Lambic Style

After brewing this beer my only words that I can say is...Whoa! I love a good challenge, and the challenge today is called a turbid mash.
What is a Lambic? A Lambic is a beer that is brewed in a region of Belgium called Pajottenland. It is a complex beer that is exposed to wild yeast and bacteria native to the region. The flavor of a Lambic is typically sour. It is often blended with fruit or sometimes older Lambics to make what is known as a Gueuze. Lambics take from 1 to 3 years to ferment and condition due to the different bacteria and yeast that work on all of the complex sugars and starches. To make the ideal wort for this style I will do a turbid mash. The turbid mash originated in Belgium in the early 1800's when breweries where being taxed on the size of their mash tun. What else do you do in that situation but jam as much grain as you can. So why a turbid mash? A turbid mash is exactly that. Milky, opaque, and cloudy. Full of unconverted starch from unmalted wheat and barley. The opposite of what you would want from a standard infusion mash. At different intervals you remove a certain percentage of mash liquor by pressing a colander like disk referred to as a stuykmanden and siphoning it out.
This beer goes against a lot of conventional methods. A thick concrete like mash. A very large percentage of unmalted grains. Old oxidized stale hops are used. Bacteria and wild yeast cultures are used to intentionally take over your fermentation. Oh those Belgians?
So how is a Lambic made in St Louis Missouri? Well first you ferment it for about a week with a standard ale yeast. Then you pitch a Lambic sour culture and let the magic begin. Sometimes it will smell like a barn. Sometimes it might smell like gym socks. After the different bugs had their turn it will be a complex sour ale that I plan on adding fruit to. I will keep you posted.

Schwarzbier

A Schwarzbier is a malty lager with a small amount of de-husked roasted barley to give it a dark color without the toasty flavor you get from something like a Stout.
I have been working on my methods of harvesting and re-pitching yeast. I have been using WLP830 German Lager yeast which is very versatile. So let's take them from light lagers to amber to dark or schwarz. Once you go black you can't go back, with yeast that is. Yeast can pick up the flavors from the dark malts and carry over to your next batch so it's been a good run my friends. I think I will go for the Southern German variety of yeast next time. Time to make a Munich Helles.

Kolsch

I have had a few less than perfect results brewing a Kolsch style beer. Kolsch is a German beer that is very close to a lager. Actually a Kolsch is a lagered beer but is an ale. Lager beers are fermented cool, ales are fermented warmer. After it is fermented it is cooled to a lower temperature and the yeast is allowed to clear up and eat up any remaining undesirables left over. The result is a clean, light, golden ale that doesn't leave much room for imperfections. The yeast can be a little finicky. It typically remains suspended in the beer after it ferments giving it a haze. Something so simple should be easy. Patience is required.
This time I feel that I got it right. One of the challenges when you start brewing is being patient enough to get the right result. Often times the brewer is just dying to crack open his latest and sample it a soon as possible. You want to share your hazy, sweet, flat malt beverage with your friends. There is nothing wrong with that. The first sampling that a brewer takes either good or bad is like an epiphany. I CAN MAKE BEER! As though you are handed a gift from the hand of God himself! Once you get past that you want to make it good or make it right to style. Proper sanitation, the right fermentation temperature and conditioning, the right carbonation and the perfect pour. Time makes all things better. The brewer and the beer.

Belgian Pale Ale

It is such a beautiful day. As a matter of fact this is my favorite weekend of the year. The weather is perfectly cool, the leaves are falling, and the Cardinals in the playoffs. It's as though all of my favorite things are in perfect alignment.
I stepped outside to admire the day and snapped this pic of a young Belgian Pale Ale.

Adjunct Brewing.

So what is so wrong with brewing beer with rice? I thought to myself as I finished my spider roll and then washed it down with a crisp delicious Sopporo. I was inspired.
Adjuncts always get a bad rap from beer snobs. It is a common practice to use rice and or corn among the big North American breweries. Barley is a magical grain. When malted it has the power to convert its own grain starches to maltose. If you add an additional form of grain like rice or corn you get the same result minus some of the body and dextrin from the barley that can make it heavier. The result is a lighter, drier beer.
So what about Rheinheitsgebot (a German purity law that only allows barley, hops, and water as ingredients)? Just as early American brewers did, I think you should make the best beer you can with what you have. Today I have a five pound bag of rice from Shop and Save. The rest will be Rahr 2 row barley along with Hallertau and Tettnanger hops.
I cooked the rice in a separate pot until it broke down into a slurry. The cooked rice is then added to the mash and left at 149 degrees for 90 minutes. The result is 1.050 on the money. The goal is to produce a clean light lager beer. It will be in the BJCP style of an American Premium Lager. Brewing is science and science is fun.

Belgian Style Witbier

A friend gave me a recipe for a Belgian Style Wit. A recipe that has won awards. It had been on my list for some time. Although the weather has been pretty kind thus far and being that it is June I must devote my refrigeration space back to the ale family of our yeast friends.
I started with pilsner malt, unmalted wheat grown in Alhambra Illinois, oats from Shop and Save, and oh yeah rice hulls. I try to keep ingredients true to style but when it comes to adjuncts I love to get them from the grocery store. Give me a 99 cent sack of rice or a tin of corn grits and I will make beer.
I decocted this mash which means that I removed a portion of the grains from the mash and boiled them, then added them back to the mash to raise the temperature of mash. This is done at different intervals to achieve a certain style of beer.
My recipe source schooled me on the use of bitter orange peel. She was emphatic that I not use fresh orange peel, not sweet orange peel, only bitter orange peel. I crushed the coriander and combined the bitter orange peel. Once you put your nose up to it and you realize why men traveled the world and fought wars to acquire stuff like this.
I dropped them in ten minutes before the end of the boil and the aroma of hops, grains, and spices filled the air. This was one of those brews that after it was all done I felt like I got it.

Update: this brew placed 3rd in the Catagory of Belgian and French Ales at the 2012 Music City Brew Off in Nashville Tennessee.