Inspired by Leinenkugel's Creamy Dark. A smooth dark lager with just enough malt character to be interesting, but still approachable. Blows Negra Modello out of the water for me. I entered the beer into NHC, let's see how it does!
This was a bit of a re-brew. Last time I tried to brew a partial-mash version of this beer, the batch was infected and I had to dump it.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Brew Day: Rundown Irish Red
Time goes by so fast. You only wanna do what you think is right. You know what doesn't feel right? That I haven't brewed either of my house Irish beers in a very long time. As I have started to circle back, I contemplated re-brewing my Spring Training Stout or Rundown Irish Red.
My other impetus for brewing these beers again is the fact that these style of beers are not as prevalent as they once were. At least not as prevalent in the portfolios of American craft brewers. Gentile Brewing in my hometown is an exception as they brew a year-round stout and seasonal Irish red. Nowadays many craft stouts have some kind of adjunct like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, spices, and most are imperial in strength.
A subtle, slightly malty style like Irish Red couldn't be more different than say New England IPA. That doesn't give craft brewers impetus to brew them. Several examples are made with American malt. In a malt-driven style like this using authentic ingredients is critical. I've bought "Irish Red" ales that tasted like under-hopped American Amber Ales.
As I drink less these days, I didn't have room to put two Irish beers on tap. On tap right now I have Employee Orientation 102, the second runnings of a training beer I made with a colleague, and a re-brew of a dark lager Pulpwood Stacker. If I could only brew one, the Irish Red made the most sense.
I kicked the batch further old-school by brewing the beer with malt extract. Two cans of Muntons Maris Otter Pale extract to be exact with some steeped specialty grains. I brewed this batch the same day I brewed Thomas Brady's Ale. To heat my water for steeping my specialty grains I used the first gallon of water to come out of my immersion chiller as I started to chill my first batch. The water was piping hot and seemed to do the job just fine in terms of extracting flavor and color from my grains.
From there I strained my specialty specialty grains and collected the wort in my Mash & Boil, topped off with more water, heated up the wort to near boiling temperature, and cut the heat before adding my malt extract. The idea is to not scorch the kettle or the extract. Also, the Mash & Boil has a breaker that shuts off if the water is too low to stop the unit from heating up when it's dry. I made sure my liquid extract was fully dissolved before powering back up to get to a boil.
Every time I brew with malt extract I ask myself why I don't do it more often. Are there limitations that come with extract brewing? Yes, but every brewer has limitations of some kind. I visited a large brewery that had only just opened. The brewers stared at monitors like Homer Simpson at the nuclear power plant as almost everything in this state-of-the-art brewery was hard piped. Even touring that facility, the brewer lamented a couple bits and bobs he wished they had done differently that they had to work around.
Usually as soon as I am done brewing, my mind immediately shifts to thinking what I will brew next. Enjoying the beer is almost an afterthought. For some reason I am particularly excited to enjoy this batch. I think I am excited to enjoy a beer made with such relative simplicity. A beer where the base was malt extract, the proportion of specialty malt was small, the flavor is designed to be subtle, and the balance makes the beer crushable.
The beer is already in the keg. Pints will be enjoyed on Saint Patrick's Day!
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My other impetus for brewing these beers again is the fact that these style of beers are not as prevalent as they once were. At least not as prevalent in the portfolios of American craft brewers. Gentile Brewing in my hometown is an exception as they brew a year-round stout and seasonal Irish red. Nowadays many craft stouts have some kind of adjunct like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, spices, and most are imperial in strength.
A subtle, slightly malty style like Irish Red couldn't be more different than say New England IPA. That doesn't give craft brewers impetus to brew them. Several examples are made with American malt. In a malt-driven style like this using authentic ingredients is critical. I've bought "Irish Red" ales that tasted like under-hopped American Amber Ales.
As I drink less these days, I didn't have room to put two Irish beers on tap. On tap right now I have Employee Orientation 102, the second runnings of a training beer I made with a colleague, and a re-brew of a dark lager Pulpwood Stacker. If I could only brew one, the Irish Red made the most sense.
I kicked the batch further old-school by brewing the beer with malt extract. Two cans of Muntons Maris Otter Pale extract to be exact with some steeped specialty grains. I brewed this batch the same day I brewed Thomas Brady's Ale. To heat my water for steeping my specialty grains I used the first gallon of water to come out of my immersion chiller as I started to chill my first batch. The water was piping hot and seemed to do the job just fine in terms of extracting flavor and color from my grains.
 |
| Who needs a muslin bag? |
From there I strained my specialty specialty grains and collected the wort in my Mash & Boil, topped off with more water, heated up the wort to near boiling temperature, and cut the heat before adding my malt extract. The idea is to not scorch the kettle or the extract. Also, the Mash & Boil has a breaker that shuts off if the water is too low to stop the unit from heating up when it's dry. I made sure my liquid extract was fully dissolved before powering back up to get to a boil.
 |
| The same thing as using Maris Otter out of the sack, except I let my colleagues in Stowmarket do the mashing for me. |
Every time I brew with malt extract I ask myself why I don't do it more often. Are there limitations that come with extract brewing? Yes, but every brewer has limitations of some kind. I visited a large brewery that had only just opened. The brewers stared at monitors like Homer Simpson at the nuclear power plant as almost everything in this state-of-the-art brewery was hard piped. Even touring that facility, the brewer lamented a couple bits and bobs he wished they had done differently that they had to work around.
Usually as soon as I am done brewing, my mind immediately shifts to thinking what I will brew next. Enjoying the beer is almost an afterthought. For some reason I am particularly excited to enjoy this batch. I think I am excited to enjoy a beer made with such relative simplicity. A beer where the base was malt extract, the proportion of specialty malt was small, the flavor is designed to be subtle, and the balance makes the beer crushable.
The beer is already in the keg. Pints will be enjoyed on Saint Patrick's Day!
Follow me on Twitter @JChalifour
Like The Would-be Brewmaster on Facebook
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Brew Day: Thomas Brady's Ale (2019)
It's been two years since I brewed the first batch of Thomas Brady's Ale. Originally I had intended to brew the beer on an annual basis. Unfortunately last year I was busy settling into a new house and new job, and just never got around to it.
The idea for the beer came from my friend Eamon. Every New Years Day he brews his barleywine, ages it over the course of the year, bottles it in the fall, and opens the first bottle on New Years Eve. I brewed my batch a few days after New Years.
Brewing on a stove-top, I made my first barleywine with an obscene amount of malt extract. Now that I have both a yard to brew in where I can use my propane burner, and my Mash & Boil that is capable of a full volume boil. That makes brewing an all-grain barleywine with a grist of over 20 pounds of grain far more practical. The bones of this all-grain recipe are very similar to the original extract version.
For the last several years at Muntons our main spring barley variety has been Propino. Before I worked for the company, the North Shore Brewers had our SMaSH base malt project where members brewed beers with different base malts as a way to evaluate them. In hindsight it was fortuitous that for my SMaSH blonde the "UK 2-row" I used was Propino. Out of all the SMaSH beers brewed, I liked the one I brewed with Propino the best.
New barley varieties are developed every few years as growers seek greater yields in the field and disease resistance. In East Anglia, where Muntons sources most of its barley, Propino is on its way out and Planet is on it's way in. My craft beer customers have all switched over to Planet, as I was down to about 14 pounds of Propino. Using the last of my Propino in a special beer like Thomas Brady's Ale that will be cellared for years felt an appropriate swan song.
When I decided to brew this year's vintage as an all-grain beer, I revisited the recipe Pattinson published on his website:
It is interesting that the grist uses both pale and lager malt. English pale malt is relatively low in diastatic power. My educated guess is that the lager malt was added to help convert the un-malted wheat in the grist. Most American brewers are not familiar with lager malt, and most homebrew shops don't sell it. Lager malt is light in color like Pilsner malt, but usually doesn't have the same honey-like sweetness.
As I slowly work through a sack of wheat malt, I used wheat malt in my recipe. This makes diastatic power not a concern. Considering I didn't have any lager malt this was a good thing. I still didn't have quite enough Propino Pale Malt to replace all of the lager malt in the original recipe. As a substitute I used Muntons Super Pale Malt.
Super Pale is an awesome malt. It is the lightest colored malt Muntons makes; lighter than even its Pilsner and Lager Malts. The bag I have at home is 1.3L in color. Super Pale was designed for hoppy beers, and in this recipe will allow most of the base malt flavor to come from the Propino Pale.
The specialty malt in the 2017 vintage was a caramel rye malt, and I aged the beer on oak cubes soaked in rye whiskey. As I thought of which spirit I would use for this batch the choice that immediately came to mind was a bourbon made by one of my customers. This bourbon uses a small amount of Muntons Crystal 400 which is 150L. Since the malt is in the spirit it was natural to use it in the beer.
This was the second batch in a row where my yield was exceedingly poor. The last batch was a re-brew of Crackerjack Cream Ale I intended to enter into NHC.
My starting gravity going into the fermenter was 1.080, barely enough for the beer to be a barleywine. When my pre-boil gravity was off, I disassembled my mill as I waited for my wort to reach a boil. I found a barley kernel that may have been causing one of the rollers to jam. I cleared that out, gave the mill an overdue brushing, and reset the gap to the factory default position. Hopefully things will be back to normal during my next all-grain batch.
Follow me on Twitter @JChalifour
Like The Would-be Brewmaster on Facebook
The idea for the beer came from my friend Eamon. Every New Years Day he brews his barleywine, ages it over the course of the year, bottles it in the fall, and opens the first bottle on New Years Eve. I brewed my batch a few days after New Years.
Brewing on a stove-top, I made my first barleywine with an obscene amount of malt extract. Now that I have both a yard to brew in where I can use my propane burner, and my Mash & Boil that is capable of a full volume boil. That makes brewing an all-grain barleywine with a grist of over 20 pounds of grain far more practical. The bones of this all-grain recipe are very similar to the original extract version.
 |
| The last label from my last sack of Propino Pale Malt. |
For the last several years at Muntons our main spring barley variety has been Propino. Before I worked for the company, the North Shore Brewers had our SMaSH base malt project where members brewed beers with different base malts as a way to evaluate them. In hindsight it was fortuitous that for my SMaSH blonde the "UK 2-row" I used was Propino. Out of all the SMaSH beers brewed, I liked the one I brewed with Propino the best.
New barley varieties are developed every few years as growers seek greater yields in the field and disease resistance. In East Anglia, where Muntons sources most of its barley, Propino is on its way out and Planet is on it's way in. My craft beer customers have all switched over to Planet, as I was down to about 14 pounds of Propino. Using the last of my Propino in a special beer like Thomas Brady's Ale that will be cellared for years felt an appropriate swan song.
When I decided to brew this year's vintage as an all-grain beer, I revisited the recipe Pattinson published on his website:
It is interesting that the grist uses both pale and lager malt. English pale malt is relatively low in diastatic power. My educated guess is that the lager malt was added to help convert the un-malted wheat in the grist. Most American brewers are not familiar with lager malt, and most homebrew shops don't sell it. Lager malt is light in color like Pilsner malt, but usually doesn't have the same honey-like sweetness.
As I slowly work through a sack of wheat malt, I used wheat malt in my recipe. This makes diastatic power not a concern. Considering I didn't have any lager malt this was a good thing. I still didn't have quite enough Propino Pale Malt to replace all of the lager malt in the original recipe. As a substitute I used Muntons Super Pale Malt.
Super Pale is an awesome malt. It is the lightest colored malt Muntons makes; lighter than even its Pilsner and Lager Malts. The bag I have at home is 1.3L in color. Super Pale was designed for hoppy beers, and in this recipe will allow most of the base malt flavor to come from the Propino Pale.
The specialty malt in the 2017 vintage was a caramel rye malt, and I aged the beer on oak cubes soaked in rye whiskey. As I thought of which spirit I would use for this batch the choice that immediately came to mind was a bourbon made by one of my customers. This bourbon uses a small amount of Muntons Crystal 400 which is 150L. Since the malt is in the spirit it was natural to use it in the beer.
| Brewer: Jason Chalifour | |
| Batch Size: 5.25 gal | Style: English Barleywine (17D) |
| Boil Size: 6.85 gal | Style Guide: BJCP 2015 |
| Color: 18.8 SRM | Equipment: Mash & Boil With Cooler |
| Bitterness: 60.6 IBUs | Boil Time: 105 min |
| Est OG: 1.103 (24.5° P) | Mash Profile: Single Infusion, Medium Body, No Mash Out |
| Est FG: 1.024 SG (6.1° P) | Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage |
| ABV: 10.8% | Taste Rating: |
| Amount | Name | Type | # |
|---|---|---|---|
This was the second batch in a row where my yield was exceedingly poor. The last batch was a re-brew of Crackerjack Cream Ale I intended to enter into NHC.
My starting gravity going into the fermenter was 1.080, barely enough for the beer to be a barleywine. When my pre-boil gravity was off, I disassembled my mill as I waited for my wort to reach a boil. I found a barley kernel that may have been causing one of the rollers to jam. I cleared that out, gave the mill an overdue brushing, and reset the gap to the factory default position. Hopefully things will be back to normal during my next all-grain batch.
Follow me on Twitter @JChalifour
Like The Would-be Brewmaster on Facebook
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Tasting Notes: Pa's Lager (Pale International Lager)
I really think video is a better medium for sharing tasting notes. I have never done a great job at posting tasting notes blogs anyway.
As far as the quality of the videos I think they are getting better. This is the first one I shot in landscape! I'll see what I can do about the lighting. Wait till the end to see what the hum in the background is.
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