RastafaRye

Strange. I drank this beer and forgot to post on it..

Yeah, so there's this weird guy on the label of Blue Point Brewing's RastafaRye.. kinda creeps me out. It's described as  Rye beer, and that's about the sum of it. I want to like Rye, as a grain. I use it, or, rather, try to use it in a lot of my beers, and in my breads for that matter.. but I'm generally not that impressed with it. I'm just *trying* to be impressed with it. I think I may have found its calling, but it's in a Stout I make.. and a Chocolate Rye stout at that, so it kinda get's buried a bit.. in this beer here, that's not the idea.. the rye is supposed to be front and center. But, it isn't really. You do not drink this beer and say "Oh, snap! Here comes the rye!" it just ain't like that. Not that it's a bad beer.. it's just not that fantastic. It's rather.. err.. average. Except in it's abv% which is like, 7.5%.. totally uncalled for in this beer, really. Sad to have to be so blunt, but there it is.

Brewing with Pete tomorrow. Need a pale ale in the worst way. I'm starting to get complaints from the guests and management that there's "nothing normal to drink" on any of the taps. Sissies! In Germany, most of my lineup would be considered perfectly normal! Yeah, we're not in Germany.. ok, I'll brew a pale ale. This is three weeks in a row now, brewing. Life is good. :)

Pellicle.. that was quick! Stout update..

Just a quick update to shoot up a really crappy picture of the Brett. Pale ale.. check it:

And there you have it. Pellicle. Snap! That was quick... I think it only took about 4 days to start to see the faintest film of funk on the top of this thing, and now, with this pic taken just yesterday, it's really coming along good. Powdery white with a couple of weird jagged 'lines' running across the top of the film, it looks legit. It's in a Better Bottle.. which is supposed to be oxygen impermeable.. so I doing that had anything to do with it, but I did just cap the top with a piece of tinfoil, as I've been doing a lot recently.


The stout I repitched this slurry into is also pretty much finished. I'll be kegging that in the next few days as well, cause I'm about to kick the Ancho Chile stout. This beer should be superior in more than one way, since I actually remembered to put in the chocolate malt this time that I enjoyed so much last time around. Plus, with the possible benefit of the Brett yeast, we'll see if that has any noticeable flavor impact at this short of a time frame.. probably not, but we'll see.

I'm also re building that  fantastic Reinhart San Fran sourdough I did a couple weeks back, but it's a difficult bread to do with your schedule isn't cooperating. I'm going to end up refrigerating the firm starter portion overnight again, for a total of two nights, and hopefully getting it going into dough shape tomorrow morning, with a final overnight tomorrow night. We'll see how that goes.. stay tuned.

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.