Low Gravity IPA

Isn't that just a pale ale? Short answer, no. Long answer, in the 1970's a craft beer revolution was started by home brewers in their garages, kitchens, and backyards. The generation of Charlie Papazian brewers (home brewer's between 1970's and today who grew up brewing with Charlie Papazian books) paved a way for better beer across the country. As home brewers started opening brewery's new styles were created. Most famously, Sierra Nevada, creating the American style Pale Ale. Today's brewer's are pushing style "guidelines", brewing fermented versions of musical mash ups (Belgian IPA, phenolic yeast with American hop varieties). American brewers brew without the history and dogma of traditional brewing regions. In Germany, the rich scientific brewing tradition is at odds with an ageing population and a youth culture moving towards spirits and alcopop. In a recent article it stated, "Today's youth do not think of beer as fashionable. The trend is moving toward alco-pops, or alcoholic mixed drinks." According to Koenig, Germans spend more on wine than beer. Alco-pops are popular in the states as well, but the home brew movement in the states gave way to a new beer culture with over two thousand breweries open and tens of thousands more home brewer's. Just like discovering a new band, food, or finding a new beer style that you like, it can be exciting. With this next generation of drinkers and brewers we're able to digest the extreme beer aught years and keep moving forward. Where a session IPA is becoming the "new pale ale". 

Lew Bryson has been pushing the low alcohol beer movement for years, and more and more it seems like it's finally taking hold. A cool thing is happening. The opposite of the extreme years. Where, instead of taking traditional styles and making them bigger and bolder (higher abv and more hops) brewers are lowering the abv but challenging ourselves to not lose flavor. The rise of table, session, "everyday" beer styles is exciting. Thus today's batch of beer, a Low Gravity IPA. Target is a four point three percent pale ale with the hop rate and character of an IPA. It's more challenging to make a flavorful beer that's lower than five percent and still be malty and flavorful than brewing seven percent pale ale brewed with double ipa hop rates. IPA is the most popular style by sales across the county. It's been an obvious style candidate to shrink. Examples such as Lagunitas Fractional IPA, Otter Creek Hop Session, and Founder's All Day IPA. With brewery's like Notch Brewing whose only focus is on producing beer lower than five percent Lew Bryson should be happy to know that the full flavor session beer tipping point has taken hold. Let's just hope it lasts. What style do you think will be the next style that we'll be making munchkin versions of?

The challenge to lower gravity beers is to prevent them from being thin and watery. First off mash in warmer than one hundred and fifty two up to one hundred and sixty. Mash temperature is very important to the sugar profile of the wort. Just a few degree mash difference will change the final gravity a few points. Another way to add malt flavor and character is to use base malts that provide more flavor than boring old pale two row. Use heirloom English malts such as Maris Otter and Golden Promise. A good go to is German malts such as Vienna and Munich that provide a more bread-y flavor from being toasted longer than most base malts. I also like to use a larger percent of dextrin malt when brewing low gravity ales and lagers. For example for this beer today I'm using twenty percent cara-pils malt. Seventy percent Vienna malt and ten percent flaked wheat. I also mashed in very warm at one hundred and fifty seven degrees. This low gravity IPA today needs a malt backbone to handle all the hops. Depending on your water you may also want to add brewing salt to your water to provide more mouth feel for your low gravity style mash ups.

Super Galena hops for bittering to forty international bittering units. CTZ hops for flavor addition at thirty minutes. With a late kettle addition of Centennial and whole leaf Citra. I've dry hopped the beer on day two of fermentation with Nelson Sauvin. I'll be dry hopping the heck out of this even more with yet to be determined hops. Fermented with Safale US-05.

Salt and Pepper Gose

Finally brewed a batch at our new house. The last batch I brewed was back in October. Seems like a very long time ago.  My focus has been on starting Burlington Beer Co. Trying to find a location has been frustrating to say the least. My wife and I bought a house built in 1931 with many recent updates over the last five years by the previous owners. We have an acre of land and we are very excited to have space for a garden again. I'll be building quite a few raised beds this spring. Back to the details of this latest batch.

It's my first time brewing a Gose style beer. A traditional sour German wheat beer. This recipe idea is my wife's. She enjoys commercial examples of Gose style beers and wanted me to brew one. For the salt we used a pink Himalayan salt. The pepper was pink peppercorns. For the six gallon batch I used thirty grams of salt. Based off the Mad Fermentationist's Gose where he used fifteen grams for five gallons and said he would double the quantity for the next batch. 

Fairly simple grist bill. Over fifty percent wheat malt. Barley malt, flaked wheat, and acidulated malt round out the grist bill. The acidulated malt will add some tartness. I'd like to inoculate this beer with some lactobacillus, but I need this batch ready in a month so I'll probably be adding a couple ounces of lactic acid to the keg. I feel like it's cheating, but using lactic acid is a quick, sanitary method to sour a beer. I've used plenty of food grade lactic acid in my professional brewing career. Pumping fifty five gallon drums of lactic acid into the whirlopool for Festina Peche when I brewed at Dogfish Head.. All the sourness for that beer comes from food grade lactic acid. For my Gose today I added ten international bittering units of hops at the beginning of boil. This batch is being fermented with Wyeast 1010 American Wheat. The strain should produce a slightly tart, crisp, low ester ale. 

The starting gravity is eleven degrees plato (1.044 SG). This should produce a low alcohol ale that's crisp, but have a fuller mouth feel from all the salt added at the end of boil. Another cool part about this batch is that we have well water at our house. This is my first time brewing with well water. I decided not to filter the water and just brew as is. It will be hard to tell what impact the well water has on this batch because I added so much salt. I'll be brewing a low gravity IPA Tuesday and that batch should be a better indicator of the impact of the well water. I may send out the water for lab samples, but my focus is still on building Burlington Beer Co. It's an uphill battle, but it's a battle worth fighting for. 

Table Beer(s)

A low gravity full flavored session ale has become a favorite 'style' of mine. It's also gaining popularity by the greater craft beer community. In January 2009 Lew Bryson started The Session Beer Project a blog to promote session beer. Also this last year Notch Brewing was founded, a brewery that will only brew beers below 4.5% abv. In a time where 6% abv beers have become the new standard for 'session' beer in America, I'd rather be quaffing a flavorful beverage under five percent that is full flavored. Today's batch of beer will accomplish this by having a thirst quenching toasted malt flavor with a spicy, herbal flavor from blending Styrian Golding, Perle, and Hallertau Hersbrucker hops into the beer. For experimentation I'll be splitting the batch between two carboys pitching American Ale yeast Safale US-05 into one and Safale T-58 in the other.

Recipe: American Two Row, Honey Malt, Biscuit Malt, CaraMunich, Munich Malt. Hopped with Hallertau Hersbrucker, Warrior, Perle, Styrian Goldings. Fermented with Safale US-05 and Safale T-58.

Belgian Table Biere(s)

Brewing up a big batch today of low gravity Belgian blonde ale that I'm going to split between two carboys and ferment each with a different yeast strain from White Labs. It's always interesting to see how different strains affect the flavor profile of the same wort. In one carboy I will pitch WLP500, a strain from the Chimay Trappist Brewery. In the other carboy I'll pitch WLP575 which is a blend of Chimay yeast, Westmalle Trappist yeast, and Achouffe yeast. Originally I was looking for WLP550 which is just the Achouffe strain but alas my local home brew store didn't have any this weekend so I went with the WLP575 Belgian Blend. I'm able to find out the origins of these strains by using the yeast strain chart that Mr.Malty has created. It's very interesting and useful to determine what yeast to use knowing the flavor impact the yeast makes in the beers brewed from the brewery's where the yeast comes from. Giving you an idea of what your beer will taste like using that yeast.

Grist Bill: Belgian Pilsner malt, Briess Pale malt, Rye malt, Aromatic malt, and CaraPils. American whole leaf Palisade hops for bittering and finished with whole leaf Centennial hops. Adding a citrus kick to the nuances of the two different Belgian yeasts from White Labs, WLP500 and WLP575.

Petite Saison

Brewed with Barley, Wheat, Oats, and Rice. First wort hopped with Saaz andCeleia. With East Kent Golding hops at the end of boil. Fermented with Wyeast 3711 French Saison. Simple recipe, but most likely a delicious beer. Step mash for today's brew to break down extra proteins in the large portion of wheat and oats in the grist. This was a great beer for the middle of Summer. Dry and drinkable, but spicy enough to be interesting. Some more noble hop flavors from dry hopping would be a nice addition to recipe. Styrian Golding, Saaz, or Tettnanger would add the needed hop flavor.

Smoked Session Stout

This is a beer I would like to serve using nitrogen. The beer would be greatly improved by this serving method. A firkin would also compliment the flavors in this Stout. It's a low alcohol but full flavored offering. It's your usual 'sessionable' Stout but brewed with over 30% smoked malt adding a delicious old world twist. As most beers had smoke flavor back in the day due to open fire malting techniques.

Grist Bill: Pale two row, Smoked malt, Chocolate malt, Roasted Barley, Crystal malt, Flaked Barley, and CaraPils. Hopped with Super Galena and Willamette. Fermented with American ale yeast WLP001. I do need to get some Thames Valley and/or London III yeast around for when I decide to do brews like this, but this one will be fermented with chico.

Small Table Beer

With the final running's of Batch 100 I'm brewing a 3 gallon batch to create a small table beer around 3.5%. Hopped lightly with Celeia hops. Fermenting with Safale T-58, creating a Belgian style amber ale. The most famous commercial American small beer using this technique of collecting lower gravity running's for a separate beer from it's high gravity brother is Anchor Steam Brewing's Small Beer. Basically when brewing high gravity beers you use a bunch of grain to create enough sugar to reach higher gravity but don't want to collect all of possible wort otherwise you'll just have a big batch of more average gravity wort. So, by collecting the rest of the running's after you've collected what you what for the big brew you can now not waste any of the sugar you've made by brewing a small beer. Glad I decided to do this, used my original 16 qt kettle from when I started extract brewing four years ago to boil on my stove top. Good memories.

UK Session Bitter(s)

Brewing a low alcohol offering today. Brewed an English Special Bitter last year that I was very pleased with. A flavorful ale that was 4.1%. I really enjoy full flavored low alcohol beers and I'll be tweaking the grist bill slightly from the one I made last year. I'll again be adding organic barley flour to the mash and mashing in warm (156*/157*) to add body. Brewing a 10 gallon batch today, which is possible because I'm borrowing a converted keg/kettle from the owner of my local home brew store (thanks Doug!). At the home brew store I've been teaching home brew classes, a few extract classes,an all grain class, and a recipe development class. Lots of fun teaching, I hope the students have learned something, I know they have taught me a lot.

Today's grist bill is Baird pale malt, Biscuit malt, Amber malt, Crystal malt,and a touch of Roasted Barley. A balanced, bold hand of East Kent Golding hops. Fermented with an English yeast strain, dry Safale S-04.

English Special Bitter

"The Bitter style came from brewers who wanted to differentiate these ales from other mild brews, enter pale malts and more hops. Most are gold to copper in colour and are light bodied. Low carbonation. Alcohol should be low and not perceived. Hop bitterness is moderate to assertive. Most have a fruitiness in the aroma and flavor, diacetyl can also be present. These are traditionally served cask conditioned, but many breweries have bottled versions." as explained on the Beer Advocate website.

I'll be using East Kent Golding hops which are traditional English aroma hops as well Willamette hops for bittering and flavor. The grist bill consists of pale, munich, biscuit, brown, and crystal malt. Also added a 1/4 pound of organic barley flour to the mash. In theory to add body to this low alcohol offering. Mashed in warm at 157f and let rest for :45 then mashed out to 168f. Boiled for seventy five minutes to increase kettle caramelizing. Looking forward to enjoying this English session ale.

An English Style Ale

Yesterday I brewed an English Style Ale. A simple recipe using whole leaf Fuggle hops. The homebrew store was out of Mild Malt so I substituted Vienna Malt. Not very english but should do the trick. Going to let the carboy just sit open to replicate open fermentation tanks. There is really no reason to do this at home but oh well it will be fun and authentic. Tomorrow I'll be bottling my Hefeweizen.