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.