Judging a Collaboration Homebrew Competition

The judging necessitates

A few month's back Shawn Burch, a fellow brewer, came up with a cool idea for a competition - a Collaboration Homebrew Competition.  The way it was designed to work is that interested participants would be randomly pair up with another brewer.  They would then get together, design a beer and brew it together.  The end product would then be judged with the winners taking home bragging rights in addition to some nice prizing including the "Pimp Paddle".

I volunteered to arrange and host the judging half which took place at my house a few nights back.  I can tell you that forcing myself to start reviewing the odd beer here and there for this site was really great prep.  The last time I judged I felt less then confident about what I was doing, this time I had no problem being descriptive, identifying what I was tasting and offering feedback when needed.   This is good considering the fact that a few of my brewing compatriots and myself are planning on becoming BJCP certified.

My score sheets

In talking with some of the brewers on hand I found there were a few methods of collaboration that went into this.  Several groups did straight collaborations and brewed a single 5 gallon batch.  Others brewed a 10 gallon batch with each participant taking home 5 gallons to ferment, they then selected either the better version or blended them together.  Finally one group brewed separately then came together and blended for the final beer.   As someone who enjoys concept of collaboration brewing it was nice to see the various methods that people came up with.

In total we ended up with seven entries, this was a little surprising as we had enough interest to round out several additional teams.  I also assembled a crack team of seven judges (including myself) and two and a half stewards to help keep the judging blind.  As far as the judges I felt we had a great range of judges from full BJCP certified, to people with more then enough knowledge to be BCJP, to a couple of guys who have never judged before.

The Final Four

I divided the group of judges into two panels and separated them in two areas of my house.  As some of the judges were also participants I instructed the stewards Eric (OC Eric) and Don (BackHouse Brew) to make sure that no one judged their own beer. In the first round I judged four beers with Daniel (beancurdturtle) and Steve (SteveM) while Shawn (oleolsson), Robert (Brew Captain), Joel (JJkings52) and Joey (PunkMonk) judged three beers.  Judged and scored using BCJP score sheets each group was instructed to advance their favorite two beers to the finals.  My group selected an American Brown and a "Belguim" to join a Wit Beer and a Dubbel in the main event.

For the finals we regrouped the judges which included zero competitors and was made up of Steve, Joey, Robert and myself. Robert suggested arranging it so that all beer could be poured at the same time so that we could debate which one was our favorite.  To do this I brought out fresh taster glasses including the four Brewing TV tastes I won by hobbit-fing John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff a few months back.

After sampling all the different beers we determine the winners.  I swore the tasting panel to secrecy so that they could be announced at the AHP Anniversary Party.  Fortunately with the magic of scheduled posting this post did go live till then so here are the Winners

3rd Place Goes to

Shawn Olsson and Cesar Alfaro
(Deconstructed Belgian Cream Ale)

2nd Place Goes to
Shawn Burch and Daniel Vaughn
(Belgian Dubbel)

1st Place and the Pimp Paddle Goes to
Vince Bunting and Mark Laun
(American Brown Ale)
 

Sour Barrel Ale Project: Update 1

Transferring the beer to the barrel

Two weeks after the initial brewday for the Sour Barrel Ale Project, I headed back over to Shawn's house to help him transfer 65 plus gallons of beer into the used wine barrel.  50 gallons came from the beast of a fermenter we had built out of a water drum. The other 15 had been fermented in 3 5 gallon buckets to allow us to top off the 65 gallon wine barrel.  After brewday the project became known as the Sour Seven as it took seven of us to brew it up.

A few details on the barrel that I didn't originally cover.  Shawn got it (and its sister) from Hogshead Wine.  It's a pretty old barrel and has seen a lot of use with primarily red wines.  To clean and seal Shawn filled it up with sanitizer and kept it filled to keep it sealed. 

To fill the barrel we re-plumbed Shawn's pump attaching one end with a racking cane.  We started by filling the barrel with the 15 side gallons and about 3 odd gallons of a Brettanomyces (bruxellensis and claussenii) starter Shawn had been working on since brew day.  Once everything was emptied we popped the top of the beast and started transferring it.  In total it took us over 45 minutes to fill the barrel.  Not wanting to fill the barrel completely to the top we were left with around 7 gallons of yeast and trub of which we collected 2 gallons into 2 sanitized gallon jugs.  Collecting the slurry took some thinking but in the end we scoop it out with a sanitized cereal container.

The gravity for the 50 gallon batch ended up around 1.013 with the gravity of the 15 gallons and brett starter being high enough to bring the total up to 1.017 when we pulled a sample from the filled barrel.  In addition to the brett starter Shawn also put together a sour starter that he'll let sour for the next couple of months before using it to top off the barrel.

Cheers

-SNB

BaseCamp Dessert aka Bourbon-Vanilla

Breakfast on the Left
Dessert on the Right
Clear shift in color

Over the weekend I kegged up my two beers that started their lives as a split batch of porter.  They started this journey back in March as a 10 gallon batch of porter brewed specifically for SCHF.  Right out of the gate the Breakfast version of the beers I've been calling my BaseCamp series got over a pound of maple syrup but it wasn't until secondary that the other beer, name Dessert, started its story.

As I mentioned last time the base grain bill was inspired by Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter, Dessert represents a slight variation on that original beer.  The beer started this process when I added 4 vanilla beans (the processing of which I botched) to secondary and set it aside to age and meld flavors.

After several weeks in secondary it was time to keg it up and finish the process.  During transfer I tasted some of the vanilla porter that it had become along the way, frankly I was blown away by how much I enjoyed it.  The vanilla was up front and a part of the beer but not in an overpowering way.  When I do this beer again I need to be careful on how I handle the bean remembering that the bulk of the vanilla guts went down the drain in the first attempt. 

Needed to get it transferred quick
so I transferred the at the same
time using two sets of equipment

When I came to add the bourbon I reviewed some notes of Denny's and found he used around 10 ml of bourbon per pint of beer.  For five gallons this came out to be was 400 ml or 13.52 oz which I rounded to 14oz.  For the bourbon I sent my wife to the store to pick some up for me, she came home with some Makers Mark.  This differs from the Jim Beam Black Bourbon that Denny uses but I've used it before and it's Eric from AHP's favorite brand.

I've been tasting the final blend over the last few days as I've been carbonating it and I've been digging the flavor balance.  I recently read an article by Denny "Recipe Formulation: A Road Map to Good Beer" in the latest issue of Zymurgy.  In it he details the process on how he created the recipe for this beer.  It started as his attempt to replicate the flavors he was getting from barrel aged beers without it touching a barrel.  I can see this when I taste the beer but would shy away from saying it's completely successful.  Then again this is my version not his so it could be an unfair judgement. Never-less it's a pretty damn tasty beer.

Now the update I know you've been waiting for - BaseCamp Breakfast aka Maple-Bacon-Coffee!  When we left this beer I had jammed a pound of oven cooked bacon into the secondary fermenter to dry bacon my beer.  3 weeks later the beer had taken on a slight bacon-ness in both flavor and aroma. At the time I'd been worried about getting the bacon out of the fermenter, fortunately the beer had broken down the bacon and it slid right out.  To finish the beer off I added coffee and a very slight amount of liquid smoke.  For the coffee I had to change to a different method as I lacked the time to to a cold extraction.  For a quick coffee boost I asked Bonnie to pick me up some espresso from Starbucks that I tossed straight in the keg.  Taste wise it is ok but long term I will still lean towards cold extracted coffee for beers that will be around longer then a weekend.

If you're hitting up Southern California Homebrew Fest this weekend try to stop on by both the Brewcommune and AHP Brewclub booths to sample both versions of BaseCamp Series 1.

Cheers

- SNB

BaseCamp Breakfast aka Maple-Bacon-Coffee

The bacon

I'll be kegging my SCHF Split Batch Porter this weekend so I thought I would present some updates.  If you recall from my original post I set out to brew 10 gallons of beer to split and create two different beers.  The next two posts will cover moving the beer to secondary and kegging them up.   In each post I will talk about what was done to both beers and will provide the recipe if you only wanted to make one version of it.  The first recipe I will provide is for BaseCamp Breakfast aka Maple-Bacon-Coffee.

Bacon and beer, two traditional male stereotypes but could they work together?  It is a question several breweries have set out to answers.  I first read about bacon in beer in Brew Your Own when I was first getting into brewing.  They highlighted San Juan Brewing Co in Washington as an early pioneer of the concept which I have not had the chance to try.  I have gotten a chance to try two bacon beers on opposite sides of good, Rogue's disaster in a bottle Voodoo Bacon Maple Ale and Funky Buddha's wonderful Maple Bacon Coffee Porter. 

The beans

The premise behind adding bacon to beer is to add cooked bacon to secondary like you would hops. You want to cook off as much of the fat as possible so that you don't kill the head retention on the beer, something that fat does.  The technique that I used was to take a pound of thick cut bacon and cook it in my oven at 350 for an hour.   I used cooling racks over a broil pan so that the fat could drip down.  Once is was cooked I took paper towels and dabbed the surface to remove any additional fat.  I wrapped in a towel and set it aside.   If I did it again I'm going to cook it the same day I transfer and not before.

On transfer day I stuffed the bacon in a sanitized bag and submerged it in sanitizer.  I then jammed the sack into the secondary fermenter and racked the beer over it.  I have a bad feeling that it is going to be a pain to get out after kegging. The only thing that remains to be done is to brew up a batch of cold brewed coffee extract to add at kegging and toss in another 8oz of maple syrup.

Resting until kegging

The other beer half of the porter is on its way to becoming BaseCamp Dessert aka Bourbon-Vanilla.  BaseCamp Dessert as well as the base grain bill was inspired by Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. I put the recipe together by scrolling through about 89 pages of posts on Northern Brewer's forum to make sure I collected the best version. Let that be an insight to how I come up with recipes, I read - a lot.  I look for ingredients I'm familiar with, interesting ideas and most importantly feedback on how the recipe turned out.  This is also one of the reasons I like to post links back to where I'm looking at recipes, so that you can get a feel for what's out there,

The first step in creating this was to source and prep vanilla beans. I picked up four vanilla beans from Whole Foods, two from Uganda and two from Papua New Guinea. To prepare them I took them and sliced them into sections and scraped out the filling. This is where I screwed up pretty big as I've never worked with them before.  When the directions called to scrape of the fillings I thought it meant to remove it, so I sent most of the good stuff down the drain.  I realized this toward the end so hopefully I'll get some flavor out of what I left behind.  I then tossed the beans into two clean and sanitized yeast vials with some tequila to extract the flavor. When it was time to transfer to secondary I dumped the entire contents of both vials into the transferred beer.  

The only thing left to do on this treatment is add some quality bourbon upon kegging by just pouring it in. No spirit soaked chips on this one my friends.  I'll cover all that next week.  One last thing, on the original post I mentioned plans for harvesting and washing the yeast for a house strain of WLP007.  I didn't do this because I didn't really like how the fermentation went starting with the starter.

Cheers

-SNB

Sour Barrel Ale Project

The wine barrel from Hogshead Wine

I know I promised an update on my SCHF Split Batch Porter which is well on its way to being BaseCamp Breakfast and BaseCamp Dessert.  I promise I will do an update on them in a week or so when I keg the finished products.  This post will cover a far more exciting project – barrel aging.

A few months ago my brewing mentor Shawn got his hands on a couple of used 65 gallon wine barrels from a local winery.  The idea surfaced to fill one them with a red ale and then pitch a large culture of bugs to create a barrel aged sour ale.  The problem became filling the barrel as 65 gallons is a lot of beer to produce.   Shawn decided to launch a thread on the AHP Brew Club forum to recruit additional brewers.  In total 7 brewers participated.

That's a damn big fermenter

The next question in the fill became how to conduct the primary, this was a question that I had an answer too.  A little over a year ago I bought a 55 gallon food grade water drum from my friend and Mead Master Chad.   My reason for buying it was that one day I wanted to do a group brew and use it as a massive primary.  Over a year later that day had arrived and I offered it up to the group. The water drum was in great shape and only needed a light cleaning to get it into shape.  

At the beginning of April we met at the shop to outline the project and determine the style guidelines we would brew to.  I mentioned it was a red ale that we decided to lightly hop (under 20) with a targeted OG around 1.060-1.075.  It’s a huge range I know, but will even out around the up 1.060 range when combined.  We next settled on a brew date of April 15th for everyone to brew in the morning then meet at Shawn’s house for drop off and combining.  In addition to the 50 gallons we planned a group fermenting we set aside about 15 gallons to ferment by itself for topping off the barrel.  In total the range on production was between 26 and 5 gallons with Shawn brewing the bulk with 26 over a very long brewday that used every piece of equipment he had. 

The day before the brew I went over to Shawn’s house with the water drum so that we could study it to see what we needed to do to convert it from a sealed water drum to a massive primary fermenter.  There were two ports on the lid what upon closer examination turned out to contain 2 inch threaded end caps.  After unscrewing one we headed off to Lowe's to build a blow off tub.  The blow off adapter is made of three part which reduced it from 2 inches to 1.  We then took about 5 feet of 1 inch ID vinyl tubing and hose clamped it to the adapter.  We ran the tub up and over the fermenter pulling it back to its sides and into a bucket (which will be filled with sanitizer) using blue bungee cords.

I opened this after the wort was combined

After the conversion I headed over to the shop to grab my grain and ran into two of my fellow brewers also buying grain for the next day.  After a quick comparison of recipes it was noted that my mash temperature was too low.  I had been in a rush to finish it and clearly had forgotten to make the adjustments.

Brewday itself will probably go down as one of my smoothest.  Not only did I set a brewhouse efficiency record of 80% but I was extremely productive as well.  Between in process cleaning I was also able to plant my remaining hops and mow the lawn.  

In about two weeks I plan on heading back to Shawn’s to help him transfer the beer from the fermenter drum to the barrel.  After that it is a short 12 month wait to the final project.  In the meantime Shawn and I will try to figure out a use for the other barrel.  Maybe a big stout? 

Cheers

-SNB

Beer Picture Gallery 1

Cool filter and my favorite beer

It's been over two weeks since my last post. Between my work schedule and Bonnie gearing up for trial my free time to do almost anything beer related has been zero.  I've got a couple of things that I want to post in the next few weeks such as an update on the Split Batch Porter which has been moved to secondary with 5 gallons getting dry hopped with bacon and another 5 getting some vanilla beans that I sort of messed up with.  Also this weekend I'm going to be brewing 11 gallons of a red ale that will be fermented in a 55 gallon water barrel before going into a red wine barrel at Shawn's house for souring and aging.

In the meantime I thought I would share some of my favorite beer-related pictures I've taken.  The bulk of the pictures come from my Untappd gallery.  Since I've downloaded app on my phone I've started taking pictures of almost all the beers I've been checking into some of which came out really cool. I tossed in a few brewing pictures for fun.

I hope you enjoy some beer porn

Cheers

-SNB

SNB can be CynicAle

Back in Dec

One of the other beers I might donate to SCHF depending on how my latest plan works out is SNB can be CynicAle.  Marshall helped me brew this beer way back in September.  It was based on a Northern Brewer Pro Series Kit for Cynic and was my first full all grain beer.  Instead of using the recommended yeast I subbed in my favorite farmhouse yeast American Farmhouse Blend (White Labs #WLP670) to guide it from saison to farmhouse.

Unfortunately the beer has been on a journey all its own.  When kegged it 4 months ago it had a pretty decent flavor but an odd slickness to it.  Shawn suggested that it might not be done yet and to set it aside for a while, which I did.  I would occasionally taste it and while the slickness seemed to fad the Brettanomyces really started to dominate.  While the exact strain of Brettanomyces used in WLP670 is not released in a beer Daniel did with it he says the flavors that have started to shine through are very reminiscent of Brettanomyces bruxellensis.

The pink foam

When I last checked it, it had turned very dark and almost muddy in clarity - a great departure from when I'd had it back in December while waxing Imperial Rhino Stout 2011. It was also very carbonated, despite not having been hooked up to a CO2 tank in months.  The flavor was completely different and while not bad, I think Daniel used the word interesting when he tasted it, it was missing something. One trick I've seen used here and there to add flavor dimensions to beer is to add fruit and give the yeast additional time to ferment.  I decided why not and asked my wife to pick up a bag of frozen fruit blend from the store.

Improvised blow-off

When I brewed the split batch porter I pulled out the frozen fruit and dropped it into some warm sanitizer. I then grabbed the keg of SNB can be CynicAle out of the cellar to cleaned and sanitize the top.  I also start the process of releasing the pressure from the keg.  Once it was ready opened the top to find a pretty sizable and fully head on the top.  I then dropped in the fruit... The fruit must have released some additional carbonation as about 3 seconds after I dropped it in the head turned pink and started rising out of the keg.  I quickly put the sanitized top back on and cleaned off the surface with some sanitizer.  Knowing that it would be fermenting for a while I fashioned a blow off tube out of a party tap attached to an air quick disconnect and a flask of sanitized water.   It was fun to watch it continue to degas while I continued on the porter.  I'll check in its progress in about a month or two to see it's worthy of representing SNB Brewing in public.

Cheers

-SNB