Recipe

Apr 4, 2013

Dia De Los Muertos Chocolate Chile Porter

benhelms Recipe Chile, chocolate, Hannah, holiday, porter 0 Comment

For the most part, I brew by myself. I find it really therapeutic to organize all my ingredients and prep my kitchen and then spend the better part of an evening measuring, mashing, boiling, hopping, cooling, racking and pitching. I’ll usually listen or watch something random like fantasy football podcasts, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart during the work and read something during the waiting periods of the brew day (latest favorites: Ready Player One, World War Z, and of course Stan Hieronymus’ For The Love of Hops).

Don’t get me wrong, I love brewing with other people too, especially when they’re interested in learning about all the nerdy science that goes into it. But I’ve also had some negative experiences brewing with others. This usually happens when they either want to do things their way (and ONLY their way), or they start out interested and after 30 minutes they get distracted by some shiny object and start texting or something while I finish up our brew day and end up cleaning everything by myself. Fun times.

So when my wife said she wanted to design a beer with me, I was a little hesitant. We were reading in our living room when out of the blue she said she wanted to make a Dia De Los Muertos-inspired beer. In was surprised, but didn’t let on as I asked her to continue.

She then went into a long speech about the history of the holiday and how we might successfully create a beer in celebration of the day.

Before I could walk her through my hesitations of brewing together, she already started going into the different ingredients and methods she wanted to use to brew the best beer possible.

I decided right there and then I’d get out of both our way and just do my best to provide her with the resources to make this dream beer of hers a reality. We sat down, I opened up some brewing software, and we designed our Dia De Los Muertos Chocolate Chile Porter recipe.

We (she) knew we wanted to incorporate a mole sauce-type flavor into it, which means chile peppers, chocolate, nuts and a LOT of spices. In fact, most mole sauces include 30+ ingredients. No joke. We also knew we wanted it to be a big beer (high ABV) for two reasons: 1) So it would age well and we could start drinking it around late October (when Dia De Los Muertos is usually celebrated in the US), and 2) Because we wanted to design it to be shared amongst friends and family during all of the fall/winter holidays.

Honestly, by the end of that evening, I was more excited about that beer than I was about any of the other beers I already had fermenting. Two days later, not only had we bought all of the ingredients already, but we’d already finished brewing.

That was fast. I’ve had beers I’d dreamed about, planned out and didn’t brew for months. This one went from the drawing board to the fermenter in two days. Wow.

Long story short: brewing with others can be even more rewarding than brewing by yourself. Even if you love your alone time and love brewing alone, people can sometimes surprise you.

Thanks, Hannah.

Check out the recipe here…

Feb 28, 2013

Bag End Bitter

benhelms Recipe English Pale Ale, ESB, pale ale, Recipe 0 Comment

I love having a 50 lb bag of American 2-row around. Got one during the holidays from my in-laws (luckiest man alive, I know), and it’s been such a blessing to be able to just brew whenever I want to, rather than having to make my whole recipe, and order all of the ingredients online, or drive an hour to pick them up. Living in the mountains is great, but not exactly the most convenient for brewing small batches as home.

This was a beer I’d been wanting to brew for a while, but it was also a test-batch type brew. I’ve been loving pale ales most and more as of late, and English pale ales even more. The subtle hops, the malty flavor; they’re just so balanced. Love ‘em. (However, to be completely honest, I didn’t realize Extra Special/Strong Bitter was a type of English Pale Ale until I started researching this brew. Go me.)

So I wanted four things out of this brew: 1) to brew a simple, balanced ESB, 2) to put my new bag of 2-row to the test by designing a recipe that was almost entirely composed of it, 3) to test out my new corona-type grain mill, and 4) to brew with my friend, Jorge, who was in town for the weekend and had never brewed before.

A multifaceted brew day, I know.

I got my ingredients in order, and decided that even though I wanted a simple ale, I didn’t quite want a SMaSH brew (single malt and single hop), so I threw in a small amount of Belgian Aromatic malt, to give it a maltier taste, darker look. And two things regarding the hops (a brew of lists apparently: 1) I overestimated the IBU’s and finishing hops a little because I was using some of my older hops and while they’d been in the freezer for a few months, it’d still been a few months, and 2) I was thinking about dry-hopping this guy, but from most ESBs I’ve had, they’re not exceptionally aromatic, so I went simple on it and skipped the dry-hopping.

And after the majority of a day spent romping around on a frozen lake (see notes section for pic), we went to work on the brew.

[I also use grams to measure hops, instead of ounces because they're much more accurate. I'll probably keep doing that with small batches like this.]

See That Recipe…

Feb 19, 2013

Cascade IPA

benhelms Recipe, Uncategorized ale, BIAB, Cascade, double IPA, IPA, Recipe 0 Comment

Every so often, after brewing a few dozen batches, I have all these tiny bags of hops, grains, and other fun ingredients lying around. They’re always in such small amounts that I can never really use them without supplementing them with another a bunch of other ingredients to make them useful. So about once a year I either make up a recipe, or do some type of franken-brew that isn’t exactly a clone of any commercial beer, and sometimes doesn’t even fit into those handy-dandy BJCP guidelines.

Exhibit A: Banana Bread Beer

Exhibit B: Blueberry Pale Ale (eventually became Blueberry Lambic)

Exhibit C: Orange You Glad You Lived in Villa Orange Pale Ale

And yes, it’s that time of year again.

I got a big ol’ bag of American 2-row for Christmas and it’s burning a hole in my proverbial pocket. And I finally got a mill, which means I can store grain a little longer (because I don’t have to crush when I buy it). But before I jump into those new adventures, I figured I’d try to clean up those small bags of malts I had lying around. I had some honey malt, a bit of Belgian aromatic malt, some special b, and an old ~5 lb bag of 2-row I found that had been in my possession for…far too long (along with a buncha random fractional amounts of hops).

Was the malt stale? Definitely. Did it have any diastatic power left in it? Hopefully. Would it taste great? We’ll see!

Also, a friend of mine–who I have known for many, many years–dropped a bomb on me a few months ago: his mother works–no, RUNS–a hop farm in Salem, Oregon. Are you serious? We’ve even brewed batches together, and he never bothered to tell me that. Anyway, I made him swear the next time he was there that he’d pick some up for me. You know, if at all possible. He came back with a few bags of hops. I love that man.

I’ve been in possession of a bunch (haven’t weighed them yet…about a pound?) of cascade hops–in leaf form, for a few months, and I honestly had no idea what to do with them. I knew they were probably a bit stale too, but who knows how much power those little lupulin glands had in them still? There’s only one way to find out…

So I did some Googling, and plenty of Hopville-ing and BrewPal-ing and finally came up with a recipe for an all-Cascade IPA. I hope, at least. In all honesty, I have no idea what it’ll truly end up being, with all of the expired, stale ingredients. It’ll be a fun test to see how long hops and grain last in my house though. (Again: hopefully.) It should end up somewhere between a 9% ABV, 100 IBU double IPA, and a 6%, 65 IBU single IPA. (Let’s just hope it’s not a 5%, 120 IBU hop bomb. Heck, even a 3.5%, 70 IBU session IPA would be weird…but unique, I suppose.)

I figured if anyone’s gonna experiment with these crazy, dry, old hops and grains, it’s gotta be a blogging homebrewer who does mostly 1-to-3 gallon brew-in-a-bag batches, right?

Right.

And a few months ago, when I had the extra cash, I bought a few fun yeasts to experiment with. One of them was Wyeast’s 1187 Ringwood yeast (or as I keep forgetting the name of and referring to as: Ringworm or Wormwood). High flocculation, low-medium attenuation. Should be a clean yeast, with a slightly fruity aroma that accentuates the hops profile. Just hope I can get this to attenuate a little more with some added head towards the end of primary fermentation. Would love to get this above the supposed 72% attenuation (a 1.022 beer probably wouldn’t be the tastiest).

Here’s what I came up with…

Here’s that Cascade IPA recipe…

Feb 10, 2013

Banana Bread Beer

benhelms Recipe banana, bread, fruit, nuts, Recipe 0 Comment

If you’re anything like me, then you like experimenting with your homebrews. That’s where I get the biggest kick out of homebrewing actually. If I want a solid pale ale, I’ll go out and buy a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. If I want a dry stout with no aroma, I’ll go and get a Guinness. But if I want a Double IPA with seven different types of hops at eight different addition times? Pliny ain’t even gonna give you that. But I can.

But even when it comes to searching for creativity within the BJCP guidelines, it can get a bit dull. So we must push forward and stretch our imaginations beyond just the styles we’re accustomed to.

What do we find there? Chocolate IPAs, Licorice Stouts, Bubblegum Lagers, and Bleu Cheese Belgian Dubbels. While I’ve never heard of commercial versions of these (or even homebrewed versions), I can imagine they’d be stupendously innovative.

And while you may scoff at the ideas of these creative beer ideas–or quite possibly even gag slightly–it’s inventive ideas like these that bring with them paradigm shifts in the brewing world. Heck, if it weren’t for Sam Calagione, who wanted a bit more of a hop flavor in his beers, we wouldn’t have Randall. It if weren’t for Vinnie Cilurzo who wanted a bigger, badder IPA, we wouldn’t have Double IPAs. And if it weren’t for Goose Island aging a stout in bourbon barrels in 1992, who knows when that trend would have made it’s way over from Europe? (Okay, bad example, but you get the idea.)

What I’m saying is, homebrewing is built for experimentation. And while I’m sure plenty of people brew at home simply to save a few bucks (I guess…), that’s not the reason I do it. I’m looking for creativity, originality, and some innovation in just about all of my recipes.

And this one was no exception!

I love bananas. I love bread. I even love banana bread. So I figured why not throw them all in the same mixture?!

I’ve had Wells Banana Bread Beer before, but it’s nothing too special. Sure, it has a hint of banana, but no bread to speak of. I wanted to redesign this idea and do to beer what runts did to candy (they made it more banana-y).

And I’m not gonna lie, even though I did a lot of research going into the brew day, I definitely winged it a bunch. But don’t worry, I did take plenty of notes, so even though it wasn’t 100% pre-planned, it can still be 100% re-brewed. Hope you enjoy this little experiment as much as I did…

See more of the making of the Banana Bread Beer…

Jan 21, 2013

Consecration Clone

benhelms Recipe belgian, clone, Consecration, fruit, Recipe, Russian River, sour 0 Comment

A year ago, I spent one the best weekends of my life in Seattle with my brother, Jason. (So good in fact, I even wrote a bit about it on my other blog.) It wasn’t just a great time to reconnect with my big bro, but in fact it was an amazing, eye-opening, revolutionary experience for me personally. I discovered sour beers. Since this discovery, I’ve done hundreds of hours of R&D on the topic and it’s now more than just an occasional selection for my palate and has in fact become one of my favorite and most prevalent choices when visiting a bottle shop. That being said, I’m still a beginner at this bacteria stuff.

In our expedition around Seattle, my brother made it his mission to educate me in the way of the sour beer. We had some La Folie, some Russian River, some Anchorage (Brettanomyces in the bottle–not technically sour, but still…), and a few others, but the point is: my eyes were opened. I was in love with sour beers. They were amazing. And for most of 2012, they became my obsession.

Along the route of my obsessive ways, I discovered (and rediscovered many times) the joy found in Santa Rosa, CA that is Russian River Brewing Company. They have dozens of Belgian styles, many of which are of the sour variety. (Speaking of which, their Belgian strong golden ale, Damnation, is an extraordinarily complex, nutty, sweet, warm, and delicious beer–and if you can find it on tap, go there. Now. You’re welcome.)

All of their sour beers are aged in barrels at least six months, and many up to two or three years. The types of barrels they age the beer in range from Chardonnay, Pinot noir and Cabernet Sauvignon to even using old whiskey and bourbon barrels. Then they age them on an assortment of fruits from cherries to currants.

I love all of their beers. When we visited them last fall, we ordered their flight with over twenty tasters on it and I’m serious. I love all of their beers.

My favorite sour of theirs though has got to be Consecration. It packs a punch with both ABV (10%), and dry/sour-ness. The first time I had it, it was a bit much for me, to be honest, but as soon as the glass was empty, I was already craving more. It’s addictive–in the least alcoholic type of way.

On to the beer!

Since I first had Consecration, I knew I wanted to try my hand at a clone of it. Because RRBC owner, Vinnie Cilurzo is so open about his recipes and techniques, I knew exactly what went into the process and ingredients of the beer. However, when I saw the homebrew kit on Morebeer.com, I immediately began to drool. It’s a complicated recipe, compared to most ales, so the idea of having all of the components just show up at my door sounded real nice–especially because I had just moved to a remote town in Northern California (last summer), and lived nowhere near a homebrew shop. (I know, from Portland, OR, the Mecca of homebrewing, to the middle of the woods. Not a homebrewer’s dream.)

I hoped and prayed, and on Christmas morning–no joke–my wife’s parents gave me the gift of Consecration. Yeah. They’re pretty okay.

So three weeks later, here I am. Brewed this up last week, and I can’t wait for this fall (or next year…) to finally taste this sucker.

Let’s See That Recipe…

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