The Count of Monte Blé: Revenge on Revenge, Remedied with Revenge

I feel a bit bad about not writing anything here for a while. It’s been busy at work, and there have been beer festivals to attend. Time was not completely wasted! There is a lot to catch up on here, but first and foremost, beer has come and gone!

It was actually a bit of a toss up of where to start when I began writing. I had to go back and read the previous post to see what happened, what has changed, etc. But I found the best place to start would be to talk about the Pumpkin and Weizenbock. Both were kegged, both were drunk, and unfortunately, there were no awards. It was a bit of an odd competition, in my opinion, considering that there were no categories, it was just for the top three overall beers. Tough competition when it’s judged in that manner, but I’m not at all disappointed. I enter beers into competitions for shits. I tasted both of the beers, and I know they’re good. When it really boils down (PUN!) that is really all that matters.

However, an outside appreciation is also a huge benefit.

Taste-wise, the pumpkin was spot on. It had a perfect level of alcohol, balanced spice character, and a gorgeous body that really delivered the pumpkin theme. The color also greatly encouraged the idea of ‘pumpkin’ with a great deep copper color. That recipe is without a doubt an A+ every time.

The Weizenbock was a brilliant surprise. It came off sweeter than what I’m used to drinking (finishing at 1.030 will do that), but damn was it fine. The dark fruit characters I got during my brief tasting pulled through completely, while the smoked malt brought up the rear, leaving a delightful smoky aftertaste that lingered for just the right amount of time. If I alter the recipe at all, I will probably increase the malt quantity, and use a yeast starter for a higher pitching rate. I loved the extra body from the higher gravity, but it could have used a bit more boozy bite. Luckily, I learned a lesson in high gravity brewing recently…but I’ll save that for later!

Moral of the story: I’ll be brewing both of those again. They turned out brilliant—one person with extensive judging experience that tasted the WB claimed it was ‘professional quality’: fuck yea!—and were both relatively simple beers to make. I just need more time and more fermenters…

Next up on the list is the Serebrianka Single hop. It was a pretty straightforward brew day, since I was mainly using this recipe to experiment with a theoretical malt profile, as well as see just what Russian hops tasted like. The brewday, however, was the most normal stage of this beer. The fermentation was wild, rowdy, and intense; and for two straight weeks! After about two and a half weeks it started to slow, but ended up cranking away in the primary fermenter for a total of three weeks. It only lasted six days in the secondary—fermentation had utterly ceased after the second day in the new container—and when I got to taste a sample I laughed out loud. I wasn’t expecting the malt profile to be so close to what I had imagined. It was truly a moment of pride for me. It was the first time I had imagined a taste in theory and then matched it in practice.

I’m currently drinking a pint of it now and its great. The Serebrianka hops are interesting as hell. While I thought the Cascadian may have been infected or pulled from fermentation early, it turns out the hops give off a hearty pear flavor upon first taste, then finish with a toasted leaf? Maybe pipe tobacco-y reminiscent spiciness. It finished at 1.015, so it’s around a comfortable 6.7%. In short, it’s a tasty, just barely-sessionable, hoppy red ale.

Red Noms!

The day that I transferred the Serebrianka into a secondary was also a brew day. I had to think quick on my feet when I got a surprise day off, and luckily I had uploaded a recipe to the Beersmith recipe cloud (PRODUCT PLACEMENT) and could check what I needed.

The Gotlandsdricka I had mentioned before seemed like a fun and fairly easy beer. There was just one mild quirk that made it unique from a normal beer. The sparge water was to be juniper-infused. So while I mashed 2.5kg of smoked malt with Maris Otter and Caramunich, I boiled juniper berries in water. It smelled pretty fantastic, and gave an interesting color that I really hope contributes to the beer’s final look.

Boil End!

Boil Start 

The only issue I ran into with this one was that the European ale yeast I used was passed its date, and didn’t even start fermenting at all. Luckily I had a vial of San Diego Super yeast I was saving for a later beer, and tossed that in. Fermentation got moving fast after that! It will definitely be an interesting beer, using primarily smoked malt as well as a good amount of honey, and then a good dose of juniper. I’m really excited about it. I’m also finding I really enjoy Scandanavian brewing traditions…

As I said, the Gotlandsdricka was not a particularly challenging recipe, and in fact, none of the beers I had done up to this point were really anything more than applying different things to the same process. I needed a challenge to spice things up! So, I decided to man-up, face my fears, and challenge the wheat wine to a rematch. I’m not exactly sure what it is about the beer style, but I’m super intreagued by it. I love the concept of barley wine, but am not a huge fan. When I tasted the West Coast Wheat Wine by Baird Brewery (Japan), I was pretty smitten. I was all the fun of a barley wine, but with a more modest boozy-sweetness.

Essentially, my idea for the beer is based on that: Intense, but enjoyably drinkable. I also want it to have some qualities of a ‘wine’. Being that its lighter in color I thought I should base it off of a fruitier white. The first time I brewed it I had used Pacific Gem and Simcoe hops (trying to pull out the grapefruit for which Simcoe is famous), but since the gravity was so low—and I kept the hop additions the same—it became a super hoppy wheat ale. That just would not do.

So for this attempt, I would use the same multi-infusion mash technique (gradually increasing the temperature from room, to 65C). However, to really channel the white wine I wanted, I decided on Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, and Citra hops. I had my 10kg of wheat malt, and was ready to show this beast who was in control.

NASA motivation is the best motivation

For good measure, I also planned on using a bit of yeast nutrient and making a yeast starter. Again; this reciipe was not going to own me twice.

building a yeastily happy home

Welp, it did anyway. The gravity bombed completely. While monitoring the mash temp, I noticed that due to the multiple infusions, I had temperature layers. The bottom of the mash was too cool to get any enzymatic activity while the top held all the heat. I stirred the mash up a number of times to try and even it out—I didn’t have to worry about the astringent side effects of stirring a mash since wheat malt doesn’t have any husks on the grain!—but was still cautions not to get the mash to the point of sticking.

The stirring didn’t do what I had hoped, and the temperature remained uneven. I took a gravity reading of the pure mash wort, and may have thrown a few things in frustration. The initial sample I took read at 1.080, which considering I needed to add at least two gallons of liquid to bring it up to six gallons I was pretty damn disappointed. After six gallons of wort was accumulated from the sparge into the kettle the pre-boil gravity was at 1.065. I was mildly frustrated…

I decided I’d deal with it, and I could do minor fixes. I adjusted the hops slightly to accommodate the lower gravity, and increased the boil to 100minutes. I also dropped some dextrose in the boil, since that strategy worked pretty well with the Imperial Stout I did with Shiggy.

I ended up with a little less than 20 liters at a gravity of 1.076. Again, more things were thrown around the garage. I tossed it in the fermenter, and spent my weekend thinking about how a giant bag of wheat fucked me over twice in a row.

My brewing notes get angry sometimes...

Lukily, I got to escape down to Maryland with some good friends. I spent a nice weekend drowning  my sorrows in good company, good beer, and saucy activities.

             

         

                                                                     (Shown respectively above...)

I soon realized that such a crime against my skills could not be dismissed so easily. I requested another day off from work, and made another yeast starter. This time, I was going big or going home. I looked up all the potential problems that may have led to a lower gravity, as well as other solutions. One thing that came up was the deadspace in the mash tun. I use a pretty sizeable mash tun, and only with the wheat wine did I breach the halfway point—and just barely. I kept that in mind, but found a potential solution that would work around my extra deadspace. Salvation came in the form of whiskey!

Basically, since distilleries also make ‘beer’ in a way, they use some similar techniques. They need to extract sugars from starches, but at a much higher density than beer since the liquid will be distilled. The technique used is called—according to my source—double mashing.

Basically, its splitting the grains in half, doing two mashes, one with a much higher gravity. Both are pretty high, but the one is super high due to using sparge run-off as the strike water for the second mash. It took a hell of a long time, but my god, the payoff was super sweet (PUN!)

                        

Sweet

And SUPER sweet

                            

The first dump into the kettle weighed in at 1.108, and the second (using 1.033 strike water) was 1.115. Both of those ‘raw’ dumps made up about 16-ish liters of wort, so the second sparge runoff was used to bring the wort up to volume. The second sparge was a bit weak so I just brought the volume up to 23.5 liters and kept the boil at 100 minutes. The preboil gravity was MUCH better (1.084 vs 1.065), and the final gravity chimed in at 1.092. I’m definitely calling that a winner for sure.

Sparge water in the kettle, high gravity wort in the bucket, and mash tun snuggled under the sleeping bag

The last wheat wine also blew over a bit, so I rigged up a blow off tube since the only thing that changed between this batch and the last one is a higher gravity. One mess was enough to deal with, but I feel like I’ve now joined some sort of officialdom now that my basement floor is sticky in spots…

A buttload of sediment you say? It settles (quite well i might add)

Depending on what the first wheat wine tastes like when I transfer it into a secondary I will decide on my next move. I currently have a 20 liter oak barrel on its way, that I plan on seasoning with a NZ Sauvignon Blanc. The idea was to let the barrel soak up the Sauv Blanc, then age the Wheat wine in the barrel until New Years (or it gets oaked enough). If the first wheat wine tastes reasonable, and the second one is also good, I’ll probably just play it cautiously, and barrel-age it on the shorter side.

But hey, it’s all still experimentation! That’s why I did two batches of the same recipe (that and I was pissed…).

I think that’s more than enough for you all. The only lesson learned this week is patience. That and I’m going to have to look into this deadspace problem more. If it does have as large of an impact as I think it might, it wouldn’t hurt to construct a smaller mash tun for the non-insane beer batches…

I'd just like to point this out: 100% wheat malt. No rice hulls. Stuck mashes are for amateurs

Gotlandsdricka
German Rauch Malt, Maris Otter, Caramunich

Sorachi Ace, Cz Saaz
European Ale (WLP011)[Failed], San Diego Super Yeast (WLP090)

Wheat Wine #2 [Multiple Infusion]
White Wheat Malt, English Wheat Malt
Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe, Citra
San Diego Super Yeast (WLP090)

Wheat Wine #3 [Double Mash]
White Wheat Malt, English Wheat Malt
Nelson Sauvin, Citra
San Diego Super Yeast (WLP090)