Russian River Consecration

As I mentioned before, I have a lot of catching up to do with the beers I have been drinking  before I put up what I have been brewing.  Luckily, I have a friend who is from outside of Portland and is kind enough to pick me up beers when she goes home.  And by kind enough, I mean that she eventually tires of me shoving a fistful of cash in her hand and crying until she eventually agrees to look for the beer I transcribed on a voluminous list.  Friends, right!?!?

Russian River Consecration

Appearance- A burgundy brown color with a very small off white head.  Head almost disappears completely leaving just a ring around the edge of the glass.  Murky clarity.

Smell- A smack of vinegar acidity right away with slight barnyard funk and a little hay.  Fruits appear fairly quickly with apple and cherry most prominently featured.  Some dark plums and raisins also make their way through as well.

Taste- Quick hints of cherry and plums before a sharp acidic sourness quickly builds and bursts through, peaking in the middle and lasting through the finish.  A light apple taste turns towards the end. Sour taste is full, balanced, and not overwhelming.  Probably one of the cleanest and most complex sour beers I have experienced.

Mouthfeel- Medium bodied and low carbonation.  Very dry finish and the taste seems to leave a layer covering the mouth.

Overall and Notes- Once again, one of the most complex sour beers I have had.  A mouth puckering sour with overshadowing the complexities of the fruit.  Luckily I have another bottle of this and I think I may try to harvest the dregs and brew my own sour beer with it, but we will see.  Also, I unfortunately lost the pictures to this one, so use those beautiful imaginations of yours!

On a side note, soon I was hoping to document one of the local farmers markets I go to in order to pick up some fruits and vegetables that I will be using in coming beers.  I also saw blueberries last time I was there.  I like blueberry jam.  I would like to make blueberry jam.  Does this sound right to anyone?  Does anyone care?

Pipeworks Brewing Co. Poivre Rose

Before I jumped in with another brewing posts, I need to get some long (and new in this case) held reviews of beers I have been drinking.  I noticed lately that I have not been giving local breweries outside a select few the attention they deserve since I moved.  What better way to appease my recent saison brewing obsession than with a locally brewed saison?

Pipeworks Brewing Co. Poivre Rose

Appearance- Pours a hazy golden color with a thick layer of foam that eventually settles into a thin layer of white carbonation.  Head of the beer is persistent and a notable sticky lacing coats the glass.

Smell- A lot of citrus up front with lemons and faint hints of phenols including a light clove.  There is a certain floral quality to the smell that melds with the citrus towards the middle of the beer that I am going to attribute to the pink peppercorns.  Towards the end there seems to be a slight amount of peppery spice, but part of me wonders if I am imagining it since I know they used peppercorns in the beer.

Taste- Starts off with the lemony citrus and a surprising malt sweetness.  However, the floral character is more noticeable in the beer and takes the lead towards the middle.  The floral taste is refreshing, not quite tea like, and not overdone.  Towards the end of the beer, the spicy peppercorn character kicks in.  I believe the added peppercorn leaves a little strange taste in the finish, but nothing off putting.

Mouthfeel- Beer is a little sweeter to what I am used to in a saison, but drys out in the finish.  Nice full carbonation as well.

Overall and Notes- Really liked my first saison from Pipeworks and will now certainly try the other one I saw at the store.  I would have liked to see it be a little dryer and personally would like to see how not including the black peppercorns would affect the beer.

Also, can we address the fact that I wrote there where hints of "a light clove"?  Well, I am an ass, but I guess we already knew that.

Belgian IPA Brewday

For anyone that has known me in the Chicago region, I will not shut up when it comes to Haymarket's two Belgian IPAs, Angry Birds and Rubber Monkey.  I am currently lobbying for the normal serving sizes to be changed to "place mouth under tap and pull."  Hell, I will even take a rubber house leading directly from the tap to my mouth, or at the very least, a bucket.  Joking aside, it is one of the few Belgian IPAs that I really think balances the hoppy character you expect from a great IPA and the fruity, phenolic notes needed from a good Belgian beer.

As a result, I e-mailed Haymarket after a failed attempt at my own Belgian IPA looking for some pointers.  Lucky for me, Head Brewer Pete Crowley shot me back an e-mail to get me going in the right direction.  He stated the key was to use the Duvel/moortgat yeast strain and low mash temperatures.  His last piece of advice was "dryhop the crap out of it."  What kind of guy would I be to say no to that?

Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.020
Boil Time: 90 minutes
Mash Time: 90 minutes

8 1/2 lbs Pilsener
2 1/2 lbs White Wheat
1 lb Briess Caramel 80 L

0.5 oz Cascade @ 30 minutes
0.5 oz Chinook @ 30 minutes
0.5 oz Cascade @ 20 minutes
0.5 oz Chinook @ 20 minutes
2.0 oz Cascade @ 0 minutes
1.0 oz Cascade @ 0 minutes
2.0 oz Cascade @ dry hop
1.0 oz Cascade @ dry hop

0.75 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 minutes
1.0 tsp irish moss @ 15 minutes

Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale

Water profile: Chicago

Mashed in with 4 gallons of water at 148 degrees F.  Wanted to keep it low per the instructions of Mr. Crowley.  Let the mash sit for 90 minutes in order to ensure full conversion.  Batch sparged with 4 gallons at 170 degrees F.  Came up about a gallon lower than I wanted, so I quickly heated up another gallon and put it through the grain bed.  Collected a total of around 6.5 gallons.

Brewed: 7/6/13

Chilled to 70 degrees F and pitched yeast starter made a couple nights before.

7/15/13 Moved to secondary and dry hopped with a total of 3 oz of leaf hops.

Bottled: 7/24/13

Tasting: A good base for a Belgian IPA to build off.  Will be rebrewing this one soon.

Saison/Lavender and Hibiscus Saison Brew Day

Getting back to brewing and what better way than a saison in the summer?  I decided to put together a basic saison recipe, but thought it would be a waste of a good opportunity to not do anything else.  After looking at Revolution's Rosa, I decided that hibiscus/flowers in general would be something I would like to experiment.  Next, I stopped by The Mad Fermentationist's website and saw he had instructions on how to make a tea out of flower petals and how to add them to your beer.  At his recommendation, I purchased the flower petals here.  I initially wanted to add jasmine and hibiscus as I enjoy the taste of jasmine in tea, but unfortunately they were all out of the jasmine.  As a result, I decided to opt for lavender instead as other sellers did not seem as reliable.  So here we go.

Saison/Lavender and Hibiscus Saison

Batch size: 5.0 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.003
Boil Time: 90 minutes
Mash Time: 90 minutes

11 lbs Pilsener
0.75 lb White Wheat
0.75 lb Munich

1.8 oz Hallertau @ 60 minutes
0.75 oz Hallertau @ 0 minutes

0.75 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 minutes
1.0 tsp irish moss @ 15 minutes

Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison

Water Profile: Chicago

Mashed in with 3 gallons of water.  Came up short on my mash temperature, so I boiled some water until I reached 147 degrees F.  Let the mash sit for 90 minutes in order to ensure full conversion.  Batch sparged with 4 at 168 degrees F and collected a total of around 6.5 gallons.

Brewed: 6/29/13

Chilled to 72 degrees F and pitched starter I made two nights before.

Moved to secondary: 7/15/13

Bottled: 4/24/13

During the bottling process, I made a tea out of lavender and hibiscus to add to part of the beer.  I used around 0.75 oz of lavender and 2.2 oz of hibiscus.  To that I added 4 cups of water and mixed together in my french press.  The initial tea was.... incredibly strong and tart.  Initially I was a little worried I had gone overboard, but I decided to add the tea as planned and hope for the best once it was diluted a bit.  After adding 2.5 cups to around 2.75 gallons of saison, the resulting concoction eased my mind a little.  As I suspected I believe the jasmine would have complimented the beer more than the lavender and even at 0.75 oz, I think the lavender could have been scaled back.  Nevertheless, looking forward to trying this one.

Tasting:

New York City

I spent the last week visiting New York City and my brother and used some of the time to visit some beer places in the city.  Luckily, it was not too hard finding beer in the city, but it was a little difficult finding time to take myself away from the rest of what the city offered (and convince others to join me) in order to see some of the places I wanted to get to.  In the end, I ended up visiting d.b.a. and Spuyten Duyvil.

d.b.a was a dark bar that had around 10-15 taps and a sprawling bottle list.  They added a nice touch with the tap list by listing the date each beer was tapped in case you are worried you are getting fresh beer, although with a place like this located in New York City, I doubt there is much concern.  Although d.b.a had some rarer beers and saisons I wanted to try, the prices were as large as I would have expected.  One of these days I am going to get a real job, dammit.  In the mean time, maybe just enjoy the picture I took of the board?  I went fairly simple with a fairly basic belgian (and for the life of me I cannot remember its name) followed by a Rodenbach Red.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

Next, at the suggestion of my brother's friend, we headed to Spuyten Duyvil for another couple of drinks.  The inside of the bar is fairly small and reminiscent of a basic pub, but the bar had a great garden in the back.  Even as I sat uncomfortably sweating in the heat, I could not help but enjoy the scenery, and more importantly the beer.  We enjoyed more than a couple Mission IPAs and I also grabbed a Green Jack Rippa and another IPA on cask (something it seems they always have)  What really caught my eye were the two boards which were dedicated to "Flemish" beers and other sours.  Notably, they served Cantillon Gueze among many others.  Once again, my wallet disagreed with my heart unfortunately.

So what did we really learn on this trip?  I am absolutely horrible at taking notes and/or even remembering the names of the new beers I have.  In my defense, I was in New York City.  Back off.

In good news, I have two beers fermenting at the moment and will update on those in the near future.  However, I cannot guarantee quality notes on those either.... or anything for that matter...