Reinitzgebot Updates, Scottish Ales, & Competition Season

It's packaging time at the Reinitzgebot Brewery (the name I've given to my homebrewery)! Tonight I plan on kegging 3 gallons of Imperial Brown Ale and 5 gallons of Rye IPA. I think I'm gonna be doing the "quick & dirty" forced carbonation method as opposed to my normal "proper" way, since I'd like to have some beer available on Saturday night for visiting friends. The Munich Helles I brewed a few weeks ago is lagering in my chest freezer; it's been there about 2 weeks so far, and I plan on leaving it there for at least another 2-3 weeks before kegging that up.

I also purchased ingredients last weekend for the first beer I've designed myself. It's going to be a spin on the Vanilla Bourbon Porter I made at the end of last year, but using my own unique malt/hop bill. I'm dubbing the beer Cinnabon Porter, which will have a base of Crisp Marris Otter malt and a blend of specialty malts, including Chocolate, Brown, Crystal 40, and Crystal 60. I was hoping for Kent Goldings for the hop additions, but the homebrew store didn't have any, so I ended up getting Styrian Goldings and Fuggles. On brew day, I'm going to soak 2 vanilla beans and 2 cinnamon sticks in a small amount of bourbon and let it sit during the course of fermentation. This infused bourbon will then be added to the porter at bottling (I'm bottle conditioning this beer as opposed to kegging). I'm planning on entering this beer in the Sam Adams Longshot Competition this year, which I just registered for. This year's Longshot competition is only for Category 23--Specialty Beers and entries are due at the end of May. I'll be brewing next weekend to get this beer done in time for the deadline.

In other brewnews, I attended a Scottish Ale tasting a couple weeks ago at the Brickskeller in DC, which was led by Bruce Williams of Williams Bros Brewing Co. in Scotland. It was a great tasting plus Bruce was an interesting and engaging speaker. My favorite of his beers was his 80/- (80 Shilling) Scottish Ale, a malt forward, but incredibly well-attenuated beer. Bruce also did a really cool experiment to demonstrate the different carbonation levels in various beers. Williams Bros produces only real cask ale or bottle conditioned beers--no forced carbonation. Bruce poured a number of different beers into small glasses including two of his own, a Budweiser, a Bud Light, as well as a glass of soda. Over the top of each glass he stretched a condom that had been filled with some Sweet n' Low. The Sweet n' Low acted as nucleation points to force CO2 out of solution and up into the condom. Depending on the carbonation level of the various beers, the condoms inflated to different levels. The condom over the soda looked like it was about to blow off the glass (ha, he said "blow off").

The tasting couldn't have come at a more perfect time--I'll be in Philadelphia this weekend judging the first round of the National Homebrew Competition, and I've been assigned to the Scottish & Irish Ales for the morning judging session. In the afternoon, I'll be judging IPAs. I've also signed up to judge the Spirit of Free Beer competition in Fairfax, VA in the middle of May, and I plan on entering a few of my beers in that competition as well. Lastly, I just signed up to steward the second round of the National Homebrew Competition at the National Homebrew Conference, which I'll be attending in Minneapolis at the end of June.

Till next time, cheers and beer it forward!

IPAs, IPAs, and More IPAs!

The last few days have been chock-full of IPAs for me. For those who aren't familiar with the style, India Pale Ale (or IPA) was originally developed in Britain to survive the long voyage via sea to India. Hops, which act as a natural preservative of sorts, were added generously to the beer to prolong its life and ensure it was still drinkable when arriving in India. The style has evolved in the U.S. to be uber-hoppy, with some beers falling into the Double or Imperial IPA category. In general, a standard IPA should have a firm malt base to support the high hop bitterness, and although emphasis is on hop flavor and aroma, the beer should be fairly well balanced.

My IPA extravaganza started on Sunday when I brewed a 5 gallon batch of a Rye IPA. I used about 3 lbs of rye malt to lend a slightly spicy note to the beer and increase the complexity of the overall flavor profile. This was my first time brewing with rye, and one thing I was not prepared for was the fact that rye malt has not husks. Malted barley comes in the husk, which acts as a natural filter bed when lautering the mash. When brewing with wheat, which I have done before, you generally add rice hulls to compensate for the wheat's lack of a husk. I did not realize that rye was also huskless. What all this means, is that lautering was especially slow and difficult. I just barely got enough wort out of the mash tun for my 5 gallon batch. In hindsight, I should've used some rice hulls or added more water for a thinner mash. In the end though, everything worked out fine...I relaxed, didn't worry, and had a homebrew! After my lautering issues, everything went fine--I gratefully avoided a boil over this time. I used about 3.5 oz of hops (Mt. Hood and Columbus), and fermentation was vigorous less than 12 hours after pitching the yeast.

Continuing on the IPA theme, I went to ChurchKey in DC last night for their Mikkeller Single Hop IPA Bonanza. Mikkeller is a Danish brewery that produces some really extraordinary beers. One of the cooler things they've done is their Single Hop project. They brewed 10 different IPAs all using the same exact malt bill and a single hop. Each beer uses a different hop as to showcase the hop's true flavor and aroma. ChurchKey managed to get all 10 IPAs on tap at the same time. AWESOME. J.T. and I went and had 4 oz samples of each in two 5-beer flights. The beers were:
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP CENTENNIAL IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP CASCADE IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP AMARILLO IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP NELSON SAUVIN IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP EAST KENT GOLDING IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP TOMAHAWK IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP NUGGET IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP WARRIOR IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP CHINOOK IPA
MIKKELLER SINGLE HOP SIMCOE IPA
This event was really incredible; rarely do you get a chance to taste and compare individual hops. The most interesting for me were the Nelson Sauvin and Chinook. Although I've used Chinook in my own brewing before, I was blown away by the flavor profile when used alone. The hop had an inherent smokiness to it; it tasted almost as if smoked malt was used in the beer, though none was. The Nelson Sauvin, which I never even heard of before, is a hop from New Zealand with bold fruitiness and floral characteristics that was reminiscent of white wine (Sauvin == Sauvignon Blanc). I'm gonna have to get my hands on some Nelson Sauvin to use in an IPA; I'm thinking of doing a single-hop brew with it in fact.

That's about it for today. I'll be going to a tasting event on Thursday evening, so I'll have another update on Friday probably. This coming weekend I'll be brewing again (an Imperial Brown Ale this time), and then I'll have three beers fermenting at once--the ultimate trifecta! Till next time, cheers!

Fermentation Frenzy--A Homebrew Triathlon

Mike DiMarco should be proud--I'm running a triathlon...a beer triathlon that is. I'm brewing 3 beers in 3 weeks, and I'm already a third of the way there. This past weekend, I brewed a 5 gallon batch of a Munich Helles, a light lager that the BJCP describeds as having a "malty but fully attenuated Pils malt showcase" and "is not overly sweet, but rather focuses on malt flavor with underlying hop bitterness in a supporting role." The beer was made using mostly Pilsner malt, with a little Light Munich as well as Melanoidin. The hop bill was pretty simple--just some German Hallertauer at 60 minutes. For my first time brewing in my new place, the brewday went extremely well. My new stove was luckily able to bring 7.5 gallons of wort to a boil, though I had a small issue with a boil over, which took 45 minutes of scrubbing the stove with a brillo pad to clean it up. The one major issue I had was fermentation; this was only my second time doing a lager, and I didn't handle the yeast as well as I should've. Although I made a properly-sized starter using WLP838 Southern German Lager yeast, I kept the starter at fermentation temperature (about 52 F) instead of keeping it at room temp to grow the yeast. Once I pitched the yeast slurry, there was about a 72-hour lag time before fermentation really got going. In the end though, the yeast prevailed, and you can see the krausen forming on top of the beer in the picture above. I'll let the beer ferment out at 52 F before transferring it to the secondary and lagering at 34 F for at least a month.

While my Munich Helles is fermenting away, I'm going to brew a 5 gallon batch of a Rye IPA this Sunday, which should come out to be a hoppy and subtly spicy ale with a firm malt backbone. The malt bill calls for mostly American 2-row with a number of specialty malts, including Rye, Caramel 60, CaraPils, and a little Wheat. The hop additions are all either Mt. Hood or Columbus, and I prepared a starter last night using WLP051 California Ale V yeast.

Finally, next weekend I'll be brewing a 3 gallon batch of an Imperial Brown Ale using Maris Otter as a base malt with Brown Malt, Caramel 80, Caramel 120, and some Dark Belgian Candi Syrup. The hops include Columbus and Willamette, and I'll be using WLP001 California Ale yeast.

Tasting notes to come once all three beers are on tap...onward with the triathlon!