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...

Off Flavors: DMS

I popped open a bottle of batch #11, my all grain wheat recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. I thought this batch was a disaster, at first because I overpitched, then because I thought it overattenuated, and yet again when I thought it was infected.

Things have definitely changed. It is by far the most beautifully pale beer I've ever made. The head is huge and fluffy and lasts forever. Before stirring up the yeast, it was beautifully clear. It looks great in my hefeweizen glass. The flavors are definitely different than my first wheat; my last one tasted very much like banana. This one doesn't taste like banana at all. Instead it has a spicy flavor and something else that is slightly funky that I can't put my finger on.

And one more thing.

It tastes slightly like cooked corn.

Sure, it is subtle. But I'm pretty sure it's there. Cooked corn flavor. I looked over my records, and I only boiled 60 minutes.

Listen up kids, here's the lesson for today.

Always boil any recipe with a significant percentage of pilsner malt for a minimum of 90 minutes!!!

DMS stands for Dimethyl sulfide. It has a pretty low taste threshold and tastes like cooked corn. The more lightly kilned a malt is, the more DMS precursors it has in it. A 60-minute boil is generally enough to drive off all DMS from darker malts like 2-row. Pilsener malt, however, is as light as you can get, and thus produces a ton of DMS when boiled.

What do I mean by 'drive off'? DMS precursors turn into DMS when heated. However, this is counteracted by a 'vigorous' boil. As it is created, the DMS is circulated up to the top of the water and driven off into the air. This only works if you have a rolling boil and you do not cover your pot while you boil. If you ever wondered why all the literature tells you to have an uncovered, rolling boil, now you know. It doesn't have to be leaping up at you, but the water has to be circulating in the pot and evaporating. For a pilsener malt, it takes at least 90 minutes to get all that stuff out of your wort.

Now I have a bunch of corn hefeweizen. Oh well, I'm probably the only one who can taste it. Besides, I boil *all* my beers for 90 minutes now in order to have more water for sparging.

Note: You can supposedly get DMS from cooling to slowly. I cool via ice bath, and have never had a problem with DMS before. Also, some people practice a no-chill method of cooling wherein they leave their wort overnight in a sealed container to cool. I haven't run into DMS from using an ice bath, but be aware that it is *possible* to end up with DMS in your beer if your cooling method is too slow and you use very light malts.

Infection False Alarm

I opened a two-week-old bottle of batch #11, my Hefeweizen, only to have it overflow all over the counter!

Yes, my first gusher. A 'gusher' is, as you probably guessed, the term used when your beer is overcarbonated and spills out when uncapped. To be a true gusher, you can't have shaken, dropped or frozen the beer beforehand, and it doesn't really count if it only lasts a couple of seconds. A real gusher will pour out what seems like an endless amount as time slows down and you think about all the beer you're losing.

What the hell went wrong? Carbonation was calculated perfectly. The beer was refrigerated. My sanitation was as good (read: paranoid) as ever.

I recalled that my refractometer measurement had put this beer's FG at 1.006 - pretty damn low, but I figured it was just a super active yeast. Furthermore, the yeast used in this batch was a repitch from a previous batch.

My thoughts went immediately to a gusher infection - wherein wild yeast invades your beer and starts to ferment the stuff that your normal yeast won't ferment. When this happens, your beer continues to ferment down to the point where it is nothing but alcohol and water, continuously producing CO2 until your bottles eventually explode from the pressure.

I started to freak, and assumed that I had gotten wild yeast in my WLP300 when I washed and bottled it. To test my hypothesis, I opened up a bottle of batch #12, the Pliny the Elder clone I brewed with a repitched WLP001: GUSHER.

At this point I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I open one more bottle of pliny and two more bottles of hefeweizen, all gushers. I of course drank them, which left me in a less than clear state of mind. Did you expect me to commit alcohol abuse? I think not.

---

The next day, with a clear head, I start doing some experiments to find the problem. If the infection came from yeast repitching, there shouldn't be an infection in batch #15 or #13, but there would be in #14. If the infection was in the fermentor, it would be in #11 (the hefe), #12 (pliny), #14 and #15 (brewed in the same fermentors as #11 and #12). If it was in the bottling bucket, then #13 would be infection free (and thus have a normal FG) until bottled.

It was then that I discovered that my refractometer readings were off. By a lot. Normally, you can get a gravity reading of fermented wort with a refractometer if you plug it into BeerSmith along with the OG. The problem is that when double checked against a hydrometer reading, the refractometer reading was coming up 1 plato short. Consistently.

Thus it was that I thought my hefeweizen had 88% attenuation and my pliny had 93% attenuation. When I added 1 plato to their FGs and plugged in the numbers, the hefe went down to 75% and the pliny went down to 85% - both normal. Batch #13 also matched the hydrometer's reading perfectly if 1 brix was added.

Note: the refractometer reads OGs perfectly, so I'm not throwing it out. In fact, I may keep using it for FGs if it is consistently off by 1, because I can just add 1 - duh.

So, if the 'infection' didn't cause my beers to overattenuate, why did it cause gushers? Well, apparently it didn't. A pliny I put in the fridge the night before poured perfectly (and tasty, if a little grassy). A hefeweizen I poured several days later after refrigerating for a night also came out very nice (and also the palest beer I've ever managed to make!).

It turns out that because CO2 dissolves better in cold liquids, it is possible to get a gusher simply because you didn't refrigerate your beer long enough. This doesn't explain why my first bottle gushed, but it may have been inadequate mixing in the bottling bucket. I guess I'll never know.

I learned several lessons here - double check your FG with a hydrometer, even if you have a refractometer, refrigerate your beer adequately, make sure your priming sugar is 100% mixed in on bottling day, don't open your beer any earlier than two weeks bottled and RELAX. I learned these lessons the hard way so you don't have to!

All Grain Recipe #11, or, How I Almost Made a Weizenbock

After creating a delicious Mr. Beer German Hefeweizen recipe, I was in the mood to repitch that WLP300 and make myself another hefeweizen, but this time from scratch and all grain. In the process, I learned a lot of hard lessons.

First off, I took what I learned from my previous two batches about grain crush and efficiency. I talked to the guys at MoreBeer about their grain mill being set too coarse and they tightened it up for me. I ran it through three times just because I'm paranoid, of course.

Second, I thought I'd see how well oven mashing would work. Basically, I heated my mash water to strike temp, doughed in my grain, set my oven to 170 and stuck the (covered) pot in there. I mashed for two hours just because I wanted to be 100% sure of conversion and because I wanted to take a trip to Starbucks for a ghetto iced latte (4 shots espresso, add my own milk from the condiment bar, half the price of a regular iced latte).

The temp tended to go up when set at 170, so next time I will try preheating the oven and turning it off.

I thought about doing a mashout, which is where you heat the mash to 168 in order to stop conversion and thin the mash to make sparging easier. The problem is that the temp went up so slowly that it would've taken forever to actually do it, so I gave up and just sparged three times with about 3.3 quarts each. The sparge water temp was about 170, but when added to the grain I only got 150 F. It turns out that you want the actual grain to be 168 F during sparging, so you need to heat up your sparge water closer to 200 F!

After doing a fine crush, mashing for two hours and sparging three times (not to mention squeezing the grain bag), I got a whopping 89% extract efficiency on a recipe I originally calculated for 65% efficiency! My hefeweizen had suddenly become a weizenbock.

To make up for it I let the trub settle out in my boil pot and didn't transfer the bottom couple of quarts. I then topped off the fermentor with a couple of quarts of distilled water and got an OG of 1.051.

I really don't like how haphazard all that was, though. From now on I'll be focusing harder on getting repeatably results. I've gotta be able to isolate variables and diagnose specific problems, or I'll just keep making mistakes. This is probably just a side effect of my anal retentive programmer background.

Anyway, I pitched my jar of harvested yeast and went on my way.

Here's the recipe, Harold-is-Weizen hefeweizen from Brewing Classic Styles.

Harold-Is-Weizen Hefeweizen (WLP300)

Weizen/Weissbier

 

Type: All Grain	Date: 4/23/2011
Batch Size: 11.00 qt	Boil Size: 13.83 qt
Boil Time: 60 min	Equipment: Brew Pot, Full Boil All Grain (6 Gallon)
	Brewhouse Efficiency: 89.00
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 2 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (1.6 SRM) Grain 50.00 % 2 lbs 8.0 oz White Wheat Malt (3.1 SRM) Grain 50.00 % 17.01 gm Hallertau (MoreBeer 2011) [4.30 %] (60 min) Hops 15.9 IBU 0.50 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 min) Misc 5.00 items FermCap-S (Boil 0.0 min) Misc 8.00 gm Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 min) Misc 1 Pkgs Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP300) [Cultured] Yeast-Wheat
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.006 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.11 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 5.99 %
Bitterness: 15.9 IBU	Calories: 227 cal/pint
Est Color: 4.0 SRM	Color: Color
Mash Profile
Mash Name: BIAB Triple Sparge	Total Grain Weight: 5.00 lb
Sparge Water: 9.23 qt	Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F	TunTemperature: 72.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE	Mash PH: 5.4 PH
BIAB Triple Sparge Step Time Name Description Step Temp 120 min Mash In Add 7.00 qt of water at 165.0 F 152.0 F
Mash Notes: After mash out, remove the bag and drain as much liquid from it as possible before setting it aside in a drip tray (a cooling rack placed atop the brew kettle works great, as does a pulley or hook with the bag attached). Transfer your liquor to a bucket and return the grain bag to your mash kettle. Add one third of your sparge water, stir and wait 10 minutes. Repeat two more times (drip, drain, sparge, drip, drain, sparge).
Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Corn Sugar	Volumes of CO2: 2.8
Pressure/Weight: 83.2 gm	Carbonation Used: 76gm
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 72.0 F	Age for: 28.0 days
Storage Temperature: 70.0 F