Hop Stand Experiment (3/5/13)

Over the past decade or so, brewers have tried to find more and more places in the brewing process to add hops. The latest innovation has been adding hops to the whirlpool. A whirlpool is a container that collects sediment in the center of a circulating vortex, allowing the brewer to remove much of the hop debris and malt proteins from her wort.

The wort is at about 200F during in the whirlpool, which typically lasts 30-90 minutes. Since commercial breweries brew on such a large scale, there is not much temperature loss over that time. Adding hops at temperatures just below boiling allows the hot wort to extract different compounds than adding dry hops (which are added to the beer when it's at room temperature). Since the wort isn't boiling in the whirlpool, there is less loss of hop aroma with whirlpool hopping compared to kettle hopping.

Few homebrewers have the equipment to perform a true whirlpool, but we can emulate the effects of whirlpool hopping by doing a hop stand. To perform a hop stand, the brewer completes her boil, then adds hops and maintains the temperature of the wort for a certain length of time—say, 30 minutes. Like whirlpool hopping, a hop stand allows the hops to steep in hot—but not boiling—wort.

Homebrewers with immersion chillers have a lot more flexibility than commercial brewers, since we can chill their beer at any point in the process. Therefore, we don't have to perform a hop stand at 200F, like a commercial whirlpool. A number of homebrewers have experimented with cooler temperatures—i.e., under 180F—and have reported good results. The idea behind this variation is that lower temperatures will volatilize less of the aromatic hop oils. On the other hand, lower temperatures will also extract these hop oils less efficiently.

I decided to test the effects of different temperature hop stands by brewing a split batch of pale ale. Half the wort was subjected to a 200F (+/- 5F) hop stand for 30 minutes, mimicking a commercial whirlpool, while the other half received a 175F (+/- 5F) hop stand for 30 minutes. The hop stand was the only hop addition, with 3 oz in each (2.5 gallon) half. In addition to testing the effect of temperature on hop aroma, this experiment will also test the effect of temperature on alpha acid isomerization (i.e., production of hop bitterness), since I will be judging the difference in perceived bitterness between the two beers.

The beer itself is a fairly standard American amber ale, besides the massive hop stand. Mostly 2 row, with some Munich for malty goodness, Crystal 75 for caramel sweetness, and some flaked barley for body and head retention. The hops themselves are two of my favorites: Amarillo and Chinook. I've never used them as the only two hops in a beer before, but it is somewhat similar to the classic Amarillo/Simcoe combination that is used to great effect in beers like Alpine Duet and Ballast Point Sculpin. The sharp grapefruit/pine of Chinook enhances and balances the softer fruity/floral aroma of
Amarillo.

Results

Both beers were among the best I've ever brewed. As expected, the 200 degree hopstand produced a more bitter beer. When fresh, the 200 degree half was at a similar bitterness level as, say, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The 175 degree half was noticeably less bitter, and has been well received by both hopheads and those who don't normally drink hoppy beers. The 175 degree half also had stronger aromatics. As the beers aged, bitterness and hop aromatics both faded, and it became more difficult to tell the two apart.

As a result of this experiment, I now incorporate a big 175 degree hopstand in all of my hoppy beers. For IPAs, I also add a bunch of hops during the boil, while for pale and amber ales I stick with the no-hops-in-the-boil technique that worked so well in these beers.

Tasting Notes

Aroma: Pineapple, pear, jasmine, pine.

Taste: Toasted bread, sweet malt, more pear, grapefruit. Dry, but with significant malt flavor.

Mouthfeel: Light-to-medium bodied, medium-high carbonation.

Vitals:

ABV: 5.8%
OG: 1.053
FG: 1.010
IBUs: ???

Strike temp: 162
Mash in: 152
Mash time: 90 minutes
Batch sparge: 168F
Efficiency: 65%

Yeast: US05 (half packet in each half)
Pitching temp: 65F
Max temp: 70F

Malts Mashed		Amount	%	Max Pts.
2 row		8	71%	36.00
Munich		2	18%	36.00
Crystal 90		0.5	4%	34.00
Barley (flaked)		0.75	7%	32.00

Hops/Additions		Amount	Time	AA%
Amarillo		4	Hop stand	9.0%
Chinook		2	Hop stand	11.0%

This was my first time using water adjustments. The mash pH was a little high, so I added some lactic acid—unfortunately a bit too much! (My water has very low alkalinity and hence doesn't have much buffering power.) So I added 1.5 grams of chalk to balance it out, and ended up with a pH of 5.3. (Ideal mash pH is 5.3 - 5.5.)

3/8/13: The 175 beer is down to 1.010, while the the 200 beer is still at 1.014. Either the extra IBUs are having a minor inhibitive effect on the yeast, or the fact that the yeast for the 200 beer sat in the rehydration water for an extra 30 minutes slowed it down. At this point, the 175 beer is more aromatic and much less bitter (maybe 25 IBUs, versus 40 IBUs for the 200 beer). If I brewed this again, I'd roll the Munich back to 10%.

3/12/13: The 175 beer is at 1.008, and the 200 beer is at 1.009. Both taste great, but the 175 beer still has better aroma and less bitterness.

Bottled 3/16/13:
#3 = 200
#4 = 175

4/2/13: Minor disaster. Accidentally bottled with fake bottle caps (no seal). Bottle primed and re-capped.

Berliner Weisse Mark II, or You Call That a Session Ale? (3/2/13)

One of the main appeals of the Berliner Weisse is that it's a sour beer you can make in a reasonable amount of time. My last batch of Berliner Weisse is, as of yet, barely tart. It may continue to sour in the bottle, but it has already been fermenting for three months, and that's a longer time-frame than I'm looking for. So for this batch I decided to try a different souring technique.

This time, instead of adding lactic acid bacteria to the fermenter with the yeast, I used a technique known as kettle souring. I mashed the grains normally and drained them into my kettle. But instead of boiling the wort, I just raised the temperature to 180F for 5 minutes to pasteurize it, then cooled it to 100F. At this point I added the lactic acid bacteria (a vial of lactobacillus delbruckii from White Labs), and kept the temperature at ~95F with a immersion heater/temperature controller setup I put together specifically for this purpose. Because the bacteria are at their optimal growth temperature (85–105F) and don't have to deal with the toxic effects of alcohol and hops, very rapid souring takes place.

Kettle souring has several advantages over sour mashing. First, you can effectively pasteurize the wort without worrying about overextracting your grains. Second, you can apply heat directly to your kettle to maintain optimal growth temperature without worrying about scorching your grains. Third, you can be fairly sure what the composition of your wort is going to be, since you're doing a normal mash.

After 48 hours, the wort had developed a noticeable sourness. I let it go for another 24 hours, then performed a normal boil. I chose to do a 90 minute boil because I used pilsner malt and I hate hate hate DMS (the cooked corn aroma often found in pale lagers). Since I soured the beer before adding hops, I was able to use a slightly higher level of IBUs (though still quite low), which should give the beer a bit more structure. After souring, the wort had developed a significant krausen, which made the boil more interesting than usual. Before the boil the krausen collapsed a bit, but there were still lots of tan bacteria bits. I skimmed off the bacteria bits, but the foam kept on coming, until I added the hops.

Batch size: 5 gallons

ABV: 2%

OG: 1.025 (after souring)

FG: 1.010

IBUs (Tinseth): 12

Strike temp: 157

Mash in: 148

Mash time: 60 minutes

Yeast: US05
Pitching temp: 65F

Malts Mashed		Amount	%	Max Pts.
Pilsner		4	62%	36.00
White Wheat		2.5	38%	40.00

Hops/Additions		Amount	Time	AA%
Spalt		0.75	60	4.0%.

3/9/13: Gravity is at 1.010. Nice tartness, but lacking aroma. I added the dregs of a bottle from my last batch to bring some Brett into the mix.

4/5/13: Added 10 pounds of frozen blackberries from Whole Foods.

4/7/13: Gravity is 1.012. Beer is bright pink and beautiful. Pink foam is pretty great.

Bottled 4/27/13: #9

Final thoughts: 1. Next time I'll use a different strain of Brett. Brux is just too funky for this beer. 2. Blackberries are great for color, but I think I prefer the flavor of raspberries in beer. 3. I don't like the malt character of a classic Berliner weisse. Though I'll continue brewing quick sours, I won't pursue the Berliner weisse style any further (for now).

Coffee Is Not Acidic

Well, not very acidic, as far as beverages go. One of the major misconceptions about coffee is (1) that it is particularly acidic, and (2) that this acidity causes abdominal pain. As a result of these misconceptions, a cottage industry has developed around 'low-acid' coffee. Here are the facts.

The average pH of black coffee is about 5. That's the same pH as black tea. Herbal teas containing ingredients like rose hips or hibiscus can be considerably more acidic. Even beer, which is not usually thought of as an acidic beverage, has a typical pH of around 4. Most wine and fruit juice is between 3 and 4, and many sodas, due to liberal additions of phosphoric acid, are even lower—Coke is 2.5! Since pH is a logarithmic scale, a substance that is one point lower in pH actually has ten times the concentration of free hydrogen ions. So beer is actually ten times as acidic as coffee.

If coffee causes you stomach problems, don't blame the acidity—unless you also have problems with tea, beer, and fruit. Which is not to say that coffee never causes abdominal pain, just that acids are not the usual culprit. Caffeine alone often triggers abdominal pain, and it's quite possible that there are other aggravating compounds in coffee.

If you prefer the taste of low-acid coffee, fine, but don't avoid acidic-tasting coffee for medical reasons. You're cutting yourself off from a world of beautiful, complex coffees that feature fruity and floral flavors you will never taste in low-acid coffee.

Making Cider at Home

Every six months or so, I remember that I really like cider. Unfortunately, I don't drink much of it, because the cider industry is in a pretty terrible place right now, as it has been for decades. Traditional English cider (that's scrumpy, not Strongbow) is difficult to find in England, and impossible to find anywhere else. There are a few small American cideries doing good things (Alpenfire in WA, Farnum Hill in NH, and West County Cider in MA, to name a few), but they're quite expensive and have limited distribution. Basque cider is absolutely unique, but, once again, hard to find and expensive. Cider from Normandy—often considered the world's finest—is what I buy most often, but Cidre Dupont is the only kind I've been able to get my hands on.

Making cider at home can be a great alternative to the mass-produced, backsweetened swill that lines supermarket shelves. Of course, to do it properly, you need apples and a press—but I'm not that committed. So I start with juice.

Juice

During the apple harvest, many farms will sell freshly pressed juice, ideally from traditional cider apples. These varieties have higher levels of tannin and acid than eating apples, so they produce much more flavorful ciders. The rest of the year I buy cider from Whole Foods, because it comes in gallon-sized glass jugs, so you don't need another container to ferment it in. All you need is a stopper and an airlock from your local homebrew store; plus, you can re-use the jug to ferment other things. (Carlo Rossi jugs also work for this purpose.)

If you're using cloudy juice and wish to produce a clear cider, you'll want to add some powdered pectic enzyme. Add one teaspoon per gallon of juice prior to fermentation.

Fermentation

The first thing I had to do to make cider was forget everything I'd learned about making beer. When you make beer, it's important to aerate to promote yeast growth, because you want a quick, full fermentation. With cider, you want a long, slow fermentation, ideally leaving some residual sugar behind. This preserves the subtle flavors of the fruit. So when making cider, you should minimize aeration to slow the yeast down.

If your juice is unpasteurized and unsulfited, you can use the natural flora in the juice to ferment it. Otherwise, you'll want to pitch a small amount of yeast. If you're using dry yeast, I recommend 0.5 - 1 gram of yeast per gallon of juice—less than half the amount of yeast recommended for a beer of a similar strength. Fermenting at low temperatures will also help slow down the fermentation. 55˚ - 60˚F is a good target, but check the temperature range on the yeast you're using to make sure it can ferment at those temperatures.

You can use a variety of yeasts to make cider. For my first batch I used Danstar's Nottingham ale yeast, but it left strong yeasty flavors in the cider even after conditioning. Since then I've used Wyeast 3068, a German Hefeweizen yeast, and Wyeast 4766 cider yeast. Don't expect yeast to produce the same flavors in cider that they do in beer. I've used 3068 a number of times, and it produces very strong banana and clove aromas in beer, but in cider it produced neither. Both of these ciders were good, but I'd give the edge to 4766, because it enhanced the cider's acidity better. There are also a wide variety of wine yeasts that I'm planning on experimenting with.

Let the cider ferment and condition for 3-4 months before bottling. If you have a hydrometer, you can check the residual sweetness of your cider. A gravity under 1.002 qualifies as dry, 1.002 - 1.012 is off-dry, and over 1.012 is sweet. If you follow this method you won't make a sweet cider, but I have managed to produce stable off-dry ciders. My ciders have finished at 1.004 (Nottingham), 1.006 (4766), and 1.008 (3068). If you use a champagne yeast (Saccharomyces bayanus) or ferment at warmer temperatures, your cider may finish drier.

Good resources on cider making include:
http://www.cider.org.uk (and Andrew Lea's book Craft Cider Making)
http://www.lostmeadowvt.com/cider.htm

Dialing In Your Coffee Grinder

Brewing coffee presents a unique problem. It is extremely sensitive to a variable that most people have no way of measuring: extraction yield. Tea, by contrast, is tasty across a wide range of extractions, as evidenced by the fact that multiple steepings of the same tea leaves can produce delicious results. Bitter tea is over-strong, not overextracted.

So when you brew coffee, you're aiming at a very small target (18% - 22% extraction) which you have no way of measuring. To hit that target, most people rely on recipes handed down by a trusted source. But the problem with just following a recipe is that even if you can control water temperature, coffee dose, and brewing time, there's no way for a recipe to specify exactly how fine your grind should be. Typically, the recipe will specify, say, 'medium-fine' or 'the consistency of table salt', but this is far too inexact. Even a small difference in grind size can have a major impact on extraction yield. Furthermore, no grinder produces a perfectly even grind; every grinder produces a slightly different grind profile. What that means is that even if the average grind size is identical, the grounds produced by two different grinders will extract slightly differently.

Now, I do think recipes are a useful starting place, but everyone needs to dial the recipe in on their own grinder. The only way to do this, short of a coffee refractometer, is to rely on taste. So you should be able to taste underextraction and overextraction, and know how to correct for both. All this assumes that you're starting with good, fresh coffee, good water, and clean equipment.

1. Overextraction. This is relatively easy to taste. Overextracted coffee is harshly bitter, often astringent or solvent-like. If you want to know what overextraction tastes like, try boiling your coffee. Often times overextracted coffee will taste as if it is roasted darker than it actually is, because the bitter compounds that are extracted last are mostly dry distillates—burnt sugars and heavy maillard compounds—which are more concentrated in darker roasts. If your coffee tastes overextracted, use a coarser grind.

2. Underextraction. This is a bit more subtle. Underextracted coffee generally lacks sweetness and complexity, and sometimes has a tea-like flavor. Underextracted coffee is often described as being overly acidic or sour; this is not strictly true. Think about it: why would a cup with less extraction have more acid? However, it is true that acids extract more quickly than most compounds in coffee, so an underextracted cup may have a higher proportion of acids, which might lead to higher perceived acidity. If your coffee tastes underextracted, use a finer grind.

In order to dial-in your brewing technique, you need to make sure that you have control of all variables. That means weighing your coffee. Measuring by volume will make it much more difficult to dial-in your grind. Start with a middle-of-the-road dosage, say, 60 grams of coffee per liter of water (14g per 8 oz). If you're brewing manually (pour over, French press, Aeropress), you need to measure water temperature and brewing time. 200˚F is a good place to start for water temperature, but more importantly, be consistent with temperature and brew time.

Brew, taste, adjust grind if necessary, repeat. Take notes. Since overextraction is easier to taste, it can be a useful exercise to push the grind finer and finer until you taste overextraction, and then back off a bit. There are a lot of variables that affect coffee extraction, but most of the time you can get a decent cup just by manipulating the grind. In general, people worry far too much about the brewing device, and far too little about the grinder. Yes, you need an adjustable burr grinder, but once you have one, you can brew very good coffee even in a cheap automatic coffee maker—or a clean cotton sock—provided you know how to dial in your grind.

What's in a Beer?

The four ingredients in beer, as defined by Germany's Reinheitsgebot (beer purity law), are water, yeast, hops, and malted barley. Simple enough. What the Reinheitsgebot doesn't tell you is that there are dozens of kinds of malt, hundreds of varieties of hops, and thousands of strains of brewer's yeast. In what follows, I will try to explain what distinguishes the different yeast, malt, and hops that a brewer can utilize in crafting a beer. I'll leave water alone, since discussing water chemistry would require a whole post in itself, and is probably less interesting to most people.

Malt:

Modern brewers have access to a huge variety of malts. All of them are produced from the same substance: raw, unmalted barley—which, to be honest, is pretty bland. However, by manipulating the way the barley is dried and cured, the maltster can produce a spectrum of bold flavors, such as toasted bread, nuts, caramel, dried fruit, smoke, coffee, and chocolate. On a more practical level, the malting process is necessary in order to produce the enzymes in base malts (alpha- and beta-amylase) that will convert the starches in the barley into sugars that the yeast can ferment. Virtually no modern breweries malt their own barley, but specialty maltsters like Briess produce very high quality products.

Hops:

Unlike barley, the processing that hops undergo after they're picked is only meant to preserve the natural flavor of the hops, not to add any flavors. The variety of flavor that hops impart to beer is a result of their natural chemical composition. The flavor contributions of hops can be roughly divided into two categories: bitterness and hop aroma. Bitterness comes from the hop resins, while hop aroma resides in the hops' essential oils. The alpha and beta acids that compose the hop resins are neither bitter nor soluble in their natural state. Brewers transform the alpha acids into isomerized alpha acids by boiling (desirable), while beta acids become bitter through oxidation (undesirable). Different hop varieties provide distinct flavors because of differing levels of the various hop resins and oils. European hops tend to be fairly mild, while some American, Australian, and New Zealand hops provide intense floral and fruity aromatics. Brewers add hops at different points in the brewing and fermentation process in order to manipulate the level and quality of bitterness and hop aroma that is present in the finished beer.

Yeast:

Yeast are what turn beer from a bitter, sugary liquid into the alcoholic beverage that we know. The type of yeast the brewer uses has a massive impact on the final product, because different strains produce different aromatic byproducts during fermentation, and different strains yield different levels of residual sweetness, or levels of attenuation. A highly attenuative yeast will leave very little residual sugar in the beer, resulting in a dry, crisp beverage, while a less attenuative yeast will produce a beer that is sweeter and more full-bodied. Yeast also vary in how quickly they flocculate, or clump together, which results in the yeast falling out of solution. Highly flocculant yeast are prized for producing clear beer in a short period of time, without filtration. Modern brewers have access to hundreds of yeast strains through yeast labs like White Labs and Wyeast.

Bacteria:

What? The Renheitsgebot doesn't say anything about bacteria! However, lactic acid bacteria are essential for producing the delicious beverages known as sour beers. Styles of sour beer include: lambic, Berliner weisse, and Flemish sour ales. Sour beers usually contain a combination of lactic acid bacteria, the yeast Brettanomyces, and regular brewer's yeast. Brettanomyces can produce acetic acid in the presence of oxygen, but this is usually undesirable, so most acidity in beer comes from bacteria. Many strains of these bacteria are inhibited by hops, so sour beers are only lightly hopped. (Except lambic, made with large quantities of aged hops, which have lost most of their resins and oils.) Pediococcus works slowly (months to years) but can produce more acid than most lactobacillus strains.

Sources:
Brewing With Lactic Acid Bacteria, Brian Nummer.
http://morebeer.com/articles/brewing_with_lactic_acid_bacteria

For the Love of Hops, Stan Hieronymus. Brewers Publications, 2012.
Hop Science III: Bitterness, Kristofer Krogerus. http://beer.suregork.com/?p=2377

Malting and Brewing Science: Hopped Wort and Beer, D.E. Briggs and James Hough. Aspen Publishers, 1982: p. 744
Malting Barley with Bob Hansen from Briess – BeerSmith Podcast 35

The Prokaryotes: Vol. 4, Falkow, Rosenberg, Schleifer, Stakebrandt, eds. Springer 2006: p. 344.

Yeast, Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff. Brewers Publications, 2010.

Vermont Breweries

This past weekend I visited my cousin and his fiancé in northern Vermont, and toured some local breweries. Vermont has the highest brewery-to-person ratio of any state, with roughly one brewery for every 25,000 people. Large, mediocre breweries like Long Trail and Magic Hat distribute their beer throughout the Northeast, but the very best Vermont beer can only be purchased in-state.

Perhaps the epitome of Vermont breweries is Hill Farmstead. Hill Farmstead is located in a remote corner of Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom, where 74% of the roads have been rated as being in 'poor' or 'very poor' condition. The land on which the brewery sits has been in the brewer's family for eight generations, and most of Hill Farmstead's beers are named after his ancestors. The demand for their beer has so outstripped supply that bottles have been illegally auctioned off for hundreds of dollars on eBay.

I didn't make it out to Hill Farmstead, but I did manage to try several of their beers at a great pub in Waterbury called Prohibition Pig. Holger Danske, a brown ale with Beech-smoked malt, was a perfect pairing for savory food. Susan (hopped with Riwaka, Citra, and Simcoe) was an excellent example of what seems to be an emerging style for Vermont's IPAs: juicy, full of resinous and tropical fruit aromas, and nearly opaque with unfiltered hop debris. But the star of the show was Arthur, a saison heavily hopped with both American and European hop varieties. This is the first really hoppy Belgian-style beer I've particularly enjoyed. So good.

If there's one beer that Vermont is known for, it's Heady Topper, a double IPA from The Alchemist. Since The Alchemist's main brewery was destroyed in the floods of 2011, they now brew Heady Topper exclusively. Heady Topper is sold in cans, but generally sells out the day it arrives in stores, so I visited their cannery to taste a sample. Like Susan, Heady Topper is cloudy in appearance and features tropical fruit notes, but seemed to have a firmer, more defined bitterness and a bit more malt flavor. Their proprietary yeast strain, Conan, gives the beer a distinct peach aroma. Homebrewers across the country are currently working themselves into a frenzy trying to clone this beer.

Lawson's Finest Liquids is Vermont's smallest commercial brewery, but has garnered an outsized reputation. Unfortunately, they're not open to the public, but I did get a sip of their Kiwi Double IPA at Prohibition Pig. The beer doesn't contain kiwis, but is hopped with New Zealand's Nelson Sauvin and Pacific Jade hops. Pretty damn good. I also found a bottle of Lawson's at Winooski's Beverage Warehouse. It was Paradise Pale Ale, a dry-hopped pale ale brewed with 100% Vienna malt, which gave it a deep amber color and a nice nutty note in the finish.

After visiting Prohibition Pig, we found ourselves just down the street from Magic Hat, so we stopped in. Samples were generous, and they had some cool artwork. We also stopped at a few breweries I hadn't previously heard of: Fiddlehead was featuring an excellent hoppy imperial brown ale, though their IPA wasn't anything special. Switchback offered a nice tour, but fairly uninspiring beer, unless your thing is subtle, malty pale ales. Vermont Pub & Brewery had a number of interesting beers, including a sour-mashed raspberry beer (which wasn't sour enough), and another sour called Tulach Leis, which had a nice brett aroma but a weak finish. Unfortunately, we were a day early for the release of their bacon rauchbier.