Tasting Notes: Dog Days of Summer ESB

A Pint of DDoS ESB in its
Natural Environment

The Dog Day ESB has been in the keg for a while, and so its time for a review.  Overall, this is a pleasant beer - not as good as my Vestigial Bitter, but certainly is a brew to be proud of.

This beer pours with a thick creamy head and the aroma of malt and goldings hops.  A bit of yeasty-ester undertones can be found in the aroma as well.  The body of the beer is is a brownish-red in colour, clear, and modestly carbonated, with a semi-dry mouthfeel.  The bitterness was not as strong as I'd normally expect - closer to an American-style pale ale than an English bitter.  Whether this was due to the use of first-wort hopping or due to recipe formulation isn't clear.  For me, this is the biggest detractor of the beer - it is a good beer, but it lacks the bracing bitterness I like in my bitters.

The beer has a real nice hop flavour, with the herbal flavours typical of fuggles and goldings hops.  Balancing this is a bit of sweetness from the crystal malt and some fruit esters.  Combined, these make for a very pleasant flavoured beer, although a bit more bitterness would balance the sweetness a little better.

42 - A Belgian Dark Strong

42 - to some it is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything; to others it is merely the number that falls between 41 and 43. . .

. . .But today, it is the name of my next recipe.  Motivated by a Chop & Brew video and a Jamil show webcast, this is intended to be a classical Belgian Dark Strong Ale - high in alcohol, lightly bodied, long ageing and slow drinking.  A real treat for most brewers.

This recipe is taken straight off of the Chop & Brew video, aside from some minor adjustments for my system.  This beer will feature my homemade Belgian Candi Sugar (Links: 1, 2, Youtube), plus a limited release Wyeast yeast (3822-PC - Belgian Strong Ale - available in my yeast bank).  It is lower in alcohol that many beers of this style because a) I want a faster-maturing version, so I can see how my homemade candi sugar works in a beer, and b) I want to send a few bottles of this out for Christmas (edit: and c) because I screwed up my sparge somehow).  This beer should be bottleable in 6-8 or so weeks, although it will continue to age and improve for 6 or more months in-bottle.

The video that spawned this brew, as well as brew-day notes & the recipe, can all be found below the fold.

Belgian Candi Sugar II

EDIT: I have refined this process somewhat. Please see this this post for some simple changes to my procedure which leads to a better tasting and more consistent candi.

As described a couple of posts ago, I have been working on a method to prepare Belgian Candi Sugar at home.  This method uses commonly available household ingredients to prepare the sugar, and requires no more equipment than you'd normally find in your average kitchen.  I have posted my method in the following video, with this post acting as a synopsis you can follow in the kitchen.

I owe a debt of gratitude to a few bloggers for helping me find my way - in particular, I'd like to direct you to the posts on Ryan's Blog, Life Fermented and on An Engineer & His Carboy for the posts that directed my attempts.  Before I go into the details I'd also like to point out that the method outlined in my video and in this post are the product of about a half-dozen trial runs.  As such they represent a process in development, and may be subject to future improvements.  If you have any luck (or ill-luck) in trying to make your own candi sugar, please let me know in the comments.

EDIT: I have solved some of the crystallization issues people have been reporting when making candi sugar. Details can be found in this blog post.

Metric Infusion Ratios

Just a super-quick post; mostly so that I'll have this table handy for when I need it. Here is a table of for inter-converting between US (qt/lb) and metric (l/kg) infusion ratios. This is a simple calculation - multiply US units by 2.086345096 to get metric & vice-versa; you can multiply by 2 for simplicity...

qt/lb	L/kg		qt/lb	L/kg
0.75	1.56		1.65	3.44
0.80	1.67		1.70	3.55
0.85	1.77		1.75	3.65
0.90	1.88		1.80	3.76
0.95	1.98		1.85	3.86
1.00	2.09		1.90	3.96
1.05	2.19		1.95	4.07
1.10	2.29		2.00	4.17
1.15	2.40		2.05	4.28
1.20	2.50		2.10	4.38
1.25	2.61		2.15	4.49
1.30	2.71		2.20	4.59
1.35	2.82		2.25	4.69
1.40	2.92		2.30	4.80
1.45	3.03		2.35	4.90
1.50	3.13		2.40	5.01
1.55	3.23		2.45	5.11
1.60	3.34		2.50	5.22

Making Belgian Candi Sugar

The Belgian Candi Sugars
Left: Attempt #1, Right: Attempt #2

With the Krampus Kristmas Ale transferred to the secondary & spiced my thoughts have turned to the next big beer - probably not to be brewed for a few months (some stouts & porters are in my new future) - but I like to think ahead.

One style I've always enjoyed, but rarely brewed, are the strong Belgian (trappist-style) ales. With lots of fruity esters and spicy phenolics, these beers are flavourful & well balanced. Their high-alcohol & dry finish makes them easy to drink, with the dryness deceptively hiding their strength.

The key to making these beers strong (7-12% alcohol) with a dry finish is the use of Belgian candi sugar - beet sugar which is heated & otherwise treated to create a candi (or syrup). Depending on how it is prepared, this candi can be anything from a light-amber with little flavour through to near-black candis with flavours of coffee, chocolate and dark fruits (e.g. plums & dates). It is the cost (often over $16/kg), and difficulty finding this product in Canada which has largely held back my ability to brew & explore Belgian strong ales.

So imagine my joy when finding out that it may be possible to produce Belgian candi sugar at home. Armed with one youtube video & a short write-up I embarked on my first experiment. After nearly two hours of heating, with little colour formation, I started reading further. It turns out I - and many other brewers out there - are doing it wrong!

Below the fold is my attempt to fix my mistake, and perhaps establish a method others can employ...

EDIT: I have solved some of the crystalizaiton issues people have been reporting when making candi sugar. Details can be found in this blog post.

Krampus Kristmas Ale

Krampus probably should have
visited me more at xmas...

Its September 2nd, the time of the year the brewers thoughts turn to cool fall evenings, pints of ESB after racking the leaves . . . and Christmas. Yep, it is time to start brewing those over-strength ales that we all love to enjoy around yule-time.

Over the past 12 or so years I've brewed a variant of my "Bad Santa"; a light-coloured, light body strong beer with hints of honey, ginger & cinnamon. Every year I tweak it slightly, aiming to make it ever better. Around 2008 this recipe hit its peak and has been on a downward slide since. Indeed, last years batch was a mild disappointment, as chronicled over these posts: 1, 2 &3. Needless to say, it is well-neigh time for a new Christmas beer.

Enter Krampus Kristmas Ale - which is everything Bad Santa isn't. Instead of a light-colour, this beer should have a deep-red hue provided by a mix of melanoiden & caramunich malt. In place of a honey-induced dryness, this beer uses a hot mash to provide a thick, sweet, malty finish. In place of subtle ginger & cinnamon tones, this been has a kick-in-the-face spiciness provided by ample amounts of of cinnamon, allspice & nutmeg. What better name for Bad Santas darker brother than Krampus - the demon who drags naughty children to his lair for punishment?

Recipe & brewnotes below the fold...

Tasting Notes: Droit du seigneur Blonde

Its been a while since I brewed my Droit du seigneur Blonde. In fact, its been in the keg for over a month and the keg is nearly empty. While it may appear that I've been tardy in my tasting notes, this is not the case. Instead, I've been waiting for it to improve.

Yep, this batch is a rare miss. And a miss for two now-obvious reasons. But lets step back for a second and talk about what this beer is supposed to be. US-style Blondes are the homebrewers response to the "light lager" brews that are all too common (Bud, Molson, Coors, etc). Light in body, minimal maltiness and a mild hoppiness, these beers are nice for a hot summers eve, and are an entry point regular brewers into the world of home brewing. In many ways I achieved this end - the beer is light, clear, refreshing & has a soft but enjoyable hop character.

My problems stems from the light flavour of this beer - sadly, due to a renovation I'm performing in my basement, the usual 18C temperature my basement reliably stays at increased to over 23C. At these temperatures the yeast produced more esters than is appropriate to this style. The esters add a fruity note that is not unpleasant; but unfortunately it is accompanied by a stale/rubbery phenolic note - likely due to topping-up the fermenter with raw tap water. The chlorine in the water would make chloroamines, which have a rubbery flavour to them.

Lesson learned - pay more attention to volumes while brewing & control your fermentation temperatuers; doing so can save you a lot of headaches!