Riddle of Steel

"Crom is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, 'What is the riddle of steel?' If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me." 

~Conan the Barbarian

Ah, Russian Imperial Stouts... Dark and huge and full of flavor, whether plain or aged on liquor/wine barrels, aged with espresso, vanilla, or other adjuncts, they command respect from beer nerds. Check the beer advocate top beers lists and you'll see a wide range of them from the world's best breweries. What you'll miss are a couple of descriptors that are high upon my personal beer preferences: dry finish and crushable.

To rectify this, I copied the grain bill and approach used in Jester King's Black Metal, a beer that I've never actually had before. I figure any Imperial stout fermented with Wyeast 3711 is going to finish pretty dry though (I have suspicions that I could just put tapwater on a 3711 yeast cake and end up with 4% beer). To give the final beer a bit more interest, I added a secondary addition of espresso beans, ancho chiles, vanilla bean, and cacao nibs that were suggested in a homebrewtalk clone thread about one of my favorite imperial stouts, Prairie Artisanal Ales' Bomb! 

The goal was to brew a sort of hybrid stout with huge flavours and nice mouthfeel (from 3711's glycerol production) that could still be mashed with decent efficiency (since FG would end so low) and that was reminiscent of belgian strong ales in terms of being "digestible" aka crushable. Since I had decided before the beer was even formulated that it would be named Riddle of Steel, I wanted to also include some layers of flavor for one "to contemplate, on the tree of woe". Oh and I figured it better be at least 11% ABV, as subtle is not the strong suit of PBBC ...

One thing I was a little worried about before I brewed this for the first time was the large amount of roasted barley plus Carafa 3 in the grain bill. I've had some really bad luck with black IPAs that have a burnt rubber/ashtray flavor, and this recipe used WAY more dark roasty malts than any of my BIPAs. Also in general I'm always worried that a brewer will say Carafa 3 when they actually mean Carafa3 Special. However, my concerns were unfounded, and if anything the wort and final base beer was pretty chocolate forward rather than super burnt/bitter/roasty.

Grain Bill
15.43 lbs (7.0 kg) 2 row

1.1 lb (0.5 kg) roasted barley
12 oz (0.34 kg) black malt

12 oz (0.34 kg) carafa 3
12 oz (0.34 kg) chocolate malt
7 oz (0.25 kg) crystal 60L
7 oz (0.25 kg) crystal 120L
1.1 lb (0.5 kg) brown sugar

1.5 oz CTZ at 60 min; whirl floc at 10min; 1 oz CTZ at flame out (just because).

Aerate the wort well and then pitch a large healthy starter of Wyeast 3711 at 65F and allow to naturally rise to 75F over 72 hours and hold there until hitting FG. Transfer into a CO2 purged keg on top of a hop sack containing 1 cup espresso beans (whole), 3 sliced ancho chiles, 6 oz cacao nibs, and 2 vanilla beans. Allow to secondary until heat from chiles is forward, pull sack, and put on tap at 2.0 volumes CO2.

Beer Specs
OG: 1.095

FG: 1.008-1.012
IBU: 51
SRM: BLACK (79 by my calculator lol)
Scoville: ~1000

Tasting Notes and Comments:

This is actually a difficult beer to provide notes for, because it usually stays on tap for 2 months and it definitely changes in both flavor profile and aroma as it ages. I am pretty sure this is a key part of the riddle of steel :)

Appearance: Impenetrably black with a khaki head that persists with great lacing. Certainly looks the part of an imperial stout.

Aroma: coffee forward, but notes of roasted malts and a decent aroma of dark chocolate (think gourmet hot chocolate).

Flavor: This is where it gets weird. Initially, the beer is really coffee forward, then as it warms the chiles and heat come forward. There's always a cocoa/dark chocolate flavor, but it only becomes dominant after a month or so in the keg. In between, there are about 3-4 weeks on tap where all of the competing flavours just meld and hit there stride together. The result was almost exactly what I was going for; the only flavor that never seemed to compete/come into its own was the vanilla. The alcohol is never really present; this is a dangerously drinkable beer. There are also some orange flavours that either arise from the CTZ flame out or the yeast (or both). 

Mouthfeel: I'm totally infatuated with the 3711 yeast as a source of mouthfeel in dry beers. It regularly finishes at 1.002-1.004 in saisons and "normal" sized beers, and it never seems thin due to the glycerol that it produces. In this beer, it really works to provide a silky mouthfeel to the finished beer that is reminiscent of a much higher FG without finishing sweet. It still tastes like a big beer and is a sipper but there is just enough saison in it to be crushable.

Finish: As I've mentioned, it finishes very dry and invites you to have another sip. This is especially true when fresh as the chiles provide some heat that makes you eager to have another drink. When you get past that, the final flavors in your mouth are roasted malts and coffee, but with a dry finish. 

General Impression: This was exactly the beer I set out to make. At some level, it's not surprising if you take 2 world class beers from beer advocate and combine them that the result is excellent I guess. But I'm going to count this as a win for beer design, since I took an idea (let's use the super-attenuative 3711 to brew non-saison big beer) and everything worked out perfectly. 

Multi-step Mash Hefeweizen

The more I've read about the importance of water profiles and played around with online calculators, the more I've wanted to revisit my hefeweizen recipe to see if I can tell a difference.  The water in the Raleigh, NC area is much like the area itself - pretty "middle of the road".  My local homebrew club already did some of the work for me by posting a table of suggested water adjustments for a variety of beer styles, so I decided to start there and see what I get.

Since this is a hefeweizen, there really isn't much to discuss about the grain bill or hops.  This recipe revolves entirely around the mash schedule, which is luckily controlled by my electric brewery controller, and the fermentation, which is controlled by my SS Tech FTSS controller.  Basically, I have little to no excuse if I mess this beer up.

Traditional Hefeweizen
OG: 1.052 (temp corrected from post-boil sample)
FG: 1.012
ABV: ~5.3%
SRM: 4

Grain Bill:
5 lbs Red Wheat
5 lbs German Pilsner

Water Modifications (Suggested by CARBOY local homebrew club)
Filtered Raleigh, NC water
Added 0.25 tsp/gal MgSO4 and 0.33 tsp/gal gypsum

Mash Schedule

Recirculating Infusion Mash - 5 gallons

Ferulic acid  at 114F for 15 min

Protein at  125F for 10 min

Saccharification I at 144F for 40 min

Saccharification II at 161F for 20 min

Rinsed grains with 2.5 gallons at 170F to collect final volume of 6.5 gallons of wort

Hop Schedule

0.75oz Hallertau at 60 minutes

Fermentation

Chilled to
64F using Chronical FTSS, aerated for 20 min and pitched Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephan)

I like to keep 3068 at 64F for 4 days, then let rise to 66F.  After 3 more days reached FG of 1.012.  Left beer in fermenter for additional 7 days to let yeast clean up any off flavors. Kegged and force carbed to 4.0 volumes at 36F in keezer

Notes:

I can't recall making a Hefeweizen that is this balanced with banana and clove before. The head retention is also noteworthy and is remarkable compared to previous batches. I'd like to attribute this to the multistep mash schedule, but I'm not aware of water treatments effecting this a great deal.  I'll have to remake the recipe to see if the results are consistent. Previous attempts, even with multistep mash schedules, definitely were lacking with regards to the classic Hefeweizen mouthfeel and fluffy head.

All in all, this ended up being my most successful hefe to date.  I can't say for certain my perceived improvements are solely due to the water treatment, though. The flavor is much more pronounced with regards to banana, clove, and the small amount of hops used seem balanced for the style. This batch "looks" like a traditional hefe more so than any I've made before.  

I will probably repeat this recipe again soon without the multistep mash to see whether or not these perceived improvements stick around. 

Friar Brock ABT 10 (Quadrupel)

With all the barrel-aged barleywines and tripels and 9% saisons that my brother has been making down in NC, I decided it was time for me to produce a big beer too. Since I had just finished kegging a batch of Friar Brock (a Patersbier) using my 3rd generation Wyeast 1214 (the Chimay strain), I figured that brewing a stronger Belgian based upon a Chimay style made the most sense. I opted for the Belgian Strong Dark/Quadrupel recipe that was available on candisyrup.com’s website.

A quick word about the Wyeast 1214 yeast I am using for my Belgian beers. The first time I brewed with it (a Hennepin clone), I managed to choose the one truly hot week in my house and fermented without the benefit of temperature control. At 75F and hotter, the quantity of banana and bubblegum produced by 1214 is truly astounding (and produces beer more suitable for monkeys than man). At lower temperatures than Wyeast recommends though (pitch at 60-62F and only allow to rise after several days of fermentation) it produces a really tasty Belgian profile on the fruity range without being really identifiable as bananas. However, at this lower temperature it can have a lag time as long as 48 hours even when using large starters. I've never had a stuck fermentation once it gets started, but the temptation is to raise the temperature early (but beware banana bombs) or to repitch. So I suppose that's a long-winded way to say that it's a pretty temperamental yeast strain. Now that I'm aware of its tendencies I really enjoy its flavour profile though.

So based upon that, my plan is to carefully control fermentation temps for this beer until it’s close to gravity, rack it to a keg, and let it naturally condition in my basement for 6-12 months. I’ll have a special release tapping party for it with mussels and Belgian chocolates this fall!

Mashing notes: Mashed in 11 lbs Bohemian Pilsner, 0.5 lbs CaraFoam, and 1 lb torrified wheat at 147F with 4.5G, stirring every 10-15mins for a 75 minute mash. Batch sparged with 5.3G of 180F water to hit 170F for a 10min rest before  vorlauf. After first runnings, I put the kettle on to boil and added second runnings every time I had extracted ~1G.  I ended up with closer to 7.5G of wort and boiled for 105 minutes rather than 90.

 Boil Additions:

1 oz Saaz and 1 oz Hallertau (both US versions) at 60 min

1 oz Hallertau at 30

2 lbs D45 Belgian Candi Syrup at 20

½ whirlfloc tablet at 5

After flameout I chilled to 62F and ended up with just under 5.25G of wort into chronical.  Aerated well and then pitched my Patersbier yeast cake (roughly 2 pitchers of yeasty trub) into chronical and adjusted FTSS to a temperature of 62F; fermentation schedule is to increase 1F per day to 68F after seeing obvious fermentation at 62 for one day.  I had broken my hydrometer by knocking it off a shelf, and when I measured OG of a sample I had stored away it was 1.074. I added enough brown sugar to the fermenter to raise the OG to 1.085, which seems more appropriate for a quad (and only raised sugar to 18% fermentables which is within style guidelines).

Fermentation went as expected, with the exception that my 1214 house yeast crushed the quad to 1.004 (95% attenuation!) for 10.6% ABV. I'm a firm believer in this yeast after a few generations; it seems to love my basement temperatures and the FTSS ramp-up in the chronical. When I pulled a sample and then subsequently kegged the beer, I was wowed by everything about it except the color. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but the SRM was far too low for a quad in my opinion (you can see from the hydrometer reading to the left). 

I happened to have some Carafa II Special (dehusked) malt at the house, so I steeped 2 oz in a pint of water at 152F for 30 mins, boiled it for 10 mins to sanitize it, and then used a 4oz pour of the quad and a 1/2 teaspoon to play around with how much steeped liquid to get the color right without changing the flavour profile. I was worried about roastiness, coffee flavours, and astringency. It turned out that 3/4 teaspoon per 4 oz (equivalent to 1.5 oz Carafa 2 Special in the mash) resulted in the correct color profile to my eye (left vs. right below). Now to store it in the keg under moderate carbonation and then drink it when it's properly aged this fall!

Sacch Trois Wheat Beer

Sacch Trois Wheat beer

Recipe inspired by 3Floyds' Gumballhead and Mad Fermentationist's 100% Trois IPA
Brewed on Dec 12, 2015

This is a pretty simple recipe that probably isn’t by itself worth a writeup. But I decided to post it because (a) it’s probably my favorite tropical fruity/hoppy beer I’ve ever made and among the best I’ve personally tasted and (b) I tried a few different things while brewing this batch that worked out quite well. Those things were as follows:

• Zythos as a flame out/whirlpool hop. I have brewed a single hop Zythos IPA before, and found the flavor quite nice (similar to Amarillo but more pure orange flavor) but the dry hop aroma was really disappointing even with large additions in the fermenter and the keg. I decided to try something different with the residual Zythos and use it exclusively in the boil/whirlpool and then use on Amarillo and Citra for dry hopping. This potentially saves quite a lot of $$ (Amarillo is $10/lb more than Zythos in Canada right now). The result worked out better than I expected; I believe this may be the best use for this hops variety and is something I'll definitely try again.

• The use of WL 644 in a wheat beer with a variety of fruity hops (Zythos, Citra, and Amarillo) really turned out even better than I imagined. The pineapple, mango esters from the yeast and the citrusy/tropical aromas and flavors from the hops go together seamlessly. Even moreso than with the JWIPA I brewed with centennial, citra, and Amarillo. The FG was a bit higher than most of my beers, and in combination with Amarillo it results in a really juicy character to the beer that goes really well with the grain bill. It’s the dead of winter here, but this beer is a little taste of summer sunshine. 

•  Finally, I chose to try and get a little stronger dry hop by cold crashing in the chronical to separate out the yeast, transferring to a CO2-purged keg, and then hopping in the keg by using weighted down nylon bags. This was also a good move, because the final beer is really bright tasting in terms of hops profile. I’ll continue this practice for hoppy beers.

So in the end, even with a pretty straightforward recipe, I learned a few things I can apply to future beers, and the actual beer is phenomenal. So I consider this batch a success!

Sacch. Trois Wheat 
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.1%
Calories: 190 (12 oz)
Carbs: 17.9g (12 oz)

Grain bill:

6 lbs. - Wheat Malt

5 lbs. - 2-Row Pale Malt

1 lb. - CaraRed Malt

0.5lb – Rice Hulls

Mash:
Mashed at 152 for 60 minutes

Sparged at 175 after 10 min rest

Boil:
1 oz Zythos at 60

2 oz Zythos at flame out

2 oz Zythos at 175F whirlpool for 20 minutes

* 0.5 WhirlFloc tablet at 5mins

After whirlpool, I chilled to 70F with immersion chiller and moved beer into chronical with continuous agitation to aerate wort. I ended up with 5.25 gallons of 1.058 OG wort after hop trub loss in the kettle.

Fermentation:
Pitched a 2L starter of second generation WL 644 Sacch. Trois (harvested from JWIPA) into chronical with initial temperature of 65F. I allowed the temp to free rise, reaching a max of 69F after 48 hours. As temperature began to fall, I raised the chronical temperature to 75F over 3 days using an aquarium heater to provide 85F water to the chronical's FTSS. I maintained 75F until a stable FG of 1.012 was reached after 12 days. The beer was then cold crashed at 38F for 24 hours, kegged, and dry hopped..

Dry hop: 2 oz Amarillo/2 oz Citra for 3 days.

Keg hop: 2 oz Amarillo/2oz Citra until it kicks.

After 3 days of room temperature dry hop, the hop bag was removed, replaced with fresh keg hops, and the keg was force carbonated and tapped on Dec. 30.