Stir it up

As I mentioned in my last post I used a liquid yeast to ferment my latest brew. I had stayed away from liquid yeast for the last while because I didn't think I was getting the best from them. Coupled with this was the extra expense involved because liquid yeast strains are up to four times the cost of dried yeast sachets so I wanted to make the most of the investment. To this end I invested in some equipment which should help in the propagation of yeast from starter packs. Working in a lab brings to my attention all manner of equipment that is of great use for home brewing but might seem a little excessive to the home brewer who is not familiar with them. The simplest of this equipment is a selection of flasks that are well suited to yeast propagation, which when coupled with a magnetic stirring plate are a very effective way of persuading yeast to grow.

To see why these pieces of equipment are useful in propagating yeast we must venture into a little yeast biochemistry and metabolism for an explanation. Yeast are wonderful survival machines with the ability to survive in both aerobic and anaerobic environments. In an anaerobic environment such as brewers wort yeast use the sugars to produce energy with ethanol produced as a glorious waste product. If however yeast find themselves in an aerobic environment they respire much like us producing carbon dioxide and water. With this is mind we can see that it is very important that the environment that yeast finds itself in during beer fermentation must be anaerobic otherwise we would have the horrifying situation of no ethanol production, vast amounts of yeast cells and a strange liquid that couldn't really be described as beer. Thankfully, there is no way that brewers can accidentally aerate to such as extent that ethanol production is completely inhibited. However at the beginning of fermentation a certain degree of oxygenation is essential to set the yeast up for the work they have ahead. Before pitching, yeast is usually stored for a period during which it has to rely upon its own reserves to survive. These reserves are rapidly depleted during storage and yeast is in no position to effectively ferment beer when it is pitched. A ready supply of oxygen at the beginning of fermentation is necessary for the yeast to replenish itself and and produce sterols to make the cell wall permeable to the wort constituents. Also during this period there is an increase in the number of cells, as cell proliferation occurs at the expense of ethanol production in the aerobic environment. It is after this stage that things kick off and a vigorous fermentation ensues with lots of gas production accompanied by copious foam and ethanol, of course.

With this little bit of information in mind the objective of yeast propagation can be laid out. Liquid yeast for home brewing is in a depleted state, ready and waiting for a chance to grow. The number of cells in the average yeast pouch is insufficient to pitch, so a propagation step is needed. This step is essentially the same as the first aerobic stage of fermentation and this is where my equipment comes into use. Sterile aerated wort is placed in a flask and the depleted yeast pouch is added to the wort where it is continually mixed on the magnetic stirrer. The aim of this exercise is to produce as many yeast cells as possible to meet the pitching rate required for the gravity of the beer, which is easily done in an aerobic environment where the yeast will proliferate rather than produce ethanol. The mixing plate keeps the cells in contact with the wort ensuring maximum use of the sugar available, and also mixes the oxygen making it available to the yeast. Studies suggest that greater cell counts can be achieved with this method and it is also a hell of a lot handier than having to shake the flask every time you walk by it.

Generally a much faster start to fermentations can be had this way because the yeast is ready to go when pitched which has many advantages in the home brew environment, the main one of which is not having a big bucket of nutritious sweet wort laying about the place just screaming out for some opportunistic bug to come along and ruin. Once the fermentation kicks off the pH starts to drop rapidly creating an acidic environment that suits only the hardiest of bugs (and they sadly are quite common) and the increase production of ethanol contributes further to the inhospitable environment.

I'll leave it at that because the other great aspect to using liquid yeast is the complexity they bring to beers, which is often greater than that of dried strains. But this is a touchy subject with home brewers because some believe that dried strains are just as good. I don't agree, and that debate is worthy of its own post at a later time.

Industrial Stout

Every so often I get an urge to brew a dark beer. Usually this desire stems from a commercial beer that tickles me, and so it was with this stout. The impetus came from supping upon Black Pearl Stout brewed my Messrs. McMaguire here in Dublin. It is a proper stout with decent roasted and bitter notes and offers so much more than the nitrogentated stouts produced by the big brewers. As I said before, I don't really try to clone commercial beer, but I was certainly looking for the rich flavour that Black Pearl offered, so I upped the amount of roasted barley I usually add and threw in a measure of black malt, which may well be the undoing of this beer, and I also increased the bittering hops and made small aroma addition too. The flaked barley should give a voluminous frothy head, which is something I have always enjoyed about bottled Guinness and think every stout should have.

4.6 kg Maris Otter
600g Roasted Barley
500g Flaked Barley
250g Black Malt

Mashed at 68 C

12.5 Plato

45g 9% AA Target 60 mins
20g First Gold 20 mins

48 IBU

White Labs Irish Ale Yeast

It looked and smelled delicious during the whole process, particularly the black malt which had a distinct coffee aroma. Mashing in is one of my favourite steps during the brew because of the wholesome smell that develops when the malt hits the hot water. It smells so damn nutritious, but this mash was better then most because of the roasted grains. The boil was beautiful too with an almost cappuccino like foam forming on the top of the wort. I don't think I have come across a process that offers quite so much intrinsic worth to me. The brewing process itself is very fulfilling even without the invariably tasty end product.

I used a liquid yeast for the first time in quite a while having brewed a spell using only dried yeast. I nursed a yeast starter of Irish ale yeast all week long that I grew from an old vial from White Labs. I bought some equipment to aid me in this process which I'll post about soon, but the end result was a fabulous fermentation that started in a matter of hours and spilled from bottle I put the blow off tube into. Haven't had one of those in a while, though I did fill the carboy to the brim. The carboy is jet black with a fabulous tan head trapped inside bubbling away very satisfactorily. I'm looking forward to sampling this, and I can think of a few others who might be equally excited at the prospect.

A curious case of accidental cloning

I'm not really into cloning commercial beers when I brew my own, but I have attempted to replicate a style or more likely a particular flavour character that I enjoyed. I had this in mind when I brewed the golden ale that graces the top left of my blog. I was tired of the gassy, listless golden ales that were inflicted upon me in last autumn's CAMRA beer club delivery so took matters into my own hands with a decent golden ale packed full of flavour. The beer upon which I based the idea was Harpoon IPA, which isn't a golden ale in the same sense as the disappointing ones I had tried, but it had the colour and more importantly the glorious hop flavour I sort. So with this beer in mind I put together a recipe with pale malt and cara pils to keep the colour to a minimum and added to these a heroic amount of hops. All I planned to emulate from the Harpoon ale was the colour and hop flavour but thanks to an unexpected jump in my mash efficiency and more vigorous than normal boil, the original gravity strayed into the low side of the IPA scale. At the end of it all the beer came in stronger than expected and almost matched the IPA I had tenuously based in on.

My memory of Harpoon’s IPA was hazy, it being quite a while since I had tasted it, but the recent influx of American beer to our shores has brought this beer along with it. I spied it in Mc Hugh’s the other week and thought it a good opportunity to try it once again. I have fond memories of this beer because I visited the brewery a couple of years back and enjoyed one of the best brewery tours to date. It was very intimate with only three or four punters coupled with a very enthusiastic brewer who splashed the free samples about with gusto. The bottled beer is inevitably less fresh than the one I tried in the brewery, with a considerable drop off in hop character, but I still find it very tasty and hope to see it more readily available in Ireland. It was upon sampling this most recent bottle that I realised how much my home brewed beer tasted like the commercial brew. It packed the same hop flavour and slight residual sweetness, and the rocky foam clung beautifully to the glass. The commercial beer was perhaps a shade deeper, but they were otherwise quite comparable.

The funny thing is, if I had attempted to clone this beer from the outset I am sure I wouldn’t have got nearly as close to its flavour and character. More than likely I would have over thought the whole process trying to imagine what American brewers put in their beer and opted for Vienna or Munich malts and a dry hopping regime. This would have thrown the whole thing out of kilter, and highlights the difficulty of cloning beers. I'm happiest randomly putting my own recipes together, and this is one of the very best things about brewing at home.

A Tale of Two Porters

I love a good porter, and the arrival of a new one on the Irish market is always very welcome, so it was with great excitement that I opened my first bottle of Sam Adam's Holiday Porter. This beer had come highly recommended from The Beer Nut who really knows and loves his dark beer but it had taken me some time to track it down.

A soon as the wonderful tan foam had formed there could be no doubt that it was an American porter. American brewers' use of Munich and other rich malts makes for an unmistakable aroma, and the flavour was American all the way too, with rich roast and perhaps a some hops. There's a little coffee and dark chocolate in there and the mouthfeel is deeply satisfying. Most porters are slightly heavy on the ABV, perhaps as a way of harking back to original days of porter in the 19th century when they would have been substantial brews, and this one is no different packing 5.8% ABV.

I am spoiled tonight because as the title of the post suggests, there are two porters in the offing. The second one is Station Porter and makes up part of my quarterly CAMRA real ale delivery. It is brewed by Warwick Brewing Co. in Gloucestershire and is a traditional real ale in the sense that it is bottle conditioned and completely flat compared to its American cousin. It took quite some effort to coax a head from the pour and the considerably lower carbonation makes for a difficult comparison between the two, but there can be no doubt that the English porter is more organic. It has distinct yeast character, with dark fruits and solvent, and more chocolate malt character without the richness of the Holiday Porter. It is still very enjoyable and resembles my home brewed porters which I generally brew with standard brown and chocolate malt. Once again this porter sticks to tradition with an ABV of 6.1%, and the alcohol is more evident, however it has plenty of residual extract for some sweetness and full mouthfeel.

Much as it pains me, the Americans have probably won this round, and I think there may well be a healthy measure of Munich malt in my next homebrew porter.

Beer Hunting

After a tip off on the ICB forum I made haste to Mc Hugh's off license to grab some much anticipated beers. I was expecting the Sierra Nevada Early Spring Beer and the Brooklyn Brewery's East India Pale Ale, but got the very welcome added bonus of stumbling upon O Hara's celebration stout, which I had tried and failed to locate previously, and Sam Adam's Holiday Porter which an esteemed fellow beer fanatic has informed me is absolutely tops. While there I also spotted some Old Scratch Amber Lager from the Flying Dog Brewery and so stuffed it in the basket. I am not a fan of amber beers really, but Flying Dog's IPA is a very robust brew without any skimping on the hops, so I imagine this brew will pack considerable flavour. I have similar hopes for the Brooklyn's East India Pale Ale because their lager is outstanding with plenty of hops and a really decent malt character. I have no idea what to expect form the Sierra Nevada ESB but the description on the label seems promising; it boasts of a hybrid of English and American hops along with the use of English Maris Otter pale malt. I use Maris Otter for most of my home brewing and know it to be a satisfying backbone to any ale, so this beer seems very promising too. All in all it was a great day's beer shopping. With the influx of American beer over the last while I think I can expect to have similarly exciting days in the near future.

The Old Man

Our family moved to Dublin in 1990, and my Father gasped for
a decent pint of beer for around 13 of the intervening 18 years.
The beer scene in Ireland up to very recently has been little more than a showcase for mass produced ultra marketed blandness. I was born in Surrey near London, and for all his life up to moving to Ireland my Dad enjoyed all that the British brewing tradition had to offer. The move to Ireland must have been catastrophic for his love of decent beer because there was literally none to be had in the Ireland of the 1990's. I had little understanding of his plight until I discovered craft beer myself, and shudder at the thought of being in a country where no beer of any character is available. He is not as evangelical about beer as I am, and as a result I came to discover craft beer by myself and alerted him to the few craft breweries then in operation. One in particular had resurrected an old style Irish stout which packed considerable flavour and this renewed his faith in what beer could be, and more recently an Irish take on the pale ale style, which is the most satisfying Irish beer on the market today.

The next move towards his beer redemption was my early forays into home brewing. I recall an Irish ale kit as my first attempt which we put in a pressure barrel and drank together over Christmas. On mature reflection is was awful (we bunged a kilo of sugar in it...), but we had brewed it ourselves and it was on tap. I tried a few more kits, but swiftly moved on to extract and then to all grain brewing. Our taste in beer seems to be similar; always leaning towards the bitter/hoppy end of things, so my home brew tends to reflect this with often an indecent amount of hops and plenty of flavour.

When I think of great drinking experiences I am drawn to the pints of cask ale accompanied by ploughman's salads in the pubs around my Grandfather's house in Surrey. While I love spending time in the few select Dublin pubs that serve craft beer, I am always drawn to these memories because the beer and food go so very well together and there is nothing strained about it. In Dublin you can't help but adopt a siege mentality, knowing full well that you are surrounded on all sides by bland beer, and if you were to leave the pub serving craft beer it would be quite a trek to find a similar one.

We have attended a few beer festivals, most notably the GBBF last year, and the Belfast Beer Festival the year before which I am grateful for because none of my other close friends and family are remotely interested in beer. Each quarter we split the CAMRA beer club selection that I get shipped to Dublin. Hopefully this goes some way to satisfying his love of English ales.