Tiny Helles tasting

Kegged just two weeks ago, this beer is really hitting its stride. It's crisp and super clear with the aid of gelatin. I've been drinking it steadily and sadly the keg is about empty. That's sort of the downside of 5-gallon batches; by the time the beer is really drinking good, it's nearly gone. I suppose I could wait a little bit longer before drinking it, but I can never resist sampling after kegging a new beer. And it tastes pretty good, I'll just start drinking it, like I did with this one. 

When it was brand new, it had a much stronger grainy, bready flavor. But as it's cleared up, the bready/grainy character is more of a background flavor. No apparent hop flavor, so it's all German pilsner malt. This beer finished at 1.010-12, so based on a 1.040 OG, it's under 4% ABV, perhaps substantially so. The great thing is that you can drink a lot of these and not get overly tipsy. The beer has a fairly moderate body, despite being such a small beer. It's not thin and there are no weird flavors from the touch of chiller discharge water that ended up in the kettle. Aroma is somewhat low, but there are hints of that bready graininess. Overall, this is a great beer and served as a great warmup for the yeast, which has been used in additional beers. Speaking of the yeast, 2633 Oktoberfest, I'm not sure I pick up anything unique about it compared to other lager yeasts I've used. 

Tiny smash Helles

Right before the lockdown hit my community, I rushed to the homebrew store to buy some grain. I intended to try making a Kolsch-like beer with US-05 yeast, but unfortunately I never got around to brewing it. Since then, my kegs have emptied and with plans to make an Oktoberfest beer, I decided I would use this grain to make a small Helles-like lager. 

I went to two different shops looking for a German lager strain, and the only one I could find is Wyeast 2633 Oktoberfest. I had intended to use Wyeast 2308 as I had good luck with it two years ago. I would have settled for 2124 as well, but both were out of stock. I've never used 2633 before and could not find a lot of information about it, but some posts I read on forums indicated it works well.

This is the first beer in my new house and the first non-Pickwick beer I've ever made. Overall, things went pretty smoothly, but I did have a few mishaps. The output end of my wort chiller somehow got in the wort for a second, so that increased the volume. I think I ended up with 5.5 gallons and an OG of 1.040 instead of 1.043. My wort chiller also came apart after one of the clamps evidently loosened. So I had to take it out and put it back together. 

In the end, this beer is a warmup for some Oktoberfest beers I'll be brewing in the coming weeks. Wort tastes pretty good. A little thin. But a good grainy, bready flavor. 

Recipe:

7.5 lbs Weyermann Pils

1 oz Hersbrucker at 60 minutes

2633 Oktoberfest yeast

Brulosophy Tiny Bottom Pale Ale

I rarely brew other people's recipes as I like the feeling of creativity and anticipation I feel when I write and brew my own. However, sometimes it pays to follow something tried and true, as sometimes things don't work out as intended. I scaled down my recipe manually one Saturday afternoon while sitting outside the homebrew shop. I didn't want to make it too complex with weird amounts, so I ballparked it. It's pretty close to the original. I got the ingredients at the brew shop in ozark one Saturday afternoon and tried to quickly scale the recipe out in the parking lot using the brewers friend app. I tried to manually scale the recipe to 5 gallons as best I could while also trying not to make it too complicated for the employee selecting, weighing, and crushing the grains for me. I have some old Fuggles on hand, but decided it’d be best to purchase fresh hops. So I got an ounce of Fuggles and Perle, a hop I’ve never used before. 

I read about this beer a pretty long time ago and somehow it got back on my radar earlier tis year. It sounded like an easy drinking pale ale, which is what I've been wanting to drink lately. Don’t really remember how I decided to add this one to the rotation. I’ve been watching a lot of homebrewing videos lately though, and one channel I subscribe to, clawhammer supply, made this beer. And I had read about it on brulosophy’s site. Anyway, here we are. 

It's the fourth in a series of beers I brewed this past winter, all using a single sachet of US-05. The original recipe calls for a different strain - San Diego Super yeast or something - but I was already using US-05, and it has never let me down.

Routine brew day, although I mixed up some hop additions. I substituted galena for magnum. And the original recipe calls for 1.5 oz or so total, but I had purchased two 1 oz hops packets and didn't feel like keeping around just .5 oz, so I put it all in.

Appearance: Golden, amber. Pretty clear without use of gelatin, just time. Off white, foamy head.

Aroma: Malt. No discernible hops. Bready?

Flavor: moderate body, good balance. Light bitterness. It had some earthy, herbal, noble hop flavor early on but those seem to have faded. It's mostly malt now, with maybe a hint of that herbal flavor in the background. Vienna malt is pretty prominent.

Overall: Very solid beer. I'm glad I brewed it. I like beers that I can drink without being overwhelmed with sweetness, bitterness, or alcohol. This strikes the perfect balance of all three.

Brew date: 2/1/2020

Keg date: 2/16/2020

OG 1.049-50

FG 1.010

~5.25 gallons

US-05

Mishmash brown ale

Apparently the definition of mishmash is a "confused" mixture. While this is definitely a mixture, it wasn't confused. I chose the ingredients deliberately in an effort to make something resembling a brown ale. In any event, this beer is made up of several leftover malts I've had around for quite some time. A brown ale sounded good, so I thought I'd pull together what I had and make one.

Nearly all of the malts are pretty old, probably at least a year for most of them, except the 2-row, which makes up the bulk of the grain bill. The chocolate malt is really old though. I bought five pounds of it from a shop in Fenton, MO in June 2014 and have used it here and there over the years, but I still have a lot left.

I like to experiment with beers to see what I can come up with. So that's what I did here. A little of this, a little of that, let's see what we get. I did do some research to try to stay within the guidelines of a brown ale; not to keep it within style per se, but just to make sure it tastes like a brown ale. For example, I reviewed an "averagely perfect" brown ale at Beer Advocate's homebrew forum, which has some ingredient overlap with my recipe.

Appearance: Deep brown with ruby on the edges and if you hold it to the light. Good clarity without use of gelatin. Light tan head.

Aroma: Roastiness. Coffee. Chocolate.

Flavor: Dark bread. Coffee. Dark chocolate. Modest hop bitterness, but definitely some astringency from roasted/kilned malts, but it's not unpleasant. Good carbonation. Fairly light body, but not thin. A good balance between sweetness and bitterness. Not overly dry and not sweet. No discernible hop flavor. I wonder if the old chocolate malt changes the flavor. Maybe kind of a dark fruit, oxidized flavor? I feel like when I've used fresher chocolate malt in the past, including in a January 2018 stout, there was a fresher, chocolatier flavor. Something to keep in mind for next time I guess. The flavor has sort of changed over time. I think I got a little of the brown malt when I first started drinking this beer, but it's completely lost now and I only taste the chocolate malt.

If I made this beer again, I'd probably cut back the chocolate malt to six ounces and maybe use less special roast too, but I think that malt is supposed to add "toasty" and "biscuity" flavors, so the heavy roasty, astringent flavor probably isn't coming from that. Another thing I'd do is use fresher chocolate malt. It was generally okay in this beer, but fresher malt would probably enhance the beer.

Brew date: 1/22/2020
Keg date: 2/1/2020
OG 1.052
FG 1.008
~5 gallons
US-05

Recipe:
5.5 lb 2 row
2 lb German pale ale
8 oz pale chocolate
8 oz caramunich I
8 oz brown malt
7 oz special roast
1.9 oz caramel 120

1 oz Willamette hops (4.2 AA) at 60 minutes for 17.42 IBU

Civil Life Rye Pale Ale clone attempt

Civil Life Rye is one of my favorite beers. It's a great balance of malt and hops in a pretty low ABV beer. I had it recently and decided I would try to make it again. I made a previous attempt in 2014 but for some reason decided to add Citra hops, which made it nothing like the real thing.

Civil Life is pretty coy about the recipe details, listing the ABV and IBU. Malts are listed but not the quantities/percentages, nor the lovibond. The hops are simply describe as "American C-hops." The term "American" precedes the hops and the word yeast, presumably meaning the beer has american yeast as well, but they don't say the strain. In short, they give us clues but not a lot to work with.

I came up with a recipe and brewed it on January 14. I racked the wort onto the yeast cake from the Southern Passion rye pale ale. Fermentation took off quickly and was done within a matter of days. I kegged it on January 22.

First off, this is a tasty beer and I like it, but it's nowhere near the real thing and quite far off in terms of the pale ale category, as well. Though the ABV is fine for a pale ale, and the bitterness too, there's just too much punchy hop flavor and not enough background malt flavor to really make this a pale ale. Instead it borders on IPA and could probably be deemed a session IPA. Surprisingly it doesn't drink like one of those watery session IPAs that were popular about four or five years ago. Maybe that's due to the pound and a half of flaked and malted rye. It has a good body, maybe moderate, maybe chewy, but isn't sweet. It was fermented with the yeast cake from the Southern Passion pale ale (US-05).

So, where did I go wrong with my beer? Perhaps the most obvious problem before drinking is the color. It's yellow (and pretty clear; no gelatin on this one, just time), whereas the real thing is "deep amber." The only malt listed on the web site that could give the beer any color is caramel, so I will need a higher lovibond caramel malt next time, maybe 120. In addition, the real thing has a slight toasty/roast flavor in the background, which almost reminds me of brown malt, and i know Civil Life uses it a lot in their beers. But that's not listed among the ingredients. Again, there's just too much hop flavor here and not enough malt and the real thing is almost entirely malt.

Changes for next time? A darker color, achieved through caramel malt I guess. And way less hops. Maybe an ounce of Chinook? What gives it that sort of roasty/toasty flavor? Maybe a darker caramel malt? Mine does have a slight crackery malt flavor in the background at times, though hops is definitely the dominant flavor. Overall, mine is a tasty beer. Cheers!

OG 1.043
FG 1.007-1.008
~5 gallons
US-05

Southern Passion Rye Pale Ale

Continuing with my trend of easy drinking beers, this is another moderate alcohol pale ale using Southern Passion hops, which I got at the Anheuser Busch hop giveaway in St. Louis in November. I had never heard of these hops before. Since I have a lot, maybe 3/4 of a pound, I thought I would use them in this beer. Apparently they're a South African variety.  AB purportedly bought a large amount and for a time maybe even all of them, per an article, which sort of prevented other breweries from obtaining them.

AB provided specs indicating the alpha acids are between 6% and 8%, at least for this crop. However, research indicates they can be as high as 12. I wonder if the AA is higher than 6-8%, because this is a fairly bitter beer. It's also a pretty dry beer, so there isn't much sweetness to balance out the bitterness. This beer may simply have too much hops, also. At four ounces for a five gallon batch of pale ale, that really may be pushing it. I recall when session IPAs were popular that they were pretty watery, even though they were sometimes around 5% ABV. It seems to me that a high quantity of hops in even a 5% beer can really alter the sweetness perception, making a beer taste very dry, bitter, and a little watery. If I made this beer again, I would use maybe only two ounces instead of four. Of course, it seems carbonation can alter a beer, as well. This beer was and may remain a bit over-carbonated. Hydrometer samples post-fermentation were sweeter and the hop flavor more pungent and fruitier.

The pungent fruitiness seems to have diminished. I have a hard time describing hops with words other than generic fruit. Maybe orange, particularly the bitter rind part. Aroma is somewhat modest in this beer, but is generally fruity.

I like rye beers, so this beer has some rye malt, which was pretty old actually. I got it three or four years ago and it's been sitting in a closet since. Incidentally, I think the rye "spice" flavor is a myth. It's a mishmash beer, too, with various types of malt, including 2 row, Munich, and German pale ale. No evident malt in the aroma. Some light malt flavors in the taste, maybe a hint of crackery malt. A touch of astringency as well, perhaps owing to the hop bitterness. It looks great, good golden/amber color, with good clarity from gelatin. Overall, it's a good but not great beer, and not really one I think of first when I consider which beer to have. It's also a reminder to be careful with recipe design. With a touch more sweetness, less bitterness, and maybe a maximum of two ounces of hops, this would be a better beer. Cheers!

OG 1.048-50
FG 1.008-10
~5.25 gallons
US-05