Making a Small Beer with Big Flavor

The craft beer movement in America is currently dominated by big beers.  It is not hard to understand why, as Imperial-style beer tends to have larger flavor profiles, more alcohol, and can be harder to get, which can create a greater demand (i.e. cult beers).  However, it is often unwise to consume more than one 10 percent or greater beer in a sitting.  Is it possible to take the flavors that someone loves in an Imperial-style beer and inject them into a beer of more sessionable alcohol strength?.

Brew Strong, on the Brewing Network, featured a show on making session beers on October 18, 2010.  One segment of this show discussed how to make full-flavored session beers from larger recipes, ones that have plenty of character and are enjoyable to drink.  The main points the Brew Strong hosts presented included:

• It only takes about 2 percent alcohol for a beer to taste like a beer
• Increase the flavor and aroma hops to provide larger hop character, though keeping with the style or recipe concept
• Raise the percentage of specialty malts, which gives the impression of a bigger and richer beer
• Adjust the base grains so that they provide greater flavor complexity; for example substitute a portion of 2-row to pilsner or British pale malt
• Reduce the base grains to lower the alcohol content, but leave the specialty grains the same
• Use a yeast that does not attenuate as much, which will leave more flavor behind
• Eliminate or minimize simple sugars, which provides a larger malt character in the finished beer
• Build the body of the beer by increasing the mash temperature to provide a larger mouthfeel

Last Thanksgiving, Jeff and I made a wheat wine braggot that we called Midnight Wheat.  This beer has quickly developed into one of my favorite recipes that Jeff and I have done together, one that has even won a recent award.  One of the main drawbacks of the beer, when it comes to making it a regular drinker, is its strong alcohol content (10% ABV).  Its alcohol strength makes it great for aging, which is one of the goals of the recipes that Jeff and I develop together, but it is not a beer I would want to drink often.  I wanted to use the Brew Strong advice to see if I could create a smaller beer that I could keep on draft and enjoy more regularly.

Taking the Brew Strong information, I made the following adjustments to the original Midnight Wheat recipe:

• Reduce the base grain quantity by approximately 60% to lower the overall alcohol
• Leave the specialty grain quantity the same as the original recipe, in order to provide a richer character
• Reduce the amount of honey drastically, but do not eliminate it completely, as it adds some flavor
• Add a small amount of black malt to mimic the original recipe's color
• Increase the mash temperature to have more mouthfeel
• Reduce the quantity of bittering hops, to keep the approximately the same specific gravity to bitterness ratio
• Increase the late hops to have more hop flavor and aroma

The altered recipe, along with side-by-side tasting notes, will be presented in a future post, so be sure to check back.

Cheers,

TW

Fun with Art: Beer Paintings

Not long ago, I came across the webpage of two artists from Bend, Oregon who had forcused their work on painting craft beer crown caps and bottles.  To further market and display their work, a blog was created (simply named: Beer Paintings).  At first I thought the beer-centric pieces might just a nice hook to draw craft beer people in, but the more I (virtually) thumbed through their pages, the more I was impressed with their focus and attention to detail.  Well done guys.

I have placed a few examples below that exemplify Cara and Louie's style.  But there is much more than what I can display.  At the bottom, I have placed a list of links that will take you to a few more of my favorites from the Beer Paintings collection.  Enjoy...  

Orval Crown Cap

La Folie and Surley Smoke

Gulden Draak Crown Cap

*  *  *

Check out a few other great pieces through these links:

• Tröegs Brewery
• Pliny the Elder
• Cantillon
• Dogfish Head
• Unibroue
• Three Floyds

Lastly, if you're curious about how paintings like these come out, check out some of the behind-the-scenes photos of a work in progress.  And the artists love commisions - shoot them an email if your interested.

Slainte!

-JW

"If God intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs."

-David Daye

Taplister - User Provided On Tap Information

I have discovered a new social media site that applies to beer - Taplister.  Taplister is a free application that provides information about what is on tap at different locations in a given city (called "Taplists").  The application is run on a database of user-supplied information, much like Wikipedia, so the data is only as accurate as the user community that supports it.  Taplister users can provide information to the database in one of three ways:

• Utilizing the Taplister app for iPhone:  The Taplister iPhone app communicates directly with the Taplister database on the server and provides real-time updates to tap information.  The app uses text completion from the beer name database on RateBeer to save the user time.  It also links to the RateBeer database for the beer’s rating, alcohol by volume (ABV), style, and description.
• Through the Taplister Site:  The Taplister site allows users to browse and edit Taplists using the navigation bar and the Live Beer Search function.
• Using codes in Twitter:  Taplister can register Twitter accounts and then scrape information out of individual tweets to update its database.  To do this, the user provides an "at" symbol with the code for the bar and the hashtag that matches the city (example: #ontapcho for Charlottesville).

There are currently 45 cities registered with Taplister in 21 states and Canada.  Take a look and see if your city is there and start utilizing this free service.

Cheers,

TW

Club-Only Competitions - A Unique Situation

 The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) organizes a series of competitions every year to promote inter-homebrewing club rivalry.  Each Club-Only Competition (COC) focuses on a specific beer or mead style and allows clubs to compete against each other.  Results from a year's COCs are one factor in determining the AHA Homebrew Club of the Year, an annual award given at the AHA National Homebrewers Conference.  The official COC schedule can be found here.

The basic rules of a COC are:

• Only AHA-registered clubs may participate.
• Each club may only submit one entry in the style specified in the COC.
• The club's entry must be received by the COC deadline.
• All COC entries are compared to the style guidelines and each other and medals are awarded based on overall merit.

If a club wants to participate in a COC, it organizes an internal event to select the single "best" homebrewed example of that style that its members can produce.  In my club, the Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale (CAMRA), this process is organized through an annual calendar.  As the date for a specific COC approaches, the club leadership reminds members that they should consider brewing a batch of beer in the specified style and they organize a night for a tasting/evaluation.  Any member who wants to participate in the COC brings an entry on the tasting night and a panel of judges select the example that most matches the BJCP style guidelines.

The COC for February 2011 presented a unique opportunity for Jeff and I.  Our respective clubs (Jeff's club is the Rhode Island Fermentation Technicians - RIFT) the picked each of our beers to send on to the competition.  While Jeff and I have gone head-to-head in competitions before, this would be the first time we represented our homebrewing clubs against each other.  The "Battle of the Bitters" COC featured the English pale ale styles (BJCP Category 8), which represent a series of English session ales that were paler than other beers of their day (porter), and had a bracing bitterness.  Examples ranged from 3.2% ABV on the low end (standard/ordinary bitter) to 6.2% ABV on the high end (extra special/strong bitter).  Commercial examples that readers may have tried include: Fuller's Chiswick Bitter, Boddington's Pub Draught, Fuller's London Pride, Goose Island Honkers Ale, Fuller's ESB, Bass Ale, and Anderson Valley Boont ESB.

Jeff and I are eagerly awaiting feedback on our beer and to see who's club can claim Lug Wrench "bragging rights."  Stay tuned for the results.

Cheers,

TW