Recipe Recap: #21 - #25

Today's Recipe Recap will cover brews #21 through #25. There were 3 rebrews - all disappointing. There were a lot of problems and disappointments here. It almost feels like my brewing is going backward. A big part of it was using harvested yeast and having a hard time controlling fermentation quality during the summer.

#21, Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA Clone 2.0
The result was definitely better than the first. However, I got way too much ester and phenol character, and what I'm pretty sure was chlorophenols, which eventually went away. The flavor was okay, but never quite right. Carbonation was great, but the beer wasn't nearly dry enough. I was discouraged enough to never bother with this recipe again.

#22, Janet's Brown Ale 2.0
Well, this one was mistakenly made with pale chocolate malt, and that made it completely different. Without the mild roast of the chocolate, this one just didn't taste right. On top of that, it was way overcarbed, maybe due to underattenuation. No roast at all, pretty much just bready and hoppy. Disappointing. Entered this one in competition because I ran out of Sweet Stout - didn't expect it to do well and it didn't. It was slammed for too much carbonation and lack of roast, among other things.

Still, I'll probably try this again eventually.


#23, Pliny the Elder Clone 2.0
This was a huge improvement over the first attempt, but it still only sorta tasted like Pliny, and I couldn't come anywhere near the dryness of Pliny. The greater sweetness of my version blocked some of perception of bitterness, so it didn't seem that hoppy (despite the obscene amount included in the recipe). I entered one in competition, but lost a lot of points because most of hops had dropped out due to age, making it seem sweeter and revealing flaws in fermentation. It was pretty damn great early on, and has convinced me to throw my IPAs into the refrigerator as soon as they are carbed.



#24, Heretic Evil Twin Clone
An infected disaster. This infection may have continued into batch #26. First time I've feared for my health due to a bottle bomb infection. Maybe I'll try making this again someday, but I'm not really sure just yet.



#25, McQuaker's Oatmeal Stout
Pretty awesome, despite its flaws. Would've been better with fresher, healthier yeast, lower carbonation and a bit more sweetness and mouth feel. I will be rebrewing this with my own tweaks to make it my own recipe and correct its flaws.

Recipe Recap: #16 - #20

Today's Recipe Recap will cover brews #16 through #20. My brewing is definitely getting better. I improved my process, lowered my efficiency, corrected my pH, cleared my beer more, carbonated properly and controlled my fermentation better.

#16, Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA Clone
First, the bad news. This didn't really taste like Union Jack at all. I bittered with Columbus hops for 60 minutes instead of Warrior for 90, giving it a much harsher bitterness. My OG was off, and it attenuated more than it should have. My high efficiency led to a lack of strong malt character, so it was hop dominated (more like my pliny clone). My lack of pH control led to a little bit of phenolic off flavor and astringency, but very very little.

Finally, the carbonation was higher than I'd like, making the beer seem harsh. Oddly enough, I have to carb around 2 - 2.2 volumes, using BeerSmith's calculator, to reach a level of carbonation that is close to what you'd get from a commercial bottle or draught. This beer was carbed to around 2.6-2.7 volumes.

Also, I tried to dry hop without a hop bag. That was a huge mistake, and I lost almost a gallon of beer to hops before all was done.

The good news is that it was a pretty good beer. It just wasn't a clone, and it wasn't perfect.


#17, Janet's Brown Ale
Holy cow, this stuff was good out of the gate. I had one after only being in the bottle less than two weeks and it was fantastic. I carbed it properly, to around 2.3 volumes. The head was thick and creamy and lasted a long time. The hop aroma was strong and pleasant. The hop flavor and subtle roastiness of the chocolate malt went hand in hand. The mouth feel was nice and thick but never sweet, and very drinkable. My best beer so far!

If there was any complaint, it might be that the specialty malt flavor wasn't as pronounced as I expected and there was a hint of phenolics in the background. I only noticed it when I compared mine to a commercial Black IPA that had a similar flavor.

I'd love to try the real thing and compare! I've also rebrewed this one with some improvements to my process. I carbed to 2.3 volumes, and will probably reduce that to 2.0 - 2.1 next time I bottle.



#18, Stone Levitation Clone
Light, dry and orange-y. Drinkable and full of flavor, though more and more I prefer beers with a very thick body. I can't detect any off flavors, though.

Carbonation is a little high at 2.5, and I would reduce that to 2.3 next time. I had to sub Mt. Hood for the Crystal, which may have had significant impact on the flavor. Aroma and flavor are definitely dominated by the orange citrus of the Amarillo. Over time, the flavors have 'melded' together into a more cohesive single flavor, where before it felt like a combination of different flavors competing for my attention. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's the only way I can describe it.

This will probably taste closer to the original if I lower my efficiency and adjust my specialty malt percentages. Of course, I haven't compared it to the original. I'll come back and update this post when I do, or create an entirely new post.



#19, JZ's American Pale Ale
Well, I'm not the biggest fan of Pale Ales in general. They're usually pretty dry and boring. For me, a glass of beer is an event, not something I drink pints and pints of. It tastes decent, though a little young, and the carbonation feels higher than it should. I think the flavors need time to merge. It currently tastes like hops and malt, instead of a single combined 'pale ale' flavor, if that makes sense.

This is my first beer made with a lower efficiency, 5.2 pH stabilizer and gelatin finings. I can definitely tell. The beer is clearer and cleaner than any before it. I detected no off flavors. Very clean and very drinkable. The flavor is similar to Levitation, probably due to using the same base malt (Great Western American Pale Ale malt, a US version of British pale malt).



#20, Triple-X Sweet Stout
Heaven in a glass. This will be gone in no time, even though I'm only drinking on weekends on my diet. Thick but drinkable. Slight milk-like aftertaste. Creamy espresso and chocolate flavor, with a hint of alcohol. Not hot alcohols or off flavors that I can detect. This one has been in the bottles only two weeks and yet is nicely carbed, creamy and delicious. Proof that if you need to age your (lighter) beer more than a few weeks, you probably did something wrong.

I carbed to 2 volumes, and will probably reduce that to 1.8 or 1.9 next time. There *will* be a next time.

Black IPA

Black IPA, also called Cascadian Dark Ale (esp. in the pacific northwest) is called an 'emerging' west coast or northwest style. It isn't technically a style category any more than American Strong Ale is, but beers made in this 'style' are pretty distinct can't be placed in any other category.

Black IPA is like a highly hopped American Brown. It has the color and roasted dark malt flavors of a Brown and the hop bitterness, flavor and aroma of an American IPA. If you want to brew one of these for competition, your best bet is to enter it into the Specialty Beer or American Brown categories. The gravity and hopping are on or past the edge of the American Brown category, but you can probably get away with it.

The Brewer's Association has this to say about Black IPA (or as they call it, American India Black Ale) in their 2010 Beer Style Guidelines:

American-style India black ale has medium high to high hop bitterness, flavor and aroma with medium-high alcohol content, balanced with a medium body. The style is further characterized by a moderate degree of caramel malt character and medium to strong dark roasted malt flavor and aroma. High astringency and high degree of burnt roast malt character should be absent. Fruity, floral and herbal character from hops of all origins may contribute to aroma and flavor.
Original Gravity (oPlato) 1.056-1.075 (14-18.2 oPlato) ●Apparent Extract/Final Gravity (oPlato) 1.012-1.018 (3-4.5 oPlato) ● Alcohol by Weight (Volume) 5-6% (6 -7.5%) ● Bitterness (IBU) 50-70 ● Color SRM (EBC) 25+ (50+ EBC)

Some deride the idea of a Black IPA as nothing more than an American IPA with an ounce of black patent malt for color. Some brewers probably are guilty of this and deserve the mockery, but a true Black IPA isn't so easy to categorize.

Another probably with the name "Black IPA" is that the beer style has nothing to do with India and is certainly not a "Pale Ale". I'll leave arguments over nomenclature to someone who gives a damn, though. I'm more interested in drinking the beer than naming it. Still, there is a simplicity to "Black IPA" that'll probably cause it to catch on, no matter how flawed the name is.

Why am I babbling about Black IPAs? I found that I'm recently enjoying this great combination of deep, stout-like roasted malt flavor (one of my favorite styles) and American IPA hopping (another of my favorite styles). Mike McDole has claimed that his Janet's Brown Ale is closer to a Black IPA than it is to an American Brown, despite the name, and I would agree. I recently tried the Discord Dark IPA ($8 growler, including the bottle itself, from Pyramid) and was shocked by how close it was to Janet's Brown. The main differences between the two were level of roastiness and a slight difference in hop flavor. The commercial beer was also cleaner. In comparison to the professionally brewed example, I could taste flaws, particularly phenols, that I hadn't noticed before in my own beer.

I'm currently in the process of brewing Janet's Brown Ale, v2, and have made a nice big starter. Hopefully I can control the fermentation temp a little better and make an even better beer this time!

Recipe Recap: #11 - #15

Today's Recipe Recap will cover brews #11 through #15. This was a dark time in my brewing - of recipes #9 through #15, my only success was #12. It gets better though, and I won't be discouraged!

#11, Harold-is-Weizen Hefeweizen
A disaster in a bottle. I overpitched the yeast from a previous batch. Since the yeast didn't get a chance to grow and produce the characteristic clove & banana flavors, this beer ended up tasting like nothing. Nothing except cooked corn, that is. I forgot to do a 60 minute boil. Since this has a significant amount of Pilsner malt in it, the DMS levels in the final beer were very high. To top it all off, this beer was so overcarbed that half of the bottles I opened were gushers. I eventually gave up and dumped more than half of the batch to make room for new stuff.



#12, Pliny the Elder clone
There were definitely some problems. The massive amount of dry hopping left the beer a muddy brown-green color that took weeks in the fridge to settle out. The carbonation was just a little bit higher than I'd have liked (it gushed while warm but was fine when refrigerated). The body was thicker than the original Pliny, so my next attempt will use less Crystal, more Dextrose and mash at a lower temperature. The dry hop was pretty long, so I ended up with a more 'raw' hop flavor, though it wasn't so bad as to taste vegetal or grassy. I also used Colombus as the main bittering hop, which lent a harsher, oilier bitterness that made it less drinkable.

On the bright side, this was still a tasty beer, and definitely the best I had brewed so far. I'll definitely be iterating on this one, and intend to try a more updated recipe from MoreBeer (as opposed to the 'original' old school recipe I followed). The new recipe uses less Crystal, more Dextrose, more CaraPils, mashes at a lower temperature, bitters with Warrior and has a very slightly different ordering of hop additions. It also dry hops for a shorter time. This should lead to a smoother, drier, more drinkable beer.



#13, Arrogant Bastard clone
On the bright side, this does taste pretty close to the original.

On the other hand...

I accidentally bittered with Simcoe instead of Chinook (shame, since Simcoe costs twice as much). Read the labels on your hops!! My evaporation rate ended up way off, so I finished with around a quart and a half of extra wort and missed by OG by quite a lot. Worst of all, I overcarbonated this one by a ton. There were no gushers, but the flavors came out incredibly harsh due to the level of co2. Letting the beer flatten by swirling it constantly helped the taste. There may have been some astringent qualities to it, but that may have been a sensory side effect of the carbonation.

Not terrible, but not a success either. The ones in glass bottles can't be helped, but I was able to release some of the CO2 in the plastic bottles to improve the beer.



#14, English Apple Ale
Ugh, where do I begin. Lots of problems here. Tons of astringency from the apple juice - I'll probably use filtered apple juice next time in the hopes of getting less astringency from the apple matter. "Earthy" english hop flavor in the Mr. Beer kit didn't go well with the apple (frankly, I didn't expect any hop flavor in the Mr. B kit at all). Over carbonated, just like the last several batches, which combined with the English malt and apple astringency to create a beer that is super harsh and hard to drink.

Next time, I'd use filtered apple juice, American two-row (or some neutral, light extract), a clean bittering hop with no flavor hops and a way lower carb level (2.1 - 2.3). I'm not sure whether I'd use English or American yeast on the next batch. I went too crazy on this one, and should have started with a simple, neutral beer that happened to have apple juice in it.

On the bright side, the apple flavor was noticeable and there was a good residual sweetness in the beer.



#15, Munich Madness Oktoberfest/Marzen
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. Sensing a pattern yet?

First off, I 'innocently' adjusted the recipe with more hops because I had leftovers. I didn't want to leave just a few grams sitting around in the freezer, so I'd have tossed them out. I used 25 gm of bittering hops instead of 20 gm, and 15 gm of flavor hops instead of 7 gm. Yes, I used more in my 3 gallon batch than the original recipe calls for in 6 gallons (14 gm).

Then, I ended up with way too much pre-boil volume because I hadn't yet figured out the impact of grain absorption. I decided to boil longer instead. I ended up with too little wort and instead of topping it off, I thought I'd just have a stronger beer.

Finally, it's slightly overcarbed but not too bad. It doesn't gush, but I'd personally prefer something around 2.4-2.5 instead of 2.8.

Tastewise, the Hallertau character is way too dominant. I'm finding more and more than I'm actually not a big fan of Hallertau, and the fact that I used more than double what the recipe called for in the flavor addition is really obvious. The beer is also too big, with an alcohol warmth due to the high ABV (6.9% instead of 5%!!). It isn't as drinkable or dry as the style calls for, it is hard to detect the 'toasty' flavors that the style is supposed to have, and there is a very strong caramel flavor that reminds me of the recipes in which I used too much Crystal 15. I'm not even sure I can taste the munich malt behind the strong crystal flavor.

This one might still turn out to be okay with some cold conditioning, so I won't call it a failure, but I also won't call it a success.




On the bright side, my beers start getting WAAAAY better at #16 and beyond...

All Grain Recipe: #21 Union Jack IPA, v2.0

My original version of this recipe (here) had a lot of problems, but also a ton of potential. I've resolved to solve as many of those problems as possible in my first re-brew!

All Grain Recipe: #16 Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA

I finally tried Firestone Walker's Union Jack IPA and I was floored. It has an incredible hop character, strongly pine-y and resin-y with hints of citrus. It is balanced by just enough malt sweetness to combine with the hops to create a candy-like, vanilla, date, cake sort of flavor. However, it is dry enough to not be cloying. It has a very similar character to Lagunitas Hop Stoopid and Green Flash Imperial IPA, but way drier. Where Hop Stoopid is thick and chewy and Green Flash is sweet to the point of cloying (I could barely finish the bottle), Union Jack manages to hit the same level of complexity without becoming overpoweringly sweet.

I immediately sought out a clone recipe and found that The Brewing Network did an episode of Can You Brew It on Union Jack. Huzzah!

Episode here.

It turns out to be a pretty complicated recipe.

The flavor is primarily tons of Cascade and Centennial in the boil, followed by a whirlpool aroma steep of more Cascade and Centennial, followed by two huge dry hop additions.

The mash is done really low (145) to dry out the beer, but then they use WLP002 English Ale yeast to maintain some residual sugar. Their mash is also a double infusion, where they raise the temp for the last 10-20 minutes to make sure it is fully converted.

Even their fermentation is complicated, requiring that you pitch at a low temperature and keep it there until yeast growth is complete (a day or so), probably to minimize ester production by the english yeast, then raise the temp (but still not too high).

The main thing I learned when making this beer is to always use a hop bag and make sure it is tied off super tight so no hops come out of the top. Holy shit was it a disaster!

The centennial I got from MoreBeer was not fully pulverized. Instead of a thick hop sludge, I had a chunky mass of hop leaves. Some got out because I didn't tie off my hop bag well enough and the hops clogged my siphon. I ended up just dumping the whole pot into the fermentor because I couldn't siphon it all out.

I also had the bright idea of dry hopping without a bag (note: I used a bag for batch #12, my last dry hop experience, and it was fine). I ended up losing close to a gallon of beer due to absorption by the hops and spigot clogging. To avoid losing even more, I ended up pouring from the top of the keg through a sanitized strainer into the bottling bucket. Bottling took forever.

I will never go without a hop bag again. I don't care if you get better extraction, or more flavor, it isn't worth the hassle.

Here's my recipe, immediately followed by the original 6 gallon CYBI recipe.