It’s experiment time! How about we do some mixing of beer yeast strains? Let see how a beer turns out if we mix it up in the yeast department, huh?

Now we have done some yeast blending before and the results were good if not exactly what we were hoping for.

For the Sorachi Ace wheat beer that I am going to brew this weekend, I bought two vials of different yeast strains. I have a WLP001 vial from White Labs and a vial of their Kolsch or German ale strain as well.

I bought both strains because I was debating which one to use. Yesterday morning, I got up early and I was going to make a starter with one of the vial. I started to boil the water when it hit me that I should just use both of the vials.

We’ll see if I get the crispness of the Kolsch yeast after the fermentation is done. I am hoping that the hop flavor and aroma of the Sorachi Ace are accentuated since both strains are supposed have that effect on the finished beer.

The biggest issue with mixing yeast strains is making a beer that may not fit the BJCP guidelines of the style you are brewing. For an American Wheat, it seems to me that the style just needs some clean yeast strain characteristics in the finished flavor. No clove or phenolic flavors that are produced from a German wheat beer strain. Both the California and the Kolsch yeast strain are clean. They don’t produce any funky flavor so maybe this mix won’t be profound.

I do think that there may be the chance that I will get the crispness from the Kolsch yeast with the softness of the California strain. Look for updates on this experiment in a future post.

Brew on!

After about two months of conditioning in a secondary vessel, I felt it was time to bottle the braggot. The bottle were all cleaned and sanitized over the weekend and the braggot seemed read to be racked and primed.

Since I am looking to get a nice carbonation going in the bottle, somewhere in the back of my mind there is some concern that the yeast may not be viable enough to eat the priming sugar, but we’ll see. This Scottish Ale yeast seems strong “like bull” and I am confident the braggot will carbonate and will continue to condition, clear, and become a delightful autumn time beverage.

The few tastings I have had of the braggot over the course of its young life have not been delightful. There is still a hotness from the alcohol and a strong bitterness from the Centennial hops. I have learned that you can’t judge a mead by the early tastings but there are some elements of the flavor that should get stronger like its malty background.

The alcohol burn and the hop bitterness should mellow over time. I think I need to bottle it up and forget about it for a few months. In the near future, on some late October night, I will come across this forgotten box of braggot bottles and I will be most pleased.

I can picture serving it in a tall Pilsner glass showing off its tawny color and rocky head. Signals of honey and malt with hops will be ready on the nose. The flavor will be bold and slightly warming and will be a perfect compliment to a long day of raking leaves.

But for now, it’s all about focusing on keeping everything clean and neat and making sure that the amount of air that gets into the finished braggot stays to a minimum.

I have a few meads that have been conditioning in secondary vessels for a couple of months now. In the past, my meads have cleared up after a few weeks’ rest. With the summer coming on and the need for clean carboys increasing, I plan to jump start the process of clarifying mead.

Now given enough time, these meads should clear on their own. I am not sure about that. I did use raw, unfiltered honey and there may be a large number of particles that are in my mead that wouldn’t be if my honey was filtered.

Plus, this situation gives me an opportunity to experiment.

If I had some sparkolloid, I would use that stuff. What I have instead is gelatin and bentonite.

I have two meads that I want to clarify. One is a small portion of the larger mead. I took a gallon and add an oak spiral to it. Go here to read more about my latest mead flavoring experiments.

The photos above are what my meads look like now. They are sort of hazy. To gather as much information as possible, I am going to use gelatin in one and bentonite in the other. Let’s see which agent is better at making particles settle out of these meads.

I plan to add the agents to these meads this weekend and then report on the findings next week. I will post the “after” pictures to see which one had more success.

With 5 gallons of a medium show mead to play with, I racked a couple of gallons to smaller containers for some mead flavor experiments.  Fermentation had slowed down considerably after 3 weeks.   I thought it would only go 2 weeks but the airlock was pretty active.

At the end of three weeks, I felt it was good time to siphon the mead onto some blueberries and oak, separately.  I have two jugs, both 1 gallon in volume, and decided to use them for these experiments.

For the blueberries, I read in The Compleat Meadmaker that I would need 5 to 7 pounds to get a medium level fruit flavor if I was adding them to 5 gallons of mead.   A quick calculation for a gallon of mead was 1+ pounds of the fruit.  Using frozen fruit has worked for me in the past, so I used frozen blueberries this time around as well.  With a sanitized funnel, I poured the berries into the gallon jug and then poured the mead on top of them until it was filled.

The oak experiment was simpler.  I had a portion of an oak spiral from my New England Hard Cider from last year hanging around.  I dropped it into the other jug and filled it with mead.  I didn’t steam the spiral as I have before and I am not sure if that will be a problem in terms of infection or other issues in terms of off-flavors.  I am taking that risk.

I racked the rest of the mead into a large carboy and it will be untainted by these additional additives.

Now we wait.  I am going to let them chill out in the basement until they clear.  I am not sure how long that will take, but the sooner the better.

Note to self, I should add some pectic enzyme to the blueberry jug.

The maibock that I brewed as part of the Midwest Supplies Kit Review was bottled a couple of days ago.  I brewed it on a cold January night with snow on the ground and a soul crushing chill in the air.

Weather like that is good for one thing – chilling your wort to lager fermentation temperature without much effort using an immersion chiller.  Other than that, it’s pretty tough brewing outside.

With a target drinking time of next month (May), getting it into the bottle now was imperative.  I tried making time to bottle it sooner but for one reason or the other, I didn’t get the time to do it.  So the carboy sat in my fridge and the proteins and the yeast settled to the bottom and the beer cleared.

For nearly 12 weeks, the beer stayed in my fridge to condition and clarify.  It sat there silently, waiting for the day that it made it into bottle with some priming sugar to carbonate naturally.

I have to say because of the long lagering time, the beer was very clear.  The basement light shined right through it as I lifted it from the fridge.

I usually lager beers for no more than 8 weeks.  I tend to get impatient and my usual bottling time after lagering is six weeks.  So to go for nearly 12 weeks was making me feel like I was breaking my own rule.

I don’t think lagering for almost 3 months is going to be detrimental, but it did get me to thinking.

How long is too long to lager a beer?

At what point do you have to start thinking about reintroducing yeast to the beer if you are going to carbonate it in bottles?

What was the longest lagering time that you did for a beer?  What were the results?  Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Brew On.

I dug into the raw local honey I bought back in November to begin the second honey-based fermented beverage.   The first one was a braggot which is now conditioning.  The second is a medium show mead.

The thing a homebrewer needs to appreciate is the amount of time needed to make a mead.  I think I was done in less than an hour including cleanup.

If you had some free flowing honey,  you could be done in less than 30 minutes if you were efficient.  I was working with raw  honey and a scale that had a max weight limit of 5 pounds and I need to measure out 13 pounds of honey.

I measured it out in a few batches and then moved it into a stock pot filled with a gallon of water that I heated up to about 90° F (32° C).   The raw honey was in a waxy form.  It was a little difficult scooping it out of the plastic bucket it came in and certainly would have been near impossible to get into the carboy.  With some heat and some water, I was able to get it into liquid state and poured that into my empty, sanitized carboy.

The water/honey mixture came up to the 2 gallon mark and then I poured 3 gallons of water on top of that.   Took a reading and found that the gravity was around 1.086.  I was expecting around 1.096 so I went back to the honey bucket, scooped out a pound or so of honey, mixed with a smaller amount of water – probably around 2 to 3 cups – and worked into a liquid state.

Once I added that addition, I was pushing 1.100 which is where I wanted to be.

Pitched two packets of proofed Lalvin D-47 yeast along with some nutrients and energizer and we were off to the races.

Here are some photos of the festivities.

After nearly 3 weeks in the primary, I racked the braggot to a secondary carboy for a long conditioning phase. My initial thoughts are to let it sit for a couple of months while it matures a bit. I am hoping it clears up while it sits, then I plan to bottle it and let it condition for another period of time. The first tastings will probably be when the leaves begin to turn color in 2013. That’s seems to be a very long time away since we really haven’t finished winter yet.

The racking went well. Although the braggot appeared to be dark amber in carboy, it looked light golden in the tube. I envision a straw colored beverage with a long lasting head and a strong kick that will go well with a crisp autumn night.

The hydrometer had the final gravity at around 1.008. That was lower than I anticipated. The carboy gave off a nice blend of honey and malt aroma as it filled. The sample I pulled for the gravity reading was bitter from the Centennial hops. I started thinking that maybe 2 ounces was too much but I hoping it will mellow in time especially with the advanced aging this beer-mead combo is going to go through before I serve it.  But who knows, the braggot is so young right now that it is hard to get a real understanding of how it will taste six months from now.

The cake of Scottish ale yeast was substantial.

It was about two inches thick at the bottom of the carboy and I was glad that I was able to rack the braggot while leaving the majority of the cake behind. This strain is pretty clumpy but takes a while to settle out. My Scottish ale seems to be taking some time to clear out. I had a bottle last night and got a bunch of yeast bits in my pour. Some time will help both of these concoctions clear up and become more enjoyable.