Tasting: Jaggery Dubbel

I realized recently that I haven't done a formal tasting of my Dubbel with Palm Sugar (Jaggery).  The brewday was a little off, with the power going out for a little over an hour as I was coming up to boil. Luckily I hadn't added my hops yet.  If I had, the alpha acids would have started to isomerize, turning the flavorful oils into compounds with bitter tastes.  This reaction happens above about 180°F from what I've read.

Dubbels are dark, high gravity beers.  Usually they are lighter in mouthfeel and residual sugar (the sugar left after fermentation has finished) than other high gravity styles like Imperial Stouts or especially Barleywines.  This is because they have simple sugars like table sugar (sucrose) that are easier than the sugars derived from the grain (maltose) for the yeast to turn into alcohol and CO2.  In this brew, rather than using table sugar or a traditional specialty Candi Syrup (flavorful caramelized syrups), I used a sugar from the local Asian grocery store called Jaggery or Palm Sugar depending on who you ask.  And, as you can probably guess, it is derived from sugar palm trees as opposed to sugar cane or beets (or agave or honey or maple trees or, well, you get the idea). 

I like to make my homebrewed Dubbels even more dry than commercial examples, because it's really easy to drink and something unique.  Mine finished at 1.005 (and 10% ABV) whereas commercial examples usually finish somewhere around 1.012-1.018 according to this very detailed document about designing belgian ales by the BABBLE Homebrewers. 

Well, enough talking, on to the tasting.


Appearance
The beer is a nice brown, with surprising red hues when held up to the light.  It is clear, but not transparent.  I'm glad the power going out didn't have any affect on the clarity. It initially poured with no head, but as the pour finished it developed a 1/2-1/4 inch cream colored head that quickly faded away for some reason.  Maybe I'll toss some wheat in next time.

Smell
Right after opening it, it smelled like caramel.  As it warms, I'm getting a lot of burnt sugar and a lot of fig.  The fig is likely from the Special B malt, which is sort of an extra toasted Crystal malt, which also gave it all of it's color.

Taste
For as aromatic as this beer is, there isn't as much going on taste-wise. At least not in the front of my mouth. I get some of that caramel/burnt sugar/fig taste on the back of my tongue and some alcohol warmth as is goes down my throat. No hot alcoholic fusel notes.  There is a really spice coming out as it warms, and it's playing really nicely with the sugar and fig flavors.

Mouthfeel
Surprisingly viscous for 1.005.  A lot of lingering sugar, which is to style, but not what I was expecting since my last one was described to me as "airy".  Not as much carbonation as I wanted, which is kind of odd since my last dubbel was almost over-carbonated, and I used a tad more priming sugar this time.  This bottle has managed to stay in the fridge longer than the other bottles I've saved, maybe they've carbonated a little more.

Overall + Thoughts
I can't believe I haven't opened all of these yet.  It's surprisingly easy to drink, I would never guess it is 10% ABV.  Eventually I'll do a sugar experiment with dubbels to see which one is the best, but this dark Palm Sugar is pretty solid.
This beer reminds me a lot of Ommegang's Abbey Ale, but it has been over 6 months since I last had it.  I may have to pull the bottle out of my cellar to do a side-by-side. (At 8.5% and 10% I may end up getting Dubbel wasted...)

Small Batch Barleywine

Before I moved, I stumbled upon a Stone Brewing tasting at my local liquor store. Since trying this year's Old Guardian Barleywine, I've been itching to try my hand at one.  It was easily one of the best complex beers I've had in a long time.  The caramel and honey sweetness was right up front, and even though it was 11% ABV there was no alcohol "heat".

I really like the idea of having a yearly brew that is tweaked each year. Anchor brewing does this with their Christmas Ale.  The Mad Fermentationist brews a dark Saison each year.  James and Steve over at Basic Brewing used to make a yearly 1 gallon (or less) barleywine and started a vertical tasting of each year's brew, although the last few years they have diverged from that.  I'm not sure if this will become my once-a-year brew yet.  It seems awfully tasty to only have 7-8 bottles a year.  Or only 1 bottle a year if I save it for vertical tastings...

This is a very "homebrewer" recipe.  I wanted to add a variety of complexities, so I threw in a little bit of everything.  Next time, I may try a single malt barleywine.  I was also trying to use up some of my stock of malts.  I really pushed the limits of my 2 gallon mash tun for this brew. I had a little more than 5 pounds of grain.  I usually shoot for a liquor/grain ratio of 2 quarts per pound.  Using basic math, that's more than 2 gallons of water needed, so I cut back a bit.  I collected a little less than 2 gallons of wort after a 60 minute mash at 150°F.

After tasting the hydrometer sample of the finished product, I am very excited about this beer.  I saved some for my girlfriend to taste the next day, and even though it wasn't carbonated or chilled, she was under the impression it was a finished product that she really liked.

Blockpoint 2012 Barleywine
//A "blockpoint" is what they call an update to a program

Grain Bill

4lbs            American 2-row
        9oz     Maris Otter
        2 oz    Crystal 60°L
        1.5oz  Special B
          .5oz  Chocolate Malt
        4oz     Aromatic Malt

Mash/Sparge
Target temperature 148°F
Starting temperature 150°F
Sparge temp 170°F
-Collected just under 2 gallons of total wort
Preboil gravity 1.057 (bigger than some of my regular brews!)

Boil (60 minutes)
15g Columbus (15.5% AA) @ 60 minutes
13g Columbus (15.5% AA) @ 15 minutes
15g Cascade (6.4%AA) @ 1 minute

Ferment
~3/4 packet Safale US05
Aerated by shaking vigerously
OG 1.100
FG 1.020
ABV: 10.7%

Bottle
4 weeks in primary fermenter
Priming sugar: 17g honey dissolved in 1 cup of water and boiled
Yielded 7 bottles

Fig Dark Saison: Tasting

I'm planning to do a post like this for each recipe, assuming nothing goes terribly wrong with one.  I don't have the most advanced palate yet, but I'm only 22.  I only started drinking craft beer a year and a half ago, and even then it was mostly "I like that style" rather than doing a tasting analysis of it.  As with the blog in general, I intend for this to be an outlet for me to document my brews and develop my skills as a brewer and taster.  I hope you'll follow me on this journey.

Appearance:  Very dark.  Hints of deep brown around the edges.  Thin head forms around the edge, but goes away immediately.  Very small hiss when opened.  I didn't take notes past the brew day, so I can't be positive that I primed it.  It is fairly carbonated, however. 

Smell:  Malty with a hint of roast and caramel. Hops take a back note and are pretty much unnoticeable. 

Taste:  Exactly what I was going for with my original recipe.  Citrus up front.  A little bit of malt and caramel in the middle and a little bit of roast in the back.  The roast is really subtle, I guess the Carafa mostly added a lot more color than it did flavor.  Can't really taste any figs (which were a afterthought anyways).  Next time maybe I'll add more (and not blend them, that was a mess, there's fig chunks in the bottle of the glass).  Or just leave them out entirely.  

Mouthfeel:  The light carbonation works its way to the back of my tongue.  A little bit of sweetness remains, but it's very easy to drink.  Not cloyingly sweet or over-dry.  Just right.  

Overall + Thoughts:  Probably one of my favorite personal homebrews. I hit what I was expecting pretty well, since it's just a recipe I already liked with some Carafa thrown in.  It could stand to be a little more carbonated, however.  I really love this yeast (WLP566 Saison II).  It has great fruit notes, with just a hint of pepper.  Boulevard's Tank 7 (And Saison-Brett) is one of my favorite beers, and this yeast delivers that character.  Maybe I'll grab a bottle of Tank 7 and compare sometime.  

Next time I try to brew a dark saison I'm going to add something with more punch, a roasted or chocolate malt. 

Pineapple Pale Ale

Whenever I brew or talk about brewing, I have a few family members that always ask, "When are you going to brew the pineapple beer again?"  I've said in previous posts that I have yet to rebrew the same recipe.  Well, I finally gave in to the pressure.

The idea for this recipe started after a discussion about a friend's trip to Hawaii.  He told me about how there was pineapple-everything there. Pineapple wine, pineapple cakes, pineapple brandy, pineapple soaps, all sorts of pineapple-based goods.  Except no pineapple beer.  (This was before Maui Brewing Company started distributing Mana Wheat off of Maui.)  As an experiment, in my 4th or 5th batch of homebrew ever, I brewed a basic pale ale and added pineapple chunks in the secondary.  And my family hasn't stopped talking about it all year.

This recipe is pretty simple.  A few pounds of 2 row, a little 20L, and Chico yeast.  I decided to try out Safale's US-05 dry yeast on this batch.  I didn't write down how much pineapple I added last time, so I decided to follow the 2 pounds per gallon rule I've heard several times on Basic Brewing Radio.  I ended up getting crushed pineapple instead of chunked since it was cheaper and came in convenient 1 pound cans.  Big mistake.  The crushed pineapple was very fine, not nearly as simple as the chunks.  The additional sugars kicked of a second fermentation, and in less than 30 minutes I was having to punch down the fruit cap with the back of a spoon.  I ended up having to do this about 7 times in 3 hours.  Even though I replaced the airlock with a blowoff tube, the stopper was getting clogged.  Now, the pineapple flesh has settled, but it is very loose.  Not sure how racking is going to go.

Using canned pineapple makes sense to me.  This beer is all about the pineapple flavor/aroma.  Boiling/pasteurizing would cause some of this to be lost, and I'd have to process my own pineapple.

Abacaxi

Grain Bill
2 lbs 4 oz  2-row Barley Malt
4 oz          Crystal 20L
2 lbs         Crushed Pineapple (canned)

Mash/Sparge
target temp 150°F
starting temp 151°F
final temp 146°F
Batch Sparge
preboil: 2.5 gallons @ 1.028

Boil
20g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 60 minutes
10g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 13 minutes
10g "Magic Hop Dust" @ 0 minutes
("Magic Hop Dust" is Austin Homebrew's way to sell the debris leftover when they break up bales of hops. This batch was estimated to have 7% Alpha Acid)

Ferment
1 packet Safale US-05 "American Ale" Yeast
//sprinkled directly into wort, per instructions

OG 1.045 (not sure why it was so low compared to preboil)

Notes
Hour long cooling rest at 98°F because I got stuck on the phone with my insurance company
Bottled one plain Pale Ale on 9/24/12 (no priming sugar, hopefully it wasn't finished)

Dark Saison with Figs

This one is a tweak of an old recipe.  In my year of homebrewing before this blog, I have yet to re-brew a recipe.  I have had some requests for another batch of Pineapple Pale Ale (coming soon) and a Dunkelweizen (that started as a Doppelbock).  I did try to tweak the Dunkel during a co-brew session with my friend Nate, but I used a different yeast.

I really like Saisons, Farmhouse Ales, and Biere de Gardes.  One of my personal favorite brews is a basic Saison.  I drank the whole batch too soon, and the last one had this amazing citrus and pepper character that the others all lacked.  I was inspired by a post on The Mad Fermentationist about a Saison with Figs and I just happened to have some figs in my freezer from a local farm.  The figs are not dried, but have been frozen to break up the cell walls (this lets the juices escape the fruit more easily).  I added in some Carafa malt, a roasted malt with the bitter husks removed, hoping the orange and black pepper flavors will mix well with the roasted malt and the darker-version-of-a-strawberry flavor the figs have.

I'm still adapting to brewing at my dad's house.  His stove is either boiling like a cauldron or not at all. I boiled off a lot more than I usually do, even with adding extra water.  I ended up having add the sediment, straining out the hops, just to make up my fill level.

Dark Saison with Figs
// 1 gallon batch

Grain Bill
2 lb 4 oz    2 Row Malt
4 oz          White Wheat Malt
2 oz          Munich Malt
2 oz          Carafa III Malt
~8oz         Frozen Figs, thawed and blended
Mash/Sparge
90 minute mash
Target temp 146*F
Starting temp 148*F
Final temp 145*F
Lazy Fly Sparge @ 170*F 

Boil 20 g      Hallertau (5.2%AA) @ 60 minutes
3 oz      White Sugar @15 minutes
4 g        Hallertau (5.2%AA) @ 0 minutes 6 g        Hallertau (6.2%AA) @ 0 minutes
Ferment
1/2 tube WLP566 Saison II Ale Yeast
OG 1.064 
//Notes

Brewed 9/1/2012 by myself
Farmers Branch water, filtered through a Brita pitcher
Fermented under the sink, thermostat set to 78*F
Figs added 9/4/12

Lakewood Brewing Tour

I really want to call Lakewood Brewing the best brewery in DFW, but I can't.  This is only because I've only toured 3 of the DFW breweries.  Of those, Lakewood is definitely my favorite.

Three of their 4 beers were available at the time my friend Daniel and I went to the tour: Rock Ryder (Wheat/Rye), Hop Trapp (Belgian-Style IPA), and The Temptress (Milk Stout).  All three were versions of the style that I think the average person (read: non-craft beer drinker) could enjoy.

I started out with The Temptress, since we were there for its release day.  Most places that have it on tap already are serving it on Nitro.  At the brewery, it was served on a standard tap.  Either they didn't have their Nitro set up yet, or the bars serving it decided to serve it that way on their own.  I don't know.  It was a great stout, with a very clean, unbitter, roast character even when it warmed in the 90° weather.  To me: perfect.  However, I wouldn't call it a Milk Stout.  It lacked the creamyness and sweetness I expect from a Milk Stout.  Maybe this is where the Nitro comes in, I don't know.  And at 9.1%, I would call it an Imperial Stout. (Although maybe not by the craft-beer-extreme definition.)

Next, I had the Hop Trapp.  Lakewood's slogan is Belgian Roots-Texas Brewed.  Only after looking at their website did I realize this was a "Belgian" IPA.  I have a new theory that the wheat malt is what helps Belgian yeast produce their special characteristics.  This is based on two data points: my homebrewed Belgian Pale Ale which I just swapped yeasts on, and the lack of Belgian character in this IPA.  It had an amazing flavor and aroma that reminded me of sticking my head in a bag of Cascades. Not much bitterness though.  This one definitely skirts the line between Pale Ale and IPA, and hopheads may be disappointed.  Personally, I love aromatic IPAs, so I thought it was perfect.

Finally, we closed out the day with the Rock Ryder.  It's probably the most true to name.  A very clean, easy drinking wheat beer, perfect for the hot weather.  It isn't a stand out among the Stout and IPA, but it drinks so effortlessly that it will be a huge seller.

Although they aren't technically in Lakewood (they are in Garland), they do make great beer.  They seem to have positioned themselves outside of the "extreme" craft brewing that has been taking over.  They make decidedly drinkable beers, and that's a good thing.  They have only been producing for 3 weeks.  With bottles expected to hit market in October, I will be a loyal customer.

Jaggery Dubbel

I decided to re-brew one of the beers that got the best reviews amongst my friends and family.  The first dubbel I brewed, I used the Belgian Candi Rocks.  Which was basically white table sugar shaped like brown rocks. The most telling review of it I had was "airy".  Buried under the light flavor was a nice dubbel - figs and other dark fruit flavors - but the mash was too low to support the lack of body in the sugar.

This time, I used a sugar called 'palm sugar' at the local Asian supermarket.  I think it's also called Jaggery or Gur some places.  I didn't really intend to use this for a dubbel, but since I finally had milled grain and the Belgian yeast can benefit from the Texas heat (my house is between 78-80 during the day) I decided to go for it.  I'm hoping the palm sugar has some characteristics that add body to the beer, since I didn't chance the mash schedule at all. One note: I've seen palm sugar sold in pancake batter colored discs about the size of a hard pancake. The sugar I bought (right) is much darker. I'm not sure what the difference is (I know some are made from cane sugar), but I decided on the darker version would be more fitting for this style.

Dubbel with Palm Sugar: 14-bis 

//14-bis was the first plane to fly under it's own power. Many think it should be the 'first' airplane since the Wright Brothers used a rail and later a catapult. Anyways, it had two wings (biplane-double-dubbel)  and was from Brasil, which has palm trees. It's also the 'first' beer posted on my blog. 

// 1 gallon batch

Grain Bill

2.5 lb 2 Row Malt
.325 lb Munich Malt
.30 lb Aromatic Malt
.25lb Special B Malt

Mash/Sparge

60 minute mash
Target temp 148*F
Starting temp 153*F
Final temp 146*F
Lazy Fly Sparge @ 170*F 

Boil

15g Saaz (2.5%AA) @ 60 minutes
8.6 oz Palm Sugar @15 minutes

Ferment

2/3 tube WLP530 Abby Ale Yeast
OG 1.080
FG 1.005
ABV 10.0%

//Notes

Brewed 8/21/2012 with Katie

Overpitched (hard to be accurate using less than the full tube of yeast)

OG much less than anticipated

Fermented in my dad's closet, thermostat set to 78*F

Tasting Post

Jester King Visit

A big part of being a homebrewer is the fantasy of being a "real" brewer. Because of this, I really enjoy going to brewery tours. Different breweries don't have as varied of brewing systems as different homebrewers, but it is still interesting to see. As a craft beer fan, getting to try a handful of new beers at the peak of freshness is equally as awesome.

This last weekend, I went down to Austin to visit some friends that also happen to be into homebrewing and craft beer. We ended up going out to Jester King Brewery. They have been doing some awesome things with beer, and for the Texas craft beer industry as a whole.


I was most excited for one of their collaboration beers with Mikkeller, called Weasel Rodeo. It's a coffee stout/porter with chipotle peppers. It's a twist on their Beer Geek Rodeo. The twist is, the coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world, weasel coffee, which has passed through the digestive tract of weasels (or are they civets) in Indonesia.

I also got to try my first "sour" beer, although I'm not sure a Berliner Weisse counts. It was tasty, a little tart, with a yogurt like nose. I don't really have anything to compare it to for quality though. Unfortunately, they ran out of Boxer's Revenge before I could try my first "wild ale".