Tasting Notes: Raspberry Berlinerweisse

Last Saturday was Zwanze Day 2014, and after missing it in 2013 this year I finally made it to the celebration at West Lakeview Liquors in Chicago.  I haven't been to many beer events before, and even though I find certain aspects of American beer culture a bit strange and alienating this festival was really fun.  The Cantillon beers were a rare treat (I've never been able to find any on the shelves here), and all very enjoyable.  I also got to try my first beer from Hill Farmstead, Society and Solitude #7---even for someone who doesn't get all that excited about double IPAs, that beer was a real standout.  But one nice thing about being a bit at odds with beer geek culture is that the beers I enjoyed most stayed on tap the longest.  As people went up for the rarer/stronger stuff,  I had glass after glass of Taras Boulba (probably the freshest I've ever had) and this really tasty lager from Amager Bryghus.  I would happily have stayed all day, but we had to leave mid-afternoon to find some food and ended up nipping in to Goose Island Clybourn to see what they had on cask.

Anyway, to mark the occasion, here are some tasting notes for the portion of the no-boil sour that I aged on raspberries (a lambic would have been more appropriate I suppose, but I don't have any bottled homebrew efforts yet).

Appearance: Brilliant pink colour---my photo doesn't do it justice.  One of the most striking beers I've brewed.  Billowing head recedes to a thin but persistent cap.

Smell:  Jammy raspberries, but also seeded multi-grain bread.  The seed smell is really distinctive---its almost certainly from the raspberry seeds, but reminds me of a particular bread I used to get from a supermarket back in England.

Taste: Tart up front, followed by more bread and ending with an aftertaste of raspberries,  Very pleasant.

Mouthfeel: Effervescent, prickly carbonation overcomes any thinness in the body.

Drinkability & Notes:  Very happy with how this one turned out.  Its super drinkable and refreshing, nicely tart but with a bit of complexity as well.  J thinks its one of the best beers I've brewed, but really I think a lot of the credit goes to the delicious raspberries I used from Klug Farms.  They tasted so good that I had second thoughts about putting them in a beer, but I'm glad I stuck with my original plan.  Between this and my blackcurrant berliner, berries seem to be a good complement for this kind of sour beer.

Brew Day: No Boil Sour

I’ve managed to brew a lot this week, even though I’ve still been meeting with students as the school year wraps up.  Much of what I’ve brewed is intended for blending with older beers that have been in secondary for a few months, so since there was nothing special about the brew days I’ll post about them all once I decide on the blends.  The beer in this post is something like a berliner weisse, fermented with a blend of  Brett Trois and Brett C, along with a large pitch of lactobacillus.  If it turns out well, some of it will also be used for blending.

I’ve brewed quite a few berliner weisses over the last year, and the technique I use is based on the one that Kristen England outlines in Brewing with Wheat (he also talks about it a bit in this old thread from the Northern Brewer forum).  England uses a simple grist of 50% wheat malt and 50% pilsner, puts it through a step mash with a decoction, skips the boil entirely and pitches a large amount of lactobacillus along with sacchromyces at a ratio of between 3:1 and 5:1.  I’ve followed this process to the letter before, and made very good beers with it, but this time I used a variation that I’ve also had some success with: a step mash without a decoction, and a pitch of brettanomyces instead of sacchromyces.

The lactobacillus I used originally came from a pack of Wyeast Berliner Blend that I bought for cheap because it was way past its best by date.  I split the pack into two starters, one made with malt and hops to favour the yeast, and another made with apple juice to favour the lacto.  This was what I used in my first berliner, but I kept back some of the apple juice starter and I’ve been feeding it and re-pitching it successfully ever since.  I usually feed it a few weeks before I’m going to use it, and occasionally put it in the fridge if I know I won’t be using it for a while (apparently lactobacillus will eventually lower the pH enough to kill itself off, so putting it in the fridge is a way of slowing it down a bit).  I have no way of calculating a 5:1 pitch rate, so I usually just decant most of the jug (it clears after a few weeks, and you can see the wispy lacto at the bottom), and then pitch most of what’s left.

I also keep starters of brettanomyces strains in half gallon jugs, and grow these up as I need them.  In the past I’ve just used Brett Trois for these beers, but this time I decided to grow up a blend of Brett Trois and Brett C: the Trois starter was fed more recently, so I imagine it was healthier and ended up making up more of the final blend.

Some people like to give the lactobacillus a head start by holding back the yeast for a few days before pitching.  I’ve never had any trouble getting enough sourness with my technique so far, but I do worry about it, especially when the lactobacillus starter hasn’t been used for a while.  I’m hoping that the smaller size of the brett starter, along with the fact that it grows fairly slowly compared to sacch, will give the lactobacillus plenty of time to sour the beer before the yeast dries it out.  I decided to try doing this batch without any temperature control, and fermentation was pretty furious this morning.

When I’ve used this process in the past, its made sour and refreshing beers that I’ve been pretty happy with.  The brettanomyces doesn’t seem to be fazed by the acidity created by the lactobacillus, and it dries the beer right out and adds a nice fruitiness as it ages in the bottle.  (You can read comments from a competition score-sheet for one of them in this post.)  One place in which I think the brett versions I’ve made have been lacking is in the malty/wheaty flavours that were there when I used a german ale yeast and a decoction, and I think I ultimately prefer that process when I’m making a straight berliner weisse.  However I have other plans for this batch. 

Some of it will end up on fruit, probably raspberries or maybe peaches (I’ve had some success doing this before, but not with these fruits).  Assuming it gets sour enough, the rest will be used for blending with fully attenuated saisons in a few months time.  My thought its that this will be a way of adding some tartness to hoppy beers, but also a way of dosing them with brettanomyces right before they go into the bottle.  I wrote about this in an earlier post, and I’ll be trying it with some other beers soon.  It seems to be the technique that Chad Yakobson uses for making some of the beers at Crooked Stave:

“The other one is Petite Sour, which as well is going to be a full time year round beer. This beer weighs in at about 4% and the idea behind it is my version of a table beer. It’s Berliner Weisse meets Gose meets Farmhouse Wit, so it’s a tart witbier. It has an acidity level but it’s tame. It has the fruitiness from the brett (which is very characteristic of our beers as it is) but also some of the beer background as well because it’s a blend of a 100% brett beer blended with a saison farmhouse type wit which is not in oak. That beer marries all these flavors together to where it’s approachable. It’s light, crisp, clean and lemony.”

Recipe:

   

Estimated O.G.	1.033
Measured O.G.	1.033
Measured F.G.
ABV.
Mash:
	133°F	60 mins
	150°F	40 mins
	160°F	15 mins
	170°F	10 mins
	No Boil
Malt:
50% Pilsner	(Dingemans)
50% Wheat Malt
Hops:
Crystal	Mash Hop	? IBUs	(5g @ 4.8%)
Yeast:
WLP644; WLP645; lactobacillus.

Berliner Weisse with Blackcurrants

This summer J and I spent a few weeks working on my aunt and uncle’s farm back in the U.K.  Its very small, basically subsistence, although they do sell some eggs to locals and my uncle runs butchery classes (people buy a whole or half pig, and come to the class to butcher it after its been slaughtered).  As a life-long vegetarian, all of that is a bit wasted on me.  But they also grow lots of fruit and veg, and part of our work while we were there in high summer was picking some of these crops.

This year, there were a lot of berries and currants: more than we could pick or use, though we did our best, making various jams and shrubs and liqueurs.  I wanted to find a way to use some of this in my beer, but bringing fresh produce back across the ocean with us was not an option.  Luckily, my uncle had a drier, and a quick search of the customs website suggested that bringing dry fruit into the country should not be a problem.

I decided the crop I was most likely to use would be blackcurrants.  At the time, I had in mind to use them in a clone of Russian River’s Consecration that I had made earlier that summer.  The original actually uses Zante currants, which are something else entirely, but I thought the jammy flavours of the blackcurrants would work well as a substitute.  About half of what I brought back went into this beer (its still in secondary), and I decided to save the rest for a berliner weisse.  My thought was again that the sharp but fruity sourness would blend well with the dry and refreshing character of such a beer.

A few months later I brewed a straight-forward berliner weisse with brett trois (featured in this post), and the saved some of the yeast cake for this beer.  I used the same process I have before, based loosely on Kristen England’s technique in Brewing with Wheat (minus a decoction): a single infusion mash at 149°F, mash out at 170°F, then cooled without a boil and pitched with a large amount of lactobacillus and some yeast.

At a few months old, the beer is drinking very well.  Most of these will stay stashed away for the summer, although I hope the sourness doesn’t increase too much between now and then because its perfect right now.  Maybe I’ll do a side-by-side tasting of these two berliner weisses, along with some of my earlier attempts, in a month or two.

Appearance: Hazy, muddy orange.  Some pinkish notes when I hold it up to the light.  Not the prettiest beer.  Full head that dissipates to a thin layer after a minute or two.

Smell: Blackcurrants very prominent, mingled with earthy funk from the brett in nose too.

Taste: Sharply sour at sides of mouth, but not unpleasantly so.  Then what I perceive as a jammy sweetness that lingers on the tongue, even though the beer stays sour and is very dry.  Quickly moves to back of throat, currants again with an almost metallic note.  J described it as briny.

Mouthfeel: Sour, fairly high carbonation, and dry---but still coats the mouth and lingers at back of throat.

Drinkability & Notes:  I’m really pleased with the way this one turned out: it should be very refreshing and drinkable come summer.  Early on the currants added a very sharp, malic acidity, but that’s mellowed somewhat (I believe the lactobacillus can convert the malic acid into lactic acid) leaving a sour but drinkable beer.  The funk in the nose might be off-putting for some, but when I swirl the glass it mingles nicely with the fruitiness of the blackcurrants.

Recipe:

   

Estimated O.G.	1.032
Measured O.G.	1.030
Measured F.G.	1.002
ABV.	3.6%
Mash:	149°F
Malt:
50% Pilsner
50% Wheat Malt
Hops:
Crystal	Mash Hop	1.4 IBUs	(8g @3.5%%)
Yeast:
Brett Trois (WLP 644)	Lactobacillus