Brew Day: 1860 Truman Double Stout (#IHP2015)

I've been brewing historical British recipes on and off ever since I made the switch to all-grain.  Most recently I've been focusing on stock ales that underwent a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces, but in the past I've made quite a few AKs, milds, and bitters as well.  So when the Fuggled International Homebrew Project came around this year, I knew I had to take part.  (In fact, I think following the project last year was part of what prompted me to start writing this blog).

The recipe chosen this year was for a Double Stout brewed at the Truman brewery in 1860 (I think I voted for the Stock Ale, though I can't actually remember).  You can find the original in Ron Pattinson's book (its very slightly different from the one Al posted), and there are also recipes and brewing notes for various similar Truman beers in the Let's Brew series over on his blog (1, 2, 3).

Reading all of this can be pretty helpful in planning a brew day, but I didn't have time to go through it all until the mash was on this morning.  Since we're all using very different malts (e.g. the Maris Otter I used would not have been available in the 1860s, and the brown malt probably had a very different character), I don't really think of what I'm doing here as accurately recreating a historical beer, but even with the leeway that gives me there's still the question of how to translate the information we have about the original recipe to a homebrew scale.

For instance, many of these beers went through quite complicated mashing regimes that I have no intention of imitating in my kitchen, and that leaves open the question of what temperature I should aim for in the infusion mash to get close to the listed racking gravity.  The racking gravity for this beer was 1.025, so I knew I had to create a fairly dextrinous wort  In his book Ron lists an infusion mash at 164, and Al suggested the same in his version of the recipe.  I was nervous about mashing so high (I thought perhaps it wouldn't translate very well to the kind of full volume BIAB mash I do, because the enzymes might denature before the mash was complete), but in the end I still went for a pretty high mash temp of 160.  It turns out I didn't need to worry about my efficiency (see below), though if I'd had time to do a bit of research I would probably have gone with something lower.  Kristen England's suggested mash temps for Truman Stouts in the Let's Brew Wednesday series are all a lot lower, and he also warns that the proportions of brown malt in these beers tends to leave a dextrinous wort, which makes me worry that the fermentation will stall at a higher gravity.  To mitigate this I pitched plenty of healthy top-cropped yeast, and gave the wort a good dose of oxygen.

I basically followed the recipe as written, though I had to substitute a small amount of Roasted Barley for some of the Black Patent, and I formulated the recipe for a slightly higher O.G. to take into account the dip in efficiency I usually see on these higher gravity beers.  I used EKG all the way through (I don't think the IBU numbers mean much in these recipes, so I based my additions on the proportions listed in Ron's book), and pitched a good amount of recently top-cropped Wyeast 1318.  Ron lists the Whitbread strains in his book, but I don't think this matters all that much, and I'd rather stick with the yeast I'm using anyway than go through the effort of growing up a fresh pitch.

The one other interesting process-related change I implemented was in my water profile.  The Truman brewery was located in East London, right on Brick Lane in fact, so I figured I see if I could find a water profile for the London Porter brewers.  Luckily Martin Brungard wrote a series of pieces on historical water profiles for Zymurgy last year, and the May/June issue has an article on London.  I won't go through all the information Brungard offers about the various possible water sources (read the article!), but the final water profile he lists for brewing dark beers is below:

Calcium: 80   Magnesium: 20   Sodium: 110   Sulfate: 80   Chloride: 190   Bicarbonate: 210   Residual Alkalinity: 105

As you can see, it has very high levels of sodium and chloride, much higher than you usually see in recommended water profiles, which will create a perception of sweetness and fullness in the beer (here hopefully balancing out all those hops!).    Brungard comments that based on research he did for John Palmer's water book, the sodium levels in this profile shouldn't be excessive, so the beer shouldn't taste salty.  I went with the following profile, aiming for a mash pH of 5.4:

Calcium: 65   Magnesium: 12   Sodium: 111   Sulfate: 78   Chloride: 193   

I'll be curious to see how the final beer turns out, though since I don't brew many strong dark beers I doubt its a profile I'll be using much.

As you can see from the photo at the start of this post, somehow the wort came in 10 points above the recipe's O.G.  I was already aiming a few points higher, because my efficiency usually takes a big dip in these high gravity beers, but it came in even higher than that.  I can think of two things that might have contributed to this.  First, I used a higher setting on my drill when crushing the grist, which might have led to a finer crush.  And second, after draining the bag with the mash over the kettle I let it drain further suspended over a bucket, and then added these runnings back to the kettle.  I don't usually bother with this, but I was worried about my gravity coming in low.  10 points is enough of a difference that I decided to dilute the final wort down to something closer to the recipe's gravity.  On the plus side, this means I might have a few extra litres that I can inoculate with some brettanomyces and keep on hand to marry with another stock ale.

Anyway, that's about it for the brew day.  Al lists his writing date as March 23rd: I don't know if that means tasting notes, but I doubt I'll have this bottled by then (I have a very hectic month coming up, and at six weeks the beer would probably be a bit young anyway).  I am planning on packaging this on the younger side and allowing it to condition in the bottle after that.  I'll post tasting notes when I think its ready for some.

 

Tasting Notes: Bitter Saison

Or rather, not-so-bitter belgian pale ale.  This is the beer I brewed with yeast grown up from a bottle of De La Senne Taras Boulba.  I was going for something similar to the original beer---pale, bitter, and hoppy---and also trying to get a sense of how their yeast strain performed.  Its a pleasant enough beer (J really likes it), but not what I was going for.  It has a nice gentle bitterness and noticeable hop character, but is a pale imitation of the characterful qualities of beers like Taras Boulba or XX Bitter.

The De La Senne yeast did reasonably well.  At first the beer had lots of sulphurous off flavours, but these have dissipated over time.  It didn't attenuate as much as I expected, ending at around 1.010, and I was also surprised that it didn't seem to be a good top-cropper (though now I think about it I've no reason to think that DLS do this).  I wish my brewing schedule had allowed me to brew several beers with this pitch, as I suspect I'd need to let it go through several generations before it would really come into its own (as far as I know, De La Senne have been repitching it since they opened Looks like I was wrong about that, but they do repitch through up to 30 generations).  I have some of the yeast cake stored in the fridge, and I may try growing it up in a month or so after I finish my current cycle of beers.

Appearance: Pale yellow colour with a slight haze.  From memory, I'd say its pretty close to Taras Boulba.  Tight head with fairly good retention and some lacing down the glass.

Smell: Grassy and floral, with a gentle pepperiness (white pepper); sweet and bready pilsner malt beneath it.  A bit like De Ranke XX Bitter if it was dialed down significantly.  Slightly plasticy aroma in the background as it warms that I don't like.

Taste: Herbal and peppery at first (but again, white pepper, not like the phenolic character I dislike in strains lime 3711); then slightly sweet and crackery malt before a dry and gently bitter finish.  Reconizable DLS yeast character.

Mouthfeel:  The mouthfeel is a little thin: surprising considering it finished higher than most of my saisons do.  Higher carbonation might help here, but I think if I brewed this again I'd also use more wheat.

Drinkability & Notes:  This batch didn't turn out how I wanted, but we're getting through it pretty quickly.  I was considering entering it in a competition as a Belgian Pale Ale, but I don't really know what judges expect from that style, and since J likes it so much I don't think I'll waste the bottles.  As I said, it does make me want to experiment more with this yeast strain, perhaps in combination with some fresher and more citrusy hops.

First Pull: Roeselare Pale Solera

Just a quick update post today.  Over the past few months I've been slowly increasing the number of six gallon soleras I have on the go, the idea being to eventually have a range of different beers on hand for coupage and blending.  To keep track of things I've decided to name each pale solera after the bug blend it was fermented with.  I currently have three in my closet---Roeselare, ECY01, ECY20---and I'm thinking of adding a fourth with The Yeast Bay's Mélange blend some time in the next month or so.  At the moment each has a slightly different base recipe, but I might start using the same base for each in future.

Last week I took the first 3 gallon pull from my Roeselare Pale Solera, and topped it up again with some freshly fermented beer.  The original solera was a mix of a Flanders Pale Ale fermented with Roeselare blend on October 11th 2013, to which I added another pale beer fermented with Wyeast 3522 on June 24th 2014.  That made the average age of the beer I pulled about 11 months.  The top-up beer I added last week was a slightly lower gravity version of the original recipe, fermented with Wyeast 1318 instead of a Belgian strain.  It had a gravity of about 1.012 when I added it to the carboy.

The beer I pulled still had a fairly high gravity of around 1.006, and was only moderately sour, with a pH of 3.96.  It had a very nice mix of citrus and stone fruit flavours, with only a little funk in the background.  I added a little over a gallon to a four gallon version of this buckwheat saison (recipe was slightly different because I ran out buckwheat), and I'm planning on letting them ferment together for another month or two before adding dry hops and packaging in bottles.  The base saison already has a nice fruitiness which I think will be complemented by the flavours from the aged beer.  Its also already fairly tart, so I'm glad that the solera beer isn't too sour yet.

I also transferred another 2 gallons into smaller jugs for extended ageing, flushing each with CO2 before transfer to minimise oxygen pick up (since I don't have kegs, I use a handheld CO2 charger).  The plan is to use some for cutting other saisons in the next few months, and to draw on the rest as a component in blended beers when I start pulling from the other soleras later this year.  I'll be brewing a 3 gallon top up for my Flanders Red solera in the next few weeks, and allowing the beer I pull from it to age further in a smaller carboy.  Hopefully I should be able to start creating blends from them all at the start of the Autumn this year.

Tasting Notes: Table Beer III

I damn near ruined this beer by letting it get too much flavour from an oak spiral.  This is particularly frustrating as I'm usually very conservative when it comes to adding oak to beer, and also because without the oak I thought this was the best table beer I brewed so far.

How did I end up adding too much oak?  The spiral I used came from my attempt at spontaneous fermentation.  Before brewing that beer, I had boiled it for about thirty minutes in some hot water, and allowed it to soak for several weeks in my house culture.  It then spent a few more weeks in the (unfermenting) wort.  I wrongly assumed that by this point most of the flavour would be gone, and added it to the secondary vessel containing the table beer in the hopes that it would add some wild yeasts to the fermented beer.

This was actually all part of a long-term plan.  My thought was that once the spiral was inoculated with various bugs from my house culture and the spontaneous fermentation, I could use it as a way of inoculating other beers in turn by adding it to the wort during primary fermentation.  Sort of like a poor man's version of fermenting in an inoculated barrel.  Its potentially a good idea, and one I still intend to implement, but I now know to make doubly sure that all the flavour is stripped from the oak.  Its currently sitting in the jug containing my house culture again.

Appearance: Most bottles of this beer were a hazy golden yellow, but this last one (which has been in the fridge a while) has dropped bright.  Foamy and lingering head.

Smell: Lemons and white grapes, but then straight up wood underneath it.  By the end its like you are sniffing a brand new American oak spiral.

Taste:  Lemony and slightly spicy at first, before the wood comes on.  The first few bottles tasted like licking an oak spiral, but now that's faded a bit such that other flavours come out as well. A nice tartness has developed since the beer was bottled, which I think also helps offset the wood.

Mouthfeel: Medium carbonation, doesn't feel particularly thin, but still very easy to drink. Slight lingering astringency from the bitterness and wood.

Drinkability & Notes:  I had no trouble getting through this batch (unsurprisingly, I find these table beers are a nice accompaniment to dinners during the week, after which I often have to spend time prepping classes for the next day), but the oak was far too dominant in most of the bottles I drank.  I think without it this would have been my favourite table beer so far, and I'll definitely brew this recipe again.  I have a slightly stronger version, blended with no-boil sour, conditioning in bottles at the moment, and I've put a rebrew of this table version in my brewing calendar for next month.

Brew Day: Vatted Old Ale

Martyn Cornell's list of endangered British beers includes the following two styles in the "critically endangered" category:

Vatted old ale
About the only survivor of vatted old ale in Britain is Greene King 5X, which is, alas, almost never made available on its own, but generally blended with other beers to make, eg, Strong Suffolk. Up to the end of the Second World War, however, Old Beer, matured for a year or more in huge oak vats, was still popular in the West Country, particularly in Bristol. Few brewers, alas, have the time or space to make long-aged beers today.

Sour aged ale
A variety of vatted old ale is the sour aged ale represented now only by Gale’s Prize Old Ale, where a proportion of each brew is held back, solera-style, to add to the following year’s fresh ale. The complexity and depth available from such long-aged beers, particularly after several years in bottle, is stunning. Fuller’s rescued POA when Gale’s closed, but again, few brewers have the time or space to devote to such a minority beer.

As I've mentioned here before, I'm pretty interested in these almost extinct British beers, and already have several attempts to recreate them underway.  So far I have stock ales inoculated with lactobacillus and one or two strains of brettanomyces, but nothing with the full complement of LAB and wild yeasts found in other sour beers.  This week I decided to change that by a beer inspired by Gale's Prize Ale: something strong, intended for long ageing, and inoculated with a range of organisms.

My original plan was to brew this as another solera, and I may still implement that by making another batch in the next month and combining the two together into a six gallon carboy.  I would then pull off three to four gallons once a year, and top the carboy off with fresh wort.  This is similar to the way that Gale's is brewed at Fullers.  They no longer use the wood from the original brewery (this used to be the source of the inoculation), but instead hold back a portion of each batch to inoculate the next one.  But there is also historical precedent for brewing a strong beer in this style.  It seems to have been something that British manor brewers did with their strong ales, as recounted in this delightful description of "marrying ale" that I found on Ron Pattinson's blog:

The method called marrying ale, we have often seen tried upon a private person's stock with success. It seems to increase its strength, but especially its mellowness and the fulness of its flavour, and consists in tapping a pipe or hogshead of ale in the middle, and when it is drawn as low as the tap, to fill up the cask with another brewing of wort. The particulars to be observed are: to begin upon a sound stock, such as is approved as to colour and flavour; for if there be any approach to acidity it will not do. The next point is to tun the newly-fermented wort upon the old stock, when it has fermented about twelve hours. The third particular, of great importance, seems to be, not to marry your ale in winter, but in autumn (October), for if your cellar be not a vault,the old stock is too chill, and the fermentation may suddenly stop: if this should happen, as in cellars that are not vaults, the heat may increase considerably in spring, the fermentation may be renewed, and the ale may spoil, or mischief happen to the cask by bursting. Ale that is brewed in the usual way will sometimes ferment in summer, and throw up the bungs of the barrels; especially if the fermentation have been hastily conducted, and little or no cleansing have taken place in the barrels after tunning (which is likely to be the case when brewing is performed in frosty weather); where this happens, the danger is that acidity will follow, and therefore the beer should be speedily used. When ale is married, the fermentation will bring away all the old hops, and it is not to be overlooked that the cork will rise that had been driven in with the tap. It is, therefore, requisite to work it out at the bunghole, skimming away the hops, &c. till they and the cork are discharged; then fill up the cask, and take out the top cork for cleansing, as before. It may be filled up several times with fresh wort, as in other cases, until the fermentation stops, and then the cork and bung put in (the latter very lightly) and left so until it is necessary to hop it down. The writer has refilled a cask in this manner five years successively, and had the ale always superior, and always alike in colour and flavour; in continuing this practice for a long period it is necessary to remove the casks for fear of accidents. The excellence of this ale is, that you can never guess at its age; it drinks always soft and mild, without any resemblance to ale recently brewed, and is equally remote from hardness or acidity

Lars Garshol describes a similar process implemented by walloon ironsmiths who emigrated to Sweeden in the 17th century.  It seems these workers missed beers from home (perhaps something akin to Flanders Red or Oud Bruin):

To satisfy their craving for walloon beer, the walloons started brewing their own beer. Out of this brewing quickly developed what seems to be a Swedish variation: hundred-year beer (hundraårig öl). This was a beer primarily made for the aristocratic owners of iron works or major mansions. 

It was brewed the same way as the walloon beer, and then stored in big wooden tuns. After a few years, half the beer would be drained off and bottled, and a new batch would be used to fill up the barrel again. This would go on for, in quite a few cases, many decades. The barrel would never be emptied, so it could literally be said to be hundred-year beer, although obviously the beer from a century ago would be present only "in homeopathic concentration" as one source put it.

Lars' post was the immediate inspiration for brewing this beer, and on his recommendation I sought out a copy of Country House Brewing in England by Pamela Sambrook, which I still haven't got round to reading.

I didn't agonize too much over my recipe for my beer.  The old recipe for Gale's Prize Ale was pretty straightforward: Maris Otter and a touch of Black Patent, with around 10% invert sugar.  Apparently Fullers have changed it since taking over the brand, using Optic, crystal, and chocolate malts.  I would have liked to have used all English malt for the base, but I'm running low until the next group buy in a few months, so I made do with a blend of US 2-row and Golden Promise.  I added about 5% medium crystal, and then on brew day cooked up a batch of invert #3 (via the dilution method) to make up about 10% of the grist by weight (not by extract).  I knew I was going to have problems hitting the high original gravity I wanted (somewhere around 1.090), so at the last moment I also added about half a cup of homemade Belgian candi syrup that's been lying around for ages.  Altogether this produced a rich chestnut-coloured wort in the vicinity of 1.090.  I hopped the beer to around 50 IBUs (the reported bitterness for Gale's), using some old Northdown hops for bittering and a blend of EKG and Fuggles for a 20 minute flavour addition.

My plan was to ferment the beer with a large amount of freshly top-cropped Wyeast 1318, along with the final 10-15 mls of a jar of ECY20 that I purchased last year.  I pitched both together so that the bacteria and wild yeasts had a chance to get established, but given that the beer will have a very high alcohol content I'm not expecting it to get too sour---in fact, I'm hoping it won't, since I'm looking for something more vinous, with a soft acidity and some light leathery funk.  Something I can bottle by itself, but also use as an interesting component in blended beers.  I gave the wort a healthy dose of oxygen, and the beer is now fermenting in the low 60s, hopefully keeping higher alcohols etc. in check.

If things go to plan I'll probably brew up a second batch in the next month or so, this time fermented with Wyeast 1318 alone since it will be blended with the inoculated beer in a six gallon carboy (still waiting for another 2-for-1 offer!).  Then, following the Swedish brewers described in Lars' post, I'll take a pull and top it up again around Christmas each year until I move out of here (which may mean only once or twice).

Modifying a Corona-style Mill

My plan to write some tasting notes for the blog this week was thwarted by a lingering cold that left me unable to taste much of anything.  It hasn't stopped me brewing though, and after a disastrous start to the brewing year (I scorched a hole in my BIAB bag and spilt grain all over the kitchen), I finally feel like I'm getting back in the swing of things.  I have a few interesting batches planned for the next few weeks, and I'm feeling quite excited about how some of the saisons currently going through secondary fermentations in my closets are tasting.  With any luck, in a few months I should have some very nice beer on hand.  I also won a couple more medals in a local competition, which was a pleasant surprise since I didn't expect much from the beers I entered.  I have one beer that I think is very good entered into the Upper Mississippi Mashout next weekend, and I'm curious to see how it does.

One thing that's helped me get back to brewing despite the fact that I've been quite busy is that, after crushing almost 200 batches by hand with my cheap knockoff Corona-style mill, I finally went to the hardware store (a two minute walk from my apartment) and bought the fifty cent bolt I needed to run it with a drill.  The 5/16" bolt screws into where the handle should be, and you can turn it (and thus the plates of the mill) by using a drill with a socket adapter.

Making that first change was pretty easy, but when I crushed the grain for my next batch (a dry stout) I noticed that the crush was pretty uneven, with lots of whole grains visible in the grist.  I went ahead and brewed anyway, but my efficiency took a significant hit: almost 10 points, not something you want to happen with a dry stout, which already risks being too bitter and astringent because of all the hops and roasted grains.  I fermented the batch anyway (it was doing double duty as a starter for a new pitch of Wyeast 1318), and as predicted its tasting a bit harsh.

The problem was pretty obvious: the plates on this kind of mill are often quite wobbly, which means that the gap between them doesn't stay even while you're crushing it.  Usually, when I'm turning it slowly by hand, this isn't too much of a problem, but with the drill turning everything much faster a lot more uncrushed grain was getting through.

There are a couple of modifications you can make to these mills to help prevent the plates wobbling.  I didn't bother with then when I bought it because the crush was OK and I was getting acceptable efficiency, but now I knew I had to try them.  The first is to add a couple of spacers on the adjustment bolts between the two sides of the mill---you can find some good pictures here.  The second is to take out the cotter pin that holds the front plate in place---mine looked like it had been bashed in with a hammer, and took a while to get out---and replace it with a 8/32 inch bolt that will hold the plate firmly in place (see picture).  That was an extra 12 cents, and took all of ten minutes.

After making those modifications, I ran a few handfuls of grain through the mill to see how the crush looked and adjusted the gap until I was happy with it.  Corona-style mills will really tear up the hulls of the grain, and can also produce a lot of flour, but since I'm doing BIAB I don't have to worry about stuck sparges and the like.  I'm also pretty careful about mash pH, which helps reduce tannin-extraction from the grain. There were certainly fewer intact hulls left after using the drill, and a bit more flour too, but I knew I could probably minimize this by conditioning the grain (i.e. spraying it with water) before I crushed it.

Midway through last week I brewed another batch in the evening (a top-up for my pale solera), and crushed all of the grain in the mill. I was a bit worried about my cheap drill overheating and burning out, but it made it through and the grist looked OK, with the crush fairly even and not too much flour (see picture).  I went ahead and brewed, and got an efficiency boost, ending up 3 points over my target O.G.  Today I brewed again---this time a pale bitter---and conditioned the grain a few hours before crushing it.  This seemed to help preserve the hulls more than the first time, when I conditioned it about 12 hours in advance.  And today I hit my target O.G. dead on.

All in all I'm pretty happy with these modifications.  They mean I can crush the grist for my batches in a fraction of the time it used to take me (I'd say about 5 minutes each for these two, where before it would have been more like 30).  I like to crush the grain the night before I brew so that I can get everything going nice and early the next day, but recently I'd been finding that I was often too tired to do this prep, which usually meant that I didn't brew at all.  What's more I have a few high gravity batches planned for the next few weeks, and I always used to dread crushing the grain for that kind of thing---not any more!

I will have to keep any eye on the flavour of my beer---I haven't noticed any astringency from the grain before now, but perhaps the more thorough crush will lead to problems.  I'll also probably need a better drill (I have my eye on this one), but for now I'll keep using my cheap one until it gives up on me.

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.