Plain wit 46 tasting notes

Pours nice gold color with healthy even white head that billows a little, laces OK.  Slightly cloudy.

Aroma - nice malt aroma, slight vanilla.  Hinnt of earthy hops.

Mouth feel - pretty thick, almost chewy. Coats like milk almost.

Flavor - tropical fruity, firm hop bitterness.  Second pour adds estery yeast - more banana.  Plain clean malt flavor in background, with slight sour hint. 

Finish - bread, then balanced mild bitterness.

Overall - a heavy light colored beer, has refreshing aspects, but basically weighs in as a load.  Almost like tropical fruit punch without sour flavors. 

No more oats.  Could bump vienna to 6 oz.  Good base for savory spice beer.  Try with black pepper, fennel or anise.

Add'l notes 11/6 - sampling last filled bottle.  So this is what phenolics taste like.  They more smell plasticy than taste it, but you get the idea.  Wyeast web site indicates 3944 makes phenolics, not esters.  Not banana, more bandaid.  This is also in Jody's rye.  

Temps and yeast are funny here.  I think higher temps will bring out more esters, lower may dampen overall yeast impact, but I think phenols will be more dominant.  Maybe try 3942, which is supposed to be more estery.  Work at bottom end of temp range, though.

Next week's session - wit

Well, next in rotation is another wit.  It is getting cooler in the basement, so the 3944 should taste cleaner this time of year.

I am switching back to just pils and wheat.  No more Vienna or oats.  Too many malt flavors there.  We want clean.  And spice.

For spices, I'm torn.  I want to try a black pepper fennel.  I also have a new orange rinder that I'd like to try, too.  Dang it, all 3 is just too complex. 

Discipline.  First you need tasting notes on the plain wit. 

Maybe later this week.

Batch 52 baltic porter

4.5 lbs Maris otter muntons 

1/4 tsp cacl

12 oz MFB kiln amber

6 oz GWM Vienna
4 oz German dark Munich
8 oz MFB caramel 120
4 oz am roasted barley

SRM 24 per brewers friend

TOG (83% eff) 1.067

Mash 60 mins 155 df. PH 5.2 OK

Sparge w 160df water

OG into boil 1.068. (84%)

60 mins boil

10 gr German northern brewer 9.6% - 60 mins. 20 IBUs

1/2 tsp Irish moss - 15 mins

1/2 oz Willamette 5.2% - 10 mins.  5 IBUs

1.068 into fermenter

Pitch with s-04p in 1 qt starter. 
Note: starter looks a little weak. 
Pitch at 72 df.  Move to 63 df basement for primary.

Abv est 6.4%.
SRM 24
IBU 25

Full krausen at 22 hours, 64 df.

Primary is vigorous through 11/2/13.

Rack to 2ndry 11/3/13, return to 63df.

Bottle 11/16 with 1/3 level cup table sugar.

Lautering

Primary finished

Pumpkin porter

So all of a sudden my pumpkin porter starts tasting like pumpkin.  With spice.  Quite good.  Like most beers, it needed time in the bottle. 

Drinking cold:

Pours mahogany, clear, a tiny white head that laces very well.

Smells of spice - light cinnamon and spicy hops.

Taste starts spice like the nose, then follows with the pumpkin, finally bitterness that isn't clingy.  Want more.

Mouth feel - clean and pleasant, but present, light coating offset by low carbonation is good.

Finish - hop bitterness blends with distinct pumpkin flavor - sour? Hard to explain.  Pumpkin with spices, esp cinnamon.

Overall impression - a pretty good beverage, pleasant appearance and mouth feel.  Needs way more malty flavor to distinguish itself as beer.  Would also benefit from more caramel, but just a touch.  Could easily cut spices in half, esp cinnamon.

Oktoberfest taste

Well, drinking my latest Oktoberfest (45) I see clearly now it is way over-hopped, as noted by judges at Brixtoberfest.  The hop bitterness just jumps out at you, after a month in the bottle.  25 ibus is way high.

A couple interesting things here.  When it was a week old, it was pretty balanced, even malty.  After a month, not so much.  Malty flavor goes down over time in the bottle over the yeast.  Same as hop aroma.  This is important.  Remember this.  This is how people are able to stand beer made with Munich as base malt.  They wait.  Like a good lagering might achieve.  Future batches could use more than 25%.  Vienna for vanilla accent, but dial up the Munich, use it like a base.

With these styles, (Vienna, marzen) aroma hops are irrelevant.  Bitter around 15 ibus. Or even less.  Hops are just for sanitation, not really balance.

Brixies Brewers Dream

So I have this dream last night.  Someone calls me and tells me there is a club meeting, so I go.  The meeting is at this sort of country club type of place, only with horses.  Most of the people in the club are renting horses, and riding horses.  I am unprepared, and can't figure out how to get ahold of a horse myself, although I kind of want to ride, even though I don't know how.  I figure I can just fake it or figure it out by watching other riders.  Since I can't get a horse, I hang out with the guys who aren't riding.

The riders ride in a circle, then they take off for a fox hunt or something.  Someone in the group I'm with comments on how difficult and cool it is to ride fast in a group like that.

I look at the agenda, and realize the beer part of the meeting isn't until late at night, and I need to get home to bed.  So I leave early.

Strange yet vivid dream.

I guess I do care that I didn't get any recognition in the Brixtoberfest contest.  Next year I'll have to plan something good.

Planned for next weekend

OK, all out of porter, need more.

So, the last baltic porter I made I entered into Brixtoberfest as a Robust Porter.  I figured since I dry hopped it with saaz, the only porter category it fit in was Robust, since hop flavors are optional.  I dubbed it Continental Porter.  The saaz kind of took over the beer, confusing for a porter, I'll admit.

The judges were unimpressed.  For starters, it fizzed over.  The one bottle in the batch.  Great.

Getting past that, the judges didn't ID the saaz.  They blamed the saaz flavor on a lot of things, but no one took the hint 'Continental'.  Yeast handling, sanitation, astringency, salty, sour, no one got it.  And a couple were real BJCP certified.

At least I got a little feedback on the malt profile - too thin for a robust.  They wanted more crystal. Like, way more crystal.  Thick with it.  More malt flavor.  Less astringency (or are they confused with the saaz?).

Looking at the recipe for the batch, it is only 1/4 pound crystal (4%), step mashed starting at low temps, for a relatively thin dry beer.  Plus, my typical protein rest at 130 probably thinned it out some, too.  Note to self - no protein rest for stouts and porters.

The thing is, if I mash warmer, I'll get more astringency from the roast barley.  But the caramel should balance that, if I add more.  And any astringency comments should be taken with a grain of salt.  I didn't really pick it up in my notes.

So, no dry hops.  Only bittering at 60 mins.  Maybe aroma (willammette) at 15 mins? And no more than 25 ibus total.  Double the caramel 120.  Ease off the roast barley a touch (maybe an ounce) and mash at higher temps, no protein rest.  Maybe bump up the munich, while we're at it, up to 4 oz, and the Vienna to 6.  And keep the mash pH over 5.2.

We're still looking for baltic porter here.  

Opening entry

I'm expecting to keep notes on beer making here.  Hopefully this will replace the spiral-bound notebooks I've been using.

I should give some thought to organization here.  I know the notebook is chronological like a blog.  I would also like to sort entries by other categories, and retrieve things easily as well, so I suppose I'll be playing with labels quite a bit.

So far, so good.