Some of my readers will be aware that I and several others have done some genetic analyses that suggest that WLP644 (Brett trois) may in actuality be a Sachharomyces. For those not familiar with this issue, or who need a refresher, my post covering both my work and some of the work done by others can be found here: Brett Trois - A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
Chris White talked briefly about the "controversy" surrounding the true identity of Brettanomyces trois in a Cheers Charlotte podcast a few days ago (time stamp 28:45 to 30:05). He didn't give away the punchline, saying "it is too early to tell" and that "we have seen some signs it is Saccharomyces". He went on to state that the results he has seen are mixed and that it is not yet clear. Apparently, they are waiting for the whole genome sequence to determine what it is, and if it is a hybrid. But it sounds to me like he is leaning towards a Saccharomyces identification as well.
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Monday, 16 February 2015
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 * 1.3559Bel], where Bel = 1/2/3/etc (Enkel, Dubbl, Tripel, etc)
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.
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...
* 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 * 1.3559Bel], where Bel = 1/2/3/etc (Enkel, Dubbl, Tripel, etc)
 |
| My new eHLT in action (in my under-construction video studio - AKA laundry room) |
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. |
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...
Saturday, 31 January 2015
Quick & Simple Invert Sugar
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| 2 kg (~5 lbs) of invert sugar. The one on the right is slightly less caramelized due to better temperature control during inversion |
Invert sugar is used in a lot of English-style beers; it is simply table sugar (sucrose, a glucose chemically bonded to a fructose) broken down into its constituent glucose and fructose molecules. In theory it is easier for yeast to ferment this sugar, hence why it is popular in high-gravity brewing.
Several of my readers and youtube viewers (and myself) have reported issues with sugar crystallizing, which if you're lucky makes a hard-crack sugar ugly, but if it gets too bad can turn your sugar into an unmanageable - and insoluble (which is bad for brewing) mess. I've been working on this issue and have found a solution - the details are included in this post, and can be applied to both Belgian candi sugars as well as to invert sugar.
And as with candi sugar, don't forget that this can be quite dangerous - you are working with a sticky liquid well above the boiling point of water. Wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, cover your feet, and be as careful as you can be.
So how do we make it - its easy, but as always the details are found below the fold.
Sunday, 25 January 2015
Matilda, The Seductress
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| The Temptation of the Idler Albrecht Dürer, 1498 |
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...
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
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:
There are a number of things you can do to get full attenuation when brewing high-gravity ales, namely:
- Yeast selection
- Pitch rates
- Late/repeated oxygenation
- Late sugar additions
- Late yeast additions
- Managing the fermentation
- What if the batch doesn't ferment completely?
Details below the fold
Thursday, 15 January 2015
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.
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.
Friday, 2 January 2015
A Year in Review
Its officially 2015, so happy brew-year everyone! I thought I'd use my first post in 2015 to look back at 2014...
The good...
Lots of good things happened this year. My wild yeast collection activities and yeast identification methods are up and running smoothly. I had a number of rather successful brews this year - most of which I posted here. Both my blog and youtube channel are getting a lot more hits - 75,000 and 10,000 hits respectively last year.
The bad..
2014 was not as busy a year for me as 2013. A rather pathetic 15 batches were brewed this year - 18 if you count the wine kits I did along the way, 16 (or 13 if you discount the wine) if you subtract the two infected brews I had this year. My blogging was also down - 11 fewer than 2013. Hopefully we can pick up both those numbers this year.
The ugly...
As mentioned in "the bad", I had my first (non-deliberately) infected beers this year in over a decade. That sucked...and it hurt even more as the infection was something I brought home from work with me. In addition, for the first year since 2008, I failed to hit the 400 liters of brewed goodness mark (roughly equivalent to 100 US gallons).
Some quick stats:
My Favourite Beer Blogs of 2014:
The good...
Lots of good things happened this year. My wild yeast collection activities and yeast identification methods are up and running smoothly. I had a number of rather successful brews this year - most of which I posted here. Both my blog and youtube channel are getting a lot more hits - 75,000 and 10,000 hits respectively last year.
The bad..
2014 was not as busy a year for me as 2013. A rather pathetic 15 batches were brewed this year - 18 if you count the wine kits I did along the way, 16 (or 13 if you discount the wine) if you subtract the two infected brews I had this year. My blogging was also down - 11 fewer than 2013. Hopefully we can pick up both those numbers this year.
The ugly...
As mentioned in "the bad", I had my first (non-deliberately) infected beers this year in over a decade. That sucked...and it hurt even more as the infection was something I brought home from work with me. In addition, for the first year since 2008, I failed to hit the 400 liters of brewed goodness mark (roughly equivalent to 100 US gallons).
Some quick stats:
- Most popular posts of 2014:
- #1: This months post on how Brettanomyces trois (WLP644) is likely a Saccharomyces, not a Brettanomyces. 5900 hits in three weeks.
- #2: 2013's post on identifying yeast by ribosomal sequencing.
- #3 & 4: 2013's posts on making Belgian candi sugar (Posts 1, 2).
- #5: 2013's post on making a sour-mashed Beliner weiss.
- Top Traffic Sources: Google (7%), Reddit (4%), Home Brew Talk (2%), Jeffrey Cranes Blog (1%), Bootleg Biology (1%) and Canadian Homebrewers (0.5%).
- Top Viewing Countries: #1: USA, #2: Canada, #3: Ukraine, #4: Germany, #5: UK
- Top Youtube Videos:
My Favourite Beer Blogs of 2014:
In no particular order...
- Shut Up About Barklay Perkins
- |Brülosophy|
- St. Johns Wort
- Life Fermented
- The Mad Fermentationist
- DC Yeast Lab
- The Mark of the Yeast
- Eureka Brewing
Most Ordered Yeast From My Yeast Bank:
- #1&2 (tied): Russian River Sanctification (#69 & 70, Commercial Bank)
- #3: Conan/Headdy Topper (#80, Commercial Bank)
- #4, 5, 6 (tied): DCYeast 01/02/03 (#6, 7 & 8, Wild Yeast Bank)
- #7: Brettanomyces claussenii (#109, Commercial Bank)
- #8: Bells Brewery Yeast (#19, Commercial Bank)
- #9: Berliner Weiss Blend (#132, Commercial Bank)
- #10: Thames Valley (#20, Commercial Bank)
Here's hoping that 2015 exceeds 2014 in every way - in my brewing & in yours.
Bryan
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