Brewing Adventures - Part II

Recent illness and the subsequent doses of codeine have inhibited me from doing anything truly productive, so now is as good a time as any to write some more about the wonderful world of homebrewing.
Yes that's right folks, it's BREWING ADVENTURES PART II. Don't soil yourselves.

As promised I would add some information on The Stoat. Well, our black beauty won us a gold medal at the recent SOBA Homebrewers Championship! Stoked. Out of over 150 beers entered, only 11 were awarded a gold medal.

Bottles of The Stoat

The winner of the Hallertau Brew Prize (where your winning recipe is brewed on a commercial scale) was a 'Robust coconut porter' awarded 46 points (out of 50), brewed by Andrew Cherry. Martin Bridges was hot on his tail with his Oatmeal Stout being awarded 46/50 as well, but he just missed out on the prize.
Our oatmeal stout was awarded a 44/50 (averaged from 3 judges' scores), so we were pretty damn close ourselves!

Apologies for the crappy photo and the unsuitable glass....

Enough with the gloating. Some tasting notes:
The Stoat pours black and viscous with a brown head that dissipates slowly. With good enough light, you can see some subtle ruby edges. Aromas are immediately recognised as coffee and cocoa, with some bready yeast and alcohol. Discrete Fuggles come through, as well as some dark fruity esters like raisins and cherries. Flavours are of strong, roasted and burnt malt manifesting coffee and dark chocolate. The hops are still discrete but make themselves known (along with esters) through dates, raisins, plums and the like. Body is full and a bit sugary. Definitely an ale to savor - not for quaffing!
Any other brews? Sure:

Dunedin Pale Ale (~6.2%abv)
This recipe was created by Piet and myself, out of a desire for simplicity. Sometimes the beers with the smallest grain bill are the most enjoyable and the easiest to drink.
We're very fond of UK Maris Otter pale ale malt, so we chose that as our base with a small proportion of crystal malts. We hopped with Pacific Jade, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin to get about 27 IBUs.
Everything went rather normal on the brew day. As soon as we steeped the grain we were overwhelmed by an unbelievably fruity aroma from the malt... Awesome. We tasted during the sparge, and both of us compared our young wort to tropical fruit juice and honey.

Sugary wort before the boil

We had modified our cooling system by adding another copper coil, hoping it would cool the wort twice as fast. Needless to say, this was an epic failure - mostly due to the messy labyrinth of tubes through which the wort had to travel.

Our crappy cooling system

Also, to separate our (still hot) wort from the trub, we tried using the plastic autosiphon (to minimise oxidation). We thought the plastic was durable enough to handle the heat, but we couldn't have been more wrong. A lesson learned.
We eventually got it down to 25 degrees, pitched a sachet of US-05 yeast and then put it to bed.
About a week later, fermentation was seemingly finished and so we bottled.
Only another week after that we drank the first few bottles - Delicious! It was simple, fruity, sweet, hoppy and quite alcoholic. After a few delicious drinks, we decided to leave it a bit longer to mature.
Unfortunately, a couple weeks later our golden pale ale had developed some nasty sulfur gas... Damn. We weren't entirely sure why - perhaps because we left it to bottle condition in the cold? Perhaps because we bottled too soon?
I tend to think it was the latter, because after a few days in our "bottle incubator" (chilly bin with and aquarium heater submerged in water), the bottles of Dunedin Pale Ale were well overcarbonated - indicating an incomplete fermentation of the sugars. Once the sulfur was gone, we were left with a hell of a lot of foam!
More lessons learned.

The Dunedin Pale Ale

But overall, the beer was lovely - one of the fruitiest beers I've tasted, with apricot, pineapple, apple, and passionfruit. I've never tasted Emerson's Maris Gold, but after a bit of research on ratebeer.com, I figured we had come pretty close to that.

Black IPA (~6.5%abv)
This was my recipe, admittedly inspired by Yeastie Boys' famous 'Pot Kettle Black'. Their American style porter was so delicious I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and make something similar!
For this brew I used 4 malts - Pale 2 row, chocolate, black patent and crystal; and 3 different hops (in relatively large amounts) - fuggles, cascade and Nelson sauvin. Fermented with trusty old US-05.
The brew day went swimmingly, and we even had friends from Wellington - Dave and Denise - to lend a hand and observe. This brew was our first to use Piet's new copper immersion chiller - 15m of wide copper tubing that we immerse in the boiled wort, then run cold water through to achieve an effective cold break. It worked wonderfully - 100 degrees C to 20 in under 10 minutes!

The copper immersion chiller (without hoses, bends, etc)

We finished up everything fine, and put it to bed on the heat pad.
A few weeks after bottling, we decided to try some. I can't help thinking that the yeast we used was a bit tired, as the bottles we opened weren't carbonated very well at all (too much CO2 in the DPA now not enough in the IPA!).
But all worked out fine - we put some bottles in the incubator, and with a bit of warmth and time they carbonated beautifully.

A nice photo, but not very representative

The Black IPA pours (you guessed it) black, with a nice fluffy tan head. Aromas of citrusy cascade and earthy fuggles, mingle with a toasted malt base and a nice bready yeast. The flavours are zesty from the hops, yet slightly smoky from the malts with hints of coffee and chocolate. Quite a creamy mouthfeel (reminiscent of a rich ice cream) with a mildly bitter aftertaste.

I'll be back with more beer stuff eventually.

Brewing Adventures - Part I

This first post is just to outline some of the beers I have made (along with brewing partner, Piet), since we started home brewing in April.
Over the last 5 months, Piet and myself have brewed over 200L of various styles of beer. That's 606 x 330mL bottles - 50 dozen. Each brew yields about 22L of finished beer (we can change the volume, but 22L seems to be a good number), so that's about 66 x 330mL bottles per brew. Awesome.
Just for shits and giggles, I'll go through - from the first brew to the last - and give a brief description of each...

Cloned American Pale Ale - Our first brew (~6%abv)
So... Where to begin? Our first brew day was far from smooth. We had plenty of booksmarts, but little knowledge on how to actually use those smarts with our own equipment. We hadn't yet discovered the beauty and gracefullness of using software and calculators to create the best recipes, so we had just modified a pale ale recipe from 'Clone Brews'.
There were only a few differences, such as us using chocolate malt instead of a certain caramalt, and tweeking the hops to suit what was available.
We mashed in the boiling pot using a stockinette, and needless to say, there was sugary wort everywhere. It was like the floor was covered in glue...We eventually got the boil going fine, and added our hops (which, looking back, were WAY out of balance).
Once the boil had finished, we took our two boiling pots to various locations to try and cool the wort in a water bath... Interesting. Kind of messy.
The fact that our beer did not acquire an infection is a miracle. It's like we completely forgot aseptic technique whilst transferring the wort to the fermenter...
About half way through the boil, we realised that our yeast needed to be activated. We had bought some pre-packed stuff from our local homebrew supply shop. We tried out best to activate it, but it was showing no signs of life when we pitched it.
In the morning, there was no activity at all, so we went about bought a sachet of dried yeast, and chucked it in the fermenter. The next day, our first all-grain brew was bubbling away happily.
We bottled about 2 weeks later, and tasted soon after that. I'll give you the notes I wrote, using a bottle that was aged a few weeks:
Beer pours a bit hazy red/brown hue, with a thin off-white head. Aroma had cherries (especially in the older bottles), some chocolate notes, and strong grapefruit-like cascade. Flavours have some coffee-ish chocolate malt, with zesty hops. Reasonably bitter near the end - but a good bitterness. Carbonation is good. Medium to light bodied.
Overall, it was an enjoyable beer (especially considering the sloppiness of the brew!), and even got some good reviews from my friends in Wellington. I would place this one far above the mainstream, mass produced beers you find in the fridge at the supermarket, and it's not nearly as expensive!

German Pilsner Disaster (~5.5%abv)
Well.. This brew sure was interesting. We found an old sac of grain from Piet's old workplace, and decided it would be good to make a Pilsner-style lager.
We did everything in a similar, yet slightly more efficient fashion, than the last brew, and so the only really terrible thing was our ingredients.
Our hops were fine, but we added way too much for the bittering stage, and so the bitterness in the final product was kind of astringent. The grain we used was old and probably stale, and shat out immense, agglutinated protein during the boil... Perhaps we should have done a protein rest?? This protein looked like grey egg matter, floating in the pale liquid.
Trying to brew a lager with our limited experience was a bit naiive, as we still had little awareness to the importance of hot/cold breaks, and finings. Our cooling system was still a waterbath and about 40 minutes of stirring....
But anyway, we got it into the fermenter and pitched our activated Wyeast Bohemian Pilsener sachet (we had learned not to get old, home-packaged yeast anymore)...
We fermented relatively cold (about 8-10 degrees). Over the next few weeks the fermenter smelled like a volcano - massive amounts of sulfur being processed by the yeast (see my other post about Saccharomyces!). We had heard about the sulfur gas being produced in cold-fermented lagers, so we let it continue. I think the sheer amount of protein from the grain was to blame for the huge sulfur smell (as sulfur is bound within protein).
Fermentation finished and we bottled. Lagering means 'storing', so we decided to let it lager in the bottles.
After a few weeks we opened a bottle and got nothing but fart - still way too sulfury. The flavours were slightly sulfury also, and there was that astringent bitterness from the hops.
About 3 months after bottling, our pilsner had lost almost all of it's sulfur (thanks yeast) and was now bearable to drink. But still a bit soapy, and far too bitter in the initial palate. We still have two bottles left, so I'll have to write some proper notes for it.

The Dunkleweizen (~5%abv)
Admittedly, this was only my third brew, and Piet's fourth, as I was sick when he made a Belgian Witbier. Since then, however, we have made another witbier which I'll describe in more detail, later.
The dunkleweizen is a German dark wheat beer, and was one of our more successful brews.
Unfortunately, my notes on this aren't very comprehensive, so it'll be a short entry...
We decided to do this one because we still had wheat beer yeast from the previous brew. The malts we used included 2 row pale, wheat, chocolate, carapils and crystal, and we used Jade and Hallertau hops.
The methodology was rather the same as the other brews, but we had come closer to perfecting our mash (using a spare fermenting barrel) and we had devised a better cooling system (running the hot wort through copper tubing submerged in cold water).
The ingredients and yeast worked together beautifully to create an effervescent, flavourful (yet moderately alcoholic) brew, that was enjoyed rather quickly! The hops were well balanced with the sweetness of the wheat and the roastiness of chocolate malt.
Definitely one to brew again.

The Stoat - Dunedin Oatmeal Stout (~6.5%abv)
Wow. I fucking love this beer. This one was Piet's recipe, and was a great success, so much that we entered it into the SOBA National Homebrew Championship (we're still waiting for the results).
Everything seemed to work out very well on the brew day. We carried out a protein, then beta-glucan rest on the flaked oats (with added barley - for enzymes) and then added it to the rest of the grain. This was the first of our brews where we controlled the pH of the mash, which we think helped a lot. The rest of the procedures went rather smoothly, although things seemed to take longer (e.g. the sparge took nearly one hour and the cooling was very slow - probably due to the viscosity of the wort).
We fermented using Wyeasts Irish Ale, which worked beautifully to give a lot of dark fruit-like esters, and a hint of toasted bread.
The 7 different malts were balanced only by 3 additions of Fuggles, imported hops from the UK. The fuggles added a lovely earthy character to the beer.
I'm lacking a set of decent tasting notes to go with this beer, but we still have a few bottles left. I'll probably add some on here in the next week (along with the results from the competition! Wish us luck).

We have done a number of other brews, which I'll get around to describing. Look out for Part II!

Cheers, Louis.

Recently, whilst scouring the fermentation section of the science library, I stumbled across a thin, pamphlet style book, on the cover of which was a stamp; "Inaugural Professorial Lecture - University of Otago, 1996".
Upon closer inspection I noticed the name of the professor giving this special lecture. If you've already guessed it, kudos.

The professor was Jean-Pierre Dufour (or, 'JP'), who was appointed Professor, Chair of Food Science, at the university in 1995. JP continued his scientific research in the department up until his death in 2007, whilst attending an Institute of Brewing and Distillery conference in Nigeria. JP had a studded career and made great contributions to the fields of chemistry, microbiology, enzymology and food science. He also assisted in the success of Emerson's brewery in Dunedin, and so their annual Belgian-style release is entitled 'JP' in his memory.
For more information on these beers, see David Wood's article on JP 2009.

Needless to say, I had found a copy of the handout that would have accompanied JP's lecture - "Thank You Louis Pasteur: 120 Years of Brewing Science", was the title.
JP decided to pay homage to Louis Pasteur, a famous scientist who, like himself, had an impressive career in several fields of science and their applications.

I have come across Pasteur's name many times during my studies (you have too, every time you look at the milk carton, or if you buy beer that has been Pasteurised), but I have always neglected to educate myself on his overwhelming amount of contributions to the understandings of chemistry, fermentation, microbiology, medicine and disease.

Pasteur lived from 1822 to 1895, making massive developments in the field of fermentation and brewing, which led to greater studies of microorganisms and disease. Although Louis seems to be the main focus of the lecture, There is still a great deal on the history and science of brewing.
To save you a good couple hours of reading, I will refrain from summarising the entire lecture booklet. I will, however, transcribe a few selected quotes that I enjoy, maybe with a bit of background information, if you're lucky...

The first quote I would like to share comes from a section about brewing history. More specifically, it is from an article in a journal - Annals of Chemistry, 29, 1839 - published by Friedrich Woehler and Justus von Liebug, who wished to describe their solution to the mystery of alcohol fermentation:
"Beer yeast, when dispersed in water, breaks down into an infinite number of small spheres. If these spheres are transferred into an aqueous solution of sugar they develop into small animals. They are endowed with a sort of suction trunk with which they gulp up the sugar from the solution. Digestion is immediately and clearly recognisable because of the discharge of excrements. These animals evacuate ethyl alcohol from their bowels and carbon dioxide from their urinary organs. Thus one can observe how a specifically lighter fluid is exuded from the anus and rises vertically whereas a stream of carbon dioxide is ejected at very short intervals from their enormously large genitals."
Not long after, Louis showed that the yeast itself was responsible for fermentation. Not tiny animals with huge genitals.

Pasteur played a main role in the elucidation of beer diseases;
"We have in our power to prepare a beer which shall be incapable of undergoing any pernicious fermentation whatsoever"
Pasteur saved the French beer industry (that was quickly being surpassed by that of Germany) by identifying bacteria as the agents of beer spoilage, and then developing pasteurisation to preserve bottled beer.

Without fermentation using yeast, certain molecules and flavours are not produced or modified, and our beer would be very, very different (of course, it would still be called wort). This is something Pasteur could appreciate.
"It is easy to show that finished wort has a decided flavour and aroma of hops, as well as a sweet taste, and that it leaves a certain pleasant, bitter after-taste on the palate. When we taste it in this condition we cannot help thinking that a liquor of the kind, after fermentation, ought to constitute a very valuable beverage, as wholesome as it is pleasant" (L Pasteur).

Undoubtedly I could go on an on, writing about the life of Louis and his work, but alas, there are a set number of hours in a day and I already feel this post is too long!
I'll finish up with a suggestion; Next time you sit down to enjoy your beer, give a little toast to the scientists like Louis Pasteur and Jean-Pierre Dufour, who helped to perfect our brews.
Cheers!

What is Saccharomyces? A very brief mycology lesson.

Saccharomyces is a fungus.
Not the sort of fungus you see when discover ancient sandwiches in your locker, or the sort of fungus you may slice and add to a stir fry.
More specifically, Saccharomyces is a genus of fungi (kingdom: Fungi) that includes many, many, species of unicellular yeast.
If you are equipped with a brain, you'll know that you cannot have beer without yeast. What you may not know, is that almost all of the brewing yeasts used to ferment the beer you're drinking will come into the genus Saccharomyces. Scientists out there might know all about this yeast, if not, they might have picked up on the name 'Saccharomyces' and seen that it is a sugar consuming fungus (saccharo - sugar, myces - fungus). If you didn't pick up on this, then you're not a good scientist. Go study commerce.

So who cares?
If you enjoy learning and enjoy drinking beer, then you will care. I was utterly thrilled when I started learning about yeast, then fermentation, then glycolysis, then the citric acid cycle, and the organic chemistry behind it all.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a species of yeast - a species that all craft beer drinkers will be well acquainted with (whether they know it or not). Microbiologists are also rather fond of it, as it's an ideal organism to experiment on. This species is commonly known as Ale Yeast, or perhaps Baker's Yeast, but the former is far more important (cerevisiae meaning "of beer"!)...
Some would think it's enough to go from a Kingdom of life through phylum, class, order, family, genus and finally to a species, but brewers (among others) take it much further - culturing species and subspecies of S. cerevisiae for years to yield different strains - they'll even give them warm, loving names such as '1028' (a London Ale strain).

S. cerevisiae love the little bubbles of carbon dioxide that accumulate in the fermenting beer, and so they hitch a ride on each one up to the surface, hence, becoming a top-fermenting (ale) yeast - brewers call this floating, foamy yeast 'head' a krausen.
S. cerevisiae's cousin, Saccharomyces pastorianus, tends to stick around the bottom of the fermenting vessel. Different strains of this fellow are used to brew lagers.
S. pastorianus used to have a different name - one hint: "Probably the Best Beer in the World"... Saccharomyces carlsbergensis is the other name for our lager friend, and was given that name by Emil Christian Hansen, who worked for Carlsberg back in the day (1883).
A lager like Carslberg (with it's far-too-confident-assumption tagline) is absolutely nothing compared to a well brewed ale. Despite 'well brewed' excluding Carlsberg from the competition, it's yeast doesn't do it any favours, either.
Ale yeasts tend to produce more of those nice fruity esters, a higher alcohol volume and they ferment at higher temperatures unlike lager yeasts. Also, 'lagering' (storing) is normally required with lager beers, as their yeasts can make some pretty nasty flavours that take time to disappear (the yeast reabsorbs them).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a cold, fizzy lager once in a while just to quench the thirst... Truth be told, I 'enjoy' them because they're normally cheaper than preferred ales...
The versatility of ale yeast is highly appreciated by some brewers, and so they use it in their lager-styled beers (although they may not advertise this). Funnily enough, many mass producers of lager will label their beers as ales *cough*TUI*cough*SPEIGHTS*cough*!!!
I digress.

So hopefully you've not become too bored or confused, and learnt something after reading this.
At least, you'll appreciate my fondness of Saccharomyces. I love everything about it, how it works, how it smells (I get strange looks when I stick my nose into petri dishes of cerevisiae in the lab), I even love it's laxative effects when you eat it alive (...)
You should love it, too - after all, it gives us beer.

The Empire Strikes Back

The story begins with my good friend and fellow beer aficionado, Donfardz64 a.k.a Professor Greg Mason visiting my base of operations in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Me and Greg were out for some beer. But from where?
(Let me first inform you; Dunedin practically closes during the summer. Probably due to the city losing almost half it's population (students) during this period).
Our efforts to source riggers from Green Man and/or Emerson's breweries proved futile, as both establishments were as closed as a... Well... Analogy of something else that's closed.
So we decided to head home and debrief. On the way, we spotted Meenan's Wines and Spirits. I suggested to Professor Mason that we head in for a look and maybe get a couple of riggers of their cheap, micro-brewed beers.
Whilst in the store we had a look at their impressive range of craft beers (most of which were from the U.K).
I simply cannot be fucked writing the rest of the details, so I'll just let you know that Greg bought a Burton Tickle Brain, and I bought a Burton Empire Pale Ale. We both bought a rigger of Meenan's beer each, of course.
That's where the title of this blog comes in, i.e. it has no relevance to the story whatsoever, except, of course, the word 'Empire'.
So, right now I am enjoying my bottle of Empire Pale Ale, and it's absolutely wonderful.
This English brew poured a glorious amber/brown hue with an off-white head.
The nose is full of fruit - I found apple, apricot, peach and ripe oranges. Mingling with these fruits was a strong, floral and zesty hops on a stern biscuity malt base.
The flavours are nice and malty, with a pleasant honey sweetness. Balancing this sweetness are the immense, hop flavours that manifest as an orange-peel sort of bitterness. In the background of these bold flavours I found a peppery spice and a caramel sweetness. The high alcohol is barely detectable, but you certainly feel it...
So, by the time you are finished reading this post, you can be certain I'm feeling reasonably happy, and it's all thanks to the Empire. I suggest you get your hands on a bottle!