Two Beers in Two Days: Brewing up a Competition!

This will be a big one. Along with the usual updates, on beers in progress, the story of the weekend must be told as well. Two beers in Two days is a tall order, but I had help, thankfully. This week produced a Smoked Weizenbock and a classic Pumpkin ale specifically for entry into the Maryland Oktoberfest. Overall, it was a great weekend to brew, and having good, talented company made it all the better.

I may as well keep this in chrono-beer-o-logical order, and start with the beer on deck. The Simo Imperial Brown ale was transferred to a secondary fermenter last week, and is looking pretty as all hell. I got a nice cylinder full for a gravity reading and It’s going to end up being around ~9ish%. Not brilliant for an imperial, but acceptable for sure. After I tasted the sample, I will most definitely accept it. Even without carbonation it tastes beautiful. We’ll be putting it on tap at the shop this week, and goddamn, am I drooling to get a proper taste of it.

Though not quite in order of the events as they happened, I transferred the Tarakena to the secondary. It was doing the classic slow, annoying Belgian fermentation, but was still going steadily (but slowly) when I transferred it. The reason I did it ‘early’ was to make room for the other two beers, and yet still get some clarification from the re-racking. I may have performed a pointless act, though, since the fermentation wasn’t over. We’ll see. I’ll probably cheat a bit and buy some clarifier tomorrow. Hopefully that will give me a better result. I guess I’ll just need more carboys…

I'm a busy brewer. I gotta feed the addiction

I’ll definitely need to sit down and figure out a strategy for carboy rotation now that I have all three fermenters occupied. Two beers in two days…some might think its overkill, but I like to think I’m only imitating those I admire (cheers, Garage Project). My friend Grant came up to help me this weekend as well. He was a heavy influence on Sunday’s beer, believing that we should enter something German for an Oktoberfest competition. And it should be smoked (of course). I tossed around for a while and wrote up a recipe for a smoked weizenbock. When prompted to give a name to such a design, the Dane always provides: “Two Smokin’ Barrels” is fermenting vigorously, and will be entered first in the Maryland Oktoberfest.  

::obligatory grain-in-hands-shot::

Having someone help was fantastic. I may have to incorporate friends more often…. It also helps for other projects—such as this blog—if the friend is a brilliant photographer. In between lift-work steps, Grant took some fantastic brew-porn shots. Photos aside, he helped make the entire brewing process heaps easier.

We were given a pretty fantastic weekend to brew as well. Two days of gorgeous sunny skies, and a cool autumn breeze. Clearly, we had to brew it all outside. And brew outside we did. I used my normal mash technique for the weizenbock(WB), but added a decent rest on the end for the fair amount of wheat malt that was used in the recipe. I sparged out, keeping a close eye on gravity and getting about 20 litres of wort to boil at 1.064. And the color of the beer was….pure…Sex.

Seriously. All it needs is booze and carbonation and its fucking perfect

The boil was nothing out of the ordinary either. It consisted of just two additions of Tettnang over the course of a 90-minute boil. After the cooldown we transferred into the carboy, and measured in at about 3.5 gallons (14ish litres?) at 1.082 OG. The gravity is going to make it an intense brew, and most of that is due to the volume boiled off. I’m definitely marking this as an issue, since this now makes three beers in a row that were under 20 litres going into the fermenter. I am most certainly not a fan of this trend.

Though it is not the worst problem in the world, it is a consistent problem that needs to be solved. I partially attribute it to my paranoia from the wheat wine incident (where I diluted the wort too much). I’m too concerned about getting a decent gravity rather than get the volume for a decent mash efficiency. Although I was a bit wary to go with my first instinct to solve this issue, I ended up following my hunch. Thankfully, it turned out to do a pretty good job of fixing the issue.

OPERATION PUMPKIN RESCUE

I decided that for the pumpkin ale we did on Monday, I would get the volume I wanted rather than embark on the usual quest for the perfect gravity. I was a bit nervous to do so, since the pumpkin ale will also be an entry in the competition, but I believed that learning is learning, and that I wont win anything until the beer is 100% through the process.

I used my normal mash (again), but this time sparged until I reached a pre-boil volume of about 23 liters. I was a bit concerned at first test of the pre-boil gravity, since it was only at 1.042. I kept repeating my mantra for the day, however (me—‘it will boil off, the gravity will be fine’), and went about as usual. It was just a 60 minute boil, adding US Saaz (in place of the original Motueka), as well as dropping the cloves from the original recipe altogether.

The rest of the ingredients consisted of about 2.3kilos of pumpkin with some allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and brown sugar. By the end of the boil, the beer smelled brilliant, and even the taste was great (albeit sweet—duh). Best of all, the beer’s original gravity finished up around 1.054, and measured up to 18 liters. While the gravity isn’t exactly what I hoped for, it will give me a good level of alcohol appropriate for the style.

Not pictured: the baked pumpkin seeds we lustfully devoured 

So clearly, the lesson for the day (or weekend, rather) was that I need to remind myself that fucking up is totally fine. Though the turn around process of brewing takes a lot longer than most hobbies, a complete failure won’t leave a hole in my pocket. And it certainly will not leave me with wasted time. With the records that I keep, I’ll be able to detect exactly what went wrong, what to fix, and will—overall—be better off from the experience. I took a leap from my comfort zone in guessing the boil-off amount, but it worked out well. I might have to use the finer calculators in Beersmith now…

brewing barefoot, however, is totally within my comfort zone.

To close it all off for this entry, the fermentations are going great. The Tarakena is up to speed again after the secondary transfer, and the pumpkin is going along nicely. Best of all, Two Smokin’ Barrels is fermenting like a rage-fueled monster. While I’m excited for all of them, I’m definitely most eager to see the results of the WB. I’ve never made anything like it before, and so far, everything is going along brilliantly.

Raise a glass for good luck to the WB and Pumpkin ale competition entries. Let’s hope a nuveau-fusion interpretation of a German classic will be accepted among the judges! And more so, lets see if this pumpkin ale recipe can go 3 for 3 in terms of winning medals!

(All photos are credited to the His Most Honorable Vikingness, Herr. J. Grant Knud-Hansen, TGT)

Two Smokin’ Barrels Weizenbock
Torrified wheat, Belgian Pilsner, Melanoiden, Caramunich, Special B, German Rauchmalt
Tettnang (4.5%)
Dusseldorf Alt (WLP036)

‘Ajack’ Pumpkin Ale
Maris Otter, Munich, Crystal 120L
US Saaz
California ale (WLP 001)
Pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, allspice