Happy Thanksgiving from Lug Wrench

Another year has passed, and today we give thanks for all that we have been blessed with.  Tom and I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope that everyone had the chance to reflect on friends and family that enrich our lives.

 

After a year of personal challenges, this Thanksgiving was more important than most and we were very pleased that things have turned out how they have.  Here's hoping that the coming year will be just as fortunate and enjoyable. 

Cheers to all and hopes that everyone has a great beer and great company during this holiday season.

Slainte!

-JW


"What event is more awfully important to an English colony than the erection of its first brewhouse?"
-Rev. Sydney Smith

Heady Topper - The Taste of Hops

My good friend, Jeff, recently presented me with an awesome treat - a can of Heady Topper.  Heady Topper is a Double IPA that is brewed by The Alchemist Brewery, located in Vermont.  Its intense flavors and limited distribution have resulted in a cult-like status surrounding the beer.  Heady Topper has earned top marks on beer rating sites like ratebeer and beeradvocate.  The Alchemist was featured in the March/April 2013 issue of Brew Your Own (BYO) magazine, which provided interesting back story on the brewery and beer, some fun anecdotes of people trying to get cans of Heady Topper, and a clone recipe.

The beer pours a very hazy clover honey color with a thick white head that thinned relatively quickly.  My wife's glass had chunks at the bottom, which the can label identifies as hop resins.  The aroma features a huge burst of grapefruit, lemon zest, and pine tree resin.

The flavor of Heady Topper is as intense as its aroma.  It begins with a burst of citrus fruit character that slaps your taste buds around.  The middle of the flavor features a strong pine resin character, along with a hint of sweetness.  It also features a substantial mouth feel, including the prickly sensation of carbonation.  The beer has a long finish, with a bracing bitterness and alcohol warmth in the back of the throat.  The finish lasts for at least 30 seconds or more, but is not cloying in any way.

Heady Topper is certainly an intense tasting experience, but certainly not something I would have as an every day beer (my wife likely differs with me here).  I found the beer changed flavors as it warmed, featuring more citrus qualities over pine resin and more sweetness over the length of the tasting.

The labeling recommends that you drink it directly from the can to help reserved the intense hop aromas and present them directly to your palate.  An interesting thought, but I think I would rather see the beer in a glass than drink it from the can.

What a fantastic beer.  Given our enjoyment of Heady Topper, and my wife's love of hops, I think I may have to try the BYO clone recipe sometime in the future.  If you have already done so, please leave a comment to this post, as I would love to hear about it further.

Thanks again to Jeff for his incredibly generous gift.

Cheers,

TW

Lug Wrench Brew: Cait the Grate, Imperial Stout

It has been nearly four months since our last blog post, and nearly 18 months since our last Lug Wrench collaborative beer.  Shame on us...we know.  Tom and I have the best intentions of continuing to fuel the blog with more content, but many times life just gets in the way. 

We were fortunate in that last weekend Tom and his family made the trip up to Rhode Island for a long over due get together of the families.  And while both our wives rolled their eyes at the mention of brew session, Tom and I made sure it happened.  The style: a Russian Imperial Stout.  Why?  Because we have never done one before and its the perfect beer for long term storage and aging.  Plus, when done right, they are oh so good.

After a bit of conversation, we decided to go with a RIS recipe from a friend of Tom's down in Virginia (thanks Jeff!).  Modeled after a famous RIS brewed annually by the Portsmouth Brewery, this homebrew version came with thumbs-up recommendation of having produced good results in the past.  While, our intent was to follow the recipe as written, our last minute attempt to get ingredients together caused us some foibles and we had to made a few substitutions.  The two largest changes was first that the LHBS was out of flaked barley when we stopped in, which caused us to improvise by adding a combination of flaked oats and wheat.  Secondly, our pre-boil gravity appeared to be much lower than expected, causing us to add in all the DME I had in the house along with brown sugar (neither which was in the original recipe) to bump up the gravity. 

 

To make the brewing session a bit more "special", because of the large amount of grain we used and the assumed low efficiency, Tom and I decided try making a second beer via a partigyle method with the mash.  After the primary boil kettle was full, we ran another 3 gallons of hot water through the mash tun into a smaller kettle that could be boiled in on the kitchen stove.  This second beer, which was hopped in the direction of an American Stout, had an OG in the 1.065-70 range.  We'll try to put up a separate post on this beer shortly.

At the time this post's writing, it is obviously too early to tell how well the beer will turn out.  However, it was yet another good Lug Wrench Collaborative Brew Session that kept us on our toes.

Below are the notes and recipe for the collaborative imperial stout.  The notes will be updated as the beer continues to ferment, aged, and be tasted.

Cait the Grate, Russian Imperial Stout

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.0 (6 gal left in the kettle, 5 gal in the carboy)
Total Grain (lbs): ~32
OG: 1.118 (target: 1.012 without sugar additions)
FG: 1.034 (69% apparent attenuation)
SRM: 57.8 (Rager)
ABV: 11.3%
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60% (dropped to accommodate lower efficiency with big beers)
Wort Boil Time: 75 minutes

Grain / Extract / Sugar
---------------------------
24.5 lbs American 2-Row Malt (Briess)
2.0 lbs White Wheat Malt
2.0 lbs Extra Light Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1.12 lbs Special B Malt
0.94 lbs Carafa Special II
0.81 lbs Aromatic Malt
0.63 lbs Crystal 60 Malt
0.63 lbs Roasted Barley
0.50 lbs Flaked Oats (instant quick oats)
0.50 lbs Brown Sugar
0.32 lbs Black Patent Malt
0.32 lbs Crystal 120 Malt
0.32 lbs Chocolate Malt (English)

Hops
--------
3.1 oz Newport Pellet Hops (9.8%) at 75 minutes
0.3 oz Centennial Pellet Hops (10%) at 10 minutes
0.6 oz Palisade Pellet Hops (7.5%) at flame out
0.4 oz Styrian Goldings Pellet Hops (5.4%) at flame out
0.4 oz Williamette Pellet Hops (5.5%) at flame out

Extras
--------
28 drops of Foam Control in the boil

Yeast
-------
2.5 packets (11g per packet) of US-05 dry yeast, hydrated before pitching

Mash Schedule
-----------------
60 minutes at 148° F
Batch sparged to get 7 gallons in the brew kettle

Notes
-------
Brewed on 11/3/13 by the Wallace Brothers.  Eighth collaborative session brew

Aeration was accomplished via an oxygen tank and diffusion stone, run for 60 seconds.

Beer was about 59° F after aeration.  Pitched the 2.5 packets of hydrated yeast (hydrated in 2 cups of 90° F pre-boiled water) into carboy and placed the setpoint of the fermentation fridge to 64°F.  Since there will be a lot of activity that will generate heat once fermentation kicks off, the setpoint was set low to keep the temp from spiking.

Activity kicked off in the carboy in less than 48 hours after pitching yeast.

11/24 - Racked the beer into a sanitized keg for aging.  FG was measured at 1.034, which gives a 69% apparent attenuation and an ABV of 11.3%.  I would have liked to seen it get below 30, but a 70% attenuation on this size beer is not bad.

2013 Summer Party Beer Descriptions

One of my favorite events of the summer is brewing beer for and attending my friend's crab and clam party, held just after the Fourth of July.  John and I have a good deal of fun picking beer styles and brewing them for the event.  The creativity of naming them usually falls to John, though inspiration often comes from brew day events.  To cap it all off, I write descriptions of the beers that hang near the kegerator to provide information about the beer, and a little humor.  As in years past, I wanted to provide these descriptions for the enjoyment of our readers.

Cheers,

TW

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Cicada Invasion West Coast Red Ale - The moniker “West Coast” usually means a hoppier and higher alcohol version of the normal beer style. Cicada Invasion has the malt base of traditional American Red ales but an increased hopping rate, making it the hoppiest of offerings at this year’s party.  The ale is hopped with Magnum for bittering and equal portions of Cascade and Centennial, which bring a delectable citrus and floral note to the beer. We hope you enjoy the deep and smooth malt notes along with the hop forward finish of Cicada Invasion West Coast Red Ale. Cicada Invasion was inspired by the intense song of this summer’s most talked about insect, the cicada. At its peak the sound reminded us of an alien space craft landing, thus the name. The cicada’s eerie red eyes match the deep red hue of the beer which hopefully you will not have to wait 17 years before seeing again. No insects were harmed in the making of this beer.

6.3% alcohol     IBU: 66     OG: 1.061     FG: 1.014

The Experiment Chocolate Oatmeal Stout - Oatmeal stouts are derived from dry Irish stouts, through the addition of oatmeal in the grist.  The oatmeal provides a rounder and less edgy finish, which is often described as a “slick” feeling on the palate. Oatmeal stout all but died out as a style in Great Britain until the famous beer writer Michael Jackson wrote about it in the late 1970s.  Since then, the American Craft Beer movement has embraced the style and it is once again commonly brewed. The Experiment has been aged on a large bed of cocoa nibs, which are the agricultural product that ends up as chocolate. The cocoa nibs give the stout an intense chocolate nose and flavor.  John has been using a stout tap to serve oatmeal stout and other dark beers since 2008. The stout tap uses a nitrogen/CO2 gas mix to carbonate the beer, which provides it with a rich and velvety finish and a dense foamy head. The Experiment is named for a brewing gadget that John has been perfecting to control hot water flow rates into the mash tun, a wonderful invention. We hope you let the stout Experiment with your taste buds and leave them wanting more.

5.6% alcohol     IBU: 36     OG: 1.058     FG: 1.016

Fallen Spring Belgian Pale Ale - Belgium was once described by the famous beer writer, Michael Jackson, as the “Disneyland of Beer.” The small nation has an expansive beer history, ranging from beer brewed in monasteries for Lenten fasting to beer brewed for thirsty farmhands in the heat of summer. Flavor profiles range all over the spectrum, from fruity, to spicy, to smooth and clean. Some of the more famous Belgian Pale Ales are associated with the City of Antwerp. They feature a wonderful balance of Belgian yeast spiciness and smooth drinkability, with an almost lager like finish. The style has much to offer the Maryland crab connoisseur, with the slightly spicy aroma complimenting the Old Bay spice on the crab, but the smooth aftertaste washing some of the heat away. The recipe, modified from last year, was created during our exceptionally short real Spring season this year – the part between the wet and cold and the hot and humid weather. The brew day was cool and crisp, clear and breezy, a perfect fall day. But it was spring, therefore, Fall in Spring. We hope you will remember this year’s Fallen Spring and fall in love with this complex, but cleanly flavored ale.

4.9% alcohol     IBU: 25     OG: 1.047     FG: 1.010

Tater Tots Vienna Lager - Germany is arguably the originator of almost all recognized lager beer styles. Lager, which translates roughly to “cold storage”, occurred because of the invention of different malting processes that produced pale malt, and by extension, pale beer. A mutated ale yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus, thrived in the colder temperatures in which the pale beers were stored. This produced a beverage with a cleaner and drier flavor than the dark ales of the time. The light clear beer, when viewed through glass mugs that were also becoming more available, made lager an instant phenomenon. The malt produced around the City of Vienna had a bready and slightly sweet flavor and was kilned darker than the malt in other areas. The resulting lager beer was amber in color and featured a wonderful malt grainy softness, making it an excellent companion to food. Our Vienna lager’s name has nothing to do with the beer, the brew day, or any significant event. It is rumored to have this name because John thinks it is the beer that his girlfriend Mary will like the most. Since Mary has done a little Tater Tot bashing on her blog (www.allweatherfriend.com - oh and you can also buy her book through the main site), John decided he would like to hear her say "I really like Tater Tots the best; I would like some more and I would like to give some to my friends." Again, this is just a rumor.

5.6% alcohol     IBU: 26     OG: 1.056     FG: 1.014

The Replacement Rye Session Ale - The term “session ale” means a lower gravity beer that is designed for easy drinking, as part of a social gathering. A drinking session, in British terms, is a gathering of friends at a local pub, where the friends take turns buying rounds of drinks. Because it has lower alcohol (usually under 4.2%), yet is a flavorful beer, it is enjoyable but does not leave the drinker in a condition adverse to carrying on a conversation. One typical fault of session beers is that they lack mid-palate mouth-feel and flavor, which makes them come across watery or bland. The Replacement is an attempt to counter this issue by “replacing” some of the base grain with flaked rye, which adds mouth-feel in the beer and leaves a nice light spicy flavor on the palate. Partnered with a blend of spicy and citrus hops, the Replacement should leave you wanting more. The Replacement is named because Tom had some concerns that the Vienna Lager would not be finished in time for the party, so he decided to make a back-up beer, just in case. This beer is no second stringer, so fill up your glass and enjoy the game.

3.6% alcohol     IBU: 40     OG: 1.040     FG: 1.013