Bubbler screw up - let's see what happens

The brewing of the Cuvee went without problem, but unfortunately I may have screwed up this beer. I pitched the White Labs Belgian strain and after 24 hours, nothin. I checked the bubbler and found that the bell on the bubbler was cracked, allowing oxygen to get into the fermenter and preventing fermentation. Ugh. I replaced the bubbler and pitched some Munton's Gold - which is supposed to produce a very clean, ester-free taste. I also think the Belgian strain may have been active, but unable to ferment. God knows what this will taste like, but I don't think I introduced any contaminants, so I am hoping it still tastes pretty good. We'll see.

Belgian Cuvee Recipe

I used my new brewing pot yesterday for the first time and learned a few things. First, you lose a lot more water through evaporation with a large pot. Next time, I will add at least a half gallon more water to accommodate the loss. I also learned much less monitoring is required with the large pot because it keeps a nice rolling boil without much fear of an overboil.

Here's the grain bill:

6 pounds of Breiss dry golden malt extract
1 pound of caramel malt grain, cracked
2 ounces of Styrian Golding hops
1/2 ounce of dried orange peel. I used orange peels from Clementine oranges and froze them.

5-gallons
Original Gravity = 1.65
ABV goal = 6%
Bitterness - very low

Heat the water to 150 degrees and steep the caramel malt in a grain sack, nylon bag or cheesecloth for 20 minutes. It should color the water a nice amber and give the water a caramel smell. Raise the water to a boil and remove from heat and stir in the malt. Try pour it in as slow as you can to avoid clumping the malt together. Some malt may cling to the bag because of the heat coming off of the boil. You can dip the bag in the water to get the remaining malt off.

Add the first ounce of the hops and stir. For about 55 minutes monitor the boil, stirring occasionally. The boil should have constant bubbles rising to the surface that push a light foam layer around the top, but not an aggressive boil that could cause the liquid to come over the top of the pot.

At 55 minutes add another ounce of hops. At 59 minutes, add the orange peel for one minute, stir and turn off the boil at 60 minutes. I used a wort chiller to lower the temperature to 75 degrees and then transferred the wort to the fermenter, leaving behind much of the hops and orange peel. You could keep the peels in the beer to strengthen the flavor or add more during secondary fermentation.

Maudite is maaavelous

I just popped a Maudite from the Montreal brewery Unibroue. This really isn't beer in the traditional sense. If there are hops in this beer, they are undetectable. That's not to say I don't love it. It's a nice caramel color with a light head and a distinct plum smell and flavor. This is beer in the sense that it isn't wine and it isn't port and you just have to label it something. It's wonderful, and powerful at 8 percent alcohol. I drank it in a wine glass and that was appropriate. This brewery makes some fine beers. I would like to visit.

MegaBoil arrival

The Kitchen Aid 15-quart pot in my kitchen is officially afraid. My 10-gallon brewpot arrived. It's ginormous. It could eat other pots alive and spit the remains out of its heavy-duty ball valve. I cannot wait to use this bad boy. I'm planning to make beer this week with it - my special Cuvee. It fits across two burners, so hopefully I can achieve a full boil without a big problem. I also need to get some rubber tubing to transfer the wort to the fermenter.

MegaPot

My birthday present should be in the mail today. I have been successfully brewing beer with a 20-quart, black enamel lobster pot, but it isn't big enough to do a full boil and the enamel bottom sometimes gets scorched with malt. So I moved on to a 10-gallon, yes 10-GALLON MegaPot with built-in thermometer and a ball valve. I think I am as excited about the valve and thermometer as the pot itself.

The first order of business will be to make the Cuvee. I ordered six pounds of dry malt extract and a pound of caramel malt grains. I bought the White Labs Belgian abbey yeast because of my lack of success with the Wyeast smack pack the last time I brewed. I have been saving some orange peels and plan on getting a touch of coriander to pitch in the fermenter and we'll see how it turns out.

Stone Imperial Russian Stout

Today is my birthday, and because I am a well-known beer liker, I get beer for my birthday. One such gift is 22-ounce Stone Imperial Russian Stout. Here's my quick review. It's nearly black in color with a smallish, but creamy head. It's similar to Stone's smoked porter, but less smokey and more alcoholy. Seems like there's a bit of coffee flavor in there. The bottle says it has a touch of anise. I can't taste it. It reminds me faintly of Jagermeister, like a digestif. Rating = 1 beer is fantastic. 2 might be too much.

The Cuvee

I was at a place in New York called BXL. It's a Belgian restaurant with a great selection of beers, each served in a special glass meant for the particular style. I was alone. I was meeting some friends later, but I didn't want to wait around my hotel room for two hours, so I got there early to eat and try some beer.

First on the list was a beer called Cuvee. It was the restaurant's house beer, made for only this restaurant by Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York. It was an amber ale made in a style like a Belgian white, meaning they brewed it with orange peel, grains of paradise and coriander. That alone was interesting, but adding to the intriguing nature of this beer was that it was very dry - no sweetness at all and carrying a 6 percent ABV. It was a session beer that packed a punch and had some interesting flavors. I had a few, and then some other stuff, and by the time my friends got there, I was talking loudly. It turns out, this restaurant is the only place in the world to get this beer, and because I don't live in New York, I have decided to try to make it. Amazingly, the waitress didn't know the recipe!

I wrote down the ingredients I could get from the menu and when I got back to Detroit, I e-mailed the brewmaster at Ommegang, Phil Leinhart, and asked him what kind of hops and yeast were in the beer and how to get it as dry as he did. We exchanged a number of e-mails and let me know to try Sterling Golding hops and just get a Wyeast or White Labs Belgian strain as the actual yeast was made by Duvel.

As I only do extract brewing, my plan is to use this recipe I have devised to recreate it. I will use 6 pounds of dry malt light extract and half a pound of crystal malt. Sterling golding for the boil. Will add orange peel, coriander, grains of paradise in the pitch with a White Labs Belgian strain. I will definitely move the beer into a secondary fermenter and possibly a third to clear the beer up. Then I plan on mailing the end result back to Phil.

Belgian Dubbel

A few weeks ago I purchased the Belgian Dubbel extract kit from Northern Brewer. The high-gravity, caramel-colored beer featured a new adjunct I hadn't used before. The extra sugar came in the form of candy sugar from sugar beats in 1 cm square rough blocks. The sugar adds some sweetness to the beer and also to the alcohol content. Brewing was fairly straightforward. There were caramel malt grains to steep for 20 minutes at 155-160 degrees Fahrenheit. I poured heated water over the sack holding the grains after the 20 minutes to get the rest of the good stuff out.


The wort was about 2.5 gallons and it took 15 minutes or more to heat it to a boil. I took the wort off the flame and poured in two 3.5-pound liquid malt extract jugs and a 1-pound Briess light dry malt extract. I was careful to not go too fast on either of these, stirring along the way. I also used some of the hot water in the wort to help get residual malt out of the extract bottles. These look a lot like miniature milk jugs.

The hops were Czech Saaz for bittering, added at the start, and Sterling Golding for the finishing in the last minute of the 60 minute boil. I combined the hot liquor with cold water in the fermenting bucket, separating most of the hops out through a fine wire strainer. Then I used a wort chiller to get the wort down to 70 degrees. I pitched a ``smack pack'' Wyeast Belgian yeast pack. Bad news - two days later - no action. It was either dead or I screwed up somehow. I had some extra Nottingham yeast from a Porter I had to throw out mid boil because I had to go to the hospital - another tale - and pitched that. Who knows what it will taste like.


I'm not really religious about measuring the gravity of beer, so I don't know what it's specs are, but it's definitely going to pack a wallop with all the sugar I put in there.

My first time

I was running around last Sunday morning trying to find a store that was open before noon to get some Christmas shopping done. Of course nothing is open before noon and because the retail clerks inside the Gap seemed unaffected by my hopeful stare, I decided to go into Trader Joe's to kill some time. There I saw it: the 2009 Vintage Ale sitting stacked 7 feet high in 750-ml bottles and corked. A quick look on the back revealed that the self-described chocolaty ale with a hint of citrus was brewed by Montreal house Unibroue - the maker of La Fin Du Monde, Blanche De Chambly and other fantastic beers.

I picked up three bottles - at $4.99 a piece these were really pretty inexpensive. I was ready to check out and already thinking about how early was too early to try this beer. After I plopped the peppermint Joe Joe Oreo clones and my bottles at the checkout, the clerk said: ``I have some bad news. You can't buy these beers until noon.'' See Simpson's Season 4, Episode 16 where Homer Simpson gives up beer for a month and after visiting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting jumps out the window when Rev. Lovejoy tells the group that after the class they will never want to drink again. Defeated. I left - I couldn't wait an hour just to buy that beer. Oh, but it will be mine. And after I try it - I will try to make it myself.

So you see I really like beer. Not just the beer I make, but I like that a good bit. I am by no means an expert. A quick look through the Interweb will find you multitudes of people with more experience and expertise than I. I am writing this for posterity in hopes that my words find eyes connected to a like mind. I'll put up recipes, beer I've tried and like and why. And places you can buy equipment, materials and such. If you've tried the Vintage - let me know how it is.