Brew Day: Blood Orange Saison

What’s your idea of a spring saison?

To me, it means low alcohol, light color, dry hopping, and a vanishing final gravity. Cheesy as it sounds, you’re trying to put the season in your glass, right? If so, the beer needs to be bright and blooming...exactly the sort of thing that suggests a day that starts chilly and wet and ends warm.

We got our hands on a couple ounces of Belma, a young hop varietal with pronounced melon and strawberry flavors, and decided to pair that with blood oranges to see what sort of fruit complexity we could tease out of an already estery beer. Strawberry, orange blossoms, cracked pepper: sounds like spring to me.

The idea for blood orange came from a trip Lara and I took to Asheville earlier this month with a couple of friends. Wicked Weed tapped a single keg of a blood orange saison, and it kicked before we could get there. Disappointed, we figured the only thing to do was to go home and brew your own.

An ester blowout and perceived sweetness are our enemies here, so we pitched low and plan to ferment under 70°F.

This saison also marks our first foray into cask ale. After a few days in secondary with orange zest and flesh and Belma hops, we’ll rack this beer into a 5.4-gallon pin so we can serve it at an event late next month.

Stay tuned for details. We’ll share them as soon as we can.

Batch size: 6 gallons
Grains: 12.3 lbs.
Estimated SRM: 5
Estimated IBU: 22
Estimated OG: 1.052
Estimated FG: 1.007
ABV: 6%

Grains
9.70 lbs. Belgian two-row pale
1.85 lbs. Munich light
0.75 lbs. Rye

Hops
0.75 oz. Perle (7.8% AA)
1.50 oz. Belma (10.0% AA)

Extras
3 blood oranges
0.5 tsp.yeast nutrient
1 Whirlfloc tablet

Yeast
Wyeast 3711 (French saison)

Mash: 5.01 gallons @ 147°F (75 minutes)
Sparge: 4.42 gallons @ 168°F (10 minutes)
Boil: 60 minutes*

Boil Schedule
0.75 oz. Perle @ 60 minutes
0.50 oz. Belma @ 10 minutes
Zest of 2 blood oranges @ 5 minutes**

Pitch: 61°F
Ferment: 68°F

Secondary: 1.00 oz. Belma and the zest and flesh of 1 blood orange for 4 days

* 60-ish, really. The propane tank bottomed out 35 minutes into the boil, so we lost momentum for a few minutes for a quick trip to the gas station. This is a low-hopped beer, so I’m hoping the hiccup won’t disturb our hop utilization. One of these days, we’ll bother to keep a second full tank on standby.

** My anal-retentive ways failed today for some reason. I never bothered to weigh the zest.

Brew Day: Belgian Chocolate Stout

When someone asks you if you want cocoa husks, you say yes. These are the sorts of rules we live by.

As much fun as it is to plan future beers on a whim, just the two of us sharing a bottle and talking about what we want to drink in the next month or two, it’s fun having your hand forced. Our friend David handed us half a pound of rich, decadent cocoa husks a couple weeks ago, and we knew right away we had to brew a beer to feature them.

Thus we have a Belgian chocolate stout. We brewed a breakfast stout with two types of chocolate last fall, so we wanted to take things in a slightly different direction this time. The idea was to highlight both the cocoa and one of our favorite yeast strains, Wyeast 3522 (Belgian Ardennes), which imparts a soft fruitiness and a hint of pepper. We wanted to avoid harsh, dry bitterness in order to let the chocolate flavors push through, so we used only a pinch of roasted barley and aromatic malt. We relied on Special B and pale chocolate malt for the traditional stout color and much of the plummy, nutty, bready depth we’re after.

Who knows? This may turn out more like a cocoa dubbel.

Cocoa husks and nibs

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Grains: 14.46 lbs.
Estimated SRM: 32
Estimated IBU: 32
Estimated OG: 1.066
Estimated FG: 1.014
ABV: 6.8%

Grains
10.25 lbs. Belgian two-row pale
1.75 lbs. Golden naked oats
1.30 lbs. Pale chocolate malt
0.95 lbs. Special B
0.15 lbs. Roasted barley
0.06 lbs. Aromatic malt

Hops
0.7 oz. Magnum (14% AA)
0.5 oz. Perle (8% AA)

Extras
1 Whirlfloc tablet
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrient
8.8 oz. cocoa husks
3.0 oz. 61% cocoa nibs

Yeast: Wyeast 3522 (Ardennes)
Mash: 4.77 gallons @ 154°F (75 minutes)
Sparge: 4.53 gallons @169°F (15 minutes)
Boil: 60 minutes

Boil Schedule
60: 0.7 oz. Magnum
10: 0.5 oz. Perle
00: 6.0 oz. cocoa husks, 2.5 oz. cocoa nibs

Secondary Schedule
2.8 oz. cocoa husks
0.5 oz. cocoa nibs

Pitch: 60°F
Fermentation: 65°F (rising to 72°F during conditioning)

We fell a few points short of our OG goal (1.059). About 12 hours after pitching the yeast, there was a clearly rising kraeusen, and the airlock was bubbling vigorously.

Brew Day: Gose

For our first brew of 2013, we thought we’d try something new. We’d been talking about brewing a gose for much of the past year, and after tasting our friend Chris’s barrel-aged gose, we decided it was time. Not that we’re barrel aging or using an open fermenter, mind you.

What you typically want in a gose is a dry, refreshing, slightly salty and slightly tart wheat ale. For the salt addition, we used Bolivian rose salt, a “fancy” garnishing salt that unsurprisingly is rose colored. We treaded lightly with coriander, fearful of stepping into the Hot Ham Water territory of our lavender witbier.

As for that tartness, well, there seemed to be three ways to go:

1. Wild yeast and bacteria. Dashing the fermentation with lactobacillus or Brettanomyces will certainly work, but it may take longer than we want, and they’ll continue chewing through this beer after we declare it done. Besides, we’re putting this beer on draft, and I’m not about to clean lacto or Brett out of our lines.
2. Sour mash. Again, you’re dealing with lactobacillus, essentially holding the mash in the 130s for 18-24 hours, sealed tightly with crushed barley stirred in to promote bacterial growth. It smells terrible. It forces you to brew partially across two days. Let’s do something easier.
3. Acidulated malt. Used to lower mash pH, acidulated malt contains lactic acid, the end product of lactobacillus that we need to give a gose its refreshing tartness. You’d typically use 2% to 3% in a dry stout to give it that classic Guinness tang, but we want something more assertive. Acid malt made up 7% of the grist, and we milled and mashed it with the rest of the grains

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Grains: 9.06 lbs.
Estimated SRM: 3
Estimated IBU: 10.6
Estimated OG: 1.042
Estimated FG: 1.008
ABV: 4.4%

Grains
4.20 lbs. Pilsner
4.20 lbs. Torrified wheat
0.66 lbs. Acidulated malt

Hops
0.60 oz. Hallertauer (3.9% AA)
0.50 oz. Tettnang (3.9% AA)

Extras
1 Whirlfloc tablet
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrient
0.75 tsp. Bolivian rose salt
7.00 g coriander seed

Yeast: Wyeast 3056 (Bavarian wheat)

Mash: 4.7 gallons @ 148°F (75 minutes)
Sparge: 3.5 gallons @169°F (15 minutes)
Boil: 60 minutes

Hop Schedule
60: 0.50 oz. Tettnang, 0.75 tsp. salt
15: 0.60 oz. Hallertauer
00: 7.00 g coriander

Pitched: 65°F
Fermented: 69°F

We employ a high-tech vacuum system to clean up any spilled grains.A cold, rainy brew day quickly turned into this. I love living in North Carolina.

Brew Day: Imperial IPA

I worried this day would never come.

We just brewed a Simcoe-forward imperial IPA, one you may recognize as a variant of the Pliny the Elder recipe Vinnie Cilurzo released to the homebrewing masses in 2009 via Zymurgy. We have gin to thank for this. Lara never really had a taste for hop-forward beers until a master bartender in Raleigh mixed her a perfect take on the classic cocktail The Last Word. The spicy gin and herbal, citrusy green chartreuse were an incredible mimc of everything that's wonderful about fresh, hoppy, West Coast IPAs.

Since that cocktail, Lara's been digging deep into IPAs, sometimes to her own bafflement. We brewed an imperial Belgian IPA a couple months ago that was one of our most successful brews, and now that we're both basically flossing hop leaves out of our teeth, it's time to take aim at one of the classics.

Pliny is an ideal plunge into this style for us because my feelings on this style aren't too far off from Vinnie's. Here's what I mean:

• An imperial IPA should be dry. Too often they're cloying, as brewers beef up the malt bill and mash higher to compensate for the massive hop charges. Just don't. Mash below 150.
• Tread lightly with specialty malts. You need a substantial malt base for a beer like this, but I'm looking for subtle accents: specialty malts under 60L that won't lace the beer with aggressive flavors. Hints of bread and caramel are great.
• Keep it under 9% ABV, dicks. This might be the biggest problem in the imperial IPA category. Most of the time, DIPAs that stray too far past 9% taste like alcohol. You can feel the throaty burn, the tingle in the depths of your jaw. It should be a strong beer for sure, but the imperial IPA is more about the woody, piney depth of massive hopping than the speed of your tumble onto the floor. Why the hell would I ever try Thomas Creek's Up the Creek IPA? It's freaking 12.5%.
• Double-digit IBUs, please. I swear 100-plus IBU beers are a conspiracy of the American Dental Association. I can feel my mouth rotting and my enamel dissolving when I drink the ale equivalent of antifreeze. (Hi, Thomas Creek!) You can work wonders with 75-95 IBUs. The fun is in the aroma additions and dry hopping, right? 

Enough of my strident BS. Here's the recipe:

Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Grains: 19.95 lbs.
Estimated SRM: 7.7
Estimated IBU: 84
Estimated OG: 1.077
Estimated FG: 1.009
ABV: 8.9%

Grains
17.25 lbs. Two-row pale
1.10 lbs. Light candi syrup
0.80 lbs. Crystal 40
0.80 lbs. CaraPils

Hops
3.00 oz. Columbus (13.9% AA)
2.25 oz. Centennial (9.9% AA) 
4.50 oz. Simcoe (13% AA) 

Extras
1 Whirlfloc tablet
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrient

Yeast
WLP001 (California ale)

Mash: 6.15 gallons @ 147°F (75 minutes)
Sparge: 3.51 gallons @169°F (15 minutes)
Boil: 90 minutes

Hop Schedule
90: 1.25 oz. Columbus
45: 0.50 oz. Columbus
30: 0.75 oz. Simcoe
00: 2.50 oz. Simcoe, 1.00 oz. Centennial
Dry: 1.0 oz. each of Columbus, Centennial and Simcoe (9 days); another 0.25 oz. of each at day 6 of the 9-day dry hop 

Pitched: 67°F
Fermented: 69°F

WhoopsWe planned for an inefficient mash given the huge grain bill. We figured we'd hit about 55%-60% efficiency and were right in that range. The numbers looked good enough at the end of lautering that I scaled back to 0.5 lbs. candi syrup to keep us from tipping over the 9% ABV mark that I'm apparently so concerned about. Our OG was 1.074 when we pitched the yeast...3 points short of the mark, which doesn't worry me too much at this scale and with such a big beer.

Brew Day: French Saison

Look, no melting vinyl!

My week of existential dread is over.

A silky smooth brew day is the cure for what ails the humbled brewer. If you read my last post, you know what a righteous mess I made of both a French saison and some of our equipment. Not so this time around.

We brewed essentially the same recipe this week, with only a couple tweaks to the efficiency percentage and grist just to buffer our chances of hitting our numbers. I also lautered very, very slowly. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to fall 15 points short of our target OG two Sundays in a row.

The result? Five gallons of 1.055 wort fermenting healthily at 68. We nailed our numbers this time, and I feel like a whole person deserving of love again. The conditions inside and outside the fermenter should be prime for a lovely gift saison for friends and family, not that I’m gonna dumb dance until I take my first taste in about a week.

Here's to hitting your numbers

Here’s what we did.

Batch Size: 5 gallons
Grains: 12.5 lbs.
SRM: 8
IBU: 22
Target OG: 1.055
Expected FG: 1.004
ABV: 6.6%

Grains
9.50 lbs. Belgian pilsner
1.75 lbs. Munich light
0.85 Crystal 40L
0.40 lbs. CaraFoam

Hops
3.0 oz. Strisselspalt (2.5% AA)

Extras
1 Whirlfloc tablet
0.5 tsp. yeast nutrient

Yeast
Wyeast 3711 (French saison)

Mash: 5.0 gallons @ 147F (75 minutes)
Sparge: 4.37 gallons @ 168F
Boil: 90 minutes

Hop Schedule
60 minutes: 2.5 oz. Strisselspalt
20 minutes: 0.5 oz. Strisselspalt

Pitched: 66
Fermentation: 68 for primary before raising to 75 for conditioning

She's vigorous