Peach Wit Part III: Fermentation

If there ever was a natural process that could be described as magical it's fermentation.  Create an environment with the right nutrients, nourishment and living conditions then add your yeast and let them do their thing until you have a wonderfully flavored beverage.  It's even responsible for adding the bubbles.

Once I added my yeast (known as 'pitching' to brewers) I wrapped my carboy up in HVAC insulation and a sweater to help keep it warm and prevent UV exposure.  These warm temperatures will help ensure a thorough fermentation as Belgian yeasts really like it warm.  It also promotes the formation of esters and phenols, the most intense varieties of flavor compounds that yeast can make.  The photo on the left shows what the beer looked like 24 hours after pitching.  The color is creamy and homogeneous from the yeast in suspension. It also has a bubbly, pale green-gray colored cloud of protein and yeast on top known as krausen.  The yeast is consuming the sugars in the wort and producing alcohol and CO2, which is being released through the one way valve on top known as an airlock.  This is what you want to see!

After a week, the beer on the right looks very different.  The yeast has dropped out of suspension (flocculated) and fallen to the bottom of the carboy where it has formed a (hopefully) compact cake known as the yeast trub.  Trub can be harvested for future uses, or another wort could be poured directly onto this trub once i siphon off the beer.  This leaves the liquid relatively clear (remember theres a lot of wheat protein that will never clear out of this particular beer).  The krausen is no longer, all that remains is a ring of residue stuck to the inside of the carboy.  Under normal circumstances, one could leave the beer like this for two more weeks to complete secondary fermentation (clearing and conditioning), however, because I am going to be adding peaches, it is recommended to transfer to a clean vessel.  I also need to transfer into a container with a wider opening to spare me from having to add the peaches piece by piece through the mouth of the carboy. 

I reviewed my initial recipe a bit and decided to up the quantity of peaches from 6 pounds to 10.  I really wanted the peach flavor to shine, and went all the way down to Niagara on the Lake to buy some of the best peaches that Ontario has to offer.  I cut and pasteurized all the fruit by vacuum packing them into bags and cooking them in 170F water bath for an hour.  This makes sure that any bacteria on the peaches doesn't make it into my beer alive and cause it to spoil.  This all went into the bottom of my plastic fermenter bucket (a little less glamorous than a carboy, but equally effective).

The beer was racked over the peaches, and secondary fermentation ensued over the next two weeks.  During this time the yeast first ate and fermented the new sugars from the peaches. Afterwards it refines the existing flavor compounds.  This refinement is known as conditioning, and really cleans up the flavor of the final product.

After the two weeks have passed I bottled up the beer.  I add a little bit of additional malt sugar before bottling to give the yeast something to feed on in order to make the carbonation for the beer.  Wits are highly carbonated styles so I added more malt sugar than usual.  Over the course of the next three weeks the beer will eat up this last little bit of sugar, and flocculate to the bottoms of the bottles.  At this point the beer is ready for consumption!

Stay tuned for Peach Wit Part IV: The Final Product!

5 Reviews! Now Trending Edition!

Once I put together the list of my latest reviews I found they had something in common: these styles are all gaining popularity quickly.  Beau's Opa's Gose is an awkward German beer style that uses salt water and coriander and has popped up in Canada from a few brewers lately (GLB/Amsterdam, Les Trois Mousquetaires and Beau's themselves).  Both the Chouffe Houblon and GLB Audrey Hopburn are highly hopped spinoffs of the Belgian Tripel style, Chouffe arguably being the original creator of these 'Belgian IPAs'.  While somewhat more commercial, Mad & Noisy (from the makers of Creemore Springs) Nuts & Bolts is also in an up-and-coming IPA variant: the India Pale Lager.  Lastly, but certainly not least, Bellwoods Session Ale, the Wizard Wolf (a growingly popular style that features bold flavor and low alcohol, designed to be drank several in succession without causing too much bodily harm).

Beau's Opa's Gose

650 mL bottle. Pours a densely hazed peach color with a moderate white cap. Aromas of orange, coriander, grass, unmalted wheat, banana and a touch of candy floss. Light to medium body with full carbonation. Compares more to a saison or a wit than to the Great Lakes/Amsterdam Gose (the only other one I’ve had). Salt is unnoticeable. Good quencher, but not overly interesting or particularly to style. Added some of the extra salt and it becomes oddly creamy and muted.

Great Lakes Brewing Audrey Hopburn

650 mL bottle. Pours light amber with a mild head and nice lacing. Aroma is a pleasant mix of noble hop aroma and yeast spice: citrus zest, clove, tangerine, anise and a touch of bread. Medium to full bodied with full carbonation. Balanced sweetness with a bitter hop finish. Nice beer.

Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel

330 mL bottle. Pours golden straw with a fuzzy white head and no lacing. Aroma is hugely hoppy; fresh cut grass, citrus, herb, a hint of honey like malt and belgian candi sugar character. Smooth beyond belief with no alcohol bite (be warned), high carbonation and medium body. Concentrated hop aroma with little to no bitterness, very clean on the palate. Dangerously drinkable and wickedly balanced.

Mad & Noisy Hops & Bolts IPL

473 mL can. Pours a woody orange color with a nice white cap and lingering lacing. Aromas of light caramel, citrus, tropical fruit, munich malt and a slight breadiness. Light to medium bodied with medium carbonation. Smooth on the palate, finishes crisp and bitter with a fruity hop note. Surprising quality.

Bellwoods Wizard Wolf Session Ale

500 mL bottle. Pours a hazy light amber with a tight white head that lasts well. Great citrusy hop aroma with a touch of tropical fruit and a light herbal note. Hints of caramel and bready malt. Super easy drinking, moderate body, moderate carbonation and great balance. A touch of sweetness and a nice bitter finish.

http://www.ratebeer.com/user/169526/ratings/

New Look!

The blogs one year anniversary is coming up on September 4th (wow), and I thought in celebration the old beast could use a bit of a work over.  The new modern look feels a bit more clean to me.  Sometimes you just need a change for fun.  Please expect the usual self absorbed writing.

Sorachi Ace Farmhouse Cider

When you learn to brew beer the hard way, making a simple cider from store bought juice is like child’s play.  Buy juice. Empty juice into carboy. Pitch yeast. Wait. Bottle.  It’s a refreshing change from beer and adds a little variety to your pipeline.

Knowing that apple juice has only simple, readily fermentable sugars, you know your cider will finish out crisp with a low, low gravity unless you can kill the yeast and force carbonate.  I don’t keg so I’m stuck with a bone dry cider; but that’s how I like them anyway.  In lieu of going to an orchard and blending the perfect mix of tart and sweet apples for a real authentic cider, I use store bought juice, it’s much more readily available.  Select a quality juice, one with no preservatives and preferably organic.  I use Whole Foods brand juice, it’s organic and paseutrized and is relatively cheap at $8.99 a gallon.  If you want to bulk your alcohol (which will be pretty high already because of the low FG) you can add simple sugar of any kind.  For complexity, maybe add spices, or dry hop.  Aside from that, dump the juice in the carboy and aerate.

Yeast choice is a matter of preference.  There are cider yeasts that are supposed to attenuate less and generate a slightly sweeter product, but I have never used one.  My first batch I pitched S-05, for this one I used Lallemand Belle Saison, hoping to generate a touch of spice and fruit notes.

We dry hopped our cider with Sorachi Ace.  A lot.  We used two whole ounces for a five gallon batch.  I really wanted to add something to this cider, and thought that the super pungent lemon aroma and hop freshness of Sorachi might be nice.

Here’s the recipe!

Beer Name: Sorachi Ace Farmhouse Cider
Style: Dry Hopped Cider
OG: 1.054
FG: 1.004
ABV: 7.2%

Grains:
5 G Pasteurized, Unfiltered, Organic Apple Cider

In the Boil:
Nothing

Fermentation:
Lallemand Belle Saison Dry Yeast in primary
Dry hopped with 2 oz Sorachi Ace Hops in secondary
Primed with 3.25 oz raw sugar

Brew Notes:
23/06/13: Brewed
Fermented wrapped in blankets
30/06/13: SG of 1.004
07/07/13: SG of 1.004, racked to secondary
21/07/13: SG of 1.00, bottled

Tasting Notes:  Pours a cloudy peach juice with a thin bubbly cap.  Medium to high carbonation with a thin body.  Aromas of lemon, herbal hop, apple, pear and a touch of yeasty spice.  Smooth and refreshing, a great summer quencher, just be careful, they pack a punch.

Overall, this is tasty stuff, the girlfriend loves it.  I really want to see how it comes along over the next six months.

Malty F*%!&R American Amber/Brown Ale aka 'Little Filthy'

You lose some you win some. After pouring out a whole lot of Bitter I'm glad to see that our next beer came together quite well.  Our American Brown Ale, which was originally planned as an American Amber, is suspiciously tasty.  It came up a little darker and wholesome looking than we anticipated, but the flavor profile is phenomenal.

The beer was initially designed to be a kick board for our 'Big Filthy' Barleywine; a good way to make a massive, healthy yeast starter to ferment our final farewell upon.  It turned out to be quite the tasty endeavor on it's own.

We wanted to brew something relatively clean, and it had to use the yeast we wanted to use in our Barleywine, Wyeast 1056 American Ale.  We'd never brewed an Amber so we started there.  Lots of Pale Malt as the base, Victory for some honey and biscuit notes, some leftovers from previous brews for depth (Aromatic and Biscuit), CaraPils for head retention, Crystal 77L for sweetness and a hint of Black Malt for color and roastiness.  Our local homebrew store recommended us to try out a new product, Zythos Hops, so we used those exclusively and spread the hop bill out a lot.  The yeast fermented quite neutral and let the ingredients shine, the hops are present and accentuate the malt bill very well.  Despite having a bite-y bitterness, this is really a malt-forward brew.  It was interesting to compare to our Belgian IPA, which also used 8 oz of Crystal 77L: I swear you can pick out the exact flavor notes it contributed to both brews.  Trying desperately not to drink all of this so I can try a bottle in a months time.  Here she be:

Beer Name: Malty F*%!&R aka Little Filthy
Style: American Brown Ale
OG: 1.046
FG: 1.010
ABV: 4.8%
IBUS: 38

Grains:
7 lbs Pale Ale Malt
1 lb Victory Malt
8 oz Crystal 77L Malt
8 oz CaraPils Malt
8 oz Aromatic Malt
8 oz Biscuit Malt
2 oz Black Malt

In the Boil:
½ oz Zythos Hops @ 60 Minutes
½ oz Zythos Hops @ 30 Minutes
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes
1 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes
½ oz Zythos Hops @ 5 Minutes

Fermentation:
Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast in primary
Dry hopped with ½ oz Zythos Hops in secondary
Primed with 4.25 oz Amber DME

Brew Notes:
02/07/13: Brewed
Single infusion mash @ 152F
Missed OG of 1.055, resulted in 1.046
07/07/13: SG of 1.010, added 1 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient, roused yeast and raised temperature
09/07/13: SG of 1.010, racked to secondary
25/07/13: SG of 1.010, bottled

Tasting Notes: Pours a dark mahogany with an off white cap that leaves a touch of lacing.  Aromas of roasted malt, dark bread, butter toffee and a touch of dark fruits.  Alternating sweet malt and bitter hop notes that layer quite nicely and round out just slightly hoppy.  Medium to full bodied with moderate carbonation and a creamy mouth feel. Quite delicious actually, one of our better brews.  Really love the malty roundness to the whole thing.

I'd love to rebrew with a slightly more subtle hop and maybe scale back the medium toasted malts a bit in place of something a little more dark.  All in all quite enjoyable!

A Day in Niagara

I had some free time to myself this morning and decided that being a man in need of peaches, I would head to peach country.  Aside from being the best fruit growing climate in Ontario, Niagara is home to all kinds of gastronomic delights.  It's iconic to the Canadian wine industry, home to a few new and wonderfully successful breweries and features trendy restaurants and classic bed and breakfasts.

I rarely travel by myself, so I took the opportunity to crank the music and plan out a route that would be selfishly indulgent and allow me to accommodate both my business and pleasure needs.  I needed peaches for the witbier, I wanted to stop in to tour the facility one of our suppliers, scope out a potential new one, taste some of the most progressive and successful wines of Ontario, and grab lunch.

First stop: Walker's Country Market.  The place has been active since the 1930's and still offers a great selection of local fruit, maple syrup and home baked goods.  Eight pounds of seconds peaches for the brew, four pounds for eating and a drink (delicious and unique Niagara baco noir juice) ran me around $16.  I passed on the pies and maple goods, although they all looked delicious.  Back to the road.

Second stop:  Niagara Oast House Brewers.  BRU buys good beer.  Oast makes good beer.  You can put together the rest.  Part-owner, sales representative and brewer, Cian MacNeill, was kind enough to give me a tour of the facility, and let me know what was coming up in their pipeline.  They're working on developing a function room upstairs and are planning a series of beers in first fill oak barrels.  I hit up the shop on my way out for a couple of bottles of their Saison ($11 each), and some of of their classy branded merchandise ($20 for a tee and $15 a hat).  Someone was kind enough to tip me off that a gastropub down the road, The Garrison House, sold their beer.  Better hit the road.

Third Stop: Stratus Winery.  I was originally a wine guy.  Now I'm a beer guy.  I suppose.  It's not that I don't like wine anymore, but beer feels a lot more casual.  I can open a bottle of it and not have to worry about drinking it in 48 hours before it tastes dissipated.  More people are willing to share a beer with you.  Anyway thats a little off topic.  Stratus has quickly become the most respected winery in Ontario, quite possibly Canada.  Most people attribute this to its French winemaker, J-L Groux.  I wasn't really sure what I was in for here as I don't typically like Canadian wines, especially reds, and had yet to try any of Stratus' products as they aren't exactly cheap.  I loved the building, inside and out. They have a beautiful wine shop and tasting bar that evokes the feeling of a luxury library (You really need to see it to understand).  I tried their Syrah at the bar and instantly fell in love.  In a blind test I would have sworn it was from France's Rhone Valley.  I bought a bottle and a novel serving platter made from a decommissioned wine barrel.  Wine was on the upper end of Ontario pricing at $44, and a similar awe inspiring platter can be yours for around $80.  Both pieces are interesting if not mildly expensive.  On to the road.

Fourth Stop:  Garrison House.  By this point I was starving, and I have heard good news about the Garrison house.  I took a seat at the bar and nabbed a half pint of local Silversmith Black Lager, a tasty burger and a coffee for under $30.  I chatted with owner/operator Leigh Atherton and she let me know that despite the fact that Silversmith is technically closed today, if I knocked on the door someone would be able to help out a beer director in need.  Off we go.

Fifth Stop:  Silversmith Brewery.  I figured I would pop in and take a look around, it is after all located in a beautiful old church.  I walked in an met up with owner Matt Swan and looked around the brewpub.  Matt let me in on the news with their brews and told me, "I guess if we didn't want people to walk in, we would lock our doors".  We parted ways and I was headed back to Oakville.

A productive and interesting day in Niagara, I would recommend checking out any or all of these places.

Walker's Country Market
walkerscountrymarket.com
15796 Niagara Parkway
Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara Oast House Brewers
oasthousebrewers.ca
2017 Niagara Stone Road
Niagara-on-the-Lake

Stratus Vineyards
stratuswines.com
2059 Niagara Stone Road
Niagara-on-the-Lake

The Garrison House
thegarrisonhouse.ca
111C Garrison Village Drive
Niagara-on-the-Lake

Silversmith Brewery
silversmithbrewing.com
1523 Niagara Stone Road
Niagara-on-the-Lake

Peach Wit Part II: Brew Day

Brewed up the Peach Wit today!  It was a bit of an experimental dry run.  There were a lot of firsts happening here and I botched a little bit; but it won't be noticeable in the final product.  I feel like it all came out respectably well.

I double milled the raw wheat in order to expose the kernel entirely, this should help me achieve a good extract efficiency and give me the OG that I anticipated.  The rest of the grain was milled as normal.  Oats and rice hulls were added after milling.

I opted for a long medium bodied mash on this one, 153F for 90 minutes.  I was hoping that this would yield a moderate body that will complement the fullness of the wheat and contrast the extra acid from the peaches.  The length of the mash should help compensate for the difficulty in converting raw wheat.  I mashed and sparged without counting the rice hulls in the grain bill, thus using a touch less water than I should have.  This probably cost me a few points in efficiency.  Between that and the difficulties associated with converting unmalted grains set me back 8 points of gravity.  Aiming for 1.050, I yielded 1.042.  This will likely result in a lower ABV.  You live and you learn when it comes to new mashing procedures.

I have recently read a lot about first wort hopping and figured that with only one hop addition in this brew, it might be a nice time to put it to the test and feel out what it's like.  First wort hopping is a revived brewing technique that originated in Germany.  Instead of waiting for the wort to come to a boil before hops are added, they are added to the brew pot before the wort is lautered and sparged.  The idea is that some of the potential aroma compounds that are isomerized immediately when added to boiling wort are allowed to steep out and develop, thus giving more flavour and softer, more even bitterness.

When we brewed our Saison we used a variety of spices at different times in the boil, from ten to five minutes out.  I found that the flavours muddled the beer and made it a touch bitter.  They aged and rounded out a bit, but I decided to add all the spices at flameout to try and generate a bit of a different feel.  More aroma and less flavour; if you will.  I also cut back significantly on the quantity of spices as I'm hoping for spiciness from the yeast as well.

Chillin'

The wort was cooled, strained and aerated and the yeast was pitched at 73F.  I've wrapped the carboy in HVAC insulation and a sweater to prevent the beer from going lightstruck and help regulate temperature.  I'm aiming for around 75F fermentation temp, this should dry out the beer and help compensate for my mashing mash up.  It should also force the yeast to throw a whole lot of spice notes and phenols.  These should complement the spices in the beer and contrast the creamy wheat.

All in all, I feel like the brew went well, the resulting beer might be a percent shy of my intended ABV but I don't feel like that's necessarily a bad thing.  It should end up a great fruity quencher with some complex spice and yeast notes.

Up next: Peach Wit Part III: Fermentation

$#!& Gushers!

Dammit!  We finally had our first case of contamination.  Spoils your beer and your fun!  What we have here is commonly called a 'gusher infection'.  Somewhere during the bottling process our beer got contaminated with a foreign yeast or bacteria, and it continued eating the complex sugars in the beer that our yeast would not.  This beer was primed with malt sugar to be carbonated very, very lightly, but the foreign bacteria produced a whole lot of CO2 as it ate our precious dextrins (the long chain sugars that yeast cannot ferment, and give sweetness and body to finished beer).  The result can be seen in this video!  Aside from nearly explosive quantities of carbonation, the beer became extremely thin bodied and bland as it aged.  Sadly, I had to dump about 3L of our bottled SMaSH Bitter as the taste declined and the chances of the bottles exploding increased (a legitimate concern, Google 'homebrew bottle bombs' for some depressing imagery).  My anal retentiveness about sanitation just doubled.

No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn! +4 Others

A motley collection of beer reviews here.  Heading up the line is one of the most interesting beers I think I have ever had the pleasure of consuming, a barrel aged sour stout from Bellwoods and Evil Twin.  Falling in thereafter are some samples I received from Great Lakes Brewery, Hissy Fit and Hissy Fit with Raspberries (AKA Raspberry Manilow).  A wheat wine from Flying Monkeys and a sturdy daily drinking brown ale from Neustadt.

Bellwoods x Evil Twin No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn
500 mL bottle. My bottle said 9.2%. Pours opaque black with a beige cap and lots of lacing. There is a hell of a lot going on here but it?s very well balanced. Aromas of cherry, raspberry, coffee, cocoa, heavy cream, porridge and oak. A touch of sweetness, then a big lactic sour bite, rounding into bitter, roasty malt notes. Ridiculously complex. Full bodied with medium carbonation and no noticable alcohol. Bought another bottle I will have to try very hard not to open. Wow.

Great Lakes Brewery Hissy Fit Grisette
650 mL bottle. Pours a cloudy straw yellow with a nice white cap. Aromas of citrus, banana, bubble gum and light grassy grains. Mild and tasty, bone dry and moderately carbonated with a slightly bitter finish. A quencher.

Great Lakes Brewery Raspberry Manilow
650 mL. Pours cranberry cocktail with a short lived white head. Raspberry, cranberry and a touch of grainy malt. Surprised not to see any yeast flavours here. Refreshing and dry, nice and fruity, but a bit much raspberry. Thin body and moderate carbonation.

Flying Monkey's City and Color
750 mL bottle. Pours dark reddish amber with a thick beige head. Aroma is maple, vanilla and little else. Not overly sweet but lacking balance. Only a hint of hop or yeast character. Nice wheaty mouthfeel. Boozy. Too one dimensional for me.

Neustadt Springs 10W30
473 mL can. Pours a rich dark reddish brown as the name suggests with a nice beige cap of head. Aromas of toffee, nuts, brown malt, licorice, dark bread and a touch of hop spice. Mildly sweet with minimal hop bitterness and only a hint of aromatics. Medium bodied with medium carbonation and a malty finish. Well made, nothing outstanding.

Thanks to Bellwoods and Evil Twin for producing a really great product.  If you live in the Toronto area and are beer adventurous, the bottle retails for $12 and I believe there is some still left; but hurry when it's gone, it's gone.

As usual:
http://www.ratebeer.com/user/169526/ratings/