2016 In Review

Last night, somewhere around midnight, 2016 came to an end...meaning its time for my annual look back at the year that was.

The Good: Both my blog and youtube channel continue to grow in popularity; my blog reaching 394k views, and my youtube channel 103k views. Most of the beers this year came out either good or excellent, including what may have been my best Berliner Weisse to-date. My brewing output is up slightly over last year - 16 beers/ciders, plus a few batches of wine. I added a bunch of fun yeasts to the yeast bank, and found two new loves in the form of Kveik yeast and fast-lagering with W34/70.

Of course, this year was also my 20th brewversary, and the celebration of that went well...and is still continuing.

The Bad: Brewing output is still down compared to historical norms, and I ran dry a few times this year. My posting of both blog posts and youtube videos has also suffered this year, despite starting a new series of short videos intended to overcome last years rather meagre offerings.

The Ugly: Turns out I was growing my hops all wrong...I hope to fix that in 2017.

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Some Quick Stats

• Most popular post of 2016: Casting Agar Plates
• Most commented post of 2016: Fact or Fiction: Can Pathogens Survive in Beer (Mould Edition)
• Most popular video of 2016: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - Making Agar Plates
• Top Viewing Countries of 2016: United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Barbados, Canada
• Top Traffic Sources of 2016: Google, Facebook, Milk the Funk Wiki

My Favourite Blogs of 2016

(in no particular order)

• Chop & Brew
• Larsblog
• Sour Beer Blog
• Brulosophy
• A PhD in Beer

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Upcoming in 2017

I cannot claim to have any big things planned for this year - more posts and videos, and ore brewdays, I hope. I also hope to electrify my brew setup...but those plans have been in the works for 3 years and have never advanced past the planning phase, so I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

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.

Belgian Candi Sugar Part III

Yesterday, Brulosophy published a post where they compared "my" candi sugar recipe side-by-side with a commercial candi syrup. The much more rigorous testing conducted by Brulosophy mirrored my own less scientific experience - i.e. namely that in beer the differences between them are hard to detect, but there are differences. The ability to find these differences appears to vary between people, as in the Brulosophy the majority were not able to tell the differences, but the minority that could tell the difference could do so consistently.

Since my previous posts on the topic (1, 2 and "3", #2 is the primary resource) I've refined my method further. In the discussions following the Brulosophy post its become apparent that I should share these changes as a fair number of people are using my old posts as a starting point in their own sugar experiments (hello, Reddit homebrewers).

The changes I have made seem to address the issues others (and I) have noted - namely an occasional acrid/burnt character. An issue was also brought up by one commenter which I think is worth addressing here.

The changes I've made to my method:

1. I've greatly reduced the amount of DME used, as the amount of protein in previous batches was excessive. For 1 kg of sugar (2.2 lbs), I am currently using 5 ml (~1 tsp) of DME. Previously I was using 1 tbs (~15 ml)
2. I avoid mixing the sugar as much as possible - I mix to dissolve the sugar into water, and I mix when adding the lye, but I do not otherwise mix.
3. I am much more careful and slow with my temperature changes. Most of the mixing I did previously was to add cold water to cool the sugar if I overshot the desired temperature.
4. I now usually add corn sugar (fructose) at a rate of 1% volume/mass (i.e. 1 ml corn sugar per 100g sugar). This does not change the flavour of the final candi, but does reduce crystallization. It is easier to then blend the mix into a syrup or cast rocks with the non-crystallized sugar.

These changes have led to a candi which is much closer (to my palate) to commercial candis, one without the unpleasant flavours some of the previous batches had. Others on the thread have mentioned using pressure cookers and other methods with great success. Hopefully, as a collective we will be able to formulate a better method of producing a consistent and flavourful candi sugar for home brewing.

The "Issue":

An issue brought up the commenter 'Chino' in the Brulosophy thread was that the 30 minute inversion time that I recommend is insufficient to completely invert the sugar, with individuals over a Reddit working on ways to get improved inversions. I partially agree with what Chino states - given the rate of the reaction and the fact that it is an equilibrium reaction, a 30 minute inversion period without the addition of something to accelerate the process (e.g. acid) will only invert 8-10% of the sugar. Where I disagree with Chino is that I don't think this matters. Mallard products comprise a pretty small portion of the final sugar - assuming 100% of the protein added via the DME is converted to Mallard products, the Mallard products would comprise about 0.07% of the final candi by weight. Although multi-step reactions, the formation of most Mallard products requires only one sugar molecule per amino acid, meaning that you need "only" 0.07% inverted sugar to be able to (in theory) produce the full array of Mallard products. The 8-10% inverted sugar is a huge excess compared to what is required - this does offer an advantage in terms of reaction rates, but its hard to imagine that increasing inversion to 25% (theoretical maximum using heat alone) or 50-75% (theoretical maximum using acid) would offer further improvements.

2015 - A Year in Review

2015 is coming to a close, so is time for the annual look back.

The Good...
The blog is still getting a reasonable number of hits (155K as of today), but the youtube channel is doing really well and, if trends remain the same, will have more hits than the blog in roughly 5 months. No infected batches this year, and instead, I've brewed two of the best beers I recall making - These Gose Christmas, and an unnamed IPA I haven't bothered blogging about yet (and whose keg is nearly empty).

I also brewed batch #300 this year; a pretty notable milestone. Granted, I did not know at the time that it was batch #300, so in place of brewing something good I instead brewed a rather bland pale ale that didn't even warrant a blog entry (and even being beer #300, still doesn't warrant a blog entry).

The Bad...
Brewing output is down - all in (wine + cider + beer) I managed a paltry 14 batches this year. In my defence I did a compete tear-down and rebuild of my basement, plus added a giant new deck on the house. But the brewery (and my back) suffered as a consequence.

The Ugly...
Unlike last year, I get to leave the ugly slot empty this year. And that, folks, counts as a victory.

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Some Quick Stats

• Most popular post of 2015: Choosing the correct probiotics for souring beer.
• Most commented post of 2015: Tie = Choosing the correct probiotics for souring beer & Easy Yeast Banking
• Most popular video of 2015: Your Home Yeast Lab Made Easy - Making Agar Plates
• Top Viewing Countries of 2015 (Ranked #1 to #5): USA, Russia, Canada, Israel, Brazil
• Top Traffic Sources of 2015: Milk the Funk, Google, Facebook, forum.beerfans.ru.

My Favourite Blogs of 2015

(in no particular order)

• |Brülosophy|
• Beer Flavored
• Sour Beer Blog
• Eureka Brewing
• Suregork Loves Beer

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Whats Coming Up in 2016?

December 9, 2016. And no, this isn't because its the 51st anniversary of 'A Charley Brown Christmas' (originally released Dec 9, 1965). Nor is it a celebration of the eradication of small pox (Dec 9, 1979). Nor is it a celebration of the birthday of actress Judi Dench (best 'M' of the Bond series, so far). Rather, it is the 20th anniversary of my first brew day! I've already brewed the beer to be consumed on that day...and I'm planning on the same day of re-brewing that first beer (although hopefully making a more palatable batch this time)...

If at first you don't succeed, throw everything out and try again!

Its been another bad day - beginning a few months ago with my first dumper in 7 years, due, I thought, to mis-management of the Brett used in that beer. This was followed by an apparently successful cranberry wit, and then my all-Brett Russian Imperial Stout. The stout started off well, but has since taken a turn for the worse - the same chemical/lemon aroma that appeared in my dumper also began to emerge from this beer, along with a horrid solvent/chemical flavour. At the same time the apparently successful wit began to develop a viscous mouth feel and some odd aromas. Despite all of this, the parti-gyled beer pulled off of the second runnings of the stout fermented fine and has turned into a surprisingly good beer. So what went wrong?

I took a sample of the RIS to work and inspected it under a microscope. I forgot to snap an image, but mixed in among the cute "mickey mouse" Bretts were filamentous rod-shaped bacteria - a lot of them. I am unsure of the exact species that the bacteria may be, but regardless, they are unwelcome guests.

The one common link between the contaminated beers, but lacking from the parti-gyle, was the use of the same plastic fermenter. This, despite repeated rounds of cleaning and sanitation is most likely the source of the contamination, meaning I am now the proud new owners of a large plastic bucket with no apparent use...and after a short trip to the LHBS, the owner of a brand-new bucket and siphon for brewing (I chucked the old siphon to be safe).

I hope this solves the issue - but in two weeks when I re-brew the Russian Imperil Stout, I'll be primarying it in glass...the new bucket is going to be broken in this weekend on a wet-hop ale!

The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.

Instead of weeping when a tragedy 
occurs in a songbird's life, it sings 
away its grief. I believe we could 
well follow the pattern of our 
feathered friends.
    --Shakespeare

I'm quoting Shakespearean tragedies - clearly something has gone wrong. If the melancholy intro didn't give that away, the picture to the right should - that's a full keg of beer going down the drain. Specifically my Easy as 1-2-3-4: a Rye Berliner Weiss...

...clearly it wasn't as easy as I intended. So where did things go wrong?

The short answer is "I don't know", simply because I threw so many new things into this batch that its not possible to point the finger at a likely culprit. I'm 99% sure the problem was the ratio's of the yeast I threw in. Two of the three yeasts - both brett - were reputed to have a lemony character, and combined were half the yeast I pitched. Their lemony character was present in this beer - in spades. The lemon was so intense it was "chemical" in character; more in-place in a bottle of furniture polish than a beer. In addition there was a strong acetaldehyde/nail polish note - perhaps due to the use of a pure lacto culture, or perhaps again due to the yeast used. Moreover, the yeast wouldn't settle (even after a cold-crash), leaving the beer hazy and with a strong yeast character.

I shouldn't complain too much - this is the first dumper in over 7 years...& that ain't bad.

Holy Pellicle, Batman!

The 1-2-3-4 is brewing away strongly, and the huge brett pitch combined with the use of a semi-open fermenter has led to the formation of one heck of a pellicle (click picture for the full-resolution glory). I wish I had grabbed a shot a few days earlier - flocks of Saccharomyces were duelling for space with Brettanomyces  doing its best to setup shop on top of the beer.  Primary fermentation is complete, so the Saccharomyces lost the battle as it always does, but it fought a valiant fight!

Some may wonder why I'm using a "semi-open" fermenter for this (by semi-open I mean a large bucket with a loose fitting lid). The reason is simple - many of the wonderful esters made by Brett require the presence of oxygen - the loose lid and large surface area will ensure plenty of oxygen makes it to the pellicle.

Tasting Notes: 42

A great beer for a snowy day.

Back in October I brewed 42 - a Belgian Dark Strong Ale made with homemade candi sugar (posts 1, 2).  The beer was kegged after a month in secondary, and a third of the batch laid down in bottles for long-term enjoyment.  I gave away a few bottles for Christmas - one recipient accused me of passing off a commercial beer as a home brew.  I'm going to assume that means he really enjoyed it!

Appearance: Pours with a thick, beige, long-lasting head.  Trails of Belgian lace follow the beer to the bottom of the glass.  Beer is dark red when viewed with backlighting; dark brown bordering on black when viewed normally.

Aroma: Pepper with some fruity esters.  Malt notes in the background.

Flavour: Fantastic.  The peppery character of Wyeast 3822 (Belgian Dark Ale, yeast bank #059) along with a pleasant maltiness dominates the flavour. Bitterness is mild and there is no other hop character.  The stone fruit and caramel notes of the candi sugar are present but subtle; if I remake this beer I think I'll up the amount of sugar, and perhaps cook it longer to exemplify the caramel character more. Aftertaste is mild, mostly malitness with a subtle pepperyness.

Mouthfeel: This beer ended at a lower than planned gravity - 1.007 - from a starting gravity of 1.069. Despite this, there is the right amount of body (med-low body) and the fruity flavours from the candi sugar provide some sweetness so the beer is not too dry. There is no astringency at all in the beer, and the aftertaste leaves your mouth feeling whetted.

Overall: One of my better beers in 2013 - excellent balance of flavours, complex but not overwhelming.  Easy drinking, not too heavy, and overall just a plain nice pint.

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.

More Drinking With Santa

So Christmas is near, and many bottles of Bad Santa (read the saga here, here, here and here) have been handed out with the explicit instructions "Do Not Open Until Christmas".  So I'm nervous; we've got a less-than-perfect brew just a few days away from being imbibed by friends & family - including more than a few beer snobs.  So what is a brewer to do - other than test, and test again?

Good news is the beer has improved greatly - much of the strong sweetness that dominated the beer earlier has faded into a more pleasant maltyness.  The ginger & cinnamon has mellowed, the rough edges are now gone.  Moreover, notes of honey are (finally) beginning to show through.  Even that pesky haze has faded slightly...although the beer remains less than ideally clear.

Based on how its aged so far, I'd predict peak goodness in another month or two - but it's more than good enough to be served on Christmas.

I guess Bad Santa decided to play nice...

...And Merry Christmas everyone.

Drinking with Santa

A Pint of Bad Santa 2012

While it is still too early to seriously start drinking, the giant pooch-screw that was this years Bad Santa brew session  concerned me.  As such, I'm trying Bad Santa a month earlier than I should, to see what it has become.

The pour is good - a nice, long-lasting rocky head forms, and is accompanied by an aroma dominated by ginger, but with detectable hints of malt, honey & cinnamon. The beer is darker than expected, but this was expected given that I had to decoct a few times to get mash temperatures to where they were supposed to be. Despite using irish moss in the boil and gelatin in the keg, this beer has a bit of a haze.  I nerded out and tested a sample at work.  No yeast were seen under the microscope, eliminating suspended yeast as the suspect.  An absorption spectrum did not reveal a strong absorption peak at 280 nm (the absorption peak of tryptophan), making a protein haze unlikely. The addition of iodine created a weak absorption peak at 580 nm, meaning that residual starches are the most likely culprit¹.  Given the mash issues I had, the presence of starch is not unexpected, but oddly, the iodine test of my mash was negative.

Bad Santa's Bein' Naughty

So its time to keg bad santa, but things are not what they should be.  What should be a clear beer remains cloudy.  Given all the bad things which happened, I shouldn't be surprised that things are not 100%, but still...

The problem may not be obvious in this photo, but the beer remains cloudy - this should be an amber-coloured beer with a bit-o-red in the colour.  It is that colour, but there's also a lot of haze, making it look darker than it should be.

Why is the haze there, why won't it go away?  Short answer is . . . I don't know.  Hopefully its protein or yeast - a bit of gelatin at kegging will pull that out.  But I fear it may be starch - which no force on earth will get rid of.

Hopefully it'll still taste good, but this may be a beer to drink out of a ceramic tankard.