I started brewing exactly a year ago. I remember because when I told SWMBO that I want to brew she swore me to wait a month and be sure, so I bought my kit the first week in June.
My first beer was an Amber Ale Extract Kit. And a stale one, at that. My second was All Grain. I hadn't really planned on going all grain right away, it's just that I couldn't get enough extract at the little shop I was buying from up north. I didn't have a MLT, so I brewed BIAB in a bag made out of the wrong material and got 58% efficiency.
But I got better. I got better equipment, and learned better process, and payed better attention to details. And slowly, slowly, my beers got better. I went from really shitty beers, to shitty beers, to mediocre beers. They are still not at the level of "good beers", but I feel I can definitely call them "Drinkable" now.
Given how I feel about my beers, it was with great reservations that I decided to enter in this year's Longshot competition. I don't think they're good enough. I know for a fact that there are much better entries in the categories I've entered. And I'm certain that they will not win. Basically, it's a waste of time and money.
But I entered anyway. Because I want the feedback. I want someone who doesn't know me to taste my beers and give me an honest evaluation. That's the thought that guided my beer selection as well: I didn't enter what I consider my "best beer". I entered beers that I want to improve on, and that I would some critique of. I entered beers that I taste something in, and that I wanted to know if other people taste it too, or am I just hallucinating.
I also entered for the camaraderie. Because a home brewer is an individual, but he's also a part of a community. There are many, many excellent brewers in this country, and many of those will be at the competition, pouring their own beers. To stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these people is an honor and a statement of intent. I am a home brewer. I make the best beer I can. I will continue to improve so that one day, my best will truly be best.
See you all at the marina. :)
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
pride and prejudice
I usually write this blog once a week. Typically Monday morning on the train... But my post yesterday seems to have generated more interest than usual, and seems to possibly offend some people. While I stand by my statements about the need for honest feedback, it was never my intention to attack or target anyone. So if I offended anyone, I apologize.
Some of the most interesting comments came from DSG, a fellow Israeli beer rater (you can see his comments on the previous post.) DSG raised an interesting point: That we are beer raters, not beer judges, and thus that bias is built into our rating. In other words, that we rate beer according to wither we liked it, not necessarily wither it is good or not. In fact, as he points out, that is how beer rating is described on the site.
While I still feel that we should strive to incorporate objective measurements into our rating, I have to concede the point DSG is making. If ratebeer calls for a "hedonistic" rating, then by all means how we like the beer should come into play. I will still argue that when I detect flaws in the beer it detracts from my "hedonistic" enjoyment of it, but to each his own.
But in reading DSG's comment I came up with two additional insights:
First, that there is a difference between a beer rating and beer feedback. And I think unlike a rating (that is done in public) feedback (which is done in private and often face to face) should focus on the character of the beer. Its strong points, its flaws, its process, what was done well, and what could be done better. And furthermore that it should be as specific as possible. In a nutshell, if rating characterizes the beer, feedback should analysis it.
Second, that the thing I was talking about, where a familiarity with the brewer or brewery may prejudice the rating, can work both ways. I know that when I evaluate a beer, I also look at were it came from. It is very possible that when I know a beer comes from a certain brewery, who's house character I don't like, it would prejudice my evaluation of a new beer by them (this happened to me with a certain New York brewery that routinely got great ratings. I tasted a bunch of their beers, and for some reason none of them seemed that great. It got to the point that I would smell a new beer by them and the particular "house smell" of their products would drive me away.) If one tried to be fair about this, one must allow for the idea that prejudice works both ways.
So I am going to try something and, DSG if you're reading this, you're welcome to try it with me: I'm going to take three IPAs, and blind taste them. One will be an IPA that I thought was the greatest example of its kind in Israel, one will be a beer a lot of people claim is the best IPA but I thought was a little lackluster, and one will be an IPA that some people rave about and that I straight-up didn't like. (you're welcome to message me privately for the specific names). For these three beers I'm planning to have my wife pour me a 100ml sample in identical glasses, without letting me know which beer is which. I'm planning to taste them one at a time, and write (on a piece of paper) a rating of each one as if I was doing it on the site. Between the samples I will eat plain crackers and sniff my own sleeves in order to cleans my nose and palate.
And then I'll compare these notes to the ones I posted on the site about these beers, and see the differences. I may discover some things about my own objectiveness. :) And it will be an interesting experiment at any rate.
I will end this post with one final thought: Homebrewing is a hobby. But it is also a community. As members of this community we need to embrace brewers on all levels, and know that every person brews at his or her own level, according to their tools, knowledge, and experience. BUT, and this is really the crux of my last post: I feel that we must strive for excellence. We must strive to improve, and learn, and experiment, and evaluate, and do all those things that we CAN do that professional guys can't afford to do. And in this quest for self-improvement, we must be honest with ourselves and each other about the results of our efforts. If I can trust you to tell me when you taste something bad, I'll be a lot more likely to believe you when you tell me something good.
Cheers.
Some of the most interesting comments came from DSG, a fellow Israeli beer rater (you can see his comments on the previous post.) DSG raised an interesting point: That we are beer raters, not beer judges, and thus that bias is built into our rating. In other words, that we rate beer according to wither we liked it, not necessarily wither it is good or not. In fact, as he points out, that is how beer rating is described on the site.
While I still feel that we should strive to incorporate objective measurements into our rating, I have to concede the point DSG is making. If ratebeer calls for a "hedonistic" rating, then by all means how we like the beer should come into play. I will still argue that when I detect flaws in the beer it detracts from my "hedonistic" enjoyment of it, but to each his own.
But in reading DSG's comment I came up with two additional insights:
First, that there is a difference between a beer rating and beer feedback. And I think unlike a rating (that is done in public) feedback (which is done in private and often face to face) should focus on the character of the beer. Its strong points, its flaws, its process, what was done well, and what could be done better. And furthermore that it should be as specific as possible. In a nutshell, if rating characterizes the beer, feedback should analysis it.
Second, that the thing I was talking about, where a familiarity with the brewer or brewery may prejudice the rating, can work both ways. I know that when I evaluate a beer, I also look at were it came from. It is very possible that when I know a beer comes from a certain brewery, who's house character I don't like, it would prejudice my evaluation of a new beer by them (this happened to me with a certain New York brewery that routinely got great ratings. I tasted a bunch of their beers, and for some reason none of them seemed that great. It got to the point that I would smell a new beer by them and the particular "house smell" of their products would drive me away.) If one tried to be fair about this, one must allow for the idea that prejudice works both ways.
So I am going to try something and, DSG if you're reading this, you're welcome to try it with me: I'm going to take three IPAs, and blind taste them. One will be an IPA that I thought was the greatest example of its kind in Israel, one will be a beer a lot of people claim is the best IPA but I thought was a little lackluster, and one will be an IPA that some people rave about and that I straight-up didn't like. (you're welcome to message me privately for the specific names). For these three beers I'm planning to have my wife pour me a 100ml sample in identical glasses, without letting me know which beer is which. I'm planning to taste them one at a time, and write (on a piece of paper) a rating of each one as if I was doing it on the site. Between the samples I will eat plain crackers and sniff my own sleeves in order to cleans my nose and palate.
And then I'll compare these notes to the ones I posted on the site about these beers, and see the differences. I may discover some things about my own objectiveness. :) And it will be an interesting experiment at any rate.
I will end this post with one final thought: Homebrewing is a hobby. But it is also a community. As members of this community we need to embrace brewers on all levels, and know that every person brews at his or her own level, according to their tools, knowledge, and experience. BUT, and this is really the crux of my last post: I feel that we must strive for excellence. We must strive to improve, and learn, and experiment, and evaluate, and do all those things that we CAN do that professional guys can't afford to do. And in this quest for self-improvement, we must be honest with ourselves and each other about the results of our efforts. If I can trust you to tell me when you taste something bad, I'll be a lot more likely to believe you when you tell me something good.
Cheers.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Judgment Day I:The politics of beer rating
I've been working on my beer tasting and evaluation skills a lot lately. You see part of it here on the blog in that I've started to publish tasting notes for my own brews. I've also been doing a lot of things like listening to podcast and reading about beer judging methods, and trying to incorporate these ideas into my own evaluation process. It's been a highly rewarding experience, where I found myself suddenly discovering new smells and tastes in beer that I have not noticed before. There's nothing like the first time that you smell a beer differently and you go "By Gad! This doesn't just smell of hopes, it smells like Mango! There's no mango in it, but I smell it!" (It's a little hard to engineer such a moment, but if you can achieve it in the presence of someone else, the startled looks are worth the effort).
In this quest to expand and train my palate I've been tasting a fair amount of Israeli beers. I have two reasons for this:
1. I live in Israel, so I never know how fresh is the imported beer I drink. Local beer, on the other hand, is fairly consistent.
2. There's a fairly small number of Israeli beer raters on ratebeer.com, so I get to know the way they rate fairly well. It also means that a typical Israeli beer doesn't have nearly as many ratings as an international brand, which lets me read a few reviews by people who's spectrum of ratings I know, and helps me calibrate my palate against a fairly consistent sample.
I also taste a lot of beer made by other home brewers, and try to have as many people taste my beer and give me feedback. It is, in my opinion, a crucial part of becoming a better brewer.
But lately I've been noticing something: Israeli raters rate Israeli beers higher, on average, than import beers.
It's a well known problem: A guy hands you a beer that he made. He's very excited about it. He thinks it's great. He looks at you with big dewy eyes as you take your sip, excited to hear your praise. But the beer sucks. Or maybe it doesn't suck, but it's just not that good. Maybe you detect the hot-fermentation byproducts, the mash tannins, or just the recipe flaws, doesn't matter. The point is that he's your friend and you don't want to offend him. So you tone it down. You don't tell him that his beer sucks (and by gad, I've had homebrew beer that actually made me want to say "yuck") You say it's "interesting" and "complex" and that you can really taste that special ingredient that he put in. He worked so hard on this thing, and it's his own hand-crafted creation. So you don't want to crush his spirit, you want to let him down easy.
And I think that's a problem. Yes, if someone spat out my beer and said "yuck" I'd be offended. But at the same time, if someone spent five minutes telling me how great it is I'd call him a liar (maybe not to his face, but I wouldn't believe him.) The greatest thing you can do for me, as a brewer, is to tell me what you taste in my beer. How it feels in your nose, and mouth, and throat. THAT'S what I want to know: your honest impression. One of the biggest compliments I've ever got for my beer was from a woman who sipped my Pilsner and exclaimed "I taste saffron!" I don't know where the hell she got that, I certainly didn't put any saffron in the beer, but the fact she tasted it meant that she was actually taking the time to really taste and evaluate my beer critically. And I really appreciated that.
The big problem with this kind of false feedback is that people believe it. And if you keep getting this kind of feedback consistently (and you probably will, because you keep asking the same people - your friends) It may lead you to believe that your beer is, and has always been, great. And that's bad, because it can mean that you never strive to improve. What's the point in trying to tweak your process, in improving your sanitation, in refining your control points,and in controlling your fermentation if your beer is already "perfect"? Why learn, invest, research, test, evaluate, and respond if you "don't need to change anything"? It's a trap. At best, if you buy into these kind of accolades they will lead you to being a mediocre brewer. At worse, it can lead you to think that you are so good that you can go pro.
I know at least one brewery like this: It started with a homebrewer who caught the bug and started brewing in his back yard. Within a year, speared on by a chorus of adoring fans, he opened a brewery. He put in a lot of time and effort into professional equipment, advertising, innovative business plan, and a dozen other things. There's just one problem: The beer isn't good.
Don't get me wrong, the beer is not bad for homebrew, and it has potential. But it's not good enough for a commercial product. The guy spends a lot of effort trying to be a "cool and innovative" brewery, which means that he does a lot of gimmicky beers (something I will talk more about in part II of the judgment series) and is involved in the brewing community in his area. The constant stream of "new, innovative beers" that comes out of the brewery keeps up customer interest and drums up business. But if you ask any of the local drinkers in his area who know how to taste beer, and aren't fooled by dumping a massive amount of hops into a mediocre beer, they'll tell you "he's great, he's a good guy, he does everything right, except for the beer..."
And the sad part about that, and I think the dangerous part, is that when you have a bunch of friends and casual drinkers singing hosannas to your brew, you tend not to accept the few who do try to give you honest advice. I have a friend. A brewer of great beers, greatly educated in the theory and practice of brewing, and (unfortunately) an arrogant bastard. (I think anyone who knows who I'm talking about will agree with that statement. In fact, I think he himself would). There's no way around it: This guy is convinced that he knows the only way to make beer, and that anyone who doesn't do it his way is an idiot. But for all his personality shortcomings, he has a great palate, and he knows how to taste beer. This is the kind of person I want feedback from.
My friend is a bit of a pariah in some parts of the local homebrewing community because of his abrasive nature. But I ask you: If you truly want to improve as a brewer. If you truly want to make great beer. If you truly want feedback on your brew. Who would you rather ask, the guy who's trying to be your friend, or the guy who'll give you his honest opinion and doesn't give a crap if you never talk to him again?
We all have egos. And when you craft something as personal as a home brew. When you put in all the time and effort and do it "the best way you know how", it sucks to have someone take one sip of this thing that you worked so hard on and tell you what's wrong with it. But if we truly want to improve we must put our egos aside and allow our beers to be tasted critically. By ourselves, and by others. Otherwise, we will never be more than the sum of our accolades.
In this quest to expand and train my palate I've been tasting a fair amount of Israeli beers. I have two reasons for this:
1. I live in Israel, so I never know how fresh is the imported beer I drink. Local beer, on the other hand, is fairly consistent.
2. There's a fairly small number of Israeli beer raters on ratebeer.com, so I get to know the way they rate fairly well. It also means that a typical Israeli beer doesn't have nearly as many ratings as an international brand, which lets me read a few reviews by people who's spectrum of ratings I know, and helps me calibrate my palate against a fairly consistent sample.
I also taste a lot of beer made by other home brewers, and try to have as many people taste my beer and give me feedback. It is, in my opinion, a crucial part of becoming a better brewer.
But lately I've been noticing something: Israeli raters rate Israeli beers higher, on average, than import beers.
It's a well known problem: A guy hands you a beer that he made. He's very excited about it. He thinks it's great. He looks at you with big dewy eyes as you take your sip, excited to hear your praise. But the beer sucks. Or maybe it doesn't suck, but it's just not that good. Maybe you detect the hot-fermentation byproducts, the mash tannins, or just the recipe flaws, doesn't matter. The point is that he's your friend and you don't want to offend him. So you tone it down. You don't tell him that his beer sucks (and by gad, I've had homebrew beer that actually made me want to say "yuck") You say it's "interesting" and "complex" and that you can really taste that special ingredient that he put in. He worked so hard on this thing, and it's his own hand-crafted creation. So you don't want to crush his spirit, you want to let him down easy.
And I think that's a problem. Yes, if someone spat out my beer and said "yuck" I'd be offended. But at the same time, if someone spent five minutes telling me how great it is I'd call him a liar (maybe not to his face, but I wouldn't believe him.) The greatest thing you can do for me, as a brewer, is to tell me what you taste in my beer. How it feels in your nose, and mouth, and throat. THAT'S what I want to know: your honest impression. One of the biggest compliments I've ever got for my beer was from a woman who sipped my Pilsner and exclaimed "I taste saffron!" I don't know where the hell she got that, I certainly didn't put any saffron in the beer, but the fact she tasted it meant that she was actually taking the time to really taste and evaluate my beer critically. And I really appreciated that.
The big problem with this kind of false feedback is that people believe it. And if you keep getting this kind of feedback consistently (and you probably will, because you keep asking the same people - your friends) It may lead you to believe that your beer is, and has always been, great. And that's bad, because it can mean that you never strive to improve. What's the point in trying to tweak your process, in improving your sanitation, in refining your control points,and in controlling your fermentation if your beer is already "perfect"? Why learn, invest, research, test, evaluate, and respond if you "don't need to change anything"? It's a trap. At best, if you buy into these kind of accolades they will lead you to being a mediocre brewer. At worse, it can lead you to think that you are so good that you can go pro.
I know at least one brewery like this: It started with a homebrewer who caught the bug and started brewing in his back yard. Within a year, speared on by a chorus of adoring fans, he opened a brewery. He put in a lot of time and effort into professional equipment, advertising, innovative business plan, and a dozen other things. There's just one problem: The beer isn't good.
Don't get me wrong, the beer is not bad for homebrew, and it has potential. But it's not good enough for a commercial product. The guy spends a lot of effort trying to be a "cool and innovative" brewery, which means that he does a lot of gimmicky beers (something I will talk more about in part II of the judgment series) and is involved in the brewing community in his area. The constant stream of "new, innovative beers" that comes out of the brewery keeps up customer interest and drums up business. But if you ask any of the local drinkers in his area who know how to taste beer, and aren't fooled by dumping a massive amount of hops into a mediocre beer, they'll tell you "he's great, he's a good guy, he does everything right, except for the beer..."
And the sad part about that, and I think the dangerous part, is that when you have a bunch of friends and casual drinkers singing hosannas to your brew, you tend not to accept the few who do try to give you honest advice. I have a friend. A brewer of great beers, greatly educated in the theory and practice of brewing, and (unfortunately) an arrogant bastard. (I think anyone who knows who I'm talking about will agree with that statement. In fact, I think he himself would). There's no way around it: This guy is convinced that he knows the only way to make beer, and that anyone who doesn't do it his way is an idiot. But for all his personality shortcomings, he has a great palate, and he knows how to taste beer. This is the kind of person I want feedback from.
My friend is a bit of a pariah in some parts of the local homebrewing community because of his abrasive nature. But I ask you: If you truly want to improve as a brewer. If you truly want to make great beer. If you truly want feedback on your brew. Who would you rather ask, the guy who's trying to be your friend, or the guy who'll give you his honest opinion and doesn't give a crap if you never talk to him again?
We all have egos. And when you craft something as personal as a home brew. When you put in all the time and effort and do it "the best way you know how", it sucks to have someone take one sip of this thing that you worked so hard on and tell you what's wrong with it. But if we truly want to improve we must put our egos aside and allow our beers to be tasted critically. By ourselves, and by others. Otherwise, we will never be more than the sum of our accolades.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Tasting Notes: Patriot Shame (APA)
Jews are by nature wine people. There's no other explanation for the fact that we have a holiday that requires you to drink four cups of wine in a single night, but forbids you from having beer for a week. Contrast that with the monks that LIVED on beer for 40 days, and you get the distinct sense that we (again) got shafted.
The upside of this is that it forces you to let the beer sit just a little longer. And sometimes the beer can really use the time. This was the case with this APA: I tasted it a week before Passover, made a face, and said "this needs a bit more time". So it was good timing for the holiday, for a change.
One thing that I did with this beer, that I've always wanted to do before but never got around to, is to compare tasting notes and brewing notes. This turned out to be very educational: My tasting notes talk about the beer being a bit thin and how it would benefit from a slightly higher mash temp. After I wrote that I went back to my brewing notes and found that, indeed, I did mash a bit lower than intended. It was good to see cause and effect outlined so clearly.
=================================================
Recipe as brewed:
Patriot Shame American Pale Ale
Mash Ingredients
Mash Steps
Batch sparge with 3 steps (0.86l, 10.13l, 10.13l) of 75.6 C water
Estimated pre-boil gravity is 1.044 SG
Boil Ingredients
Steeped Hops
Fermentation Ingredients
--------------------------------------------------------------
Original recipe numbers (Listed in the recipe I used):
OG 1.052
FG 1.013
Attenuation 74%
IBU 40
Color 7 SRM
Alcohol 5.1% ABV
PreBoil 1.044
--------------------------------------------------------------
Brewing notes:
*Mash in: 14.5L @ 76 +.5L after daugh-in yielded mash at 65.5-66C <== This is probably the cause of the thinner body
Fermentation Notes:
Yeast pitched at 19.2 after 24 hrs
8 hours after pitch raised temp from 20 to 21.3 to try to get a bit extra attenuation due to lower than expected OG
After 8 days temp raised to 22.2 for diacitile and attenuation
12.3 (10 days) FG (by corrected refractometer) 1.008
13.3 (11 days) drop to laget temp (4C)
17.3 (15 days) Reached 4C
24.3 Bottled 21.3 Liters
---------------------------------------------------------
Taste Notes:
Appearance: Light copper, mostly clear with a large foamy head
Aroma: Citrus and Grapefruit, hoppy with a bit of yeast
Taste: Firm bitterness upfront, grapefruit and lemon, body a bit thin - probably overly carbonated a bit since carbonation is very lively
Palate: nice and bitter, fairly long
Overall: Good. Beer tastes rather like a light IPA, which if you think of and American IPA as a sort of extra-hoppy APA makes sense. For next version I would try slightly higher mash temp, sightly lower carbonation, and maybe just a touch more hops - probably as late addition
==============================================
One thing I thought about this morning, after I re-read the notes, was the hop schedule. When I tasted this beer I felt it needed a bit more hop character, and had originally though about another (late) hop addition. Re-reading this now I realize that while the character is a bit lacking, the bitterness is above and beyond the guidelines for an APA, and has in fact strayed into IPA territory. This causes me to think: Maybe the reason I feel the need for more hoppiness, is because of the extra bitterness. It is possible that, having drank many an IPA, I come to expect certain hop character at certain levels of bitterness, and my palate is interpreting this beer as a not-quite hoppy enough an IPA, rather than an APA. (The styles ARE very close, after all). So in looking at this recipe now, I think I would not add another hop addition, but rather move one of the bittering additions (probably the Challenger) to a later stage, thus reducing the overall bitterness, and upping the perceived hop character at the same time. (lower carbonation will help this too, I think). This is why it's good to re-brew a recipe several times: You get to experiment and test different ideas.
The upside of this is that it forces you to let the beer sit just a little longer. And sometimes the beer can really use the time. This was the case with this APA: I tasted it a week before Passover, made a face, and said "this needs a bit more time". So it was good timing for the holiday, for a change.
One thing that I did with this beer, that I've always wanted to do before but never got around to, is to compare tasting notes and brewing notes. This turned out to be very educational: My tasting notes talk about the beer being a bit thin and how it would benefit from a slightly higher mash temp. After I wrote that I went back to my brewing notes and found that, indeed, I did mash a bit lower than intended. It was good to see cause and effect outlined so clearly.
=================================================
Recipe as brewed:
Patriot Shame American Pale Ale
| Type: All Grain | Date: 3/2/2012 |
| Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 l | Brewer: Boaz |
| Boil Size: 29.44 l | Asst Brewer: |
| Boil Time: 90 min | Equipment: Brew Pot (50L) and Cooler (24L) |
| Final Bottling Volume: 20.00 l | Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 |
| Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage |
| Amt | Name | Type | # | %/IBU |
| 4.50 kg | Pale Ale Malt 2-Row (Briess) (3.5 SRM) | Grain | 1 | 86.9 % |
| 0.34 kg | Munich I (Weyermann) (6.1 SRM) | Grain | 2 | 6.6 % |
| 0.20 kg | Caramel Malt Pils (Shahar) (2.9 SRM) | Grain | 3 | 3.9 % |
| 0.14 kg | Medium Caramel/Crystal Malt - 45L - (45.0 SRM) | Grain | 4 | 2.7 % |
| Name | Description | Step Temperature | Step Time |
| Mash In | Add 14.46 l of water at 72.7 C *see below | 66.7 C | 60 min |
Estimated pre-boil gravity is 1.044 SG
| Amt | Name | Type | # | %/IBU |
| 20.00 g | Galena [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min | Hop | 5 | 30.8 IBUs |
| 7.00 g | Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min | Hop | 6 | 14.2 IBUs |
| 12.00 g | Cascade [5.40 %] - Boil 10.0 min | Hop | 7 | 1.8 IBUs |
| 7.00 g | Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min | Hop | 8 | 2.8 IBUs |
| Amt | Name | Type | # | %/IBU |
| 18.00 g | Cascade [5.40 %] - Aroma Steep 2.0 min | Hop | 9 | 0.0 IBUs |
| 16.00 g | Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.50 %] - Aroma Steep 2.0 min | Hop | 10 | 0.0 IBUs |
| 10.00 g | Galena [11.00 %] - Aroma Steep 2.0 min |
| Amt | Name | Type | # | %/IBU |
| 1.0 pkg | Fermentis Ale Yeast US-05 | Yeast | 12 | - |
Original recipe numbers (Listed in the recipe I used):
OG 1.052
FG 1.013
Attenuation 74%
IBU 40
Color 7 SRM
Alcohol 5.1% ABV
PreBoil 1.044
--------------------------------------------------------------
Brewing notes:
*Mash in: 14.5L @ 76 +.5L after daugh-in yielded mash at 65.5-66C <== This is probably the cause of the thinner body
Fermentation Notes:
Yeast pitched at 19.2 after 24 hrs
8 hours after pitch raised temp from 20 to 21.3 to try to get a bit extra attenuation due to lower than expected OG
After 8 days temp raised to 22.2 for diacitile and attenuation
12.3 (10 days) FG (by corrected refractometer) 1.008
13.3 (11 days) drop to laget temp (4C)
17.3 (15 days) Reached 4C
24.3 Bottled 21.3 Liters
---------------------------------------------------------
Taste Notes:
Appearance: Light copper, mostly clear with a large foamy head
Aroma: Citrus and Grapefruit, hoppy with a bit of yeast
Taste: Firm bitterness upfront, grapefruit and lemon, body a bit thin - probably overly carbonated a bit since carbonation is very lively
Palate: nice and bitter, fairly long
Overall: Good. Beer tastes rather like a light IPA, which if you think of and American IPA as a sort of extra-hoppy APA makes sense. For next version I would try slightly higher mash temp, sightly lower carbonation, and maybe just a touch more hops - probably as late addition
==============================================
One thing I thought about this morning, after I re-read the notes, was the hop schedule. When I tasted this beer I felt it needed a bit more hop character, and had originally though about another (late) hop addition. Re-reading this now I realize that while the character is a bit lacking, the bitterness is above and beyond the guidelines for an APA, and has in fact strayed into IPA territory. This causes me to think: Maybe the reason I feel the need for more hoppiness, is because of the extra bitterness. It is possible that, having drank many an IPA, I come to expect certain hop character at certain levels of bitterness, and my palate is interpreting this beer as a not-quite hoppy enough an IPA, rather than an APA. (The styles ARE very close, after all). So in looking at this recipe now, I think I would not add another hop addition, but rather move one of the bittering additions (probably the Challenger) to a later stage, thus reducing the overall bitterness, and upping the perceived hop character at the same time. (lower carbonation will help this too, I think). This is why it's good to re-brew a recipe several times: You get to experiment and test different ideas.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Bottle blues
Every time I have to wash, rinse, sanitize, fill, and cap 60-some odd bottles I wish I were kegging.
Don't get me wrong: There are few joys in the life of a homebrewer that equal the sudden thrill of finding a perfectly good, dark brown, non-screwtop bottle with an easily removable label. In my neck of the woods the local Vienna Lager (Goldstar) comes in these bottles, and it is one of the greatest justifications for the continued existence of that beer (Though truth be told, as far as Vienna lagers go, Goldstar is one of the better examples of the mass-produced breed). I look for bottles everywhere: I have scoped out every recycling bin around my office, and I know which ones have empty beer bottles and on what day. My coworkers have gotten used to seeing a crate of empty bottles in the corner of the office waiting to be taken home, and my friends have learned to put bottles neatly in bags for me. I am the bottle king of my little domain.
But it's a lot of work. Especially if one suffers from a lethal combination of fishing bottles from the trash (often with dried residue and fungus inside) and a compulsion for cleanliness and sanitation that would make a clean-room worker weep with joy. Before any bottle of mine gets filled it had been rinsed out between 6 to 8 times, scrubbed with a dedicated bottle brush, sanitized with contact sanitizer (including the mouth and a few centimeters on the outside), and filled on top of the sanitizer foam. Multiply that by 60 bottles for an average 20L batch, and you'll easily understand why I wasn't that upset when my latest batch of cider turned out sour. - At least it meant I didn't have to bottle it!
So I'd love to keg, but it's not really a realistic option.
For one thing, I don't drink enough. I drink somewhere in the neighborhood of one liter per week. I still have bottles of a Pilsner I brewed in August (and it's still good, which I attribute to the anal-retentive sanitation described above), and practically every other beer too. At that rate, I would be able to use a keg maybe two or three times a year (assuming I just drink from that keg). Hardly worth it.
For another thing, I don't have the cooling. I "only" have the fermentation fridge (I say only in quotations because I'm well aware that many home brewers don't have that, and I count myself blessed to have a wife who doesn't mind sticking a fridge in the livingroom so long as she gets to decorate it). Kegs need to be kept at serving temperatures (not strictly true, of course, but the alternative is an inline cooler, which is another piece of equipment I don't have) where as beer needs to ferment at temperatures much higher. They can't live in the same fridge.
Actually that's not true: I could dedicate my fridge as a keg/lagering fridge and brew ales and lagers based on the ambient temperatures. But I loth to do that. So much of the character of beer hinges on precise temperature control that I would hate to lose that ability just to save some effort.
And kegs have their own problems: They don't transport well (If you want to take some beer over to friends you have to bottle it). They're expensive (compared to the free bottles I get). They don't age well (I have an "archive" of past beers I brewed, so I can taste how they change over time). And they require a lot of extra equipment (CO2, lines, taps, etc).
All of these reasons mean that I will stay with bottles in the foreseeable future. Maybe one day I'll have a large walk-in cooler in the basement and thirty taps lining the walls of the livingroom. But as it is, whenever I have a beer that's ready to leave the fermenter I will be putting it in bottles, and just wishing I were kegging...
Don't get me wrong: There are few joys in the life of a homebrewer that equal the sudden thrill of finding a perfectly good, dark brown, non-screwtop bottle with an easily removable label. In my neck of the woods the local Vienna Lager (Goldstar) comes in these bottles, and it is one of the greatest justifications for the continued existence of that beer (Though truth be told, as far as Vienna lagers go, Goldstar is one of the better examples of the mass-produced breed). I look for bottles everywhere: I have scoped out every recycling bin around my office, and I know which ones have empty beer bottles and on what day. My coworkers have gotten used to seeing a crate of empty bottles in the corner of the office waiting to be taken home, and my friends have learned to put bottles neatly in bags for me. I am the bottle king of my little domain.
But it's a lot of work. Especially if one suffers from a lethal combination of fishing bottles from the trash (often with dried residue and fungus inside) and a compulsion for cleanliness and sanitation that would make a clean-room worker weep with joy. Before any bottle of mine gets filled it had been rinsed out between 6 to 8 times, scrubbed with a dedicated bottle brush, sanitized with contact sanitizer (including the mouth and a few centimeters on the outside), and filled on top of the sanitizer foam. Multiply that by 60 bottles for an average 20L batch, and you'll easily understand why I wasn't that upset when my latest batch of cider turned out sour. - At least it meant I didn't have to bottle it!
So I'd love to keg, but it's not really a realistic option.
For one thing, I don't drink enough. I drink somewhere in the neighborhood of one liter per week. I still have bottles of a Pilsner I brewed in August (and it's still good, which I attribute to the anal-retentive sanitation described above), and practically every other beer too. At that rate, I would be able to use a keg maybe two or three times a year (assuming I just drink from that keg). Hardly worth it.
For another thing, I don't have the cooling. I "only" have the fermentation fridge (I say only in quotations because I'm well aware that many home brewers don't have that, and I count myself blessed to have a wife who doesn't mind sticking a fridge in the livingroom so long as she gets to decorate it). Kegs need to be kept at serving temperatures (not strictly true, of course, but the alternative is an inline cooler, which is another piece of equipment I don't have) where as beer needs to ferment at temperatures much higher. They can't live in the same fridge.
Actually that's not true: I could dedicate my fridge as a keg/lagering fridge and brew ales and lagers based on the ambient temperatures. But I loth to do that. So much of the character of beer hinges on precise temperature control that I would hate to lose that ability just to save some effort.
And kegs have their own problems: They don't transport well (If you want to take some beer over to friends you have to bottle it). They're expensive (compared to the free bottles I get). They don't age well (I have an "archive" of past beers I brewed, so I can taste how they change over time). And they require a lot of extra equipment (CO2, lines, taps, etc).
All of these reasons mean that I will stay with bottles in the foreseeable future. Maybe one day I'll have a large walk-in cooler in the basement and thirty taps lining the walls of the livingroom. But as it is, whenever I have a beer that's ready to leave the fermenter I will be putting it in bottles, and just wishing I were kegging...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Dialing in your process
When you first start brewing it's all guesswork.
There's a lot of numbers involved in brewing. Efficiency, volume, gravity, boiloff, time, and many many more. You need to know these things when you brew, but you'll only know them when you start brewing, so you guess. You use rules of thumb, estimates, and calculations to achieve approximate numbers that you can use to estimate your results. And then you brew with those numbers. If you're lucky, they're close enough to true values that you end up with decent beer. When you're just starting, "decent beer" is great, and you get convinced it's the best beer you've ever tasted. So that's fine.
As you grow more proficient as a brewer, though, you start noticing certain things. The OG is consistently a little low, the color is a little off, the attenuation is not what you were looking for, the beer is decent but it's not great, etc. At first you attribute this to mistakes in the particular batch, then you start blaming inconsistencies in the process. But after you improve the process, and repeat it consistently, it becomes a nagging feeling that you're missing something else. Eventually, you start looking at the underlying assumptions that you base your process on, and try to modify those assumptions to fit the factors of your particular system. This is called "Dialing in" your process.
For me the trigger was realizing that my OG is consistently two points lower than the recipe expected. This mean that the water to sugar ratio in my wort was slightly off. IE, I either had too much water, which meant my boiloff wasn't as much as I thought, or I didn't have as much sugar, which meant that the mash efficiency wasn't quite what I thought. Of the two, boiloff is the easier to measure, and is relatively constant. So lets start there.
There's two ways (that I can think of) to measure boiloff:
The first involves simply measuring how much liquid you had at the beginning of the boil, versus how much you have at the end. The difference is the stuff that boiled off. Simple in theory, but can have unforeseen problems. For example: If you use an immersion chiller, like I do, you need to put it into your wort 10-15 minutes before the end of the boil in order to sanitize it. Since you have to measure at the end of the boil you will either have to allow for the volume of the chiller (bigger than it looks) or take the chiller out (which negates the point of putting it in to sanitize in the first place. ) You can measure after you chill, of course, so long as you account for the shrinkage due to temperature drop. In my case, since I measure with a ruler stuck in the wort, this was not an option. I simply wasn't going to stick an un-sanitized, sugar coated metal rod into my wort.
The second method to measure the volume is calculating posthumously. That is, using the numbers you get to calculate what the boiloff was. This works as following: Lets say after I finished my sparge with 32Liters of 1.042 wort. After I boiled and cooled I sampled my wort and came up with an OG of 1.050. The amount of sugar did not change during the boil, only the amount of water. Therefore I can say this (Ov*Pg)/Og = Fv Where Ov is Original volume, Pg is preboil gravity, Og is Original gravity (at end of boil) and Fv is final volume. In this case: (32*42)/50=26.88 Given that my original volume was 32, I lost 5.22L of liquid during the boil, or roughly 16%.
The beauty of this method is that you can apply it retroactively. I take notes every time I brew, and I know my start volume, start gravity, and final gravity for each batch. By taking the last few batches, running them through this simple calculation, and averaging the result, I can get a pretty accurate measure of my boiloff. One I know that, I can go back to my calculations and figure out if I had too much water, or not enough sugar. Adjust, brew, test, adjust again, and so on until the numbers are consistent.
The sad part about this is that I'm going to go through all the trouble of dialing in my process, and then I'm going to change it again when I go HERMS this summer. But then again: I'll still be using the same kettle once I go HERMS, so doing this calibration now will make it much easier to isolate problems with the new setup down the road. So I guess it's worth it.
There's a lot of numbers involved in brewing. Efficiency, volume, gravity, boiloff, time, and many many more. You need to know these things when you brew, but you'll only know them when you start brewing, so you guess. You use rules of thumb, estimates, and calculations to achieve approximate numbers that you can use to estimate your results. And then you brew with those numbers. If you're lucky, they're close enough to true values that you end up with decent beer. When you're just starting, "decent beer" is great, and you get convinced it's the best beer you've ever tasted. So that's fine.
As you grow more proficient as a brewer, though, you start noticing certain things. The OG is consistently a little low, the color is a little off, the attenuation is not what you were looking for, the beer is decent but it's not great, etc. At first you attribute this to mistakes in the particular batch, then you start blaming inconsistencies in the process. But after you improve the process, and repeat it consistently, it becomes a nagging feeling that you're missing something else. Eventually, you start looking at the underlying assumptions that you base your process on, and try to modify those assumptions to fit the factors of your particular system. This is called "Dialing in" your process.
For me the trigger was realizing that my OG is consistently two points lower than the recipe expected. This mean that the water to sugar ratio in my wort was slightly off. IE, I either had too much water, which meant my boiloff wasn't as much as I thought, or I didn't have as much sugar, which meant that the mash efficiency wasn't quite what I thought. Of the two, boiloff is the easier to measure, and is relatively constant. So lets start there.
There's two ways (that I can think of) to measure boiloff:
The first involves simply measuring how much liquid you had at the beginning of the boil, versus how much you have at the end. The difference is the stuff that boiled off. Simple in theory, but can have unforeseen problems. For example: If you use an immersion chiller, like I do, you need to put it into your wort 10-15 minutes before the end of the boil in order to sanitize it. Since you have to measure at the end of the boil you will either have to allow for the volume of the chiller (bigger than it looks) or take the chiller out (which negates the point of putting it in to sanitize in the first place. ) You can measure after you chill, of course, so long as you account for the shrinkage due to temperature drop. In my case, since I measure with a ruler stuck in the wort, this was not an option. I simply wasn't going to stick an un-sanitized, sugar coated metal rod into my wort.
The second method to measure the volume is calculating posthumously. That is, using the numbers you get to calculate what the boiloff was. This works as following: Lets say after I finished my sparge with 32Liters of 1.042 wort. After I boiled and cooled I sampled my wort and came up with an OG of 1.050. The amount of sugar did not change during the boil, only the amount of water. Therefore I can say this (Ov*Pg)/Og = Fv Where Ov is Original volume, Pg is preboil gravity, Og is Original gravity (at end of boil) and Fv is final volume. In this case: (32*42)/50=26.88 Given that my original volume was 32, I lost 5.22L of liquid during the boil, or roughly 16%.
The beauty of this method is that you can apply it retroactively. I take notes every time I brew, and I know my start volume, start gravity, and final gravity for each batch. By taking the last few batches, running them through this simple calculation, and averaging the result, I can get a pretty accurate measure of my boiloff. One I know that, I can go back to my calculations and figure out if I had too much water, or not enough sugar. Adjust, brew, test, adjust again, and so on until the numbers are consistent.
The sad part about this is that I'm going to go through all the trouble of dialing in my process, and then I'm going to change it again when I go HERMS this summer. But then again: I'll still be using the same kettle once I go HERMS, so doing this calibration now will make it much easier to isolate problems with the new setup down the road. So I guess it's worth it.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Upward mobility (Gushing, Part II)
After my last post about gushing I got a message from my Partner in Crime. They guy sounded upset. "Infected beer doesn't taste good, it has weird flavors! Ours is good, no flavors!", he complained.
I had to admit the man had a point. The beer was gushing, but we didn't know why. Before I send him to look for a possibly non-existent infection in his equipment, I should try and figure out exactly what was wrong. The signs we had (gushing getting worse with time, beer looking weird) were inconclusive. I needed more information. If I could only taste the beer, I may be able to tell what's going on there...
Which leads to an interesting question: How do you go about tasting a beer that levitates out of the bottle when you open it? I decided to to a little experiment.
I took two bottles of the beer out of the fridge and set them side by side on the counter. For both bottles, I started to open the cap little by little, until I heard just a little bit of gas let out. Psssst...stop. Psssst...stop. I noticed that a bit of foam was building up inside the bottle, sign that the CO2 was being released. I tried to release the gas in two different rates: the bottle on the left got one release for every two the one on the right got.
At some point, I clearly overshot. The bottle on the right, that has been releasing at a faster rate, had apparently reached a tipping point. All of the sudden I noticed that the foam inside the bottle doubled and the yeast inside seemed to be traveling upwards towards the cap. Ah ha! One mystery solved. I have been wondering why it is that when I pour the beer it looks murky and smells weird. Now I knew: The pressure letting up caused CO2 to fling the yeast back into the beer, causing the murkiness and the smell.
Well the one on the right was obviously a bust. But what about the one on the left? I have been letting the gas out very slowly, and the yeast didn't seem to be disturbed. If I kept venting the beer really slowly I should be able to avoid the yeast problem. But I didn't want to spend half the night on this. Finally I had a thought: I caught one tooth on the cap with my bottle opener and bent it until I could hear just the faintest Pssssssst sound. This meant that I've created a tiny channel for the gas to escape, hopefully very slowly. I put the beer back in the fridge (figuring that that would help any yeast that becomes disturbed to settle back down) and went to sleep.
The following evening I grabbed the beer from the fridge. Opened it like I would any other, and poured it. Success! The beer poured without gushing (but still with plenty of carbonation) and settled neatly in my glass. There was a slight haze to the beer, which was what it had always had, but none of the murkiness. Time for the all-important taste test: Will the beer taste infected?
Well, no. In fact, it tasted just fine. I've had this beer many times before, over the course of several months, and I knew what it tasted like. It tasted exactly the same now. No sign of wired flavors or infection. Mystery solved! I guess I owe P.O.C. an apology :)
Moral of the story: It pays to spend the time an figure out exactly what happened to your beer. Even if it takes a whole day to open it. :)
I had to admit the man had a point. The beer was gushing, but we didn't know why. Before I send him to look for a possibly non-existent infection in his equipment, I should try and figure out exactly what was wrong. The signs we had (gushing getting worse with time, beer looking weird) were inconclusive. I needed more information. If I could only taste the beer, I may be able to tell what's going on there...
Which leads to an interesting question: How do you go about tasting a beer that levitates out of the bottle when you open it? I decided to to a little experiment.
I took two bottles of the beer out of the fridge and set them side by side on the counter. For both bottles, I started to open the cap little by little, until I heard just a little bit of gas let out. Psssst...stop. Psssst...stop. I noticed that a bit of foam was building up inside the bottle, sign that the CO2 was being released. I tried to release the gas in two different rates: the bottle on the left got one release for every two the one on the right got.
At some point, I clearly overshot. The bottle on the right, that has been releasing at a faster rate, had apparently reached a tipping point. All of the sudden I noticed that the foam inside the bottle doubled and the yeast inside seemed to be traveling upwards towards the cap. Ah ha! One mystery solved. I have been wondering why it is that when I pour the beer it looks murky and smells weird. Now I knew: The pressure letting up caused CO2 to fling the yeast back into the beer, causing the murkiness and the smell.
Well the one on the right was obviously a bust. But what about the one on the left? I have been letting the gas out very slowly, and the yeast didn't seem to be disturbed. If I kept venting the beer really slowly I should be able to avoid the yeast problem. But I didn't want to spend half the night on this. Finally I had a thought: I caught one tooth on the cap with my bottle opener and bent it until I could hear just the faintest Pssssssst sound. This meant that I've created a tiny channel for the gas to escape, hopefully very slowly. I put the beer back in the fridge (figuring that that would help any yeast that becomes disturbed to settle back down) and went to sleep.
The following evening I grabbed the beer from the fridge. Opened it like I would any other, and poured it. Success! The beer poured without gushing (but still with plenty of carbonation) and settled neatly in my glass. There was a slight haze to the beer, which was what it had always had, but none of the murkiness. Time for the all-important taste test: Will the beer taste infected?Well, no. In fact, it tasted just fine. I've had this beer many times before, over the course of several months, and I knew what it tasted like. It tasted exactly the same now. No sign of wired flavors or infection. Mystery solved! I guess I owe P.O.C. an apology :)
Moral of the story: It pays to spend the time an figure out exactly what happened to your beer. Even if it takes a whole day to open it. :)
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