Status Update

It's been a while, a long while.  I keep meaning to update the blog, but we have been busy.  Marygrace and I have recently been looking for a house.  The good news is, we found one.  The bad news is that I don't really want to start another batch of beer until we move.  (Although I will make an exception for a pumpkin stout for Halloween.)  The house is good, but my recent brewing attempt have been rather lackluster.  It seems that brewing works in waves for me since I don't really repeat any of my recipes and I always like to experiment.

I believe that one of my issues may be coming from my conical fermenter.  I bought it on eBay over a year ago and it has been working great, but recently every beer that I have brewed in it (Lite American Lager, German Pilsner, and Hop Harvest) have had a stale water flavor with slight metallic undertones. The last time I cleaned it, I noticed that some of the chrome coating on the thermometer was peeling and I think this may have something to do with it.  I'll have to replace it, but until then, I'm back to carboys and buckets.

The Gose that I brewed isn't as great as I would have hoped either.  Since I used aciduated malt, as suggested by Brew Your Own, the flavor produced is more similar to a wort spoilage, rather than a true bacterial infection of the beer.  It gives the beer a bit more of a sour milk/tea-like flavor than anything else.

The beer that I tried to make with wild yeast that I captured has scared me.  I smelled it a short while ago and it still reaks of DMS.  After tasting it, it was still present.  I will have to try this experiment once again after we move.

My mead is a shining star of what I have done recently, proving to myself that it was not my water source that was the cause of my stale water off flavor mentioned above.  My one complaint about it though is that I rushed it too much.  I should have done another one or two carboy transfers, but I didn't, and the bottles have a very small layer of yeast on the bottom.  Either way, it was my first go at it, and my lesson was learned.

I'm in a slump right now, and I'm glad that I got all of that off of my chest.  I'm hoping a couple easy extract brews and means can get me out of it.

The Gose is Loose!!!

I have been excited about this beer ever since I read an article about it in Brew Your Own magazine toward the end of last years hockey season.  Something intrigued me about it from the very start.  What couldn't be loved about a salty, sour, spicy beer, and whats more, it's name lent itself perfectly to somebody who's a Buffalo Sabres fan.  The Gose is Loose was born.

The Gose is a northern German beer brewed in Leipzig.  Just like most other beers, the location of the played a huge role in its development.  The natural salinity in the water of this part of Germany gives the beer its distinct dry, salty taste, and the beer was originally spontaneously fermented giving it the sour flavor.  Today these same qualities can be mimicked with sea salt and acidified malt.  As for the corriander in the beer, who knows where that came from.  I could go ahead and say that it was partially from being influenced by some Belgian beers, but I wouldn't know for sure.

This is going to be a long month before I am able to drink this beer, and even longer until hockey season starts...

 

And of course, I had to run out of airlocks and didn't realize it until it was too late:



Primary: The Gose is Loose, Harvest Ale, Wild Yeast Test Batch
Secondary: Wildflower Mead
Carbonating: Ginger Ale
Total for 2011: 78 Gallons

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Just because I haven't posted in a while does not mean that things have been slow here at Lake Effect Brewing.  I have a couple more batches under my belt in the past couple of weeks, I have successfully captured and brewed a batch of beer with wild yeast, and I had a great hop harvest, all of which I plan on detailing in future blog posts.  For now, I just wanted to throw out a quick plug for a couple of things and tomorrow when I brew my very first sour beer (maybe my second, I still have not tasted my wild yeast ale) I plan on doing a full sized post.

The first thing I want to mention is the Basic Brewing Logbook.  I picked this up a couple of weeks ago and I could not be more pleased.  I love this book.  Even though I use Beer Tools Pro, this serves as an excellent hard copy for finalized recipes for the year.  With its agenda in the first few pages, you are able to keep track of all of the dates for your primary, secondary, lagering, and anything else you could possibly want, and with room for 50 batches, even I would have to try to fill it up.  For $13, you can't go wrong.

The second, and most important part of this post is a startup brewery in Austin, TX that needs your help.  My brother in law's boss, the owner of Austin Homebrew Supply, is in the process of starting up a microbrewery and they need some help purchasing some more equipment.  They have set up a Kick Starter page where you can pledge to donate money to their cause.  Don't worry though, you won't be just giving someone a handout, for your donation, you can get anything from a sticker to being able to help create a featured beer as well as helping to name it.  So, unbutton your change purses and help a worthy cause of fellow homebrewers to pursue their dream.

On Deck: The Gose is Loose
Primary: Wild Yeast Test Batch, Harvest Ale
Secondary: Wildflower Mead
Carbonating: Ginger Ale
Total for 2011: 76 Gallons

2-A German Pilsner Introduction

The history of the German Pilsner is sort of a bizarre one that has its roots in the Czech Pilsner, which has its roots in the German Helles. Go figure, the Germans were trying to copy the Czech that had been based off of their own creation.  The only real difference between these two styles is the use of regional ingredients.  Both are light, crisp, and malty beers, but the big variations come from the yeast, color from the pilsner grains, and hops used.

The recipe formulation is basic on this beer since it is traditionally a single grain beer, German Pilsner malt.  The hops that I used here are Tettnanger.  They are a bit more aromatic and less spicy than the Saaz used in the Czech Pilsner.  I also used a Munich lager yeast for this beer that provides a bit of a drier, more highly attenuated lager beer.

The baseline beers that I am going to be using for this comparison have to be readily available around me, and as much as I would love to use Augustiner Pils as one of them, it is not going to happen.  I plan on using Wasteiner and Jever Pils.  After all, once in Germany we had an older gentleman tell us that Jever Pils was the only beer that he would drink, and being from Munich, that had to say something.


Primary: Wildflower Mead
Secondary: German Pilsner
Carbonating: Lite American Lager, Ginger Ale 
Total for 2011: 70 Gallons

Mead Day 2011

I know, I know, I'm working on my BJCP Challenge, but I couldn't pass up and excuse to try something different.  This one came in the form of Mead Day 2011 on August 6th.  I have only tried to make one mead in the past, but it didn't turn out that well since it was allowed to be exposed to a bit too much oxygen, and ended up well, oxidizing, also I was using store bought honey which does not have a track record for producing great mead.  Instead of just trying to wing it again, I decided I better go the safe route and I picked up The Compleat Meadmaker : Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations by Ken Schramm.  Although I didn't make it through the whole book by the time this mead day came around, I made it through most of the important basic parts.

I basically used the Medium Sweet Orange Blossom Mead on page 25, but I adjusted it for the honey that I bought on eBeeHoney.com, 12 lbs of raw wild flower honey, and I decided to go for the no heat method since I did not want to lose any of the honey aromas.  eBeeHoney seems like an excellent source for my mead honeys, they have reasonable prices, have quite the variety of honeys and are relatively close, so shipping costs are not too unreasonable.

Here's the recipe that I used since when I taste and review this recipe, it may be at least six months from now.

1 Gallon of Wildflower Honey (12 lbs)
4 Gallons of Filtered Water
2 Tbsp Yeast Nutrient
1 Tbsp Yeast Energizer
2 Packets Lavalin K1-V1116 - INRA - Montpellier

Using the no heat method, I just mixed all of these things together in one of my fermentation buckets and hooked up my aquarium pump to it.  I'm going to let the pump keep going until Sunday afternoon since in many places I have read that it is advantageous to continually aerate the must for a couple days after pitching.  After primary and secondary have been completed, I plan on racking the mead onto toasted French oak chips for a week or so in order to infuse some of the vanillins and tannins from the wood and give the mead much more depth.

Although this was a fun departure from my strict brewing schedule I'm quite excited to get back to my BJCP challenge.  Next up, Vienna Lager...

Primary: German Pilsner, Wildflower Mead
Secondary: Lite American Lager, Ginger Ale 
Total for 2011: 65 Gallons

An Underground Beer Culture Surviving in Wine Country Part 2

My next few attempts at finding delicious beer in France were nothing short of brilliant successes.  One of the days when we were walking around the city of Narbonne, we had stumbled upon an underground bar/brewery that was advertising lambics for only 2.50€.  But, of course, with our luck it was closed.  I do have the best wife in the world though, and she promised me that we could go back another night.

Well that night came and it was everything I could ever want in a bar.  L'Antre de l'Echoppe was literally an underground beer culture.  It was a tiny brewpub that was built into an old cobblestone cellar with a medieval theme and with plenty of both domestic and import beers on tap for reasonable prices.  This brewpub was so small in fact that they actually brew in the bar, and when it is open, they just push the equipment off to the side.





They only had two of their own beers on tap, but they were both spectacular. 



The first that we had was La Blonde Maison.  At 5% ABV, this was an extremely easy drinking beer.  It was cloudy, very light, and fruity with a slight sharpness at the end.  La Noire Maison was another 5% ABV beer.  Surprisingly, for having a dark, strong, and chocolaty aroma it was unexpectedly light.  It had a deep chocolate malt flavor with almost no linger.  I hope that some day I am fortunate enough to get back to Narbonne and to L'Antre de l'Echoppe again.

When we went up to Carcassonne after Narbonne, I was hell bent on finding some Biers de Carcassonne, but we had no such luck.  We did however find a couple of other beers in a small boutique shop.  At first I was a little skeptical about them, but chilled that night in our Barcelona I indulged and was more than satisfied.



Abbaye Fontfroide not only is a remarkably beautiful abbey outside of Narbonne, but the namesake has been used for an artisanal beer.  The nose is a very subtle spicy (peppery) aroma from the yeast, and there is an excellent head, so good, it made pouring difficult.  It was very heavy beer that was both sweet and spicy notes that shockingly did not linger long at all.  There was an excellent floral flavor as well, and after tasting some of the raw honeys in the area, I would not be surprised if that was where it was coming from.



We never went to the Abbaye de Valmange, but much like Fontfroide, they lent their name to a beer.  It was extremely aromatic with overpowering caramel notes.  The beer itself some subtle spicy notes along with the chocolate and caramel flavors. 

So in the end, I would have to say I am pretty impressed with the beers the south of France had to offer.  (Their wines weren't that bad either.)  I just wish I wouldn't have been so blind when I was traveling around Europe in the past not searching an scouring for the artisan beers.  I can only imagine how many delicious ones I have missed on my travels.

Primary: German Pilsner
Secondary: Lite American Lager, Ginger Ale
Carbonating: Honey Dunkelweisen
Total for 2011: 65 Gallons

An Underground Beer Culture Surviving in Wine Country Part 1

I was a bit skeptical at first and for good reason. Sure, in northern France you can find some great breweries, including the ones that are credited with reviving the Bière de Garde and the Bière de Mars styles, but in southern France, the heart of wine country, really?  At one point the master blender at the estate we were at (Château des Karantes) had remarked to us that the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France (where we were) produces more wine in one year than all of Australia combined.  And I was supposed to find good beer here?  I went in a skeptic, but I came away a believer.

My first experience was at a small cafe in Gruissan.  There were signs in the window tempting: 'Découvrez nos bières artisanales.'  It was a hot day and I was quite parched, so it was my duty as an inquisitive brewer to partake in a nice cool, frosty beverage
 

La Néou is an aromatic, 5% ABV white beer brewed with spices and water from the Pyrenee mountains range.  It was a light, sweet wheat beer, and it had light honey notes to it. (Honey is one of things that this region of the world prides itself on, so it makes sense that they would use it in their beer.)  There was the slightest diacetyl (butterscotch) flavor to the beer, but it wasn't off putting at all.  It actually worked very well with the beer.  These pleasant flavors lingered for a while and it was a perfect way to quench my thirst on the Mediterranean coast.

My next sampling wasn't a beer, but a cider, and being it is my goal to familiarize myself across the lines of the BJCP guidelines, I thought it would be another great learning experience.

 

I am not an expert in ciders by any means, so I do not know if it is actually one of the high quality ciders on the market, but I do have to say it was one of the best I've ever tasted.  It was Loïc Raison's Cirdre Breton Brut.  At 4.5% ABV it is relatively low alcohol compared to most that I have drank in the past, but it's flavors were unmatched.  Upon the first sip, you're hit with a light, dry crisp flavor that has just a touch of sweetness and a hint of honey.  The more and more I drank, the more the tannin flavors of the skin became present and gave the illusion that you were biting into an apple.  It was a wonderful thing to have happen.  Flavors like this are going to be hard to match when I start making ciders, and I can only hope to achieve results close to this.

This one completely ripped off Delirium Tremens (only a pig instead of an elephant), so how could it be bad?  The big pink pig was calling my name and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.  Had I been able to speak and read French a bit better, I may have steered clear (Rince Cochon translates to Pig Rinse...ugh...).

 

Although this beer is very crisp and refreshing like a lager, it is actually an ale that has a very soft nose, similar to a pilsner, and just slightly fruity, like an English ale.  The flavor and after taste were exactly the same, the slightest maltiness along with a hoppy/fruity after taste.  Though this beer wasn't necessarily what I was looking for, it did have a nice sweetness and crispness to it that has its own time and place, and a BBQ in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea was just that (though I do not think that is what the brewers had in mind since it is from Belgium).

Look out for part two of this series later this week... 

Primary: German Pilsner, Ginger Ale
Secondary: Lite American Lager
Carbonating: Honey Dunkelweisen
Total for 2011: 65 Gallons