Fair Trade Stout

Though it started thunderstorming halfway through, brewing yesterday went surprisingly well. On the agenda was my first stout, kind of a specialty Imperial or Foreign Extra stout, depending on where you want to peg it. 5 gallons of it are healthily chugging away in my closet (the freezer is set for lagering temperatures right now, so I had to settle for a cool, dark place in the house). I'll be adding freshly roasted coffee beans to it in secondary (probably 2 and a half weeks from now), and thoroughly aging it, since it will need it at around 9 percent alcohol. Hopefully it will be prime and drinkable around the end of the year.

First Lager (Photos to Come)

I had a relaxing and successful brew day on Friday afternoon making my first Champagne Lager, the details of which I have recently posted. Once again, I forgot my hydrometer reading so I have no idea as to the efficiency of this batch, but I hit most of my target volumes and temperatures spot on, so I suspect it was as expected.

I used filtered Culligan water for this batch as lagers are much cleaner flavored than ales and tend to emphasize off flavors. Essentially, brewing a good lager is far more difficult than brewing a good ale; factors like water mineral content (in this case) and poor technique aren't hidden by strong ale flavors. So I have my work cut out for me. Currently, the beer is bubbling safely away in my chest freezer set to approximately 55 degrees, and will occupy that space for three or four weeks, followed by a quick stint at 70 degrees or so (called a "diacetyl rest;" meant to remove the buttery-flavored compound diacetyl produced by many lager yeasts), and a cold secondary at fridge temperature to mellow and blend the flavors.

I should be brewing my new coffee stout (Fair Trade Stout) this Saturday or Sunday, which should be my biggest beer to date (hovering around 9% near Annabelle and the Tripel). I'd like for it to reach it's prime by Christmas.

Otherwise, Molly and I plan to bottle her Irish Red very soon. Preliminary sniffs are promising. Annabelle, too, is hanging out in secondary, but will be there awhile longer. A taste of her the other day was decent: the alcohol is a little hot (needs mellowing), and the flavor isn't spot on, but it has certainly been awhile since I brewed that first batch. I have a 7 oz. bottle of the original Annabelle waiting to be compared to this batch, but characteristics of its extended aging are not going to be reflected in the newer ripe batch. Oh bother.

Michelle DeFouw, who is responsible for the run of Dierksenkougan T-shirts long ago, will be working side-by-side with me on an imaging/printing project very soon (we meet Tuesday), where she plans on printing a substantial run of professional vinyl (removable?) labels for class credit, of up to six beers, which sounds just about ideal for holiday mixed six-packs. More on that later.

Sam

PS: Photos to come from this most recent brew day. I seem to have broken my bandwidth limits for the University hosting site, something I plan on addressing with IT soon.

Annabelle

Brewed Annabelle today. Pretty lousy efficiency, need to figure out why. I think my large batches are suffering because of the sheer amount of grain. Should still be about 8 percent, maybe a bit less. Should still turn out. Pitched onto Molly's yeast cake and had active fermentation within the hour; a method I'll likely use again. Speaking of, thinking of experimenting with Edinburgh Ale yeast as my house yeast, using it on everything I usually make with California Ale. Cali is just too boring, and everyone uses it. Edinburgh could give me some richer and fuller beers, especially out of Rachel and the IPA, and likely I'll stop using Munton's Dry Ale yeast for Eva and just switch to Edinburgh as well, it being most appropriate for the style. Perhaps Hannah (recently fermented on California Ale yeast) could also use some beefing up in the body category.

Hopefully I'll be brewing again fairly soon. The new porch and our outdoor hose are speeding up and cleaning up the process, so I've really been enjoying it. Anyway, that's it for now.

Four

1. I'm excited to announce that Molly's first beer is bubbling away in the fermentor. I'm excited to taste the final product, but I'll let her get on the brewlog and tell you about it herself in the coming week.

2. Tomorrow I'll be brewing up another batch of Annabelle, this time with a big healthy slurry of the right yeast (harvested straight out of Molly's batch). She won't be finished anytime soon, but I'm excited to spend my Labor Day laboring over my propane burner, as hopefully weather will be agreeable.

3. I was able to get Dan, one of the brewers here at Bell's, to draw off a slurry of Bell's proprietary lager yeast for the Champagne Lager I hope to brew in about a week or two. I need to time the brewing with the cool secondary fermention of Annabelle and Molly's beer, because, as I've written before, lagers require long, cool primary fermentation for their clean, crisp character. So after tomorrow, that's on deck.

4. The next experiment further on down the road, possibly within the month, is Fair Trade Stout, a "Foreign Extra Stout" style with a huge amount of Fair Trade coffee. FESs are massive versions of your typical stout, sweeter than a dry stout (Guinness) with substantially more alcohol and hop character. I'll back off on the hops a bit to let the coffee be the foremost flavor and aroma, with a good alcohol bite and lots of complimentary roastiness from the malt. I'll probably use local Water Street coffee because it's damn good. This one might take a bit of aging so don't expect it until the snow comes.