Beer Tasting - Oatmeal Coffee Stout

It's been three weeks since I bottled the "Breakfast of Champions" Oatmeal Coffee Stout, so I feel comfortable doing a beer tasting with the finished product. As I mentioned in the brewing blog for this beer, my numbers came out exactly as planned, so hopefully it tastes similar to what I was envisioning. I've had a couple bottles over the past week as well as shared a few with friends, but I haven't taken the time to be analytical.

I'll be following the five category format from beeradvocate.com: Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel and Overall.  

Appearance: Pours pitch black, perfect colour for Oatmeal Stout. The head is thick and frothy, but it dissipates a bit too fast. Wondering if adding the whole beans post boil, during fermentation hurt the head retention.

Smell: Roasty coffee, close to dark espresso notes. To me it smells like it was infused with actual coffee beans, rather than brewed coffee or espresso, which makes it smell slightly stale to me, but still pretty good.

Taste: Huge coffee flavour, bittersweet dark chocolate, and a slight sourness on the finish, which I think comes from the oatmeal. It starts sweets, cuts to bitter quickly and finishes a bit sour, which is an interesting taste sequence. If there ever was a brunch beer, this is what I'd choose to drink. Who am I kidding, I'm sticking to ceasers for brunch.

Mouthfeel: Extremely smooth and creamy, thick bodied.

Overall: The brewing process for this beer went as well as I could have hoped for. All my numbers came out exactly as planned, which makes this an easier beer to analyze as it should be easily replicated. In the future I might play around with how the coffee is added, as I think the whole beans killed the head retention, but the velvety mouthfeel typical of an Oatmeal Stout is still prevalent. I think I'll also try brewing the exact same recipe, but forgo adding any sort of coffee and compare the end result. The slight sour aftertaste lingers a bit too much, but I'm not sure if that was caused by something in my recipe, brewing process, or an exclusive issue with this individual bottle.

Thanks for reading!

Curmudgeon IPA

A week ago Sunday, my old home brew partner Matt was back in Toronto for a few weeks, visiting family and friends and getting his German work visa sorted out. No better time to reunite the brewing duo and craft a beer together. This beer will be the first ever BCCB (Big Country Collaboration Beer), as aside from guest brewer Matt joining me, I also have my roommate's girlfriend Jeanette designing a label. Collectively we have decided to create a beer inspired by the personality of our roommate and dear friend Max. With Matt and I both having lived with Max, we feel we can develop a taste profile for a beer that mirrors Max's personality. Jeanette being Max's girlfriend and having a background in graphic designing, will be creating a beer label that screams Max.

The name of the beer comes from a term that all of Max's close friends know him as and that Max lovingly embraces.

I decided an IPA would be the best style of beer to impart the flavours that would remind the drinker of someone with curmudgeon like characteristics. I realized after deciding on the recipe that I coincidentally followed the Bavarian Purity Law and with Matt's German girlfriend visiting with him, I had a little fun with it.

The base malt for this grain bill is 2-Row Malt, which is a very common choice for many all-grain beers. Crystal 40L Malt is a good choice for any pale ale as it will add some colour, which would be lacking if only 2-Row Malt was used, but it won't impart the caramel notes that a higher coloured Crystal Malt would. Finally, I used Munich Malt to add more malty sweetness as I plan on using high alpha acid hops and I wanted to balance out the bitterness.

While Matt was catching up on his Sunday morning beauty sleep, I was up and at it turning the kitchen into my brewhaus and milling all of the grain.

Once Matt joined me, I put him to work sanitizing all of the equipment, which is something I'm sure no home brewer enjoys, but needs to be done. Since Matt is the guest brewer and was a little late to the party, I thought it was only fair.

Once we got going, we mashed in at 1.3 quarts per lbs of grain, for a total of 15.6 quarts at a strike temperature of 165°F. I waited about 5 minutes and checked the settled temperature and it was still around 158°F, so I added some cold water to get closer to the targeted 152°F. It ended up hovering around 150°F for the duration of the 60 minute mash, but that shouldn't cause too much of an issue with the conversion efficiency.

Once the 60 minute mash was complete, we started separating the liquid (wort) from the grains. This was where we ran into a bottleneck in our process, we had quite the stuck sparge. Separating the wort from the mash as well as gathering 6 gallons of total pre-boil wort by sparging (170°F water), probably took us around an hour or so. Matt was constantly stirring to aggravate the grain bed and remove the clog. A couple times I even had to blow back into the siphon tubing to remove the clog as a last resort. This was definitely the most frustrating part of our brew day and we ended up with a little less than 6 gallons, which means our original gravity (OG) will be higher than targeted and therefore the ABV will be higher as well. Before the boil, I measured the pre-boil OG in order to calculate my efficiency. It ended up being 1.052, which means I had an efficiency of 26 (52 X ~6 (gallons of wort) / 12 (pounds of grain)). An efficiency of 26 is a bit higher than the last brew (OCS = 24), but it's still shy of 28, which is the average for efficiency.

During the 60 minute boil, Matt and I added the two hop additions at the 60 minute mark and the 15 minute mark. At the 60 minute mark we added the Mosaic hops, which had an alpha acid rating of 12.7%. Alpha acids are a chemical compound located in the resin glands in the flower of the hop plant. The higher the alpha acid in the hop addition, the more BU (bittering units) they will provide. To provide some context, the Golding hops used during the OCS brew were 5.8%AA. Aside from Mosaic being relatively high in alpha acids, they impart many flavours and aromas, like earthy, grassy, herbal, citrus, cedar, floral, pine, tropical, spice and stone fruit. Many of these flavours and aromas will disappear over the course of the 60 minute boil, but any that remain will be a welcomed addition to the Curmudgeon IPA. With 15 minutes left in the boil, we added the Falconer's Flight hops, with an alpha acid rating of 11.4%. This hop will bring many of the flavours that you would recognize with a typical IPA, with distinct tropical, citrus, floral, lemon and grapefruit tones.

Once the boil was complete, we cooled the wort in the bathtub, transferred the wort to the plastic fermenter and took another OG reading. The final OG was 1.075, so depending on the final gravity, it's likely the ABV of the beer will be closer to 7.75%. The higher ABV could be a blessing in disguise, as a curmudgeonly beer should be pungent with "get off my lawn!" bitterness, and put you to sleep by 9pm on a Saturday night with it's surprising inebriating qualities.

Thanks for reading!

Bottling - "Breakfast of Champions" Oatmeal Coffee Stout

I bottled the Oatmeal Coffee Stout on Saturday, March 1st, so I'm a bit delayed with this writeup. So far everything seems to have gone perfectly with this beer. On Saturday, February 22nd I checked the Gravity and it was already down to 1.016. With an Original Gravity of 1.055, that gives me an ABV of 5.1%.

At this point the beer looks to be fully fermented, so I'm free to toy with it as I please prior to bottling. With this beer, I've decided to add half a pound of dark roast coffee beers that I picked up at Starbucks. As I mentioned during the initial brewing blog for this beer, I decided to use whole beans rather than drip coffee or espresso as I didn't want the acidity to throw off the mouth feel. I simply added the beans to the glass carboy and racked the beer on top of them. Finally, I added the rubber stopper and the airlock and set it aside for another weak to let the coffee beans infuse with the beer.

After the additional week passed, it was time to taste the beer and bottle. The beer had good roasty and chocolate flavours and I could definitely smell and taste the coffee. It's hard to tell if I achieved the velvety smooth mouthfeel that's so key with an oatmeal stout, so I'll have to wait for the final result to find that out. This time around the bottling was going much smoother, until part of my bottle capper broke off. Luckily I was still able to finish capping the bottles, I just had to apply more downward pressure. On the bright side this gave me an excuse to buy a heavy duty bench capper.

As you can see in the final picture, I've started making very creative labels for my beer. I picked up 55 packs of report cover labels at the local Parkdale Dollarama for $1 each and wrote OCS for Oatmeal Coffee Stout on each bottle. I'm basically doing this so I can tell the difference between all the different beers I'm brewing, but I also think it adds a nice touch.

Thanks for reading!

Beer Tasting - 'Tis But A Scratch ESB

'Tis But A Scratch ESB was bottled a little over 3 weeks ago, so it's more than ready for a tasting blog. I've actually consumed half of the output in the past week as I've really enjoyed it and I find it pretty session-able, even at it's potent 6.4%. As I've mentioned at the other steps throughout the process, I didn't follow my recipe properly, so the numbers ended up being a bit off. This caused the beer to be a bit out of style from your typical ESB as it's a bit darker in colour, higher in ABV and a bit too bitter.

I'll be following the five category format from beeradvocate.com: Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel and Overall.  

Appearance: Pours dark amber, perhaps a little too dark for the ESB style. Light bubbly head with very long retention.

Smell: Nice malty sweet character, but hidden a bit by a rather over powering bitterness. Hops providing a bit of a grassy, earthy nose. Definitely a bit too bitter for the standard ESB style.

Taste: The bitterness of the hops hit the taste buds initially, but it balances out near the end with malty sweetness. The bitterness of the hops lingers, but is pleasant, at least to a hop-head like myself. Aside from a slight earthiness, the hops don't impart too much flavour, definitely more focused on the bittering aspect.

Mouthfeel: Very effervescent, which is a bit out of style as well, but likely a cause of adding more priming sugar than the style called for. I'd say it's a bit too alcoholic for an ESB, putting it closer to the IPA classification.

Overall: For my first all grain brew, I'm pretty happy with it. I pegged some of the errors I made throughout the process, so it turned out close to what I expected. I'd re-categorize this beer as an American ESB (don't think this is a legitimate beer style... yet), as it's definitely more bitter than I'd expect out of ESB, but the malty sweetest of the ESB pale malt is still prevalent. Next time I brew this beer, I'll definitely focus on following my recipe closer and seeing if it fits the flavour profile better.

Thanks for reading!