BJRR Golden Sour with Coffee

There's a lot of NHC judging happening this weekend. As usual, I sent a few entries off including the Bourbon Barrel-aged Imperial Stout that I brewed with several friends last year. It's a big tasty beer and hopefully we'll see some good scores when it gets judged. That was the first beer that we ran through the Sugar House Distillery Bourbon barrel and right now it's housing an Imperial Porter we brewed last year based on Lost Abbey's La Cruda. "We" are Brandon, Jeff, Ryan, and Rob, thus these are the BJRR series of barrel beers. The first two beers were clean beers, but our little collaboration group was anxious to do something a little more wild.

Ryan texted me a while back when he was still living in Denver about a sour coffee beer from Black Project. He said it was an amazing beer and I needed to look into brewing a sour coffee beer myself. To be honest, I thought it sounded horrible, but he swore it was worth looking into. My concerns were whether the coffee character would clash with the acidity produced by the lactic acid bacteria. I started doing a little research and stumbled across a New Belgium blog post about their sour beer with coffee, Oscar Worthy Coffee. Reading through this post definitely peaked my interest. Not long after that, I got my hands on a couple bottles of Derde Golf, a sour beer with coffee from The Bruery. I really enjoyed this beer and it opened my eyes as to how coffee and acidity from lactic acid bacteria can work together to make an incredibly complex sour. Lastly, I picked up a bottle of Libertine's Coffeetine earlier this year. I opened this bottle a few weeks back and it pretty much sealed the deal for me. So the beer we're brewing today is based on Libertine's Coffeetine.

I did a little research and found out that Libertine uses their golden ale for the base. A little more research turned up a recipe for their golden ale on which the following recipe is based. A couple things I changed, German pilsner instead of Belgian, and I sub'd half the wheat malt for spelt malt, an heirloom variety of wheat. Another change is the use of aged hops; this keeps the lactobacillus happy by keeping the IBUs low (theoretically close to 0.0). We'll be mashing high and use a lower attenuating yeast for primary. This will help ensure long term food supply for the brett and bugs. Then it'll go into the barrel along with some Roeselare for aging. When ready, we'll dry bean with a yet to be determined variety of coffee.

We'll be brewing 15 gallons total. The following recipe is for 5 gallons, or 1/3 of our total batch.

7.0 # Avangard German Pilsner
1.75 # White Wheat Malt
1.75 # Spelt Malt
0.5 # Flaked Rye
0.5 # Flaked Oats
28g Aged Hops (60 min)
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
White Labs WLP002 (Primary)
Wyeast Roeselare (Secondary in the barrel)

Mash at 158F for 60 min, 90 min boil, ferment at room temp.

Water Profile
Nothing fancy here, we're cutting carbon filtered tap water with RO/distilled at a rate of 1 gallon RO to 4.5 gallons tap water.

Update 11/17/2018
This beer was transferred out of the barrel and into a sanke keg for dry beaning on some custom roasted Brazilian coffee, roasted by Jeff. We're going to add the coffee after Thanksgiving, then let it go for ~2 days, then tasting daily until we get the profile we're after. The base beer coming out of the barrel was great and should serve as a great blank slate for the coffee.

I noticed I forgot to mention when this beer went in the barrel; it was April of 2017.

Update 11/25/2018
Beans added this morning!

Update 12/1/2018
This beer was kegged this morning. Aroma is very nice, lots of coffee. Flavor seems a little more subtle. The coffee seems to have softened the soreness a bit. I haven't taken a final pH reading on this beer yet. It's definitely sour, but it's not the most sour beer I've made.

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Texas Style Smoked Sausage #1

We recently went to visit our friends in Houston, Texas and as part of that trip, we did a quick little getaway to Austin. We visited Jester King which was a lot of fun although I have to admit there was a couple of their beers that had a bit too much sweat sock/smelly high school locker room character for my liking...and this is from a guy that is a huge sour and wild beer nerd.

We also stopped into The Salt Lick BBQ for a late lunch/early dinner before we went to Jester King. As you can also probably tell from my food-related posts, I really like good BBQ, smoked foods, and smoked beer. We tried the brisket, pulled pork, ribs, and smoked sausage at The Salt Lick and everything was awesome. The sausage was seasoned perfectly, not too much that the spices overpowered the meat and smoke; it inspired me to try to make something similar at home.

My disclaimer, definitely read up on sausage making before you try it for the first time. You don't want to accidentally poison anyone with botulism.

The recipe I'm basing mine off of is apparently from Smitty at Kruez Market in Lockhart, Texas and was published in the book "Texas on the Half Shell”. Another recipe I plan to try is this one based on The Salt Lick's sausage. Here's the recipe I used today and some details on process:

9.0 # Beef Chuck
1.0 # Pork Shoulder
62.4g Kosher Salt
42g Black Pepper, coarsely ground
1.77g Cayenne Pepper
11g Cure #1 (not used in the original recipe, but needed since we're smoking at low temps)
136g Powdered Milk mixed with 12oz Ice cold water (the original called for cereal binder)

Cut the meat up into grinder-sized pieces and sprinkle kosher salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and cure #1. Run them through your 5/8" (coarse) grinding plate. I should mention, when grinding meat, you want it cold...not frozen, but very cold. If needed, return meat to the freezer to make sure things stay nice and chilled. Run the meat through the coarse plate a second time then add water and powdered milk and mix well. Stuff into medium hog casings.

Allow sausages to dry for a bit then smoke at 130F for 4-ish hours. Poach the sausages in 165F water until they reach an internal temp of 154F. Chill in an ice water bath then allow them to bloom at room temp for an hour or two. To serve, you grill over indirect heat until heated through and the casing is cooked to your liking. I'm planning on throwing mine in my kamado for a little extra smoke character.

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Hopefully Horchata Imperial Porter

So my brew club is doing a "weird ingredient" competition. This is meant to be kind of a fun and not too serious competition. A couple months ago we all drew a random weird ingredient from a hat that you have to incorporate into a beer. The not too strict rules basically say your weird ingredient needs to comprise 20% of your ingredients. That said, there is a caveat and that is that you can use your own discretion if 20% would result in an undrinkable beer. Basically, make a good faith effort to incorporate your ingredient. At our April meeting, we'll sample all the entries and select the top three out of the bunch

For my ingredient I drew Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. I figured this might work in a horchata-inspired Imperial Porter...so I'm not trying to recreate the flavors of CTC in a beer, I'm using CTC as an adjunct in a (hopefully) Horchata-themed beer. I have no idea if this is going to be any good but it should be fun. Just in case it's horrible, I'm only doing a 2.5 gallon batch. Anyone that stumbles across this recipe, definitely check below for updates in case this beer turns out horrible.

I'll be incorporating the cereal right into the mash. With all the fermentables including lots of simple sugars I expect to get from the cereal, I think the best plan is to mash a little on the high end. Here's the recipe as I'm planning to make it:

3.0# Maris Otter

1.0#  6oz Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal

9oz Crisp C77 Malt

6oz Dingmanns Aromatic Malt

4oz Crisp Pale Chocolate

3oz Crisp Roasted Barley

11oz Flaked Barley

7oz Lactose

6.5g Northern Brewer (60 min)

6.5g Chinook (7 mins)

US-05

Mash at 156F, 90 min boil, ferment at 60F, cross fingers it's drinkable

I'm also considering making cinnamon and vanilla tinctures. If I do, I'll dose as needed to help emphasize the cinnamon character and to add a little vanilla character.

"Cereal" mash

Brewing Notes
No real issues with this batch. The mash smelled really good with all the cinnamon. As you can see in the picture of the mash, I threw the cereal in whole. It might have been a better idea to crush it up first, but I knew I didn't want to run it through my mill. It seemed that it had completely broken down after 15 minutes or so. I also tossed in a handful of rice hulls to make sure I didn't get a stuck sparge.

As I usualy do when brewing with darker kilned grains, I waited until the sparge to add the dark grains to the mash. At the beginning of the mash, the wort was an odd yellow-ish orange color. About halfway through the mash, the clarity improved drastically and it looked like more of a copper color. The first runnings were rusty colored, but it turned dark brown after adding the pale chocolate and roasted barley.

Update 3/6/2017
Fermentation has kicked off, but there isn't much krausen. It might be oils from the cereal (see the pre-boil sheen pic). Hopefully there's nothing there that will go rancid.

Update 3/12/2017
There's still a fair amount of krausen on this beer but I decided to pull a sample. Good news is there isn't anything way off. There's definitely residual sweetness but there's only a hint of cinnamon. I think I'll definitely do a tincture as I'd like a bit more cinnamon character. I can't tell if it's yeast in suspension, but the sample was incredibly cloudy.

Update 4/2/2017
I decided to go ahead and keg this beer today. I dosed it with a bit of cinnamon-vanilla tincture (cinnamon stick and vanilla bean in about 5oz of vodka). I'd say it's definitely reminiscent of both the cereal and horchata. It's a pretty cloudy brew, so I'm treating it with gelatin in hopes that it'll help clear the beer a bit.

Midway through the mash

First runnings look like rusty water

There's definitely a sheen on the wort

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Sour IPA Attempt #3

Today I'm doing a re-brew of sorts based on the Super Juice Solution recipe I got from Jason Yester of Trinity Brewing fame. Here's the link to the original post. This version will deviate slightly from Trinity's recipe, so it's not intended to be an exact clone, but it should be in the ballpark.

To recap, I tried brewing a sour IPA based on Trinity's Red Swingline a while back. The beer turned out pretty good but was definitely not very sour. Jason Yester stumbled across my blog post and emailed me offering some assistance along with the recipe for Super Juice Solution. I brewed that beer and while the results were better than the Swingline attempt, it still was not on par with Trinity's beers. I suspect the method I used to keep the wort warm during the kettle souring phase may have actually gotten too warm and cooked the lacto reducing the cell count to a level that it had a really hard time souring the wort. This time I'm doing a few things differently, details are below:

• I acquired a 1/4 barrel sanke keg last year and I'll be using it for kettle souring. There are a few benefits with this vessel including it's more or less airtight, it's easy to sanitize, and with a volume of 7.75 gallons it has minimal headspace with 7 gallons of wort. Keep in mind, too much O2 exposure with lacto can result in less than desirable flavors and aromas. The spear has been removed and the open neck will be sealed using a #11 drilled stopper.
• The first time I tried to brew this beer I didn't have a pH meter. Without a pH meter, it's definitely challenging to accurately gauge the sourness of un-fermented wort. The sugars in the wort can completely mask the acidity. If you've ever had a Berliner Weiss served with Woodruff or raspberry syrup, you know what I'm talking about.
• I'm using a GoodBelly SuperShot for the souring rather than WLP677 Lactobacillus delbrueckii. I've never used this product before, but there are lots of positive comments about this product in various brewing forums. This product contains a whole bunch of L. planetarium 299V cells, 50 billion per the packaging. According to some of the documentation I’ve read, this strain is capable of both homofermentation and heterofermentation. I have some biology and chemistry education in my past, but I admit I’m no expert.  If I understand correctly, this strain tends to be homofermentative in anaerobic environments, and heterofermentative in aerobic environments.  Homofermentation produces lactic acid only, while heterofermentation produces lactic acid, ethanol, and under some conditions acetic acid. Some acetic acid can add complexity, but I’m really after lactic acid production here.
• I'm using Co-Brew brett blend for primary. I really liked the character I got from this blend in my recent brett IPA experiment. The CO-Brew Blend tends to ferment fairly quickly, so the fermentation period should be closer to a typical ale.
• I'm changing up the hop varieties a bit compared to the original. I have some Citra and Simcoe that I need to use up, so this is probably the biggest deviation from the original recipe.
• Grain proportions and amounts are slightly different than the original recipe, but not a huge change.
• I’m keeping the IBUs fairly low in this beer. The reason is too much bitterness can really clash with sourness. Also, sourness coupled with bitterness is usually something humans instinctually avoid because those characteristics can be associated with poison. Finally, it will mean I won’t have to wait three months for some of the hop bitterness to drop out before enjoying this beer. 

Preparation – Normally when using Wyeast or White Labs cultures, I would create a lacto starter about a week before brew day. Per the comments I’ve read, most people are allowing the SuperShot to come to room temp then pitching directly from the container. At 50 billon, the cell count should be high enough that a starter isn’t needed, so that means there really isn’t much preparation involved.

Mash Day - Mash as indicated in the recipe below and collect about 6.75 - 7 gallons of wort. Either bring to a boil and hold for about 5 minutes or raise temps to 170F and hold for 10 minutes before chilling to room temp. This will ensure the wort is pasteurized and no other little critters have hitch-hiked into the wort. Transfer to 1/4 barrel keg, purge headspace with CO2, pitch culture, then seal with a #11 drilled stopper and an airlock and wait until the pH drops to 3.2 - 3.4.

Boil Day - Once the pH has dropped to 3.2 - 3.4 (it will probably take at least 48 hours at room temp), boil following the hop schedule in the recipe below. Chill and transfer to fermenter. Since we've killed the lacto culture during the boil, we can aerate as normal before pitching the CO-Brew brett blend.

6.0# Avangard Pilsner Malt
1.0# 9oz Best Malz Chit Malt
13oz Avangard Vienna Malt
13oz Weyermann Acidulated Malt
6oz Crisp C77
6oz Rice Hulls
1 – GoodBelly Lemon Ginger SuperShot
Appropriate sized starter of CO-Brew Brett Blend
3ml Hopshot (60 min)
6g Corriander (15 min)
33g each of Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe (10 min)
30g each of Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe (Dry hop)
20g Willamette (Dry hop)
10g EK Goldings (Dry hop)

Mash at 145.4 for 35 minutes. Collect 6.75-7 gallons and boil for 5 minutes. Chill to room temp or not warmer than 114F. Check the pH and if it’s greater than 4.5, adjust as necessary with Lactic Acid then pitch lactobacillus. Once pH reaches 3.2 - 3.4, proceed with 90 minute boil following hop schedule above. I also did a hop stand with the 10 minute hop addition after chilling to sub-isomerization temperatures. With my whirlpool setup, it doesn’t take more than a couple minutes to drop the temp. Start fermentation at 66F, then ramp up to 72F over the course of a week. Dry hop after primary fermentation subsides.

Water Profile
I decided to try Tasty’s profile that I’ve used before on my IPAs. I really like the hop character I get with this profile, so I’m crossing my fingers that it works well with a sour.
To 10 gallons of RO or Distilled Water, add:

16g Gypsum (CASO4)
7g Epsom Salt (MgSO4)
2g Canning Salt (NaCl)
1g Calcium Chloride (CaCl2)

Brewing Notes
No issues other than I got started later than I'd planned. Since I'm splitting the brew day for the kettle souring part, I still finished with plenty of daylight left.  I actually used two GoodBelly shots; probably not necessary, but since this is my third attempt at a sour IPA, I figured I'd pitch a little extra.

1/4 barrel was cleaned and sanitized

Sparging

First runnings into boil kettle

After 10 minutes at 170F, wort was chilled to 80F

Update 2/28/2017
I'm not declaring success yet, but things seem to be headed in the right direction. 48 hours in (at room temp) and the pH has dropped to 3.63 and is noticeably more sour than the samples I tasted from attempts #1 and #2. I'm thinking I'll probably be boiling tomorrow or Thursday.

Update 3/1/2017

pH is down to 3.52 tonight.

Update 3/4/2027
pH is down to 3.49 and appears to be stable. This seems consistent with most of the reports on Milk the Funk. One interesting note, even at room temp it more or less finished souring in four days (the fourth day pH was 3.50). Other observations, I saw zero airlock activity during the souring process. I also didn't detect any acetic character in the samples. I'm proceeding with the boil today.

Update 3/5/2017
I checked this morning and I'm not seeing any signs of active fermentation yet. This brett blend took a little while to get going in my MicroBurst IPA a while back. The lower pH from the kettle souring may also be contributing to a increased lag time. Bottom line, I'm not to concerned yet.

Update 3/6/2017
I started seeing hints of fermentation last night,and more this morning. When I got home from work there was an inch or so of krausen. The aroma coming off the airlock is really nice.

Update 3/12/2017
Pulled a sample today and I'm really digging this beer. I can't wait for what's to come after a large dry hop addition. Gravity is down to 8.1 (1.018) today, which correlates to about 4.9%. Trinity's SJS is around 4.1% and I upped my grain bill a tad, so this is right about where I wanted to be.

Update 4/16/2017
I racked this beer to secondary on top of the dry hops today.

Update 4/30/2017
This beer was kegged yesterday and is currently conditioning.

Update 5/7/2017
I'm really liking this beer, so I'm calling it a success. I think hop bitterness could be just a tad lower, but the sourness is right about where I want it.

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Russian Imperial Stout - 2017

For my first brew of 2017, I'm brewing an ever so slightly modified version of the whiskey barrel stout that I brewed with a couple buddies last year. If it turns out as planned, this will be the first of my NHC entries this year. I won't be putting this version in a whiskey barrel, which will allow me to avoid the way too crowded Specialty Beer category. Edit 2/20/2017: The AHA finally adopted the 2015 BJCP Guidelines, so the groupings should result in a much less crowded Specialty Category this year. I'll be kegging this beer and I'm considering putting half on nitro. This recipe uses almost all Crisp malts. I'd strongly suggest sticking with the malts below as domestic malts just don't have the same character as Crisp malts. Here's the recipe as I'm making it today:

8.0 # Crisp Maris Otter
6.0 # Crisp Organic Pale
1.0 # Crisp Roasted Barley
12 oz Simpsons Double Roasted Crystal
5 oz Crisp Chocolate Malt
5 oz Crisp Pale Chocolate Malt
0.75 # Extra light DME
28g Warrior (60 min)
(1) 3ml Hopshot (60 min)
42g EKG (10 min)
42g EKG (0 min)
Yeast Nutrient
Whirlfloc
(2) US-05

Mash at 152F, 90 min boil, start fermentation at 63F and raise to 68F over a few days. Nothing fancy on the water as West Jordan, Utah water has worked really well for stouts.

Brewing Notes
No issues with this brew session other than I was having a hard time getting a super accurate gravity reading on my refractometer. Original gravity is somewhere between 1.105 and 1.110 which means this is going to be a pretty big beer. I made sure I aerated well with pure O2; I dosed it right before pitching, then again about five hours later.

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