Brewsflash: Dog arses and make-believe citrus

Bottling time!

I've been too busy brewing and not busy enough bottling lately, leading to a production bottleneck (see what I did there?) in the shape of too few carboys.

Nothing makes my day like a confusing Google Image Search.

As I reported recently, I brewed a medlar saison a couple of months ago, and it was about time I got it bottled bottle lest it never get druk. Drank. Consumed. Whatever.

Medlars are a fascinating fruit. Related to the hawthorn, medlar trees grow golf-ball sized fruits, which are hard, tannic, and not very pleasant unless they're bletted.

That means rotten, only more poshly so.

I am endlessly fascinated by weird and slightly(*) yucky foods, and the medlar is a favourite of mine pricesely because (°) it is a rare example of a fruit which effectively has to spoil in order to be edible.

*) or very. Or very very. Or will you fuckin' stop already!

°) also because it gets charmingly nicknamed things like "open arse" and "dog butt". Good thing the Internet wasn't around when the medlar got its nick, or else I'd be gargling goatse(^) beer soon. 

^) Oh and for the love of god don't google goatse if your don't know what it is already. The internet should come with a warning sticker that says "Don't google goatse". The medlar's nick should be ample warning, but apparently it isn't.

Using about two dozen properly bletted medlars (courtesy of the amazing Marloes & Martijn), I made a syrup which I froze until I was ready to use it in a brew.

Early February, I brewed a basic(*) saison, and in a spontaneous act of generosity, I'm sharing the recipe with you, Constant Reader.

Or just because.

*) I promise to one day lay out my understanding of what a saison was, what it now is and what it should be, but for now, let's assume there actually exists such a thing as a basic saison.

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Technical stuff below; skip unless you like technical stuff, numbers and beergeekery

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Made a 5 gallon batch, comprising 36% Pilsner, 36% pale and 28% wheat malt. 
Mashed on the low end at 150°F, where it gradually petered down to about 140 (my mash tun needs an insulation coat). 
70' boil. 
0.5 ounces of Citra @ 70'         (26 IBU)
1.0 ounces of Citra @ 10'         (6 IBU)
1.5 ounces of Citra @ flameout (0 IBU)

5g of black pepper corns and zest of 1 lemon @10'.

Cooled to 68°F and pitched with French Saison (second generation 3711, kindly donated by Frankenbuddy). 
Fermented at 71°F, ramping to 77 over the course of a week; dropped from 1.063 to 1.002.

Racked to secondary and split in three batches. 

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Technical stuff all done now, resuming normalcy

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Three batches then, from a single brew. Not only did I not have enough medlar syrup to flavour an entire 5 gallon batch, I also wanted to be able to define the specifics of the medlars' contribution. 

It will end in tears one day.

1. basic version. Just the above recipe, no further shennanigans applied.
2. Cul de Chien: added syrup I made from about 2 dozen bletted medlars, half a lemon, and sugar.
3. basic + Orval dregs for Brett funk and rustic saison character.

Then I moved all three to the cellar and tried to forget about them for a few months.

Until yesterday.

Batch 1 and 2 were bottled by yours truly yesterday, which means I'll be able to taste them properly in a couple weeks' time. So far, the prognosis looks good. Solid saison profile, with Citra really doing its utmost to bring refeshing hoppy citrus notes and the yeast tying it all together. The Cul de Chien version had a bit of extra lemony zing to it (I may have overdone things lemon-wise when I made that syrup) and a certain je-ne-sais-quoi which probably the medlars. Even if the beer tatstes nothing like medlars at all, it's still going to be a great brew. 

Yeastie Boy is buzzing with anticipation.

Batch 3 will be bottled sometime soon. My understanding is that the Bretts will take a long time before they become noticeable, but will impart a bit of that rustic Old Orval vibe, which I think will add more complexity and authenticity.

Because all authentic saisons were brewed with citra and Dog's Arse.

More news when the brews are sampled.

Until then, I part with a fitting Chaucer quote:

We olde men, I drede, so fare we:

Til we be roten, kan we nat be rype;

May our bletting be long in the waiting.

Greetz

Jo

Ten Fidy (Oskar Blues Brewery)

An ode, perhaps.

To beer, because I figure you already suspected as much.
To stouts, because it's pretty hard to get more beer in your beer than with a stout.
To imperial stouts, because they're pimped out chromed out stouts so more beer in your already-a-lot-of-beer.

To beer then.

But most relevantly, to canned beer.

Let me go off-tangent here for a short while.
Canned beer, in this country, seems to embody all that is wrong with beer in the world today. Canned beer spells cheap-ass lager like nothing else, and if not that, then it spells comfort to the homeless, in whopping half-liter cans of blisteringly boozy chemically enriched Frankenbrew.

Yes, Anthony Martin, I'm looking at you and your triple-X steroid lagers

It's ironic that we all seem to trust bottled beer just a little bit more than its canned counterpart, when a tin can is such a superior vessel in every way. It doesn't break, it's somewhat easier to clean and supposedly more sustainable than glass, but most importantly, it keeps the light out of the brew.
Light which, as you may already know, is pretty damn bad for beer.

Filthy nasty little lightses. We hates it!

But in spite of the redeeming qualities of the tin can, you'll find most beers which actually come in cans are, well, not the best.
Oh who am I kidding: most canned beers are crap. Period.

Coming slightly back from what only appears to be a tangent: when last I hooked up with SaintDennis, we did the usual "yay you got me beer, here's some beer" thing which beergeeks the world over know as "swapping". Among my stash that night was...a can.

A can of imperial stout.

Someone (*), somewhere (°), not only decided that a can is indeed a fit receptacle for all things beery, but took that decision one step further and delivers all of their brews in a can.
Not one can.
Just, you know, in cans. 
Canned. 
Whatever.

*) Oskar Blues, apparently.
°) Colorado, apparently.

So here we are, with a can of 10.5% ABV imperial stout in our hands. Ain't nuthin' left to do but drink it then.

Da's one big ass mofo brew.

 When poured, Ten Fidy ticks all those boxes you expect in the style. Thick and almost gloopy, black as an inkwell in a safety deposit aboard the Titanic, with a humble tan head which is swiftly pulled under into the darkness below.
"Are you drinking ink now?" werethe exact words of my son when he saw me pour it.

Seriously, Google?

In the nose you'll find a massively dense malt presence, with the mandatory chocolate and coffee fragrances taking the lead. Underneath is a not-very-subtle-but-quite-alluring whiff of soy sauce, giving the beer an almost meaty aroma. Deeper still you'll find subtle and, yes, elegant specialty malt touches, not unlike what you'd expect to find in barley wines. Not an easy beer on the nose, because there's such a lot of depth to it, but I could sniff this all night long.

Ah and when it hits the lips and passes on from there into the mouth, across the tongue, to the back of the throat and way into, well, let's not follow it quite all the way, shall we?
In the mouth, this beer again does everything right and more. It's thick and velvety, sweet-bordering-on-clingy-sticky, with a massive 98 IBUs of bitterness being wonderfully balanced by the shitloads of malt that went into the brew. Coffee and chocolate again, as well as a subtle roast, but also a deep and almost undetectable hint of dark red fruits. It's a beer which sighs yearningly, almost mournfully, for the inclusion of bourbon.
This is quite common in imperial stouts: the style seems to be almost dependent on barrel ageing, and often you'll find the base beers somewhat lacking, deficient almost, when not invigorated by boozy barrels.
The Ten Fidy however, merely whispers promises of even bigger, even more, even better, but is perfectly capable of holding its own without being propped up by a barrel of Bourbon. A barrel aged version does exist, I'm happy to hear, and while I'm dead curious to see how that turned out, the base beer is, in all respects, phenomenal all on its own. If I ever manage to brew a stout half this good, I'll be counting my blessings (if somewhat double-sightedly).

Beer: Ten Fidy
Brewery: Oskar Blues Brewing
Style: Imperial Stout (in a can!)
ABV: Ten Fidy uv coahse
EBU: 98 but you'd never tell
EBC: So black as to no longer really matter
Served: a spiffy 330ml can!

Oskar Blues Brewing have a whole range of canned brews, and unless this impy stout is a lucky one-shot fluke, I whole-heartedly recommend trying some if ever you get the opportunity.

A toast then.
To canned beer, to Oskar Blues and their Ten Fidy, and to SaintDennis and his Underground Treasure Trove of Beery Bliss.


Wassail!

Greetz

Jo

Burn baby!

Remember Brew#4?

Oh. That's right, I never made much notion of it because of other pressing issues (sampling beers and stocking up on quality brews, to name but two).

Well, here goes then.

Brew#4 is a leap into the unknown. Two weeks prior to B-day, I had just sampled a bottle of this baby:

"For people with guts"
Kinda hard to drink beer if you have none.

"The Daughter of the Ear Of Corn" is a small but rising (sort of) Belgian brewery, located in the region of Baarle-Hertog.

Yes, that's a piece of Belgium, smack in the middle of the Netherlands.  

Bravoure, then, is a smoke beer, but so delicately smoked that I'd hesitate to call it one, lest it gave people the wrong idea. I was so impressed by it, that I got me some smoked malt and distilled a recipe. I'd found a clone recipe for Antwerp's pride:

Het Bolleke

I tweaked the recipe to accomodate the smoked malt and achieve a higher ABV and substituted the hops, ending up with something which, during wort extraction, was tasting quite spot on.

I'd also infused some vanilla beans in Caol Ila whisky, to pimp a small batch of this brew which I'd set aside.

Turns out it all went nicely, and several weeks later, the brew is happily undergoing bottle conditioning in the hot room. I'm quite curious as to how drinkable this in going to turn out, but I've high hopes for it.

Seeing as how drinkable the wort was.

 

Now for a name...
 

Naming a brew is always a spurious affair. In this case, I couldn't quite find a name for this one, and all the obvious references to smoke turned out to be trite or misleading. A chat with the affable Marloes gave rise to musings on days long gone, when the East India Companies sailed for the orient, bringing spices and the occasional burning shipwreck. Add a bit of geekiness to all that and you end up with a brew which becomes somewhat unpronouncable, like zn+1=(|Re(zn)|+i|Im(zn)|)2+c, z0=0

Best enjoyed with a slice of Mandelbrot

I'll give it a week before I check carbonation, and another two weeks to mature, but I'm guessing it'll need at least a month or two to mellow out.

Quite stoked about this one, so watch this space for updates.

Also, witness the latest improvement to my homebrew equipment:

A fully automated grain mill!

 

Until then,

Greetz

Jo

Brewsflash: Brew#3 goes PSHT!

Rejoice! Jubilate! Be jolly and make merry! Brew#3 successfully spent the past five days carbonating in the hot room, and now looks a little something like this:

That's one happy brew

Carbonation looks rougher than it is in this picture, and those bubbles covering the inside of the glass are all gone now, two minute after pouring.
Lift this baby to the light to inspect color and degree of clearness:

No Instagram was harmed in the making of this picture

No, a clear brew is is not. Nor did I expect it to: my brewing skills have many different angles of possible improvement to them yet, and wort filtering, as well as many other clarification techniques, remain as yet untried. So I don't fret, even if, when all "Whoohoo I did great" sentiments are ruthlessly disposed of, I am not at all pleased with the color and overall presentation of this beer. Improvements are in order.

Ahhhh but the nose is a lot better. Cascade dry-hopping did wonders in terms of inviting the unwary drinker. Not yet at the point where the nose is luring me in, but we're getting there. And waaaay in the back, I can almost smell the Pacific Jade, which is now distant enough to give a subtle bubblegummy tease to the nose. Yes, this is what I had in mind. One out of two so far.

Mouthfeel is decent, on the watery side. The US-05 yeast is notably present, despite it being a held-back and inobtrusive fellow. Hops provide a nice, clean bitterness, as well as fruity-earthy flavours, which nicely complement the toastiness of the Münich malt. Almost in IPA-style, the initial bitterness and the hop flavours melt into a malty sweetness, which then sort of flows outwards again in a nice, lingering bitter aftertaste. Oh yes, I think this is very drinkable, and spot on to what I had in mind where taste and flavours are concerned.

Two out of three is quite okay for a third go: I think I'm getting the hang of the basics here. Brew#3 was supposed to be a stronger, heavier and more balanced spin on Kohaku (which was #2). As the Constant Reader may remember, I am aware of the many errors I made during the brewing of #3 which have hindered it in becoming all I wanted, but the main flaw that irked  me about Kohaku has been eliminated: that gap between the toasty malt and the hop flavours has disappeared. Yes, I wanted it to be stronger, but I know where I screwed up. Yes, I wanted it to be fuller bodied, but again, I know where I goofed.

What I'm left with is a beer I do not at all mind pouring myself another one of. A beer I can dig up out of the basement and pour for friends and guests. But most importantly, a beer which will serve as a basis for some proper experimenting. Do I need that bit of of Fuggles halfway through the boil? Is US-05 really what I want in this? Can I ditch those unmalted flakes or are they doing something for this beer? How do I get the color and clarity to a level which doesn't inspire me to call this one "Pond Muck"?

Seriously, you've no idea what a kickass hobby this homebrewing thing is. :)

So there you have it. Brew#3 shall henceforth be named Pond Muck.


"Veyversleyck" in Olde Dutch

May it prove to be a friendly companion and a worthy ancestor to future brews.

Greetz

Jo

A label for a tiger

The bullet is bit: that tiger-brew I've been bragging about has finally got a name, and a label to go with it.
Thanks to the lovely Kazuyo-sana, my ham-fisted attempts at making this beer sound Japanese have come to fruition, and I hereby declare its name to be Kohaku.

Not sure about the left-hand thingies are, but Google agrees that these are kanji for Kohaku

Kohaku means (among other things) "amber", and the kanji themselves mean "tiger" and "Belgium". So, with Nihonnese poetics applies, this would come to mean something along the lines of "amber tiger from Belgium", which is aptly fitting.

Invoking my legendary Photoshop skills resulted in the following end product:

Left to right: Kohacu classic and Kohaku kiai

Counting down to the Kagami Biraki. So far, reactions have been positive, with the little kiai scoring surprisingly well. Curious what my sparring buddies will think of this...

Until then,

Greetz

Jo