Cheers Buddy!

This weekend was packed with beer exercises as my region prepares for the Bluebonnet Brewoff. In the coming weeks we will judge 1300+ entries from all over the United States. The first week began with unpacking, verifying, and sorting entries. I volunteered on the yellow sticky line. Having put dots on about 4500 bottles of beer I am still seeing dots. Sunday began with some spiritual cleansing. After worship I gathered with the community of beer lovers to empty the barrel. We racked the Berliner onto various bugs in attempt to get it sharply sour. The base had reach a SG 1.008 while fermented solely with WLP677 the beer tasted clean –Belgian clean that is with light notes of lactic acid. Pitching different bugs will allow us to identify which bugs are preferred. I will work much of the batch with a house culture. I am thinking Brett B will move the base into the Berliner family without being out of style. The challenge will be to produce sharply sour notes within three weeks. I am open to ideas on this. Having not pitched the bugs I’m still gathering thoughts. While the crew was around we also shared some award winning home brew. Cheers Buddy!

2014 Midwinter Homebrew Competition
1st Place - Straight Unblended Lambic - House Guest 2.0
Cuvee Conditioned -Dec 2012 Golden sour dry with medium funk and deep acidity | Exceptional | Bottled for aging

3rd Place - Open Category Mead - Coffee Mead
Coffee Mead 2.0 ground coffee added to 1/2 gallon. Stored cold. Racked and bottled.

2014 16th Annual Domras Cup Mead Competition
1st Place - Open Category Mead - Oak Aged Caramelized Honey Mead
Oak Stick Aged Caramelized honey mead. Ruby brown color. Fruity floral aroma. Flavor of toffee and light cinnamon. Getting better aged at room temperature. The sweetness and alcohol are becoming one/well rounded.

Works Cited:
Family Photo - AB, CH, AG, DM, SW, EF
http://domras.homebrewcomp.com/domras/Results.htm
http://www.midwinterhbc.com/

Cold Brewed Coffee Mead

On the left is a caramelized honey mead with agreeable flavor profile. Lighter in body with some residual sweetness. The flavor needed some excitement and so I added freshly ground coffee. The coffee was exceptional Maui Moka coffee from an estate in Hawaii. Roasted less than ten days prior it was sure to add flavor to an otherwise average bochet mead. The coffee mead on the right was the resulted of two days of cold steeping. Brewed cold the coffee flavor and aroma would be extracted without its harsh bitterness. I added one cup to the fermentor and sampled daily.

The coffee mead was exceptional at day two. It smelled like coffee with hints of fruits and honey. The flavor was wonderful. Reminiscent of a Pharisäer — coffee flavored with rum. The creation could be served with brunch. Unlike the coffee varieties of brewed beer I could taste the coffee bean with an added toffee component. I racked and bottled to preserve the profile. Then tucked the bottles away for special occasions.

Two weeks later I could resist no longer. JF had arrived expecting a brew beyond normal. The coffee mead opened with a hiss. The pour was petillant some fizz escaped creating a bubble collar. The color was reddish brown with a bouquet of rich coffee aroma. I smiled remembering bottling day. On first sip the coffee mead was telling a new story. I had remembered flavors pleasant enough for competition. What I was drinking was not  competition worthy. I was drinking coffee-ash a sweet and stale palette destroying elixir. I had tasted this in small portion from commercial beers with coffee. In beer the staling was aftertaste aforementioned and disappearing.

"How could this be?" I though having postmarked and entered the creation into competition the week prior. I noted bottle fermentation while searching for answers. JF and I moved on to better homebrew that night. Today I am reviewing mead scoresheets.

Aroma: 5/10
roasted/coffee grounds/spent coffee. some moderately caramelly honey comes out later low esters & alcohol

Appearance: 4/6
bright brown with tan small head, sparkling not petillant, mod legs, mod lace

Flavor: 16/24
quick hit of honey before a spent-coffee ground hit, cleansing spritzy CO2 is moderate (but >> petill.), slight oily/fresh ground aftertaste is spicy and sharp vs roasty ahd has a bit of cooked honey flavor, acid is mod-hi & sl. acetic, alcohol smooth & moderate, building tannins of coffee balance to over-bal. honey

Overall: 5/10
Good drinking beverage, nicely moderate coffee without overwhelming but feels a bit spent/over extracted, maybe honey a bit caramelized/heated consider no/less honey heating & cold-extr coffee, perhaps a smoother coffee variety

*Acetic - Vinegary, acetic acid, sharp

Aroma: 5/10
Light roast coffee aroma, hint of honey sweetness. Low/no alcohol aroma. Straight coffee -very little honey.

Appearance: 5/6
Medium reddish brown, good clarity. Moderate carbonation.

Flavor: 13/24
Light honey sweetness. Strong, bitter coffee flavor with moderate-high astringency. High acidity. Low-moderate alcohol. Light body Lingering harsh aftertaste.

Overall: 5/10
Honey is too light to balance coffee/coffee is too bitter for honey. Try using a more flavorful honey and a higher quality coffee with lower acidity

*Bottle Inspectoin - very slight sediment

Bochet Mead

A mead makers breakfast: local honey fermented bottled and aged served on strawberries.
What remains is my inspiration to do a caramelized mead. Bochet – a mead where the honey is burned to yield toffee, chocolate, marshmallow flavors before adding water.

Czworniak – a traditional Polish mead uses 1 part honey to 3 parts water. In keeping my process simple I would follow this recipe. After the caramelized reduction I added water to cool and pitched a healthy amount of champagne yeast. Making mead was much easier than I had expected. The work begins with maintaining a nutrient rich fermentation. I am expecting things to finish around 11%ABV. While not a Sack Mead with much higher starting gravity. The creation has the flavor of toffee with an aroma of spring. There are some interesting syrup notes but the mead should be enjoyable in the coming years.

1 gal Honey
3 gal Water
4 tps Yeast & Nutrient

Cider No.1

Crispin Lansdowne caught my attention while pondering my next brewday. I was thinking of brewing a vanilla stout but was distracted by Crispin's cider fermented with Irish Stout Yeast. The bottle had a considerable amount of sludge which made it even more promising. I could culture the yeast and homebrew a stout with commercial yeast. I would use apple juice as the starter providing the yeast a consistent medium. The experiment quickly dissipated as the yeast were no longer viable. After I week with no activity I pitched some Belgian yeast and was fermenting my first cider within hours. Post fermentation had 7 bottles of still cider without hint of carbonation. Each was given some priming sugar and a shot of yeast to bottle condition. The resulting cider is sparkling like champagne with no head retention. Far from a sweet traditional cider the flavor is sour like someone decided to ferment oxidized granny smith apples. Not bad for my first attempt but a creation by experimentation.