Brew Day: OG Sam Summer (29B Fruit and Spice Beer)

Ten years ago the legendary "Rock of Boston" WBCN went off the air. When it happened it was a bit of a shock to me. Toward the end of its run, I had taken my first cubicle job where I could listen to music at work, and rediscovered the station. 'BCN felt like it would be around forever. That was what my dad listened to in the car when I would tag along with him to jobs. My uncle Mike grew up on 'BCN in the '70s, and stayed with the station all through the '90s as they continued to play new artists as opposed to growing with their original audience. During my formative years the station played the bands I loved to listen to in high school and college.

Nice of Boston Beer to so perfectly describe the recipe!

Essentially the station changed formats and became a sports radio station. The morning DJs Toucher and Rich stayed on after the format change. I remember at that time Rich Shertenlieb of Toucher and Rich comparing WBCN to a restaurant everyone said they loved, but not enough people went to anymore to keep in business.

Samuel Adams Summer Ale was one of my formative craft beers. Not only was it one of the first craft beers I can remember really loving, I have so many fond memories associated with Sam Summer. As I think about those memories, most of them were in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Since that time there has been an explosion in the number of beers and craft breweries. To say nothing of New England IPA.

Brew Day: Pretzel Wheat Beer

One of my Brew Year's Resolutions was to collaborate more. The idea was to brew more with others and brew less in my hot and tiny kitchen. This brew was presented to me and is a great opportunity to do just that.

The Mass Brew Bros are two local craft beer enthusiasts who have visited every visatable brewery in Massachusetts. Their website features articles, detailed maps of every brewery in Mass broken down by region, and a list of breweries in planning that is updated almost weekly.

I originally connected with the guys on Twitter and met them in person at Sierra Nevada Beer Camp 2016 in Boston. Now that my hours have been cut at Modern Homebrew Emporium for the summer, I hope to be able to make it to one of their upcoming tastings.

Like every beer-lover should, Rob and Bob have dabbled in homebrewing in the past. They had brewed some Mr. Beer kits a long time ago. When the guys wanted to brew a pretzel wheat beer, they reached out to me for help. The inspiration for the beer was of all things Shock Top Pretzel Wheat. Say what you will about AB's crafty brand, but that beer does taste like a pretzel.

The guys sent me a recipe from Brewer's Friend and a description of the Shock Top beer. Having tasted the beer once I had a fair idea of what it should taste like. The beer is essentially a darkeer witbier with a hint of salt.

For the grist I went with Belgian Pils malt for a rich, bready malt flavor; Torrified Wheat to add a doughy flavor and add body; Caramunich as my caramel malt to match AB's description; and Special Roast to add a light toasty quality. Crafty witbiers like Shock Top Belgian White and Blue Moon have a sweeter orange flavor to me than say Newburyport Plum Island Belgian White so I added sweet orange peel. I used one quarter the amount of sea salt that I used in my Westbrook Gose clone

According to my refractometer we missed our starting gravity badly. Unfortunately I didn't have a hydrometer with me to confirm the reading. Everything else went fairly well. I was able to pack up my car and make it home by 3:00 p.m. It was amazing how quickly the day went buy brewing just one batch and not attempting any other beer-related tasks.

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Brew Day: Westbrook Gose Clone

I love German beers. When I think of German beer I think of the clean lagers, the reinheitsgebot, and maybe hefeweizen. Not all German beer is that regimented. One such style is Gose.

 
Gose (pronounced Goh-zuh) is a very light-colored, lightly sour beer that is lightly hopped and brewed with sea salt and coriander. Light and refreshing, Gose is a perfect summer beer. Not widely available until recently, examples available locally are Rising Tide Gose, Samuel Adams 26.2 which is a draught-only release along the Boston Marathon route, and Anderson Valley who also makes several Gose variants with different fruits. The best Gose I have had is not available in Massachusetts: Westbrook Gose from South Carolina.

Loading up on beer in Asheville to mule home. 

 
Westbrook Gose is highly sought after. We picked it up when we visited Asheville, North Carolina. The shop had a one six-pack per-person limit. One friend of mine traded for an entire case. I can only imagine how 24 cans were packaged in one box and shipped.

Sharing (recipes) is caring

When I first started creating my own recipes my instinct was to keep them close to the vest. What if I made an award winning beer? I can’t have people copying my award-winning, life-altering beer! What if I followed the lead of so many other homebrewers and opened a commercial brewery? I couldn’t have my trade secrets out in the ether.

 

As I brewed, I realized a few things. Most of my early, precious recipes produced middling beers at best. Stealing one of those recipes would be almost as useful as stealing my identity to sign up for a bunch of credit cards. I also came to realize that an experienced brewer with a good palate and enough time can eventually clone anything.

Brew Day: Sierra Nevada Celebration Clone (American IPA)

The first year Andy and I brewed Pa's Video Board lager, our family kicked the five gallon keg in a few hours. Last year we brewed a ten gallon batch to make sure we had enough. As it turned out our family Christmas gathering was on a Sunday and people didn't have the same beer-drinking vigor knowing they had to work on Monday. We had a ton of leftover beer. By the time all that Pa Lager was gone I think we were all bored of it.

This year I brewed a three gallon batch in honor of Pa Chalifour, but I also decided I wanted to brew another beer the family could enjoy during the holidays. My thought was to brew a West Coast IPA for my hop-loving cousins.

Name a more iconic beer. I'll wait.

As a beer drinker seasonal creep drives me nuts. I loathe it to the point that I developed the definitive guide for seasonal beer. Usually seasonal creep is an annoyance. I can still wait to buy a beer like Samuel Adams Octoberfest at the seasonably appropriate time. However, when a seasonal beer is an IPA that is best enjoyed fresh is when seasonal creep becomes problematic. The hop flavor and aroma in will diminish as it sits on the shelf.

Brew Day: Geary's Summer Ale Clone

As a homebrewer it is possible to brew hard to find beers like an Australian Sparkling Ale. It is also possible to attempt to clone specific commercial beers. Homebrew shops and websites sell tons of commercial clone kits, occasionally they have hilarious names that thinly veil the beer the kit is attempting to clone. A year ago I attempted my own clone of The Substance by Bissell Brothers Brewing in Portland, Maine. At the time it was the hot, new IPA on the market. One year later people still line up outside the brewery. This time around I am cloning a beer from New England's oldest craft brewery.

Traditional brick-lined boil kettle designed by Alan Pugsley.

DL Geary Brewing was incorporated in 1983, one year before Samuel Adams, and started producing beer in 1986. David Geary spent three years in Britain learning his trade.  He spent time at the Ringwood Brewery owned by influential English craft-beer pioneer Peter Austin. Another disciple of Peter Austin named Alan Pugsley, who would later become head brewer and partner at Shipyard Brewing, helped set up the brewery.

Tasting Notes: Welkin Ringer ESB Clone Kit

I originally bought the Welkin Ringer ESB clone kit on a whim at Beer & Wine Hobby. It was the first time in awhile I bought a kit for a style of beer I was familiar with and had brewed before. I intended to do a side-by-side tasting of the clone and the real beer, but couldn't find any after putting a low to moderate level of effort in looking for it. On Untappd, it did not appear there were a lot of recent check-ins.

Really impressive clarity.

The beer pours medium copper in color with a small, mousy white head. The low carbonation level contributes to the small head. To compensate this is a beer that benefits by being poured a little more violently. Instead of pouring along the side of the glass, pouring the beer in the middle causes the head to rouse. Not unlike how real ale is almost sprayed out of a beer engine. The beer has brilliant clarity for a beer that was unfiltered and is quite bright. The S-33 dry yeast gave the beer a perfect appearance.

Brew Day: Welkin Ringer ESB

The local homebrew shop (LHBS) can be a dangerous place to hang out. I was at Beer and Wine Hobby over a month ago to pick up some odds and ends. I ended up leaving with their Welkin Ringer ESB kit which is a clone of Mystic Brewing's beer from their Wigglesworth Series.

Bottle conditioned ESB goodness.

Often when I brew kits it is to leave my comfort zone. When I develop my own recipes I tend to drift back to the ingredients and recipes I know well and have used before. That can help master a particular beer or style, but it doesn't help a brewer grow. Developing new recipes for new styles or using a lot of ingredients for the first time is both daunting and risky. Knowing where to begin can be daunting, and the risk is your beer not coming out very good.

Tasting Notes: The Sustenance (American IPA)

This is a beer that I dedicated not one, not two, but three posts to. This was as near and dear to me as anything I have tried as a brewer, which is ironic because most of the recipe came from a professional brewer. Even though this was an extract batch where water chemistry is less important, it was still the first beer I applied what I had learned about water.

On a scale of one to ten with ten being the most satisfied, I would give the beer a seven. I did a side-by-side comparison of The Sustenance and The Substance:

My beer is on the left, Bissell's is on the right. Looks like it cleared while in the fridge

The can I cracked open was three months old, but still had a noticeable hop aroma. The clone didn't have as pronounced of an aroma, but it had slightly more hop flavor. I think the hop bag I used in an almost full carboy didn't enable enough of the hops to be in contact with the beer. I would also whirlpool for 15 minutes instead of the 20 minutes that I did to try to capture more aroma and less bitterness from the late hops.

Slightly better picture of the clone. Slightly.

I think using the campden tables to de-chlorinate the water made a huge difference. When my girlfriend tasted the beer she noticed the difference right away. She couldn't put her finger on it, but did say the beer tasted a lot better. Well, that was easy and something I should have started doing a long time ago.

If I were to do the extract version of the recipe again I would use more corn sugar and less extract to try and match the attenuation in the commercial version. Honestly, if I were to brew this again I would want to do an all-grain, or at least a partial-mash batch. I would be able to more closely match the color, and by mashing at a lower temperature create a more fermentable wort. Even adding most of the extract at the end of the boil, the clone is still noticeably darker.

As the picture shows, the clone has a much larger head. The bottles aren't gushing, but the beer is very foamy. Even when poured slowly there is a thick white clumpy head. The beer itself is almost opaque. The beer looked clear all the way until bottling. Initially I was afraid the beer became infected at bottling, but luckily the beer hasn't started gushing and it still tastes fine. Another adjustment would be to use less priming sugar.

The beer is entered in the Best of Boston Homebrew competition where I will be judging tomorrow as a final practice before my tasting exam on the 22nd. If the beer comes in with a score higher than a 30 on the BJCP 0-50 scale I will be pleased.

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Brew Day: Ballantine IPA Clone

When news came out that Pabst was going to resurrect Ballantine IPA I was certainty excited to try it. I was vaguely familiar with the Ballantine brand before the relaunch. As my strong sense of nostalgia took hold I did more research and became intrigued.

The original American IPA

Due in part to mass emigration from Germany, lager became the preeminent style of beer in the US, and internationally for that matter. Based out of Newark and founded by Scottish immigrants, Ballantine was the one major US brewery that lasted well into the 20th century brewing ales and borrowing more from British traditions. Ballantine pushed the envelope in terms of styles and flavor. It was craft beer before craft beer existed. Unfortunately the brewery lost market share and closed in 1972. After a series of corporate transactions Pabst acquired the Ballantine brand.

Brew Day: The Sustenance (Substance Ale Clone - American IPA)

Check out Cloning The Substance Part I and Part II for the recipe and the story behind it.

Steeping my specialty grains. I could also have used a muslin bag.

I designed the recipe as an extract recipe so any brewer could brew it. My last brew day was Pinch Hit Belgian Pale Ale so it was nice to have an easier brew day for a change. I steeped the flaked grains with a little 2-row in a 3 gallon stock pot. I let the grains steep for a little longer than 30 minutes as I fiddled with the recipe on BeerSmith.

Cloning The Substance - Part II

After driving home from Maine on Saturday evening and recovering from Beer Camp I was finally able to crack open a can of The Substance on Sunday. I was sure to drink slowly and critically to imagine what the ingredients were that they used. The malt was present to balance the beer, but stayed out of the way to let the hops shine. I figured the base malt was American 2-row. I didn't detect any esters from the yeast so I felt safe in assuming that the yeast was the Chico strain (S05, 1056, WLP001). 

Taking notes to create my recipe.

I was at a loss as to the hopping. Having only brewed a couple IPAs I wasn't sure where to begin. If there was one high alpha acid hop like Centennial, and lighter hops like Cascade it would be easy to ascertain that the big hop would be the bittering hop, and the lighter hops the late additions. All the hops on the chalkboard were big, high alpha hops that could be used for bittering and aroma.

Cloning The Substance - Part I

Sean, my new team lead at work might arguably be more of a beer nerd than I am. He is deliberating making the leap to start homebrewing. When it comes to appreciating craft beer Sean has me beat. Sean is all over Beer Advocate looking for new beers to try, news on when beers are being released, and looking for people in other parts of the country to trade beers with that aren't distributed locally. 

Target acquired!

When I told him my girlfriend and I were going to Portland for Beer Camp last month he told me to pick him up some of The Substance by a brewery in Portland called Bissell Brothers. I had never heard of the beer or the brewery. It took me an embarrassingly long time to remember the name of the brewery and stop calling the beer The Sustenance. I can't tell if I am getting old, if beer is effecting my brain function, or both.