Steel Cut Irish Style Oatmeal Stout

Most oatmeal stout's are brewed with flaked oats(that have been pre-gelatinized) and/or Oat Malt to lend the style it's signature body. To make flaked oats, raw oats have been rolled while being steamed making the starches ready to be converted by the enzymes present in the mash. For today's Oatmeal Stout I'm going to use raw Steel Cut Irish Style Oats that need to be cooked for 30 minutes to break down the starches in the raw oats before being added to the mash. After the oats are cooked the enzymes in the mash can convert the starches in the oats into fermentable sugars. I'm hoping the steel cut oats add even more body than flaked oats, creating a motor oil oatmeal breakfast stout.

Recipe: American Two Row, Irish Style Steel Cut Oats, Roasted Barley, Dk. Munich malt, Crystal malt, and Chocolate malt. Hopped with Warrior for bittering and Willamette for flavor and aroma. Fermented with Fermentis Safale US-05.

Iron Brewer Robust Smoked Brown Ale

Today's brew is for the Iron Brewer competition where three mystery ingredients are picked and each brewer much concoct a beer to showcase these ingredients. So far there has been two rounds of six brewers and this is the third round of six. The three ingredients this round are Smoked Malt, Vanilla, and Centennial hops. With the hops adding a big citrus, grapefruit flavor I'll be using the hops for bittering because I'm not sure how smoke,vanilla, and grapefruit go together in beer, but grilled grapefruit with vanilla foam sounds good. Anyway it's very exciting to be invited to brew in this competition. The competition is steep this round with home brewers who brew damn good beers. Really looking forward to try what everyone brews up, but especially Slovak Brewer Stephen Freshnock's Belgian 'house smoked' Golden ale. He is by far taking the biggest risk while the rest of us are being 'safer' and brewing darker beers (3 porters, a dunkelweizen, and my brown ale). The dunkel is a pretty bold move as well though.

Allez Brasser! With these three ingredients I decided upon a Robust Brown Ale as a base. A baltic brown porter of sorts. With 37% of grist bill being Cherry Wood Smoked Malt to create a sweet bacon malty backbone. A halved Vanilla bean will be added to secondary after infusing in Bourbon for a week. Centennial hops will be used for bitterness to balance out this burly brown ale. Click here for recipe.

pLambic 1.1

The title for this post is not a spelling error. The lower case 'p' stands for 'pure culture' since real Lambic beers are only produced in the Pajottenland region of Belgium. Lambic beers from this region are brewed with a plethora of wild yeast and bacteria that creates sour and vinous flavors. These bugs of the brewing world lend a complexity to beer that doesn't exist in pure brewers yeast. Tomme Arthur writes about these bugs on the White Labs webpage. To read more about the history of Lambic beers read on.

For my pLambic today I performed a single decoction mash to create the web of dextrins necessary to make a flavorful Lambic. Also did my best to have a turbid mash which is to do the opposite of what good brewing technique dictates. By stirring the mash periodically during runoff I affected the turbidity of the wort I collected. Again, normally you want clear wort when you runoff but when preparing wort for wild beers it's a little different. You want tannins, dextrins, and other proteins to make there way to the fermentation vessel. What normally is a detriment to creating a high quality beverage is in this case needed to feed the bugs.

I'm going to split this batch between two 3 gallon FV. One I'll pitch White Labs WLP655 Belgian Sour Mix. The other I will pitch a pure brewers yeast strain, Fermentis US-05. To then pitch a different blend of bugs to that 3 gallon version later on. The caveat with these bugs is they take up to six months to really begin to emerge. So what is brewed today is enjoyed a very long time from now.

Farm Fresh Series: Mixed Berry Saison

Raspberries and Blackberries fermented with a blend of Saison yeast strains to create what I imagine will be a spicy, fruity, a little tart, easy drinking ale. It's been lots of fun brewing these fruit beers recently. Results have been good with whole fruit in primary during fermentation thus far so I'll be doing the same today.

Grist Bill: Belgian Pilsner malt, Honey malt, and Aromatic malt. Lightly hopped with Celeia. With three and a half pounds of blackberries and raspberries.

Cascadian Dark Ale

A collaborative brew with friend and fellow pro brewer Brent Baughman. We decided to brew up a decidedly American style of beer in honor of this holiday weekend celebrating the 234th birthday of America. We both agree it's a great time to be apart of this New American Craft Beer Renaissance that has been growing since the 70's. This fairly new style, first called black IPA, but renamed Cascadian Dark Ale, origins discussed further by Lisa Morrison. In her article she discusses how it's a style created in the Pacific Northwest, but Greg Noonan brewed a 'Black IPA' called BlackWatch in 1990. Anyway, I do like the name Cascadian Dark Ale and the idea and spirit of creating truly new beer styles, with new names that aren't derivative mash ups of existing beer styles. Let's agree on a name and start brewing even more regional beer styles to be celebrated nationally.

Grist Bill: Briess Two row, Honey malt, Flaked Rye, CaraPils, Chocolate malt, Black malt. First wort hopped with Perle and Centennial hop variety's. Finished with a heavy hand of whole leaf Centennial hops. Fermented with Safale US-05 American Ale yeast.

Centennial Pale Ale

Kicked my most recent batch of pale ale on draught and I have quitea bit of whole leaf Centennial hops. So, I'll be brewing an American Pale ale today with over a quarter pound of hops at end of boil. Also, I'll be collecting 900 ml of wort from today's brew to start a prop for a batch of Saison to be brewed tomorrow. The yeast for tomorrow's Saison is White Labs WLP568.

Grist Bill: Briess Two row, Munich malt, Dk. Munich malt, Toasted Flaked Rye, Amber malt, Briess Xtra Special malt. Hopped with over a quarter pound of whole leaf Centennial. Fermented with Safale US-05.

Farm Fresh Series: Blueberry Belgian Ale

Continuing my Farm Fresh Series with fresh Blueberries from my local farmers market. So far in the series I've brewed a Strawberry Cream ale and a Tart Cherry Porter. I kegged the strawberry ale yesterday and racked cherry porter to 2nd. I'm very happy so far with how both batches are maturing. Strawberry flavor comes through surprisingly well.

Today's recipe is similar to strawberry cream ale's grist bill, but instead of flaked maize I'll be using flaked barley and oats. Creating a golden ale for the blueberries to influence any way they please. Hopefully with some color and flavor. To mix it up from most commercial examples I'll be fermenting this batch with a Belgian yeast strain creating spicy and fruity flavors of it's own that hopefully won't overwhelm the blueberries. Just like the strawberry and cherry beers I'll also be adding the fruit directly into primary FV during knock out. Good results so far with whole, well slightly crushed or cut up, fruit fermentation.

Grist Bill: Pale two row, Honey malt, Flaked Barley, and Flaked Oats. Slightly hopped with Celeia variety with five and a half pounds of fresh blueberries from Fifer Orchards in the fermentation vessel. Fermented with White Labs WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale yeast.

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.