Autumn 2015 Blending: Pale Sours

[Edit: The pale sour described in this post won gold in the European Sour category at NHC 2016.]

Over the last year or two I've changed the way I think about brewing sour beers. In the past I'd brew a batch, wait till I thought it was ready, perhaps add fruit, and then package.  But as I read more about the practices of professional sour brewers in books like American Sour Beers, and interacted with other homebrewers in forums like Milk the Funk, I started to think that this wasn't the best way to approach sour brewing.  Instead of thinking about each batch as an individual beer, I switched to thinking of them as elements in potential blends.

In some cases this involved simply saving batches for this purpose, but I also deliberately started a number of five and six gallon soleras, using different combinations of brettanomyces and LAB in each with the intention of always having a range of different sours available for blending.  I've already started using some of these beers as a small element in my saisons (i.e. as part of a bière de coupage), but this month I finally got round to creating my first proper blends.  In this post I'll talk a bit about my experience and describe the pale sours I made in my first session.  In future posts I'll talk about dark sours, and a few bières de coupage as well.

Blending

I was always planning to do this blending at the start of Autumn, so in the weeks and months prior to the final session I made various preparations.  First, I had to brew top-ups for the soleras.  I stuck to the same base recipe, but used aged hops, added some oak cubes to the primary, and used US-05 as my yeast instead of my preferred choice of Wyeast 1318.

About two weeks before blending, I took a small sample from each beer, and spent an hour writing some basic tasting notes.  My main goal was to check that each beer was ready for blending, but this also gave me some idea of what I was working with, and gave me a basis for beginning to think about potential blends.

I knew that blending for the first time was going to be pretty difficult, so I decided to set some basic parameters.  First, I decided on the beers I would be blending in advance: five gallons of pale sour, to be bottled immediately; four gallons of pale sour, to be transferred onto cherries in a five gallon carboy; and three gallons of pale sour, blended or separate, for use in cutting beers over the next few months.

With this baseline in place, I also decided to think of the blends in terms of one gallon units, with the possibility of going down to half gallons if I thought it was necessary.  For instance, the five gallons of pale sour would consist of five parts.  All I had to do on blending day was decide what those five parts would be.

A few days before blending I took samples that were large enough to provide gravity readings from each beer.  These provided me with plenty of beer to check my tasting notes and start experimenting with possible blends.  I measured blends using a syringe, usually taking 4ml of beer for each part of the blend.  With the pale sour, for instance, I would take five 4ml samples from the various elements, and blend them in a single glass.  So one blend might have been 8ml Roeselare, 8ml Mélange, 4ml ECY20, and so on.

To be honest, I found it quite difficult to settle on a final blend.  It was usually easy to tell if something didn't work, in part because I already felt like some of the base elements were better than others, and tended to prefer blends where these made up most of the whole.  But beyond this it was difficult to find criteria for choosing between acceptable blends, especially since, given the relatively high finishing gravity on at least one element, I expected further fermentation to take place in the bottle.

An added difficulty came from the speed with which I found myself getting palate-fatigue, even with regular breaks.  Sometimes the same blend would taste completely different ten minutes apart---I wonder if this was partly due to the base beers opening up a bit as they sat out on my desk.  I mitigated this to some extent by testing the blends a few days before bottling.  This meant that I could taste my final blend with a fresh palate when I packaged the beers, and check that I hadn't gone horribly astray.

I eventually settled on blends that were identical to the ones I'd envisaged on my initial tasting.  They tasted fine, and I figured that observing how the base elements contributed to the character of the final beer after some conditioning time would help give me a better basis for future attempts.

The Base Beers

Roeselare Solera
Gravity: 1.007
Start Date: 13/10/13
Notes: Stone fruit, honey, pencil eraser.  Light to medium sour.  Strong component in blends.

ECY20 (2014) Solera
Gravity: 1.001
Start Date: 28/11/14
Notes: Grainy, lemons, slight plastic.  Medium+ sour (mouthwatering).  Works well as sour note in blends.

Mélange Solera
Gravity: 1.001
Start Date: 2/4/15
Notes: Strong aspirin/medicinal note, soft fruitiness behind it.  Medium sour.  OK component in blend but medicinal note is a little strong.

ECY01 Solera
Gravity: 1.000
Start Date: 28/8/14
Notes: Woody, minty, distinctive.  Bitter.  Light sour.  Works well as a small component in blends but decided to leave this out to age longer.

ECY20 (2013) Adjunct Sour
Gravity: 1.004
Brew Date: 17/12/13
Notes: Soft barnyard, apples, slight plastic.  Light sour.  Nice component in blends, though perhaps a little oxidized?

Pale Sour Blend

This ended up being 2 parts Roeselare Solera, 1 part ECY20 Solera, 1 part Mélange Solera, and 1 part Adjunct sour.  The Roeselare provided a nice base flavour; the Adjunct sour rounded this out with some soft barnyard funk; the Mélange added another layer of complexity; and the ECY20 enhanced the sourness without making it overwhelming.

Since the Roeselare, which made up two out of five parts of this blend, had a relatively high final gravity of 1.007, I decided I should allow for further re-fermentation in the bottle.  To accommodate this in my priming sugar calculations, I made use of Jeffrey Crane's very useful spreadsheet.  I had to guess the highest temperature the beer had been stored at (my apartment does not have air-conditioning, so it might have been quite high).  I also decided to aim a little high in my desired carbonation, to around 3.5 volumes.  As far as I can tell, the calculation is based on the assumption that the blend will attenuate to the F.G. of the driest component.  I have no reason to believe that's incorrect, but I didn't want to rely on it entirely for a decent level of carbonation, so I aiming a little high made sense.  The various components were combined in a CO2-purged bucket, and bottled right away.

Kriek

This consisted of 2 parts Adjunct Sour, 1 part Roeselare, and 1 part Melange.  I was aiming for something less sour (anticipating the contribution of the cherries), so I decided to leave out the ECY20 entirely, and use the lightly tart Adjunct Sour as the main component of the blend.  I was also hoping that the soft barnyard funk of this beer might emerge behind the cherries and provide a nice backdrop.

This blend was combined in a CO2-purged bucket, and transferred onto around 7lbs of cherries: a combination of Montmorency and Bing cherries that I picked up at the farmer's market earlier this year and stored in my freezer.  Ideally I would have like to use 8lbs, with more sweet cherries in the mix.  My reason for using a combination like this is that I tried some sour cherries grown on my Uncle's farm in England this summer, and I felt that they had a slight sweetness and depth that was missing in the American cherries I'd bought.  I hoped that adding in some sweet cherries might help approximate this flavour, but I realized at the last moment that I didn't have quite enough in the freezer.

Future Coupage

This left three gallons of beer, besides the 3 gallons that was carried forward in each solera: one gallon of Mélange, and two gallons of ECY20.  I transferred these to CO2-purged 1 and 1/2 gallon containers.  I'll be using them to cut saisons that I want to add a little tartness to.  I think the Mélange might bring out the fruitiness I've seen in some of my buckwheat saisons, and the ECY20 is tart enough to add an interesting dimension to a dry and hoppy beers.

Next post: blending sour reds and browns.

Brew Day: Autumn Saison w/ Wyeast 3725

Making slants of Wyeast 3725

After taking the summer off, I'm finally back to brewing on a regular basis, which should mean a return to regular posts here.  Most of my batches for the next few weeks will be top-ups for my various soleras in preparation for a blending project next month.  But I also picked up a few saison strains via RiteBrew's preorder program, and on Friday I made a batch with a strain I've never used before: Wyeast's Biere de Garde (3725).

Despite the name, the online consensus seemed to be that this wasn't really a typical biere de garde yeast (in his book on the style, Phil Markowski focuses more on lager and hybrid ale strains).  But the official blurb from Wyeast---"Malty and full on the palate with initial sweetness. Finishes dry and slightly tart"---made me think it would work well for some non-typical saisons I had planned.

The first of these was a rebrew of the Saison de Pipaix recipe from Farmhouse Ales.  I made a version of this beer last year with The Yeast Bay's Wallonian Farmhouse strain, and found the result intriguingly different from my usual pilsner-and-adjunct saisons.  The combination of Vienna malt with a small amount of Amber gave the beer a distinctively bready, toasty flavour, which to me at least brought up various Autumnal and harvest-related associations.  I have no idea how well the recipe matched up to the original beer (twice now the bottles I've bought have been completely flat), but I found the results interesting enough to make a mental note to come back to the recipe next Autumn.

The flavour profile of the yeasts sounds like exactly what's called for here: something to emphasise the malt and suggest at slight sweetness, while also drying the beer right out.  And if nothing else, it will give me a healthy pitch for some of the other projects I have planned, which include some higher gravity beers, along with a few more yeast blends.

Due to some technology-related issues I don't currently have access to my old BeerSmith files, so I couldn't check the exact details of the old recipe.  I followed the percentages mentioned in Farmhouse Ales for the grist (58% pilsner, 38% vienna, 2% amber), and used some Triskel and Fuggle hops I had lying around for bittering and aroma additions.  This was all decided at the last minute, but my hope is that they will complement the maltier character of this beer.  A bit of online research suggested I was more likely to get the flavour profile I was looking for by keeping the yeast on the cooler side, so I pitched in the mid 60 °Fs and set it in the fermentation chamber at 70 °F.  It will have to come out after about 36 hours to make way for another batch, so at that point I'll let it free-rise to wherever it wants to go.  I also added 10g of oak cubes, as part of my ongoing effort to see whether the addition of some amount of oak to the primary fermentation will subtly affect the structure and flavour profile of the beer.  At the moment it is fermenting away vigorously in the fridge.

I'll end by mentioning a few things I have planned for the next couple of months: the blending project should yield some pale and red sours, some of which will end up on fruit purchased earlier this summer; I'll use some of the leftover sour beer from the soleras to cut some fresh beer (including some darker, maltier saisons made with this strain that I'll cut with beer from my Flanders Red solera); I want to work on perfecting my base recipe for a bitter spelt saison; and since I recently purchased a small kegging system, I'll also be working on ordinary bitter recipes, and seeing how well I can emulate cask conditioning in a keg.

England Trip 2015

Tomorrow I'll be flying back to the U.S., after spending the past month visiting my family in England.  Since I didn't schedule a post for this week, I thought I'd put up a link to some of the beer-related photos (with descriptions) from my trip. They include, among other things, a visit to the Hook Norton brewery in Oxfordshire, a beer festival in Liverpool, and a few of my favourite local pubs. Needless to say I've enjoyed some excellent cask ales while I've been home (along with some mediocre ones), and I'm feeling excited to start another year of homebrewing and blending once the heat of the summer dies down back in Chicago.

(NB:  in case anyone cares, stand out cask ales from the trip include Marble Brewing's Manchester Bitter, Brimstage Brewery's Trapper's Hat, Milestone Brewery's Black Pearl, and various beers from Melwood Beer Company.  I only tried a few of their beers, but Burning Sky are definitely the brewery I'm most excited about.)

Beer related photos from my trip home

Posted by Browne & Bitter on Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Using a Corona Mill to Make Fresh Masa

In keeping with the general theme of finding multiple uses for brewing related ingredients and equipment, I thought I'd write a quick post about an alternative use for Corona mills.  In fact, I shouldn't say 'alternative', since these mills are sold for grinding nixtamalized corn to make masa, and are being re-purposed by budget-conscious homebrewers like me for crushing grains.

To make masa you need dried field corn.  I've been using this stuff from Amazon, but when I get back from England I plan to see if I can find wholesale suppliers for all the unmalted grains I use in brewing and baking.  I also plan to try using this corn in some beer---either ground up into grits and boiled in a cereal mash, or maybe even in the form of mealy masa added straight to the mash.  But that's another post.

Once you have your dried corn, you need to nixtamlize it so that it will form a dough.  I first learnt about this process on an old episode of Good Eats, but recently I've been relying on the excellent description of the process in this post.  Nixtamlizing the corn involves boiling and soaking it in an alkaline solution: the most common way to do this is by using 'cal', which is also sold as pickling lime.  I add one tablespoon per pound of corn, make sure its well covered with water (it will expand as you soak it), then bring it to a boil for twenty minutes before letting it soak and cool overnight.

The next day you need to give the corn several rinses in clean water to get rid of the lime.  At the same time, you should try to agitate it or rub it together so that the hulls fall away from the corn (this will already have happened to most of them---they seem to sort of dissolve).  Then once the corn is clean and drained its time to get out your Corona-style mill.

Unlike brewing, we're not at all concerned to preserve any husk material here, so its fine to screw the mill down to its tightest setting.  I go down as tight as possible, so that it won't move, then back off a fraction and crush the corn.  Its a bit of work, and often frustrating as the mill works itself loose, but ultimately not that much effort.  The result is a mealy grain that compacts into a rough dough.

Now comes the hard part: do you want to run the grain through the mill again?  Lots of people recommend this, and it certainly leads to a finer texture in the finished product.  The problem is that milling the meal is much harder than milling the corn (at least with my Corona), because you have to force it into the drive shaft as you mill (it won't fall in by itself as grain or whole kernels do).  This makes milling the grain a second time significantly more difficult and time consuming.  I've done it four of the five times I've made masa, but on my most recent attempt I only milled it once, and I thought the results were acceptable in the tacos I made.

Once you have your meal, its time to decide what you want to do with it.  I've made tamales in the past, but the easiest thing (if you have a tortilla press) is to make tacos.  You work small amounts of water into the meal until it forms a smooth dough.  Be careful here: if you add too much at once, the dough will get sticky and it will be difficult to press it.  I've settled on a consistency I like through trial and error, but I get there by touch rather than specific amounts.  I then press golf-ball sized rounds of dough on a cast iron press lined with a cut-up ziploc bag.

Finally, I remove the bag and carefully peel off the tortilla: if you've got the consistency of the dough right this shouldn't be too hard, but sometime they stick, especially if the dough is wet.  I cook them on a wide griddle, following instructions from one of Rick Bayless's books: he has you lay the tortillas on part of the griddle set to low heat for about fifteen seconds, until they release from the metal.  Then you flip the to a hotter part of the griddle, cooking them for about 30-45 seconds on each side.  I like to transfer them to a basket lined with a kitchen towel at this point to steam for a few minutes.  After that, they're ready for filling!

I really like the results, but it is a lot of work, especially if you grind the meal more than once (this might be easier on a better mill).  We can get pretty good corn tortillas in the supermarket here (certainly much better than anything I ever had access to in England!), so this is only something I do when I have a bit of time on my hands.  That said, the masa seems to keep reasonably well vacuum-sealed in the freezer, so I've started making big batches and portioning it out for later use.  This means a lot of work up front, of course, but I think its worth it in the long run.

Bread and Beer: Buckwheat

As I've mentioned before on this blog, one reason I like using unmalted grains in my beer is that I can find other uses for them around the kitchen, particularly when it comes to baking bread.  I've been using buckwheat a lot recently, both in baking and brewing, so I thought I'd follow up on my earlier post on spelt and combine some tasting notes for a couple of buckwheat saisons with pictures of how I use buckwheat groats in baking.

Buckwheat seems to have at least some history in brewing.  G. Lacambre mentions it in his 1851 book on brewing in Europe. (Yvan de Baets cites this book in his essay on the history of saison, but its contains very little about historical farmhouse beers, as Lacambre was more interested in the 'fancy' beers brewed by commercial brewers.  There are some interesting sections on Lambic though.)  Anyway Lacambre doesn't seem to think much of buckwheat as a source of fermentables.  He says its used rarely (occasionally in some parts of Germany, less commonly in Belgium), though it does contain a decent amount of starchy matter and is often fairly cheap.  He even describes his own experience with it: a small amount gave the beer a distinctive and disagreeable bitter flavour, prevented the beer from clarifying, converted poorly and caused problems because it became gummy in the mash.  Hardly a glowing recommendation!

Some contemporary brewers might be interested in using buckwheat because it doesn't contain gluten, but I was first drawn to it because I was curious about whether brettanomyces would convert its relatively high levels of caprylic acid into the ester ethyl caprylate.  Caprylic acid is not something you want much of in beer (it apparently tastes 'goaty'), but ethy caprylate is described in Wild Brews as "Waxy, Wine, Floral, Fruity, Pineapple, Apricot, Banana, Pear, Brandy".   Perhaps using larger amounts of buckwheat in a mixed fermentation might encourage the formation of these esters?

I've described how I use buckwheat in brewing in earlier posts: I crush the groats in my mill, boil them into a thick and goopy porridge, then add them into the main mash for the saccharification rest.  One thing I haven't stressed enough in earlier posts is that buckwheat is an absolute nightmare to lauter (as Lacambre warned us!).  I'm doing Brew in a Bag, which usually means I can get away with very gummy mashes using rye or wheat without too much difficulty, but buckwheat is a complete nuisance.  It forms a sort of gummy layer on the bottom of the bag, which means it just won't drain when you lift it out (or at any rate, drains very slowly).  This makes the bag difficult to maneuver (since it extra heavy with all the hot wort) and means it takes a long time to get enough wort from the grain.

In baking, buckwheat is much easier to use.  There are a number of ways you can incorporate unmalted grains into bread (including by making a porridge in a process that is basically identical to a cereal mash), but the method I use most frequently involves sprouting the grains and then folding them into the dough.  Buckwheat groats are particularly easy to use in this way: they only require a brief soak (about twenty minutes, where something like spelt needs four to six hours), after which I drain them, put them in a mason jar with a breathable seal (a coffee filter and a rubber band usually), give them a good shake so that there is plenty of oxygen in the mix, and then leave them till they start to sprout.  You can help them along by shaking once a day and maybe soaking and rinsing them again, but buckwheat groats sprout so quickly its usually not necessary.

Once they're just beginning to sprout, they're ready for use in bread.  I fold them into a wholewheat version of the Tartine loaf about an hour into the first rise (you need to do a few folds to develop the gluten first, as the sprouted groats will cut through it if added too early).  You can also grind up a small handful of the groats and use them to coat the top of the loaf.  They add a nice sweetness, along with a bit of texture, to the final bread.

Back to beer again, I've only ever used buckwheat in saisons.  I've brewed four versions of essentially the same beer now: a pale saison using up to 30% buckwheat.  In every case I've cut the fermented beer with some proportion of aged sour beer.  The very first version used a few litres from a lambic-style beer, but the three subsequent ones all used pulls from my Roeselare solera.   All of them have had flavours reminiscent of the description of ethyl caprylate above, though of course its difficult to say for certain whether this is because of the buckwheat and brettanomyces, or because of the saison yeasts and fruity hops (all versions have had late additions of Amarillo).  I've included tasting notes for two of these beers below.  I packaged the third version just before I left for England, and combined the fourth version (fermented with a different blend of yeasts) with the pale sour so that it can undergo a secondary fermentation while I'm away. The most recent batch was fermented with oak cubes in the primary, and I'm curious to see how these add to the overall flavour profile.

Buckwheat Saison I

This is the first version of the beer: I blended about 10 litres of saison with 2 litres of lambic-style sour, and added some Trimbach Pinot Gris as well.  Its about nine months old at this point, and has been in the bottle since the end of January.  You can read some earlier tasting notes here.

Appearance:  Pale and slightly hazy yellow colour.  Soft, foamy, meringue-like head with great retention.

Smell: Lemons and limes, followed by a hint of tropical fruit. Slightly floral edge as well, but more like dried flowers (almost reminds me of my Grandma's potpourri).

Taste:  Lemony acidity up front, but only moderate.  White wine comes across in the finish.  The strange waxy flavour is gone, or at least blended seamlessly with the rest so that its no longer offensive.

Mouthfeel: Crisp, with good carbonation, but the wine in the finish gives it a slight vinous character.  Nice balance of dryness with mouthfeel that I'm aiming for in using these unmalted adjuncts.

Drinkability & Notes: I'm very happy with how this one is tasting right now, and I'll probably start drinking the majority of the batch as soon as I get back from England, setting aside a few bottles to see how it continues developing.  This has all the elements I'm looking for in my saisons: its tart, fruity, refreshing, but with some complexity and structure as well.

Buckwheat Saison II

This is the second version of the beer, and the first that was blended with a pull from my Roeselare solera.  The idea with this and subsequent versions was to increase my overall yield by brewing four gallons of clean saison (about the most my system can handle) and then blending them with one gallon of aged sour.  This works well, and I plan to continue using this system as I keep brewing these beers.

Appearance:  Same as the first version.  Head retention on these beers is pretty solid.

Smell:  Lemons, yellow stone fruit, and hay.  Reminiscent of a younger version of the first version, but without the strange 'soapy' edge that I think came from the white wine.  Slight funk underneath it.

Taste:  Tart and lemony at the start, then again a more generic fruitiness with some floral honeyish elements.

Mouthfeel: Crisp and dry.

Drinkability & Notes: This one is still a bit sharp and angular, but hopefully with a bit more time in the bottle the edges will soften and become more rounded.  Still a very promising beer, and one of my favourite saisons.  Luckily I have more of this batch so I can check in on it more regularly.

Tasting Notes: Second Extraction Beers

Last summer I bought a lot of fruit at my local Farmer's Market.  Some of it went into pickles and preserves, but most ended up in sour beers.  The results were excellent, with some of the beers going on to take first place their categories in local competitions, so I've been looking forward to picking up more this year to use when I make blends from my soleras in the Autumn.  However, as a penny-pinching graduate student I was also very aware of how expensive all that fruit was, and I couldn't help wonder if I might be able to extend its use beyond single beers.  After all, Cantillon use their cherries twice, and Jester King have also tried a similar process for some of their beers.  What's more, by transferring clean beers onto the spent fruit, dregs, and secondary yeast cake of a sour beer I would be essentially repeating my process of cutting young beers with aged sours.

My basic idea, then, was to take clean beers that were already quite dry (mainly saisons) and transfer them onto the spent fruit and dregs from a sour beer.  I was hoping that the mixed culture might add some tartness and complexity to the finished beer, and that at least some of the fruit would come through as well.  Overall this has been pretty successful, especially with fruits that make a quite assertive contribution like Raspberries or Tart Cherries.  I'll certainly be repeating the process with more saisons this year.

Tart Brown Ale w/ Cherries from a Sour Brown

The base was a blend of American 2-Row and Pearl malt. along with some Medium and Dark Crystal for character, Pale Chocolate and Midnight Wheat for colour, and Golden Naked Oats to fill out the body.  I was going for a light tartness with this one, so I first let it ferment with a pitch of Wyeast Ardennes, and then transferred it on top of the spent fruit and yeast cake from a beer I'd brewed with Wyeast Oud Bruin.  I felt like the first beer I made with that blend was fairly one-dimensional and boring, and that's true to some extent of this one as well.  The fruit does come across nicely in the aroma though.

Appearance:  Dark brown with red highlights when I hold it to the light.  Thin but persistent head.

Smell:  Bright cherries prominent on the nose, along with darker fruit like blackberries or currants.  A sort of bready smell behind it, so that the whole makes me think of good quality preserves on toasted wholewheat bread.  Slightly metallic edge as it warms up.

Taste:  Light tartness first, kind of lacking in the mid-palate, and then a lingering taste that reminds me more of red currants than cherries. A bit disappointing after the aroma: a bit flat, I'd like more prominent fruit and more of that toasted bread in the background.

Mouthfeel:  The oats definitely give it a slightly fuller mouthfeel.  In fact, because of the low carbonation, it coats the back of throat in a way I'd describe a 'cloying' if it was sweet.

Drinkability & Notes:  The fruit comes across nicely on the nose, but the beer itself is a bit lacking.  I haven't managed to come up with a low ABV sour brown recipe that I'm happy with yet.  The oats certainly help with the mouthfeel, but there just isn't enough going on with the flavour.  With slightly higher carbonation it would be quite drinkable and refreshing: the tartness is just right.


Tart Saison w/ Cherries and Raspberries from a Flanders Red

The base was blend of Golden Promise and Pearl malts, aiming for a bit more character than plain pilsner.  I added some Golden Naked Oats again for mouthfeel, and around 1.5% Midnight Wheat for colour.  Once the beer had fermented out with Wyeast 3726, I transferred it onto spent fruit and and a small amount of beer left from a Flanders Red, and let it sit for about a month.  The O.G. was 1.044. and I'm sure it dried right out, giving an ABV of about 5.8%.

Appearance:  Reddish-brown colour.  I was going for a more brilliant red.  First pour is crystal clear. Head dissipates entirely after a few seconds.

Smell:  Raspberries and cherries dominant in nose, with some earthiness as well.  Smell of clean lactic sourness.

Taste:  Tart, jammy fruit up front.  Mid-palate is again a bit lacking, but it finishes nicely with a lingering taste of raspberries (fruit and seeds).  Hint of bready malt behind it.  Also fairly sour, to the point where I might struggle to drink more than one or two (my tolerance is low though).

Mouthfeel:  The high carbonation makes it crisp and refeshing.  Perhaps a touch thin, but it doesn't detract from the beer.

Drinkability & Notes:  Tart and refreshing, with the fruit coming through quite clearly.  Its actually a bit more sour than I'd like, but otherwise I'm quite happy with how this one came out.  I'll probably do the same thing again this year, perhaps adding some spelt for body and maybe some Munich and dark candi syrup for a bit more character and depth.


Tart Saison w/ Apricots and White and Yellow Peaches from a Golden Sour

I planned this beer as a pale saison that I would age on spent yellow peaches and apricots from a Golden Sour/pLambic.  The grist was  again a combination of Pearl and Golden Promise, rounded out with a bit of torrified wheat.  I added some El Dorado and Mandarina Bavaria hops to the whirlpool, hoping they'd accentuate the fruit.  Once it had fermented out with Wyeast 3726, I transferred it onto the spent fruit and dregs, but this time I added three pounds of frozen white peaches as well.

Appearance:  Pale yellow colour.  Crystal clear.  Billowing head that dissipates very quickly.

Smell:  Interesting aroma.  Lots of grass and hay.  Strongly evocative of cut grass that's dried out in the sun.  Reminds me of summers when I was a kid.  Peaches are very subtle in the background behind it, emerging a bit as it warms up, but I don't know that I'd pick that description if I didn't know they were there.  Aroma is probably more reminiscent of apples at this point.

Taste:  Tart, and a little juicy.  Peaches come across a bit more here.  Same warm and bready malt emerges in the background.  I quite like the dimension this adds.  Lingering tartness with a slight taste of peaches

Mouthfeel:  Crisp, with fairly high carbonation.  A touch thin though, which makes the sourness a little sharp, although is already softened a little compared to earlier bottles.

Drinkability & Notes: The 'dried cut grass' aroma is very striking, and wasn't there in the earlier bottles.  Peaches are subtle but there if you look for them.  All in all a tart and refreshing beer with a bit of added complexity.  I was hoping for a bit more from the peaches, but they seem to make quite a subtle contribution in all the beers I've made with them.  It'll be interesting to see how this one continues to develop over the next few months.

Tasting Notes: 1831 Truman Keeping Porter

Last year, as part of my ongoing efforts to make beers inspired by historical English stock ales, I brewed a Nineteenth Century Keeping Porter based on a recipe for an 1831 Truman beer taken from Ron Pattinson's excellent Home Brewer's Guide to Vintage Beer.  After undergoing an extended secondary fermentation by lactobacillus and brettanomyces clausenii, its been sitting in bottles for about a month. I haven't tried it since packaging because I don't have a Running Porter to blend it with.  I'll brew one as soon I start up again after the summer---essentially the same recipe, with a smaller amount of hops---but in the meantime I thought I might write some tasting notes with the help of a commercial beer.  Although there isn't much on the shelves that is likely to come close to the Nineteenth Century versions of these beers, a bottle of Samuel Smith's Famous Taddy Porter caught my eye.  No doubt well past its best at this point, but it was on sale and seemed like a good choice for blending.

I won't bother writing tasting notes for the Sam Smith's beer.  I tried each beer by itself, then blended approximately 1/3 'stale' beer with 2/3 'fresh' beer, in line with the descriptions in Ron's book.  I was pretty happy with the result, although the Keeping Porter is still a little rough around the edges.  Hopefully they'll smooth out as it continues to condition over the next few months.

Keeping Porter

Appearance: Dark brown colour, and fairly opaque.

Smell: Intriguing combination of toast, roast, and fruity sourness.  Very unique.  Powdered cocoa, dark fruity chocolate, toasted bread.  Suggestion of lactic sourness.

Taste: Very lightly tart.  Transitions to dry cocoa powder and then almost-burnt toast and bitter cold coffee.  Light fruitiness around the edges.  A bit rough still

Mouthfeel:  Low carbonation gives it a vinous character.  Slightly viscous.

Drinkability & Notes: Certainly interesting, though I don't think I'd care to drink more than a single glass at the moment.  The tartness is nice, and I enjoy the dark fruit and chocolate, but the burnt roast is a bit rough and astringent.  Hopefully it will continue to soften as the beer ages in the bottle.


~1/3 Keeping Porter & ~2/3 Taddy Porter 

Appearance: Dark brown with red highlights.  Good head that dissipates to about a quarter inch.

Smell: Similar to the Taddy Porter alone: dark fruits (raisins, prunes, figs), though less pronounced than in the original, along with a dusting of cocoa; but also a more pronounced breadiness.  Again the slightest suggestion of lactic sourness, which gives it an edge over the Taddy Porter.

Taste: The Taddy Porter is all dried fruit and chocolate with a slight tanginess and a hint of bitter coffee. This adds a tartness and lingering burnt roast that aren't there in the original, and transforms the overall impression.  Same elements but with a different emphasis.

Mouthfeel:  Not noticeably different from the Taddy Porter in terms of body, but there's added tang and astringent roast.  Dry and tart.  Very drinkable.

Drinkability & Notes:  The tartness really adds to the drinkability for me, since it clips the dark fruit from the original, and makes it transition to the burnt roastiness of the Keeping Porter.  Tangy up front, and then a lingering tartness and roast at the end, with dark fruit and cocoa in the middle.  Those transitions definitely add a complexity that is very satisfying.  The roughness of the Keeping Porter comes through as well though.  I hope it gets a bit softer with age.