Holly, Hannah, and Annabelle
We've been bottling and brewing like crazy maniacs over the last couple of days. Here's the scoop on all things Dierksenkougan:
Holly and Hannah are in the bottle, and should take just less than 2 more weeks to be complete and ready to drink. Hannah, as expected, is perfect, and should be an ideal twin of her former self. And Holly has greatly improved with her month or so in secondary fermentation, really mellowing out so that the chai flavors aren't overpowering like we feared they may be. She'll still be strong, but I'm really looking forward to a drinkable and even enjoyable holiday brew. She'll be done in two weeks as well, but unlike Hannah, could probably use even more aging in the bottle due to her complex flavor profile. We'll slowly be breaking open these bottles (she was a smaller batch, with about 35 bottles) and watching how they change over time.
Annabelle is the newest member of the Dierksenkougan catalog, and I've been very excited to brew her since we started. Building off the concept of several Founder's beers, namely Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale and Red's Rye, Annabelle should be a first for Dk in several areas. Through it was somewhat troublesome and messy, I chose to brew Annabelle in a double mash and double boil, which means to the rest of the world that I basically brewed two different beers simultaneously, and mixed the resulting contents together in the end. This has historically been done for a long time; the British porter style was actually once called an "entire," meaning specifically a mix of three stock beers (two thin and cheap brews with one more expensive, dark, and more alcoholic brew) and was traditionally served to porters under that name until the style became a standard and was brewed as a single batch under the porter name.
So back to Annabelle. Basically I brewed two different batches: something close to an amber ale or a lightly hopped British bitter, and a pitch black and virtually unhopped stout with a touch of rye grain and smoked barley. Combined, I'm hoping to create a strong Scotch ale like Dirty Bastard, with some rye sourness and smokey undertones representative of the historical Scottish style. Scotch ales are traditionally only lightly hopped, since importing hops to Scotland was expensive and growing them in the region was nearly impossible. As a result, Scotch ales were hopped with very strong hops (note: hops differ like dogs; there are several breeds of the same basic plant. Some are very strong and require only a fraction of the amount to impart the same amount of bitterness as other weaker varieties) and were brewed to be incredibly malty and alcoholic, instead flavored with smoked malts and regional spices like spruce tips. I confess, this is not a style for everyone, and to some it may taste like pure gasoline. But hopefully, others will enjoy the flavor and strength and be opened up to a more esoteric style of brew that is very atypical of the American style. Such is my goal.
The second and perhaps more important reason I chose the double-mash-double-boil technique was that I have noticed several of our beers are turning out too thin and watery, which I assume is from my habit of diluting our final wort with cold water to bring the batch up to 5 gallons. With a five gallon brewpot, leaving room for preventing boilovers and accounting for evaporation over the 60 minute boil leaves us with far from a 5 gallon result. So I pulled out the secondary brewpot, an 8 quart size, and made sure that combined we were producing at least 5 gallons of beer. No dilution, no thinness, hopefully. Especially for this robust style of beer, which needs to be thick and malty to really be enjoyed authentically.
Annabelle will need a lot of time in the secondary fermenter. I expect she'll be done fermenting in a couple of days, and out of habit I'll pull her off the spent grain husks and other trub before bad things start happening. After about a month in secondary, which, also required of the style, I will keep colder than usual (between 60 and 65 degrees), we'll bottle her and let her age for as long as I can keep myself from opening a bottle, which will probably be about 2 days. Expect Annabelle in early March.
Holly and Annabelle labels to come. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday break.
Cheers,
Sam
Holly and Hannah are in the bottle, and should take just less than 2 more weeks to be complete and ready to drink. Hannah, as expected, is perfect, and should be an ideal twin of her former self. And Holly has greatly improved with her month or so in secondary fermentation, really mellowing out so that the chai flavors aren't overpowering like we feared they may be. She'll still be strong, but I'm really looking forward to a drinkable and even enjoyable holiday brew. She'll be done in two weeks as well, but unlike Hannah, could probably use even more aging in the bottle due to her complex flavor profile. We'll slowly be breaking open these bottles (she was a smaller batch, with about 35 bottles) and watching how they change over time.
Annabelle is the newest member of the Dierksenkougan catalog, and I've been very excited to brew her since we started. Building off the concept of several Founder's beers, namely Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale and Red's Rye, Annabelle should be a first for Dk in several areas. Through it was somewhat troublesome and messy, I chose to brew Annabelle in a double mash and double boil, which means to the rest of the world that I basically brewed two different beers simultaneously, and mixed the resulting contents together in the end. This has historically been done for a long time; the British porter style was actually once called an "entire," meaning specifically a mix of three stock beers (two thin and cheap brews with one more expensive, dark, and more alcoholic brew) and was traditionally served to porters under that name until the style became a standard and was brewed as a single batch under the porter name.
So back to Annabelle. Basically I brewed two different batches: something close to an amber ale or a lightly hopped British bitter, and a pitch black and virtually unhopped stout with a touch of rye grain and smoked barley. Combined, I'm hoping to create a strong Scotch ale like Dirty Bastard, with some rye sourness and smokey undertones representative of the historical Scottish style. Scotch ales are traditionally only lightly hopped, since importing hops to Scotland was expensive and growing them in the region was nearly impossible. As a result, Scotch ales were hopped with very strong hops (note: hops differ like dogs; there are several breeds of the same basic plant. Some are very strong and require only a fraction of the amount to impart the same amount of bitterness as other weaker varieties) and were brewed to be incredibly malty and alcoholic, instead flavored with smoked malts and regional spices like spruce tips. I confess, this is not a style for everyone, and to some it may taste like pure gasoline. But hopefully, others will enjoy the flavor and strength and be opened up to a more esoteric style of brew that is very atypical of the American style. Such is my goal.
The second and perhaps more important reason I chose the double-mash-double-boil technique was that I have noticed several of our beers are turning out too thin and watery, which I assume is from my habit of diluting our final wort with cold water to bring the batch up to 5 gallons. With a five gallon brewpot, leaving room for preventing boilovers and accounting for evaporation over the 60 minute boil leaves us with far from a 5 gallon result. So I pulled out the secondary brewpot, an 8 quart size, and made sure that combined we were producing at least 5 gallons of beer. No dilution, no thinness, hopefully. Especially for this robust style of beer, which needs to be thick and malty to really be enjoyed authentically.
Annabelle will need a lot of time in the secondary fermenter. I expect she'll be done fermenting in a couple of days, and out of habit I'll pull her off the spent grain husks and other trub before bad things start happening. After about a month in secondary, which, also required of the style, I will keep colder than usual (between 60 and 65 degrees), we'll bottle her and let her age for as long as I can keep myself from opening a bottle, which will probably be about 2 days. Expect Annabelle in early March.
Holly and Annabelle labels to come. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday break.
Cheers,
Sam
posted by Sam Reese at 2:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home