Strange Fruit: Part 2

Oak Plum Saison
Belgian Pils, Caravienne, Torrified Wheat, Special B
Saaz, Mount Hood, Zythos Hops
Wyeast Belgian Saison (1.2 lt starter)
3lbs Yellow Plums
3oz Hungarian Oak Cubes

A few days before making the Belgian Fruit Beer mentioned in the post previous to this one I brewed up a Saison. Although I felt it was a couple weeks early to brew a Saison I did have the weather in my favor. When you are reaching 70-80 degrees every day, a Saison hits the spot. I also saw The Bruery and some Stillwater's on tap a few times while I was out and about to sway my brewing schedule.

Again, I mentioned in the previous post that I had to play with varying temperatures last Summer and Fall, but this early Spring brought a nice stable 67-70 degrees in my basement with the help of a blanket or two wrapping the fermentor. For my OG on this batch I shot for 1.046 was almost right on. Wyeast Belgian Saison is as finicky as them come in my book. Just when you think that you stalled out everything revitalizes and is fine. I still let the primary go for 13 days. To bring fruit into this recipe I went back to my Plum Rye IPA and ended up getting 3lbs of Yellow Plums. You are not going to get a whole lot of secondary fermentation using plums. I was hoping for a bit of tartness. The Rye IPA was very pleasant, but with this yeast I didn't know what to expect. I left the plums soaking in Cabernet for the entire primary and the taste of them on racking day made me want some Sangria. The tartness of the plum and fruitiness of the wine was a nice blend. That brings us to the current week. The outside temp is dropping and with a week in the 50s and low 60s I figured that oaking it might be another nice addition. That is where this post ends. I am going to let it sit on the oak for about 14 days. Every other time that I have used oak it was a Stout or Porter and 30 days seemed to be what I gauged everything on. The one exception was the Oak Double IPA that we did this year and 2 weeks was plenty (by the way, a First Tasting Post on that beer should appear later in the week).

Cheers until then.

Strange Fruit

4lbs Raspberries in Secondary

MARCH:
Now is the time of year when I start thinking about fruit beers. It's not that I am a fan of them, but playing with different fruits and alcohols has been a big part of my brewing over the past year. Last year I worked on a few different saisons, mainly concentrating on different herbs, different yeast strains, higher and lower temperatures and overall getting to know the style of beer a bit better. Spring in Philadelphia is absurdly warm right now and it feels like a nice middle of the road temperature to work with.

I have access to a good deal of fruit grown last year and frozen. Raspberries were the majority in my options. I wanted a pretty basic base of Pale Malt, a bit of Wheat. Warrior hops seem to be something that have made it into two recipes last month so I went with it as the only hop at 60 mins. I wanted this to be a fairly big beer with an OG around 1.096. I planned on 3 lbs of berries at knock out and a 2 litter starter with 2 smack packs. This is sounding kind-of DFH Fort-like and as much as I would love to make something like that, I know there is so much time and knowledge to kick something like that out. I was recently sent a blog where the brewer made a 120 Clone and I assume that it is a similar fermentation process.

After primary is over I still plan on racking onto another 4 lbs of berries. Time and taste will tell.

Lesson Learned- Puree, Puree, Puree. I potato smashed 3 lbs of rasp. and wild berries. This resulted in a nicely clogged screen when draining into the fermentor. I planned on this so I had a strainer and large funnel sanitized and ready.

Brett Pellicle

APRIL:
After a month of sitting a top of 4lbs of raspberries in the secondary it looks no different that out of the primary. Why would it? The berries roused up a nice second fermentation adding plenty more tartness and haze. I pitched a vile of Wyeast Brett L. Let's see what happens.



Sour Belgian Raspberry
Pale Malt, Wheat Malt, Carapils
Warrior Hops
Wyeast Belgian Wit 
White Labs Brett L
Orange, Lemon, Lime Zest
3lbs of Raspberries (knock out)
4lbs of Raspberries (secondary) - Photo above

Here is a poem: 

Strange Fruit by Seamus Heaney
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring 
What had begun to feel like reverence.

Batch #3

Double IPA
Brewed with Julian Heal

Canadian Pale Malt, US 2 Row, Munich, Belgian Pilsen, Crystal 40, Carapils
Warrior, Cascade, Centennial Hops
Wyeast American Ale II

I never brewed an Imperial before. Well...nothing that was supposed to be over 10% and actually hit both gravities. It was a perfect day to brew as it was the morning after the only real snow that Philly got all winter. That is what Imperials are for sometimes. A nice boozy treat that you can sip on when the winds are wiping around and you just want the winter to end. Well...that is my Northeast scenario. In this case it will be a nice treat where everything is just beginning to bloom. That means it is hop planting season. Speaking of hops we have close to pound of hops in this beer.

We had a nice blow off by the morning after brew day. I wasn't there to see it, but it must have been a nice see that we had plenty of aeration before pitching our starter. It was also one of back to back brews that Jules made that day. Who starts off with an Imperial and ends with a Smoked Oaked Baltic Porter? After a nice primary we racked on to 4ozs of French and Hungarian Oak Cubes. After two 2 weeks it had plenty of oakiness so we racked off, let it sit again and dry hopped. With about eight weeks in we are getting ready to bottle. More pics to come soon.

Hometown Brews

We took a day trip out of the city yesterday to visit my parents in North East PA. They live about 15 mins north of Scranton and the ride up I476 to the Turnpike Extensions is about a 2+ hour ride with zero traffic. Yesterday brought a series of snow squalls from Lansdale to Allentown. It was a nice to see that there is a winter outside of Philadelphia. There are plenty of decent beer bars up in the Scranton area, but it is rather difficult to get my parents (just one half) to have a meal based around craft beers. There was a nanobrewery just outside Scranton that just settled into the their hometown of Carbondale. This all happened in the past month so I was hoping to catch one of their beers on tap, and I did.


Three Guys and a Beer'd is the name of the brewery. Their website is still in the works, but from their Facebook page it looks like they eight or so beers readily available. Three of them were on at our dinner destination. I started out with Ladder Dive, a Rye IPA. I've always been a fan of Rye IPA. Philly's own Dock Street's Rye IPA has always stood out as one of my favorites and I was pretty pleased with this beer as well. Like most Ryes there is a bit of sensory overload. Sweet and piney and citrusy and spicey.  My only disappointment was in the bar's glassware. Unfortunately frosted mugs don't make an easy transition from shitty domestic lagers and pilsners toward anything craft. I always worry that frosted mugs equals frosted cleaner which in turn leads nighttime sickness.  They had an American Wheat and an Irish Red on also. I don't have a tendency to gravitate toward either of these styles, but I had a nice fish dinner so I went for their wheat, Wheat the People. This one can pass in a frosted glass. It was a classic, clean US Wheat. It took them a few tries to get me the right beer though. First they gave me a lager, then the Rye IPA again, and finally the Wheat. Fortunately I had they left the Rye on the table and I got enjoy both of them.

On the way back to Philly we made a stop in the Poconos. Both my wife and I lived in Stroudsburg prior to moving to Philly. There are a few brew pubs around the area with most recently, Shawnee Craft Brewing Co. being available outside their tasting room. I've heard about Shawnee for a while and have even had some Philly friends stop at their tasting room last year. Their Session Porter was on tap along with a Blonde. I tried both and was overall pleased with these two as well. The Porter was super rich with nice dark fruit notes and plenty of body of a session beer. At around 4% it was a nice beer to enjoy before an hour ride home. Their Blonde, which I am assume is their Biere Blanche was a bit more of my style of wheat compared to the Three Guys American Wheat. Nice peppery notes, a bit puckery and dry finish made this beer a winner for me. But overall I both breweries make coming and going and a new treat for me.

Tasting: Dubbel de Figs

Dubbel de Figs was my second collaboration with friend, long time homebrewer, Julian Heal. Julian and his brother, Tom, have been brewing for well over a decade and since 2010 have been making batch after batch on their Brew Magic system. For me, getting out of the basement or patio and working on a piece of equipment like this is a nice change of pace.

It is all in a name, and Dubbel de Figs is just that. A nice Belgian-Style Dubbel with figs added at every stage of brewing (1st Wort, Mash, Boil and Fermented). The end result was a cloudy, dark amber concoction pleasing to the nose and palate as a Belgian should. It starts off nice and sweet, a bit nutty with a bit of dark fruit (raisiny and or figgy), and of course yeasty. The head dissapated quite quickly. Jules kegged his 5 gallons and we bottled mine. We bottle from a conincal fermentor, so the priming sugar was probably a bit uneven bottle to bottle. There is a subtle spiciness to it from the star anise and cloves, but it is probably all in the yeast. (Belgian Abbey).

We started our first collab. of the year with a Double IPA. You can read about that in the Spring.

First Tasting: Rum Raisin Oatmeal Stout

I was stoked to make this beer from start to finish. I read about a clone of Lost Abbey's Judgement Day where the raisins were added for the entire boil. Judgment Day is a sweet beer to begin with so I wasn't sure how this one was going to work. I now feel like the silkiness that the oats tend to add are insignificant.

Of all the stouts that I made for the winter (Chocolate Stout, Chocolate Cherrywood Stout, and the Rum Raisin Stout, and even the Date and Molasses Porter), I tweaked each ingredient list here and there; Maris Otter base malts, 2 Row, Roasted Barley or Flaked Barley, Oats and Carafa 2 and 3, just to get a better understanding of the grains themselves. I used a half pound of raisins in the boil and then racked onto another half pound of raisins the were in a dark rum for 14 days. It has been great playing with different alcohols, woods and fruits this year. Peaches and Rum, Cherrywood/ Bourbon, Oak/ Bourbon Raisins and Dates even Plums and Bourbon. This year I hope to get into a few others.

I give this beer a solid B+. It is very sweet, but the rum added to that and I would rather see it come through on the heavy side rather than always wonder how much is enough. I can now start to scale back. The head on this dissipated very quickly, but from the picture above you wouldn't guess. I am thinking that the raisins are the culprit. I was away for a few weeks during all of these dark beers while they were racked so they all had plenty of time to be undisturbed or bottled too early. I am learning to be patient.

Yeast Starter Anatomy

Smack your pack or take you vile out of the fridge to room temp.

I only got into the fun and importance of making yeast starters in the fall last year. I made half batches for so long that one packet of yeast was plenty for 3 gallon high gravity beers. Last night while enjoying the last beer made last year, a Single Hop (Palisade) Pale Ale, a friend found something off about it. Out of no where he asked if I made a starter and I actually didn't. It was the first time I didn't out of 8 or so recipes. So here is my usual set up for making one. Yeast Nutrient optional.

For a 5 gallon batch with a 1,000 ml starter use 3.5 ozs of DME. Consult Mr. Malty though for correct number of yeasties that you need for your recipe.

15 Min boil of your DME in one pint of water.

Chill baby Chill. 15-20 Mins is usually enough time.

Keep it Clean!

Keep it really clean!

Wait 18-24 hours. Give it some swirls if you are not using a stir plate. Use an airlock, tinfoil, or foam stopper. Consult other books, blogs, and forums. Everyone does it different.