Good thing I didn't wear sweatpants today

So I'm in the Hoboken train station this afternoon waiting on a train to go and meet R. From there we're on our way to Cricket Hill to claim a few bottles of their new barrel aged porter - Paymaster's Porter agen in Four Roses whiskey barrels. And it's a sin to pass up the opportunity to have a beer on the train. That's why they have a liquor store in there for crying out loud!

So I walk up to the refrigerator and what do I see? DAB. And not just any ol' DAB, DAB in cans. And not just DAB in any ol' cans, DAB in... TALLBOYS!!!

Speechless. And happy.

F Yeast Starters

I've been through the paces with yeast culturing and growing a pitchable slurry of yeast up from an agar plate and all that. It's a lot of work. It's very time consuming and you have to be extremely careful with your sanitation practices. Quite frankly I just don't have that kind of time to dedicate to the hobby these days.

At the same time, I love to have a low gravity 3-4%ABV beer on hand at all times. I know it's completely counter to the direction that the whole craft beer movement is moving - big beers, huge beers, huger beers - but it's what I really enjoy more than anything. A nice, flavorful, drinkable beer that I can put away a few of without sitting down to take notes about how "complex" it is. And I haven't said the "S" word for a reason - I hate it, I think it's goofy.

And also at the same time, I like to re-pitch my yeast. I like to brew several batches in a row with the same strain instead of culturing up enough yeast for each different style I'm going for. Again, it's more time consuming and more expensive to brew with a different yeast every time.

So... where am I going with this....

With those thoughts in mind, I figured to hell with starters. Why not have my low gravity beer be my starter. Instead of making a starter I bought two vials of WLP007 and today I brewed an English bitter. The yeast slurry from the fermenter will be re-pitched for my next three or four batches. And instead of dumping a bunch of starter beer/wort I'll have five gallons of beer to show for it.

I worked off of the Jamil book for the recipe. Crisp Maris Otter is the base malt with 1/2 lb of Weyermann Cara Aroma and 1/4 lb of Briess Special Roast. The Cara Aroma is a dark crystal malt. 1/2 oz of Kent Goldings added at both 10 and 0 min remaining in the boil.

After this beer I'll be brewing a Pale Ale with Nelson Sauvin hops, an IPA with Centennial and Amarillo (thanks, Lee, I'll hook you up), and an English Brown and/or my Oatmeal Stout recipe.

I'm just glad to have the yogurt fork incident behind me.

I ate yogurt today

with a fork.

Homebrew Alley IV Results

I haven't really blogged much of late because I haven't really had much to blog about. Haven't brewed in about a month. Homebrew Alley IV was this past weekend, so that was something fun. I had the opportunity to judge three flights - English Pale Ales, American Ales, and Strong Ales. Lots of great homebrew. There really weren't any duds in the bunch - and that's saying something because I drank a lot of homebrew.

Results of the competition are posted here.

Lots of people are finding this blog by looking for information on the White Labs High Pressure Lager yeast strain, WLP925. Unfortunately I can't report much good news about how my beers fermented with this yeast did in the competition. There were three of them - a helles, a pilsner (really should have been entered as a Dortmunder), and a rauchbier. None of them placed. But at the same time none of them got bad feedback. They were all kind of "eh". Although, personally, I think that the rauchbier is first rate.

WLP925 - finally an evaluation

I finally have a beer tapped up that I fermented with the WLP925 High Pressure Lager Yeast. At least one that's worth drinking anyway. The first lesson I learned with this yeast is that it's seriously non-flocculent, so with the Dunkel that I first brewed to be fermented with this yeast I had to dump the entire four liter starter into it. It doesn't taste all that swell, so I figured I'd wait until this second pitch to pass judgment on the yeast.

The recipe was about 99% Weyermann Pale Ale malt with a dash of Carafoam. Bittering hops only, no flavor or aroma additions. Fermented with the second pitch of the WLP925 yeast at around 64F under about 15psi. OG 1.053, FG 1.012 after just under two weeks. Racked it to secondary for ten days at 35F. Fined with gelatin and racked to serving keg.

The beer is a deep gold with a thick, tight white head. Slight haze. Tough coaxing the aroma out of it. Some grain, some bread crust. Also some light esters of the ethyl hexanoate variety - apple, aniseed. Some alcohol showing even though it's only 5.4%. Malt sweetness with some definite bready notes in the flavor. Esters and alcohol don't show as they did in the nose. Bitterness is moderate. Mouthfeel is creamy in the middle and finishes dry. Carbonation is soft, though definitely high enough to be appropriate to style.

I've got a couple of other batches coming with re-pitches of this yeast, so I'll wait to see how those come out before a final verdict, but here are some early pros and cons:

Pros:

1. This strain attenuates very nicely, which I think is important for a lager strain.
2. Capturing carbonation during primary fermentation seems to have really created an interesting mouthfeel. This beer doesn't have that carbonic bite that may or may not happen in some beers that are force carbonated.
3. Pretty clean lager beer in about three weeks.

Cons:

1. The yeast doesn't flocculate at all. Even after fining with gelatin it's still a little hazy. Also, I basically wasted the first batch that was pitched with the entire starter since the starter yeast wouldn't flocculate. I think that the next time I would use this yeast I'd just get a few vials and pitch them all instead of making a starter.
2. The beer isn't completely clean. The slight esters that it created bothered me. I had a problem with my spunding valve during primary fermentation that I corrected with a new pressure relief valve in the most recent batch. We'll see if that corrects it.
3. This is nitpicking, but I don't think that the yeast performs as quickly as advertised. I think you need at least 10 days in primary to get complete attenuation, another week or so in the secondary and to condition and clarify, then another day to settle in the serving keg. So I'd be hesitant to call it a beer any sooner than two and a half weeks after brew day.

For those in the NYCHG I'll try to bring some samples to the January meeting.

So on Tuesday I'll be entered in this homebrew contest being held by The Office restaurants. Jeff at Beer Stained Letter wrote about it a few days ago here. My Oatmeal Stout will be in full effect at the Montclair location. If I'm lucky enough to be chosen the winner on Tuesday, I'll be back there again on Saturday to face off against the winners from all of the other Office locations. The winner on Saturday has their beer brewed at High Point in Butler and their beer will be served as a winter seasonal at all of The Office locations.

Wish me luck!