Rhadamanthus - Bière de Garde

The third and final Bière de Garde in our series, Rhadamanthus.  This beer will use Belgium Strong ale yeast.  And its named after the third guardian of the underworld.

Rhadamanthus was the brother of Minos, the much more popular brother.  Minos was jealous of his popularity on Crete and drove him away to Boeotia, a central region of ancient Greece.  He is not mentioned much in mythology, but apparently he spent some time in the Elysian fields, which is akin to heaven in the Greek myths.  He then is said to be the judge of the dead that judges people from Asia and the east.

In other Bay View Brewing news, my little sister Katie got married this weekend.  It was an amazing wedding and I thought I would share this very official picture of me and Katie eating spinach dip in the wedding party bus only minutes after she became Mrs. Schmidt!

Oh, and less importantly, the brew day turned out pretty decently as well.  The beer came in well above 5 gallons at 1.068, which should lead to several tasty beers north of 7 percent.  I am going to throw the carboy in the basement before I leave and let all three of our guardians of the dead keep the beer safe until I return from India.  Hopefully before the end of February.

Minos - Bière de Garde

The second Bière de Garde in our exploration of the variety, Minos.  Using the same grain bill and essentially the same hop schedule, this beer differs only by the yeast strain, American ale yeast.  Farmhouse ales are generally distinguished by their yeast strains. It will be a real treat to taste three Bière de Garde's in spring, all with different yeasts.  Of course the alcohol content will be slightly different in all these brews as well since my efficiency is all over the board.  And, for the second beer in the series, the second guardian of the cold dark underworld, Minos.

Minos was the king of Crete in his mortal life.  He was viscous and cruel.  In an effort to prove he was the rightful king he asked Poseidon for a sign.  Poseidon gave him a great white bull to sacrifice, but Minos switched the bull for a normal one.  When Poseidon found out, he cursed Minos' wife with zoophillia.  She had Daedalus build her a wooden bull to hide in, so she could trick the white bull to mate with her.  She gave birth to the Minotaur.  Well, Minos had Daedalus build a labyrinth to hide the minotaur in because he didn't want anyone to know about his wife's monster son.  But, Daedalus did know both how to exit the labyrinth and who the Minotaur was.  So him and his son, Icarus were imprisoned.  Daedalus build Icarus wings for them to escape, but as we all know, Icarus flew too close to the sun, fell into the sea and drowned.

Minos went on a hunt to find Daedalus.  He came up with a riddle that only Daedalus could solve.  How do thread a string through a spiral seashell?  When he got to the court of Cocalus in Sicily, Cocalus brought the riddle to Daedalus, who tied the string to an ant and had the ant walk through the shell.  Minos now knew Daedalus was in Cocalus' court and demanded he be handed over.  Cocalus agreed but said he Minos should take a bath first.  While Minos was in the bath, Cocalus' daughters and Daedaus trapped him and scalded him to death with boiling water.

He then became one of the three judges of the underworld.  While his brother and Aeacus judge men from Asia and Europe, Minos is the final judge.  And now, some pictures.

We really wanted to up our efficiency with this mash so he decided to do a double batch sparge.  Washing the sugar from the grains twice.  Additionally, we stirred the grains every fifteen minutes and stirred directly before vourlauf.  It must have worked because we got a 76% efficiency.  Above is Reva adding the hops.  We also decided to do a 110 minute boil.

We ended up getting 4.75 gallons of beer at 1.071 OG.  Meaning this beer will be closer to 7.5% ABV while the previous brew was 6.4%.  Also, we tried some Stawman by Angry Orchard and Tier de Garde by Southern Tier.  Angry Orchard aged their cider in oak barrels and with 10% alcohol by volume it was a very strong, dry, intense and tasty cider.  The Tier de Garde is an IPA brewed with grapefruit peels and largered.  It was super interesting.  Citrus, obviously, and extremely mellowed and smoothed.

The yeast has been pitched and is currently fermenting.  And me and Reva decided to kick back with a good Harrison Ford movie, Clear and Present Danger.  One of us got a little more tired during the 8+ hours of brewing than the other...  In three months this Bière de Garde will be ready for sampling.

Aeacus - Bière de Garde

This week I have chosen to brew a Bière de Garde.  In french it literally means "beer for keeping" or guarding.  It is traditionally a farmhouse ale (similar to Saisons) brewed in the Nord-Plas-de-Calais region of France.  It is brewed during winter or spring and then lagered in a cold cellar to be consumed in Summer.  I got some 6 month old German ale yeast cheap, so I've spent the last week building up the cell count and will use that for this ale.  As for the name, Aeacus is greek god who I thought fits this beer well.

Aeacus is the son of the Zeus.  He lived on the island Aegina, named after his mother, as a extremely just and fair king.  For being so just as a king during his mortal life, he became one of three judges of the underworld, Hades, after his death.  Aeacus holds the keys to Hades and is said to be responsible for judging all the men from Europe.

So hopefully Aeacus will guard this European beer well.  Below is my recipe.

Grain Bill

Briess - Pilsen Malt 11 lb

Briess - Vienna Malt 2 lb

Briess - Special Roast Malt 1.5 lb

Briess - Caramel Malt 80L 0.5 lb

Hop Schedule (100% Dry Whole Leaf)

Golding  1 oz (60 min)

Kent Goldings  1 oz (60 min)

Yeast (liquid)

Wyeast German Ale 1007  (two build ups, approx 270 billion cells)

Mash Schedule

Conversion 4.7 gallons at 148F for 60 min

Batch Sparge 3.25 gallons at 165 for 15 min

First, a quick picture of Blaze's new home brew system.  It is a HERMS system, which stands for Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System.  It's a really cool set up and it will allow for a lot higher gravity beers, bigger batches, and better efficiency.  Here is a link if anyone is interested in seeing how they work.

http://byo.com/brown-ale/item/1325-rims-and-herms-brewing-advanced-homebrewing

Well, I only got a total of 5.9 gallons at 1.055, a much much lower SG than I wanted.  My efficiency was terrible, 62%.  It should be 70 at a minimum.  Which means the beer will be less alcoholic than I intended.  I am going to have to look up same ways which will make my mash tun more efficient.

Only one hop addition at the beginning of the hour long boil.

Boil done and time to chill the wort and pitch the yeast.  Started brewing at 8:30 in the morning and finished all my clean up a bit after 2.  So under a 6 hour brew day from start to finish.  At least I am making better time.

The best I can hope for is a beer at 6.4% ABV with all the characteristics of a Bière de Garde.  BeerSmith says the beer will have 30 IBUs, making the beer more balanced than malty.  I'll find out when I bottle it, after coming back from India.

Lost Cow Brown Ale

Today is a random brew day.  I didn't really have a recipe in mind, I just picked out what ever grains looked good and then whatever fresh whole hops were available.  I already had a yeast starter going for a few days with an american ale yeast.  I decided to go real heavy on Briess' Special Roast Malt.  Which I later found out has a very biscuty or toasty quality.  I chose some low alpha hops as well to go with the darker nuttier flavor of the grains.  It turns out I pretty much picked the exact profile of an American Brown Ale.  I literally just wondered around the grain room till I found what I wanted, hence, Lost Cow Brown Ale.

Grain Bill

Briess - 2 Row Brewers Malt Grain 10.000 lb

Briess - Special Roast Malt Grain  1.500 lb

Briess - Caramel Malt 120L Grain  1.500 lb

Hop Schedule (100% whole leaf hops)

US Golding  1 oz (90 min)

German Hallertau  1 oz (90 min)

German Hallertau 0.5 oz (15 min)

German Hallertau 0.5 oz (0 min)

Yeast (2 liter starter)

Safale S-05 11g

Mash Schedule

Conversion - 5 gallons at 150F for 60 min

Batch Sparge - 3.5 gallons at 165F for 15 minutes

Getting those yeasts all good and healthy.  So recently I've been realizing that I am having a huge issue with thermometers.  I need to go get a lab grade thermometer so I can calibrate all the other thermometers I have.  Which means, my mash was sitting for an hour somewhere between 156F and 148F.  Which is basically the entire range for which you can mash.  Most of the thermometers tended to read towards the lower end of that spectrum so hopefully I will get a nice dry beer.

Also, I got some Iodine to do a starch test. Where you use a dropper to drop some iodine into the wort and check the color.  If you see a nice light brown or light red, you have good starch to sugar conversion.  If the color stays real dark, the mash needs to rest longer to convert all the proteins.  The only issue is that this tincture I got doesn't have a dropper and I am pretty sure it is 100% iodine and so its really difficult to tell the color change.  Fairly positive I should have got an iodine solution that is less iodine. Next time.

Not much vorlauf needed, the gain bed settled quickly to produce a really nice filter.

First conversion I got 3.25 gallons. It's time for sparging.  After dumping my 3.5 gallons at 190F the mash looked liked it evened out at 167F.  Some places 169F.  Hopefully not much higher, otherwise I will extract tannins.  I must have done my water calculations wrong because I got just a touch under 7 gallons, at 1.046 SP.  I'm going to do a 90 minute boil to bring the volume down and the gravity up.

My efficiency is somewhere around 70%, which is on the lower end of typical.  Time for the first addition of 1 ounce US Golding and 1 ounce German Hallertau, all whole leaf hops.  I put them in my hop bag because I forgot my stainless strainer at the bottom of the kettle.

After 90 minutes there's just one last hops addition for aroma.  All in all the I ended up getting a quart more than 5 gallons of beer into the fermenter at an OG of 1.058.  Not bad.

Cydne helped by pitching the yeast. And the yeast starter really improved the lag time of yeast activity.  Less than 12 hours later the krausen was already up to the bung.

The beer should hopefully come in around 5.8% and fill approx 55 bottles.

Marchfest Extract

So, I didn't feel like having a long brew day since I slept in.  Yesterday was the Santa Rampage, a biking pub crawl where everyone dressed as Santa Clause.  Anyways, not much energy for an all grain brew.  Reva picked out the extract kit, and since Oktoberfest lagers need a few months to lager, it works out perfectly because this beer can lager while I'm in India.  Plus, since we have cold weather it will work out nicely to lager.  Hence our Oktoberfest beer in March, Marchfest!

4 friends, 5 bars, 20+ miles

Steeping the specialty grains for the pre-boil.

Reves adding the first and only hop addition, 1 ounce of German Traditional.  We are using our new hop mesh bag so that there is less trub in the fermenter.

Reva pitching the yeast, Wyeast 2633 Oktoberfest Lager Blend.  The beer came in at 1.066, and a quart or so under 5 gallons.  The target was 1.058 so hopefully it will ferment to a slightly higher ABV than planned for.  At the moment the beer is fermenting in the basement where hopefully it will be at the correct temp, 48-58F.

Spent Grain Rolls

Just finished baking some rolls from the grains we used for Logan's Porter yesterday. Me and Reva are heading off to see a play at the Rep but if anyone in wants one maybe I could do a delivery tomorrow. Let me know, recipe will be posted in a bit.

Loggey Black Bear Porter

Today my brother Logan is helping brew his spin on a classic robust porter.  The characteristics we are trying to hone in on is a dark color, smooth/non-dry mouth feel, malt forward with room to hid the ABV, and a large sustained chocolate taste throughout the entire sip.  We also decided to amp up the ABV because it's winter and why not!

Grain Bill

10.5 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US
2 lbs      Vienna Malt
1 lbs      Munich Malt 10L
1 lbs      Caramel Malt 10L
1 lbs      Chocolate Malt
0.5 lbs   Black Malt

Hop Additions (100% whole dry hop cones)

1 oz   (60 min) US Golding
1 oz   (60 min) UK East Kent Golding
.5 oz  (30 min) Cascade
.5 oz  (0 min)   Cascade

Yeast (Dry Yeast)

23g (2 packets) Safale US-05 w/yeast starter (24 hours)

Mash Schedule

60 min Mash at 153F.
15 min Batch Sparge at 165F

Dough In - 10:15am

4.5 gallons of water was added to the pre-heated mash tun at 168F.  After dough in the mash temp was 158F, after a minute or two of stirring it settled at 153F, which is what we were shooting for.

While we wait the 60 minutes for the mash, we are getting inspired by a porter line up.  Starting with Sinebrychoff's Porter from Kerava, Finland.  A very dark, dry Porter, with hints of chocolate and cherries.  Although the ABV is 7.2% there is definitely a nice boozy presence that is sustained throughout the entire taste, however not overpowering.

The mash stayed right around 153F for the entire hour.  It took about 3 full pitchers during vorlauf to clarify the wort.  We got about 2.5 gallons at 1.089 SG for the first runnings.  When adding the additional 4.15 gallons for the batch sparge, the temperature came in way under what we were targeting.  Some wort had to be removed and boiled, then added back to the mash tun to bring the sparge temp up to 168F.  I also misjudged exactly how much water could fit in the mash tun during sparge and so a couple quarts were sacrificed to the grain gods.  After 15 minutes we vorlaufed another three pitchers and ran the second runnings off into the boil kettle.

The total pre-boil volume 6 1/3 gallons at 1.060 SG.  Aiming for 1.062 but because I couldn't fit so much liquid into the mash tun during sparging, I am ok with those numbers.  While we are waiting for the wort to heat up to a boil it's time for some Jimmy Johns and another beer.  This one from Sweden, D. Carnegie & Co.'s Klass III Porter.  Less dry than the previous Scandinavian porter, its got a much more creamy profile which is what we are going towards with Logan's Porter.  Milk chocolate and vanilla flavors and at 5.5% ABV it's a very drinkable smooth beer that you don't have to worry about having a couple of.

First hop addition of two ounces.  Smells awesome. We got another 30 minutes till the next hop addition.  So it's time for porter number 3, Bell's Porter.  It has smooth creamy texture with subtle tastes of milk chocolate and a lighter more caramel color than the previous two porters.  A pretty solid run of the mill porter.  Nothing bad, but nothing outstanding.  Time for the second hop addition.

Just added the last addition of hops and we have 5.42 gallons.  I just got some hose clamps which super help with the air issue I was having in my plate chiller set up.  It worked out really well, chilled over 5 gallons of boiling wort in under 10 minutes to 71F. 

We measured an OG of 1.070. Since we're using only dried whole cone hops there is some loss in hop utilization and absorption of the wort, but it looks, and smells, real awesome.

Then we pitched the yeast, which had been brewing in a yeast starter 24 hours beforehand.  So there should be roughly 370 billion healthy yeast cells ready to ferment all the sugars in our now beer.

And now we wait for the yeast to get to work fermenting.  In about two weeks it will be bottling time.  Another beer variety to add to the christmas six pack.

It's about 5 pm after cleaning all the equipment, which means the brew day took 7 hours in total.  The brewhouse efficiency ended up being about 67%, which is really low, however this has a lot to do with not being able to get the last 1/2 gallon of water/wort back into the tun.  Next time I will have to make sure to use more water in the first infusion.  Hopefully, we will get a batch of 55 twelve ounce beers with a profile as such (assuming a FG around 1.017).

ABV 6.9%

Bitterness 30 IBU's 

Color 41.0 SRM (real dark)

IBU/GU .43 (slightly malty)

January 17

Logan came over today to help bottle the porter.  And it tastes incredible.  It's really, a very impressive beer.  It has so many chocolate and vanilla flavors.  It also tastes like it was meant to be barrel aged, which is exactly what we are going to do.

He's pretty happy with his beer, and for good reason.  I am excited to barrel age the porter in a one liter oak barrel that has had Central Standard white whiskey sitting in it for a couple weeks.  Yea, I can't find the whiskey bottle so the whiskey is going into the vodka bottle.

In two very short weeks we will be carbonating the liter of beer to then it will be lagered for two months.  The beer will come in at 6.7%,