Bringing that Belgian funk from Brooklyn town

This bottle of Local 1 has spent the best part of a year in my beer fridge. Not for any reasons relating to maturation and such, merely a matter of waiting for the right moment. Monday evening last week fitted the bill; it had been a mother of a Monday in the workplace and I had some tasty cheese and cold cuts left over from the weekend. The popping of a cork from a generous bottle of beer such as this is always very satisfying. The hazy golden beer eagerly filled the glass only to retreat rapidly again leaving little foam, but the lively effervescence brought a distinct Belgian funk to the nose along with a malt sweetness that translates into a honey sweetness on the tongue.

I suppose this beer is a take on the Belgian Tripel - the label speaks of raw sugar additions from Mauritius which serve to thin out the body and make the beer very drinkable despite the hefty 9% abv. It works very well in this sense. The '100% bottle refermentation' make this a lively beer and I imagine the cork cage has its work cut out containing the pressure. The carbonation sits nicely, and carved through the heavy cheese and other oily treats I had with it.

As an aside, you might have noticed yet another dark, flash washed out, shadow strewn picture of a beer bottle accompanying this post. It's not ideal, but at the time of drinking I just want to get the beer in the glass and enjoy it. I usually throw down a few notes, but breaking out the camera and taking a picture often ruins the moment for me. Does anyone else who indulges in this beer blogging lark feel the same, or am I just shamefully uncommitted?

Death in the northern hemisphere

Summer is reluctantly giving way to autumn in Dublin. The weather is still pleasantly mild, but the state of my wife's once glorious sun flowers tell a different story. They are sorry sight but the only clear sign to me that we are careening towards less temperate weather. To my mind it isn't quite time enough to break out the winter warming beer and don't really feel like committing something dark, rich and alcoholic to a glass is fully justified.

I made do the other night with something rich and alcoholic, yet crisp and full of  fresh hop character. Unsurprisingly from the West coast of America, Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale is very bitter and bursting with hop flavour. It is satisfyingly full bodied and thanks to all those floral, spicy hops it holds onto rich foam all the way to the bottom of the glass - a characteristic that always pleases me greatly in any beer. Plenty of sticky body and malt holds its own against the hop onslaught resulting in a well balanced, all too easily drinkable warming ale. A few more of these will do the job nicely until such time I can happily hit the the more traditional cockle warmers.

How to make your taste buds disappear completely

Damn this stuff is bitter. I mean coat the top of your mouth make you pull a funny face, still in the back of your throat an hour later bitter. It makes even the most intense American hop bomb taste like a pint of mild. It's hard to see the point of it. I read a while back that plenty of rich malts were used to balance the intense hopping in this lightweight beer, and at the time this intrigued me. Was it possible to add that much hops to a beer of a mere 3.5% and make it any way balanced? The answer's no. The hops are so intense they burn, and the body gives up long before it has a chance to contribute anything. It does smell amazing though, and the pungent hops would make you think that you are in for a big heavy hitting alcoholic hop bomb.

Care should be taken when drinking this beer. After I finished the bottle I was ravenous despite having my dinner shortly before. The intense bitterness stimulated my appetite ferociously, and I found myself raiding the fridge before bed for just about anything I could get my hands on. Not one for the diet conscious.

I didn't enjoy it, but as an experiment this beer is superb. It highlights everything that is right with the new breed of craft brewer at work today.

Hardness and alkalinity Part 1

Water hardness and alkalinity are some of the trickier aspects of brewing to get a grip of but the benefits and improvements it can bring to your brewing make it well worth looking into. Suitable water improves every step of the brewing process. I already outlined the importance of calcium in a previous post. This post is a guide to assessing the hardness of your water supply and its suitability for mashing. First we need to get some definitions straight as it is these phrases that often cause the most confusion:

Hardness: This is essentially the concentration of calcium and magnesium in the water. It is divided into two further sets of terms:

Permanent hardness also called non-carbonate hardness. This cannot be removed from the water by simple means. It is made up from calcium and magnesium compounds such as calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.

Temporary hardness also called carbonate hardness or alkalinity. This can be removed through the various treatments that brewers use, and is responsible for the lime-scale on household appliances. It is made up of calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate.

The significance of the distinction is seen when we consider what the two types of hardness bring to brewing. Carbonate hardness increases mash pH by neutralising the natural acids contributed by the mash, dragging the mash pH away and above the 5.4 that is optimal for malt amylases to work. Non carbonate hardness lowers mash pH and is beneficial to meeting the optimal mash pH.

The contrasting action of these differing forms of hardness leads us to another important term in brewing water chemistry: residual alkalinity. This is the net effect of the water hardness on the mash, and the extent to which the water will have to be treated to meet requirements. For most Irish water supplies carbonate hardness will out-weigh non carbonate hardness and the water will require a degree of treatment to lower the alkalinity.

Water reports state water hardness in 'equivalents' of calcium carbonate or bicarbonate. This is necessary in order to compare the different types of hardness in the water on a equal footing. When compared in this way it is seen that 3.5 equivalents of permanent calcium hardness or 7.5 equivalents of magnesium hardness is required to offset the pH raising effects of 1 equivalent of carbonate hardness. It is clear from these figures that carbonate hardness is very potent at increasing mash pH. If your water supply is low in carbonate hardness it might be possible to offset the residual alkalinity through the addition of calcium sulphate or calcium chloride, which is likely to be added at any rate in order to increase the calcium concentration to a more suitable level. However, if the carbonate hardness is very high, adding calcium to the water will not be sufficient to overcome the residual alkalinity and the carbonate hardness must be removed.

In my next post I will provide some simple methods for estimating alkalinity, and how to remove it.

Bigger than planned

I haven't brewed nearly enough over the last few months. It was time to remedy this with a bang, so last weekend I planned to brew an American IPA. It got away from me a bit  thanks to some overly zealous hopping (is that possible in an American IPA?) and a better than expected extraction of sugar from the mash.

25 litres
5 kg Maris Otter
2 kg Munich malt
500g Cara Munich

35g Galena 13% AA 60 minutes
25g Centennial 10.5% AA  20, 10, 5, 0 minutes

OG 1.078

60 IBU estimated

Saf 05

I gave my mash tun a serious workout and it held up admirably. Once again I treated my water, bring the calcium up to around 160 ppm through additions of calcium sulphate and calcium chloride. I rid myself of around 130 ppm of pesky alkalinity using carbonate reducing solution and everything went very well indeed. I planned for 75% efficiency and an OG of 1.070, but achieved about 80% and ended up with 1.078. Very gratifying but the fact that my last runnings came in at 1.030 indicates that I just can't get the damn fermentable sugar out of the mash tun. The chemistry was perfect; the temperature held at 66 C and pH fell in a spot on 5.4, but the damn grain held on to the sugar. Not to worry. I'm not a penny pincher and have no problem dumping the grain. Perhaps in future I'll do some small beer.

I opted for some first wort hopping because Galena can be a little harsh,  and also the hop rate was quite liberal. I used pellets for the Centennial and had to break out some extra kit to cope with all the pellets. I planned to make a big beer with plenty of rich malt for quite some time, the hope being that the richer Munich malt will provide a decent base for the hops.

Below is a video of Saf 05 yeast hard at work. The wort looks like swamp water because my set up dumps all the break material into the fermenter, but the beer generally drops bright in the end with no ill effects.

Jack Russell not Great Dane

With all the hype around Brewdog's heavy hitting beers it's easy to forget that they produce beer of average strength too. Well, easy for me to forget at any rate because until recently I couldn't get my hands on any of it. This was happily remedied with a recent trip to The Drink Store of Dublin's Stoneybatter. A number of Brewdog beers have turned up there including The Physics and 77 Lager, both of which are lightweights compared to Brewdog's more potent beers, but they do not suffer in the flavour stakes and will stay in my memory just as long as their bigger beers. It is clear that the philosophy of packing in the flavour is avidly adhered to in these beers despite the pedestrian nature of the style, being far closer to the average beer on the street that Brewdog swore not to emulate.

77 Lager is unlike any other lager you will try. The hop choice is not one associated with a lager (Amarillo, I think) but the taste and aroma is very satisfying. I wouldn't class it as a lager on a blind taste and it likely only masquerades as a lager because of a period of cold storage that the majority of ales undergo anyway. It's certainly clean like a lager but the orange fruiy flavours probably undo the work of the lager yeast strain, if indeed one was used.

The Physics falls directly into standard British ale territory, but with more teeth in the form of a surprising bitterness. The malt that drives this beer is superb and probably the best I have tried in quite some time. Crystal and Caramalt is mentioned on the label. I will be seriously looking into this combination to get that juicy, chewy malt aspect into my own beer.

Proper, Proper Job

I knew when I read the back label on the bottle of St Austell's Proper Job I had tried the beer before. The front label tells us that it is 'powerfully hopped', but in general, unless it's BrewDog telling me that, I tend to ignore it, knowing that my idea of powerfully hopped and the average British brewer's idea are two quite distinct things. A further study of the label makes for very interesting reading; Willamette, Chinook and Cascade are listed as the hops employed and it is at this point that punters might have reason to think they have something quite special on their hands. As it turns out this ale is powerfully hopped in a very satisfying manner. Frankly, for a British bottled ale it is astounding, full of hop flavour and resins all wrapped around a satisfying malt base. I could drink this stuff all day, but at 5.5% abv it would take its toll.

I mentioned that I thought I had crossed paths with this beer before, well, I am certain that it is none other than the Marks and Spencer Cornish IPA I tried in London earlier in the year. In that post I begged M & S to unleash this beer on the Irish market, and I will once again reiterate this plea; Take back the Yorkshire Bitter and give us this wonderful IPA instead!

Happy birthday Grandad

The weekend found me visiting the English suburbs of my early childhood for my Grandad's ninetieth birthday. We had a get together involving four generations of my father's side of the family, something that really drives home just how old my grandfather is. He was born in 1919 and spent all his life in the historical town of Egham, except for a stint in the army which found him carrying a Bren gun around the deserts of Africa. That's him on the right in the 1940's, in uniform enjoying a pint of something dark, more than likely Guinness.

Egham is only around 20 miles form London and the most direct route to London from Egham takes you straight past Chiswick on the M4. I discovered this while being ferried to the RealAle.com bricks and mortar shop near Twickenham. Chiswick is of course home to Fuller, Smith & Turner, the producers of any number of great beers, and usually there is some Fuller's to be had in the pub that housed our family get together. I was surprised to find that the biggest seller the pub stocks at the moment is Doom Bar from Sharp's brewery of the Southwest. My uncle had travelled from down that way and was disgusted that a beer from his region was on offer near London. His other options were Courage Best Bitter, which was thin and bland, and Bomardier which surprised me with a distinct and very pleasant English hop flavour I can't say I really noted before. Apparently Doom Bar is the most popular beer the pub has ever stocked, but I can't say I rated it all.

Having checked out their website, my trip to the RealAle.com shop was much anticipated. As it turned out, the website does not do justice to the selection on offer. BrewDog are well represented and I took advantage of this by grabbing some Atlantic IPA, How to Disappear Completely and Storm. American beer was present in force, though a little pricey so I restricted myself to Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron and Victory's Storm King Imperial Stout. Out of curiosity I bagged some Thornbridge Brewery Jaipur IPA to see what all the fuss is about and in keeping with the Corninsh beer theme, some St Austell Brewery Proper Job, which I am sure I have tried before, but more about that in a later post.

Barcelona

I know what you're thinking: this is not a city for lovers of beer, and in some respects you'd be correct. You won't find any cask ale here and for the most part the beer on offer is very bland and very cold, but happily the beer consumed in Barcelona, particularly in the heat of an August afternoon hits the spot nicely. You hardly find yourself drinking for gastronomic reasons, more as a means to stay alive, lest thirst and heatstroke kill you. Perhaps I'm being a little melodramatic, but ice cold beer in these conditions really does offer a revival to a body past its thermal comfort zone.

Our hotel was in the Exiample quarter of town, and area north of the old town and built after the old town burst through the city walls during a period of rapid expansion. Exiample sits in stark contrast to its older neighbourhood; a strict grid like lay out of smaller streets crossing larger avenues similar to New York makes for easy navigation, while the Barra Gotic and La Ribera of the old town are a confusing, seemingly random network of small streets that once sat within the old city walls, and savagely bisected by the relentlessly busy La Ramblas. As it turned out the Eixample proved to be an excellent location for beer bars, or 'cervecerias'. The Pilsner Urquell boards outside Mengi Mengi drew us in while out for a stroll after dinner on our first night. Along with quality Czech lager on tap, the bar sported a number of beer fridges stocking a solid if unspectacular selection of beer from Germany and Belgium as well as some Argentinian Quilmes Lager, which I tried for the first time. The Pilsner Urquell came served in a glass from the freezer and, unsurprisingly was very cold indeed. Luckily this lager still gives plenty of flavour at that temperature and it went down very nicely.

Lunch for us generally meant tapas. There are many places around the city to try it, but once again our hotel proved to be right next to one of the best tapas bars in town that also just happened to have a decent beer menu. Cervesia Catalan is a very busy spot, but thankfully our custom of eating quite a bit earlier than the locals meant that getting a table was straight forward. It appeared to be something of an extreme sport later in the evenings when the locals emerged from their labours for a spot of supper. Walls lined with beer bottles surround diners, and good selection is offered on the menu. Standard Spanish lager is available on tap, which I washed down some omelet and potatoes with. I followed this with some Timmerman's Kreik - a mistake I realised too late. Timmerman's appear to be one of the many Belgian brewers out there making a very good living from putting E numbers and fruit syrups into weak lambic, not to mention an unhealthy dose of artificial sweetener. Nasty stuff and a lesson learned. After lunch we exploited the most civilised of Mediterranean traditions - the siesta, a healthy dose of tapas and cold beer aids this no end.

Two minutes west of the Placa de Catalunya will find you in the incongruous medieval hard wood and wrought iron interior of Alt Heidelberg, a German bar serving a decent selection of beer nicely complemented with tasty German fare and traditional local tapas. Once again Pilsner Urquell is the main beer available on tap - a little confusing because the aged menu suggested that other beers are available. The same thing occurred in Mengi Mengi, where the menu would have you believe that Spaten is on draught, but a request for draught beer will get you Pilsner Urquell. It seems that SAB Miller have muscled into the better beer bars and forced all other producers, except for the Spanish macros, from the bar. Confusingly the menus are often not updated, and the waiters will not inform you that the beer you think you are ordering isn't in fact on offer. The highlight of this visit for me was some Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. It was all brown sugar and treacle, the ordering of which raised a smirk from the waiter who I am sure thought I had taken pot luck from a Spanish language beer menu and didn't realise what I was letting myself in for. I washed down some excellent sauerkraut and bratwurst with the porter and topped it off with a sweet and refreshing Lindeman's Peche - which raised yet another smirk from the waiter.

Our last evening found us enjoying after dinner drinks in D'Or, yet another bar with a respectable beer selection only minutes from our hotel. Large ornate German beer fonts on the tables immediately alert you to the possibility of a decent pint, but it was the more obscure Catalan beers from Cerevesera del Montseny that caught my attention. Nonchalantly dropped in among a list of European beers of note was Lupulus. Thankfully my extensive knowledge of Latin meant that this beer did not slip by and I was rewarded with a healthy dose of American C hops more intense than I ever dreamed of from a Spanish beer, and on top this delight it was bottle conditioned to boot. It was a little soup like but really delivered. Happy with this find I opted for another beer from Cerevesera del Montseny, this time their dark beer described as 'cervesa negra Irlandesa', so it was not hard to see what they were driving at. Unsurprisingly it didn't quite hit the mark, resembling a thin, weaker English stout rather than the fuller Irish interpretation. Once again a funny look met my request for this dark beer. Spanish waiters seem concerned that a punter will, heaven forbid, stumble into a dark beer. This is ice cold lager country after all. A curious thing, but it's nice to know that the waiters have the beer novice's well being at heart.

Calcium

Calcium is essential to every step in the brewing process. Most water supplies used in brewing are deficient in calcium and additions of salts are required to increase calcium to a more suitable level. The main actions of calcium are:

• It influences mash pH in a beneficial way, ensuring that the pH is kept low enough for effective mashing. This is achieved through interaction of calcium with carbonates in the water. Carbonates tend to increase wort pH, dragging it away from the optimal pH of around 5.2. Calcium binds to carbonates forming compounds that precipitate out of solution and remove the ability of carbonates to influence mash pH.

• Calcium protects malt amylases against heat inactivation during the mash. Malt amylases steadily lose their ability to convert starch into simpler sugars during the mash because the mash temperature is a compromise between the optimal operating temperature of both alpha and beta amylase. Alpha amylase suffers most during the mash, but a sufficient calcium concentration protects the enzyme from heat inactivation.

• During the boil trub is formed by the precipitation of protein matter through thermal degradation, but calcium plays a significant role in trub formation by neutralising protein molecules through electrostatic interactions. A minimum calcium concentration of 100 mg/l is required for good trub formation.

• Yeast flocculation is aided by calcium through the interaction with proteins on yeast cell walls. Most strains require at least 50 milligrams/litre (mg/l) for good flocculation.

• Beer stone is formed from a build up of oxalate on brewing equipment. Oxalate in packaged beer provided nucleation sites for carbon dioxide that promotes gushing upon opening of the package. Values of 70 - 80 mg/l are sufficient to remove excess oxalate from the brewing process.

When making calcium additions it is important to account for the significant amount of calcium that is retained in the grain during mashing. The calcium that ensures effective mash pH is sacrificed during the acidification process in the form of calcium carbonate, a solid that precipitates and sticks to the grain. This loss can account of or 50 - 60% of the calcium in the mash.

Increasing calcium values to 200 mg/l has shown to increase run off from the mash tun, improve extraction and also increase free amino nitrogen - an essential nutrient for yeast. As the the wort gravity decreases during run off the pH tends to increase, promoting the undesirable extraction of tannins and silica from malt husks. However, it has been noted that increasing calcium in sparge water to 200 mg/l can prevent the wort pH increasing and reduces the extraction undesirable compounds.

The amount of calcium in your brewing water can be measured using test kits that are commonly used for aquarium water analysis. However, it can be assumed that most brewing water does not a have the 100 - 150 mg/l calcium that is desired for brewing. Below are some simple calculations for making calcium additions using minerals commonly used in brewing.

• The water will have a some calcium already present, though it will very likely be sub-optimal. When calculating the amount of calcium to add, the quantity of calcium in the water already must be subtracted. So that's the first step.

• This value is then divided by the percentage of calcium present in the salt you have decided to add. This value differs depending on the salt used and the extent to which water is bonded to it. Calcium sulphate has the chemical formula CaSO₄.2H₂O. A bit of chemistry tells us that calcium accounts for 23% of this molecule, so the value of calcium in mg/l that we want to add is divided by 0.23.

• This value is then multiplied by the litres of water that you want to treat.

The most common calcium additions in brewing water come from the following salts:

Calcium sulphate: CaSO₄.2H₂O - 23% of which is calcium

Calcium chloride: CaCl₂.

Calcium chloride is very hygroscopic, which means it readily absorbs water from the atmosphere. As a result it is found in a number of forms. This influences the amount of the salt that must be added. If the molecule has two water molecules attached calcium makes up 27% of the molecule, but if has seven water molecules attached calcium makes up only 18% of the molecule. That means our numbers in the calculations in step two are 0.27 and 0.18 respectively.

An example might help clarify this:

Take some tap water with a calcium concentration of 60 mg/l. Let's say we boost the calcium to a more respectable 150mg/l, and we're brewing a stout so we should use calcium chloride to add some body.

There's 60mg/l calcium in the water already, this means we need an additional 90 mg/l to meet our desired value of 150 mg/l. Calcium chloride takes up water readily so we'll assume that your supply of calcium chloride is fully saturated with water thanks to the shoddy way you store it. This means you have:

CaCl₂.7H₂O - 18% of which is calcium.

You want to add 90mg/l:

90/0.18 = 500 mg/l

You have, say, 30 litres of water to treat, so:

500mg/l x 30l = 15000 mg = 15 grams of calcium chloride in 30 litres.

The scenario is the same for the addition of calcium sulphate to water used to brew a crisply hopped pale ale.

We need to add, say, 100 mg/l calcium so,

100/0.23 = 435 mg/l

And we need to treat 40 litres of water:

435 x 40 = 17391 mg = 17.4 grams of calcium sulphate in 40 litres.

As can be seen, it is easy to boost the calcium levels in brewing water, but it is important to consider that in each of the examples above addition of chloride and sulphate were also made to the water, which might result in a unsuitable balance of each of these constituents. A blend of both can help too much of either dominating, while ensuring that calcium levels are met.

Dark beer and dark evenings, all fit for writing

The Beer Nut's musings on the joys of 'having written' gave me much to think about yesterday. I agree with him entirely, particularly about the joys to be had from a disciplined approach to writing. Sadly, I don't feel as disciplined as perhaps I should be, and my rigidity of thought with respect to how important it is to be disciplined and my apparent lack of it, is a source of consternation to me. I mean, take a look at Ron, he's a blogging machine, driven by what precisely I don't know, but you know he just loves it. Not just the having written aspect but the process of cramming all those facts and anecdotes into his posts. Mark Dredge is similarly prolific, but he just wants to write, it is essential to his well being and his beer blogging is a means of combining two things he enjoys. If you query The Beer Nut about why he blogs, he'll give you a glib answer along the lines of the need to document the beer he drinks, but it's clear there is far from mere ticking at work on his pages - you just don't have to write that well to make a list of conquests. The beer community is the better for it.

I'm glancing to my back garden while I painfully hammer out these words. Things are starting to stir. The tail end of hurricane Bill is heading this way, the depression slowly moving eastward across the country, promising heavy rainfall and a night of blustery mayhem that will no doubt slaughter the impressive sun flowers my wife has tended to over the summer. Much like other beer lovers, on evenings like this my mind turns to dark beers, particularly stout.

I am shameless in my promotion of American dark beers, but I feel this enthusiasm is entirely justified by the shear quality of those I have tried. The uncompromising nature of American brewing suits stout particularly well, mainly because flavour is packed into them but not in an overpowering one dimensional hop bomb way. It's just full, rich, complex roasted goodness with the occasion always just right measure of hops. The strong pedigree that this Oatmeal Stout traces its family tree from whet my taste buds from the off - Goose Island's IPA is a world beater, and the stout delivers in a similar manner. It's a cliché to say that an oatmeal stout is smooth, that's the very reason the oats are added, but this one really is. This may well be as much to do with the perfect carbonation as anything else. The one thing I didn't expect, but welcomed greatly was the quite pronounced smoky, phenolic note on the nose, very similar to Islay scotch. The smoke didn't follow through onto the palate, instead was replaced with wonderful bitter chocolate, coffee and a long lingering bitterness. I'm not surprised really, the damn label even looks tasty, and is the most striking manifestation of Goose Island packaging I have seen.

I feel much better now, having written.

Berliner Weisse for kids?

This bottle of Berliner Kindl Weisse has hung around in my fridge for quite some time now. I didn't worry about it going bad, the lactic acid content took care of any spoilage issues, but also the right moment to drink it just didn't present itself. It is a style of beer I've been eager to try for quite some time with the promise of a sharp tang and low alcohol content. Sadly this brand of Berliner weisse left me a tad unsatisfied.

What little I now about Berliner Weisse is this:

• Low abv (2.5 - 3.5%)
• Very low IBUs (3-8), no aroma hops are added, and often the beer isn't even boiled, with the hops added during the mash.
• A good measure of of unmalted wheat is used in the grist.
• There should be a pronounced lactic character without any acetic notes.

Everything you need to know about this history of this beer can be found at Ron's, of course. I was keen to see if it really measured up in the taste intensity stakes, like Cantillion's Lambic and I thought I was in for a treat if there is any truth in the stories about barman in Berlin looking at you curiously if you don't drink the stuff "mit schuss", the idea being that it is intolerable without some syrup to ease the palate somewhat. From the off I was determined to drink it without any flavour additions but need not have worried as this particular Berliner weisse is very tame indeed - almost to the point of a slightly sickly blandness. The lactic character is there alright, but it doesn't bite and leaves a vacuum on the tongue where you might expect the pleasant acidic tingle to satisfy. The carbonation wasn't as high as anticipated either - three to four volumes of CO2 are common, but the malt was reasonably with a grainy/bready contribution.

This lack of flavour and intensity has led me to believe that I have got a form of Berliner Weisse Lite on my hands. The cheeky sprog on the label makes this seem even more likely. Perhaps Barry can shed some light on this beer from his newly adopted home in Germany?