Brew Day: Two Dry Stouts!

With Saint Patrick's Day a couple of short weeks away, I find myself without anything appropriate on tap! I always try to have something dark and roasty on - either a stout or a porter, o
r both! I am not the type who thinks of darker beers as winter seasonals... I can drink a porter anytime, and a dry stout functions just fine as a "lawnmower beer" for me.

Sláinte Mhaith - my dry stout

I have a standby (award winning) dry stout recipe that I brew at least 2-3 times per year. It is consistent and a pleaser for any fan of the style. I call it 'Sláinte Mhaith' (SLAHN-cha wa - Irish Gaelic for 'Good Health'). It is really just the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles (http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styles-Winning-Recipes/dp/0937381926) by Jamil Zainasheff (@mrmalty) and John Palmer with whatever uniqueness my system/process lends:
70% Maris Otter British Pale Malt
20% Flaked Barley
10% Roasted Barley
I use WY1098 British Ale as my yeast...

I have always loved stout - I was among the first people I knew to like Guinness (I will not admit how early). Like many brewers, I originally fell prey to the "more is better" thinking when formulating my stout recipes. When I sat down to write this blog entry, I looked back through my recipe binders and brew logs... There were TEN stout recipes (American and dry). Each was decent - I don't believe I ever made a terrible stout (I have made a few terrible beers though). But none of them was what I was looking for - thus the ten different recipes, none brewed a second time.

Then I listened to Jamil's Dry Stout  episode on The Jamil Show (http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show) - the original one, not the Brewing with Style newer one... He talked about the simplicity of classic Dry Irish Stout. I brewed that recipe, which he later included in the book referenced above: it was exactly what I had been pursuing! I have been brewing that exclusively as my dry stout recipe ever since.

2015. The year is young, and I have been immersing myself in brewing media: Basic Brewing Radio/Video, the beer engine, Chop & Brew, Brewing Network... Was it time to brew a different stout? Should I put more than one stout on tap? An episode of Chop & Brew and an entry in the beer engine blog featured a Beamish-inspired dry stout - I had tried clones of Beamish in the past, but they had fallen short. This recipe, and the subsequent tasting on Chop & Brew, seemed compelling.

I talked through my ideas with my local brewery's tasting room manager (and former student), and he mentioned he had a nitro system that was not currently in use. What?! He offered it to me on loan! That iced it - I was going to brew both, and serve them both on nitrogen!

Brewed and ready for March 17th. No green beer here - only proper stout!

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Slainte Mhaith
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Category: Stout
                Subcategory: Dry Stout
                Recipe Type: All Grain
                 Batch Size: 5.5 gal
              Volume Boiled: 7 gal
            Mash Efficiency: 70 %
        Total Grain/Extract: 10.00 lbs
                 Total Hops: 2.0 oz

Ingredients
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            7 lbs Maris Otter Pale
            1 lbs Black Roasted Barley
            2 lbs Barley (Pregelatinized Flakes)
              **2 oz East Kent Goldings (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
           Yeast: Wyeast 1028 London Ale

Notes
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Mash @ 152°

Vital Statistics
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 Original Gravity: 1.044
 Terminal Gravity: 1.009
            Color: 27.47 SRM
       Bitterness: 41.8 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 4.5 %

** I actually shifted 10% of the hop bill to 10 minutes to match the Beamish-inspired recipe (for analoous comparison purposes)

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Squeamish
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                   Category: Stout
                Subcategory: Dry Stout
                Recipe Type: All Grain
                 Batch Size: 5.5 gal
              Volume Boiled: 6.5 gal
            Mash Efficiency: 72 %
        Total Grain/Extract: 9.25 lbs
                 Total Hops: 1.9 oz

Ingredients
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
            7 lbs Maris Otter Pale
            1 lbs Malted Wheat
         0.75 lbs Black Roasted Barley
          0.5 lbs American Chocolate Malt
           0.6 oz East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
           0.4 oz Perle (Whole, 8.25 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
           0.5 oz Hallertau (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
           0.2 oz East Kent Goldings (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
           0.1 oz Perle (Whole, 8.25 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
          0.15 oz Hallertau (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
           Yeast: Wyeast 1098 British Ale

Notes
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Mash @ 152°

Vital Statistics
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 Original Gravity: 1.042
 Terminal Gravity: 1.008
            Color: 28.44 SRM
       Bitterness: 39.1 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 4.3 %

Reclamation Project (Hops and Our Garden)

Our garden has suffered neglect for at least two years. When we first moved into this house, we were excited at the prospect of so much space: more yard, more garage, more storage... We wanted to put the garden in the sunniest part of the yard, but it had the worst soil. In order to take advantage of the sun, we had to build raised beds.

After constructing four large (72 square feet each) beds, we soon discovered all the critters were drawn out of the woods by our new vegetation: the deer and rabbits had their way with our produce. Next came the fence!

This was an unexpected expense, so I built it on the cheap... I ended up using "cherry" landscaping timbers instead of decent treated posts, along with 60 inch "rabbit" wire. I soon realized that the deer could easily make it over the 5 foot wire fencing, so I added two rows of single-strand aluminum electric fence wire to extend the fence height to 7 feet. The posts made it five years before the first one rotted and failed. One-by-one, a handful of other posts began leaning. The sagging fence was the final straw - it was time to fix up the eyesore that was once our garden.

Of all the victims of our neglect, the saddest to me was my burgeoning hop collection. Two years ago, I harvested close to 10 lbs, of hops (wet). I'm pretty sure that was the last time I harvested, and did nothing in the way of maintenance since: no pruning back, no fertilizing, no supplemental watering... It's a bit depressing to think that I had gone from 10 lbs. from 13 varieties to completely ignoring them altogether.

As I prepped to replace the fence and shape up the garden, I eyed my pots of hops. The pots are arranged alphabetically, and the first in the bunch was Cascade: a complete loss - rotted out by poor drainage (and a pot that had apparently been dumped then righted). It got better after that, and despite my laziness, the rhizomes themselves were thriving - completely filling the pots (especially the Cluster).

I trimmed things back, saving a handful of starter rhizomes for friends before carefully repotting. This is my 2nd, and in a couple of cases 3rd, division and repotting. Recommitted to their care, I am hopeful about this years crop.

Now I need to get back to work on the fence and reclaiming the rest of the garden!

Birthday Party Dry Hop

My Double/Imperial Red Ale (Bruise Bros) finished out right around the same time as my Redwings: good on the beer, bad on the'Wings. Time to dry hop it!

Weekends are always busy, and this was no exception. Mother's Day tomorrow, and today we did the family celebration of Brandon's birthday a week early, since I won't be around next Saturday on his real birthday. I had a bunch of stuff to do in the morning to get ready for company to come over, so I was just preparing my hops when folks started showing up...

My dad, who used to work at the Rainier Brewery back in its heyday (and whose grandfather was the business manager of the Horluck's plant for Sick's Brewing from the late-30s through the 60s), always takes an interest in my brewing despite the fact that he no longer drinks. As I weighed out the hops, sanitized marbles (to weigh them down), and shoved them into a hop bag, he shared how much he hated the smell of hops.

What? Are you crazy? Hate the smell of hops? He explained that he liked the smell as they were added to the wort, but he had negative associations with the smell of plain dried hops. It seems that when he first went to work at Rainier (he was 14 years old), one of his jobs was to move hop bales from cold storage to the brewhouse for the brewers.

Just like today, the hops were bundled into 100 or 200 pound sewn burlap bales; at 14 my dad probably did not weigh much more than 90-100 pounds since he weighed about 120 when he enlisted in the Marines at the age of 19. At any rate, he had to wrestle the bales out of cold storage, transport them using a hand-truck through the brewery up an elevator into the brewhouse. It was exhausting work, and he could not get rid of the smell. I guess I can see where his dislike comes from... I still like it though.