Townsend Hall Mead

Michael and I are back at it again, this time brewing the nectar of the Norse gods: mead. I guess it's technically a metheglin, which is an Old English term for a mead with spices added; we're adding orange peel and ginger. Apparently metheglin shares its etymology with medicine, and we'll certainly be chugging down this cough syrup as soon as it's ready.

For nostalgic reasons, I want to name this brew Townsend Hall. It is the name of a U of I dorm where Michael and I both lived, though half a decade apart. It was also the site of my first introduction to homebrewing. My friends on our floor brewed a mead in their closet using honey, orange peels, and crystallized ginger. It was a pretty rough set up; basically 2 liter soda jugs with balloons on top in lieu of airlocks. I'm pretty sure that they used bread yeast instead of brewer's yeast too! I remember helping vent the balloons and marveling at the fermentation in action.

At the end of the school year I tried some of the concoction. I remember expecting it to taste like prison toilet wine, and wondering if it would make me go blind like bad prohibition era bathtub gin. When I tried it I was amazed. It tasted like a nice dry white wine; no funk, no skunk. If someone served it to me in a restaurant, I would never guess that a bunch of college dudes whipped it up in their closet.

After this, I started reading Charlie Papazian's books. Several years later when I had the nerve to spend the money and go all in on what I have to call a lifestyle rather than a hobby, I bought my first 5 gallon setup and a pale ale kit. The rest has been history. I want to thank my college floor mates for sparking my interest in this. To Mike, Alex, Will, Jon, and Todd: Skal!

Michael and I brewed our mead a few days ago. What you see above is the mead must: 13 pounds of local wildflower honey aerated with five gallons of spring water. We are going to add sweet orange peel and ginger root to recreate the taste of the original Townsend Hall mead. We're also going to add golden raisins to the primary to hopefully add a Moscato-like finish, although I'm guessing the final product will be pretty dry. The recipe is as follows.

Townsend Hall Mead

Style: orange ginger metheglin

Water:

5 gallons of spring water

Honey:

13 lbs. of Sunny Hill Honey from May’s Honey Farms in Harvard, IL

Fruit:

1 lb. of golden raisins

Spices:
½ oz. of sweet orange peel
¼ oz. of dried ginger root

Yeast:

2 packets of Lalvin 71B-1122 (dry wine yeast)

Other Ingredients:

3 tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend (1 tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

1 ½ tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer (½ tsp. stirred into the must on days one, three, and five).

Recipe:

First, rehydrate the two packets of yeast in four ounces of warm water (104 to 109 F). I recommend sanitizing a small pot and heating up some of the spring water to the desired temperature, and then pouring it into a small sanitized measuring cup. Add the contents of the yeast packets into the warm water and let stand for 15 minutes without stirring.

Add 2 ½ gallons of the spring water to a sanitized 5 gallon bucket. Add half of the of honey as well. It helps if you immerse the containers in hot water first; it really cuts down the viscosity of the honey when you pour it. Thoroughly incorporate the honey and vigorously aerate the mixture with a sanitized plastic paddle. This will take about ten minutes. You now have mead must. Pour the well-aerated must through a sanitized funnel into a sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy.

Add 2 ½ more gallons of spring water to the bucket and mix in the rest of the honey. Aerate once again and add then pour through the funnel into the carboy. Add the first dose of yeast nutrient and energizer to the must and stir thoroughly to fully incorporate. The total volume of the must in the carboy will be over six gallons, so be very careful when moving it. I use a brew hauler (shown above), and it's made transporting large quantities of wort and must much easier and safer.  

Take an original gravity reading; it should be around 1.079-1.080. Stir the yeast well with a sanitized spoon and pour it into the must. Gently stir the carboy again. Attach your airlock and put in a safe place to ferment.

Add the quantities of nutrient and energizer specified above during the first five days of fermentation. Stir the must to incorporate these additives and to degas it.

On day seven, boil the golden raisins, the orange peel, and the ginger in a quart of spring water for five minutes. Cool to room temperature in an ice bath. Gently muddle the mixture with a sanitized potato masher to break open the raisins, then pour it into the carboy and stir.

After one month in the primary, rack the mead into two sanitized 3 gallon secondary fermenters. Fill the carboys up as high as they can go without interfering with the stopper, ideally to the base of the neck. Avoid transferring the yeast lees, the raisins, and the spices. Put in a tight fitting stopper and airlock. Make sure it has a good seal, as the mead will stay in the secondary for at least 3 months. Also make sure to check your airlock and keep it filled with sanitizer or vodka to the appropriate level.

Bottle when the mead has reached its final gravity and cleared (approximately 3 months). I would estimate that this one will be pretty dry, so the FG will likely be around 1.000.

Good things are worth waiting for! I'll probably taste some of this shortly after bottling to bring in the spring, but most of it is going to get saved for the years to come. Time should add some pleasant complexity.

Nostalgia is bittersweet like this mead. I know that future sips of it will transport me back to the hall where its ancestor brew was conceived. Not your traditional mead hall, but a mead hall nonetheless.

BILCO: A Brother-in-Law Collaboration

My brother-in-law Michael has become quite the craft beer aficionado over the past few years. He has also become a skilled hop cultivator as well, and we recently merged his homegrown Cascades with my homegrown Chinooks for a memorable joint venture.

This is our recipe for BILCO, a Brother-in-Law Collaboration. We aimed to make a big IPA and added 5 ounces of our dried backyard hops to the kettle. The final product had a hop presence that was closer to a pale or an amber, but we got a lot of compliments from our friends just the same. Perhaps in making a more balanced beer we appealed to hop heads and mainstream beer folk as well. We're definitely making this one again!

Besides combining our brewing and hop cultivating efforts, this recipe merges two IPA traditions as well. We paired caramelly British specialty grains with our piney, orangey backyard American hops. This brew was destiny; the Atlantic Ocean couldn't keep these ingredients apart.

BILCO

Style: IPA

Water:

3 gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

½ gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Thomas Fawcett & Sons Pale Crystal Malt

Extract:

9 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

2 oz. Chinook, whole cone (bittering @ 60 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 15 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (flavor @ 10 min.)

½ oz. Cascade and ½ oz. Chinook, whole cone (aroma @ 5 min.)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:
Original gravity should be around 1.073 and finishing gravity should be around 1.015, making for an ABV of 7.6%. You could certainly recreate this recipe using pellet hops. If you use whole cones like us, I would recommend tying them off in muslin bags to make it easier to remove them from the wort when the boil has finished. Using a large strainer, you can press the excess liquid out of the bags and back into the kettle if you're worried about losing any hoppy goodness.

This was an amazing fall beer/winter warmer, but brew it anytime you please. Cheers!

Festivus!

Nothing serves as a better precursor to the "Feats of Strength" than a few beers to numb you up for the abuse. Enjoy your favorite beers this holiday season, and tell all your people that you love them (just don't say it too much or they'll think you're drunk).

Make sure to have plenty of carbs to sustain you too. Be merry and be safe. Wesolych Swiat!

Peragave

I love pomaceous fruits. After recently making an apfelwein, I wanted to replicate the process with pear juice. I decided to make a gallon test batch. If it's good, I'll probably make a three or five gallon batch. The only consideration would be cost, considering that pear juice is pretty expensive. I also added a agave nectar to boost up the booze and add some finesse to this brew, hence the Latin inspired name.

Peragave

Style: pear wine

Juice:

3 quarts of pear juice (Knudsen's).
A fourth quart of pear juice to add when racking to secondary to achieve desired volume.

Other fermentable sugars:

23.5 oz. light agave nectar (365 brand)

Yeast:

1 packet of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast

Other Ingredients:

½ tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend

¼ tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer

The process was pretty simple. My must consisted of about 3 quarts of pear juice and a 23.5 ounce bottle of light agave nectar. Add 2 quarts of the pear juice to a sanitized gallon jug. Pour in the agave nectar, cork the jug with a stopper, and gently shake for five minutes to incorporate the ingredients and aerate the must. Add more pear juice until there is only about two inches of head space in the neck of the jug between the must and the stopper (roughly another quart). There shouldn't be a lot of krausen, but give yourself a little headroom just in case. Add yeast nutrient and energizer and stir gently for five minutes to incorporate. Then take a gravity reading; it should be roughly around 1.090. Then pitch the yeast and gently stir it in to the must. I used Red Star Côte des Blancs, the same yeast that I use for my apfelwein.

Keep in the primary jug for two weeks, then transfer to a secondary one gallon jug. At this point there will be a lot of trub in the primary. There will be a yeast cake at the bottom, as well as a considerable amount of solids from the pear juice that have fallen out of suspension. Avoid transferring the bulk of this sediment to ensure a less turbid final product. After transferring to the secondary, add pear juice from a freshly opened bottle until there is only about an inch of headspace in the neck of the jug. Keep in the secondary for 2 to 3 months before bottling.

I'm guessing that this will finish with a final gravity below 1.000, as my apfelwein did, so the ABV should be around 12%. I'll post some tasting notes after bottling it in the spring. That will keep me going through this coming winter: the promise of good weather and homemade hooch!

St. Bigfoot Apfelwein

I love fall. Harvest time has always stirred up something primal in me, and there's nothing like a crisp, dry glass of cider on a breezy autumn night to bring out your inner noble savage. Hence, my most recent project, St. Bigfoot Apfelwein! Thanks to my sister Stephanie, whose quirky sense of humor inspired the name.

I designed this recipe after taking some cues from the viral apfelwein posting by Edworts on Home Brew Talk, as well as practical advice from some cider brewing books. I made it a couple of months ago, and it's in the secondary now. It's an attempt to merge the Old World tradition of fruit wine with a twist from a New World ingredient: maple syrup. It's what I imagine German and Scandinavian immigrants to Wisconsin and Minnesota probably threw in with their apfelwein to boost up the booze with a locally available sugar source. I also really liked The Saint by Crispin, which is a cider brewed with maple syrup and a Trappist ale yeast.

I used Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast, which is typically used for white table wines. I tasted a sample of my product when racking to the secondary and it was tart as a Granny Smith apple. This is a plus for me. I don't prefer desserty wines, and I don't want to play around with chemicals needed to backsweeten the apfelwein.

As with the mead I recently made, this is my first attempt at apfelwein. Any experienced brewers of ciders and wines who come upon this and shake their heads at my rookie mistakes have full permission to drop some knowledge on me. It's the only way I'll learn.

St. Bigfoot

Style: Apfelwein

Juice:

5 ½ gallons of apple juice (365 brand, organic, fresh pressed).
A few more cups of apple juice (if necessary) to add when racking to secondary to achieve desired volume.

Other fermentable sugars:

16 oz. maple syrup (two 8 ounce bottles, 365 brand, light amber)
12 oz. can of frozen apple juice concentrate (Sno Pac brand; thaw before adding to must)

Yeast:

2 packets of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast

Other Ingredients:

1 tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend (½ tsp. added to the must on day one; ½ tsp. added to the primary on day four).

½ tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer (¼ tsp. added to the must on day one; ¼ tsp. added to the primary on day four).

The process was pretty simple. First, rehydrate the contents of two packets of the Côte des Blancs yeast in 4 oz. of warm water (approximately 105 F) in a small sanitized measuring cup or bowl.  

Then, take three gallons of the apple juice and pour into a sanitized bucket. Also add one bottle of the maple syrup. It helps to immerse the bottle of syrup in hot tap water for a few minutes to cut down on the viscosity so it pours easier. Paddle the must for 5 to 10 minutes to aerate before pouring through a sanitized funnel into a sanitized 6.5 gallon carboy.

Next, add the remaining 2 ½ gallons of juice to the bucket, along with the second bottle of maple syrup and the apple juice concentrate. Aerate for 5 to 10 minutes and then add to the rest of the must in the carboy. Add the first addition of yeast nutrient and energizer to the carboy. Stir the must vigorously for two minutes using using the narrow end of a sanitized paddle in order to fully incorporate the mixture.

Finally, after the yeast has been rehydrating for at least 15 minutes, gently stir it with a sanitized spoon. Pour the yeast into the carboy and gently stir the must to evenly distribute it.

Stir in the second dose of the yeast nutrient and energizer after four days. Ferment in the primary for two weeks. Transfer to a secondary 5 gallon carboy and add extra juice to minimize head space (though probably not necessary because of initial volume). Keep in the secondary for 2 to 3 months, or until final gravity is reached, which I'm estimating should be between 1.000 and 0.996. Original gravity was 1.064, so the ABV should be around 8.5%. Bottle still and enjoy!

You can backsweeten the wine if you don't like the dry, tart character, but make sure to do so safely. If you add extra fermentable sugar without properly dispatching the live yeast with appropriate chemicals, then get in the bunker and prepare for bottle grenades.

So make some! Taste a little this year, but hide half of it away in a closet or cellar to let it get interesting. Dust it off next November and release the beast!

Winter Beer Recommendations

Winter's that time of year when I transition from golden and amber ales, which complement breezy fall weather so well, and delve into brown ales, stouts, porters, and maybe even a few heavier lagers. I usually don't have a lot of patience for sweet, syrupy beers if they aren't balanced out by a decent hop profile, but short days and blankets of snow have a way of convincing my palate to lust for those thick, malty brews. It must be my inner caveman crying out for more calories to survive the cold. Anyway, I'd like to share a few of my recommendations for good winter beers. Many of these pair exceptionally well with holiday fare.

1. Elliot Ness - Great Lakes Brewing, Cleveland, OH. Elliot Ness is a pleasant domestic take on a Vienna lager. It has a malty aroma and a slightly sweet finish. Bring some to Thanksgiving dinner. I've paired it with smoked turkey; very tasty. It can carry you through the meal and stand up to the dessert course as well. A good beer to share with craft virgins too, as its lager body makes it more accessible.

2. Bell's Best Brown Ale - Bell's Brewing, Kalamazoo, MI. Larry, you need to bring back the old bottle art with the little sleepy owl! I'm not digging the new guy as much. The beer is a deep sienna color. It's very turbid and unfiltered, as most Bell's brews are. Best Brown is kind of like their amber ale, except the toasted barley flavor is jacked up a few more notches. The hops balance it out for a clean finish. This is a good snow shovelin' beer (winter equivalent of a "lawnmower beer"). I would pair it with pork tenderloin and roasted herbed potatoes.

3. Breakfast Stout - Founders Brewing, Grand Rapids, MI. I've always talked about how this beer would actually be delicious to have with breakfast, and I recently got a chance to experience this pairing! A few friends and I attended the Breakfast Stout Breakfast that Founders put on this year and it was amazing. The dark roastiness of the beer was delightful with bacon and grits, and the significant ABV kept us warm in the misty November morning air.

4. Dragon's Milk - New Holland Brewing, Holland, MI. Oaky aroma with a syrupy, vanilla taste. Spoon some over warm pecan pie topped with ice cream. I really enjoyed the toasted chili Reserve Dragon's Milk that New Holland released earlier this year, and I can't wait for the raspberry one that comes out this fall.

5. Rye-on-Rye - Boulevard Brewing, Kansas City, MO. At 12% ABV, it's a real winter warmer. Slight caramelly sweetness is balanced by a modest hop profile and a gentle bite of rye. Pair with an aged cheddar or Uniekaas Reserve.

Old Bill

This is an English barley wine that I made last year for Christmas. It named it in the honor of my grandfather, who was known to drink a few beers in his day. I wish he were here to taste it. He had a sweet tooth too, so I think he would have enjoyed the cloying raisin viscosity.

Old Bill (2014)

Style: English barley wine

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. 55 L British crystal malt

Extract:

11 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

2 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

1 oz. East Kent Goldings pellets (dry hop)

Fruit:

1 lb. of golden raisins added on the third day of primary fermentation. Bring to a boil in a quart of water and simmer for ten minutes. Turn off heat and use a potato masher to mash raisins into a pasty consistency. Cool and add to the primary.

Yeast:

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale (two packets pitched in the primary).

A third packet of Wyeast 1084 (added to the secondary 3 days before bottling).

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ¼ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

I estimate the original gravity to be about 1.104 and the final gravity to be around 1.024, and the ABV should be around 10.5%.

Last time I made this I kept it in the secondary for about six weeks to thoroughly allow fermentation to complete and to let it clear. The end result was good, but sweeter and less carbonated than I would have liked. I think the yeast were tuckered out in the last mile. I think adding a second packet of 1084 at the beginning might help get a healthy fermentation started right away.