Hi there,
Mike and I will be live streaming on YouTube on Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 12PM Eastern Daylight Time
That’s Greenwich Mean Time (GMT-5) this Sunday.
We’ll be hanging out and answering homebrewing questions. See our video announcement here.
See you soon.
Brew on!
We get homebrewed beer sent to us from all over the planet. This time, the beer is from Mike in Washington State, USA. He shipped it over 3,000 miles so that we could open it up on camera, write about it here, and post a video on YouTube. Check out all the things that we thought about in our homebrew swap, exchange number 31.
Batch Size: 5.5 US Gallons
Boil Time: 60 mins
Grains
9 pounds Maris Otter Pale Malt (78%)
1.5 pounds Munich Light Malt 10°L (13%)
0.5 pounds Caramel/Crystal Malt 15°L (4%)
0.5 pounds Flaked Oats (4%)
Hops
1 ounce Southern Star hops – Boiled for 60 minutes – 13% AA
1 ounce XJA/436 hops – Boiled for 30 minutes – 14% AA
1 ounce N1/69 hops – Hop stand addition – 20 minutes – 13% AA
1 ounce U1/108 hops – Hop stand addition – 6.5% AA
1 ounce African Queen hops- Hop stand addition – 15.5% AA
1 ounce African Queen hops – Dry hopped for 4 days – 15.5% AA
1 ounce N1/69 hops – Dry hopped for 4 days – 13% AA
1 ounce U1/108 hops – Dry hopped for 4 days – 6.5% AA
Yeast
1 packet of White Labs California Ale WLP001
Instructions
Mashed at 149° F for 60 minutes
Mashed Out at 167° F for 10 minutes
Added 0.5 tsp Irish Moss and 0.5 tsp of Wyeast Yeast Nutrient with 15 minutes to go in the boil
Fermented for 21 days at 64° F
Calculations
IBUs: 97.4
Color: 12.6 °SRM
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.014
Here’s what we thought.
Appearance
Mike liked the color. The haze was dominant. Head was rocky and persistent.
Aroma
There were notes of orange and peach. There was also a floral component to it. Notes of violent and chamomile.
Flavor
There wasn’t a lot of bitterness. The flavor was not as strong as they were in the aroma.
Mouthfeel
Soft and smooth. Medium body.
Overall Impression
We were happy that this beer had some bitterness but not a lot. It definitely did not have the bitterness of west coast IPA from last decade. The aroma was really strong – we wished the hop flavor was as strong. For a first kegged beer, it was a winner.
BREW ON!
In the course of aging sour beers, things can go awry. These brew dudes don’t think that should ruin everything. When you put that much time into a beer, it would be a big letdown to pour it down the sink. The beer that was known to us as the “2 year old” was a little off. Watch this video to learn more about how I added fruit to this beer and saved it from a death down the drain.
In 2017, I had 15 gallons of beer to blend into one gueuze. These volume was attained by brewing one the same day of the year for three years.
After evaluating the beers, we felt like the beer that was two years old at the time was not great. The majority of the blend came from the other beers.
The two year old was put back into the dark corner of my basement until I had an idea of what to do with it.
To save this beer, I had to add fruit to it. I debated what kind of fruit to use – raspberries were in the running – but in the end, I decided to use cherries.
I typically use frozen fruit as the additions to my beers and this time around was no exception. I bought a thre pound bag of frozen cherries – a blend of sour and black cherries. Then, I added the contents of a couple of 32 ounce bottles of 100% “Just Tart” cherry juice from the R.W. Knudsen Family company.
Then, because I was getting creative or bored or both, I added 8 ounces of French oak cubes (medium toast) and two split-down-the-middle vanilla beans.
After all these additions were made, the beer sat for 9 months before I made plans to bottle it up.
When I tasted the beer, it wasn’t “cherry” enough so I added half of a bottle of pure cherry extract to push that flavor note forward.
At bottling, I added 230 grams of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water for 15 minutes. I then added one packet of CBC-1 Cask & Bottle Conditioning Yeast properly re-hydrated.
Here’s what Mike thought about this beer.
Lots of acidic notes on the notes. The C02 was pushing a lot of sour notes.
Cherry/berry notes on the nose with caramel and woody notes.
The taste was full of deep, mahogany fruity taste with some sour cherry notes. He got some subtle wheat cracker taste.
I am glad I was able to save this beer. It made for a great Kriek beer.
BREW ON!
By request, we brewed this SMaSH beer to learn more about Rakau hops. Somebody somewhere asked for us to brew with this hop, so we did.
This variety is from New Zealand and it has a lot to provide to the palette. Check out our review of this Rakau hops SMaSH beer with these tasting notes.
I am sure I am mispronouncing the hop name in the video because that’s what I do. I wish I didn’t.
If you know how to pronounce the name of the hop, please add it in the comment below and enlighten everyone who reads this post.
With the flavorful hops, I tend to add the majority of my pellets at the end of the boil. If you add them at the beginning, different flavor notes come through. You get a better sense of the bittering properties of the hop but these new varieties, in my opinion, aren’t to be used early in the boil.
With the Rakau hops, they are listed as dual purpose, which means they could be used for bittering or for flavor, but my brewing method was to provide as much flavor in the final beer as possible.
I put Mike to the test and I thought he nailed it. He presented these notes for the hop flavor:
The commercial descriptors were in line with what he said. I quoted something I read:
“Once described as the whole orchard”
It certainly reminded Mike of the mixed berry salad that his wife made last night.
The other items were stone fruit and a fig character.
Mike theorized that maybe the seedy berry taste he was getting could be in line with an earthy figgy flavor.
I though the beer has a strong strawberry note.
I think this hop could shine on its own in a hop forward beer. My thoughts were a pairing with Melba hops in an IPA.
My other thought was that this hop would work in a sour beer like a Berliner Weiss or a kettle soured beer.
Mike thought it would worked in a fruited wheat beer (50% wheat malt in the grain bill, America ale strain, some berry added during fermentation) because it would marry well with this hop’s flavor profile.
Thanks for reading – hope you give this hop a try.
BREW ON!
This is the moment we have all waited for – the first taste of the beer that Mike brewed in the Catalyst Fermentation System.
We did the unboxing to see all the parts and get a sense of what this thing looks like.
We did the brew session to show off the system in action.
We even showed off how to dump trub from the fermentation chamber.
Now, it’s time to taste the beer that was fermented in the Catalyst. It’s a witbier and (spoiler alert) it’s a good one. Check out this video to see what we mean.
If you want the majority of the recipe, you can find it on the brew session page, but here is the list of hops and the yeast strain that Mike used as he said in the video.
1 ounce East Kent Goldings at 60 minutes to go in the boil
1 ounce Amarillo at 10 minutes to go in the boil
The yeast that he used was WYeast 3944 Belgian Wit. He used this instead of the White Labs Witbier yeast.
I thought this witbier was really, really good. It really was a Hoegaarden plus. The beer had that glowing yellow hazy look.
We thought that the yeast strain brought a phenol note that the White Labs strain does not but it could have been the high fermentation temperatures.
The starting gravity was 1.040, which made the one Wyeast smack pack a perfect amount.
He fermented in his basement and the temps started at 65 degrees Fahrenheit which rose to 80 degrees Fahrenheit as it finished. There was a big rocky head during the fermentation – a real top cropper!
Mike didn’t have a a chance to add orange peels to his beer in the fermentation stage. He had different ideas to get it into the beer at different points, but didn’t get the time.
He did however provide orange slices at the tasting, which I didn’t think it needed. Mike loves Harpoon’s UFO beer so he digs the orange.
Mike liked the system and it was fun to use to brew his beer. He found the transfer from the Catalyst to his keg was tremendous using the tube that connected to the bottom of the system. Collecting the yeast was a little bit of an adventure since it was a bit messy. He said that he would need to brew a few more times to get the hang of it and get more comfortable with the process.
If he keep brewing beers like this one, I’d say it’s a worthy investment for any one.
Brew on!