Genesee

It sounds like the company that owns Genesee is going to make a push into Michigan this year. I found this article from the Rochester Business Journal that mentions many interesting things. It's a very well-done piece in general. Most interesting is that it mentions the undercapacity of the Rochester Brewery along with the brewery owners' desire to acquire brands. Combine that with the fact that Pabst, Strohs and a cadre of other brands are for sale and it makes one go hmmmm.

Golden Ale brewing day

I decided to make a light golden ale with a special ingredient. The idea is to make a session beer with a bit of zest. I'm planning to add about a 10 ounces of maple syrup to the secondary fermenter to add flavor and a bit more alcohol. This will extend out the fermentation time as well because the sugars are more complex to ferment and take longer. I am using all extract for this batch and am hoping to get a nice light color. Starting with 3 pounds of Briess Dry Malt Extract, one pound of Bavarian wheat extract and two pounds of Briess Pilsen malt - a very light malt color. I am using one ounce of Perle hops for bittering and Styrian Goldings for finishing.

The beer came out with a bit higher Original Gravity than I thought. It settled out at 1.055. I pitched a Munton's yeast that I harvested from the Cuvee beer secondary fermenter and had chilled overnight in a cleaned old baby food jar. I put the yeast in a little luke warm water and added some malt and had it sitting with cling wrap over the top. I am hoping for a vigorous bubble by the time I go to bed in hopes I get pretty good attenuation.

Cuvee in the fermenter

My Cuvee is starting to clear up in the secondary fermenter. It was very cloudy and seems about half settled now. I'm planning on keeping it in there for an extra week or so to try to get more gunk to fall out of solution. I also think that perhaps I should try to keep my fermenter farther from the heat vent in my room. The last batch I made had a lot of isoamyl acetate (banana flavor). Live and learn.

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.

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.