Tasting: Foreign Stout

Take a gallon of Double Stout, blend with a bit of funky-sour beer and age for nine months.

All the 90% dark chocolate, espresso and peaty smoke is still there. Time and funk has brought out faint cherries, port and leather notes. The rough edges have been smoothed out but the beer still finishes dry with a nice roasted bitterness. That dry finish makes it suitable for a hot summer evening. This will likely continue to improve until I can no longer resist those last few bottles.

Tasting: Summer Saison

I got in two saisons before getting fed up with the heat this summer. Given a couple slight changes I thought it prudent to drink aside each other so the effect of those changes stick out.

Another out of stock yeast at the LHBS again forced an on the fly substitution. This time I had to use the notoriously slow to finish Wyeast 3724 (DuPont) in place of the well-behaved 3711 French Saison. For the second batch I made sure to buy a package of 3711 in advance AND make a from-the-bottle starter of Dupont yeast (which I've never had trouble with) for a mixed ferment. Now on with the comparison...

As the summer tempuratures rose, so did my impatience with this yeast and I bottled before terminal gravity was reach. I paid the price of a couple cracked bottles and excessive carbonation. The taste is good though. Grassy hops, pepper and late summer fruit (apples, plums and overripe peach) dominate the aroma. The taste has a nice rusticity from the dried out base malts (Belgian pale, US pale, and Vienna) and noble hops (excepting the Styrian Goldings) used for all additions. A nice refreshing summer beer.

For the summer's second batch of saison I changed the late additions to just Saaz (an ounce each at 15 minutes and knockout). The blend of Saaz, Hallertau, and S. Goldings produces a nice flavor but I wanted to see if I could get away with something simpler. This one attenuated to 1.001 in a reasonable amount of time, so no over-carbonation problem. I'm not sure this one is quite ready yet as it has a raw yeasty smell that I've found with bottles that have not undergone enough conditioning time. There is a nice saison there, but I will have to show some patience for it to shine.

Next tasting: Rhubarb Sour.

Tasting: Les Fleurs du Mal 2010

The beginning of August marks the start of my annual month long sabbatical from brewing. Only beers not in bottles are the sours, which calmly do their thing in the corner just passing the time until it's their turn. It is too hot and humid for brewing to be any fun. And there is fun to be had out of doors. But this is a good month to drink some beer and write, neglecting this blog a little less. First up in the August tasting notes series is Les Fleurs du Mal.

This one presented a bit of a challenge when I went to buy ingredients at the LHBS. With Wyeast 3942 (De Dolle) out of stock, I was left scratching my head for a substitute. 3864 (Unibroue) seemed a reasonable substitute. No Amarillo whole leaf hops also forced a choice between Cascade leafs and Amarillo pellets for dry hopping. I chose the pellets and I'm not sure it was the best choice as they were a pain to separate from the beer and they seemed to affect the flavor.

OG: 1.070
FG: 1.010
ABV: 7.9% ABV

The medium amber color is decidedly darker than previous years. I account for this with unexpected efficient and color extraction as the grist did not change much. Just two months after bottling, the citrusy aroma of the hops is fading. The Amarillo pellets for dry-hopping seemed to give a harsh edge to the flavor and aroma that I've not found in my whole leaf dry-hopped beers. The fading hops have struck a nice balance with the yeast and malt. There are fresh pears and apples. Maybe a bit of mango? A bit a honey sweet malt gives way to a bone dry finish accented by just enough bitterness.

I had not sat down and focused on the flavor of this brew but I'm glad I did. Even with the on-the-fly changes I am pleased with how this turned out. I doubt I will let more than a bottle or two get much older as previous batches turned too sweet, almost syrupy, when the hops faded.

Let There Be Funk

George Clinton once said "If the funk was going to happen, I wanted to be there." He best get to my apartment to encourage this year's Les Framboises du Mal, not that it needed any, just look at that pellicle.

Fooling Around

A batch of saison is brewing. But the foolishness stems from the combination of a gallon of pale sour beer and a pound of rhubarb.

Tasting: La Fontaine du Sang

After a frustrating bottling session (never using pellet hops for dry-hopping ever again) I am ready to sit down and drink a couple strong, tasty beers. So here is a comparison of the original bottling of La Fontaine du Sang and the most recent from a few weeks ago.

Original: Bottled September 19, 2009
Dark cherry color. Big cherry smell. Tart cherry taste. There is more though, mostly funky aromas and flavors. Mostly the same since it was bottled, just a bit less sweet than I remember. I wonder if the wine yeast I used at bottling killed off the Sacc. and Brett?

Fresh: Bottled May 14, 2010
This batch is a blend of a pull off the solera and fresh, non-soured beer. The solera was refilled with the fresh beer that did not go into the bottle. Straight solera beer could have stood on its own and would have been fantastic. But I wanted something with a sweet-sour balance for summer slurping.

The color is nearly the same for this version. The aroma has more barnyard funk and earthiness aside lemony acidity. The cherries are there, but faintly in the background. The taste is similarly skewed towards funk more than acidity. But this is actually drier than the first and makes the light sourness more enjoyable. I did not bother with wine yeast to condition this batch so it will likely be more interesting to age.

Brew Updates

April and May have been slow months for brewing and beer drinking in general. The beers I have brewed in Springs past were all I could find time for. Les Fleurs du Mal just received an ounce of Amarillo dry hops. Les Framboises du Mal is in primary fermentation and should be ready for raspberry additions when the early summer fruit season begins. Yay. A sharp jump in efficiency will result in both beers being stronger than past versions, both creeping towards 8% ABV.

I blended and bottled La Fontaine du Sang a week ago. A tasting and comparison to the previous bottling will be coming shortly.