20th Brew-versary Extravaganza!

This post is one part of a two-part piece (the other being a video) I've put together as part of my 20th anniversary as a home brewer - a milestone I hit a few weeks ago - December 5, 2016 to be exact.

To celebrate this milestone I set myself three goals - to prepare a video looking back on 20 years of brewing (embedded below, or available at my youtube page), to brew a 20% ABV beer to drink on my 20th brew-versary (recipe/brewday here, detailed brewing and tasting notes below the fold), and the biggest challenge of them all - I rebrewed the first beer I ever made, applying my 20 years of experience, to see if I could make a palatable version of that venerable brew (the brewing of which can be found in the video embedded below, tasting notes to follow sometime in early 2017).

Ironically, somewhere along the line I lost track of the true date of my brew-versary, and in many previous posts listed it as December 9...turns out the true first brew day was on a loose-leaf piece of paper jammed in the back of my old log book - a page I found with only weeks to spare, and containing a completely different (yet equally cheap) canned-malt kit beer.

If you don't want to listen to me ramble on for 20-ish minutes about brewing, that take home from my retrospective video is:

1. The on-line brewing community has grown dramatically, and for the better.
2. Ingredients are better and more plentiful.
3. Equipment and techniques have evolved, generally for the better.

Without further ado, the video...

Brewing and tasting notes for the 20% beer can be found below the fold...I'll post a followup detailing my attempt at re-brewing my first beer early in 2017.

Tasting notes - 2.5 Years of Gnarly Roots

As I have written about several times in the past, I am a fan of long-aging beers and the evolution of flavours that aging brings upon these beers (posts 1, 2, 3). Indeed, one of the earlier homebrew's I discussed on my blog was the brewing of the Gnarly Roots Barley Wine - a classic barely wine recipe from Charlie Pappazian's Hombrewers Companion, which has the notable feature of also being a funky beer that is aged with B. bruxellensis and B. lambicus.

This beer is very nearly 2.5 years old (specifically, it is 890 days, AKA 2 years, 5 months and 7 days old). I've posted two tasting notes about this beer previously - one at bottling, when the beer was ~7 months old, and a second when the beer was ~1.5 years old. Over that time the beer began t age nicely; the original strong bitterness had begun to fade, classical aged flavours (sherry, caramel) had begun to form, and some hints of Brettanomyces had begun to emerge. Its been almost another year since I posted the last set of tasting notes, and its time for a new one, as I think the beer is finally nearing its peak.

Appearance: The beer pours a bright coppery-red, crystal clear, with a soapy white head. But you have to pour carefully - proteins are beginning to precipitate out, meaning a poor pour leaves the beer cloudy, with noticeable chunks at the bottom of the glass. This loss of protein (plus the 12.8% alcohol) causes the head to be short-lived, although a thin ring persists around the edge of the glass until the end of the pint.

Aroma: Malt sweetness dominates, complemented with with a pleasant blend of sherry and fruit notes. A subtle funk is present in the background, as is a slight alcohol note.

Flavour: The beer has achieved a fantastic balance - the extreme hop bitterness of the young beer has faded, while the sherry and caramel notes typical of aged beers have become the dominant flavours. As the beer warms a fruit character emerges - a mix of classical English fruitiness plus some bretty-stone fruit. In the background is a small hint of leathery funk, lending a subtle refinement to the flavour. There is almost no alcohol heat, and no fusel hotness at all. It is amazing how this initially unbalanced beer has achieved such a great balance of complex flavours, through nothing more then time in the cellar. The aftertaste itself is one of lingering sweetness and a subtle leatheriness.

Mouthfeel: The body of the beer is medium, but is fading as the brett continues to slowly consume the remaining dextrans - also resulting in an increase in carbonation, with the beer now quite effervescent. While above what is normal for a barley wine, the prickling sensation of this higher carbonation accentuates a slight alcohol burn in the aftertaste - the only real indication you get that this beer is over 12% in strength.

Overall: This beer embodies everything about aged beers that I enjoy - a continual building of complex flavours, ever changing balance between flavours, and a unique character that cannot be replicated through any process other then long aging. This is a beer for sipping; good for a quiet afternoon on the deck (or, in winter, in front of a fire), where you can take the time to enjoy the complexity of the beer and the changes in flavour that emerge as the beer warms. It was a fair bit of work to get it to this point, and only half the batch remains, but the end product was well worth the effort and wait.

Ambrosio, The Fallen Monk

This post is the ultimate post (minus the inevitable tasting notes & updates which will follow over the upcoming months and years) in my Brewing Vintage Beers Series. Today's beer is  a Belgian Septuppel, which is the closest number I could come up with that matches the normal Belgian beer-naming scheme*. What is this oddity? It is a strong Belgian Dark Strong (aka a Quad) fermented to at least 20% ABV, and potentially 2-3% beyond that.

* An analysis of over 80 Belgian Enkels, Dubbels, Tripels and Quads reveals that commercial brew "names" follow the formula %_vol = [4.0296 * 1.3559^%vol]. I.E. a 20% beer would be:
20% = [4.0296 * 1.3559^Bel], where Bel = 1/2/3/etc (Enkel, Dubbl, Tripel, etc)

My new eHLT in action
(in my under-construction video
studio - AKA laundry room)

Why would anyone do such a thing? For me, there is two reasons. The minor reason being that while I've brewed mead's that pushed up close to 20%, I've never hit or exceeded this strength. Its a completely arbitrary, and yet almost mystical threshold. What lies beyond that I do not know - perhaps beer nirvana, more likely a really bad hangover, but either way I want to see what is one the other side.

The main reason is a bit different - December 9th, 2016 will mark the 20th anniversary of my first brewday. I though it would be nice to have a beer whose ABV was at least as large as the years leading up to the anniversary. To make sure this happens I have over-designed the beer; assuming it attenuates as I expect I should get a beer at 22-23%, but I suspect I may not get quite that much attenuation, and as such, I've hedged my bet. I'm brewing it now since I'm certain its going to emerge from the primary as a fusel, ester and phenolic mess, but with roughly 20 months of aging ahead of it, it should have turned into something really nice on time for 12/9/2016.

To get to that mystical 20% I'm using every trick in the fermenting high gravity beer playbook. Multiple yeast additions, holding back the ~20% of fermentables that are sugar until a day or two into primary ferment, multiple yeast additions, multiple oxygenations, and I'm pitching a shit-tonne of yeast (roughly 5 million/ml/^oP) thanks to my use of my last brews yeast cake. And the ace in my sleeve - a backup 2L starter of White Labs super high gravity yeast. I'm hoping to not need that bad-boy, but if I do he's ready to go.

41 L of wort boiling on the range.

Brew-day itself was a bit of a mix-up; I recently bought an electric HLT from one of the co-owners of Forked River Brewing (I guess you don't need to homebrew when you have a real brewery), so I was able to do my mash indoors, with the plan of venturing outside into the -25C weather for the boil. Turns out propane valves freeze at -25C - even if the propane itself is at room temperature, but my wonderful wife was kind enough to clear out the kitchen for the day so it was a full-volume boil on the electric range too get this beer down to gravity - adding an hour to what was already supposed to be a 3 hour boil. But in the end I exceeded my numbers slightly by 4 points), and everything looks like it went well, so now onto the ferment.

The recipe, brew-day notes and other details are included below the fold, but I thought I'd spare a word on what is now the second really odd name I gave to a beer in the past 2 weeks. These two beers are deeply connected - with "Matilda, The Seductress" functioning as a starter for "Ambrosio, The Fallen Monk". These names are not arbitrary - they are drawn from my favourite novel, "The Monk" by Matthew Gregory Lewis (legally available free from the Gutenberg Project). In this novel the young monk Ambrosio is seduced by Matilda - a familiar of the devil - leading Ambrosio down a road of murder, rape, insect, and eventually death at the hands of Satan himself. As with the novel, the beer "Matilda , The Temptress" gives Ambrosio his drive to darkness (namely, a lot of yeast) - and "Ambrosio, The Fallen Monk" somewhat follows the tradition of naming these beers after devils & other dark creatures...

Matilda, The Seductress

The Temptation of the Idler
Albrecht Dürer, 1498

This is the penultimate post (minus the inevitable tasting notes) of my Brewing Vintage Beers Series. Today's beer is  a Belgian Enkel, also known as a Patersbier. This is a style of beer that I wish was much more common - it has all the flavour and complexity of a double or triple, but comes in at less than 5% ABV and thus is quite sessionable. It solves all of the problems of dubbel and tripels; you can imbibe in pint after pint of an Enkel without finding yourself hugging the floor as the room spins around you.

This beer is obviously not a high-gravity beer, so why is it part of the vintage-beer series? The answer is that this isn't just any old beer - it is also a massive stater for one hell of a big beer I'll be brewing (and posting about) in two weeks time, and its also been scaled up to provide a few extra litres of wort to test-ferment a dozen wild yeasts I've isolated over the past year. This is truly a beer with many faces!

To make this beer a good "starter" for producing yeast I am taking the rather unusual route of adding yeast nutrient to what is a beer that wouldn't normally require it - but keep in mind, our goal isn't simply a good beer, but its also healthy yeast at the end of the ferment. Yeast nutrient plus a strong oxygenation will fulfill that goal.

Some may be wondering about the odd name for this beer. I don't want to give too much away, but it is related to one of my favourite novels and also to the name of the strong/vintage beer this beer's yeast cake will be re-pitched into.

Recipe & brew-day notes below the fold...

Brewing long-aging beers - fermenting high-gravity beers

As promised last week, this is the fourth instalment in my "Brewing Vintage Beers" series. In this post I'm going to cover some of the methods that homebrewers can use to ferment beers that push - or even exceed - the rated alcohol tolerances of the yeasts being used. Experienced brewers will likely see nothing new here, but I've tried to include a bit of the science behind what the different methods do, so that my readers have a better idea of why these things work and are often necessary.

There are a number of things you can do to get full attenuation when brewing high-gravity ales, namely:

1. Yeast selection
2. Pitch rates
3. Late/repeated oxygenation
4. Late sugar additions
5. Late yeast additions
6. Managing the fermentation
7. What if the batch doesn't ferment completely?

Details below the fold

Brewing long-aging beers - some guidelines.

A few months ago I announced my intention to start a short blog series on long-aging beer, in a post where I outlined a couple of my more recent vintage brews. This was followed by a review of THE book any brewer serious about brewing vintage beers (or collecting commercial vintage beers) must have in their library, In this, the third post in this series I will go over some of the rules for designing, brewing and aging these beers.

The ideas in this post are largely my own, but as I mentioned in the aforementioned book review, the reading of Patrick Dawson's "Vintage Beer" was key to crystallizing these ideas in my mind, so I'd like to encourage my readers once again to buy this amazing book.

This is going to be a long post, so the details can be found below the fold.

Book Review: Vintage Beer by Patrick Dawson

Although it may not appear to be the case, I'm actually at the beginning of a series on the brewing (and enjoyment) of vintage beers. This series started nearly two months ago with a post on two well-aged beers I've brewed since starting this blog, and continues today with a review of one of the best beer books I bought this year - Vintage Beer - A Taster's Guide to Brews That Improve over Time by Patrick Dawson.

You'll notice that I said "beer book" not "brewing book", because nowhere in the pages of this book will you find brewing tips or recipes, nor any discussions of bringing commercial-scale processes into the home brewery, nor any discussion relating to home brewing ingredients, scales or methods. Despite this, this is one of the most important home brewing books I've added to my book collection in many years. This book is a must have for any home brewer who brews - or is thinking of brewing - long-aging beers.

Confused? This apparent contradiction is explained below the fold...

A tale of two beers

This is the first in a series of articles I am working on about deigning, brewing and cellering vintage (long-aging) beers. By long ageing I mean a year minimum, with the upper ceiling ranging upwards of a few decades. This opening post is a bit of my history with vintage beers and an example of two of my more "recent" vintage brews. Future articles will look at how these beers age, how to design and brew them, and culminate with a long-planned recipe and brewday for a beer that I hope I will enjoy for a decade or more.

I have long enjoyed vintage beers, by which I mean beers aged for years before consumption. My first experience with these beers was an accident. My first barley wine was not conceived under the best of circumstances - I was more interested in the alcohol content than the finer aspects of the style. As was the norm in the 1990's the beer was under-pitched and fermented too warm, leading to a hot and overly estery beer that was unpalatable. Embarrassed, I hid these away in my parents basement where they were out-of-sight. Three or four years later, while helping my parents move, I found the missing cases of beer. On a lark I drank a bottle. In place of the fusel heat and esters were hints of sherry and toffee, dried fruits and wine. And so began a love of vintage beers.

Since that day I've made a point of aging a few bottles of any strong beer (over 8%) to see how they turn out over 8 to 18 months, and once or twice a year brew a batch of beer explicitly for laying down for some long ageing. "Recently" (March and October 2013) I brewed two such batches, and to open my mini-series on vintage beers I thought I would describe how these two particular beers have changed over time.

The beers:

Gnarly Roots Barley Wine Brewed: March 2013 Age: 1 year, 7 months % Alcohol: 12.8% IBUs: 100 IBU Other: Secondaried with Brett

42 (Belgian Dark Strong) Brewed: October 2013 Age: 13 months % Alcohol: 8.2% IBUs: 26 IBU Other: Brewed with homemade candi

Remainder of the post is below the fold...

First Tasting: Gnarly Roots Barley Wine

It has been 227 days (7 months and 13 days) since I brewed my Gnarly Roots Barley Wine.  This beer - a creation from the mind of brewing legend Charlie Papazian - is an American-style barleywine with a twist.  On the surface the recipe is a classic US-style barley wine - 100IBU of bitterness, a SG of 1.100, and fermented with a clean US-style ale yeast (Wyeast 1056).  The twist is that it is secondaried with Brettanomyces lambicus and Brettanomyces bruxellensis.  The additions of these "wild" yeasts should create an earthly and fruity flavour profile that mimics that which was common in pre-20th century English strong ales.

I kegged the beer today, with the intent of transferring it to bottles in 3 weeks.  Once bottled this beer will be cellared and brought out for special occasions - if done judiciously, I should be enjoying this beer for years to come.  It turns out I had ~ 200ml of beer that wouldn't fit into the keg, so I put it into a mason jar and stored it in the fridge for a few hours until I had the time to do a proper tasting.  The beer is still a little young for tasting, but I'm not one to give up  a chance to sneak a peak.  Full review is below the fold.

Go big, or go home (Gnarly Roots Barley Wine)

Tentative Label

One of the downsides of a career as a scientist is you spend a lot of the early part of your career in temporary positions. For the past 12 years I've never known if I still be living/working where I was 6 months in the future. I've finally reached a point in my career where that is no longer the case, meaning I can finally re-start brewing beers that require multi-year commitments - i.e. barleywines and sour beers.

It has been over 8 years since my last batch of either of these two lascivious beer styles, despite them being among my favourites.  It is time to end the drought - and since I'm also approaching my 20th year as a home brewer (December 6th 2016 is the day), I want to make something that I can use to celebrate the vicennia of my homebrewing hobby (plus, enjoy a few bottle of between now and then).

Since this is a big beer event, I need a big beer - so I'm making a sour barleywine.  As in, combining my two favourite kinds of beer into one hellofa brew.

This recipe is based on a recipe from Charlie Papazian's "Homebrewers Companion".  For years I've wanted to brew his Gnarly Roots Barley Wine; a classical American-style barleywine that is fermented with a normal ale yeast, and then soured with Brettanomyces bruxellensis &  Brettanomyces  lambicus. Coming in at ~12% alcohol, and requiring nearly a year to ferment, this recipe should produce a complex, wine-like beverage with the unique phenoic flavours and aromas imparted by brettanomyces yeasts.

I've staid nearly true to Charlie P's recipe - aside from altering the bittering hop from Erocia to Chinook, and upping the portion of the beer brewed all-grain (its too big a recipe to do a 100% all-grain brew using my setup).  This beer should fulfil my cravings for both a barleywine and a sour.  Recipe and brew-day noted are below the fold.