Welcome Clara and Sofia!

Today my two princess were born: Clara and Sofia. The two wonderful twins already have a dedicated beer (guess the style!). Girls and mom are OK.

I will slow down production, probably till the girls are able to change their diapers each other: Backdoor Brewery is closed till further notice.

Stout: Dry vs. Foreign

Achill's Island Stout

Achill's Island Stout is my well establishes stout, based on Pale malt, with 8-10% flaked barley, 10-12% of roasted grains (Chocolate and Roasted). I use a high mash (67ºC), and ferment with S-04 to get a high body (higher than style requirements) and a pleasant fruitiness, to smoothen roastiness of black malts.
Again I brewed a good stout, I don't like Guinness draught as I feel it too watery, so I exagerate with body and flaked rains to have a creamy beer. Roastiness, burnt, coffe and chocolate are presents, but it's very pleasant to drink.
Judges don't like all this body, so I scored just 35,5 (on 50) because my Dry Stout was 'not enough dry'. Well, not bad. I'll drink it and enjoy anyway

I hate astringency in beer (as a noob, I had bad results on black beer, due to inexperience), so there are several points were I operate differently from pale/amber beers, to prevent tannin extraction:
Mash: ph goes down to 5,5 thanks to black malts, I adjusted water/grains ratio to 3l/1kg
Sparge: 70ºC, it means less efficiency, but temperature far from the risk of tannin extraction. Sparge ph is acidified under 6. Less water than usual, I prefer add water later, then wort with low density but tannins inside.

based on Mr. Guinness idea

I used a similar procedure for the Foreign Stout, slightly different, with 24% Munich, 3% Crystal, 3% flaked barley and 8% Roasted plus Chocolate. I boiled 90 minutes, half an hour more than the Dry, then I fermented it with US-05, for a bigger attenuation.
After a month in the bottle, it's nothing special: coffe, chocolate, liquorice but also toffe and caramel, not well combined togheter. Roastiness is too harsh, with a kind of charcoal aftertaste and a bit of spicyness and astringency. 40 IBU, but the only detected bitterness comes from burnt grains.
It's a deep dark black beer, a cappuccino head, creamy, medium body and a bit of alcohol warming. But very burnt, and caramel like flavors are non well combined with roastiness.
Next time I'll get rid of crystal and munich, and use some brown malt.

Fermentation chamber

After the bad results of las summer fermentation, it was time to build a proper fermentation chamber. Nothing complex, just a closed box to help the fermentor stay 4-5 degrees below the cellar temperature, thanks to iced water bottles to be changed periodically.

Materials:
5 polystirene panels 50x100x2 cm wide
1 sealing silicon tube

4 panels cut at 70cm (70x50)
Base (48x48 cm) and upper cover from the 5th panel.
Seal the first vertical wall with base, 2cm of the vall are out from the side. Put silicone on this over border and on the base, then seal the second wall. So for wall number 3 and 4.

This box can easily accomodate a standard 25 liters fermentor, with space in the corners for the iced bottles. Then I added an upper cover.

Temperatures during first fermentation days

17 liters + 1 pack S-33. 2 iced bottles 1,5 liters:
Chamber Tº -4ºC (21ºC cellar, 17ºC chamber). Tº max wort: 21ºC

18 liters + S-33 slurry. 3 iced bottles 1,5 liters:
Chamber Tº -6ºC (22ºC cellar, 16ºC chamber). Tº max wort: 22ºC

20 liters + starter from recycled US-05. 5 iced bottles 1,5 liters:
Chamber Tº -15ºC (24ºC cellar, 11ºC chamber). Tº max wort: 18ºC

Bocknut: last chestnut beer

Many homebrewers tried to brew a beer with chestnut once. Chestnut are full of starch, malt will do the conversion, have good flavor and aroma, in fall you can find tons of chestnut and have a starch source for free...
I brewed a lot of chestnut beers, never had unforgettable beers, sometimes had trouble; anyway I give it a try almost every fall. I don't like chestnut in ales, high fermentation always gives an unpleasant sweet-like aftertaste, but I had better and cleaner results in lager. However, no beer to be remembered. Last winter I had something like 20kg of chestnut found in the trees, so I decided to give it another try.

19,0 liters (preboil 22,0)
efficiency  75%, boiling 90 min.
OG 1,060; IBU: 16,0; EBC: 30;
Malts:
  4400 gr Munich Malt, 1,037;
  100 gr Crystal Malt 120, 1,033;
  750 gr Chestnuts, 1,012;
Hops:
  24 gr Styrian Goldings, 5,7 %a.a., 90 min;
  2 gr Simcoe, 11,4 %a.a., 90 min;
  20 gr Saaz, 4,0 %a.a., 5 min;

A kilogram of chestnuts needs an hour or more to be roasted and peeled, and you have to add this to the total brewing time. Sparge was lower. Not stuck but slower than in a normal bock.
What is potential SG of chestnuts? I found 1020-1025 online. But if I consider stable my system efficiency (75%, and i keep it low) 1012 is the real calculated potential, using 750g of chestnuts (after peeling). If I considef correct SG 1025 as chestnut potential, this would mean a 70% efficiency, that would be very strange: I used the same pocedure as usual with no errors.
So, in my opinion chestnuts yelds very low sugars.

Another bad point is the flavor and aroma contribution: even in a clean low fermentation, with few weeks lagering, I can't find any clear note reminding chestnuts. Just a little sweety flavor, overwhelmed by malty and melanoidin notes from decocted munich and crystal.
So, no OG points, no flavor, no aroma contribution. Maybe I need more than 15 or 20% to sense chestnuts in beer, but it's crazy to spend all this time peeling 2 kg or more for 20 liters of beer...

Now that is all written here, I hope I'll remember to avoid chestnuts next fall. I will just roast and eat togheter with a pint of ale.

Barley Wine 2016

Today is Barley Wine brewing day!
Same recipe as past year (at least I try), Pale and Munich (20%) as base malts, with a little Crystal and Chocolate (3% each) plus raw cane sugar to reach 1085 OG. Decoction, plus ninety munites boil will enhance malty notes, caramel, melanoidins, dried fruits...
Fifty IBU, with a little Chinook at twenty minutes boiling to add fruity and piney notes. This is not an American Barleywine, but a little american hop helps.

This year I'm gonna bottle everything soon, the Barley Wine will agge in bottle. No maderization experiments this time: it's the same recipe al last year that I splitted to maderize half: this second version was not as good as the original one, as it lost a lot of malty notes, red fruit and dried fruit aromas, while the portlike tones were not enough to balance the loss.

Catpiss bitter

Romeo,  Backdoor Brewery mascot, passed away two weeks ago. He was a nice, red cat, and he really liked american and pacific hops. He spent half an hour purring around a big parcel of Vic Secret, just a week before we found a terrible limphoma attacked him.

I want to remember him with this recipe, a 4% abv bitter enerously hopped with Simcoe, to create a typical catpiss aroma. Obviously I added his beloved Vic Secret, hoping it will smoothen the simcoe and I'll ferment it with Kolsch yeast: it has to be piss, in the end.

Catpiss recipe, 20,0l (preboil 22,0)
efficiency  77%, 60 min. boilin
OG 1,038; IBU: 32,5; EBC: 11;
Maltis
  1700 gr Pale, 1,036;
  1360 gr Pilsen (2 Row), 1,039;
  140 gr CaraWien, 1,035;
Hops::
  5 gr Simcoe, 11,4 %a.a., 60 min;
  15 gr Vic Secret, 14,5 %a.a., 20 min;
  20 gr Vic Secret, 14,5 %a.a., 5 min;
  40 gr Simcoe, 11,4 %a.a., 0 min;
  20 gr Vic Secret, 14,5 %a.a., 0 min;

Spring is coming, and a session beer is ok, even if too extreme. Well, we will see if it's drinkable...

Recognized BJCP Judge.

doctored beers

I studied hard.
Passed the online exam, 200 questions in 60 minutes.
I studied hard. Again, and when  I say 'studied' I mean 'drinked': beers from every style I found.
I left a green bottle of my hhomebrewed beer, to be able to identify skunk from potolysis.

I made a paired tasting with crap commercial lagers to be sure I can get corn taste in beer.
I spent a whole evening smelling four different glasses of crap lager, doctored with lactic acid, clove alcohol tincture, diacetil, bisulphite, to recognize main beer flaws.

exam participants

I flew to Barcelona, tasted six beers in a row at 10:00 AM, with no breakfast (I wanted to have as much as possible a sensible nose).


Then finally:

I'm BJCP Recognized Judge.

Altbier vs. Kölsch

Those two batches were brewed by chance: my homebrewing shop offered me a discounted pack of Wyeast Kölsch, so I decided to use it.

Kölsch vs. Alt 

I never liked Kölsch I tasted: too weak, too watery and with faint aromas, so I decided to produce an Altbier: amber, more bodied and with a higher hoppage than a Kölsch, but again with an hybrid fermentation, ale yeast (Alt means 'old') and lagered at low temperaturesm. I used Ho Pale and Munich malts, togheter with 6% Crystal, to give good caramel and melanoidins notes, all balanced with generous hop adjuncts of Hersbrucker and Aramis (a french hop with good aa% and perfect for bittering european lagers).

Kölsch and Altbier are served in the stange, the same tall and tiny glass, to drink it faster before delicate fruity aromas fade away. Produced and drinked in the same way, those beers are protected regional denominations, and can be produced only in the corresponding area of origin: that led to the big challenge between the two cities and theyr own beers

Anyway, after primary fermentation I moved the beer in another tank for the lagering: the beer had a gentle and elegant fruity aroma of apple and green fruith, so I decided to reuse yeast and brew a Kölsch style beer.

After the lagering, I brewed a light beer based on Pils, sweet water and a little Hersbrucker (20 IBU), bottled the Alt, and put the light wort on the yeast cake.

I did the same job as the donkey in the famous picture that drinks one beer and piss out the other: nice idea for the labels.

 

Labels are almost identical. Just a different color, like beers (but don't tell to people from Koln or Dusseldorf that their beers are so similar...).

Alt is already drinkable, slightly fruity, well hopped and bitter, withh caramel notes above all. In the meanwhile Kölsch has just been bottled, and the first sample from the fermenter isn't bad: light, watery and with faint hop notes. Like a canned Finkbrau: hopefully it will get better after few weeks...

Altbier, in a stange (oops! that's a Kölsch glass!)

I kept some Kölsch yeast, want to try it on a Bitter.