brew

So, so many lager styles

The Munich Dunkel recipes starts, as one might expect, with Munich malt. Ours had nine pounds, fourteen ounces. A five ounce dash of Carafa II went in for color and that’s it for grist. Laid back, noble hopping was 1.20 ounces of Hallertauer as soon as it came to a boil and another half ounce of Hallertauer with twenty minutes to go. Again we used SafLager for fermentation. One lesson here (besides “lagers are a time consuming pain in the ass”) is that using a yeast source once from start to finish and tasting the result would be a good idea before committing to using it in multiple batches.

On the accident scale from delight to disaster the dunkel falls somewhere in the middle. The aroma has enough of a hint of tart caramel to give away the fact that something isn’t quite right. The flavor is purely tart. It’s not painfully sour. If it took a stylistic trip to the north and claimed to be from Berlin this beer would be much closer to the mark. Overall it’s tolerable but not something I really enjoy drinking. The lemony citrus portion of the sour is a little too strong and there’s also an off putting slickness in the body.

Czech-American Farmhouse Lager

The pilsner looks perfect – pale and clear and golden with rapid rising bubbles. It has a light raspberry aroma that is unexpected for the style but not off putting. The first taste immediately reveals it’s not really a pilsner at all. Something wild got into the fermentation and changed it thoroughly. Unlike some of our other problematic lagers, it doesn’t have the big sharp sour infection. The beer is sour but only ever so slightly. As an example of style it’s a complete failure. But as a continental farmhouse ale I think it’s quite decent. Precision and repeatability are obviously the goals, but happy accidents are still better than down-the-drain accidents.

While it almost surely isn’t reproducible on purpose, the simple recipe could be best summarized as “Saaz, plus some grain”. 7.75 pounds of two-row malt combined with 3 pounds of flaked corn spent ninety minutes in the mash tun and another ninety in the kettle. At sixty minutes we added 0.75 ounces of Saaz. At twenty minutes we added 0.40 ounces of Saaz. At ten minutes, we added another 0.40 ounces of Saaz. At five minutes, added another 0.40 ounces of Saaz. And finally at flameout we added a whole ounce of – you guessed it – Cascade. Just kidding it was more Saaz. Fermentation was was SafLager plus whatever else snuck in and contributed all the flavor.

A little out of focus but it is *thick*

This beer is the epitome of a good idea on paper. There’s a great big aroma of raspberry jam that promises dark richness. It tastes big and bold initially with great berry flavor. Then there’s a weird, totally out of place roasty barley flavor fulfilling the porter portion of the beer. And finally the finish has slight tartness that is again reminiscent of raspberries. Individually each flavor is fine. But they just do not fit together correctly. I think the base porter is too flavorful for the blend. The style would be better with either a strong dose of fruit on a more neutral beer or a lighter fruit addition into a strong beer. The mouthfeel is notably different with the added fruit adding slight syrupy effect. I don’t see any real color impact – just dark without any red or purple.

To make this blend, we waited for primary fermentation to finish on the robust porter and racked roughly half of it (2 to 2.5 gallons) onto three pounds of raspberry puree in a clean fermenter. This was carefully aged… until an open keg was available and free time permitted another transfer. The basic process worked fine. Flavor and aroma from the raspberries came through without an excess sweetness. The fruit and the beer just don’t match.

The porter tastes like porter

Two porters in a row – or a demonstration of lazy blogging with half written posts piling up in the queue. This one started with 9.25 pounds of pale two row and had a medley of minor additions: 1.25 pounds of Munich, 13 ounces of Caramel 40, 10 ounces of chocolate, and 6 ounces of black malt. This wound up overshooting the predicted mark by about ten pounds. 1.076 is more an extra robust porter. The first 1.70 ounces of hops were Goldings at the beginning of the sixty minute boil, the second was 0.75 ounces of Fuggles at fifteen minutes, and finally 0.70 more Goldings at the last second. Fermentation was with subtle, reliable WLP001.

The robust porter is a nice dark black with a tan topper. The aroma doesn’t give away much beyond a subtle sweetness. The flavor, however, very much lives up to the name. After an initial punch of sugar it’s all roasty bitterness with bits of smokiness and coffee. The combination very much strikes me as robust. The sweetness up front is a little too much and it could stand to be drier but it’s still a very drinkable beer. The body is medium maybe even shading to medium-light – nowhere near what I would call heavy. The relative lightness seems like a nice demarcation from the world of stouts.

Baltic Bitterness

The big, bad brute of the porter family has a lengthy list of grains starting with 9.75 pounds of Munich and 5.75 pounds of pilsner – either could be a base malt in its own right in smaller recipes. Special B and Caramel 60 are both 6.5 ounces, Carafa II is 5 ounces, and chocolate malt is the last 3 ounces. A whole lot of Saaz balanced out all that malt with 2.7 ounces at the sixty minute start mark and another ounce with fifteen minutes to go. Unlike the other porters this one called for a lager yeast. It was one of our rare successes with SafLager and imprecise fermentation temperature control.

The Baltic Porter’s tan head dissipates rapidly perhaps as a function of age. There’s still plenty of body and the lighter remaining carb works nicely with the style. The aroma is sweet and grainy with a little roasted barley. That roastiness comes through boldly in the flavor along with a bit of coffee. It’s actually more on the bitter side. Unlike other malt oriented brews, the darker roast flavors are bitter themselves and combine with the hopped bitterness rather than offsetting the hops like caramel or toffee malts. I like its coherency. Everything works together from start to finish instead of having different notes take turns.

The non-hoppy pale ale

The wonderfall odd ball of the Pale Ale family! A nice golden orange beer gives off an earthy aroma. Sweetness dominates the flavor. The fruit aspect of it reminds be of berries. The finish only puts a mild damper on the sweetness. This certainly isn’t dry. I was surprised by the lack of bitterness but per the style guidelines there isn’t supposed to be much in the way of hops. Any spiciness comes through more so in the nose than the taste. A very tasty all around beer despite not being what I expected.

Like most of the Belgians the backbone is pilsner – just two ounces shy of nine pounds. Ten ounces of caramunich and three ounces of biscuit malt are the rest of a simple grain bill. Unlike many heavy pilsner recipes it only called for a sixty minute boil. Hopping, oddly, comes from English Kent Goldings. The British hops seem almost exclusive to British styles. One point three ounces went into the boil right at sixty minutes with another point three ounces at flameout. Yeast of choice was Anterwerp Ale WLP515.

Gorgeous tan & black contrast

A pitch black beer with a pleasant tan head – more than I was expecting to see given aging and ABV. The nose is sweet with hints of alcohol that come across more fruity than hot. The body is definitely thick and heavy and it starts very, very roasty. I definitely get coffee and chocolate from it. The brew definitely is not overly sweet or syrupy. The only place that the hulking alcohol creeps into the taste is in the finish. Aging has tempered that part significantly. There’s a little bite but not hot alcohol hitting the throat. It’s certainly warming but as an effect rather than a flavor. I don’t think there’s a single thing wrong with this beer: great, interesting style and well executed.

By the power of barley

The barleywine smells… powerful. That’s appropriate I suppose. The aroma is full of caramel and booze. The head gets obliterated by alcohol in fairly short order. Some carbonation persists but a low level is sufficient. The beer itself is extremely rich with huge coffee and dark caramel flavors. It’s sweet without so much as a nod towards being balanced, but I think that’s OK since the whole thing is tuned for a ten ounce glass. The alcohol presence isn’t the least bit subtle but it’s tamed down just enough. All in all a solid prototype barleywine – the flavors are well suited to further aging and developing.

Even a half pint may be excessive

The old ale has massive bubbles in a big white head topping a dark brown ale. The aroma is much grainier compared to the sweetness of other high proof beers. The beer itself is deceptive. The body is by no means heavy the initial taste is mild – just a standard malt-forward ale. The finish, however, packs a wallop of flavor. Light toffee is underscored with some balancing acidity. The finish tails towards sweet but not excessively so. I think the richness of caramel or burnt sugar could be upped a bit for an even better beer but this isn’t bad as is. Treacle instead of molasses might be the magic ingredient that tips it from good to special.

Photogenic at least

This gorgeous reddish brown ale has a subtle aroma of grain and fruit. A medium light body offers very little up front. There’s a bit of sweetness and a touch of acidity but not a whole lot else. The finish is a little bolder albeit only by comparison. I get some bitterness and spiciness headlined by clove but subtlety remains the rule. Nothing is wrong with this beer but nothing is exciting about it either. I’m disappointed that the plum color doesn’t deliver the dark fruit flavors that it implies. Yeast can be finicky little buggers it seems.

Pilsner as is often the case with Belgians, is the base: eight and a half pounds. The recipe piles on specialty malts with 13 ounces of Munich, and six each of aromatic, Caramunich II, and Special B. A 90 minute mash and 90 minute boil were also required. 1.50 ounces of Tettnang was the only hop addition, but extra sugar did go in at the end of the boil: both ten ounces of amber candi sugar and six ounces of plain sucrose. The yeast whose cooperation was sorely lacking was WLP530 Abbey Ale.