I’m going to be a tease for a moment….
Competition results were handed out to Tony, Joel and Jeremy this past Wednesday at the local club meeting. I will be either updating my prior post Competition Time or putting a completely new post up… Whichever strikes my fancy, because that is how I roll.
In slightly other news, and in honor of Monty Python… “And now for something completely different”…. Oak Aged and spirit aged beers…. I have had a very select few of these. I know I have had a couple that were completely forgettable, because, well… I have forgotten what they were. Of note, however, are Goose Island Brewing Co’s Bourbon County Stout , and Cold Spring Brewing Co’s 3 Lick Spiker….
There are a number of things going on with these beers. They are Oak aged, they are strong ales, and they are also infused with bourbon from the barrels or oak chips used in the fermentation process. This being said, I offer some notes on the two aforementioned beers:
Goose Island seems to have a slightly better handle on this particular “style”. The beer overall is smoother while in a “young” state. This means that I had this year’s bottling, and not a sample that had been aged in my super top secret beer cellar. When I forst pour the glass, the bourbon is very to the front. It invades the nose, rather than act as an accent to the otherwise roasty and chocolatey aromas of the Imperial Stout style. Not being a fan of liquor, I steel myself for an alcoholic onslaught that never quite comes. The taste is…. smooth, roasty and stout-like, with just a hint of bourbon on the back of the taste when I swallow. Nice, I think, and prepare to take another sip when the alcoholic warmth of base style envelopes me, starting at the very pit of my stomach and working its way to my mouth. This is not an a “kick your teeth out” manner, though. It is very subtle, yet intended. I very much dig as a “new” beer, though this would be a mouthgasm if given a year or more in the cellar.
Cold Spring Brewing Co. just arrived on the Rochester scene last week. I grabbed a couple of their offerings, thinking they would be fairly pedestrian (which apparently they were, or I would be writing about them). I also grabbed a bottle of this beer that sounded kind of dirty… 3 Lick Spiker. I am all about salaciousness, so i grabbed the bottle based on name alone… without looking at the label or style tag at the bottle shop. Apparently, this is from their John Henry series, or John Henry is their base Imperial Stout. I have not quote puzzled this one out. I perused the label at home and see it is a Bourbon oak aged imperial stout. Remembering my experience with Goose Island, I am both intrigued and scared. See, Oak aging can be a tricky beast. Too short on the wood chips (or in the barrel), and the oaky character does not come through. Aging too long on the oak can be like drinking a tree. Interesting, I think. I pop the cap, and pour into my Sam Adams glass to see a not quite pitch black stout emanate forth. Decent 1/2″ off white head. Aroma is decidedly of bourbon and chocolate malts. The taste is…. again smooth with a heavy chocolate character (soft chocolate, as from Carafa malts, though, and not the bitter character from chocolate malts). I perceive alcohol throughout the taste as I await the bourbon punch of an underdone budget beer. As with Goose Island, the Bourbon character is left for the remainder of the taste, though not the kick to the senses that I was expecting. While not entirely jolting as a new release beer, this definitely needs a bit of age on it to smooth out the alcohol flavors and to subdue the bourbon character a bit.
Final call: Overall drinkability goes to Goose Island. For economy’s sake, though I would go to Cold Spring. For an easy $3 less per bottle, I get very much the same beer, though a bit more rough around the edges. The bottom line is that for a “right now” bourbon oak aged beer, go to Cold Spring. I have a bottle of each (soon to be more) that I will keep around for at least 6 more months if not a full year to do another comparison. Something tells me that after a full year, this will be more-or-less a dead heat horizontal tasting.
Friday night musings…
So, I’m sitting here on a Friday night. The kids are all in bed (finally, some quiet!!!), I have a decent Cascade IPA from Stevens Point Brewery ( http://www.pointbeer.com/ ) in front of me, and I am at my computer alone with my own thoughts.
Again.
Nothing good can come of this…
Actually, Good things are in the works. On the brewery side of things, I am looking at some properties that have potential. Yes, they are rough around the edges, and would all require some extensive upgrades/tear-outs, but this really is all about building up the Rock Your World Brewing Co. from scratch. I’m just looking for now, no hard plans to put in an offer or anything obscenely crazy like that at the moment.
Second, I am thinking that Spring is here (even though the weather does not indicate such), and I need to get some brewing done! The downside of this realization is that all of the beers in my immediate pipeline are long-term brews. Last weekend, we brewed the Flander’s style red… that won’t be ready for at least 18 months under the best of circumstances.
I also have to brew the annual Barleywine/Ole Ale type thing. I really, really like how last year’s Old Ale came out using the specialty strain from Wyeast. This yeast strain is available starting this month (April), so I think I will have to buy a pack of that soon. This beer stood exactly 12 months inside fermenters last time we brewed it. That is a long time to be tying up yet another secondary fermenter.
July is when we brew the Imperial Stout (Romanov Family Portrait, f.k.a Vlad and Joe’s Rockin’ Imperial Stout), as well as Sanglant Pouces (our Belgian Strong Ale). Each of these only stays in fermenters for 6 months total before bottling, but we are now up to 4 batches that will need extended aging.
Being Spring, it is just about time to think about the Dandelion Mead again. I have 3 brewslaves ….brewmonkeys …. helpers this year that are more than capable of picking a few gallon sized bags of blossoms for me. This wouldn’t be ready for at least 12 months as well, again, tying up fermenter space.
I still have to bottle the Irish Red I brewed in the end of February/early part of March… yeah, it’s a bit out of season… I still have most of the last batch of Blonde from last summer, so that one is out to brew in the near term. What does this leave to brew?
I am thinking that a batch of Hippy Bro or Cleveland Steamer might be in order. Both of these recipes are fairly quick-turn. They won’t tie up fermenter space for long, and they will be ready to drink on the inside of 1 month for Hippy Bro and 2 months for Cleveland Steamer. Maybe we will follow both of those up with another stab at a Dry stout.
Oh just to continue with the stream of consciousness here… Joel, Tony and myself are brewing a Chocolate-coconut Porter for the brew club that will be using Cocoa nibs for all of the chocolate flavor. I suppose I should reserve a carboy for that one as well. I have high hopes for this beer. We are using the base recipe for our Tasti Sparrow Porter, only we are substituting the 1-1/2 pounds of chocolate malt out and putting the cocoa nibs in its place…. the coconut idea came to me when I was trying to figure out how much of the nibs would be needed. I thought “Self, you need to add toasted coconut to this beer.”
When Self talks to me, I tend to listen. He has good ideas….
Most of the time.
The one idea involving a donkey, hot wax and midgets didn’t really work out quite as planned……
Anyway, we’ve got some beer to bottle, some vehicles to repair, and hops to string up (Nugget and Willamettes are already 2+ feet tall!!!) this weekend. I raise my glass of the quickly disappearing unicorn that is Genny Bock to each of you that suffer yourselves through my ramblings.
Have a good weekend, brew well, drink better, and don’t let the drink get the better of you.
slaves
Name subject to change…
Happy East-over to everyone. That should cover both our Christian and Jewish friends and relatives, as both holidays coincided this year (again).
Now that that is out of the way… Rochester, NY, was blessed with some unreal beautiful weather this weekend. Seriously, 86 in the first week of April for any city right on the Great Lakes is quite literally a Godsend. I just couldn’t resist finally pulling the trigger on brewing that Flanders Red style ale.
I am undecided on the name at this point. On the one hand, I want to name this Kick the Ginger. Let’s face it, this beer is going to have just about every brewing-related microbiota thrown at it. It is the red-headed step child… the one that does not belong.
On the other hand, I kind of want to tip my hat to the Flanders region of France (formerly Belgian territory), as that is the particular terroir for this beer. Being that there is a Flanders region in what is now France, I think a toast to my ancestral roots is in order… and the fact that the only war the French ever had a chance of winning was against themselves. In this instance, perhaps “Waterloo”, or “Where’s your Head, Joan d’Arc?”…
I’m open to suggestions on this one. Really, I have time. This beer won’t be ready to drink for nearly 2 years. Here is what we did for this one:
The recipe, for 5.25 gallons (brewed on 4/4/2010):
- 10lbs Munton’s Pale Malt
- 3lb Weyermann Vienna Malt
- 2lb Weyermann Light Munich Malt
- 1/2lb Weyerman Dark Munich malt
- 1/2lb Cara-Munich II
- 1/2 lb Flaked Barley
- 1/2lb Malted Wheat
- 1/4 lb Aromatic Malt
- 1 oz Hallertau Mittelfrau (1.31%AA) Added at 60 minutes
- 2 oz Czech Saaz (1.31%AA) added at 60 minutes
- WYeast 3763 Roeselare Blend yeast in a 1/3 gallon starter
There are few notes to the recipe and the batch.
- The recipe is loosely based on Jamil Zaneisheff’s Flander’s recipe as listed on the Brewing Network site http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/The_Jamil_Show_-_Flanders_Red_Ale.html
- Changes to grains and the primary yeast strain were based on what I have available to me locally, as well as notes from other brewers regarding having better success with the sourness of the Roeselare blend being the primary strain.
- Both of the hops used were aged for approximately 2.5 years. I’ve had them in the freezer since 2007, and just have not had the opportunity to use them until now. The Alpha Acid contents listed above were calculated in my trial version of Promash.
- I threw a couple of handfuls of homegrown Nugget hops into the mash, as I have heard that doing so will help to keep grain dough-balls to a minimum. FWIW, these hops have been left on the drying rack in my garage since last year’s harvest, and I only added them for the hop oils to break up the grains a little. I did not add enough to promote bittering or flavor (though the mash did have a nice fruity hop aroma to it)
- I missed the mash temperature by a few degrees. We wanted to mash at 154*F to promote mouthfeel to combat the drying action of the wild yeasts. Instead, the mash stabilized at 150*F, so I added an additional 1/2 gallon of boiling water to the mash to bring the temperature into range.
- MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR PROPANE LEVELS!!!! I was damned sure I had enough propane to eke out this brew. I turned the gas on, light the match, and barely had flame. I turned the sparge off, ran to the store, then had to run to the ATM because the store’s network was not accepting cards, then busted ass home before I lost too much heat in the boil kettle.
- The color ended up being darker than I expected at probably around 20 SRM instead of the calculated 16 SRM. It is a beautiful red color, at least.
- Throughout the boil, I added an additional 0.6 gallons of wort into the kettle to compensate for excess boil-off. This affected our brewhouse efficiency negatively, and I ended up with an original gravity of only 1.073 rather than the expected 1.085. It does work out in the end, though, as I ended up with 5.75 Gallons in the primary (plus the 1/3 gallon starter), so I hope to end up with more final product than was originally planned for. Overall efficiency for the day was 66% vs. our normal 70 – 74%.
In all, it was a great Easter for us. I got to brew beer. I got to be outside. I got to spend quality time with the kids, and kiss boo-boos and clean up driveway rash from bike spills.
