Lawnmower Brew ongoing

Eight days after brew day, the Lawnmower Citra Inferno has got me stumped.

Dramatic lighting will save any beer.

Right from the start, the WLP300(*) yeast I'd pitched it with kicked off with gusto, creating a dense, 6 inch head of frothy yeasty yumminess on top of the fermenting wort. Airlock went bubblybubble and all was well and brewsy.

*) a German hefeweizen strain, chock full of estery aromas and whatnot

But after eight days at a steady 18-20°C, my ordinary Safale US-05 yeast should be done already.

Measurements indicate fermentation is still ongoing, or at the very least incomplete.

1012 SG, coming from 1049.
Blurry picture is in fact an opaque measuring glass.

More confounding still: that spanky Valentine refractometer the Missus so kindly donated to science (i.e. me) showed consistent readings at brew day: 1049 OG (13.9% Brix) but is way off at this stage, showing a measly 1025 SG (6.3% Brix) which should be around 1008 or lower (2.1% Brix) at fermentation's end. Whatever the state of my yeast at this time, both the refractometer and the densimeter should show consistent, nearly identical readings.

Whichever is more accurate, that yeast is still going on, but decidedly slower than I'd expected. Perhaps it's typical for the strain, something I plan to ask the lab.
This is my first time using White Labs, and this particular Hefeweizen strain in particular, and the Yinterwebzthingy tells me 14 days in primary is not unheard of. Since the airlock shows more activity is ongoing, I'll take my chances and keep things as they are.

Meantime, I got me a sample and oooh baby is this brew coming together or what?

Plush yeast is being bored by beer.

It's a weizen, so yes, it's cloudy to the point of looking like anisette. At this stage, it's flat with a mild tingle, but I don't expect I'll be carbonating this very strongly. The smell is Hefe all the way: a citrusy, estery fragrance, with hints of banana and clove, and juuuust enough hops to spark my interest. Odd, since I was aiming for about 45 IBU, which is about 3 times more than a typical weizen, but at this stage, this is floating my boat all the way to Beervana and back. The original plan was to dryhop the fermented beer with Citra, but as it is, I'm tempted to split the batch and leave half as it is: it really is that yummy.

Plus: be silly to call it Citra Inferno if it only contained a whiff of Citra, wouldn't it?

Not sure how the almost soapy fruity esters  of the yeast would combine with more hops, and I'm inclined to forego Citra, which can impart a pepperminty flavour sometimes, in favour of the more grapefruity tang of Amarillo, which I'd planned for a variant of this brew later on. Choice, the brewer's nighmarish muse...

Pretty stoked about this brew, which puts more forcus on yeast than I'm used to, but is pleasing me no end, even in this immature state. With or without extra Citra (Amarillo? Something else even?), I've a feeling this one's a keeper.

Greetz

Jo

Brewday!

HoppySlosh brews again!

What with spring being somewhat delayed, I had ample time to contemplate my next brewing endeavour. Looking foward to mowing the lawn and doing other potentially dehydrating chores around the house during the summer, I'm brewing a light, hoppy wheat beer this time; an American style hefe-weizen (or a Germanic Murkan wheat, if you will).

First things first: I need to learn how to control my brewing volumes so I'm applying science in the most advanced way possible to gauge the volumes in my kettle:

The Graded Spoon

Yes, that's a (rather oversized) plastic spoon, graded by yours truly to indicate how much liquid is in my kettle. Sometimes, all you need to improve the quality of life is a permanent marker. And an oversized spoon.

Onward onward as the day wanes: mashing was a breeze. I was prepared for all kinds of disaster (*) after reading that wheat tends to clog up the filter bed, but my grain behaved perfectly, and I got a good 22 liters of turbid wort out of the tun.

Steep steep.

*) speaking of disaster, the most important rule in brewing can be neatly summed up as this: Always check your valves. Nothing spoils the mood quite like having to start mopping when you're not even 5 minutes into the mash.

I applied a new technique (well, new for me at least) called first wort hopping.

Not hard to guess what that means.

I've been told the early addition will smoothe out the bitterness from the early hops, so here goes nothing.

Sparging. Note the state of alertness of the nearby mop.



Sparging went well, although I did forget to properly mash out (again). Forgot to take a pic of the pre-boil wort, but one thing I like about wheat is that it naturally clouds the wort, which means I could stop worrying about a super-clean sparge for a change.
No pic of the boil either, so you'll need to take my word for it: I added liberal doses of Centennial, Amarillo and Citra.

Post-boil tampering with the counterflow cooler.

My fifth attempt at brewing and I finally figured out how to properly cool: let gravity do the work. As you can see in the pic, I pour my boiled (and still piping hot) wort in my mash tun again, which will now serve as a filter tun. What's not in the pic is how this time I placed the tun on a stool on top of the counter, raising it high enough to no longer be a pain during cooling. Higher altitude means more hydraulic pressure chasing my wort through the cooler, and less chance of flowback or halted cooling. 

Should have thought of that four sessions ago, but at least I'm improving.

After cooling, only one thing was missing. Well, two really.

Some yeast, and a lovely assistant to pitch it.

I'm using a bit of a character yeast this time: the German Hefe Weizen from White Labs (WLP300 in case you're interested) will impart spicy notes to the beer, which I hope will complement the hoppy aromas.

Fitted the airlock, forestalled any domestic disputes by cleaning up the kitchen, and a good six hours later, the yeast was going glugluglug like clockwork. Next morning, a good 5 inch of thick yeasty froth confirmed all was well with Brew#5. I'll give it about a week in primary (depending on airlock activity and density measurements), after which I'll rack it to secondary, with a generously added amout of Citra hops. From the whiffs I got off the airlock so far, this may prove to be quite drinkable. 

More news as the brew progresses!

Until then,

Greetz

Jo

HoppySlosh gets spoiled rotten!

"Fancy coming over to help me with a bottle or two?"

Altruist that I am, I hastened to aid a friend in need, so last Friday evening found me at Dennoman's table, enjoying good company and the result of an absolutely unbelievable feat of brewing bravado.

Booze'n'buddies. And some strawberries just off screen.

As a warmer-upper, the gracious host plumbed the depths of his fridge and dug up a bottle of this:

Beer and metal. Booya!

EyeHateGod are a New Orleans based band (here, see if you can stomach this if you don't believe me), and Three Floyds apparantly have brewed a beer in their honor. If you listened to their music, then it'll come as no big surprise that it's a black brew (or "dark" at the very least).
Black IPAs tend to cater to hops ànd malt lovers both, but this particular example is a full-on hops bomb. Not much roast or coffee undercurrent to be found here, but instead, what you get is a relatively dry, yet firm-bodied IPA which is, well, black-to-darkish. Pretty unique for an IPA (of any color really) as it doesn't play on the sweet, caramelly backbone so typical of Douple IPAs, and instead lets the hops sing in all their glory. Hard to name them specifically, as there's so much going on all at once: citrus fruits, pineapple, sweet tangerines and a wee bit of soft resin.
This was my first 3F ever, and if it's any indication of the brewery's skill (they got voted Best Brewery Anywhere on This Planet so I'm guessing it is), then this is a one to watch.

Beer: In the Name of Suffering
Brewery: Three Floyds
Style: BIPA
ABV: 7.1%
EBU: -
EBC: -
Served: 500ml bottle

Strawberries kept the the palates entertained while the host descended into to Inner Sanctum of his humble abode: the cellar.
More on Denno's cellar later. Time to roll in the big one.

On a Friday evening.
How much more decadence can the human body take?

The Bruery is one of the current pinnacles of radical craft brewing. Their Black Tuesday, named after the day when a terrible brewing accident caused permanent burns to the head brewer, is realistically impossible to acquire here in Belgium, unless, of course, you are the infamous Dennoman.

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Interludium

As the evening wore on and the topic of conversation drifted from beer to the weather and back again, Dennoman recounted his meeting with a generous share holder of a brewery whose name eludes me at the moment. Bottom line of the story was that Denno walked away with a ridiculous batch of nigh-impossible-to-find-or-at-the-very-least-heftily-priced bottles of brew.

Altruism, it seems, has not yet become extinct, and to altruism then do I dedicate this interludium.

Denno, I've made arrangements with the Vatican; once the forms are back, stamped and papally sealed, Saint Dennis(*) it is.

Saint Cephallophore, more like.

*) Dennis, apparently, is derived from the Greek name Dionyssos, which happens to be the name of a god involved with boozy beverages and wanton indulgence. Coincidence? I think not.

Interludium ends about here

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Black Tuesday then. A nice, thick seal of wax was barring the way, and after some careful manhandling (bottle-handling?), StDennis managed to open the bottle and FFFFFFUUUUUUU get some tissue oh fuck oh fuck shit damn and buggeration she's gonna blow!

Blow she did, leaving dubious stains with promising smells all over the pristine table top. Quite impressive how a beer of such relentless caliber still manages to gush. I suspect the neighbours suddenly looked up from their TV show, sniffing the air and wondering what that smell was.

Because as soon as you open it (and, admittedly, spill some), the scent hits you full on. This is a powerful, potent monster of a beer, layered, nay, stratified with boozy bourbon, thick dark oak, soy sauce (*), petrified vanilla pods and a surprisingly playful whiff of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. 

*) "Kikkoman Soy sauce", spoke StDennis to his disciple, who marvelled but held his tongue(°). But indeed, smelling the capsule later on, the soy sauce thing makes sense, despite sounding icky. A thick, meaty tang of salt and umami, bordering on a fermented pong. By itself, a bit upsertting, but in the broader scope of things, utterly fitting.

°) theriouthly, I wathn't weawwy howding my fongue of courthe.

This is one of those beers which makes the eyelids droop as soon as you take a whiff. A smile blooms across the lips as the fumes rise up and it feels almost sacrilegeous to take that first sip.

But heathen than I am, sip I did.

Epiphany says Love Brew.

We need a new word to express epiphany. Eureka doesn't cut it. Saint Arnoldus Bless My Beard will only do for the unshaven. For the moment, a baffled Holy Mother of FuckDamn will have to suffice, but it barely reaches the ankles of WTF-ness washing over me when that first sip of brew oozed sludge-like from the glass into my mouth. Viscous, thick and oily, yet fiery with booze at the same time. It doesn't pour, it doesn't trickle, it doesn't even insinuate. Like a lazy hungover snake covered in brimstone, it undulates across the palate, into the gullet, slowy sliding down into the stomach, leaving a trail of glowing happiness in its wake. I'm not waxing poetic here, it's the honest truth: this beer positively radiates yumminess.

There's so much going on in here, it's hard to collect one's calm, but, truth be told, after a couple of sips, the calm hits you like a velvet hammer anyway: this is a boozy beer indeed. At 19.5% ABV, it's probably wiser to think of this more as a beer liqueur, even though it is, technically as well as spiritually, beer. StDennis confirmed my guess that the extreme alcohol content is achieved through superior brewing skills, combined with ageing in some seriously damp barrels, rather than through physico-chemical envigoration (aka Eisbocking). And yes, by the time we hit the bottle's bottom, those almost-twenty-percent were hard to disregard.

But it's not just booze. There's the bourbon, obviously, which is such a ridiculously perfect companion to this style of beer. Together with the barrel itself, it infuses the rich dark malts with such earthy, and contrastingly ethereal essences that the senses really becomes somewhat lost. There's wood, vanilla, some solvent, a distant hint of dark dried fruits and maybe just a tiny touch of anise. What's really striking is how lusciously smooth it all is: there's not a hint of harshness or brutality to be found, despite the face-on extreme nature of the beer. 

It's beers like this which make me realise Belgium really is a bit of a backwater where creative brewing is concerned. We're good at what we've been doing for the past few centuries, I'll give us that. But a few devoted craft breweries aside (I'm looking at De Struise Brouwers, and maybe De Dochter van de Korenaar and a select few others), we simply don't have the balls or the ingenuity to take beer to this level. And to be honest, most Belgians I know are not ready for this much beer in their beer. The current national consensus seems to be that Draught Guinness (at a mass-produced and hardly matured 4.1%ABV) is a radical, extreme beer, which most people I know equate with all stouts, and uniformly don't like. I've a feeling most of my fellow-countrymen simply wouldn't know what to do with a beer of this magnitude.

This beer is extreme, I'll not naysay that, but it is such a delight to drink, and, perhaps more important still, to share. It's a beer which singlehandedly embodies the spirit of sharing, of casual congregation and collective hedonism. And if one can hedonise in the company of a saint, then one can really count oneself to be blessed.

Beer: Black Tuesday
Brewery: The Bruery
Style: Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
ABV: a staggering 19.5%
IBU: 40
SRM/EBC: 100 / 200+ (almost as black as Samuel L. Jackson)
Served: 750ml wax-sealed bottle

St-Dennis, you da MAN!

Greetz

Jo

PS: while I don't have a picture of StDennis' cellar, I do have first-hand reports about the treasures locked within. First-hand as in I've been there. Yes, you can start doing that Wayne'nGarth thing now.