Classic RIS

I’ve got it in my head to make a run at NHC gold medals in the next few years.  I’ve reworked a few recipes, have some processes down pat which score well in competitions and therefore I want to see how they do on the national level.  Looking at my NHC Gold Medal Winning spreadsheet, I drew inspiration for a classic RIS.  The winning recipes in the past few years have had ~80% Maris Otter as the base malt.  Roasted grains tended to be a blend of chocolate, roast barley, black and dark crystal malts.  To incorporate all of these I added all 5 roast/specialty grains to my grain bill to hopefully develop some complexity.  I leaned slightly more on the crystal grains than the roast malts hopefully to stay away from an ashy taste.

Classic RIS

2.5 Gallons

8 lb Maris Otter (84%)

0.4 lb C60 (4%)

0.4 lb C120 (4%)

0.25 lb Chocolate (3%)

0.25 lb Roasted Barley (3%)

0.25 lb Black Malt (3%)

0.5 oz Chinook (60 min)

0.25 EKG (45 min)

0.25 EKG (30 min)

0.25 EKG (15 min)

0.25 EKG (5 min)

Mashed at 152F for 60 minutes.  Sparged hot at 168F.  Boiled for 90 minutes. 

OG: 1.097

FG: 1.027

ABV: 9.2%

IBU: 55

Florence, SC water with additions

Ca: 72 ppm

Mg: 1 ppm

Na: 61 ppm

Cl: 79 ppm

SO4: 84 ppm

HCO3: 145 ppm

Mash pH: 5.46

Thames Valley yeast.  2 L starter then 1.5 L starter.  Wort aerated for 70 seconds.

11/8/14: Brew day.  Preboil OG high at 1.074.  Post boil high at 1.103.  Mash pH low at 5.2.
12/13/14:  Tasted the first bottle.  Still a little muddled.  Some fruit.  I"m hoping time will help meld this together.  It is clean and the alcohol is a background note.

Solera Blending/Golden Brett

I brewed my Solera about 3 months ago and I’m now going to start moving towards packaging it.  I did some test blending with my Golden base wort and found that 2/3 golden with 1/3 sour was very nice.  This will be put in a 1 gallon carboy and left for a little to blend together and mellow and eat up anything that is left.

I wanted to blend some more and add some fruit so I’m going to do another gallon carboy with 1/3 Golden base beer with 2/3 sour to up the sourness.  I bought 2 cans of tart cherries packaged in water to add also.  This will sit for up to a month before packaging.

The solera will be replaced with the Golden base beer up to 5 gallons in order to push out excess O2 and give the bugs more to chew on.  This evolving beer will be revisited again in a few months for more sour beer.

The remaining Golden base beer which should be around 3 gallons will be put in my 3 gallon better bottle sour fermenter.  Along with the beer I’m adding ~15 oak cubes which have been boiled to remove the tannins.  I’m pitching a vial of saved Yeast Bay Brussels Brett and I’m leaving this in the closet for a few months.  Walt from Wicked Weed gave me this advice after asking him how to get a beer as awesome as Serenity.  I also talked to the Mad Fermentationist about getting the most funk out of a beer and he recommended giving the brett a lot of phenols to play with and that’s why I open fermented my Golden base beer with a Belgian strain.

All in all, this blending should take place today 10/28/14 and I’ll have another 5 gallons of sour beer working away.  That’s 5 gallons in the solera, 3 for the funky brett beer, 1 which is just a straight blend of 1/3 solera and 2/3 golden and the other which is blend of 2/3 solera, 1/3 golden and tart cherries.  Hopefully they’ll be packaged in a few months!

Golden Wort for Sours

The Rare Barrel was on The Brewing Network recently and talked about their sour production.  Their program is basically based around 3 base beers which they then pitch bugs into and experiment with.  The base beers are a golden, an amber and a dark sour.  The recipes are very similar and they shared each.  I want to do an aggressively funky brett beer and also needed a beer to blend with my very sour Solera, so I brewed their golden wort to funkify and blend.  I open fermented it with Wyeast Abbey Ale after talking to The Mad Fermentationist to get a lot of phenols for the brett (Yeast Bay Brussels Brett) to hopefully turn into delicious barnyard funk.

5 Gallons

5.5 lb 2 Row

2.25 lb Wheat

0.5 lb Aromatic

0.5 lb Flaked Oats

0.5 oz Tettnang (60 min)

0.5 oz Tettnang (30 min)

Mashed at 148F for 60 minutes and boiled for 60 minutes.  3 g CaCl2, 2 g CaSO4 and 4 mL lactic acid got the pH to 5.35.  3.27 gallons was heated to 161F for the mash and 3.97 gallons was heated to 179F for the sparge (168F).

2L starter of Wyeast Abbey Ale

OG:1.048

FG:1.013

IBU: 16

ABV: 4.7%

10/11/14: Brew day.  Got an absurd 83% efficiency so OG was 1.054.  Opened the lid of the fermenter once krausen was observed after ~1 day.  Left it open with just foil over it for 3 days, then closed.

10/20/14: FG 1.008.

????: Pitched The Yeast Bay Brussels Brett blend and dregs from Hill Farmstead Anna.

????: Tasting notes

Red IPA

SWMBO’s father loves hoppy reds.  So do I as a matter of fact, fresh Tocobaga from Cigar City is one of my all time favorite beers.  We’re heading down to Tampa for Thanksgiving, so I put a Red IPA on the list of things to brew.  It’s a mixture of Tocobaga and just some classic IPA notes.  We’ll see how it turns out.

3 Gallons

6.5 lb 2 Row

0.5 lb Munich

0.5 lb Vienna

0.75 lb C60

0.1 lb Carafa II

0.5 oz Chinook (60 min)

0.5 Cascade (15 min)

0.5 Amarillo (15 min)

0.5 Centennial (15 min)

0.5 Cascade (0 min)

0.5 Amarillo (0 min)

0.5 Centennial (0 min)

Mash at 150F for 60 minutes.  Boil for 60 minutes.  2 g CaCl2, 7g CaSO4, 1g NaHCO3, 1 mL lactic acid for a mash pH of 5.34.  3.12 gallons at 163F (150F) to mash and 2.13 gal @ 185F (168F) to sparge.

Wyeast Thames Valley Yeast

OG: 1.069

FG: 1.016

IBU: 69

ABV: 7.3%

10/27/2014: Brewday.  OG 1.069.  Cooled overnight, pitched on 10/28.  Aerated wort for 60 seconds and pitched 1.5 L starter of Thames Valley (after taking off a vial to save).  Wort was a little darker/roastier than expected.  Plan is to dry hop 0.5 oz of Amarillo, Cascade and Centennial in a few days before fermentation ends and then a second dry hop 3-4 days after, then bottle.
11/2/14: Dry hopped with 0.5 oz of Amarillo, Centennial and Cascade
11/5/14: Dry hopped with 0.5 oz of Amarillo, Centennial and Cascade and crashed to 50F.
11/26/14: Tasted the first bottle.  This turned out more like a brown than a red.  I'll lay off the munich/vienna/crystal/roasted grains next time.  Good hop flavor but the malt makes backbone is too strong and upsets the balance.

Oktoberfest

I'm very much into clean, easy drinking lager type beers these days.  With the Fall approaching, I wanted something similar, but also something that fit the cooler weather.  That's where Oktoberfest style beers come in.  Malt forward, but very clean and easy drinking.  I don't have the ability to lager, unless I want to tie up my Ale brewing (I don't), so I need another solution.  Scouring the forums, it appears people in my situation have taken to brewing these clean lager beers with ale yeasts and fermenting cold to mimic the flavor.  A lot of people say you don't get the same flavor, which makes sense, but I just want to get close enough.  I love my own Kolsch, so if I can brew a malty version of that, I'm going to be happy.

Oktoberfest

3 Gallons

2.5 lb Vienna
2 lb Pilsner
2 lb Munich

0.5 oz Tettnanger (60 min)
0.5 oz Tettnanger (15 min)

Mash at 148F for 60 minutes.  Boil for 90 minutes.  3 g CaCl2, 2g CaSO4, 1g NaHCO3 in mash.  0.45 mL lactic acid in sparge water.  2.43 gallons at 161F for mash.  2.82 gallons at 179F for sparge.

Wyeast 2565 Kolsch Ale

OG: 1.055
FG: 1.012
IBU: 23
ABV: 5.7%

9/27/14: Brewday.  OG 1.068 due to over boiling and getting ~78% efficiency.
9/28/14: Visible fermentation.
11/15/14: Tasting notes.  The malt backbone is right on, but there's something to Kolsch ale yeast that turns me off.  There's this weird fruitiness/smartie taste.  I got it in White Labs and now I get it in Wyeast's version.  

Winner!!

I attended the Keep Florence Beautiful beerfest this past weekend.  It's a combination beer fest and homebrew competition.  I entered 3 beers on a whim, my Sour Blonde, my Strawberry Rhubarb Berliner and my most recent IPA.  They announced the winners midway through and much to my surprise they called my name as Best in Show runner up for my Strawberry Rhubarb Berliner!  I got an awesome ribbon and walked back to my girlfriend.  Then they announced the Best in Show winner and they called me again for my Sour Blonde!  I was totally shocked, and got another ribbon and an awesome Das Boot.  Next up, NHC medals!

NHC Gold Medal Recipes 2000-2014

I posted this on reddit.com/r/homebrewing and it w.as well received so I thought I'd also post it here for posterity

I spent the past few weeks compiling all of the gold medal winning recipes that are posted on the AHA website from 2000-2014. I put them in a spreadsheet and calculated the recipes based on percentage of grains, hops used, OG, FG, mash temp and yeast used.

I'm not sure why I did this to begin with, but I certainly did learn some things from doing it.

There are some proven gold medal winning recipes that you can see from some people copying the exact recipe from the year before and winning gold. It was interesting to watch a category such as Pale ale or IPA progress in the last 10 years.

Some things I noticed for success in competitions:

--In hoppy beers, complex hop bills were almost exclusively used (No single hop beers won)

--Also in hoppy beers, Simcoe and Amarillo are almost always in the winning beer. Centennial and Cascade a close second. A lot had all 4.

--For big ABV beers, a complex malt bill was frequently used (>6 grains)

--Almost every Fruit beer that won used extract at bottling and not real fruit

--There are certainly categories that seem to win more often. You have a better chance of getting gold with a RIS than an American Stout (6 wins vs 1)

--Ingredients matter. For example, british style beers almost exclusively had british malts, yeast and hops.

--Don't even try to win gold with an IPA/DIPA because this guy Kelsey McNair or something has won the last 3-4 years with virtually the same recipe. (Kelsey, you out there? Want to trade? ;))

Anyways, those are things I noticed. I don't brew a lot of the categories so the subtleties of some are lost on me. Take a look if you want and I think this could be valuable if people can use this to determine how to be successful brewing different styles.

2000-2014 NHC Gold Medal Recipes