MO/WGV SMaSH

SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop) beer brewing is a great way to experiment with ingredients.  You select one kind of malt, and one kind of hop, and brew a beer using only those ingredients and yeast.  This lets you really see what any given malt or hop tastes like by isolating it from the rest of the ingredients in your beer.  It works well for exploration purposes, but you are limited in what style guidelines you can fit into as not many types of beer can be brewed to style with just one malt.

We decided to make an Ordinary Bitter; we stretched the guidelines a little on this one as it is fractionally under colored and has a touch too much alcohol, but we really wanted to give it a shot.  Maris Otter (MO) is the traditional British Pale Malt.  It gives English beers that stereotypical bready, biscuity sweetness that you can't get from anything else.  It's a lovely malt and is widely used in SMaSH beer.  East Kent Goldings are the textbook British hops, and are responsible for the earth, spice and floral notes so common in English brews.  We really wanted these but our store was out of stock.  We settled on a distant relative of EKG's, the Whitbread Golding Variety (WGV).  We spread the hop bill out far and wide, so we would be able to see the WGV's in all their roles, Bittering, Flavor and Aroma.  As far as yeast was concerned, we really wanted to be true to style, so we chose Wyeast 1469 Yorkshire Ale Yeast.  All in all this simple experiment should make us a very true tasting, if a little lightly colored, brew.

Here's the recipe:

Beer Name: MO/WGV SMaSH
Style: SMaSH Ordinary Bitter
OG: 1.036
FG: 1.008
ABV: 3.9%
IBUS: 30

Grains:
7 lbs Maris Otter Malt

In the Boil:
¾ oz Whitbread Golding Variety Hops @ 60 Minutes
¾  oz Whitbread Golding Variety Hops @ 30 Minutes
¾ oz Whitbread Golding Variety Hops @ 5 Minutes
1 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes

Fermentation:
Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale Yeast in primary
Dry hopped with ¾ oz Whitbread Golding Variety Hops in Secondary
Primed with 2.3 oz Amber DME

Brew Notes:
11/06/13: Brewed
Single infusion mash @ 153F
16/06/13: SG of 1.010
19/06/13: SG of 1.008, racked to secondary
03/07/13: SG of 1.008, Bottled

Tasting Notes:
26/07/13:  Pours a pale straw color with a thin white cap.  Aromas of lemon zest, herb, biscuit, bready yeast and crisp malt.  A touch dry for the style, crisp and refreshing.  Medium carbonation and light body.  A sessionable quencher with a slightly bitter finish.

It's easy to appreciate the value of the Maris Otter in this beer.  It generates a huge amount of character for a base malt, I'll certainly be using it more often.  The WGV hops play their part as well.  If this weren't a SMaSH and an experiment, I would be adding a touch of Crystal 120L or even Chocolate Malt for color and richness, and a bit of Biscuit Malt for depth and complexity.  I'd adjust the hops back so that most of the IBUs come from the bittering additions, rather than so spread out.  I'd carbonate slightly less as well.  All and all this is a great thirst quencher and a damn tasty experiment.  I look forward to brewing a 'real' bitter.

"Does This Taste Infected?" Dunkelweizen AKA "My Crazy Dunkel"

That whole thing about having everything under control with brewing and thinking we know what's going on?  The part where I said "I feel like we are at the point where we can dependably choose to make a beer that tastes a certain way, and make it so"?  Ignore that.  At least for now.

We set about brewing a Dunkelweizen.  A traditional German wheat beer, with a little dark malt flavor and yeasty profile.  We designed a nice little grain bill that would give us some malt sweetness and a touch of toasty cocoa notes.  We hopped lightly, just to balance the malts.  We chose an appropriate yeast strain that would make some spice and banana notes that appear in the traditional style.  And then everything went to hell.  Somewhere along the line (we think in the temperature critical part of fermentation known as primary) the yeast got out our control and started producing a very tart, lemon juice flavor.  At first I thought the beer might have got infected, but we quickly ruled that out.  Souring bacteria cannot thrive well in beers that are hopped any more than a few IBUs, and there was no pellicle (a visible sign of infection that looks like a white film on your beer) that would indicate another type of bacteria.  As the beer aged, the sour flavor diminished to a point where it was drinkable, but still too tart for the style.  Then we bottled.  After three weeks (which is how long it generally takes to carbonate a beer) is was very sour, dominated by lemon juice like flavor.  I had one recently (5 weeks after bottling) and the sourness has faded a bit but is still present.  I really hope it subsides more.  We learned that you really need to keep your fermentation temperatures in your control.  We hadn't really been paying too much attention here, and were neglecting a couple key elements to the process, and may have been fermenting somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees warmer than we thought.  Although this is likely to be the culprit for our sour lemon beer, it isn't sure.

Here's the recipe:

Beer Name: My Crazy Dunkel
Style: Dunkelweizen
OG: 1.048
FG: 1.008
ABV: 5.3%
IBUS: 16

Grains:
4 lb Wheat Malt
2 lb Pilsner Malt
2 lb Munich Malt
10 oz Chocolate Malt
1 lb 4 oz Rice Hulls

In the Boil:
1 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker Hops @ 60 Minutes
½ oz Strisselspalt Hops @ 60 Minutes
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes
1 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes

Fermentation:
Wyeast 3056 Bavarian Wheat Blend in primary
Primed with 5.7 oz Amber DME

Brew Notes:
28/05/13: Brewed
Stepped mash
20 Minute Protein rest @ 122F
60 Minute Saccharification rest @ 152F
10 Minute Mash out @ 170F
Fermented in cooler set to regulate to 65F
02/06/13: SG of 1.010, Slight sour flavor. Infection?
05/06/13: SG of 1.010, Racked to secondary. Sourness fading
19/06/13: SG of 1.008, bottled

Tasting Notes:
26/07/13:  Pours cola colored with a thin head that dissipated quickly.  Nose is lemon zest and a touch of dark malt.  Aromas of lemon zest, and a touch of bittersweet chocolate malt as it warms.  Sour on the palate, with the slightest hop bitterness here. Thin body and moderate carbonation.  Sadly one dimensional and possibly infected.  Let it age and pray it gets better.

Either we made some very unhappy yeast, or got ourselves a right nasty Lactobacillus infection that can tolerate the hop level we used (apparently rare but not impossible upon further research), either way this beer was a learning experiment.  We have since bought new equipment for sour beers (Okay, I was working with lacto at the same time we brewed this and cross contamination is a POSSIBLE issue) and are paying more attention to fermentation temps.  Am I going to throw it out? Hell no! Am I going to use this yeast again? Not likely.  Will we be more careful about contamination and temperature control? Yes.  Will I make it right eventually?  You bet.

Breaking Point: Belgian IPA

As it turns out, if you practice anything enough you can get good at it.  As you practice you'll have ample opportunity to figure out all your problems, that's the easy part.  As you persevere you will then slowly begin to figure out all their solutions.  Our 7th beer is living proof.  After mashing our first three batches extremely hot (a fatal flaw the lead to over bittered and over sweetened lower than intended alcohol brews), not keeping proper notes on our California Common and severely overcarbonating our Saison, we seem to have come up with a beer that is a winner on all fronts.  Recording and adjusting our process has been key to our success.  I'm not saying the beer is perfect, and we still have a lot to learn, but I feel like we are at the point where we can dependably choose to make a beer that tastes a certain way, and make it so.

We wanted to brew up something called a Belgian IPA.  The style is still developing and is found in two forms; a West Coast style IPA that has been fermented with a Belgian ale yeast or a Belgian Tripel that has been aggressively hopped with English or American hops.  We wanted to brew the former.  We put together a recipe that would use a blend of both American and Belgian style character malts as well as Belgian Candi Syrup, to build a beer with American IPA like crystal malt sweetness, but with the bready, fruity tones of a Belgian Amber or Dubbel.  Then we hopped in the style of a West Coast IPA: Centennial for earthy bittering, Simcoe for pine and citrus flavors and Citra for its tropical fruit aromas.  It was all rounded out with a warm (ester producing) fermentation using Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale, to get some fruit and spice notes layered in.

All said and done, the recipe and fermentation schedule looked like this:

Beer Name: Tropic Thunder
Style: Belgian IPA
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.008
ABV: 6.7%
IBUS: 62

Grains:
4 lbs Pilsner Malt
3 lbs 2-Row
1 lb Munich 10L
8 oz Crystal 77L
8 oz Aromatic Malt

In the Boil:
1 lb Belgian Candi Syrup 45L @ 60 Minutes
1 oz Centennial Hops @ 60 Minutes
½ oz Citra Hops @ 30 Minutes
1 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes
1 tsp Wyeast Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes
½ oz Citra Hops @ 5 Minutes
½ oz Simcoe Hops @ 5 Minutes

Fermentation:
Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale Yeast in primary
Dry hopped with ½ oz Simcoe Hops in secondary
Primed with 4.5 oz Amber DME

Brew Notes:
17/05/13: Brewed
Mashed @ 156F
Fermented in Reflectix and Sleeping Bag
21/05/13: SG of 1.014
24/05/13: SG of 1.014, racked to secondary
28/05/13: SG of 1.013, double dropped (accidentally)
02/06/13: Fermentation seems to have restarted, SG of 1.010
11/06/13: SG of 1.008, bottled

Tasting Notes:
25/07/2013:  Pours a pretty orange tinged amber with a thick off white cap of head.  Leaves soapy lacing. On the nose lots of mango, banana, strawberry and a touch of citrus zest.  Dry with only the smallest hint of caramel malt background and yeasty spice.  Slightly bitter on the finish, layered with the yeast notes and more fruit.  Moderate body and carbonation.

I liked the appearance and flavor of this beer, it's something I would consider remaking.  All in all it's just a touch too subtle for me, as though all the flavors could be more pronounced.  Ditching the Pilsner Malt and adding more of the Crystal and Aromatic would help provide it a slightly sweeter finish.  Hopping could be upped considerably as I find this under bittered for an IPA.  Brew again!