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.

Craft Brew Review - 4 great beers.

Because I homebrew I rarely have purchased beer in the house.  But every once in a while the well runs dry & I'm forced to make a beer-run to the local(and usually poorly stocked) LCBO.  Having recently run out of Merlins Mild, and with the Hopsteader still carbonating, it was time for one of my rare beer runs.  The secret to a good beer run is to bring my wife - while she doesn't like beer, she somehow has this magical ability to find the rare gems among the LCBOs usually meagre offerings.  As per usual, she hit a home run and found me four excellent beers:

The IPAs:

Hops and Robbers by Double Trouble Brewing

Boneshaker IPA by Amsterdam Brewery

The Pale Ales:

666 by Great Lakes Brewery

Crazy Canuck by Great Lakes Brewery

Reviews below the fold...

Video: Budget Yeast Starter System

A few weeks ago I posted a video & blog post on how to take yeast from a yeast bank and grow it upto amounts that can be used to start a 20L/5 US gallon batch of beer.  However, that video used equipment that not all brewers have - namely, a stir-plate and flask.  Not all brewers will want to make the investment into these items - especially if new to the hobby.

Luckily, there is a way for them to step-up yeast with zero investment - all you need is an empty 2L soda bottle and a funnel.  The only downsides to this method are a) you produce ~30% less yeast per step, and b) you must remember to manually oxygenate the yeast several times each day.

Important Note: The numbers and stages of this starter are based on the amount of yeast brewers receive when they get yeast from my yeast bank.  If you are starting with a wyeast smack-pack or white labs tube the process is slightly different; instructions for this can be found at the end of this post.

Below the fold you will find a couple of tables to help you determine how many steps, and what step sizes, you need to produce the number of yeast you require.

Surprisingly Not Bad (Q3 Tasting Notes)

A half-pint of Q³

So my grocery store challenge beer - named Q³ (q-cubed; Quinoxic Quaffable Quinoa), has been kegged for two weeks and is ready for a first sampling.  The official 'unveiling' to my brew club is still three weeks away, but I had a half-bottle left and wanted to be sure I wasn't poisoning my fellow homebrewers.

Aroma:
This does not smell at all like a beer - not that I expected it too.  Because this was brewed without hops, there is no hop aroma; nor is there much of the maltiness you would expect.  Much to my delight, there also was not the strong lactic acid odour I was expecting, due to the lactic acid fermentation that occurred during malting.

So what does this smell like - much as you'd expect from the recipe.  The aroma is not strong, but anise and sage are the predominant notes.  The combination is citrusy, reminding me a little of a orange liquor.  Honey is detectable in the back-notes, providing a bit of sweetnesss to the aroma.

Appearance:
This beer has a nice golden-coppery colour, and is cloudy like a hefeweizen.  The beer pours with a thin, short-lived head (this will hopefully improve with age).  In the glass, this looks more like a sparkling wine or cider than a beer, as the bottom of the glass gets layered with a thin films of bubbles while little accumulates on top.  The little bit of head that forms is comprised of larger, coarser bubbles than would be normal for beer.

Flavour:
The flavour of this brew is surprising - not at all the barely palatable beverage I was expecting. The flavour is mild and easy-on-the-tongue.  Honey and anise are the major flavours, although small amounts of sage come through.  These are layered over a unique flavour that I can only assume comes from the quinoa - almost a weak nuttiness or bread-like flavour.  The yeast don't seem to have imparted much of a fingerprint on the beer - none of the flavours I would associate with yeast (esters, diacetyl, etc) are apparent - unless they are part of the spicy/fruity flavours imparted by the sage & anise.

Mouthfeel:
The mouthfeel of this 'beer' is most un-beerlike.  It is very thin - similar to a cider or mead - but was expected given the low finishing gravity of the beer (1.006).  The carbonation is much finer & more effervescent than a beer, producing a sensation more akin to a champaign, cider or sparkling mead.

Overall:
Overall, I'm not entirely sure I made a beer - this is not an overtly beer-like concoction.  But it is not unpleasant - in fact, if it wasn't so much work & so damned expensive, this would make a nice summer drink to enjoy on the dock while watching the sunset - with ice.

A financial review of homebrewing

This evening SWMBOd noticed me pouring a pint, and asked if I had "saved enough money to pay for all the [brewing] crap I had bought".  I don't brew to save money - I brew because I love the process and the product - but I often tell my wife that I save us a bit of money every time I brew. . .

. . .so am I a liar?

Hopsteader

Our Garden on Brew-Day

So its nearly 10C below freezing, and I'm stuck in the garage.  That is the bad new; the good news is I'm brewing an American-style IPA.  Big hop flavour, and enough bitterness to make my Merlins Mild crawl into a corner and fear for its life. SWMBO'd named this beer Hopsteader - a name I hope it lives up to.

This beer is brewed slightly differently from most IPAs and other high-IBU beers.  Instead of hop additions for the full 90 minutes of the boil (to get the maximum bitterness from the hops), all hop additions in hopsteader start at 60 minutes into the boil - a mere 30 minutes from the end of the boil.  This means a lot of hops go into this beer to get the desired 65-67IBUs of bitterness - the four hop additions (30min/15min/5min/dry) amount to nearly 200g - almost a pound - of hops.  By adding this huge amount of hops late in the boil, this beer will have a tonne of hop flavour and aroma, while having a strong (but not overpowering) bitterness.

Recipe below the fold.

Tasting Notes: Merlins Mild

So the Merlins Mild has been in the keg for a while, and has cleared and carbonated.  Its not quite what I was hoping for - too 'mild' for my taste, and weakly flavoured compared to milds I've tried in the past.

Merlins Mild

Appearance:
The beer is darker than expected, an estimated SRM of 20 instead of the planned 15SRM. The beer is carbonated to a higher level than is normal for this style - by choice.  As off-style as it is, I simply do not like the low carbonation typical of some English styles.  The carbonation pushes up a nice head, but the head itself is short lived.  Even so, Belgian lace hugs the glass throughout the pint.

Aroma:
The beer itself has a malt aroma with a slight hint of hoppyness.  The low level of hop character surprised me - Fuggles at flame-out usually leave a nice hop aroma.  The hops added at flame-out could easily be doubled.

Flavour:
As the name would suggest, this beer is mild.  Problem is, it is too mild.  Minimally bitter, minimal hop flavour, subtle maltiness and few esters from the yeast round out this beer. I suspect the hops must have lost of of their alpha acids, as there should have been 20IBUs worth of bitterness; I'd estimate this beer has about half of that.  Initially I was worried about oxidation, as there was a slight cardboard flavour, but it appears to have faded.  On the plus side, the flavour lingers shortly after the sip, and is features a nice modest maltiness.

Mouthfeel:
This beer has a thin body, which is normal for the style. The higher level of carbonation gives it a nice effervescence and a slight carbonic acidity which is pleasant on the tongue. No astringency mars the beer, making it a great thirst-quencher.

Overall:
Its not a bad beer, but it lacks the hop flavour I'd normally prefer.  A good brew to convert a bud drinker to homebrew; not a beer to impress the guys and gals at the brewclub...