Between brewing pilot batches and moving Good Beer forward, August has been a busy month!
This past month, the home pilot brewery crafted some really cool beer concepts. I have several beers I'm extremely excited about, even though I haven't even tried them yet. Between late July and this past weekend, I brewed a Farmhouse Strong, an Imperial Stout, a Sour Session ale, a Wild Pale Ale, and enough beer to fill a used oak barrel - literally.
The Farmhouse Strong was bottled almost two weeks ago. The Farmhouse Strong is a dark, strong, American-hopped beer with Belgian yeast flavors. It was fermented with a delicious Belgian Saison yeast blend which I've been using for a couple years with great success. It is definitely my go-to Belgian yeast. I added some dark malts (Special B and Chocolate) to try and achieve a chocolatey raisin flavor. And, in the spirit of Southern California, I added copious amounts of Cascade, Columbus, and Chinook hops. It clocked in at 8.0% alcohol by volume. Like I said, I bottled it a couple weeks ago, and have yet to taste it, but it tasted great along the way. I'll surely open a couple this weekend (Labor Day) while relaxing by the pool.
The Imperial Stout was inspired by the Haven Brewing Breakfast Stout brewed by my good friend Dave Larsen. He used a lot of chocolate malt to create a viscous and decadent Breakfast Stout. I had the pleasure of trying it from the fermenter a few months back, and had the barrel aged version on Monday night at the Haven 3rd Anniversary Party in Orange. Anyways, I used a bunch of chocolate malt and as many malts as I could to create a thick, viscous mouthfeel. This beer is sitting in fermenters right now, and I've been toying with the idea of racking it on some oak or vanilla beans before bottling it up.
The Sour Session ale was quite an experience. I decided to try my hand at a pseudo-sour mash. I've done a lot of research in sour mashing, recently, and it finally inspired me to try it out. Boy, was that scary. I mashed and sparged a grain bill for a pilot batch of pseudo-Berliner Weiss, then drained the wort to a 5 gallon corny keg. In the corny keg, I let Lactobaccilus and a host of other microorganisms free. For four days, the keg sat at about 104 degrees to promote the souring. By day two, the keg was carbonated. By day three, it was getting scary and I had thoughts of sour beer explosions in the garage. By day four, I decided I could not just sit back while a time bomb sat in my garage. I attached a beer serving line to the keg's "outlet" and put the other end in the kettle. To my surprise, the keg was so carbonated that it pushed all the beer out and in to the kettle. I boiled the beer (to stop the souring process), added hops, and I am fermenting it with an ale yeast. It's an interesting experiment.
Photo: pH measurement of the soured session wort
I'm very much looking forward to the Wild Pale Ale. It's a style that is just now becoming popular in the craft beer world, but wild ales have been brewed for ever. My Wild Pale Ale is hopped up with citrusy American hops and fermented with Brettanomyces bruxellensis, bruxellensis 'Trois' and lambicus. I have never used this yeast, and many brewers fear letting it loose in their brewery, but I can't let that stop me. From what I've been able to ascertain from internet research, B. bruxellensis 'Trois' is producing magnificent tropical fruit flavors - think pineapple, mango, papaya. The B. bruxellensis and lambicus were added to the other fermenter to experiment with yeast blending and to compare the different strains. Based on this, I thought a hoppy Pale Ale was the way to go. I'll return with results in the future.
Photo: Brettanomyces yeast strains
Photo: Brettanomyces yeast starters
Photo: Wild Pale Ale fermenting away (Saison in the background)
Finally, in a collaborative effort with Dave Larsen and Mike Roberts, we brewed enough beer to fill a used oak barrel. In. One. Day. I'm not kidding. In a single day, the three of us combined for over 50 gallons of beer. We brewed a simple, low-gravity Saison, knowing fully well that it would be aged in a french oak barrel that had previously been used for wine, and most recently used by a local brewery for a soured Imperial Saison. The simple beer we put in the barrel is going to sit there for a while, developing additional flavors, absorbing the oak, and taking on the essence of what had previously filled the barrel. I also plan on releasing some additional souring strains of Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and Brettanomyces, to add complexity. It's going to come out of the barrel a completely different beer. I'll report back with results in several months.
Photo: I guess you could say we're starting a barrel program.
Photo: Bryce crushes the grain with the malt mill
Photo: Sparge arm distributes hot water on top of the grain bed. 
