Tasting the House Bitter (1.3)

One of the nicer things about a low gravity beer made with English yeast is that the ferment is done in a few days, and the yeast drops like a rock.  If you're kegging, you're enjoying the fruits of your labor in about two weeks.  A month, tops, if you bottle condition.  The house bitter I brewed a 12 days ago has been on tap for nearly a week, and it's quite good, but I think a few tweaks are in order.

No such thing as a failed experiment...'specially when it tastes like this.

I experimented with a more complex grain bill and a higher mash temp, 155 versus my more-usual 150, in this iteration.  In a beer that starts out with a malty, bready base malt, I think all those body-boosting, character-boosting tricks come come together as a bit too much.  In fact, although the beer came out right at 3% abv, it drinks way bigger than I was aiming for.  The pale chocolate and special roast together give a toasted sourdough thing (a flavor I've heard about from special roast, but not experienced until now) that I'm not that fond of.  Again, just too too much bread given the base malt.  

That said, I do like the caramel flavors I'm getting from the english dark and special B combo.  It's an almost candy-like aroma that is kept from being cloying by a pretty firm bitterness, with a nice hop flavor finish.  I didn't end up dry hopping this, so there's no pipe tobacco (which goes great with caramel malts), but there is the barest hint of fuggle aroma.  I know I'm complaining about too much body and keeping the crystal malts, but I absolutely love that burnt toffee note from the dark crystal, and will reduce dextrins elsewhere. 

Speaking of which, I've tended to mash lower in the past—even for a low gravity beer—and I experimented with a higher mash of about 155.  The beer has a lot of body for a 3% alcohol beer, and that would be great if this was February, but it's not really playing so well in June, when I want something more crisp.

For house bitter (1.4), I think I'll drop the roasted malts to streamline the flavor, stick with one caramel, and drop the mash temp a bit to dry this for a bit more crispness. Back to basics.  In the meantime, this batch is still awfully tasty.

Brewing the House Bitter (1.3)

I've mentioned before that, too me, a good bitter (pale ale, whatever...there, I said it) is the platonic ideal of beer.  For a while I've been working a a good house pale, starting back in the day with something a lot like a Sierra Nevada, and slowly, but surely, working my way to something more closely resembling it's malty cousin across the sea.  There is absolutely nothing better than having a good bitter on tap in the house—also, it keeps my wife happy (sometimes I love my honey-do list).   

Despite the long-term love affair, development of a house beer has been willy-nilly, with batches tucked in between my more numerous one-off batches.  This is fine, because I love pales/bitters in nearly all of their permutations and I am not—NOT—someone who cares that much about consistency in a home-crafted beer.  However, since purchasing a copy of BeerSmith, which has some nifty version controls, I've decided to work on dialing the beer in, if only as an exercise in getting my process more consistent, which I do care about. 

I'm on the third batch since adopting a somewhat controlled method of recipe development, and I've enjoyed every batch so far.  I started with Jamil's recipe for an ordinary bitter from Brewing Classic Styles, scaled up for my system.  I've played around with the yeast, using the new Yorkshire Ale strain, S-04, and British Ale II, and I'll be using the Wyeast 1968, London ESB strain this time.  This time will be the first time that I've played around with the specialty grains in the recipe, trading out half of the British dark crystal for special B, and half of the special roast for pale chocolate.  With four different specialty grains, this is starting to look like a real homebrew recipe!  I have a suspicion that it'll come out muddled, and I'll end up with a much more simple recipe in the end--probably just Munton's dark crystal.

Foam Control is Essential.  Also Plastic Wrap. 

Another change I'm making this time—okay, so this isn't exactly controlling for variables—is that I'm switching out the EKG and sending in the fuggles.  I'm a big fan of fuggles, which I think have a nice earthy, sometimes pipe-tobaccoe nose, that goes really well with the toffee notes of the darker crystal malts I like.


This will also be the first time that I've tried this recipe as a no-sparge recipe.  I upgraded to a larger cooler mash tun in the hopes of being able to make no-sparge session ales, as I've heard the technique can be helpful for giving a low-gravity beer a nice, rich body.  I also find that I frequently overshoot my expected gravity when there's not much grain.

Big flavors in a little beer, folks.

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: House Bitter (1.3)
Brewer: Vince Dongarra
Asst Brewer: 
Style: Standard/Ordinary Bitter
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0) 

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 13.09 gal
Post Boil Volume: 11.96 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 11.00 gal   
Bottling Volume: 10.42 gal
Estimated OG: 1.038 SG
Estimated Color: 12.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 30.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 75.3 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     %/IBU         
14 lbs                Pale Ale (Crisp) (4.0 SRM)               90.3 %        
8.0 oz                Muntons Dark Crystal (135.0 SRM)         3.2 %         
8.0 oz                Special B (Dingemans) (147.5 SRM)        3.2 %         
4.0 oz                Pale Chocolate (200.0 SRM)               1.6 %         
4.0 oz                Special Roast (50.0 SRM)                 1.6 %         
57 g                  Fuggles [5.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min   21.2 IBUs     
28 g                  Fuggles [5.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min         7.3 IBUs      
1.00 Items            Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)        -             
28 g                  Fuggles [5.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min          1.9 IBUs      
1.00 tsp              Yeast Nutrient (Boil 3.0 days)           -             
1.0 pkg               London ESB Ale (Wyeast Labs #1968) [124. -             
28 g                  Fuggles [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days      0.0 IBUs      


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 15 lbs 8.0 oz
----------------------------
Name              Description                             Step Temperat Step Time     
Mash In           Add 5.81 gal of water at 167.4 F        155.0 F       75 min        
Mashout           Add 9.64 gal of water at 177.2 F        168.0 F       40 min        

Sparge: Batch sparge with 1 steps (Drain mash tun, ) of 168.0 F water
Notes:

I love how fast low-gravity english beers can be made. 

This came out a very decent 3% quaffer in about a week and a half. 

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Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
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Tasting the Fresh-Kegged No-Boil Berliner Weisse

It's a good thing I brew for domestic consumption, because these multi-adjective descriptions would make for lousy marketing.

Still life with white beer and petunias.

Not very long ago, I brewed a no-boil berliner weisse as part of my plan to continue use of my ancient plastic equipment through brewing of sour beers.  The idea was to keg half of the beer fresh out of the fermenter, and leave the other half in a keg in the basement cellar to further sour until I break it out sometime during the dog days.  I've been drinking the fresh-kegged version for about a week now, and have some thoughts.  

In general, this is a pretty good beer.  It's super light, only about 3% alcohol, and has a nice grainy, just-tart flavor with a super dry finish.  There's also a bit of a funk on the nose from the lacto that I like in some examples of the style.  It's just barely sour, but there's really no sweetness to be balanced, so it comes off as a not-too-tart, unsweetened lemonade.  And it looks like lemonade.  They aren't kidding when they say this stuff is white—the lack of a boil, plus a bit of still-suspended yeast (lacto, starch?) makes it very, very pale.  I'm looking forward to trying the other keg sometime later this summer.  


I'm about half way through this keg, and I have learned some lessons that may help make it a much better beer next time.   

In brewing this, I focused on the health of the lacto and so abused the yeast more than I might usually, and that was a mistake.  I pitched this WYeast German ale strain without a starter into quite warm, unoxygenated wort some time after pitching a huge starter of lacto, which doesn't like oxygen.  As a reward, I ended up with rather large dose of sulfur, which I find happens with some yeasts when they are not treated properly, so I guess this is one of those strains.  In generally, I don't mind a tiny bit of sulfur, especially in a light, thirst-quencher like this, but a lot smells like...well....like sulfur.  Sulfur is pretty volatile, so it dissipates quickly in a highly-carbonated beer like this.  You just don't want to stick your nose in the foam for the first minute or so.  Luckily, when you keg, you can "burp" the keg at the pressure release valve a few times a day, and you can get rid of a lot of the sulfur, so the smell is now down from Blazing Saddles to something you might find in some commercial lagers.  The short of it is that next time I'll pitch a starter and oxygenate, and not worry so much about what it does to the lacto.

This head was not long-lived. Actually running this through a picnic tap to avoid bacteria in the taps.

I'm also a bit disappointed by how cloudy it still is and how the head dissipates so quickly.  The recipe I used involved an hour-long protein rest at 133, and I suspect that may be too long, resulting in a break down of the proteins needed to have good head retention (I also missed low, which might have been the issue).  Of course, for all I know, a good head on a Berliner Weisse not to style, but it does look nice.  The recipe also involved doing a mashout right after the main sacarification rest, which is reached by a decoction.  I suspect that raising the temp to mashout from the sac rest through heating the mash takes long enough to allow the starch released during the decoction to convert.  But I used a boiling water infusion, so I may have denatured the enzymes too quickly, leaving the beer with a starch haze.  Next time I may let it sit for a while before mashing out.

All-in-all, a nice beer to have around.  I'm looking forward to trying to make it better.