The thing that should not be

I have Metallica in heavy rotation on my Pandora radio today.

There is a beer that I just cannot seem to get brewed.  Various brewing mishaps (detailed in humorous glory below), weather, and ill health in the form of over-indulgence the night prior have made the brewing of this beer seemingly unattainable.  The Beer Gods simply will not allow me to experiment.

It starts a few weeks back, when Tony and Joel came over so we could brew our club-sanctioned batch of beer using cocoa-nibs.  The premise of the beer is simple.  Everyone in the club gets together in various teams, and devises a recipe that would utilize cocoa nibs.  The only “rule” was that our base recipe could not have chocolate malt as a part of the grainbill.  This makes sense, as the goal of this mini-competition is to highlight the various flavors that can be coaxed from cocoa nibs.  They will not provide only a chocolate flavor and/or aroma.  At times, they will be  fruity, at times chocolatey, and there are other flavors and aromas which escape me at the moment.

We decided to use my Tasti Sparrow Porter as the base recipe for our team beer.  (Coincidentally, our team was dubbed “The Bearded Clan” by the club coordinator given the preponderance of facial hair that the  three of us possess and the name suggests a funny double entendre).  I did have to modify the recipe to exclude the normal 1-1/2lbs of Chocolate malt.  I did this by increasing the amount of Black Patent and also including some darker crystal malts so ensure that we would have a nice dark Robust Porter with some residual sweetness.  I also decided….no, I had an epiphany that we should use toasted coconut in this particular beer.  It was going to be epic, and reminiscent of the South Pacific.

Hey, I was in the throes of beer-gasmic creation.  Let me have my delusions.

Our final recipe for the beer ended up being the following (brewed on 5/23/2010):

• 10lbs Maris Otter
• 1lbs Victory Malt
• 1/2lb Cara-aroma Malt
• 1/2lb Black Patent Malt
• 1/4lb Crystal 60*L
• 1 oz Northern Brewer pellet hops (9.5%AA) added at 60 minutes
• Wyeast 1028 London Ale yeast
• 5oz Cocoa nibs added to secondary for 3 week “dry-nib”
• 4oz home toasted unsweetened coconut added to secondary for a uh…”dry-nutting” (that sounds dirty…hehehe)

OG was 1.054with 5.75 galls in primary (calculated OG was 1.063 at 5.5 gals, efficiency = 60%)

IBU was 43

color was 80-ish SRM

Brewing notes for the beer thus far are:

• Our mash temperature ended up higher than we wanted at 157 *F vs the planned-for 152*F.  I think in the long run this will benefit the finished beer by providing a good residual sweetness to accentuate the cocoa and toasted coconut.
• We did a 1 hour boil and neglected to take a preboil gravity reading..meh
• We nearly cooked the yeast, by “smacking the pack”and leaving it in the sun for 45minutes or so to allow the little yeasties to wake up and propagate.  They didn’t fully cook, but I think we did stress them a bit, as there was no yeast activity in the fermenter for a good 30 hours after pitching the yeast in there.
• Beer was racked secondary  in 6/6/10 on top of the 5oz cocoa nibs and 4oz freshly toasted unsweetened hippy organic coconut shavings.  The gravity at this point had dropped to 1.013, right as expected.  Tasting the sample proved my thoughts in residual sweetness correct.  I think this will be outstanding provided that any oil from the coconut doesn’t completely  obliterate the head.

So, that beer was done and in the carboy by 2pm on a beautiful day for brewing.  Joel had to jet off to a family event, but Tony had planned for a day of brewing and beer.  We had already brewed one batch, that left beer to be had.  A short  while into our beering, my lovely wife Stacie asked why we weren’t brewing another batch.

Ihadn’tthought of it.  It was pure genius. Of course, I was starting to feel buzzed at that point.  I took a quick look at my available ingredients and decided we had the makings of an interesting IPA.

I whipped up the following recipe for 5 gallons:

• 12lbs Fawcett Optic Pale Malt
• 3/4 lbs Dark Munich
• 1/2lbs Cara-aroma
• 1/4lbs Cara-Amber
• 2oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) as First Wort hops
• 1/2oz Warrior pellet hops (17.2%AA) added at  60minutes
• 1oz Willamette whole hops (5.5%AA) added at 10minutes
• 1/2oz Warrior pellet hops (17.2%AA)added at 5minutes
• 1oz Willamette whole  hops(5.5%AA) added at flameout
• WYeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast

We do not yet know what this beer would end up being going into the carboy.  This is the beer that Ninkasi will not allow.  The following has kept this beer from being born:

• On 5/23, we had mashed in and all was going well.  Tony  went outside to transfer the mash kettle off the burner in  order to heat the sparge water.  In so doing, my twins decided it was a good time to get under foot.  They NEVER get close when I brew.  They must have been sniffing paintchips again, because they broke the cardinal rule on this day. Tony over-corrected his positioning of the mash kettle, and down it fell on the driveway, spilling sweet wort and grain everywhere.  Luckily neither he nor the twins were burned or hurt….. My mash/boil kettle however did not survive the fall, having flattened itself  when it hit pavement.  Oddly  enough, the glass floating  thermometer did NOT shatter.   It’s all good Tony, you saved the kids and yourself from irreparable harm, showed great restraint in not throttling them for their misdeed, and I get to upgrade my brewery.  In the meantime, I will make sure Tony’s loaner kettle stays nice  and shiny for him.
• Memorial Day weekend was my next target date for trying this beer.  What I did not plan for was the wall-to-wall sunshine that Sunday that would beckon me to mow the lawn for 6 hours…. without a shirt….and forgetting the sunscreen.  Nor that night when I would get a little too deep into my cups and further dehydrate myself.  I awoke on Memorial Day hating the sunlight and the  fact that my clothing felt like sandpaper on my back.  There would be no brewing this day, only after sun lotion, Tylenol, and large amounts of water.
• And again this weekend.  Once  again, I got into it on Friday night, so Saturday had  beer very far from my mind as anything to make or consume.  Then today, when Mother Nature decided we would have a monsoon in the morning with high winds the rest of the day.

This “W-IPA”, as I have come to call it, will be brewed.  Perhaps Karma is telling me to revise the recipe.  As I look at it again, it seems a bit thin in the hopping.  Any brewers that read me, feel free to chime in with your thoughts.  This is meant to be an IPA, nothing imperial/double strength or “strip the enamel from your teeth” bitter.  Critiques are welcome.

I shall ruminate on this for the week.

I will ask myself “What would FSM Brew?” as I climb the beer volcano and keep an eye out for pirates attempting to overrun the stripper academy.

I will do all things beer-y to get myself in Ninkasi’s good graces.

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