Not what we thought it was after all...

One problem with tasting one’s beer at bottling, particularly after one has dulled and confused one’s palate with several other beers, is that flavors will be misinterpreted. It also really doesn’t help when one has three carboys full of beer, none of which has been labeled, and one has to make a guess as to which beer is which.
Luckily we did not pour out the beer we were bottling on Friday night that we thought was infected with acetobacter. I did manage to pour out one or two of the dozen or so bottles, but Thomas transferred the remainder of the unbottled beer to a 3-gallon carboy.
Which is fortunate, since the beer in question was actually an American pale ale I’d made in July. We should have realized this, since it wasn’t nearly dark enough to be a Southern English brown ale; but neither did it taste hoppy enough to be an American pale ale. If I recall correctly (I can’t find my notes from this particular brew), I had to take the boil to 90 minutes or maybe even 2 hours, to reduce the volume of wort sufficiently. Hence some hops that I’d intended to be flavor hops ended up being bittering hops due to the time they spent in the boil. Also for some reason the fermentation was incomplete – finishing gravity was 1.014 rather than the expected 1.010 – and what we were tasting and thought was acetic acid was in fact acetaldehyde.
We discovered our mistake on Saturday when we went to bottle the supposed American pale, which was in fact the Southern English brown. Thomas said “What is wrong with this picture? This carboy has lots of hop residue on the shoulders. It can’t be your pale – your pale was in secondary.” With the Southern English brown and the mild, we’d only had time to do a primary fermentation and then go straight to bottling. So we tasted it, and sure enough, it tasted a lot like a Southern English brown has been described as tasting – the only flaw being perhaps a bit too much roasty graininess
So we’ve got a good mild, a decent Southern English brown, a dozen bottles of unripe and green-apple-tasting American pale that probably won’t improve much, and 3 gallons of American pale bubbling away now that the priming sugar and the action of transferring it have woken up the yeast sufficiently to finish the fermentation. Also I put a ½ ounce Cascade hop plug in it to try to impart more hop aroma.
And in the meantime we went out and bought the ingredients to rebrew the Southern English brown, and I have the grains ground and the recipe put together for another American pale. So we’re going to have a lot of beer around the house soon.

Finally updating, and it's about trouble in the brewhouse.

I'm looking to the collective wisdom for some help in this.

On August 8, I made two starters for London Ale yeast (Wyeast 1968). Both were in growlers with airlocks, unfortunately only filled with water as we're out of booze. The stoppers have been replaced semi recently (like 2 years ago), the airlocks not that recently.

The next day when we brewed an all-grain batch of Southern English Brown ale, we used one of the starters for that. We aerated with an aquarium airstone that had (we thought) been well sanitized. We put the beer in a glass 6 gallon fermenter, which we thought had been well cleaned and sanitized, and gave it an airlock (as we didn't think it would need a blowoff - and it didn't).

Two days later, when we brewed an English Mild ale, we went to get the other starter. It had gone sour (lactic - definitely not acetic). Also, it had blown off enough that the airlock was completely filled. We didn't use it, obviously; instead we siphoned some beer out of the Southern English Brown, which was by then at high krausen, and used that to inoculate the Mild.

Flash forward to last night. We bottled the Mild (which was fermented in a fairly new Better Bottle); it was delicious and we sincerely hope it continues to be so. We then went to bottle the Southern English Brown. It was sour - acetic! Vinegary smelling. We didn't think vinegary taste could develop so soon. We had to throw it out, although we saved a few bottles as People's Exhibit #1 for the next BJCP session.

So we have two sour beers in the same brewhouse, both weak English brown ales, one's gone lactic (luckily it's just a half gallon starter) and one's gone acetic. Any ideas as to why? We suspect either the glass 6-gallon carboy that the S. Eng. Brown fermented in wasn't thoroughly cleaned, or that the airlocks or maybe the stopper were contaminated.

Beer-related excerpts from my recent travel diary

Last month I took a trip back to various Midwestern cities and towns I love and miss. Because I did not have consistent net access, I kept a print journal. (I kind of miss doing that...) I'll reprint here some of the beer-related stuff from that diary.

First off, a note about the places I went:

Bloomington, Indiana, where I lived from 1991-2000 while pursuing 3 graduate degrees, 2 of which I finished. I met and married Thomas there. I miss the Upland Brewery and to a lesser extent the Bloomington Brewing Co.

Overland Park/Mission, Kansas, in the greater KC area, where I lived from 1972-1986 and again in 1990-91. My mother and aunt live there.

Lawrence, Kansas, where I did my undergrad from 1986-1990. Some of my high school/college friends still live there. I miss Free State Brewing there.

Lincoln, Nebraska, where I lived from 2001-2004 when I worked at UNL. The brewpubs there aren't that great - Lazlo's is OK but Misty's Steakhouse and Brewery is crap, I'm afraid. Was better when it was Crane River. What I miss there is YiaYia's beer bar.

On with the excerpts:
From Saturday, April 11, 2009:
Upland's tripel, which one of the brewers shared with me, is 9.5% and (to me) after a while in the bottle, noticeably hoppy. He said he used Strisselspalt and Saaz. I could definitely taste the noble hops of some sort. I was surprised when he said the Helios was a Belgian pale ale and had some pepper to it. I'll have to try it out of the bottle - I got 6 packs of it and of the Dragonfly.

There are also big bottles of Strawberry Lambic, one of which I'll probably pick up tomorrow. (ETA: I didn't. I was feeling cheap.)

Anyway. The Brugge Brasserie Tripel de Ripple is definitely funky and Bretty compared to the Upland triple.

From Sunday, April 12, 2009:
Caught an Ard Ri at the Upland and a Java Porter and a Ruby Bloom at Lennie's. At Lennie's I had a salad and a bowl of white chili. First chicken I'd eaten in almost 2 months (I gave up land animal meat for Lent).

I love and miss this place and can find my way around it very easily. I wish there were some way I could get a job here or at least retire here. I guess I could retire here, nothing stopping me.

They were having $2 pints at Lennie's! I wish I'd had Thomas with me and I wish we'd been on foot. Not that any of their beers are exceptional - just decent. I miss Thomas already.

From Monday, April 13:
Nice of Bottleworks to be closed today. I might have seen that on their website but who knows, it might not have even been on it. After following Google Maps' crazy directions that didn't warn me that highway numbers would change and that the whole thing would look like a roller coaster that didn't run on rails, I get there - in a very unpresupposing neighborhood - only to discover it is closed.

I tried to call Thomas, only to find my TracFone reading "No service." For the entirety of Missouri. So. Cell-phone-less, directionless, I proceeded to Columbia, which took a couple hours, getting hungrier, eating too many almonds. Finally in Columbia I got off at the wrong exit and got to drive past payday loan places and Dollar General stores before backtracking to the neighborhood of MU and thence to its business district. I did not find the Flat Branch Brewery [ETA: I was 4 blocks away!], but I did find a bar/deli called Quinton's and had a veggie sandwich and a Fat Tire.

I don't think I've ever had Fat Tire on tap before. It was really good. I'd never been that impressed with it before, my least favorite of the New Belgium lineup.

Anyway I now have cell phone service again. I went to Lukas Liquors in far south KCMO, per aspera (=through difficulties, part of the Kansas state motto), and picked up some Boulevard and New Belgium offerings I couldn't get elsewhere - including one Boulevard Smokestack offering - actually two - and then got yet another veggie sandwich at Barley's Brewhaus, which is now an amazing taproom, but apparently started in the early 90s as a brewpub, according to a regular who was sitting next to me. [ETA: the website mentions no such early history.]

This entire hotel smells of chlorine.

From Wednesday, April 15:
I discovered that the Lunar Ale from Blvd has a little bit of that Belgian funk. [ETA: maybe more like, that wheat beer cloviness, since it's an American dark wheat ale, apparently.]

From Thursday, April 16:
Well, this is the night Beer Wars showed. I didn't see it. I was with my old friend Delana instead.

This morning my mother and I walked about 3 or so miles on a trail in the Streamway Trails system out in western Shawnee near the Kansas River. It wasn't as picturesque as I'd hoped. However I did learn something. The Shawnee Indians were relocated from Missouri and Ohio (?) to what became the town of Holliday, Kansas and the government gave them a mill in 1836 which was flooded in 1844. 8 years of a mill, big whoop. Anyway, we got a walk.

Then I went back to her place for coffee. After that, I went to Lawrence and had lunch at the 23rd Street Brewery, which is an extension of the 75th Street Brewery in KCMO. Service was iffy, beer was pretty good, chicken gyro was yummy and came with garlicky green beans that were, if anything, undercooked.

After poking around campus for a few hours, I walked to meet Delana at Free State. I had an avocado chimichurri, a Belgian pale ale I could barely tell was Belgian, and a barleywine with some age on it.

We went to Henry's (Delana's favorite bar - they had New Belgium 1554 on tap but I indulged in mixed drinks, something I rarely do) where I called Thomas and found out his car was towed and it's $180 at least to get it back. We may end up ditching his car, if such a thing is possible.

Oh yeah, Delana thought my tale of mouse breeding in my house to be Sedaris-level funny.

From Saturday, April 18:
I really enjoyed the Bread and Cup yesterday and YiaYia's. I'd forgotten what an amazing beer selection YiaYia's has - that's where I really got into Belgian beers beyond Chimay (not dissin' on the Chimay, that stuff is awesome).

I went to 3 Floyds tonight. Fabulous lineup of guest beers, including Kasteel Rouge, Klokke something that's a strong dark amber, and Monk's Cafe sour ale.

3 Floyds had on the Pride and Joy, Gumballhead, Robert the Bruce, Alpha King, Dreadnaught, Hyena (a Belgian pale), Rabid Rabbit (a strong Belgian golden), Behemoth (a barleywine), and Omeganaught (the second runnings of the Dreadnaught). I had the Gumballhead, the Hyena, and the Dreadnaught (in a half pint). I also had a reuben. They had very few food offerings. The only vegetarian offerings they had were a grilled cheese sandwich and some veggie pizzas. Good thing I was being flexible. Anyway I was there for the beer. I took home some 6 packs and bombers. One of the bombers is for our friend Eric, who was kind enough to give Thomas a ride to go retrieve his towed car.

Accidental barleywine?

This weekend I had planned to brew an American IPA. I ground the grains and made a starter on Saturday. On Sunday, Thomas pointed out to me that I hadn't bought Star-San and that we were running low on iodophor.

I decided I didn't want to sanitize the brewing vessel with bleach, so the actual boil/hopping/chilling/yeast addition/aerating would have to wait until Monday, but I mashed on Sunday. This time I did a batch sparge (the previous brew we did a fly sparge and it took a fairly long time). It looked like I got a pretty good extraction, particularly from the first runnings. I took a hydrometer reading which turned out to be inaccurate because the end of the bulb at the bottom was broken off. So in fact it should have been riding higher than it was (at least I think it should). Anyway that reading gave the average of all the runnings' gravity as 1.054, and since I was going to be concentrating 7 gallons into 5 during the boil, I figured that would bring me fairly close to my target of 1.068. (I am new to all-grain, mind you, and the math is not my favorite part, so I won't be surprised if I was way off.)

I covered the two 5-gallon brew pots with lids and let them sit overnight. Monday, when I'd gone and gotten Star-San, I heated them up for the boil.

Taking stock of my hops, I decided to omit the Palisade hops I had been going to use for bittering, as their alpha acid level was only about 7% and I realized they'd be better used as a flavor/aroma hop if at all. (Reading up on them now, it looks like I'm probably right.) Since I had a vacuum-sealed 3.8 ounce bag of them, and one-ounce bags of all the other hops I was going to use, I decided to leave them out.

So, the hop schedule as I initially planned it:
Chinook 13%AA 60 min
Amarillo 8%AA 30 min
Amarillo 8%AA 15 min
Willamette 5.8%AA 5 min

The thing is, I had so much wort to boil down that it took quite a bit longer than that. Add to that the fact that Thomas couldn't figure out why his wort chiller setup wasn't working, when it had worked "so well" last time (I told him I thought I remembered it had worked thanks to a hose clamp, and leakily, last time) and he went out to Lowe's to buy more tubing. I held off on adding the bittering hop until it was truly to a rolling boil. Even so, here was my actual hop schedule:

Chinook 13%AA 120 min
Amarillo 8%AA 60 min
Amarillo 8%AA 25? min (maybe that was 15 min, can't remember now)
Willamette 5.8%AA 5 min

I worked out the math on the IBUs and it looked like I was going to get 78 with the original schedule, so I don't know what it actually worked out to be, but suffice to say it will be a hoppy brew. So I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that it needed more malt, and I added 1 1/2 pounds of light DME.

Once I got the wort chilled, thanks to Thomas's new improved setup, I took a hydrometer reading (with a different, non-broken hydrometer). It claimed it was about 1.090 or maybe a bit higher! Thomas said "I think you've made a barleywine."

I think I made a double IPA, myself, but it did taste awfully malty. According to the BJCP guidelines, an American barleywine "[d]iffers from an Imperial IPA in that the hops are not extreme, the malt is more forward, and the body is richer and more characterful." Well, we shall see how it tastes at racking time.

Thomas pointed out that I can always dilute it. I suppose. I mean if it tastes really "gloopy" and like it will need forever and ever to mature, I could dilute it in secondary to the regular-IPA strength I was going for... if the malt/hop balance would be right. Or I could just call it my first barleywine (or my first DIPA, whichever it is).

Homebrewing legal in Utah!

Homebrewing has finally been made legal in the state of Utah, whose laws concerning alcoholic beverages are legendarily strict (and self-defeating, if the purpose is to curb excessive consumption; case in point, if a customer brings a bottle of wine to a restaurant, he or she must consume the entire bottle rather than recork it and take it home).

I still wouldn't want to live there - I don't feel at home in the midst of Mormons - but Utah has made a definite step forward in my opinion.

UBU!

The Babylonian captivity of Lake Placid Brewing is over! I don't know the details, but as of yesterday, Ubu, 46er Pale Ale, and Frostbite (renamed simply to Lake Placid IPA) were available at Beers of the World.

So raise a glass and toast a great upstate New York brewery whose time has finally come again!

Losses, changes in the Rochester area beer market

I was saddened to learn on Monday that Bruce Lish was replaced as the head brewer at Rohrbach's on Buffalo Road. (Read the BeerAdvocate discussion thread here.) I really hope he can find another gig where he can use his copious brewing talent and creativity. The beers he introduced at Rohrbach's, including the Kölsch he brewed for the Lovin' Cup and the Alt he brewed for Swan Market, were among the best they produced. He might have secured Rohrbach's another account at one of my favorite places, but they missed out on that chance by letting him go.

Then I just found out that the MacGregor's in Perinton is closed. Of all the MacGregor's branches, this is the one I visited least (it's close to nothing I visit frequently). But I know some folks who do make it a regular stop. This discussion thread on BeerAdvocate may have more information as the situation develops.

Beer in Rochester is far from dead, of course. We have great beer bars such as the Old Toad (which is having Dogfish Fest tomorrow night - don't miss out!) and the Tap and Mallet (which hosts a Beer Social each month featuring distinguished visitors from the beer industry - tonight it's Sly Fox night). And we can get fine craft beer in bottles (and in kegs) from Southtown Beverage, Beers of the World, and others. Depending on which Wegmans we shop at, the beer selection ranges from small to spectacular - and let's not forget Hegedorn's, well worth driving out to Webster for.

Also it looks as if the acquisition of High Falls by KPS is definitely not going to mean the end of the Dundee line of craft beers, as Mark Tichenor reports here. That's a relief. I'd hate to see our old Genesee Brewery become a Labatt's factory. Besides, they'd have to change the Labatt's billboards - no more boasting that it's imported daily from Canada.

I just continue to wish we had a good brewpub, or even a brewery with a bar, in Rochester or the inner suburbs. Since arriving here in 2004 I've seen Flour City and Bru both tank within about a year of opening. My two old college towns, on the other hand, Lawrence, Kansas and Bloomington, Indiana, both continue to support thriving brewpubs - Free State has been open since 1989 and consistently winning awards, and in Bloomington Upland Brewing has been around since 1999 and the Bloomington Brewing Company has been around since 1994. It kind of makes me homesick... and I wonder why Rochester can't have nice things, dammit!