2011 Homebrew #2 - Saison of the Witch

This is the second of two beers I "released" into the wild in February. Made for a friend's birthday celebrations (and for Nick Cage's movie), this is also the second beer I've used the 3711 French Saison yeast. If I ran a brewery professionally, I'd make this the house belgian yeast. It's very clean and easier to control than most of the belgian yeasts available, yet you can give it some heat and probably get some wilder spice flavors. The fruit flavors in this and the Icarus Belgian Pale Ale (posted last month) invoked tropical fruits and citrus. Both beers fermented extremely efficiently, ending dry without any cloying sweetness. I'd like to try this yeast on a darker belgian style beer.

Saison of the Witch
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General
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Category: Belgian and French Ale
Subcategory: Saison
Recipe Type: Partial Mash
Batch Size: 5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 3.9 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 65 %
Total Grain/Extract: 10.30 lbs.

Ingredients
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2 lbs. Pilsen Malt
1 lbs. Rye Malt
1 lbs. Munich 10L Malt

Mash the above at approx 155 degrees F for 75 minutes.

3.3 lbs. CBW® Pilsen Light Liquid (Malt Extract)
2 lbs. Dry Extra Light

Added the dry and liquid malt extracts with 15 minutes left in the boil, to avoid any caramelization and off-flavors of the extracts.

1 lbs. Rye Flaked
1 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Saaz (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
1 oz. Styrian Goldings (Pellets, 6.00 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
1 oz. Saaz (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
Yeast: WYeast 3711 French Saison Yeast


Vital Statistics
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Original Gravity: 1.062
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 6.58 SRM
Bitterness: Approx. 45-50 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 6.5 %

West Town Brewing Company - Bitter Sun India Pale Ale

Bitter Sun IPA survived through the hottest, most brutal summer days (all of them, its been in the carboy for months). The warmth of my office, which doubles as the beer room, likely turned up the notch on the yeast, producing some pretty fruity esters not normally associated with the yeast used. Frankly, the heat got up to 92 in that room quite a few times, jeopardizing the entire batch. It survived. It persevered. And now it will assault the world back, with some seriously bitter hoppy goodness.

Next IPA, I'll probably aim for something more balanced, more malty, and do it as a partial mash so I can have a really off the wall grain bill (i.e., I'll use rye, a little wheat, caramel malts, and even something biscuity).

Name: Bitter Sun IPA
Category: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Subcategory: American IPA
Recipe Type: Extract
Batch Size: 5.5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 3.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 65 %
Total Grain/Extract: 9.60 lbs.
Total Hops: 5.0 oz.

Ingredients
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1.0 lbs. English 2-row Pale (half of which was toasted in the oven for 10 minutes at 350F, but not a lot of the flavor is coming through yet)
0.5 lbs. American Caramel 40°L
.5 lbs. Cara-Pils® Malt
6.6 lbs. Liquid Light Extract
1 lbs. Dry Light Extract
1 oz. Amarillo (Pellets, 8.9 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Centennial (Pellets, 9.5 %AA) boiled 45 minutes.
1 oz. Cascade (Pellets, 6.0 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
.5 oz. Simcoe (Pellets, 11.9 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
1 oz. Cascade (Pellets, 6.0 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
.5 oz. Simcoe (Pellets, 11.9 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
1 oz. Centennial (Pellets, 10.00 %AA) added to Secondary.
1 oz. Simcoe (Pellets, 11.9 %AA) added to Secondary.
Yeast: WYeast 1056 American Ale

OMG Beer Headquarters Update...

Getting very close to all systems go with the homebrewing and beer drinking at the new OMG Beer! Headquarters.

First thing to get done: bottle the West Town India Pale Ale that made the trip from the old headquarters to the new in a carboy with Summit and Simcoe hops floating in it. Mmmm, hops.

The current brewing schedule, subject to modifications:
before the end of April - Dunkel Frankenweizen, a Dunkelweizen brewed with Rye like a Roggenbier
May - The Modern Wit, based off a belgian-style Kiwi Witbier recipe from Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head
June - Salubrious Seth's Salvatory Saison, Batch #2

American Wheat Beer, Another Point to Be Made

I forgot one important trend or sub-style, when I talked about American Wheat beers - the hoppy Wheat beer. These extremely refreshing beers have huge hop additions late in the wort boiling process; instead of adding bitterness, these late additions add hop flavor and aroma to the beer, without punching the bitterness through the roof of your mouth. Additional dry hopping of these beers adds more flavor and aroma, while still only minimally altering the bitterness. In many ways, the end product is similar to an American IPA, only with a lighter and wheatier malt flavor. Great examples of this much loved trend are Three Floyd's Gumball Head and Southern Tier's Hop Sun and Uber Sun (an imperial/stronger version of Hop Sun). A recipe for the West Town Brewing Co version of this style is the tribute beer Gumball Toe.

Upcoming West Town Brewing Co. Beers...

January was a quiet month, with only one, or arguably, two homebrews. Inspired by the oak-aging going on in the commercial beer world and the need to perfect my porter recipe, I decided I'd reformulate my porter recipe, and then split it in half. Half would be aged in my mini secondary carboy with oak cubes and a half-pint of bourbon, while the other half would be aged normally. That second half is finally about to bottled. The bourbon oak half made an appearance on Super Bowl Sunday. The recipe for the porter will be up soon, along with a brief history of the porter.

To counter-balance the roasted malt and chocolate flavors of my porter, an IPA became the first West Town Brewing beer for February. This beer is about to be dry-hopped and then bottled (and it still needs a name). With only one weekend left, one other beer birth shall occur in February. I love dark wheat beer and I love rye beers, so why not try to combine the two and make a Rye Dunkelweizen? This might be a crap-shoot, or it might be awfully close to a german rye beer called Roggenbier.

Finally, there will be at least one March-produced beer. I recently received the awesome gift of Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewing. One of the easier to find and extremely tasty Dogfish Head beers is the Indian Brown Ale, which is described as a frankenstein hybrid of brown ale, scotch ale, and IPA. The Indian Brown Ale recipe just so happens to be in the pages of Extreme Brewing, so it seems appropriate to pay tribute to a great beer which serves as proof that brewing outside the style box is a good thing sometimes.

West Town Gumball Toe, A Tribute to Three Floyd's Gumball Head

Three Floyd's Brewing Company brews beers that make any beer drinker smile. The intensity of flavors in beers like Gumballhead, Robert the Bruce, Alpha Klaus Xmas Porter, and Black Sun Stout, as well as others, inspire me as a brewer. If I were to claim influences, Three Floyd's would be high on my list. After acquiring a really nice variety of hops before the summer of 08 began, I decided it would be an opportune time to pay tribute to Three Floyds by making my own version of their Gumballhead, a hoppy American wheat beer, brewed in many ways like an American IPA but with a large part of the grain bill consisting of wheat.

My general idea was to balance the intensity of Amarillo and Warrior hops - Amarillo is mentioned on the Gumballhead label - against the flavors of Caramel 120°L malt (1/4lb), Red Wheat (2lbs), American Two-Row (2lbs), Alexander's Wheat Liquid extract (4lbs) and Munton's Dry Wheat Extract (1lb). The caramel 120L contributes a raisin bread like flavor to the beer, while the hops are a pungent mix that hints of grapefruit and lemongrass. Both the caramel 120°L and the Red Wheat contribute color to the beer, though a soon to be posted picture reveals that Three Floyd's Gumball Head is still quite a bit darker and more red than the rather orange West Town Gumball Toe.

I think a nice way to alter this recipe might be to add another caramel malt to make the malt profile a little more rounded out and fuller, and to use a fresher liquid wheat malt extract from Austin Homebrew Supply or Northern Brewer, i.e. find some fresh Briess Liquid Wheat malt extract from wherever is convenient to you. The fresher extract would probably make for a fuller wheat flavor. Gumball Toe is lighter in flavor than its expertly brewed Three Floyd's counterpart, with unfortunately less bready toasted malt flavor.

The Gumball Toe tribute recipe is below:

American Summer Wheat
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General
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Category: Light Hybrid Beer
Subcategory: American Wheat or Rye Beer
Recipe Type: Partial Mash
Batch Size: 5.5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 3.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 65 %
Total Grain/Extract: 9.25 lbs.
Total Hops: 3.5 oz.
Calories (12 fl. oz.): 199.4

Ingredients
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2 lbs. Pacific Northwest Wheat
2 lbs. American 2-row
.25 lbs. American Caramel 120°L
4 lbs. Alexanders Wheat Liquid
1 lbs. Muntons Dry Wheat
1 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
.5 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 5 minutes.
.5 oz. Warrior (Whole, 16.00 %AA) boiled 1 minutes.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Pellets, 8.50 %AA) added to Secondary.
.5 oz. Warrior (Pellets, 16.00 %AA) added to Secondary.

Vital Statistics
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Original Gravity: 1.050
Terminal Gravity: 1.011
Color: 11.47 SRM
Bitterness: 44.9 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2 %

Homebrewing - The "creation" of the West Town Brewing Co.

Consider it official. Homebrew doesn't need fancy names or bells and whistles. Served often in a label-less bottle, or one with a half torn off commercial label, homebrew doesn't have to be fancy or even have a name. But, I like names, and stories, and beer...so I like the idea of making beers that have stories and names behind them. Eventually I'll slap an official West Town Brewing Co. label on all my bottles, which will at least make it easier for friends.