat beer. The name inspired me, and I wanted to make my own Bee Sting Ale, not a clone. I came up with the idea of focusing on the “bee” and the “sting.” For the bee, I wanted to use honey to bring about a dry sweetness, and for the sting, I wanted something with zip — leading me to choose the peppery, earthy seeds of paradise. And there you have it!

12 April 2009
Bee Sting Ale
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

5.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
2.0 lbs Orange Blossom Honey (15 min)

Specialty Grains:
0.5 lbs Crystal Malt 15L

1.0 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (60 min)
1.0 oz Amarillo Hops [8.2% AA] (15 min)
3.0 g Seeds of Paradise, crushed (5 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Heat to 155°F.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat, add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add Chinook hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add orange blossom honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add Amarillo hops.

At 5 minutes, add seeds of paradise

Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

So far the beer has a wonderful flavor, with Chinook’s grapefruit coming out to play with the Amarillo’s citrus notes. When we racked the beer we noticed that the zip of the seeds of paradise wasn’t quite there yet, so we created a seeds of paradise extract to be added when we bottle (We’ll update the recipe here once we know how much extract is needed). Honestly, I’m happy with the sample I had after racking, but it’s not a true representation of my idea of a bee sting — it’s all bee, and not enough sting. I think the extract will help us bring up the sting, while still being refreshing.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes 4 Comments »

After trying to summon my inner Dogfish Head and it not quite working (not Sam’s fault … just mine and my inability to differentiate between 8 oz by weight and 8 oz by volume), I decided that my next recipe would be a little simpler and more classic.

15 March 2009
Sweetheart Kölsch
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
2.0 lbs Wheat Dried Malt Extract (60 min)

2.0 oz Vanguard Hops [54.4% AA] (60 min)
1.0 oz Sterling Hops [6% AA] (5 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs German Ale/Kölsch Yeast WLP029

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter two days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to a boil. Turn off heat and add liquid and dry malt extracts while stirring.

Bring back to a boil. Add Vanguard hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 5 minutes, add Sterling hops

Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

Originally, since I like being witty and giving things weird names, I wanted to come up with an alliterative name for the kölsch. I had already come across one named Kölnnel Klink Kölsch, which I thought was pretty darn klever (ha! I crack myself up). The closest I came was calling my brew the Kurnitz Kölsch, after Grandma Kurnitz, the character I played in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. However, Grandma Kurnitz is extremely bitter and harsh, and that’s not what I was going for in my kölsch, so I renamed it the Sweetheart Kölsch, under the guise that you would share a bottle or two with your sweetheart. Collective “Aw!” on the count of 3 … 2 … 1 … oh nevermind. Back to the beer.

We just recently bottled this beer, so a tasting post should be around the bend in a week or two. My hope is that this beer is balanced and refreshing. Sure, it might not make you fall off your seat with a burst of flavor, but at least you’ll stay seated with no beer spilled.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes 5 Comments »

Y’know, maybe this simple recipe malarkey is overrated. Let’s get creative again.

I am (in)famous within our social circle for my love of all beers Belgian — quite a shame, I’m sure you can agree, thanks to the vulgarity of it.

Belgian-style Dubbel is a dark amber ale, a bit on the strong side (up to 7.5% ABV), and usually sweet and fruity, often sporting subtle plum and dried fruit notes, with just a touch of roasted malt to round the whole thing out. Hop character is generally subdued, providing a careful balance against the malt.

Sass that, I thought to myself when I started to write this recipe. Spring would be arriving by the time this beer was ready, so I knew we were going to be in the mood for a nice hoppy quaff. Bearing that in mind, I decided it might be fun to take the plummy sweetness and hints of chocolate found in a Dubbel and see how they would play against a bit more hop bitterness and some pronounced spicy hop flavor and aroma. On the same vein, with the weather warming up, a high gravity beer would become less and less satisfying with each passing day, so we targeted a lower starting gravity of about 1.050 instead of the usual 1.060 – 1.070 range.

Vanguard and Sterling both impart a pleasant hop spice to a beer, so those were our first choices. Our goal with the hops was to have a fairly pronounced flavor and aroma, but without too much bitterness, so you’ll notice our early hop additions are pretty light.

As for malt, pilsner malt extract tends to result in a very light body and color with a bit of residual sweetness. Some candi sugar should dry that out. Meanwhile, we’ll also add some Caravienne for its caramel, Special Roast for its nutty biscuit flavors and deep orange color, and Chocolate for its roasty cocoa character and a bit more color. In the end, we should end up with a lot of malt complexity for such a light bodied beer, backing up some strong hop notes.

This was also our first dry hopped beer. Dry hopping involves adding hops to a finished beer and letting them steep cold for a week or two. This adds a very distinct hop aroma. “Dry Hop” is also the name of my Rock Band band.

31 January 2009
Hoppy Dubbel
5 gallons, 30 minute steep, 60 minute boil

5.00 lbs Pilsner Malt Extract (60 min)
1.00 lbs Belgian Candi Sugar Amber (60 min)

Specialty Grains:
0.50 lbs Caravienne Malt
0.50 lbs Special Roast
0.25 lbs Chocolate Malt

0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (60 min)
0.75 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (15 min)
0.75 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (15 min)
0.75 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (dry hop)
0.75 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (dry hop)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs Belgian Style Saison Ale Yeast Blend (WLP 568)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter at least three days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Heat to 155°F.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat, add malt extract and candi sugar while stirring. Continue stirring until candi sugar is dissolved.

Bring to a boil. Add bittering hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, add flavor hops.

Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion, starting at 65 – 70°F and allowing the temperature to rise to 80 – 85°F over two to three weeks.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Add dry hops. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

The yeast in this recipe is notoriously fickle. Saison yeast tends to take several days to start working, and will sometimes stop dead in its tracks after a week only to start up again another week later. The key with these idiots is patience. I’m not talking long red light patience here, either. More like airport security line the Friday after Thanksgiving patience. Take gravity readings every day after the first week. If the fermentation stops before it should, leave it be. It should wake up again. You might try pointing a space heater at the fermenter to get the yeast riled back up. If there’s a lot of sediment, it also can’t hurt to gently stir the beer with the handle of your (sanitized!) brewing spoon, but be careful to avoid splashing so you don’t introduce any oxygen into the beer (there should be a blanket of CO2 over the beer anyway, so don’t worry if a little bit of splashing occurs).

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We’ve been meaning to do the tasting session for our Dry Irish Stout for a while, and time was running out because the beer has been something of a hit — we went through quite a few bottles serving it to family at our engagement party. I don’t imagine we have many more than seven or eight bottles left by now.

So, to the task at hand:

1.034 OG; 1.016 FG; 2.4% ABV; 31 IBU

Appearance: Pitch black. Fluffy, blackish-brown head.

Nose: Sharply roasty and nutty, backed by a fruity sweetness.

Taste: Very roasty. Hints of chocolate. Assertive coffee notes. A lingering black bitterness, balanced by caramel and fruit.

Mouthfeel: Light-to-medium body. Smooth in the mouth, yet dry after swallowing.

Overall: A great surprise. Satisfying and thirst quenching. The big coffee notes and the subtle fruity ester and caramel flavors really blend together well. It reminds me of Kona, actually.

I really felt like I was flying blind when I wrote this recipe, especially grain-wise. Neither of us knew a whole lot about roasted barley and malts, so I’m glad it didn’t turn out that I overdid it with them.

Do any of you out there have attenuation issues with your stouts and porters? ‘Cause this was two in a row that under-attenuated. We were shooting for 75% and ended up a little more than 50%. Maybe this was a good thing, though; according to one of our brew buddies, when she and her husband have made dry stout and gotten it to attenuate all the way, it’s tasted much too dry when carbonated instead of being kegged on nitro, whereas ours tastes great despite not having finished. Just thought I’d ask.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 3 Comments »

Our last three or four brews were a bit… out there. Successful, mind you, but generally inspired by muses who like their jobs too much.

And so, we dialed it back a notch for our January brew session, creating a recipe for a low alcohol dry Irish stout.

4 January 2009
Dry Irish Stout
5 gallons, 30 minute steep, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Ultralight Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)

Specialty Grains:
1.0 lbs Black Roasted Barley
0.5 lbs Black Patent Malt
1.0 lbs English Brown Malt
0.5 lbs Crystal Malt 75L

2.0 oz British Kent Goldings Hops [5.7% AA] (60 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs Irish Ale Yeast WLP004

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter two days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Heat to 155°F.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat, add malt extract while stirring.

Bring to a boil. Add hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

Chill wort to below 80°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 65 – 70°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

Easy, hands-off boils like this one are so refreshing.

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Ah. My first attempt at recipe writing. I wanted something bold, something rich, something dessert-like. But before I pick it apart myself, let’s look at our tasting notes:

1.057 OG; 1.020 FG; 4.9% ABV; 38 IBU (obviously the beer is a bit more bitter because IBU refer to alpha acid bitterness, and the cocoa added its own bitterness)

Appearance: Practically black with a latte colored, thick head. Decent head retention.

Nose: Hint of raspberry, unfortunately it’s a tad too artificial. Some alcohol. Woody bitterness.

Taste: The raspberry blooms in the middle of the sip — still too artificial. Roasty and woody bitterness. Hint of chocolate masked by the bitterness, which lingers.

Mouthfeel: Smooth, coats the tongue.

Overall: The flavors we’re going for are there, but a lot of it gets lost in the bitterness of the cocoa powder. Needs a bit more [real] raspberry flavor. Not great, but good, and easy to improve.

I’d like to work with this recipe again, or at least one similar to it. On the second round, I would use raspberries, not extract — for me, there is just something a bit too artificial about the extract punching your taste and olfactory senses in their nads. We also misread the recipe and used way too much cocoa. In my notes, I should have explicitly written that we needed to use 8 oz of cocoa by volume, but we used 8 oz of cocoa by weight. Trust me, that made a big difference in the finishing bitter.

Nevertheless, I’m happy I got the chance to be wildly experimentative with my first brew. Quite honestly, I think it’s humbled me and taught me that mastering classic, solid styles might be a better idea first, which we kept in mind when we brewed my second recipe this month. I’m excited. I kept it very clean, very balanced, and no crazy ingredients. Stay tuned!

Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

We were on the moon, all right? Hey! Apple Ale! Boy this sure is yummy! Let’s see how we did!

1.061 OG; 1.012 FG; 6.5% ABV; 19 IBU

Appearance: Thick, fluffy, off white head. Reddish brown and almost opaque.

Nose: Apple apple apple. Crisp, tart, and cidery, with just a little bit of caramel maltiness.

Taste: Apple apple apple and malt malt malt. The hop bitterness perfectly balances the sweetness of the caramel malts and the tartness of the apples.

Mouthfeel: Dry, crisp, and refreshing. Medium bodied. Syrupy, but without clinging to the tongue.

Overall: Though it never forgets that it is indeed a beer, our Winter Red Apple Ale is seriously appley, which it had better be — It’s 2/5 cider and infused with five pounds of apples, after all.

Unfortunately, the spices didn’t come through as much as we’d hoped. I can spot the nutmeg if I’m looking for it, but the cinnamon, ginger, and coriander aren’t prominent enough. Maybe we’ll make a spice extract next time or steep the spices in the secondary fermenter, since the boiling tactic obviously didn’t work out.

Even without all of the spices, though, the big blast of apple and caramel really snaps the tastebuds to attention. It’s fun and playful, and if our respective families’ testimonies can be trusted, it’s also an excellent gateway beer. We’re calling this a winner.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 2 Comments »