The United States of IPA, a project

Last year I brought one beer to the New England Homebrewers Jamboree, a Galaxy IPA part of the North Shore Brewers single hop project. For 2016 I wanted to bring more beer, and more importantly I wanted to bring some unique beers. As jamboree loomed over the horizon I racked my brain trying to think of beers that would stand out in the crowd. Standing out among the 100 beers the club will probably bring, plus beers poured by the other clubs there is not easy. My beers tend to be fairly traditional in style and ingredient selection. In comparison to some of the out-of-the-box beers other homebrewers make, my beer can sometimes feel boring to me by comparison.

As we made the trip down to Homebrew Con I had a couple of ideas kicking around, but nothing I had put pen to paper to. Jamboree is the second weekend of September, it was getting close to time to plan out what I want to brew. During my Homebrew Con recap, I glanced over the seminars for the sake of brevity. I enjoyed all of the seminars I attended, but there were two seminars that gave me inspiration for jamboree.

The very first seminar we attended was How to Brew Like An All-Star presented by Denny Conn and Drew Beechum. Denny and Drew co-authored the book Homebrew All-Stars, and run the blog Experimental Brewing. I wasn't sure exactly what the seminar would be about, but I had seen Denny on the BeerSmith Podcast several times and figured it would be interesting.

The seminar was a blast! Denny and Drew have great rapport, and Denny kept breaking out his ukulele. Jennie got a kick out of it too. I think that's when she realized that she would have at Homebrew Con too.

During the seminar, Denny and Drew broke down the four brewer personality types they identified.

• The Old-School Masters: These are brewers who focus on brewing and mastering classic, or at least conventional styles and techniques.
• The Scientists (The Process Nerds): These are brewers who continually tweak with and experiment with their brewing process.
• The Wild Ones: Brewers who will ferment anything fermentable liquid with any organism.
• The Recipe (And ingredient) Innovators: Brewers who continually push style boundaries, or use new and innovative ingredients.

They had attendees take a short quiz to determine his/her personality type. Before finishing the quiz I would have thought I was a recipe innovator. I am always working on recipes. For every batch I brew, I probably have made four times as many recipes. However, according to the results I am an old-school master. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. A recipe innovator is a brewer who invents the first pumpkin peach ale and that's not me. I came to realize that there is nothing wrong with being an old-school master, I am far from the only one out there, and being one doesn't make me a bad brewer.

How to Brew Like an All-Star was a seminar I knew I wanted to attend from the beginning. Unfortunately, it is impossible to attend every seminar because there are several different ones going on at the same time. At 10:15 a.m. on Saturday there were about four seminars I was interested in. At the last second I decided to check out Regional American IPA: What's Up with All the Crystal Malt?. The seminar was presented by Favio Garcia, co-founder of Lost Rhino Brewing in Ashburn, VA; Carrie Knose, co-owner of Living the Dream Brewing in Denver; and Paul Sangster, co-owner of Rip Current Brewing in San Diego. This seminar was awesome!

All three of the presenters discussed the regional differences in IPAs in their respective areas. They discussed the IPAs their breweries make, other prominent IPAs from their regions, and discussed some of the common characteristics of IPA within their region. To further illustrate the regional differences, each brewer brought an IPA to represent their region: Face Plant by Lost Rhino, Empty Trophy Case by Living the Dream, and What's Up with All the Crystal Malt?, a collaboration by Living the Dream and Rip Tide to represent contemporary West Coast IPAs brewed just for the seminar.

The presenters did briefly discuss hazy New England pale ales and IPA. Being from New England, visiting Trillium, Maine, and Vermont it is certainly a style I am familiar with. I have also brewed Fort
Dummer and Alan's Stepchild in the "New England" style.

Sometime after the seminar I realized exactly what I wanted to brew for jamboree: The United States of IPA! I will brew all three regional variants discussed in the seminar along with a New England IPA. Instead of trying to come up with the craziest recipe, ingredient, or process, I could stay in my wheelhouse and be the "old-school master" that I am. All four beers will be original recipes, no clone brews.

By grouping four distinct IPAs to jamboree, grouping them together, attendees will be able to taste the regional differences first hand. It should be a great way to brew and bring "regular" beer and present it in an engaging way people can be excited about.

As an added wrinkle the four recipes will all be completely different; none of the beers will have any ingredients in common. There will not be a single malt, hop, or yeast in common. This is partly to account for the regional differences, but primarily it is a way to have fun and use different ingredients.

Jamboree is the weekend after Labor Day. To have these done in time I need to get brewing!

Audio recordings and PowerPoint slides of the above Homebrew Con seminars are available here to all American Homebrewers Association Members.

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Jamboree 2016! Beer people are the best people

Last year Jennie and I were only able to make it up to the New England Homebrewers Jamboree, or Jambo for Saturday afternoon. The event starts on Friday night, goes all day Saturday, and most attendees camp Saturday night and pack up on Sunday morning.

I enjoyed lots of great beer. But over a course of two days they did kind of run together. For next year I might bring a notepad to take down some quick tasting notes. At least then I can go back and have a chance to have a better recollection.

Friday night featured an authentic, German-style dinner. Think sausages, sauerkraut, dilled carrots, strudel. The food was excellent. I love how Oktoberfest has become almost like a German St. Patrick’s Day where everyone, even people who aren’t German, can celebrate German culture, especially German beer!

Jambo organizers encouraged everyone to bring German-style beers for Friday night. I didn’t have time to brew another beer, but I did have some bottles of a bock that I brewed over two years ago. At the time it was one of the best beers that I had brewed, and it really has held up nicely. The feedback the beer received was positive. The 12 bottles I brought didn’t last the night. This is a recipe I would love to revisit in the future when I have the equipment to make lagers again.

Jennie and I parked our cars and set up our tent right across from where the Metro South Homebrew League were set up. I met those guys at other events, including Homebrew Con. As the night wound down we hung out with those guys, shared some beers and grilled cheese sandwiches. On Saturday I beat club member Vinny in the worst game of Beirut in the history of the sport to win a club-branded glass.

I set up my beer at the North Shore Brewers tent on Friday night, and on Saturday morning we iced everything down. Shortly after setting up, Michael Scroth co-founder of Stone Path Malts walked up to our club’s tent to talk about his malt. I pulled him over to show him the beer I made with his malt. He was excited to try it and really enjoyed the beer. The passion he has for his malt was obvious. I look forward to brewing with Stone Path Malts again. 

Jamboree was my first time to try three of the US of IPA beers. The idea was to have a vertical where attendees tried all of them and noted the regional differences. Jambo is too crazy to conduct anything that orderly. I was able to pull a couple of people aside, including Dave Rowland co-owner of SoMe Brewing.

SoMe is run by a father and son team. When Jennie and I visited SoMe during Portsmouth Beer Week 2015 we met Dave’s father David at the brewery. I also told him how we rented the Granite State Growler Tour bus for a bachelor party, and how it got out of hand. Evidently our group earned something of a reputation as he remembered hearing about our antics. He introduced me to Butch Heilshorn the owner of Earth Eagle Brewings. I was able to apologize for some things I said online that I probably should not have. Butch couldn’t have been more cool or understanding.

What is great is that two professional brewers went out of their way to attend a homebrew event. Dave was there with his club. I also met some awesome brewers while judging in the competition. When I say that beer people are the best people, in my experience beer people are the most engaging, irreverent, and approachable group of people I have come across. 

Next time I’m at Jamboree I’ll make more of an effort to find some beer inspiration. At its core beer is often more about the people than the liquid (as long as the interaction isn’t forced). Events like Jamboree are a reminder of that. 

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Brew Day: US of IPA – Broken Fist IPA (West Coast IPA)

The US of IPA is a project where I will brew four regionally inspired American IPAs. I will be pouring all four at the North Shore Brewers tent New England Homebrewers Jamboree. Jamboree is an event open to the public to benefit Make a Wish. Tickets are available here.

Regional IPA sub-styles are a funny thing. There are and have been brewers on the West Coast making pale, hazy, and hoppy ales not unlike New England IPA. One of the most highly regarded IPAs in the Midwest, Modus Hoperandi by Ska Brewing is as dark in color as any East Coast IPA. For a while on the East Coast any IPA that was aggressively hopped and/or bitter was marketed or described as a "West Coast IPA" as a way to differentiate the beer from the darker, more balanced, and more English in character IPAs that were prevalent on the East Coast.

Somewhere along the line I had it in my head that a West Coast IPA was supposed to be bitter. There certainly are prominent examples that are like Sierra Nevada Tumbler, and most of the IPAs produced by Stone. I was surprised during the Regional American IPA: What's Up with All the Crystal Malt seminar at Homebrew Con when Paul Sangster, co-owner of Rip Current Brewing in San Diego described the IPAs in San Diego as being low in bitterness and high in aromatics. I actually stepped to the microphone during the end of the seminar for the Q & A session to ask about this dichotomy. Sangster's short answer was that the bitter West Coast IPA was falling out of favor to a degree, at least in the San Diego area, as less bitter and highly aromatic IPAs are becoming increasingly popular. It reminded me of how hazy New England IPAs are gaining in popularity compared to the traditional East Coast IPA.

The first batch of Broken Fist IPA was so good and so well received by everyone on Memorial Day weekend the consensus was that I had to brew it again. During the seminar the characteristics of IPAs in San Diego Sangster described matched Broken Fist perfectly. I had brewed an example of the style without even knowing it! It is the perfect West Coast IPA to brew for my US of IPA project. . I scaled up the recipe to a six-gallon batch. I plan to bring three gallons of each IPA to jamboree, but I want to have plenty of Broken Fist to share with friends who won't be at jamboree and to enter into competitions.

The only way I could brew six gallons in my apartment would be to brew two separate three gallon batches. That would be an eight to nine-hour brew day. No thanks! I texted Andy about having another brew day, but only a few weeks after he brewed The Commonwealth vs. Chalifour, and having a newborn, it was probably too soon to for another brew day at "Cabot Street Brewery". Luckily, Adam loved the original Broken Fist so much, he volunteered his backyard. I packed up all my gear just like I had for the North Shore Brewers beer camp.

I made a few additional tweaks from the original recipe for batch number two. I was also able to buy eight ounces of Citra hops for this batch, while I had to make due with only two ounces for my previous three-gallon batch. I want this batch to have an even more assertive hop aroma. Beyond the additional dry hops, I am increasing the bitterness just a little bit as I thought the only flaw in the first batch was that it was slightly sweet.

For water I used all distilled and added salts to get the water profile exactly as I wanted it. I did this for a few reasons: I don't know the water profile for Peabody like I do for Beverly, the water in San Diego is very soft, and I wanted to be sure high chloride water wouldn't make the beer too malty.

After loading and unloading all my gear, the brew day itself was okay. We spilled some spent grain which attracted a bunch of birds to Adam's backyard. I forgot to bring a thermometer, so I couldn't check my mash temperature and I estimated the temperature of my sparge water. I trusted Beer Smith's calculations and just let the mash sit in my modified cooler. After sparging I filled my eight-gallon kettle almost to the very top. I watched that kettle like a hawk to make sure the wort didn't boil over onto Adam's patio.

I used a batch sparge. Essentially I added a little more than half of the water I needed to the mash, stirred the mash once it was done, drained it as quickly as possible, added my sparge water, stirred, and drained again. Whereas when I brew with Andy we will fly sparge, and slowly sprinkle the sparge water over the grain bed like a coffee maker.

My original gravity and volume were both short. I ended up with a little over five gallons. I don't think I took the volume of hops into consideration enough. This was only my second batch with my cooler and propane burner. It is a matter of getting used to my system which will happen the more I use it. As I was running my wort chiller it started to sprinkle. I moved the wort into the fermenter, brought it home, and used my trusty swamp bucket to bring my wort down to fermentation temperature before pitching my yeast.

One down, three to go! I will probably brew my three other IPAs in my apartment as three-gallon brew-in-a-bag batches. Hopefully the heat isn't oppressive when I do.

Click here for the recipe.

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Tasting Notes: The United States of IPA

I am terrible when it comes to posting tasting notes for my beers. I’m lucky if I get around to writing up my impressions on half of my batches. In the future I think I’ll do some catch-up pieces where I write some quick impressions of several beers.

The US of IPA is the perfect time for me to test out this concept. I brought the beers to Jamboree, and with all that goes on at Jambo I didn’t exactly have time to hold each beer up to the light to note the appearance, and then swirl the beer around to rouse the head and make a detailed description of the aroma.

Broken First IPA (West Coast IPA): I think I nailed the recipe. The extra Citra that I didn’t have for batch one gave the beer a much more prominent hop flavor. I ran into a coworker who was attending Jambo for the first time. He tasted all four of the beers and enjoyed this one the best.

Dave Rowland from SoMe Brewing said he got a very low level of oxidation from it. Oxidation may be an off-flavor he is more sensitive to than others, especially as a commercial brewer. Broken Fist was the only beer of the group that I racked to a secondary fermenter which could explain the oxidation Since the beer was double dry-hopped, I didn’t want the beer sitting on the first dry hop for too long. Broken Fist was also the first of the four that I brewed making it the least fresh.

To improve the beer going forward is more about improving my process than the recipe. Dave said when I think I purged my keg with CO2 enough, to go ahead and purge some more. If I rack to a secondary fermenter, that should be purged also. Next time I would need to brew more wort to account for the huge amount of hop absorption.

Ideally I would cold crash the beer and use a fining agent like gelatin to help with clarity.

Age of Sail IPA (East Coast IPA): This beer proves that an IPA can showcase a rich and complex malt profile. I learned at Jamboree that Stone Path Malt while based in New England that the malt is actually malted in Germany at a family-owned malthouse in Bavaria. Even if the malt doesn’t have a New England terrior, the traditionally produced malts were perfect for this traditional IPA. Michael Scroth, co-founder of Stone Path really enjoyed the beer.  I look forward to using their products more in the future. The Ringwood Ale yeast with its medium attenuation accentuated the malt flavor perfectly.

Hop bitterness was sufficient, while the hop flavor was perhaps a touch low. If I brewed this again I would probably substitute the Mt. Hood hops for Crystal or Cascade, increase the hops late in the boil and dry hops slightly. For a first brew I was quite happy with it. The 3 gallon keg kicked at Jamboree. It is comforting to know I am not the only person who still appreciates a more traditional, balanced IPA.

Flyover IPA (Midwest IPA): Not only was this the last recipe I finished putting together, it was the last name I came up with. I wish I did a little more research on the name as there are several commercial beers with the same or similar names.

The beer itself is rock solid and felt like a quality representation of Midwest IPAs. It was hoppier than Age of Sail, and maltier than Broken Fist. The underlying malt flavor was clean and slightly sweet. It was also not too sweet that the mash clashed with the citrusy hop flavor. I think the hop profile was perfect for this beer. Flyover was the only keg not to kick at Jambo. I look forward to revisiting it again and seeing if I enjoy it as much as I did at Jamboree.

 

Haze for Daze IPA (New England IPA): I couldn’t have been happier with this brew. It had the characteristic “juicy” hop flavor and soft mouthfeel. I think increasing my flaked adjuncts really enhanced the latter.

I got similar fruit esters from the Giga Yeast Vermont Ale yeast as I’ve gotten from Heady Topper and beers I’ve made with The Yeast Bay’s Vermont Ale. That really complimented the fruity hops used in the beer. The Pearl malt gave the beer a light sweetness which added further complexity.

This beer is another keeper. I would love to brew exactly the same recipe, but with three different hops varieties.

In all I would say the project was a success. I was able to brew with a wide variety of different ingredients, combine different flavors, and make four unique beers that all fall within the same style.

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New England Homebrewers Jamboree

This year I have rejoined and have been more active with the Northshore Brewers. This year was also my first year attending the New England Homebrewers Jamboree. The club brought an astounding 100 beers to the event. I brought a keg of the Galaxy IPA, and several other members brought their single hop beers.

That's my beer!

In hindsight I wish I had planned ahead and brought some of my better beers like Curly's Milk Stout, Camp Randall Red IPA, or Walk-Off White. The club had a series of randalls set up including a coconut porter randalled through fresh coconut, fruit beers randalled through fresh fruit. A fresh batch of Walk-Off White randalled through fresh orange peel would be awesome.

Brew Day: US of IPA – Flyover IPA (Midwest IPA)

The  US of IPA  is a project where I will brew four regionally inspired American IPAs. I will be pouring all four at the North Shore Brewers tent  New England Homebrewers Jamboree. Jamboree is an event open to the public to benefit Make a Wish. Tickets are available  here.

With the first three IPAs that I brewed I had a few concepts simple concepts to wrap my head around: New England IPA: hazy appearance, juicy hop flavor, soft mouthfeel; East Coast IPA: balanced with an English influence; West Coast IPA: blonde color and highly aromatic. Leaving the relatively new New England IPA to the side, Midwest IPAs are somewhere in the middle between an East Coast and West Coast IPA. Hoppy, but not the one-dimensional hop bombs you find on the West Coast. They are balanced and malty, but not usually as dark and caramelly as an East Coast IPA. Examples that you can buy in Massachusetts would be Anti Hero IPA by Revolution, Founders Centennial IPA.

Out of all of my IPA recipes, the Midwest IPA was the last to come together. Without a couple of bullet points I knew I needed to hit, I put off designing the recipe. During the Regional American IPA: What’s Up with All the Crystal Malt? seminar, Carrie Knose singled out Modus Hoperandi by Ska Brewing as a beer she always goes back to. I found a clone of Modus and used that as my starting point.

Modus is noticeably darker than most Midwest IPAs which is another reminder that these regional differences aren’t absolutes. There is no Maginot Line that once crossed IPAs become dramatically different. Since I want my beers to be representative of these regional differences, I went about lightening the color of beer. I still used 120L Crystal malt, but I lowered the percentage of the grist. To compensate for the loss in body and head retention from decreasing the crystal malt, I added a small amount of malted wheat. Whereas Broken Fist used Briess 2-row barley, I used Great Western 2-row. I also used some Vienna malt to add a light toasted quality. On brew day I threw in a few ounces of Weyerman Dark Munich malt when I was a couple ounces short of Caramel 120.

Once I had the malt color and flavor where I wanted in my head, it was time to focus on the hops; this is an IPA after all! When looking over the recipes for Broken Fist,
Haze for Daze, and Age of Sail I had a few great IPA hops I hadn’t used yet: Simcoe, Centennial, and Amarillo. Centennial is the single hop used in one of the great Midwest IPAs: Bell’s Two Hearted. Not available in Massachusetts, I always seek out Two Hearted when I am in a state that Bell’s distributes to. When I was struggling for ideas for a Midwest IPA, I thought about brewing a Two Hearted Clone. Needless to say Centennial is perfect for a Midwest IPA.

Simcoe is very sticky and piney. Simcoe is synonymous with West Coast IPAs, Pliny the Ender in particular. I used Simcoe for bittering, and judiciously later on to add complexity while trying to make sure it doesn’t throw off the balance. Amarillo is one of the most popular aroma hops used in IPAs. I added some at flameout, and will have Amarillo make up a plurality of the dry hops. Taking a cue from Carrie’s beer, there will be one dry hop for ten days.

For my yeast I was debating using a more balanced strain like Wyeast 1272, or trying to culture up Bell’s house yeast from Oberon bottle dregs. I went back through the Regional American IPA presentation slides and remembered that Carrie said that while her house strain is Dry English Ale, most brewers in the Midwest use Chico. Having had a bad experience with Dry English Ale fermenting at too high of a temperature, I wasn’t about to try again in the middle of August. Beyond that Chico made sense to me on a couple of levels. It is the most common yeast used in the Midwest; Dale Katechis of Oskar Blues said on Brew Dogs that it is their house strain. At its core Midwest IPA is a middle-of-the-road IPA. If I am going to brew a representative example, using a neutral yeast like Chico makes sense. I also had a free sachet of Mangrove Jack’s M44 (presumably their version of Chico) from Homebrew Con. With all of the brewing I have to do before Jamboree, being able to use a dry yeast means it’s one less yeast starter I have to worry about.

After missing my target volume on my last two three gallon BIAB batches, I adjusted my settings in BeerSmith and was right on the money with my target volume this time. If there is one thing I can take away from this project it has helped me dial in my system through sheer repetition. The only difficulty I had was chilling my wort. When the ground water is warm like it is in the summer there is less of a difference in temperature between the water you are using to chill your beer and the beer itself. I had to let the beer chill overnight before pitching my yeast. I ended up using a swamp cooler when I brewed Haze for Daze.

I almost had enough beer to fill the keg. I did a better job accounting for boil off, but didn’t account for hop absorption. I won’t be able to taste this beer until everyone else does at Jamboree.

Click here for the recipe.

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Just when you think you have it all figured out....

I was feeling pretty good. On the heels of my imperial stout advancing to the final round of the National Homebrew Competition, I won a medal at the New England Regional Homebrew competition with my Olde North Shore Ale and an Honorable Mention for Fredward Wit. 

For a beer that was three months old to medal at the largest competition in New England is pretty good.

Those were the only two competitions I had entered all year. Advancing at NHC was always a goal, but entering NERHBC was a bit of a lark. The two beers I entered were brewed for an event in July, not a competition in October. This year at Jamboree, Mike Shea from our club cleaned up with five medals. Ray Pickup, who is planning to open Rockport Brewing, was also at jamboree encouraging everyone else in the club to enter more beers next year.

A friend of mine who is a professional brewer also entered the competition at jamboree. I may be way off here, but I had the sense he was on pins and needles hoping his beer would win. It is also possible I was projecting what my feelings own would have been if I had entries. Deep down in places I don't talk about at parties, I am hyper-competitive. More accurately I hate losing. It rook me years to learn how to deal with failure. It probably took me longer than most well-adjusted adults.

Anyway, being around competitive people including another industry professional motivated me to enter the largest homebrew competition in New England. After entering two big competitions and winning two medals I was starting to feel pretty good about myself.

The next competition was Ales over ALS. While not a BJCP competition, I do want to win Ales over ALS after a couple near-misses. I brewed a wet hop IPA with my homegrown Chinook. It was a way to bring a one-of-a-kind beer to the event, and have a story for attendees at the event who aren't brewers or craft beer nerds.

The first time I tapped the keg was at the event. I got lemon and a some astringency in the finish. With over a pound of wet hops in a five gallon batch I expected some citrus and even some chlorophenols from all of that hop material in the kettle.

The attendees liked it enough, but two of the judges absolutely destroyed it. Both complained of acetaldehyde. The most common flavor descriptors for acetaldehyde are green apple like what is found in low levels in Budweiser and Bud Light,. The other common descriptors are raw pumpkin or pumpkin guts.

I was incredulous. Firstly, I didn't think the beer was problematic. If it was, I should have known better and caught it myself. Secondly my ego was bruised to have my beer torn to shreds by people I know and generally respect.  By the time I received my scoresheets I had already started breaking down. I went so far as to reconnect the keg and taste the beer again. I concluded that the judges probably were right. That meant I had been pouring problematic beer for four hours. Great.

All that was left was to figure out what went wrong. Acetaldehyde can be caused by fermentation problems. The original yeast I pitched never quite took off and I had to pitch dry yeast. Maybe the sluggish fermentation caused the acetaldehyde normally produced during fermentation not to be processed by the yeast. Acedaldehyde can also be caused by bacteria. The oxidation of acedaldehyde can also create acetic acid. That would explain the lemon that I was getting.

A couple weeks after brewing the wet hop beer, I brewed eight one-gallon batches for a Muntons sales meeting. I brewed the beers to showcase our malts as well as some of our competitors malts in a finished beer. I fermented in eight brand new one-gallon growlers. Each beer was over-pitched with half a sachet of dry yeast. Fermentation in all eight vessels was vigorous enough that it should have cleaned up any chemical byproducts during fermentation.  ALL EIGHT of those batches were acetaldehyde-bombs. Not only did I waste two days brewing and one day bottling those batches, I now have to fill that time at our meeting where we would have been tasting those beers.

If that wasn't enough, Jennie found a pellicle growing on a brown ale that was my most-recent batch.  A different beer, in a different vesel, with a different infection made it crystal clear I had a sanitation problem. I have been using an acid-based sanitizer Star San for years. Either something changed in the water supply in terms of alkalinity or mineral contact that is affecting the effectiveness of the Star San, or my Star San is just old.

After dumping 13 gallons of beer, I took every piece of equipment that touched beer recently, hoses, siphons, carboys, growlers, and sanitized it all the old-fashioned way: with bleach! Excuse me while I cry into a commercial beer.

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Brew Day: Salted Caramel Brown Ale

With Jamboree approaching, I had already decided I wanted to brew my IPAs for my Untied States of IPA project, but Jennie had decided she wanted to brew her own beer to bring. I would periodically ask her over the course of several weeks if she had started on her recipe or had any ideas. By the end of July time was no longer on our side.

I wanted to be helpful and make suggestions without her beer becoming my beer. After she designed her Shareholder’s Saison I knew she was more of a “recipe innovator” in contrast to myself who is more of an “old-school master”. I scanned through the archive’s of Jennie’s cooking blog to try and find some culinary inspiration. When I scrolled down to her Salted Caramel Cookie Cups (amazing!! BTW) I suggested a salted caramel beer. Jennie loved the idea and was all-in.

We went back and forth trying to figure out what should a salted caramel beer should taste like and how to design the recipe. I started with a Southern English/London Brown Ale as the base style as it is sweeter and more caramelly. I designed my recipe to use rich, dark caramel malts. From there I added some light brown sugar to boost the gravity and alcohol of the beer while still providing a lighter underlying sweetness. The idea was to then blend in the salted caramel.

The recipe was a five gallon extract batch with some steeping grains. After four separate all-grain IPA batches in short succession, a quick and easy extract batch was just what the doctor ordered.

Somehow the Caramel 120 malt that I purchased for the Flyover IPA ended up in this beer. I ended up steeping three different caramel malts, all 80L and darker. To add a more lighter sweetness and boost the gravity I also added a pound of brown sugar.

In the end we never ended up having time to blend in actual salted caramel. When I kegged the beer I blended in caramel syrup and salt to taste. My fear is that the underlying beer is going to be too dark and will dominate the caramel and salt.

I kegged the beer and hoped for the best. Jennie really wanted to make a salted caramel beer. I’m afraid she is going to be disappointed with how it comes out. I am already thinking about how to completely re-imagine this beer if it is a dud at Jamboree.

See the full recipe here.

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Tasting Notes – Catching up on past beers Part II

This is a belated Part II where I post some thoughts and reflections on beers I brewed in 2016. Click here for Part 1.

Salted Caramel Brown Ale – The other batch we brewed for Jamboree. Adding the actual salted caramel was an afterthought, which given the name of the beer was something of a problem. In a pinch I added Hershey’s caramel syrup and sea salt to taste when I kegged the beer. The beer didn’t have enough time to naturally carbonate in time for jambo. In the end the beer was a decent enough brown ale, with a slight hint of salt and caramel. I promised Jennie I would go back to the drawing board before brewing another salted caramel beer. I still have most of the keg in the basement. I think I will break it out for the North Shore Brewers holiday party in January. Rating 3 out of 5.

NSB SMaSH Base Malt – I jotted down some quick thoughts on the other SMaSH beers brewed by other club members. All of the beers were fairly boring, because the beer was designed to be boring. The point of the exercise was to taste the flavor contributions of various base malts.

The ingredient variable aside, having brewed basically the same recipe as several other brewers, my batch more than held its own. After my Galaxy IPA from the club’s single hop project finished overly dry last year, having this year’s club project beer be as solid as it was validates my brewing process as much as anything. I packaged the beer in four half-gallon flip-top growlers. I opened one at the club picnic. I brought two to jamboree to be served along with the club’s other SMaSH beers. I ended up dumping most of those when I needed to fill the growlers with leftover Broken Fist. Alas, I still have one growler left. Rating 3.75 out of 5.

Commonwealth v Chalifour – This was a tripel recipe I developed, that Andy and his brother AJ brewed. After rushing to have it ready for AJ’s 30th birthday party, we weren’t able to bottle the beer in time. Andy and I each kept four bottles, and gave the rest to AJ. I thought it was pretty good, if perhaps a little light for the style. Jennie said she got some sourness in the flavor. I didn’t really get it. I shared a bottle with the manager at the Modern Homebrew Emporium as part of my “liquid resume”. Plenty of esters from the Belgian yeast. Rating 3.5 out of 5.

Summer Somewhere 2016 – I had originally planned to bring this beer to Beans N Brews in June. However I let the beer sit in the secondary for too long before packaging, and it was not ready for the event. I ended up bringing bottles of Fort Dummer instead.  I ended up bringing a keg of Summer Somewhere to AJ’s birthday party in lieu of the not-quite-ready Commonwealth v Chalifour.

The London Ale 1318 yeast definitely threw more fruit flavor into the beer than the Irish Ale 1084 I used in the 2015 version. The Styrian Bobek hops gave the beer more of a pilsner-type flavor. The beer tasted far more European than the citrus bomb that the 2015 version hopped with Galaxy was.

I brought a one gallon polypin to a North Shore Brewers meeting. The beer had fallen off considerably by then, but was still drinkable.

At AJ’s party there was a half-barrel keg of Samuel Adams Summer Ale and a quarter-barrel keg of Harpoon IPA. That my 3 gallon keg kicked that night is a point of pride. This is a beer I will brew every year. I might play around with different ingredients, but the bones of the recipe will never change. Rating 4.25 out of 5.

Fort Dummer – It’s never good when you find two ounces of hops in the freezer and realize they were supposed to go into the beer you just bottled. The batch was still pretty good. The folks at Beans N Brews enjoyed it even though they were expecting an English summer ale. When I drank it I kept thinking about the missing hops and in my mind the beer should have been better. When brewing four IPAs at once for my United States of IPA project, I made sure to pre-measure and label every dry hop addition to avoid making the same mistake again. Rating 3.5 out of 5.

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I actually won something

In my recent post Making hard cider at home, I admitted that the only medal I had ever won in a competition was for a cider. I was hoping to change that last year as I vowed to enter more competitions. I didn't brew quite as much in 2016 as I had in 2015. A lot of what I brewed last year was for events like Jamboree and Ales over ALS. Entering more of my beers into competitions was one of my Brew Year's Resolutions.

I had gotten great feedback on my latest batch Pa's Lager. Before that I entered Pa's Lager and Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout into a competition in Portland, ME: the Groundhogs Day Homebrew Competition 2017 run by the Portland Mashing Maineiacs. Additionally I volunteered to judge in the competition. I'll take a built-in excuse to visit Portland. I made time to stop by Foundation and D.L. Geary's before heading home.

The competition wasn't huge with only around 100 entries. The categories were grouped into six different "tables" from which awards were given. I judged American Ales, American Porters, and American Stouts with a brewer and judge named Doug who is from nearby Swampscott, Mass. He was also a Certified BJCP judge and additionally he is a Certified Cicerone. Our scores tended to diverge a bit, but we were able to reach easy consensuses for the winners of both flights we judged.

Of the two beers I entered I probably had higher hopes for the Pumpkin Milk Stout. I was really happy with how that beer came out, and I thought it was a more forgiving beer and would better mask any flaws or off-flavors. After Doug and I finished our flights, I was milling around and saw the table where all of the judged beers were lined up. As I looked for my entries and any hopes I had of the Pumpkin Milk Stout placing were dashed. I found the bottle of Pumpkin Milk Stout with dried foam on the outside. If my beer gushed, there was no chance it would win anything.

The steward from that table told me the beer didn't gush when opened, but it did slowly foam after opening. I took a swig from the already judged bottle. It didn't taste offensive, but it clearly had fallen off from even a month earlier.

What I didn't find was Pa's Lager. The Best-in-Show judging was being conducted in a separate room that I could see into through a large window. I saw the bottles in contention for BOS on a table and I was pretty sure I saw a bottle with a yellow cap with the top filled in with black ink. Was that Pa's Lager? It certainly looked like it.

I made sure not to let myself get too excited, but as soon as I got home I kept refreshing the competition's website waiting for the winners to be announced. Finally, late on Monday night I saw this:

Pa's Lager finished in first place at it's table! After four years of brewing I finally have brewed a beer that medaled in a competition. I woke Jennie up to tell her and she was so happy and supportive. I shared the news with my family on social media. That a beer brewed in honor of Pa Chalifour won an award meant a lot to them also. 

For me as a brewer I was happy to receive the acknowledgement. In the past I have entered beer into competitions that I had high hopes for, but the entries maybe were not at the peak of freshness like the Pumpkin Milk Stout or I had entered "bad bottles" that were infected while the rest of the batch was fine. Some of the beers I have brewed that I thought were the best were made in too small of a quantity, or were consumed at an event like Jamboree, and couldn't be entered. This time everything came together. 

This past Saturday I received my scoresheets via email. Pa's Lager was judged by two professional brewers who gave it an score of 43.5. That is by far the best score I have ever received in a competition. Curly's Pumpkin Milk Stout received a 26. The beer did gush. The judges thought the beer was thin and too spicy. That is further evidence that the bottle was infected because having designed and tasted the beer myself, the beer was neither when it was young. 

Now, was this the biggest competition? In terms of number of entries it wasn't. I am entering three different beers in the Ocean State Homebrew Competition which should have five or six times the number of entries. I also applied for three entries into the National Homebrew Competition, the largest competition in the country. 

I have several projects I am working on at the moment. A couple of them are beer-related so check this space for details. The key is balancing work, brewing, and life in general. I need to keep my pipeline of fresh beer churning if I want to keep doing well in competitions. If I want to go to the next level, a closet full of medals will only help the cause and give me credibility.

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Brew Day: US of IPA – Haze for Daze IPA (New England IPA)

The  US of IPA  is a project where I will brew four regionally inspired American IPAs. I will be pouring all four at the North Shore Brewers tent  New England Homebrewers Jamboree. Jamboree is an event open to the public to benefit Make a Wish. Tickets are available  here.

Commercial beers change over time. Even when they are purported to be the exact same as they have always been, they will evolve as ingredients and processes change. More often though, a commercial brewer will make changes to a beer that they think will make the beer better. One beer that has changed is Bissell Brothers The Substance. On the right is The Substance purchased in August 2014, and on the left is The Substance as it appears in August 2016.

 

When I cloned the beer two years ago the grist was 86% 2-row, 7% flaked barley, and 7% flaked rye. The finished beer was quite clear; especially compared to hazy New England IPAs. Over time the appearance of the beer has changed. Since I only pick up cans a few times a year it is easy for me to spot, but the beer has definitely gotten hazier.

Beyond just the appearance I do get a slickness in the mouthfeel consistent with oats, while I no longer get any noticeable rye flavor. Maybe this is just my visual bias, meaning I see a hazy beer and based on what I see I start to feel and taste things based on what I am seeing. With that caveat, my guess is that Bissell Brothers replaced the flaked rye with flaked oats. The hop flavor and aroma feels similar but if a blend of six or seven hops is changed it is hard to identify a major difference.

When I started planning my New England IPA for the US of IPA my starting point was The Sustenance, but I wanted to adjust the recipe to make the beer more like how The Substance is now and not how it was in 2014. I wasn't going to be married to the hops from The Sustenance recipe. On a podcast Noah Bissell said he designed The Substance to use less sought-after hop varieties. As a new, tiny brewer it would be difficult to obtain in-demand hops like Citra and Mosaic. In that spirit my original plan was to buy the least expensive American hops I could find and make a hazy version of The Sustenance. Then I realized I had all of these free hops from Homebrew Con. What is cheaper than free?

I used three new hop varieties. I had four ounces of Pekko which I found the aroma to be quite tart and citrusy, almost lime-like. I also had two ounces of 007 hops which I found to be equal parts citrusy, herbal and spicy. For my dry hops I added an ounce of Triple Pearle which was similar to 007, if perhaps a bit more spicy and peppery.

In the interest of variety, I switched out the base malt from The Sustenance with Pearl malt which is what The Alchemist is rumored to use in Heady Topper. Drawing further inspiration from Heady, I chose to use Vermont Ale yeast. The Conan strain as it's called has an obscenely high attenuation. It will convert more sugars into alcohol than almost any other British or American strain (Conan is rumored to be English in origin). I added a higher percentage of flaked oats and wheat to try and make sure the beer doesn't finish too dry.

I haven't used Conan in two years. When I last used it, I harvested some yeast and froze it for future use. When freezing yeast two things are critical: you need to blend in one-part glycerin and two parts water before freezing, and you need to make sure the yeast doesn't thaw at all in the freezer. The glycerin protects the yeast cell walls from being punctured by frozen water crystals. Thawing and refreezing, which is essentially how a frost-free freezer works, puts the yeast's cell walls at risk each time it freezes. To hedge against this, I packed the yeast in a bag with an ice pack to try and make sure the yeast stayed frozen.

To try and revive my frozen Conan I let it thaw slowly in the refrigerator. I then added it to a diluted 800ML yeast starter and let it go on my stir plate. It took almost two days for there to be the faintest sign of any fermentation. I didn't trust that I had enough viable cells, so I bought a package of Giga Yeast's Vermont IPA strain. The nice thing about their packaging is that it comes with a "double pitch" which contains double the cells that Wyeast or White Labs include in their packages. I was able to pitch the package directly into my wort while still ensuring I had a proper pitching rate.

 

This was the final batch I brewed (if not blogged about) as part of the project. I had planned to brew all of the US of IPA beers during my vacation. That turned out to be too much brewing in too short of a period of time. I brewed this batch on a Wednesday night during the biggest heat wave of the year. Even with my air conditioner on high all day, the temperature didn't get much below 80F. I was able to use a swamp cooler to allow my beer to ferment in the high 60s.

As a kicker while I was brewing I realized I still hadn't packaged Broken Fist. I had planned to take care of that on Sunday, but ended up going to Lynch Park for the Homecoming fireworks instead. The beer being in contact with the dry hops for a few extra days isn't the worst thing in the world. I am glad the beer wasn't in contact with the dry hops for more than two weeks. That would have imparted plenty of grassy notes. Especially with the amount of hops I used.

Click here for the recipe.
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Brew Day: US of IPA – Age of Sail IPA (East Coast IPA)

The US of IPA is a project where I will brew four regionally inspired American IPAs. I will be pouring all four at the North Shore Brewers tent New England Homebrewers Jamboree. Jamboree is an event open to the public to benefit Make a Wish. Tickets are available here.

At a recent North Shore Brewers meeting, I was discussing with a fellow club member named John how the Ipswich Ale Brewery has changed many of their seasonal beers over the last few years. Although I enjoy their new products, I do miss the old Winter Ale and Harvest Ale. Ipswich isn’t alone among New England breweries to change their lineup. The English-influenced IPAs that the East Coast, or at least New England used to be known for are losing shelf space, tap lines, and the consciousness of beer drinkers to hazy New England IPAs, and more assertive West Coast IPAs.

To that point, John said that his favorite IPA was Gentile IPA. Per Gentile’s website: “Light caramel malts add a touch of sweetness to the bitterness provided by American and English hops, providing the way for a balanced beer that is great to pair with food. No palate fatigue here.” He said that he enjoyed Gentile IPA because it reminded him of what East Coast IPA used to taste like and represent.

As much as I love hop bombs, I don’t want to live in a world where a more balanced IPA is considered old-fashioned or obsolete. There should be a place for both. What I wanted to accomplish with this beer is to make something that is an homage to the legacy of New England brewing. In the beginning our craft beer had a particularly strong English influence. Many of the first IPAs made in New England featured English base malts and yeast, complemented with caramel malts and for flavor and body. Local examples of a traditional East Coast-style IPA beyond Gentile IPA are Ipswich India Pale Ale, Berkshire Brewing Company Lost Sailor IPA, and Wachusett IPA (Purple Can). Balanced and restrained, these are beers that become more drinkable with each sip. When we were in Philadelphia we closed the hotel bar and each Yards IPA tasted better than the last.

Harpoon IPA also needs to be mentioned as one of the first IPAs brewed on the East Coast. It isn’t as dark in color or as English-inspired as some of the other IPAs I mentioned. It still exhibits a similar malt/hop balance to be comfortably considered a traditional East Coast IPA.

Outside of New England, as you go south, IPAs generally aren’t quite as English-inspired in the sense that they don’t necessarily use English hops and yeasts, but they do have more malt flavor than most IPAs from the West Coast. However, as I formulated my East Coast IPA recipe I wanted to pay homage to the English-inspired IPAs that used to be synonymous with New England beer. I started my recipe with Jamil Zainasheff’s English IPA recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. I drew further inspiration from Ipswich IPA, Wachusett’s IPAs, and several other beers as I formulated my recipe.

One of my parameters for the project was that each beer would use completely different hops. This beer really should have Cascade hops, but I am already using it in Broken Fist. I made it a point to use two seminal American hops that aren’t commonly associated with IPAs: Willamette and Mt. Hood. I read an article recently that you don’t need to use “IPA hops” like Citra, Cascade, Centennial, or Chinook to make a great IPA. Revolution Brewing proved that with their Crystal Hero IPA. I look forward to trying that for myself.

For a while in the 1990s a Ringwood yeast character was synonymous with East Coast beer. As an ode to DL Geary, Shipyard, and Federal Jack’s it felt appropriate to use it here. Given that one of my self-imposed limitations with the US of IPA project was that each beer would use a different yeast to further differentiate the beers it made even more sense.

Originally I was going to use mostly English malts as well, but then I saw that Beer & Wine Hobby started carrying Stone Path Malts made right here in New England. What could be better for an old-school New England IPA than a bit of New England terrior? Stone Path has a Pale Ale malt that is similar in color to Maris Otter. Also available is a Caramel 40 and Dark Munich malt. The grist is 99% New England malt, I did add a small amount of Light Chocolate malt for color and to dry out the finish.

I brewed the beer on the first day of a stay-cation. The brew day itself was okay. I ended up with only 2.5 gallons of wort which I topped off with some additional filtered water. Since I will be filling a three-gallon keg, I really wanted to have three gallons. I pitched a two-month old starter of Ringwood that was made for a beer I never ended up brewing. It took about 36 hours for there to be signs of fermentation. I remember Andy telling me the Geary’s clones took a bit of time. I just hope I didn’t under pitch and end up with a diacetyl bomb. My plan is to move the fermenter to a warmer location after a few days to try and prevent that from happening.

I still have two IPAs to brew that need to be ready for the second weekend of September. Time isn’t exactly on my side at this point.

Click here for the recipe.

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