Barlewine

One of the things I wanted to do this year while I was on vacation was brew up a barleywine to celebrate myself and Julia's anniversary. The idea is that I'll be able to ferment it for a couple months, bottle it, and store it away so that we can open a bottle every year on our anniversary. Since this beer is being made to age, I hopped it up pretty aggressively, and made it out to be a high alcohol content. Since I have my cooler now and can do all-grain, I wanted the beer to be (mostly) all-grain. Of course, there are limits to how much my cooler can handle, so I made my recipe 18 lbs of grain, and 2 lbs of malt extract. I'm also thinking I'll put some maple syrup in there after the initial fermentation calms down to boost it a bit more. The original gravity was supposed to be 1.119, but I ended up at 1.108, so with some of the things that happened today I lost about 2% of my final ABV that I'd like to make up. As it is without any further adjustments, I should end up around 10.5%, but I'm shooting more for 12%. This will make it the strongest beer I've done yet.

Because this is such a big beer, I knew I needed a good yeast and a lot of it. I chose to use WLP001 (California Ale) for it's clean flavors and high alcohol tolerance. Rather than spending a lot of time and effort building up a big starter for the beer, I decided to make a stout for my starter and wash the yeast. The idea was that I would bottle the stout the day before brewing the barleywine, boil and cool some water to sterilize it, mix the water in, and pour the yeast left on the bottom of the fermenter into jars. After sitting a bit, the trub in the jars would settle to the bottom, and I could pour the yeast off the top into a second sterilized jar. I'm not sure how good of a job I really did, but I ended up with a few very full pint jars of yeast, and one not so full jar. You can see two jars in the picture. Using the Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator, I determined that I needed about half a pint jar to properly ferment the beer. Since the jars are just a bit over half full of yeast, I decided to use an entire jar's worth after pouring the clear liquid off the top.

There were a few things that I took away from today since it was my first really big brew. First is to be prepared for my mash. I have some PH strips that I use to measure my mash PH and make sure it's in acceptable ranges. Today my mash was very low, and I found out that one way to raise the PH is with baking soda. Of course, we didn't have any, so 5 minutes into the mash I had to run to the grocery store and buy some. I added a half a teaspoon, mixed up the mash really well, and it took it to a more normal range.

The second thing I discovered is that my pot just isn't big enough to handle that much liquid. One of the reasons I got so much less of an original gravity than I anticipated was that I didn't get nearly the efficiency I was anticipating from my mash. The other was that the pot foamed over when it started boiling, and I ended up getting sugar-concentrated foam all over my stove. My pot was near full when I started the boil, so I'm attributing that to the boil-over. The reason the pot was so full was that I mashed with a full 5 gallons of water, and then had almost another 4 gallons to sparge with (I still think I didn't sparge with enough water to really get most of the fermentable sugars out either.) I got slightly over 2.5 gallons of first runnings out of my mash tun, and with the other 4 gallons that left me with near 7 gallons to boil. My pot's capacity is only 7 gallons, so I ended up having to put one gallon in a separate pot, and slowly feed the extra wort into the boil kettle as I boiled off liquid. I don't know if this is even an acceptable technique, but it's the best I could think of.

Finally I learned that all-grain brewing takes a lot longer than extract or partial mash. In order to boil off enough liquid to end up with about 5 gallons in the fermenter, I ended up boiling for close to 3 hours. Of course, I didn't have enough time to do all of my boil and cool down the beer before the class I had to teach today, so once again improvising, I boiled down to a little over 6 gallons before I had to leave, turned off the heat and covered the pot, and left to go teach my class. When I came back, I brought the pot back to a boil, and started my normal hop additions. Fortunately I wasn't planning on adding even the bittering hops for more than 60 minutes, so I think I was able to do this with minimal impact on the final beer.

We'll have to see how this one turns out, but if all goes well I won't even know for another year or so. If I get to 12%, at roughly 120 IBUs, this is going to be a big, hoppy monster.

- Adam

Revisited: Sierra Nevada 2009 Bigfoot

So what happens when you let a beer sit for 6 months to a year? Well, generally speaking probably some pretty terrible things. Beers with lower alcohol content tend not to hold up well, but given the right beer with a high enough alcohol content (around 8% or more) it becomes possible. The goal is to gain complexity not found in the fresh brew, and a better blending of flavors. Well, I have a bottle of 2009 Bigfoot from back in February that I'm ready to try out and see what has happened.

The first sniff pouring the beer in the glass revealed a strong fruity scent, which dropped off fairly quickly. Underneath is a roasted malty quality similar to caramel. There's a touch of apple cider as well. Mostly it's got the caramel sweetness to it that I didn't feel came out as much originally.

The appearance is identical to the fresh version, so I'll skip over it.

At the first sip I got a fruity sweetness on the tip of my tongue for just a moment, cherry or apples, but it quickly went away. The hop bitterness took over on the back of the tongue, and was followed by a warmth and a somewhat grassy aftertaste. On the second sip I noticed that the bitterness was more mellow and rounded than I previously remember it being, but I found the flavor slightly astringent. There was a dark chocolate flavor just around the bitterness that I didn't think mixed well. I noticed that if I didn't hold the beer in my mouth, the unpleasant flavors subsided. The fruit loop flavor I had noticed in it with the previous bottle was gone.

The feel of the beer was pretty similar, although I felt the warmth came through more than before, and the carbonation was significantly reduced. Instead of the prickling sensation I had previously mentioned in this beer, there was just a mild tingle on the tongue.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. After 8 months or so, I was hoping that it would make the beer much better, but I'm actually not enjoying it as much as I did when it was fresh. Granted I didn't exactly keep it temperature consistent, and the flavors have changed quite a bit. However I guess I'm not appreciating the changes as much. I think Dan has a bottle of the 09/09/09 that he's putting aside for us to try in 2012, so that will be an interesting experiment with a beer that's designed to be aged.

- Adam

Moylan's Old Blarney

Wow, has it really been almost a month?  Time flies when you're engaged.  I guess it's about time for a new review.  Generally I try to stay pretty positive about beers, looking for the good qualities of it rather than focusing on the negative.  However, sometimes you just find a brew that rubs you the wrong way.  Despite the fact that so far I've liked the Barleywine style, and this brew has won numerous awards, Moylan's Old Blarney Barleywine was just one of those beers.  I've noticed that there are some beer geeks out there who just love hops.  The more hop flavor you can pack into a beer, the beer they think it is.  This beer was definitely brewed for those people, and at this stage in my life, I'm not one of them.  I generally avoid IPAs, or any beer that boasts its strong hoppy flavors.  In the end, it comes down to bitterness.  Although hops are important as a preservative in beer and to kill harmful bacteria, one of it's primary functions is to impart bitterness to a brew.  They also can have a drastic impact on the aroma, giving beers the flowery, earthy, pine, or other scents that can be so attractive in a beer.  However, I think sometimes craft beer lovers especially can forget the other ingredients - malted barley, yeast, and water, that are equally important to the flavor and smell of the beer.  I could be wrong, but in my opinion all the ingredients have their own special role to play, and should be balanced against each other to form a quality brew.

And that's enough of my ranting - on to the brew.

The beer poured a hazy brownish-orange color, and sported a small off-white head that dissipated quickly to a thin layer of bubbles.  There was some lacing on the glass from this remnant, but it didn't stick around for long.

The smell was strongly, strongly hoppy, and had a medicinal quality to it that I didn't favor much.  The hops had a pine quality to them, and underneath sat the sickly-sweet smell of alcohol.  It mixes together to have a bit of a caramel smell to it, but cheap caramel.  Dan mentioned that it reminded him of the smell of cow-tails (the candy, not off the animal).

The taste was somewhat lackluster.  It had caramel and alcohol notes to it at first, but was strongly bitter.  The bitter flavor stuck in my mouth, and just wouldn't go away.  There was a metallic quality to it as well, like taking a big swig of the aftertaste I so often complain about with certain Dogfish Head brews.  There doesn't seem to be much of an effort to hide the alcohol in this brew, other than by covering it with unpleasant bitterness.  It's harsh, and hard to get down.

The body is medium, and the carbonation is mild.  Still, I had a hard time focusing on anything but the taste.  Maybe if it had been heavier I would have enjoyed it more.

I couldn't do anything but sip this beer.  Every bit of it was a struggle to get down.  I wouldn't say there was an enjoyable moment to the entire glass.  Dan couldn't finish his, and I didn't really want to.  I did, but it wasn't worth the effort.  I don't really know what else to say about it.  If you love hoppy beers, maybe you should give it a shot.  I know it's one I won't be trying again, and this beer alone is enough to make me skeptical of trying anything else Moylan's has to offer.  I really don't see how this brew managed to win as many medals as it has.

- Adam

Sierra Nevada Bigfoot 2009

It's barleywine season apparently. The last trip over to State Line with Dan showed a slew of barleywine style beers and other various craft brews. There were too many to pick up all of them, and they had run out of a few I wanted, but I did manage to pick up a few interesting selections. One of these was the 2009 Bigfoot, Sierra Nevada's barleywine. I had tried the 2008 25th anniversary Bigfoot last year, but apparently never got to the review. Looking at my notes though, there's a lot of similarities with this year's version, to the point where a seperate review would be redundant.

For those that don't know, a barleywine is a strong beer, often 8-12% alcohol. It's generally brewed during the colder months of the year, and can often be aged due to the high alcohol content and high level of hops. The style originated in England, and was known for it's fruity characteristics. For more information on the style, there's a good article by Michael Jackson (not the singer) here. Sierra Nevada puts their version out annually, and each year has a different label to mark it.

The beer poured a clear, deep reddish-brown. It supported a frothy 2-finger creamy caramel color head that had moderate retention, and left a decent bit of lacing on the glass.

The aroma was grassy but sweet, and a hop scent lurking underneath. There were fruity notes as well, reminding myself and Dan of apple skins, and I thought I detected some cherry at first. I also had a sensation of caramel with the aroma. The smell, however, was not all that strong, and I had to stick my nose nearly in the glass to really get a feel for what was going on.

The taste is of caramel on the front of the tongue at first, followed by a strong hop bitterness on the back half of the tongue as it's swallowed. As the bitterness of the aftertaste kicked in, Dan and I both briefly noticed the taste of fruit loops of all things. With additional sips, I began to notice the fruityness (possibly prune) that existed on the tip of the tongue, and just a bit of spice around the mouth. The aftertaste that developed was similar to the aftertaste of a cup of coffee. The one thing that I didn't notice much in the taste was the high level of alcohol, although as the glass progressed I certainly could feel it.

The beer had a moderate body, with a moderately strong level of prickly carbonation. It left a thin coating on the teeth, but wasn't long lasting. At first the beer had a creaminess to it from the head, which was actually quite pleasant and helped offset the bitterness, but as the beer progressed the head dissipated, leaving a much sharper sensation in the mouth. There was very little warmth to it given it's strength, just a little bit around the mouth after swallowing. It was also nicely balanced between wet and dry, not too far to one side or the other.

All in all, the drinkability of this beer is too high for it's strength. The bitterness is a little much for my tastes, although not overwhelming. It is however a beer that's meant to be sipped, not chugged. It's incredibly flavorful, and although it's a bit harsh, it has the potential to be aged, which should alter the character nicely. I'm planning on saving a bottle or two for a while, and seeing how it is in another year. It's absolutely an enjoyable drink, and one that I hope to be able to pick up every year.

-Adam