India Pale Ale, cause the kids love it!

Comet hops are an heirloom hop variety that was first planted in 1980. Comet was the result of a wild male hop collected from Logan Canyon, Utah, and crossed with an English hop, Sunshine. While looking up information about Comet, and then UK Sunshine hops I came across a great article from BrewingTechniques' September/October 1995  discussing the role of genealogy in hop substitutions. The article is filled with great historical tidbits about hop origin and hop name stories. I won't look at hop substitutions the same way after reading the article. At one point the article states that "96% of the US hop crop was Cluster". I guess Cluster is the original "C" hop. Understanding hop origins can go a long way towards making hop choices for substitutions and recipes.

Anyway, onto a batch of IPA brewed with a whole bunch of "C" hops. Bravo hops for bittering addition at sixty minutes. Whole leaf Comet hops at five minutes. Whole leaf Belma, Simcoe, and Comet hops at end of boil. I added the Simcoe to play off the wild hop flavor of the Comet hops. Dry hopped with Cascade, Centennial, and CTZ (pellet) hops. Basic grain bill of English pale malt, flaked wheat, honey malt, and weyermann carafoam. Mashed warm at one fifty six. Mash off to one sixty eight. Collect fourteen gallons. Boil to twelve and a quarter gallons. Pitch dry American ale yeast. Ferment. Dry hop. Dry hop, again. IPA!

Maple Sap Amber Porter

Every spring, Vermont maple trees provide a bounty of maple sap that is boiled into maple syrup. In this case, beer.  Some friends had some extra sap and suggested I brew with it. Being as I have yet to use maple sap I was very excited to brew with the sap.

Instead of using sap for the strike water the sap was poured into the kettle and brought to a boil. The sap started at three degrees plato (1.012sg) fresh from the sugar maple tree. Friends Pete and Kimber supplied the sap and helped brew the beer. They we're thinking porter, I was thinking amber ale. We decided on brewing an amber porter. I really like using husk-less roast barley and roasted wheat for beers where you want a clean roasted malt flavor that doesn't overwhelm the rest of the recipe. I'm hoping to taste some maple flavors in this batch. Munton's pale malt for the base. Weyermann carahell and cara red for body and color. Chocolate Wheat and Carafa II for color and flavor. Bittered with Bramling Cross. Flavored with Czech Saaz.

While mashing in the amber porter I reduced the sap from five gallons to two gallons in the time it took for the collected wort to be combined with the boiling sap. The sap measured five and a half degrees plato (1.022sg). After pouring the wort in with the sap I started a ninety minute boil. Adding hops with sixty and ten minutes left in the boil. Fermented with US-05.

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. 

Parsnip Saison

As the leaves change and cooler weather moves in, root vegetables are harvested. The cold nights boost the sugar and flavor of parsnips and carrots. Parsnips, are usually harvested after the first frost. I've wanted to brew a Parsnip beer for about a year now. The earthy, slight licorice flavor of roasted parsnips is always delicious with dinner. Simply cut into matchsticks and roast with salt, pepper, and thyme until done.

With frost on the ground Parsnips arrived at farmer's market's. I quickly gathered over twenty pounds to roast into a Saison. The earthy, peppery, and lemon peel flavors of Saison style beers should blend well with the parsnips. I roasted twenty three pounds raw to thirteen pounds cooked. It took an hour just to cut the parsnips, and I have decent knife skills. I didn't even peel em', just rinsed with water. If I'm after an earthy flavor from the parsnips why would I peel away the layer that was in contact with the soil. After roasting the parsnips I added hot water to the cooked parsnips and pureed with an immersion blender before being added to the mash. I'm treating the parsnips much like pumpkin, squash, and any vegetable that could benefit from the enzymatic activity of the mash. I was stunned by the parsnip aroma and flavor in the wort. The parsnips were noticeable to the point of a smile. Hopefully some aroma and flavor will remain in the end, post fermentation. Lightly hopped with German Tettnanger for bittering. I decided during the boil to remove any late kettle hop additions to let any parsnip flavor emerge and not be covered up by hops.

Pale Malt, Belgian Pilsner, Wheat Malt, Torrified Wheat, (9%) Vermont grown Raw Barley and Flaked Barley. Vermont grown Parsnip. German Tettnanger hops. French Saison yeast.

Article in the Burlington Free Press

article below is from the Burlington Free Press Issue October 5, 2012

Hip to local hops

Matt Ryan Free Press Staff Writer

October 5, 2012

JERICHO — If you grow it, Joe Lemnah will try to turn it into beer. "Next week I'll probably brew a squash ale," Lemnah said from the makeshift brewery he's set up inside his parents' defunct horse barn in Jericho. "I just found this wicked cool local blue Hubbard squash, which are these absurd, gargantuan squash that have that whole orange flesh. You know, because pumpkin ales are so passé. It's been done to death. Like, there's other orange fruit out there. Let's use them. "

An Essex High School grad, Lemnah, 30, has brewed beer professionally for six years and recently founded the Burlington Beer Company. He has a company website, business cards, stickers and bottled beer, just not a brewery in Burlington. It's coming, he said, within the year.

The brewery will produce some flagship beers, including an India Pale Ale that Lemnah has dubbed "Another IPA."

"So it's easy to order another, badum, tish!" he explained.

Lemnah said his larger objective, however, is to brew an evolving lineup of beers, changing with the seasons and the availability of ingredients.

"I want localization to be at the center of everything, and really be kind of, like, farmers market-inspired, seasonally-focused beers," he said.

Localization beginning with local hops, although "definitely not exclusively local hops," Lemnah said, because "there's too many fun hops from far away." He plans to use Vermont hops for a particular line of beer that would have a "sense of time and place."

Localizing the process lowers his carbon footprint by reducing the shipping distance of ingredients, Lemnah said.

"You're supporting the local economy, the whole 'buy Vermont first'... But like I said before, it really gives that sense of time and place. The hops are going to have a unique character."

East Coast hops

Lemnah gets his local hops from backyard growers like his buddy Zach Summerfield.

Summerfield, who has known Lemnah since high school, said hops have grown up the side of his mother's house in Jericho for nearly 10 years. The hops grow along a 30-foot span of wall to a height of about 25 feet.

"As far as what we've experienced, they've grown like wildfire," said Summerfield, 29, of Colchester. "They're fairly intrusive. They grow onto the deck and into the doors of the house."

Vermont's humid climate, however, isn't particularly conducive to large-scale hop production, according to Heather Darby, an agronomist at the University of Vermont.

"They (the hops) like it, but so does everything else," Darby said, specifically diseases and insects. "When you're in Oregon with dry summers, they don't get the same disease and insect pressure that we do."

Darby began studying hop production in Vermont three years ago when colleagues at Washington State University asked her to do so. They wanted to compare West Coast hops with East Coast hops.

"And simultaneously, there was this sort of new interest in growers and brewers to produce local hops," Darby said. That interest, she said, grew from the localvore movement and a spike in hop prices.

"A lot of brewers want to buy local," she said. "They want a product that is very high quality. It's understanding what that is, and then figuring out, how do we get there."

In studying the vitality of 19 strains of hops at UVM, Darby has found that some hops can and do thrive in Vermont, despite the climate. But she cautions that much work remains to be done if Vermonters want to grow their local hop market.

"Even if we can grow them, which we can, they're very labor intensive to harvest," Darby said. "It requires special equipment to do that, and special equipment to handle them after harvest."

Darby figures upwards of 50 Vermonters have taken to growing small quantities of hops in their yards or on their farms.

"We have a few one-acre hop yards, and then everyone else is under an acre," Darby said. Put together, they make up an estimated total of 5-10 acres. "Once you get above a quarter of an acre, you gotta think about how to mechanize the process."

During the summer, UVM Extension lent a mobile hop harvester, a "shared piece of infrastructure," to two farms, Darby said, in an attempt to push mechanization.

Without a mechanical harvester, the hops have to be picked by hand, which can take upwards of an hour per vine. Impractical for a large harvest, Darby said, even if a grower invites over friends for hop-picking "parties."

"You're gonna run out of friends," Darby said. "It's only gonna be fun once."

However you get them, Summerfield recommends harvesting local hops when you can to brew beer.

"I always find that stuff you grow yourself tends to taste better," Summerfield said. "The hops tend to be very strong. Very large flavor profiles."

Autumnal Squash Ale

Before temperatures even begin to cool down, brewery's start shipping out their seasonal beer's for fall in August and even July. Much like how stores keep putting fall and winter holiday decorations out earlier and earlier every year, breweries are racing to market to keep up with seasonal beer demand. There is nothing I can do to change the push to sell seasonal decorations or beer each year, but I've noticed that the larger by volume the brewery, the earlier their seasonal beer are brewed and on the market. What this means is that at the largest craft breweries in this country fall seasonal's (ie: pumpkins and brown ales) are brewed in May and June. Meaning that by September many of the pumpkin beers on the shelf are already three to four months old. Some smaller brewer's decry that these large brewing company's are moving seasonal release dates up more and more. My seasonal beers will be brewed when the seasonal ingredients are ready. Many times with pumpkin ales, large brewery's use canned pumpkin meat or even no pumpkin at all and just spices (nothing seasonal in the beer, but the marketing). Anyway, enough about beer industry politics. Back to the Burlington Beer Co. Autumnal Squash ale.

My twist on a pumpkin ale is to use winter squash to provide flavor and body to one of Burlington Beer Co.'s fall seasonal's. The winter squash variety's highlighted in this years batch are acorn, butternut and blue hubbard. Winter squash actually contain more sugar, and I think more flavor than pumpkins. Some smaller heirloom pumpkin varieties do have more flavor and sugar than traditional carving pumpkins (which I suggest you use when brewing a pumpkin ale), but still not the rich flavors of acorn and butternut squash. This beer is based off the squash ale I brewed last year, but with more spices this year.

Brewed with Pale Malt, Munich Malt, and Weyermann Cara ten. Hopped with Super Galena. Just under a pound of cooked squash (24 pounds raw) per gallon. Fermented with American Ale yeast (US-05). Spiced with changing leaves and cooling temperatures.

This beer will be available at Burlington Beer Co.'s Autumn Harvest Tasting Event October 16th. Also available to sample will be a Fresh Hop Ale brewed with Vermont grown hops, Another IPA, and some sour beers and vintage beers.

American style India Pale Ale

Transferred last weeks fresh hop ale to secondary while brewing an IPA yesterday. The fresh hop ale has a nice malt back bone with a hoppy nose and flavor. The Vermont grown hop flavor is pine-y and herbal. Really, the flavors of the hops in this ale are truly unique to the small cluster climbing up the side of a house in Essex, Vermont. Terroir is what is being tasted. The beer provides a sense of time and place and that's what Burlington Beer Co. is striving to brew. I had no idea what the hops were going to taste like and it's fun exploring new flavors. Just like Almanac Beer Co. states, "Beer is Agriculture".

Onto yesterday's batch of India Pale Ale. Basically brewing the same recipe I served in April at Burlington Beer Co.'s first tasting event. I also entered the beer served at the tasting event into the 2012 National Home Brew Competition and here is the score and review. 

Grist bill of Pale malt, Vienna malt, Victory malt, flaked barley, and Honey malt. I substituted the Munich malt from the recipe to Vienna malt because I have a crush on Vienna malt right now and dropped the caramunich all together. Bitter (:60) and flavor (:20) hop additions was an experimental hop variety HBC-342. The end of boil, aroma, and flavor hop addition (:1) was equal parts whole leaf Centennial and Cascade hops. The wort was knocked out onto the fresh hop ale yeast cake at sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit and visually started fermenting within half an hour. Set point on the fermentation chamber is sixty five degrees Fahrenheit to keep esters (fruity yeast flavors) at bay. 

Next week I'll be brewing an Autumnal Squash Ale with Blue Hubbard, Acorn, and Butternut Squash. Lightly spiced with the flavors of cold nights, changing leaves, and pumpkin pie, but brewed with winter squash.



Here's a picture of a barn foundation restoration taking place down the street from the pilot brewery that I think looks pretty cool. Have a good day!