Brew Day: XX Bitter

I think that De Ranke's XX Bitter is for me what Saison Dupont is for many American saison drinkers: one of the beers that made me fall in love with the style and start brewing it seriously at home.  That partly reflects the indirect route I took to these beers, first becoming excited about them after reading the descriptions of old saisons in Yvan de Baets' essay in Farmhouse Ales.  That essay helped me to see a pattern in the kind of Belgian beers I enjoyed and the kinds I wasn't so keen on.  And XX Bitter (along with beers from Brasserie de la Senne) came closest to how I imagined the bitter versions of those beers.

Because of that, I've been meaning to brew a batch directly inspired by XX Bitter for quite a while.  Luckily, Nino and Guido are very open about how they brew their beers, making it a principle to "offer our customers insight in our brewery, the brewing process and the materials used, with nothing to hide".  This article contains almost everything you need to know in order to brew a beer along these lines, and there is also plenty of information on the De Ranke website.  Nino was kind enough to answer a few extra questions for me as well.

Here are the main takeaways I got from all of this:

1. The recipe is 100% pilsner malt.
2. Whole hops are essential.  The brewers are very serious about this part of their process, stating that they "use exorbitant amounts of hop flowers, which results in unmatched complexity and mouthfeel".  This certainly fits my own experience of their beers.
3. There are only two additions of hops in the boil.  The first is of Brewer's Gold, added with 75 minutes left in the boil, aiming for 60 IBUs.  The second is with Hallertau Mittelfruh, at two minutes left in the boil.  Nino recommended that I add a minimum of 1.5g/l, and I ended up using closer to 2g/l.
4. The brewery uses a dried Fermentis yeast.  Discussion with other homebrewers online left me fairly certain that this was Safbrew T-58.  Nino simply suggested that I "select a yeast strain that is quite neutral so the hops will shine through better". They also "use very little cooling during the brewing process", which suggests to me that the yeast is allowed to free-rise after a certain point.
5. The beer finishes very dry, and is given a relatively long conditioning period at fairly high temperatures.  From the article: "We condition at higher temperatures than a lot of breweries, mostly at 15°C. We also allow for 4 weeks of conditioning after primary fermentation which is longer than a lot of other breweries. This gives us a really dry beer.”

That is more than enough information to base a homebrew recipe on, though I had to make a few changes to what I brewed.

I wanted to use the freshest whole hops possible, so I waited until Hops Direct announced that their new European crop had arrived, and picked my hops from there.  Unfortunately they did not have any Brewers Gold this year.  I ordered some Bramling Cross instead, since they have a similar oil profile and flavour description to Brewers Gold (plus I knew I could use them in some other recipes).  The only problem was that the AA% was surprisingly low, at only 3.3%.  This meant I had to use A LOT of hops to get to 60 IBUs.  I thought about supplementing with pellets instead, but decided that went against the spirit of the thing: if I had enough whole hops, why not use them and see how things turned out.  I adapted my water profile to emphasise this bitterness, going for around 150ppm calcium sulfate to around 50ppm calcium chloride.

My other main concern was about the yeast.  Nino states that the beer gets very dry, but from what I could learn from other homebrewers, it seems that T-58 is not a particularly attenuative strain.  With that in mind, I did everything I could to make a fermentable wort, including a long low mash rest at around 146°F (followed by a shorter one at 154°F).  Also, though I was using dried yeast, I gave the wort plenty of oxygen before pitching.

My predicted O.G. was 1.054, but both batches ended up higher than intended, between 1.058 and 1.060, perhaps due to the longer than usual mash rests.  This probably won't help with attenuation, but I decided to just let things be rather than adding water to get closer to my intended O.G.  After pitching the yeast, I kept the beer in the mid 60s for the first 24 hours or so, and allowed it to free-rise after that.

The batch brewed with T-58 was still at 1.020 after two weeks of fermentation.  I transferred it to a second keg and let it sit at room temperature with a spunding valve, and after four weeks it was down to 1.012.  I'd hoped to get it down to at least 1.008, so I was a little disappointed with where it ended up, but I decided to just got ahead and package it rather trying to start another fermentation with a different strain.

It's been in the bottle for about three weeks at this point, and while its a nice beer, it doesn't come close to XX Bitter.  First, the bitterness just isn't as pronounced as it is in the original.   Its definitely there, but doesn't have the lingering quality that I love in De Ranke's beer.  I don't know if this is because the beer didn't dry out enough, because I used lower AA hops, or something else entirely.  The fuller body also makes it less drinkable than XX bitter.  That aside, its a nice beer: aromatically complex, with both the yeast and the hops making their presence known.  But its just not what I was going for, and disappointing for that reason.

I think if I brew this again, I'll give up on the idea of making a 'clone' and use a yeast strain that I'm more familiar with.  I actually made some other beers along these lines using these same whole hops, but they're a subject for another post.  In the meantime, I plan to set the rest of this batch cold-condition in the fridge while I'm away in England, and I'm sure we'll have no problem finishing it off once we get back.

But wait, there's more...



As Nino mentions in that article, there was a period between 1994 and 1998 when the beers at De Ranke were brewed with yeast from the Rodenbach brewery.  Yvan de Baets has a very evocative description of that beer, and the flavour profile associated with old saisons, in his essay:

It is often said that sourness and bitterness do not go well together in beer but, because [saison] was a beer that had matured for a long time, the bitterness decreased, permitting the equilibrated development of the sour and vinous flavours of the beer. We had evidence of this until several years ago when the excellent XX Bitter, a heavily hopped beer from the De Ranke brewery in Wevelgem, was still fermented with yeast from the Rodenbach brewery in Roeselare. This yeast is in fact a mix of diverse yeasts, some of which are of the Brettanomyces strain, and of lactic bacteria. When the beer was young, bitterness dominated, balanced by a light tartness. As is aged, the bitterness diminished, giving way to a more pronounced and slightly vinous tartness. The balance of this beer was always perfect. It certainly came close to old saison beers.

With plenty of whole hops left over after I formulated the recipe for the clean batch, of course I had to give this one a try as well.  The recipe was exactly the same, but instead of using T-58 I pitched a packet of Wyeast's Roeselare blend, which is intended to imitate the yeast at Rodenbach.  As with the beer described above, I tried to make sure this one finished pretty dry, giving it a long, low mash rest and plenty of oxygen. I'm hoping this will help the beer attenuate fairly low after a month or two, so that I can package it while its still quite fresh, and see it develop in the bottle.  If that isn't possible (and as of posting this, its looking unlikely), I'll leave it to develop in a carboy over the summer.

My First Kegged Beers

Its taken me a while to get a kegging system, mainly because I don't have the space or the money for the kind of multi-keg setup I'd like.  But after my trip home this summer I decided it was time to look into something basic, if only so that I could brew the kind of fast, low-ABV beers I missed from home without the hassle of bottle-conditioning.  I already had a very small fridge that I'd picked up for cheap from a graduating student---barely enough for one three gallon keg and a five pound CO2 tank, but I had to start somewhere!

I actually bought this fridge over a year ago, and it was only when I noticed the relatively cheap prices for new three gallon kegs at RiteBrew that I finally decided to put it to use.  I bought two kegs, even though I knew I could only fit one in the fridge.  My idea was to prime most beers with sugar, allowing one keg to condition at room temperature while the other served beer from the fridge.

This has worked well so far, and is even easier now that I've built a basic spunding valve to regulate the pressure in the keg.  It also fits with one of my ambitions with these kegs, which is to come as close as I can to something like cask-conditioned beers from back home.  I took my lead here from Terry Foster's advice in his book Pale Ale:

An argument against the use of kegs is that you have to push the beer through the serving line and tap by carbon dioxide pressure.  This might be all right if you are operating at CO2 levels of 2.0 or above, but it is not so good if you want a less gassy beer... There is a very simple way round this that I use.  When I fill the keg, I set the regulator to around  5 pounds per square inch and let the beer equilibrate over a few days.  I draw off a pint or two, set the regulator to 10 pounds per square inch, open the valve, allow the pressure to balance, and then turn off the valve.  The valve is opened only when the flow of beer slows while serving, and it remains open for just a few minutes.  In that way, the pressure in the keg always remains close to 5 pounds per square inch and the beer is perfect, no gassier than real ale served from cask by a beer engine.

So far I've found that I don't need to close the valve: setting the regulator to around 5 lbs per square inch is enough to serve most of the keg, and I can just turn it up for a minute if the flow stops entirely.

The results so far are still a way from cask-conditioned beer, though certainly closer than anything I managed with bottles.  For one thing, the serving temperature is too cold---I've bought the parts to build a temperature-regulator for the fridge, but I need to borrow some tools from a friend to do the wiring, and haven't got round to it yet.  Another problem---obvious in the pictures below---is that all of the beers I've brewed so far have chill-haze, meaning they are not at all bright.  I suspect this is a result of my BIAB process, combined with the shorter conditioning time.

Below are descriptions and photos of the first three beers I served from the keg: all dry and bitter, with a low-ABV.  I expect I'll mostly be brewing beers along these lines, sticking to bottle-conditioning for my saisons and sours, but serving almost everything else I brew (almost all of which is what people call 'session beer') directly from the keg.  In fact, I have a kolsch lagering in the fridge right now while I take a few weeks off booze.

One thing I'm particularly looking forward to is brewing some beers with American hops, something I haven't done for quite a while!  I gave up on making IPAs and pale ales early on, once I realised that it would be impossible to make really excellent versions until I could minimise the amount of oxygen the beer was exposed to.  To solve this, I picked up a cheap second-hand five gallon keg, and my plan is to use this as a primary fermentor for hoppy beers (another use for the spunding valve), transferring them directly to a serving keg (with dry-hops) with CO2.  I found this post from Ales of the Riverwards very helpful here.  But more on that in a month or two.

Bitter

Grist: Golden Promise (97%), Medium Crystal (3%)

Hops: EKG, Styrian Goldings

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.044

IBUs: 45

ABV: 4.4%

A standard recipe here, going for a lighter-coloured bitter without too much crystal malt character, nice and dry, with a moreish hop bite at the back end.  Most of the bitters I brew look something like this, though sometimes with slightly more crystal malt, and sometimes with a darker crystal malt.  Besides the bittering charge, this one had an addition of EKG at 20 minutes, and some Styrian Goldings at flameout.  In my experience, Wyeast 1318 tends to mute the hop character a bit, unless your dry-hop, so the end result was a sort soft hoppiness that blended well with the slightly fruity character of the yeast.  Very drinkable: this was my first beer in the keg, and it was a bit of a shock how quickly I finished it!

Dry Stout

Grist: Golden Promise (69%), Flaked Wheat (17.2%), Roasted Barley (6.9%), Chocolate Malt (4.%), Dark Crystal (2.8%)

Hops: Northdown, Challenger

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.044

IBUs: 39.5

ABV: 4.2%

What's not to like about dry stouts?  Bitter, roasty, and with a low ABV to boot.  I think I'll be making them a lot more frequently now that I have a keg.  I've been trying to come up with something a bit different from the standard home-brewer Guinness clone: something with a bit more hop character, bearing more than a passing resemblance to De La Senne's Stouterik.  The bitterness was nice in this one, balancing well with the fuller mouthfeel from the wheat, but I would have liked a bit more roast and/or chocolate.  Next time I might try pulverising the roasted barley and adding it post-mash, or perhaps backing down on the roaster barley adding more chocolate malt.  

One of my plans for this year is to try souring a batch of this recipe with the Omega Yeast lactobacillus blend.  My thought is that I could split this into small jugs, and then add it to regular batches to give a little lactic bite, either blending it in the keg and relying on the hops to keep the lactobacillus at bay, or maybe even adding it to the kettle for the last 15 minutes of the boil.  Watch this space.

Pale Bitter

Grist: Golden Promise (92.6%), Torrified Wheat (7.4%)

Hops: EKG

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.038

IBUs: 37.6

ABV: 3.7%

Here I was going for a pale beer, along the lines of the historical Boddington's Ordinary Bitter, or its modern counterparts like Marble Manchester Bitter.   Its supposed to be where Wyeast 1318 came from, after all! The original Boddingtons was reputedly intensely bitter, but I've also read that it didn't have much in the way of hop character.  With this in mind I decided to keep all my kettle additions before the final 30 minutes of the boil.  I did add a very light dry-hop to the keg though, giving it a delicate citrus aroma.  

I liked this beer A LOT, but I'm sure I'll tinker with the recipe a bit in future, perhaps trying a blend of different base malts.  To finish, here's a picture that gives a better sense of the colour of this beer (and also shows you where I write these posts!):

Tasting Notes: Summer Ale

What do I like to drink when it feels like -19°F out?  Summer ale!  Well, not really, but its what's in the fridge and I haven't written tasting notes for it yet...

Appearance: Golden and almost clear, with a very slight haze.  Thin lingering head.

Smell: Wheat and spicy hops, with a light fruitiness beneath it that is probably a combination of the Challenger hops and the yeast.

Taste:  Crackery malt, almost bread-like but not in the rich way I associate with Maris Otter.  Like a crusty baguette.  Transitions nicely into spicy hops and then a fairly firm bitterness.  J says it tastes 'English' in a good way (i.e. it tastes like the pale cask beers she enjoys most when we visit my family).

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, about the best I can get from bottle-conditioned English beers.  Medium body, slight astringency.

Drinkability & Notes: I really like the combination of malt in this one, but I'd like the hops to be a little brighter.  I think next time I'll add something like Styrian Goldings or maybe even Bramling X to give some citrusy notes along with the spice.  I thought the flavours were a bit muddled in the first few weeks after bottling, but its conditioned well and is tasting pretty good right now, especially if I remember to give it a while to warm up before opening it.

Brew Day: Bitter Saison

This post is about another attempt to brew a beer inspired by Brasserie de la Senne's Taras Boulba.  But before I get to that I thought I'd mention that I've started a Facebook page for this blog; I don't know if I'll keep it, but my thought was that I could post shorter things about beers that don't make it onto here, along with links that I find interesting etc.  In fact the first link I posted was to a recent interview with Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne.  Its in French, but I managed to make my way through it despite my pretty poor knowledge of the language----context and knowledge of brewing vocabulary helps, and its an interesting interview that's worth the effort.

Its no secret how much I love this brewery.  You only need to look at the way they describe their beers to see that they fit my palate: low-alcohol, bitter, dry.  But there's also the way in which they make beers that are genuinely informed by a knowledge of tradition and locale ("bières à l’ancienne", as they put it on their site) without falling into either sentimentality or fantasy about the past nor being solely backwards-looking or conservative in their attitude towards brewing.

The interview builds on some of the things mentioned in the Philosophy section of their site (translated into English here) as well as things Yvan mentions in his essay on saisons in Farmhouse Ales.  He says that "bières à l’ancienne" is a kind of catch-all concept, and that really they brew the beers they love to drink.  But again, "bières à l’ancienne" can be divided into two categories---those characterized by their bitterness, and those characterized by their acidity.  That pretty much sums up the kind of beers I brew, particularly the ones I call "saisons"---my starting point for those beers is Yvan's essay and the beers he brews, which I think are pretty different from the majority of saisons brewed in the U.S.

After not being able to find fresh Brasserie de la Senne beers for several months due to problems with their distributor, I've been very lucky recently as a local store got in a shipment of relatively fresh bottles of Taras Boulba and Zinnebir (along with some equally fresh De Ranke XX Bitter, which was quite a treat).

One nice thing about having fresh bottles on hand is that it presents the opportunity to try growing up a pitch of healthy yeast, and that's exactly what I did with my last bottle.  Yvan discusses the brewery's yeast in the interview, saying that it originates from a well-respected Belgian brewey and was "Le plus beau cadeau de ma vie" (the greatest gift in his life).   I sniffed the starters a few times as I was growing it up, and it certainly smelt familiar, but all I could think of was Taras Boulba and Zinnebir.  I wonder if the brewery is De Ranke or somewhere else?  One thing that is striking is that, though distinctive, the yeast not quite as expressive as the strains usually classified as being for saisons in the US.

I decided to base the first beer I brewed with the yeast on a bitter saison I made a few months ago, the distinctive feature of which was that it used massive amounts of low alpha hops.  That earlier beer was largely a product of circumstance---some free Celeia hops were included in an order from Label Peelers, and since they had a low AA content I saw no reason not to to throw large quantities into a single beer.  It turned out to be one of my favourite saisons to date, and the one that was probably most reminiscent of Taras Boulba.  I liked it so much that I think I probably drank the almost the entire batch myself.

This beer was brewed along the same lines, only this time I used low AA Hallertau Mittelfruh in place of the Celeia, and supplemented them with some Bramling Cross to increase the spicy, citrusy character.  My first instinct was to repeat the grist from the earlier beer, which included a reasonable amount of unmalted spelt.  I think this gives the beer a slightly fuller mouthfeel, which helps prevent the bitterness from becoming astringent and unpleasant.  However I was pressed for time during this brew day and wasn't able to do a cereal mash, so I went with a more straight forward blend of pilsner, wheat and Munich in a single-infusion mash.  It will be interesting to see how much of a difference the spelt really makes.

As is my usual practice with saisons in this gravity range, I left the beer in my fermentation chamber for 24 hours in the high 60s; today I checked to see if fermentation was underway, and turned the chamber off to let the yeast free-rise to wherever it wants to go.  Fermentation looked healthy and vigorous, and smelt fantastic.  I'll probably try to top-crop some of the yeast in the next day or two so that I can brew more beers with it and perhaps even try streaking it out and isolating it properly for long-term storage.

Recipe:


Measured O.G: 1.040
Measured F.G:

Mash: 149°F

Malt:

84.0% Pilsner
10.0% Wheat Malt
6.0% Munich

Hops:

Hallertau             60               12.8 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Bramling X         60               14.9 IBUs     (10g@2.69%)
Hallertau             20               4.30 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Hallertau             10               2.60 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Hallertau             5                 2.10 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Bramling X         0                 0.0   IBUs     (15g@2.69%)

Yeast:

De la Senne

Brew Day: Nineteenth Century IPA

This weekend I brewed another in the series of beers inspired by old English stock ales: an IPA based on Mitch Steele's descriptions of the beers brewed in Burton-upon-Trent in the nineteenth century.  It was actually reading that book that first prompted me to start brewing English-style beers inoculated with brettanomyces---the role played by wild yeasts in British brewing is mentioned several times in the opening chapters, and there's also a few paragraphs about their role in IPAs in particular in the chapter devoted to Burton IPAs.  But more on that below.  I'll spend the rest of the post explaining how I came up with my recipe and process for the beer.

Water.  The importance of the mineral profile of Burton brewing water has been recognized since these beers were first brewed there.  Steele mentions that as the popularity of IPA increased, some companies opened new breweries in Burton to take advantage of the local water, while others began adding salts to mimic its profile.  But since brewers were drawing from various sources (wells, the river itself, etc.), its a little difficult to say exactly what the mineral profile of their water would have been like, though it would certainly have had high sulfate and calcium levels.   Rather than "Burtonizing" my Chicago water, I decided to simply add enough gypsum to get my sulfate levels around 300ppm---lower than many "Burton" water profiles, but high enough to lower my mash pH and significantly shape the flavour profile of the final beer.

Malt. Rather than use an English base malt I went with Dingemans pilsner in an effort to emulate the white malt used by IPA brewers.  Steele mentions that "[w]hite malt is very similar to today's Pilsner malt, which, interesingly, was itself developed after an industrial espionage mission by Czech brewers into England's best malthouses".  I suppose something like Thomas Fawcett lager malt might be a good approximation, but I went with what I had on hand.

Hops. The hops were supposed to be 100% East Kent Goldings---a lot of them!---based on the hopping schedule for the 1839 Reid IPA in Ron's excellent book.  I was actually a little short, so I ended up adding a small amount of hallertau to make up the ninety minute addition. Really I should be using this year's crop, following the practice of the Burton brewers who used their freshest hops in these beers---but it will probably be a few months until they show up on the US market, and the Goldings I used have been stored frozen and vacuum-sealed since I purchased them.  I may try to find some fresher ones when I dry-hop it next year (more on that below).

Mash. Steele also outlines the kind of mashing schedules used by breweries during this period, but I didn't take any special steps to imitate them, going instead for my usual single-infusion mash at around 149°F, aiming to end up with a highly fermentable wort that will produce a dry beer.

Fermentation. Now the fun stuff.  Primary fermentation will be done by Wyeast 1028, but this evening I'll also be pitching dregs from a bottle of my brett-fermented wit, which contains White Labs brettanomyces clausenii and trois.  Hopefully these strains will be well-enough established to promote a long, slow secondary fermentation as the beer matures.

Steele devotes a couple of paragraphs at the end of the chapter on Burton IPAs to speculation about the role played by brettanomyces in their secondary fermentation, quoting Clausen on the role these yeast played in developing "that peculiar and remarkably fine flavour" characteristic of the best English stock ales.  Ron also has some interesting research on his blog, including evidence that Bass pale ale had brettanomyces in it as late as the 1940s.  It seems likely that the beer picked up these wild yeasts from the wooden casks it was aged in (although, based on these notes from Adnams brewer Brian Lee, brettanomyces was all over their brewhouse in the 1940s, including in the bottling line!).  Steele speculates that it accounted for the dryness of the beer and its sparkling condition on reaching India after being completely flat when shipped.  If you read through the comments on Ron's post, he and others make some interesting speculation about the character of these beers, mentioning Orval as a beer that might be somewhat similar (and perhaps even historically linked to English pale ale brewing).  All interesting stuff!

I'll probably bottle the beer in 9-12 months, dry-hopping for a week or two beforehand.  Based on descriptions in Steele's book, and questions I've asked Ron by email, I think that the Burton IPAs were probably aged on dry-hops for several months or longer.  It seems that this might even have played a role in promoting secondary fermentation.  I'm undecided as to whether I should copy this part of their process---they surely knew what they were doing, but it goes against what I've been taught by contemporary brewing practice.  If I had a bigger batch, I'd split it into two 3 gallon carboys and try both, but since I'm only making 3 gallons I'm a bit wary of taking the risk and ending up with vegetal and grassy flavours in the final beer.

Well, that's it for now.  I haven't decided whether to make an imperial stout as well---more on that next weekend I guess.  Now that I'm finishing up with these stock ales for the time being, I'll soon be back to brewing Farmhouse Ales again, and I have a couple of fun ideas for things to try out over the next couple of months.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.057
Measured F.G:

Mash: 149°F:

Malt:

100%  Pilsner

Hops:

EKG               90               84.7 IBUs     (85g@5%)
EKG               60               64.8 IBUs     (65g@5%)
EKG               30               33.0 IBUs     (65g@5%)


Yeast:

Wyeast 1028

Brew Day: English Summer Ale

Following on from the bitter I brewed last week, this weekend I brewed another pale and hoppy English-style beer, based on a recipe from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing.  I had intended to brew it this summer, but somehow never got round to it---instead it will be brightening things up in a month or two as the winter starts to set in.

Martyn Cornell has a brief but informative chapter on "Golden Ale" in his book Amber, Gold, and Black.  He mentions that the tradition of golden beer goes back to at least 1842, referencing an advertisement for "East India Pale and Golden Ales" from William Saunders' brewery in Burton on Trent.  I would have thought A.K.s might fit in this tradition too, but Cornell seems to differentiate between beers that are golden and beers that are simply pale or straw-coloured---at any rate, he discusses A.K.s in a different chapter.  He identifies two beers as key players in shaping contemporary golden ale: Exmoor Gold, originally brewed in 1986 by the Golden Hill brewery; and Summer Lightning, brewed by John Gilbert of the Hop Back brewery in 1989.  He goes on to describe what might look like a bewildering array of 'summer', 'blonde', and 'golden' ales and bitters that have cropped up since.  The terminology isn't really fixed, and as always the characteristics of these beers probably vary quite a bit, but for me at least there's a definite expectation of the kind of beer I'd get if I ordered something with one of those names in a pub back home.

Mosher provides a nice summary of the characteristics of some of these beers in his book:

"Paler than most English bitters, summer ales are likely to be a little more intensely hopped as well.  Most versions hover between 4.5- and 5-percent alcohol.  Hops have center stage, with moderate to high bitterness backing up loads of fresh, citric aroma.  Late kettle additions, and perhaps even dry hopping, contribute to this forward expression of hop personality."

I suppose it sounds a lot like an American pale ale, and Cornell mentions that modern golden ales are often brewed with American hops, though of course many still stick to English and European varieties.  Perhaps its just the fact that I'm used to drinking them on cask, but I still think of these beers as being slightly different from their American counterparts---and I suspect that if you come to them expecting an American pale ale, you'd be disappointed.

Anyway, I've gone on before about the fact that the variety of beers encompassed by "Bitter" often seems to be under-represented here in the U.S, in a way that gives a distorted picture of what English pale ale has been in the past and what it can be today.  I think that goes hand-in-hand with some other gems that I've heard, like "Bitter isn't bitter".  I did a little research this weekend, and noticed that the current BJCP guidelines do recognize that bitters needn't be copper-coloured and caramel flavoured---hopefully the new guidelines, which I believe are going to include a category for golden bitter, will reinforce this further.  I care about this because these pale ales are some of my favourite beers, and ones I think might find an appreciative audience with at least some American beer drinkers.

A few quick notes on the recipe.  Randy Mosher calls for Maris Otter base malt, and demerara sugar; I used Golden Promise and Invert  #1.  I didn't have any Saaz on hand, but I did have some "Saaz Special" that I won in a recent HBT giveaway by Hop House Brewing Supply.  Otherwise, it was a pretty typical early morning brew session.

Recipe:

Measured O.G: 1.047
Measured F.G:

Mash: 152°F:

Malt:

62%  Golden Promise

25%  Pilsner
8 %   Wheat Malt
5%    Invert #1

Hops:

Challenger     60               27.8 IBUs     (17g@8.2%)
Challenger     30               8.30 IBUs     (10g@8.2%)
Challenger       5               2.70 IBUs     (10g@8.2%)
Saaz Special    5               2.0   IBUs     (10g@6.0%)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1028

Tasting Notes: Bitter Spelt Saison

Here's some tasting notes the third and final beer I brewed with The Yeast Bay's saison blend.  It's another attempt to brew a bitter saison in the mold of Brasserie de la Senne's Taras Boulba and the beers Yvan de Baets describes in his essay on Farmhouse Ales.  I was prompted to brew this one when, on opening an order from Label Peelers, I found that they'd included a free pound of year old Celeia hops in 1 oz. bags!  Large doses of low alpha hops are exactly what Yvan calls for in his description of these beers, so I decided to throw most of what they gave me into a single three gallon batch.

Appearance: Hazy yellow colour.  Thin lingering head with good lacing down the glass.

Smell: Floral and a little spicy, with some hints of pear and lemon in the background.  Doughy malt as well.

Taste: Dominated by a herbal and spicy hop character that is very reminiscent of Taras Boulba.  Similar malt profile as well, but also a slight tartness and more prominent yeast character.

Mouthfeel: Soft and slightly creamy mouthfeel from the spelt/wheat helps balance the bitterness to some extent.  Still dry, and of course a firm and lingering bitterness.  Its perhaps a little much by the end of the glass---not astringent, but it builds and becomes a bit minerally if you're not eating something along with the beer.

Drinkability & Notes: When I opened the first bottle of this beer I thought I'd ruined it with the dry-hop of Styrian Goldings.  It had an over the top pear/floral character that was quite off-putting.  But now that's faded slightly, I'm quite happy with how this one turned out---its probably my most successful attempt to brew something along the lines of Taras Boulba, though its certainly not a clone of that beer.  The bitterness means I could never enter this in a competition as a saison, but its the kind of beer I want to brew for myself.  Still needs more work, but getting closer to what I have in mind.

Recipe:


Measured O.G: 1.039
Measured F.G: 1.004

Mash: 149°F main mash
Cereal mash for spelt.

Malt:

58.0% Pilsner
16.3% Flaked Wheat
14.8% Unmalted Spelt
10.9% 6-row 

Hops:

Celeia             60               15  IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Celeia             30               7.7 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Celeia             15               4.0 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Celeia             5                 2.5 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Celeia             0                 0.0 IBUs     (28g@2.69%)
Styrian G.       Dry Hop                        (20g)

Yeast:

Yeast Bay Saison Blend

Tasting Notes: Old World's Mantra

This beer was based on the recipe Yvan de Baets contributed to For the Love of Hops.  It was the first of a couple of beers that ended up attenuating significantly more than expected, most likely as a result of pitching too much super-healthy top-croppped yeast.  Yvan's predicted final gravity was 1.012, whereas this went down an extra 5 or 6 points to something like 1.006-7!

I remember when I first started home-brewing my main concern was to make my beers as dry as possible.  I find many commercial beers too sweet (especially American interpretations of English and Belgian pale ales), and in those early days before I made starters or top-cropped yeast, my beers would also often finish on the high side.  As a result I'm often a little blasé about where my beers finish, basically just trying to make them as dry as I can.

After tasting this and a couple of other bitter beers I've brewed recently straight after tasting some fresh Taras Boulba at Zwanze Day, I've decided I need to finesse things a little more here.  Obviously Brasserie De La Senne beers lean firmly towards the bitter side of things, and so might seem unbalanced to some.  But to my mind they do have a balance of their own, and its something I think is missing from my beers.  One or two extra gravity points, or perhaps a water adjustment, would round out my bitter beers just enough to give them that added complexity and maybe a slight softness that they're missing right now. The challenge is to come up with my own sense of what a balanced beer tastes like, and what's involved in brewing one on my system.

That's not to knock this beer, which I've been enjoying a lot.  But I take this silly brewing thing pretty seriously, and want to brew the best beer possible.  I've made the transition from obvious off-flavours to clean beer to beer that has something like the flavour profile I'd like.  This next transition, where you really come to understand and perfect the balance of the flavours you're looking for, seems to me like a more difficult and interesting one.

Appearance: Hazy when poured from the fridge.  Nice colour though, and would look lovely if it were bright.  Tight, stable head, and decent lacing.

Smell: Earthy hops, slight fruitiness that seems like a mix of the hops and malt.  Pretty generic description I know.  It smells like a Bitter, let's put it that way.

Taste: Brief sweetness up front, but quickly becomes slightly spicy, and then a tingling minerally bitterness.  Struggling to come up with non-beery descriptions

Mouthfeel: Lowish carbonation works well.  Dry and very drinkable, with a firm persistent bitterness that isn't at all harsh.

Drinkability & Notes: Despite what I said above, I've been really enjoying this beer.  It goes nicely with food (pictured with homemade bread/chutney), and the bitterness makes it very moreish.  But it is a bit one-dimensional, and would be improved if I could round out the flavours without adding too much sweetness.  Definitely a recipe I'll come back to.

Repetition: Ordinary Bitter, Water Treatment, and Carbonation

First Beer

This weekend I brewed a version of the Ordinary Bitter I made earlier this year.  As I begin to pay more attention to the details of my brewing, I find that I'm much more inclined to return to the same recipes over and over again, tweaking the ingredients or other aspects of the process so that I get a better understanding of how all of this affects the final beer.

Earlier this summer I attempted an experiment in this spirit.  On two subsequent weekends, I brewed two identical Bitters, keeping everything the same apart from the water treatment for the mash.  I was hoping to get a better understanding of how mineral additions and mash pH shaped the flavours of my beer, and perhaps to start to work out what my own preferences were here.  Things didn't quite go according to plan, as I'll explain below---but I still feel that I learnt a lot, and I'm inclined to start doing this kind of thing more often.

The recipe for the beers was fairly simple: Golden Promise and invert #2, with additions of EKG and Fuggles in the first half of the boil, and Styrian Goldings towards the end.  I fermented both beers with Wyeast 1469, cropping and pitching from one to the next.  (Some people might be able to recognize the inspiration for this beer from this description.)  I wanted something fairly straight-forward and familiar so that any differences would be more obvious.

Chicago has pretty great water for brewing: its low in most minerals and tastes fine (to me) once its been filtered for chlorine.  The one problem is that it has fairly high residual alkalinity, which can make it difficult to hit a mash pH in the right range when brewing pale beers.  I usually deal with this by a combination of acid and mineral additions.  My aim with these beers was to work out (a) whether I had any preference between relying more on acid than minerals, or vice versa; and (b) whether higher levels of either affected the flavour profile positively or negatively.

To this end, I brewed one beer with a relatively large addition of lactic acid (5ml), and smaller additions of gypsum (3.2g) and calcium chloride (1.6g).  According to Bru'n Water, this gave me a mash with the following water profile:

         Calcium: 84.6               Magnesium: 11.8        
         Sodium 8.4                  Sulfate 106.3
         Chloride: 49.3              Bicarbonate: -44.2        
         Total Hardness: 260     Residual Alkalinity: -107

For the second batch, I lowered the amount of lactic acid to 3.5ml, and increased the gypsum to 6.9g and the calcium chloride to 3.2g.  This gives the following profile:

         Calcium: 140.9            Magnesium: 11.8        
         Sodium 8.4                  Sulfate 195.6
         Chloride: 83.1              Bicarbonate: 18.8        
         Total Hardness: 401     Residual Alkalinity: -92

Both mashes should have been in the 5.2-5.4 pH range (I didn't record the predicted pH for the first, but for the second it was 5.4).

On brew day, I took measurements during the first 15 minutes of the mash, and then throughout the rest of the process.  I was still getting the hang of using my pH meter, so the measurements may be a little off, particularly for the first beer, as I was taking a reading too early:

• Mash pH: at the start of the mash, the first beer settled at around 5.2, while the second settled at 5.4.  By the end of the mash, both beers were in the mid 5.4s.
• Boil: after 30 minutes of the boil, before the first hop addition, the pH of the first beer was 5.21.  I forgot to take a measurement for the second.
• Beginning of Fermentation: the pH of the first beer was 5.31, whereas the pH of the second beer was 5.2.
• Final beer (from bottle): the first beer finished at 4.04, whereas the second beer finished at 3.99

So as you can see, there appears to be some variation in the pH throughout.  I can't make much sense of the numbers, since the first beer started with a lower pH, but ended up with a higher one.  This makes me wonder if I didn't screw up my measurements of the first beer through inexperience with my pH meter.  Either way, both beers were in the right range during the mash.

Of course, these numbers are really besides the point: the real question is how the beers taste, and this is where things went a little awry.  Both are turned out fine in terms of cleanness of flavours, etc.  The Golden Promise really shines through in this recipe, and the bitterness is pleasantly bracing without being too harsh (though more on that below).  I don't detect any of the lactic acid in either. But the second beer attenuated several points further than the first, and this makes it difficult to compare them with each other. Both started at 1.037, but the first attenuated to 1.012, whereas the second went all the way to 1.008.  This means that the beer with more mineral additions is also drier and thinner, and that skews my perception of its flavours.

I'm not sure why one attenuated further than the other.  I tried to keep my process identical across the two brew days, but with no ability to measure pitching rates, I simply eye-balled what seemed to be a reasonable amount of top-cropped yeast, and I suspect I pitched a larger quantity of healthy yeast into the second batch.  This was also the third generation of this particular pitch of yeast.  I noticed as I went on that it became increasingly attenuative across each generation.  This always happens to some extent, but this time I was paying closer attention to the numbers, and I was surprised by how much the attenuation increased in later generations (frankly, it over-attenuated in both Old World's Mantra and Stingo).  Since I haven't seen any other signs of an infection, I'm assuming this is just because I was pitching large quantities of very healthy yeast; but of course, I can't rule out the possibility that somewhere along the line some other organisms got into my pitches and was cropped along with this yeast.

Either way, it makes direct comparison difficult, because the first beer has more body and residual sweetness than the second.  Both are bitter and dry, the second more so than the first; but I don't know how much of that to attribute to the lower F.G., and how much is a result of the differing water profiles.

Second Beer

Here's where it gets interesting.  With the larger part of both batches, I followed my usually practice of bottle-conditioning with table sugar, aiming for around 1.8 volumes of carbonation.  From a bottle, I definitely prefer the first beer.  The very slight residual sweetness provides a nice balance for the bitterness, and gives more expression to the almost cracker-like flavours of the malt.  In contrast, the second beer seems almost too dry, a little harsh, and generally more one-dimensional (though still perfectly enjoyable in itself).

However, I also tried conditioning a small portion of each batch in a Cubitainer, in an attempt to mimic cask-conditioned beer at home.  This wasn't enough of a success to warrant a post yet (I'm going to try again with the Quarter Session bitter I brewed this weekend), but it did mean than I got to try both beers with a lower level of carbonation, around 1.3 volumes.  Here I definitely preferred the second beer: the first seemed a little too sweet, whereas the second was very drinkable.

This really opened my eyes to how much the slightly higher levels of carbonation achieved in bottle-conditioning can affect the flavours of a beer.  I realised that, from a bottle, the residual sweetness of the first beer managed to balance the carbonic bite of the CO2, whereas the second beer was too dry and ended up tasting thin and a little harsh.  From a cubitainer, on the other hand, where the carbonation was lower, the first beer tasted overly sweet, whereas the dryness and bitterness of the second really stood out.  I also significantly preferred both beers from a Cubitainer rather than a bottle; higher levels of carbonation really scrub out a lot of the more subtle flavours in a low-gravity beer like this.  I kind of knew that already, but hadn't seen so clearly the extent to which it was true.

So, while I didn't really learn what I set out to regarding water treatment and mash pH, I did learn something interesting about serving Ordinary Bitters at home.  Hopefully I can get the cubitainers working well, in which case I'll be able to brew something closer to the beers I miss from back in the U.K.  If not, it might be worth mashing higher and under-pitching so that bottle-conditioned beers have more residual sweetness to stand up against the bite of the CO2.

Tasting Notes: 1909 Lees Bitter

I've been waiting to post tasting notes for this beer because it was a bit rough around the edges for the first month or two.  I suppose that's unsurprising given the amount of hops used in it (70 calculated IBUs), especially since I also missed my O.G. by almost 10 points!  For the first month or so, it tasted like a poorly fermented kolsch: lots of honey and light fruitiness.  The bitterness wasn't too rough, but the whole thing didn't really come together.  Its started to come into its own in the last few weeks, and may well continue improving.

Appearance: Golden colour. Has a chill-haze if poured straight from the fridge, but crystal clear if you let it warm up a bit.  Head retention is terrible.

Smell: It had a strong honeyish aroma when it was young, but this has faded quite a bit.  Very slight fruitiness, but hard to tell if its the sugars, the yeast, or even residual aroma from the hops.

Taste: Honeyed malts, light fruitiness (apples, pears, maybe apricot), tea-like tannins in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation.  Not too thin.  Bitterness is not at all rough, but builds gradually as you drink a pint to become almost numbing.  I like it, others might not.

Drinkability & Notes: It all comes together quite nicely at this point, drinking smoothly where before all the edges stuck out.  I'm surprised that the bitterness isn't harsher.  It definitely builds up as you drink, but I don't find it at all unpleasant.  Probably won't make this again, if only because of the quantity of hops involved, but J and I have both been drinking it fairly regularly.

Brew Day: Old World’s Mantra

What is Yvan de Baets’ favourite kind of beer?  The saisons he writes about in Farmhouse Ales?  The lambics brewed by his neighbours in Brussels?  According to For the Love of Hops, it’s English bitter!

“Yvan de Baets eschews the words “beer style”, but ask him the question most brewers duck, what his favourite is, and he’s quick to answer.  He loves bracing, bitter beers from Great Britain, not exactly surprising given how much he appreciates bitterness itself, a quality apparent in Brasserie de la Senne beers.”

I was pretty chuffed to read that, and of course I had to brew the recipe that accompanied it.  Earlier in the book you can find Yvan waxing philosophical about bitterness, connecting human appreciation for it to the emergence of culture, and ending with a rousing encomium to modern bitter beers:

“I see the bitter beers we make as liquid communication that talks to the people’s intelligence, and delivers them from the ‘manipulations by the stomach’ the agro-food industry is using.  By promoting bitter beers, something that had almost been lost forever some decades ago, craft brewers help the human culture of taste to be reborn and to get stronger.  They show respect not only for themselves, but also for the people who drink their delightful beers.  And they do all this by making something that is a never-ending source of pleasure for their customers.  Bitter is definitely better.”

The recipe at the back of the book is called “Old World’s Mantra”, and is a sort of celebration of the old world hop varieties it employs.  I brewed it directly after the Keeping Porter on Sunday (a long day!), and my notes are pretty short.  I stuck to the recipe in the book as far as possible, but I was a little short of Munich malt, so I had to sub in a small portion of Vienna for some of it (I’ve copied the recipe as it is in the book below).  I also didn’t have time to do the infusion mash schedule Yvan provides, but if I brew this again (and I’m sure I will) I’ll certainly follow it.  The other modification of note was that I added gypsum to get my sulfate levels up to around 250ppm.  This is part of an on-going investigation into how water modifications affect my bitter beers.  I’ll write a post about what I’m learning in a few weeks.

Finally, Yvan specifies a neutral, highly attenuative, flocculent yeast.  The listed final gravity is 1.012 (74.25% apparent attenuation), so I think he must mean attenuative for an English strain.  I went with WY1469, as its what I’ve been using recently.  I’ll probably use WY1028 next time I brew this for comparison.

Recipe:

Measured O.G.	1.048
Measured F.G.
ABV.
Mash:	151°F
Malt:
82% Pilsner
12.0% Munich
6% Medium Crystal
Hops:
Challenger	60min	44.3 IBUs	(25g@ 8.9%)
Styrian Goldings	10 min	1.4 IBUs	(20g@ 1.8%)
Styrian Goldings	Whirlpool	1.4 IBUs	(15g@ 1.8%)
Bramling Cross	Whirlpool	4.7 IBUs	(15g@ 6.0%)
Yeast:
WY1469

Tasting Notes: 1933 Kidd AK

A.K!  Not a pale mild, but a light running bitter that seems to have been pretty popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  As I’ve said before, I tend to think of the bitters I brew as falling into two general camps: pale, hoppy, golden bitters, and copper-coloured, malty, amber bitters. Of course, the amber ones are still hoppy, and the pale ones are often malty, but you get the general idea.  I often look for an AK recipe when I’m thinking about brewing something in the first camp---and in fact, looking over my brewing logs for the last two years, I’ve brewed more AKs than any other historical beer.

In Amber, Gold, and Black Martyn Cornell says the following about the distinction between AK and other bitter beer:

“Brewers seem to have maintained a deliberate difference between the two types of bitter beer: lower-gravity, lighter coloured, less-hopped AK light bitters, served relatively soon after brewing; and slightly darker, hoppier, stronger ‘pale ales’, often designated ‘PA’, stored for some time before sending out.”

“Less-hopped” is of course a relative notion, and needs to be understood in the context of the very high hopping levels you often seem to see in these older recipes.  Cornell quotes a Victorian drinks writer, Alfred Barnard, describing an AK as “a bright sparkling beverage of rich golden colour and … a nice delicate hop flavour”.  That about sums up what I’m going for.

All the AK recipes I’ve brewed have come from the Let’s Brew recipes posted by Ron Pattinson and Kristen England at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.  Lots of them include some American six-row, giving the beer a grainy taste.  Continental pale malt and adjuncts like flaked corn  and invert sugar also seem to be quite common.  This one is based on the 1933 Kidd AK---I followed the recipe exactly (well, scaled to 3 gallons), except that I moved the final hop addition from 30 minutes to 20 minutes because I wanted a bit more hop flavour.  I usually use Wyeast 1028 or 1469 for these beers, but I was in the middle of brewing a bunch of belgian stuff when I made this, so I just used half a packet of Nottingham instead.

Appearance: Pale golden colour, and crystal clear.  Almost looks like I have an American lager in my glass.  Decently thick head that lingers a while.

Smell: Grainy malt.  Slight herbiness, with some citrus and blackcurrant.

Taste: More of that grainy malt, along with light lemon and blackcurrant.  Subtle but there’s plenty going on.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation is a little higher than I’d like.  Really lovely dry and lingering finish from the hops.

Drinkability & Notes: Just what I’m looking for during the summer.  Drinkable and light at 3.9%, but more complex than it first appears.

Tasting Notes: Quarter Session Bitter

Here’s some quick tasting notes for the Ordinary Bitter I brewed a few weeks ago.  Its a lovely beer, one of the best bitters I’ve brewed I think.  I don’t know how much of that I can attribute to the water treatment, but it certainly didn’t hurt.  I finally ordered a pH meter, which should take some of the guessing out in future.

Appearance: Reddish tint.  Hazy as expected (I forgot to add the whirlfloc).  Nice thinnish but lingering head with decent lacing.

Smell: Slight spiciness from hops, then nutty caramel notes from the crystal malt.  Some dark fruit as well. 

Taste: Slight sweetness and spice, followed by some subtle fruitiness with the malt.  Firm, lingering bitterness, but not too harsh.  Keeps bringing you back for gulp after gulp.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation is spot on.  It would taste much better from a cask, but this is one of my best efforts for a ~3.5% bitter.  Not too thin, but doesn’t pretend to be a 5% beer either.

Drinkability & Notes:  Shame about the murkiness---it would have been a beautiful beer if it was bright---but still very happy with this one.  You have to let it warm up a bit before opening it, but if you do it reminds me of plenty of beers I’ve drank back home.  The bitterness from the WGV is a little brasher than you’d get from EKG (higher cohumulone perhaps?), but it works well here.  Very drinkable.  If I wasn’t so busy with work at the moment, these would have all gone by now.

[By the way, if Ordinary Bitter is your thing, Boak and Bailey put a great post up about Boddington’s today.]

Farmhouse Ales II: Hops and Bitterness

This is the second in what I hope will be a series of three or four posts about Yvan de Baets’ contribution to Farmhouse Ales.  In the first post I wrote a bit about the role played by mixed fermentation in traditional saison brewing, and described a relatively young home brew fermented with a mix of Wyeast Farmhouse Ale and East Coast Yeast Bug County.  In this post I want to talk a bit about the role of hops and bitterness in the character of these saisons.

De Baets emphasizes the heavy hopping rates used in traditional saisons several times in his essay.  He suggests that hops were initially used for their superior bacteriostatic properties, helping to control the inevitably mixed fermentation I described in my last post.   While rates varied, he cites one source as specifying between 5/8g per litre (95-152g, or 3-5oz, per 5 gallon batch), with one third of this added towards the end of the boil. 

This might not sound like much, especially as the hops used would have been low-alpha varieties (between 2-4%).  However its important to remember that these were relatively low-gravity beers by modern standards, so we’re talking about BU:GU ratios of 1:1 or higher.  In fact, if you look at the recipes for old English stock beers that were made for keeping (like saisons) in Ron Pattinson’s new book, you’ll see ratios of 2:1 or more. De Baets cites old sources stating that “young, these beers naturally were not drinkable; however, the bitterness disappeared little by little and one knows that heavy doses of hops increased the conservation quality of the beers and preserved their flavour when they aged.”

So I suspect that the bitterness and overall flavour profile of these beers was pretty different from the hoppy, bitter beers that characterize the craft beer scene today.  Modern American IPAs get their bitterness from smaller additions of high-alpha varieties, or even hop extracts; or they are bittered by large charges of hops that are only added at the end of the boil.  In contrast, these old saisons seem to have had large quantities of hops present throughout the boil, along with a considerable quantity added at the end.  In my experience the bitterness provided by noble hops used in this way is quite distinctive.

What’s more, the sheer quantity of hop matter in the boil must have had other effects of the flavour and composition of the wort.  I sometimes get a tannic or tea-like quality when I use low-alpha hops in these quantities.  Moreover other compounds from the hops are likely to be present in greater quantities.  De Baets mentions that brewers who wished to encourage a more prominent sourness would have used aged hops, and there is some evidence that the organic acids present in such hops can be converted by brettanomyces to yield the distinctive flavours found in sour beers such as lambics.  The combination of mixed fermentation and aged hops may have contributed to the gueuze-like character of old saisons that De Baets mentions towards the end of the chapter.

Indeed, De Baets emphasizes that the bitter character of these beers is “not at all incompatible with the sourness of the beers nor will it prevent their eventual acidification”.  This is a topic for another post, but he also mentions that sourness and bitterness needn’t be uncomplimentary, despite contemporary wisdom on the subject (cf. BFM √225).

This side of old saisons hasn’t really come back into fashion in quite the same way as mixed fermentation has, and the beers described here might be unrecognisable as saisons to some people.  For instance, the BJCP guidelines describe saison as having low to moderate hop aroma and flavour.  That said, there are at least plenty of brewers making saisons with large amount of aroma and dry hops (e.g. Prairie), but the emphasis seems to be on late additions rather than bitterness (e.g. Chad Yakobson says in his BN interview that he doesn’t really like bitter beers), and if American saisons are bitter they also tend to be have higher ABVs.  Of course, there are also some beers that do fit this description (De Ranke XX Bitter springs to mind, maybe Jester King’s Petite Prince, and of course the beers that Yvan de Baets is putting out with De La Senne).

Anyway, I’ve been trying to brew a bitter, hoppy saison for a while now, and this beer is one of my most recent.  It was fermented with the yeast cake from the spelt saison I made with the Yeast Bay blend---I suppose that might mean the brettanomyces cell-count is higher in this beer, but if that’s the case I can’t pick out any distinctive contribution yet.  It’s about 7 weeks old at this point.

Appearance: Thin head at first but dissipates completely.  No lacing.  Hazy yellow colour.

Smell: Citrus and subtle spiciness.  Maybe some apricot notes?  Yeast blends nicely with the hops again, but aroma not as assertive as I’d hoped.

Taste: Apricot more pronounced, followed by slight doughy sweetness from the pilsner, but lacking in the middle.  I wanted something crisper, and more bitter.

Mouthfeel: A little thin and watery: I was aiming for a slightly higher carbonation to mitigate this but its not there yet.  Unsurprisingly this yeast doesn’t seem to produce the large amount of glycerol you get with Wyeast French Saison, which might mean taking other steps to avoid thinness in these lower gravity beers. For instance, I think the spelt in the last beer really helped here.  Perhaps the brettanomyces will eat through the last few gravity points and increase the carbonation in this one.

Drinkability & Notes: This is an OK home brew, something I would have been really pleased with a few months ago, but still lacking: the aroma isn’t as pronounced as I’d hoped, the beer tastes a little thin and insipid, and it doesn’t have the firm bitterness I wanted.  Perhaps it will improve with a little more time: there’s a chance it hasn’t fully carbonated yet, and even if it has the brettanomyces might yet make it more interesting.  I’m still very excited about this yeast strain, as once again it blends nicely with the hops, but I think I can brew a better beer than this with it.

29/4/14: A quick update.  The carbonation has increased even over the last few days, to `prickly’ levels, and its improved the beer quite a bit.  Still not as aromatic or flavourful as I’d hoped, but it fixes the thin and watery mouthfeel.  I guess I should make sure I give beers more than two weeks to carbonate before writing these notes.

Recipe:

Estimated O.G.	1.045
Measured O.G.	1.044
Predicted F.G.	1.004
ABV.	5.2%
IBUs	44.8
Mash:
(Farmhouse Ales	113°F	30 min
Saison)	131°F	15 min
	144°F	45 min
	154°F	30 min
	168°F	5 min
Malt:
81.5% Floor-malted Pilsner
9.2% Vienna
9.2% Wheat Malt
Hops:
Hallertau (US)	60 min	32.3 IBUs	(30g@ 5.4%)
Hallertau (US)	15 min	8.6 IBUs	(30g @ 5.4%)
Sterling	15 min	3.9 IBUs	(10g @ 7.4%)
Sterling	0 min	~1.8g/l	(20g @ 7.4%)
Sterling	Dry Hop	~2.7g/l	(30g@ 7.4)
Yeast:
The Yeast Bay Saison/Brett blend