Archive for April, 2009

BJCP 7 Post-Mash + Irish, Scottish, and Brown Ales

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

We started with guess that beer, and had another slightly off go at a German Lager. This time it was a Kellerbier — a cellared German Pils. Les admitted that it might have had some age on it. I guessed a Maibock, but was wondering the whole time why there was no alcohol in the flavor.

Les presented a broad technical topic for week seven — the post-mash process, which essentially includes mash-out, sparging, lautering, boiling and chilling. Some interesting techniques I wasn’t particularly familiar with were discussed, but the most important aspects of the talk were the small tips regarding the things that can go wrong with beer if certain things aren’t taken into account. It was definitely a complex lecture with a lot to be gone over in just an hour.

CSI member, Greg Bauer presented on Irish, Scottish and Brown Ales, which we’ll get to after the jump. (more…)

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Not sure how I feel about this: Beer Chips?

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

You can check them out here. And if you do, let me know how they are. Something just screams either full-on marketing fail or pure genius.

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BJCP 6: Mashing + Porters and Stouts

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Class six was in the seventh week thanks to Easter, and the nice holiday that Les gave us. The weather warmed up quite a bit, and I was initially not looking forward to drinking a ton of heavy, darker beers so far into April. Maryland Homebrew Day member Stefin Clapham presented a flight of excellent beers, and I have to say that I enjoyed this tasting session pretty thoroughly despite not feeling like I was in the right season to drink them. The technical topic presented by CRABS member Glenn Quinting — mashing — is probably the most important activity we’ve discussed so far, and I hope to put as much of what I’ve learned from this session to use in my own brewing.

As usual, we started with some questions to answer, and we also did our first legitimate scoring of a beer. Then we moved into “Guess that beer,” and most of us — even the more experienced folks who had already been through the course — were completely stumped. We tasted a beer that featured almost no hop character, but was still pretty malty. There was some light ester going on, but without that hop character it was difficult to pinpoint what the style was, let alone what kind of beer it was. I guessed bock, as there was some minor alcohol heat to it, and the color seemed appropriate, and I was totally off the mark. It turned out to be Morland’s Hens Tooth Strong English Ale, but the bottles were a bit old, per Les’s admission. Despite the age on the bottles, this was a great exercise. (more…)

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Skunked Beer

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

You’ve all had ‘em before — a beer that smells like you ran over it on the road. You’ve also probably heard some of the various explanations as to the cause of this phenomenon — green bottles, light, heat, age of the beer, etc. But let’s get down to the real science behind why that Heineken bottle you opened smells like a woodland weasel did some exploring in there.

First and foremost, it has nothing to do with heat. While the flavor of your beer can be affected by temperature extremes, for the most part once it’s bottled as long as it isn’t being left in a hot car for days at a time it probably won’t be particularly hurt by temperature change.

So the answer we’re looking for is light. This means that — yes — the color of the bottle has an effect on the flavor of the beer. Green or clear bottles are more likely to be skunked than brown — brewers would refer to such a beeer as being “light-struck.”

Here’s the thing, that skunk smell you’re tasting is actually the same set of chemical compounds emanating from the skunk’s scent glands. Certain chemical compounds in beer that were derived from the hops —  isohumulone  to be exact — are reactive to certain wavelengths of light — those about 5,000 angstroms. What happens is that these molecules are broken apart by the light, and then rebond with sulfur compounds in the beer, creating the familar mercaptan thiol that we recognize as the smell of skunk. It smells kind of like really intense garlic in high concentration, but in beer the amount of molecules you’re perceiving is usually extremely low. (more…)

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BJCP Class 5: Yeast and Wheats, Ryes, and Rauchbiers

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

So you may have noticed SYD sitting here kind of quiet all week, but there was definitely a good excuse. Sunday was my presentation of the technical topic, yeast. I spent a healthy portion of my week’s free time working on a handout and Power Point presentation on the all-important single celled organism we use to make beer, bread, and lots of other good stuff.

Prior to my presentation, we played guess that beer and I did well enough to get it down to the country of origin — America, and the style — Imperial or Double IPA, but I couldn’t quite identify the hop variety, which turned out to be Simcoe. Not a bad beer. Then we had our first “identify the defect” scenario. Les brought in two growlers of the same beer, and we had to guess the style and then identify the defect. The beer was a clone he’d done with C.R.A.B.S. of Wharf Rat’s Best Bitter. One of the growlers had a beer that was SERIOUSLY affected by an overabundance of diacetyl. It tasted like an extremely buttery bag of Snyder’s pretzels, or toffee. Not really a bad flavor in my mind, just definitely way beyond what the style guidelines for a Best Bitter allow as far as butterscotch notes are concerned.

I felt like I did a fair job with my presentation, though I did mix up one term that I’ll have to correct for the class website. The majority of my presentation got into some pretty technical turf — at least the hand-out I spent 4 hours writing up did.

One of the things I wasn’t totally aware of that the class discussion following my presentation brought up was using olive oil instead of oxygenating a starter. This is something I’m definitely excited to try out. The basics of the process involve replacing the yeast’s need for fatty acids during its growth phase. Normally, yeast synthesizes these fatty acids from amino acids in the wort, and the dissolved oxygen from the aeration. Supposedly, with literally just a drop of olive oil from the head of a pin, that process of synthesis is eliminated, and no oxygen need be introduced at any point during fermentation. (more…)

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