Brett beer Part II, Reinhart loaf, etc..

Exciting times afoot, kids!

This appears to be the final gravity on the Bret C. pale ale. At least, until the pellicle kicks in (or doesn't). It's still a fine beer right now, either way.. but a little funk won't hurt, I figure. I'll wait and see, esp. since I just transferred it into a Better Bottle for aging until something cool happens inside..

In either case, it does or it doesn't, the vial you see there was so clean tasting, and well attenuating I figured I'd repitch the slurry of it into a vat of my Rye Chocolate Stout I was brewing today and let 'er rip. That stout:

As seen draining from the boil kettle into the fermenter, is underway now.. no turning back now. I'm not scared. The way I see it, this Brett C is wicked versatile.. very clean when young, and supposedly develops a pellicle and some funk building buggers if you let it sit. Friggin' awesome! My new house yeast, I figure. ;)

In other news, that sourdough bread I have been building up over the course of the past 4 days... check it:

 

Sweet. It tastes great! The cell structure is open in places, but no huge gaps. The crumb is soft and slightly tangy, but not overly so. The crust is a *bit* chewy, but not hard to eat.. tho I wish it was more like the 50% starter based tinned bread I just did a couple days ago. Now *there's* a bread with a fantastic crust! But either way, it's easily my best boule so far to date. Rather complex.. so I'm working on a way to pare that down a bit.. if I could get 80% of this flavor from a much simpler dough build, I'd be a happy man. Stand by for details on that..  long story short, he suggests a much larger sourdough starter percentage than I've been using, or has been suggested to me in other books. I've been using somewhere near 30% for a starter, but this fellow is suggesting 50% or more, in some cases.. I made a tinned bread the other day that is so sour and so GOOD, I may not make yeasted bread again if I can help it. It's totally awesome! I've also been screwing around with King Arthur flour again.. as much as I hate to say it, it seems to be worth the 50% price hike over my Gold Medal stand by.. drats. I'll post some updated recipes in the near future when I can figure out which direction I'm going and what I can prove to work, at least, in my own kitchen. 

Carry on...

Another loaf, beer update..

Made another loaf of sourdough, and didn't really even get a chance to eat it. Here's it's only photo, before it was killed:

It's a good looking loaf, but circumstances conspired against it. Those circumstances being, me and the Boss and Kids went to NYC for a ballet show/Museum trip and, while there, we hit up Amy's Bread in Chelsea Market. Wow! That was impressive stuff. Big windows to look through at the processes inside, and really neat things to see. I ended up choosing a 1lb loaf of Country Sourdough to bring home, and, after carrying it around all day (literally), finally got a chance to eat a slice when I got home at 2100 hours that evening. It was awesome! Zingy taste from the sour, on a way different scale then my stuff has.. more of a tangy sour, than what mine develops. Mine is more 'funky' than lactic sour-y. This loaf had a crust that was so crisp and tasty, but not in the slightest chewy, that it was a pleasure to bite into. And the crumb was so soft, it was as if it wasn't there at all.. but the flavor from the grain really shined through. It didn't fare well here at the house, since it was so good, even The Boss ripped into it hard core and almost killed the loaf single handedly.

In other news, the 100% Brett beer I brewed up a few day ago really churned along well and seems to have finished it's ferment. It took two days to start seeing activity in there, just like most of the yeast guys said it would, and then it kicked off. It churned along really steadily with a very low (1/2") krausen during the entire main ferment until about yesterday, when it started to die off and fall back in. There is an odor to the ferment that I can't put my finger on, but I dare say you probably couldn't tell that it was a Brett beer at this point, from smell alone. It just doesn't smell funky at all at this stage of the game. Supposedly, we'll perhaps get a pelllicle out of this thing and go a little further in some other direction or another, but we'll have to wait and see what happens there.

Speaking of funky beers, the kombucha brew is still hangin' out, and I might keg that up soon... I've been drinking up the Oro de Maggie the past week or so, cause it's about time to get a new one in there I think. Problem is, I've got all sour beers in the pipeline now, and only one dedicated sour beer line. Is it time to open that up, ya' think, to two sour beer taps? Hmm..

Movie Review: Well, not really.. but I just saw The Blind Side, and I'm giving it huge props. Go see it!

Got a new book from the library, my first Reinhart book, and I'm getting some interesting info from it for sourdough recipes. He's using huge amounts of starter in some of these recipes (sometimes over half the weight of the total flour!).. and I'm thinking about trying this idea out. Probably this weekend, I think..

I can't think of what else to write about.. hm..so, that's it. Go click my Google ad, you cheapskates. Do it now, before you leave the site! Now, scram..

Solo brew by the numbers..

Just finished up with a solo brew and it was just picture perfect. Targeting 1.052 O.G. and 5.5 gallons, and got 1.051 and 5.75 gallons. That's pretty close in my book. I'll take it. It's a base beer for a 100% White Labs WLP645 Brett Clausenii yeast that I got from my boy, Jody. I don't remember the occasion, but he just gave it to me and said make something with it. So, I whipped up a really simple base recipe of 9.75 lbs of two row and 0.25 lbs of crystal 45, and fermented it low at 149 for a short trip of 1/2 an hour. I mashed low to acentuate the ferntability of the wort, and went with a short mash time to, hopefully, leave a tad bit of unconverted starch in there for the wild beasts in the yeast to stress out on, giving more wonky flavor in the end result. 
 
So.. since I usually name all my beers by mistakes and disasters that occur during the brew day, and, since nothing bad happened during *this* brew day.. what should I name this thing?
I ended up going for a pale ale with this particular yeast when I was originally thinking about a stout or darker beer because of Saison tasting party I went to at Will's place the other day.. They had a beer there, Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Bier, that was a really pale, saison-ish style thing, that was just beautiful to drink. At the end of the night, I ended up going home with the dregs in the bottle from that beer, and the next day whipped up a low gravity wort to pitch those guys in to. Check the result:

It's hard to see in this poor pic, but the camera doesn't wanna focus so well inside the jug... Dig those wacky strands of goopey crazyness in there? Disgusting! This smells POWERFULLY of pineapple. From my reading in WildBrews, this is a characteristic of the beginnings of acetic acid production. It's very distinct, and just like pineapple, no kidding.

I'm beat.. get out of here, kids!

Keg down! No post in a while...

Been in training for the past week, so haven't really been home much and able to access the computer to do any blogging.. I should mention though, that this tragedy occurred:

Oh no! The IPA is killed! Drats.. I've got no pale ales downstairs, not counting the Oro de Maggie sour. The Kombucha beer, the not so aptly named Hanssens "All-Purpose" sour ale, is still kicking it too.. the pellicle on this thing now is huge and ugly as sin! It's developing some brett. character that I can definitely detect, and hopefully a bit of sour too. I'll be checking it out again at the three month mark, I think, to see how it's progressing.

Other than that.. I ain't got much. Supposed to be heading down to Will's place this coming Saturday for a saison tasting for an upcoming article. I can dig it.

Pizza and Hot sauce..

Made my first pizza from scratch.. well, three pizza's from scratch, including the dough. Two came out edible, one got into he garbage when it ticked me off and got stuck to the peel. But the dough was made 68% hydration with 1/8th cup of olive oil from a Reinhart recipe I found online. It was *really* easy to shape the dough. Probably too easy, really. It was very stretchy. The mozzarella could have been easier to slice, I guess.. our slicer/dicer for cheese kinda stinks, but here's a before and after

Before:

After:

It was fun and tasty. I'll definitely do this again. I've heard grilling them is also a trip, so I'll be looking into that as well. In other news, here's another thing:

A gallon of Franks Original killed, just under three months time. Delicious!

That's all.. carry on.

Hanssen's Kombucha beer, chicken eggs, whole wheat berries..

Yo.

Some good news! The chickens are still laying very well. I've heard through various sources that this isn't unusual after all for first year chickens.. things might change next winter, including molt and requiring that supplemental light source after all. But in the meantime, this is still going on:

There were two more yesterday when that was taken, as well.. but just beautiful eggs they are. I've been eating them fried lately, and just amazed at the texture of the whites now.. really fantastic stuff.

I bought a few lbs of whole wheat berries at this organic food place in Litchfield a couple days ago. This is what I got:

I plan to grind them in my Corona mill and incorporate them into a bread recipe.. I wanna get some whole wheat in there for some texture, flavor, nutrients..  but I'm not sure if my mill is gonna be suitable for doing ore than 5-10% of wheat.. It doesn't really grind a nice flour, cause it's kind of a rude mill, but a few percent of wheat in the mix mix make things sorta interesting. I'll give it a whirl and report back.

In beer news, I racked the very slow fermenting Red beer I did with Timmay into a keg. I had a small sample of it in a glass just before I capped it up, warm and flat, and it had a really curious, interesting flavor. I have good feelings about this one coming out quite well. While I was down there, I whipped out a thief and took a quick snag of a few oz's of the Hanssens "All-Purpose" sour ale (now fortified with Kombucha bacteria!) and put that into a glass. I'm thinking the Hanssens should be renamed, cause that bottle of dregs did *nothing* for over a month. It wasn't until I put the kombucha culture in there did anything happen, and boy, did it happen. Dig this ugliness:

The pic is poor, cause there's so much condensation inside the neck of the carboy, but you can see the amount of pellicle *ugly* going on in there. It's only been two months.. but I got nervous and wanted to see if I was growing a disaster or something promising. End result, from my small tasting got me some notes on the project as it is right now.. this is what I wrote:

C: cloudy gold color
A: slight smoke? Brett smell.. Funky up the wazoo.. old fruits or some sort, apples turing sour...
F: Bret! No sour. F'ing Awesome brett, in fact. WTF? Wheaty.. funkyness. complex flavor, hard to pin down. awesome. Let's let it go a bit...



So. If you can picture *that* in a beer.. ;) I was very surprised at the *lack* of acetic or any sour notes in here at all. The kombucha is nothing if not sour. I mean, very vinegar sour. This beer is not. It's meaty, complex, Brett tasty good. If I kegged this right now, you'd love it if you like Brett beers. That wasn't what I was going for, however, so I'm going to let it ride for another month and re evaluate the situation. but, man.. is that thing ugly. 

Challenger Special and some sourdough bagels..

Forgot to post this a few back, but...

Killed it! The Challenger Special, brewed up by Rob and me way back at the end of August.. hopped only with Challenger hops, as you might have guessed. Really tasty stuff.. but no longer.

In other news, the Red beer I did with Timmay is pretty much ready to keg. I'll get around to that soon, so there'll be something new and fun to try. The Dunkel I did with Pete, on the other hand, is flowing fine right now. Good times right there..

Here's a shot of some sourdough bagels I did up last night, from The La Brea Bakery book..

Should have made the rings they're formed from a *little* bigger, as these look more like fat dinner rolls than bagels.. but whatever, they taste really good. The consistency is spot on, though, the first time I think I can say that for my bagels. In the pat, my straight dough bagels have been more fluffy and soft than a bagel should be, but these guys are dense and chewy, bagel proper. I'm wondering if it was the vital wheat gluten, or the slow rise in the fridge that did that? Either way, I might be eating another one this afternoon.. it was that good.

Chickens are still dong very well. The Barred Rocks seem less susceptible to frostbite and cold in general than the Reds.. and I think I'd recommend those to new chicken owners, if I was asked. Plus, they're cute as all get out! And they lay eggs pretty darned well..

'Tis all...