Summertime Gose

As a home brewer, people are naturally interested in what you’re making.  It’s always fun to share your beer, but one of my favorite things about the hobby is introducing people to flavors in beer that they never knew existed or even could exist.  Since my brewery is located off of a well-traveled alley, I constantly get people stopping by to ask questions and sample some of my beer.  It’s a lot of fun…not only because I get to meet people and talk beer, but it’s a great feedback loop to have while being able to introduce folks to random styles of beer.

For the warm months of summer (the few that we actually get here in Seattle), I wanted to have something that would be refreshing, yet unique, on tap.  Since Goses are rarely seen, except by those that seek them out, I thought it would fit the bill nicely with its lemon tartness and orange flavored nuttiness from the coriander.  Add in a little salt to the mix and you’ve got a brew that is sure to turn a few heads.

For my first batch of Gose, I decided that I wanted to stay fairly traditional.  I kept the grain bill pretty simple and standard by using about 60% wheat malt and just a touch of Munich to add a little depth to the malt profile.  In addition to the sea salt and Indian coriander, which I lightly toasted in a pan and pulsed with a coffee grinder prior to adding, I threw in a few black cardamom seeds for that sort of smoky, mintiness that I feel they sometimes give off.   Hopefully it’ll intrigue and not disappoint.

Traditional Gose

Recipe Specifics

----------------------

Batch Size (Gal):  6.5

Total Grain (Lbs):  9.25

Anticipated OG:  1.046

Anticipated SRM:  3.3

Anticipated IBU:  6.2

Wort Boil Time:  90

Anticipated ABV:  4.8%

Grain

-------

59.5% - 5.5 Lbs Wheat Malt

32.4% - 3.0 Lbs Pilsner

8.1% - ¾ Lb Munich

Hops/Spices

----------------

20 grams Libery (Pellets, 3.0% AA) @ Mash Hop

15 grams Indian Coriander seeds (toasted and pulsed) @ 10 minutes

24 grams Sea Salt @ 10 Minutes

10 Black Cardamom seeds @ 10 minutes

Yeast

-------

WLP Lactobascillus (400ml starter)

Wyeast 1007 German ale (750ml starter)

Water Profile and Additions

-------------------------------------

Charcoal filtered Seattle water

Mash Additions: 1 gram/gallon Calcium Chloride

Boil Additions:  2.5 grams Calcium Chloride, 2.1 grams Epsom salt

Mash Schedule

--------------------

Doughed in @ 139°

Immediately raised temp to 149° via HERMS, rested there for 90 minutes

15 minutes @ 168°

Sparged with 170° H20

Notes

--------

5/2/11 – Added WLP Lactobascillus to 400ml of starter wort and left at ambient temp (68°).

Brewed on 5/7/2011 solo

Doughed in at 146° and mash stabilized at 139°.  Immediately raised the HERMs control to 149°, which took about 6 minutes for entire mash to reach.  Left for 90 minutes before raising HERMS for mash out.

Collected 5.5 gallons of 1.054 wort.  Topped kettle to 8.15 gallons so that after the boil I’d end up with 6.5 gallons of 1.046 wort.

Boiled for 90 minutes with spice additions at 10.

Chilled down to 120° and let rest covered for 45 minutes.  Temp dropped to 112° after which I racked the clear wort into a carboy and then pitched in the lacto culture.  Moved into the fermentation chamber with temp set to 110°.

5/9/2011 – Dropped temp dial down to 68°.  Created a 750ml starter for the German Ale strain.

5/10/2011 – Carboy down to 68°, so I pitched in the German Ale yeast.

6/7/2011 – Transferred into a C02 flushed keg since I needed the carboy space.  Keg was moved up into my office which was about 70° and left unpressurized.

11/11/11 - 1st Review/Tasting

Autumn Maple II and the Yambic

Back in October of ’09 when we set out to clone the Bruery’s Autumn Maple, we were experimenting with a strain of yeast that we hadn’t worked with before…the Bruery’s house yeast.  With commercial strains, you can review the fermentation specs before hand and expect the yeast to maintain those same properties, allowing you to craft a beer to your own desires.  With unknown strains though, aside from scouring the internet to find another brewer who captured and brewed with the same strain, you’re basically left to assumptions and experimentation.  Those assumptions led us to brew a 13% abv beer when, in fact, we intended to only brew a 10% beer.

Although the 13% version of Autumn Maple turned out to be a fantastic beer in its own right, it wasn’t what we were aiming for and before settling on the recipe, we wanted to make some adjustments to hit our initially intended goal.  Two things come to mind: 1.) gravity/abv and 2.) flavor profile.

First the ABV.  With the ’09 batch of Autumn Maple, we made the assumption that the Bruery’s house strain of yeast would act in a similar manner to most commercially available, high-gravity Belgian strains of yeast and attenuate somewhere in the range of 74-78%.  With this assumption in mind, we crafted the beer to have an OG of 1.100 so that at 76% attenuation, we would end up with about 10% abv.  After fermentation completed, we discovered that the yeast could tear through the wort and was capable of attenuation rates closer to 98%.  With this knowledge in mind, for batch two we decided to scale down the OG to 1.080 so that at 98% attenuation, we’d end up with a 10% beer.

Second, the flavor.  A complaint that I often have with pumpkin beers is that you only taste the spices and not the pumpkin.  With our first batch of Autumn Maple, the spice mixture was at a perfect level and although there was a touch of yam flavor, it didn’t stand out as much as we wanted it to.  Whereas with the first batch we only added the cooked yams to the mash, for batch 2 we decided that not only would we increase the amount of yams in the mash but we’d also add some yams to the boil.  With the increased volume in the mash and the new addition in the boil, hopefully the yam flavor will shine through and elevate the beer to new levels.

Autumn Maple II / Yambic

Recipe Specifics

---------------------

Batch Size (Gal): 6.0

Total Grain (Lbs): 13.5

Anticipated OG: 1.080

Anticipated SRM: 14

Anticipated IBUs: 23

Wort Boil Time: 90

Anticipated ABV: 10.0%

Grain/Fermentables

---------------------------

46.5% - 9.0 lbs Domestic 2-Row

20.7% - 4 lbs Munich Malt

26.1% - 5 lbs Cooked Yams

3.2% - 10 oz. Grade B Maple Syrup (added at secondary)

2.8% - ½ lb CaraMunich

0.6% - 2 oz. Dark Molasses

Hops/Spices

---------
65 grams Libery (pellets, 3.0% AA) @ 60 minutes

1 ½ grams Allspice, freshly ground @ 2 minutes
¾ gram Cinnamon stick, broken into small pieces @ 2 minutes
¾ gram Nutmeg, freshly grated @ 2 minutes
1 Tahitian Vanilla Bean, split and seeded @ 2 minutes

Yeast

---------------

Bruery house strain – cultured from a bottle of Orchard White

Water Profile and Additions

------------------------------------

Charcoal filtered Seattle water

Mash Additions: 0.1 gram/gallon baking soda

Boil Additions: 1.2 g/g Calcium Chloride, 0.25 g/g Epsom Salt, 0.2 g/g table salt.

Mash Schedule

--------------------

15 minutes @ 135°

60 minutes @ 151°

20 minutes @ 168°

Sparge with 170° Water

Notes

--------

Brewed on 9/26/2010 with Blake and Paul

9/13/2010 – Started growing up the dregs from an Orchard White.  Same process was used as in the first batch: Harvested the dregs from a bottle of Orchard White and mixed with 10ml of 1.035 worth.  Once fermentation started, I added another 20ml and then 24 hours later, another 50ml.  24 hours after that, I stepped it up to 250 ml, then 1000ml, then 2000ml, and then 4000ml all with about 24 hours in between each step.

9/26/2010 – Placed about 5lbs of washed yams on the BBQ and 5lbs in the oven for about 45 minutes.  After the yams were cooked, we mashed them all up, skins and all and measured out 5lbs to add to the mash (shortly after dough in).

With the additional yam content, we ran into a few issues where the mash stopped recirculating.  We were able to get it started again each time by stirring the mash and back-pressuring the line.  Next time, we’ll add rice hulls.

Other than the few stuck mash times, the mash went smoothly and our efficiency was great.  Collected 7 gallons of 1.069 wort and topped off kettle to a little over 7 ½ gallons.

Hops added at 60 minutes.

Molasses added at 20 minutes.

Whirlflock and yeast nutrient added at 15 minutes.

Spices were added at 2 minutes.  Same amounts were used as during the first batch: 2 parts allspice, 1 part cinnamon, and 1 part nutmeg (3 grams in total).  We also added one whole Tahitian vanilla bean which we split and seeded.

90 minute boil.  Wort chilled to 68° and 60 seconds of pure 02 was dosed.  6 gallons of 1.081 wort in total.  5 gallons went into one carboy and then the Bruery yeast was pitched.

Yambic

Yambic - About ¾ of a gallon of the pre-pitched wort went into a gallon jug.  To this jug, we added a ½ cup of a sour starter that we had on hand (starter contained the dregs from numerous beers: Deviation, Vagabond, Isabelle Proximus, Girardin Gueuze 1882, etc).  Should be interesting to see what it can do to such a high gravity wort.

Primary fermentation took place at 68°.

10/6/2010 – Racked to secondary and 10 oz. of grade B maple syrup were added.  Beer was moved up to my office which had an ambient temp of about 70°.

12/11/10 – Moved both the Yambic and the Autumn Maple down to the basement where temp is about 63°.  Gravity at 1.002.

3/6/2011 – Kegged the autumn maple.  There’s definitely more yam flavor than the first batch, but the beer is also more cloudy.  With the lower alcohol, it’s smoother than the first beer initially was but it also doesn’t taste as complex or rounded.  We’ll see what it’s like with carbonation.

11/17/2011 - Tasting and review

Brettanomyces Experiment - Initial pH, Attenuation, and Secondary Metabolites

Over the years, I’ve found that new brewers typically fall into one of two categories:  those that like to jump in with both feet and learn from experimentation or those that like to research as much as possible before making the leap.  I certainly fall into the latter category and so as expected, when I started venturing into the world of wild fermentations, I scoured the seemingly limited, publicly available information.  

When I came across Chad Yakobson’s dissertation on brettanomyces, I was really intrigued.  In his “Brettanomyces Project”, one of the things that he examined was the effect that varying amounts of lactic acid concentrations have on attenuation as well as secondary metabolites.  Depending on the strain that he was studying, he basically found that, “higher initial concentrations of lactic acid had a significant effect, increasing the level of attenuation observed in each strain while generally decreasing the secondary metabolites produced” (Yakobson).  As a career analyst, the myriad of data fascinated me but as an intrigued homebrewer, I was left without a subjective view.  If the amount of ethyl lactate production is correlated with the initial lactic acid concentrations yet ethyl caproate is inversely correlated, what’s the initial lactic acid concentration that would give me the appropriate balance of flavors that I want in my beer?  What about attenuation?  Is the reduction in ethyl caprylate worth the increased attenuation?  As much as I value Yakobson’s numerical findings, these are the questions that I, as a homebrewer, want to find the answers to.

Even though I don’t have a home filled with sophisticated lab equipment, I wanted to try and replicate Yakobson’s experiment as best I could in order to determine my own subjective opinions.  The Brettanomyces Project dissertation examined the results of eight different strain profiles, but in order to keep things relatively simple, I decided to only work with two commercially available strains of brettanomyces lambicus:  Wyeast 5526 and White Labs 653.   

Even though I could have kept the grain bill of the base beer extremely simple in order to showcase the subtle nuances of the brett fermentation, I opted not to since most likely my future 100% brett beers will not have such a simple wort.  Since the point of this experiment is to find out what flavors I’ll want in future beers and the lactic acid concentrations necessary to arrive at such levels, I decided that using a base beer similar to what I’ll be brewing in the future will provide me with the most realistic results.  There’s no point in using a simple pilsner malt base if later I’ll be brewing with other specialty grains that could mask the very subtle flavors only apparent with a pilsner base.  In the end, I went with a grist of Maris Otter, Munich, Carahell, and Crystal 40.

Once the mash and boil were complete, I filled 12 one-quart mason jars with 28oz. each of clear wort.  These were then split into two groups of six, one soon to be inoculated with Wyeast 5526 and the other with White Labs 653.   In Yakobson’s study, he examined the fermentation at 5 different lactic acid concentrations.  Since I had six jars for each brett strain, I decided to replicate the lactic acid concentrations that Yakobson used plus one additional point.  After determining the g/L of lactic acid in the 88% solution that I had on hand, I was able to calculate the amount of acid needed to dose each 28oz mason jar to reach 0, 100, 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 mg/L concentrations.

Concentration (mg/L)	ml of Lactic Acid Dosed	Initial pH
0	-	4.95
100	0.093	4.55
500	0.463	4.05
1000	0.925	3.75
2000	1.85	3.41
3000	2.776	3.08

Unfortunately I don’t have access to equipment necessary to count the number of yeast cells per ml of wort, so when it came time to inoculate the jars, I tried to be as consistent with each as possible.  Four days before my actual brew date, I made a 600ml starter for each strain.  Since I only have one stir plate, I rotated between the two starters every 24 hours.  When it came time to pitch the yeast, I used a sterile syringe to suck up the yeast from each starter while it was still spinning on the stir plate so as to get a homogenous mixture for each test batch.  By dosing 15ml of homogenous starter to each jar, hopefully I ended up with roughly the same cell count in each batch. 

After fermentation resides in a few months, I plan to measure the final gravities and pH.  I should be able to be get two 12 oz. bottles out of each batch and soon after bottle conditioning, I’d like to hold one blind tasting with one bottle from each of the 12 experimental batches.  Hopefully the results will be obvious and conclusive, but if not, a second blind tasting after another year or so should provide another opportunity for critique.

Batch Specifics

--------------------

Batch Size (Gal): 5.0

Total Grain (lbs): 9

Anticipated OG: 1.050

Anticipated SRM: 5

Anticipated IBU: 17

Wort Boil Time: 60 minutes

Anticipated ABV: Varies by initial pH / Lactic Acid concentration

Grain

--------

89.2 % - 8.0 lbs Maris Otter

7.4% - 0.66 lb Munich Malt

1.7% - 2.5 oz. Carahell

1.7% - 2.5 oz. Crystal 40

Hops

-------

60 minutes – 20 grams Cluster (Pellets, 5.0% AA)

Yeast

-------

Wyeast 5526 Brettanomyces Lambicus

White Labs 653 Brettanomyces Lambicus

Water Profile and Additions

-------------------------------------

Charcoal filtered Seattle water

Mash Additions: 0.65 g/g Calcium Chloride, 0.35 g/g Epsom Salt (based on 3 gallons)

Boil Additions: 0.65 g/g Calcium Chloride, 0.35 g/g Epsom Salt (based on 3 gallons), and 0.2g/g Salt (based on 6 gallons)

Lactic Acid – dosed into individual batches at rates mentioned above

Mash Schedule

--------------------

60 minute rest at 152°

15 minute mash out rest at 168°

Sparged with 170° water

Notes

--------

4/6/2011 – Started Wyeast 5523 starter (600ml) and placed on stirplate

4/7/2011 – Started White Labs 653 starter (600ml)…unfortunately it didn’t arrive the same day as the Wyeast.  Swapped Wyeast for White Labs on the stirplate.

4/8/2011 – Switched starters on the stirplate.

4/9/2011 – Switched Starters on the stirplate.

4/10/2011 – Brewed solo.

Hit strike 152 mash temp dead on.  Added mash mineral additions.

Collected 5 gallons of 1.060 wort.  Topped off to 7 gallons with filtered water, boiled for 60 minutes, and ended with 6 gallons of 1.050 wort.

Whirlflock and yeast nutrient were added at 15 minutes remaining.

Whirlpool chilled to 70° degrees and then let sit for about an hour and a half covered, waiting for the wort to completely settle.

Used kettle valve to fill 12 quart jars with 28 oz. of clear wort.

Remaining wort was used to fill another mason jar and a 1 gallon jug, both to be placed in various spots in my brewery to test out spontaneous fermentation.

For the 12 test batches, a 1ml syringe was used to dose each of the jars to the appropriate lactic acid concentrations (see grid above).  After lactic acid concentrations/pH levels were correct, 15 ml of brett were added…Wyeast to 6 jars, White Labs to 6.

Test batches were placed in closet where ambient temp is about 70°.

8/17/2011 - Bottled each sample

9/15/2011 - Blind Tasting Results

Pro-Am Imperial Red with Rye

Although it was a lot of fun in the beginning, I rarely submit our beers to competitions anymore.  There was a point when I felt like judges’ feedback was the only place where I could get honest, constructive criticism, but now, with a large group of obsessed beer nerd friends, my options have expanded and the opinions of the judges no longer seem to hold as much weight as they used to.  With the homebrewing world growing and more and more brewers interested in passing the BJCP exam and later judging, I also found it extremely frustrating when you received two contradictory judging scores and notes.  That said, there is still one competition that I like to enter each year…the Puget Sound Pro-Am.

Although the Pro-Am competition is initially judged according to BJCP guidelines, it differs from other competitions in that local breweries select beers of their choosing to be scaled up and brewed at their breweries.  They don’t always select the top beer in each category and often they’re only looking for beers of a certain style.  If they do end up selecting yours though, the commercially brewed version will most likely be submitted to the Pro-Am competition at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.  

With the limited time and planning that we had, deciding on a brewing strategy for the competition was not a simple task.  Granted that we had some beers on hand that we could submit, we wanted to brew a few beers specifically for the competition that we believed could give us a leading edge.  

One thing that helped define a strategy for us was to look at what the trends were last year.  In years past, it seemed like whatever did well at the GABF would do well at the local Pro-Am the following year.  Two of last year’s winning GABF beers included rye and the 1^st place beer was an imperial red ale with rye (Red Velvet).  Given that rye’s a unique enough ingredient to make a beer stand out, yet it’s still easy to work with and produces repeatable results (as opposed to spices or the like), it seemed like a good option to incorporate into a recipe.  About a year ago, we brewed an imperial red ale that, as far as all our hop-forward beers went, turned out to be one of my favorites that we’ve produced.  Incorporating rye into the recipe seemed only natural and when the recipe for Red Velvet was printed in the November issue of Zymurgy, it turned out that our own recipe was extremely similar (with the acception of the rye addition).

With a few modifications to our imperial red ale recipe, we essentially were killing two birds with one stone.  I guess only time will tell if it’s a smart move or not, but using a unique-enough ingredient like rye and mimicking a winning style from last year seemed like a strategy worth trying.

Holden's Red

Recipe Specifics

---------------------

Batch Size (Gal): 6.0

Total Grain (lbs): 18.13

Anticipated OG: 1.087

Anticipated SRM: 17.3

Anticipated IBU: 90

Wort Boil Time: 90 minutes

Anticipated ABV: 9.5%

Grain

-------

69.0% - 12.5 lbs Maris Otter

16.5% - 3.0 lbs Flaked Rye

5.5% - 1.0 lb Crystal 60

5.5% - 1.0 lb Munich Malt

2.1% - 6oz. Crystal 120

1.4% - ¼ lb Pale Chocolate

Hops

-------

75 minutes – 40 grams Magnum (Pellets, 12.1% AA)

30 minutes – 30 grams Simcoe (Pellets, 11.5% AA)

10 minutes – 25 grams Amarillo (Pellets, 7.1% AA)

0 minutes – 40 grams Centennial (Pellets, 8.5% AA)
0 minutes – 20 grams Cascade (Pellets, 5.6% AA)

0 minutes – 15 grams Amarillo (Pellets, 7.1% AA)

Dry – 40 grams Amarillo
Dry – 40 grams Cascade

Dry – 40 grams Centennial

Yeast

-------

Wyeast 1056 American Ale (1500ml starter)

Water Profile and Additions

------------------------------------

Charcoal filtered Seattle Water

Mash Additions: ½ gram per gallon Chalk, ½ g/g baking soda.

Fermentation Addition (see notes): 6 grams gypsum, 2.4 grams Epsom salt, 3 grams table salt.

Mash Schedule

--------------------

60 minute rest at 152°

15 minute mash out rest at 168°

Sparged with 170° water

Notes

--------

3/4/2011 – Made 1 liter starter of 1.035 wort.

3/5/2011 – Added 500 ml to starter.

Brewed 3/6/2011 with Blake.

Doughed in at 158° and hit our 152° mash temp dead on.  Added mash mineral additions and hit 5.2 pH.   

Rested for 60 minutes and then sparged until we had 7.5 gallons in the kettle with a total of 638GUs.

Boiled for 90 minutes and with 15 minutes left, we added whirlflock and Wyeast yeast nutrient.

Chilled down to 66° and racked beer into carboy.  Started to oxygenate with tank 02 and airstone, but our tank was low so we only got about 10 seconds of 02 in there.  After realizing this, we shook the crap out of the carboy for another 5 minutes.

Started fermentation at 66°.

3/7/2011 - Realized we didn’t add the boil kettle mineral additions, so we boiled up a cup of water and added the minerals that we would have added into the kettle.  Water was cooled and then dumped into fermentor. 

3/10/2011 – Raised temp to 68°

3/22/2011 – Needed the space in the fermentation chamber, so I brought the carboy up to my office.  Ambient temp, ~70°.

3/23/2011 – Added dry hop additions to primary.

3/30/2011 – Wanted to get the beer off the dry hops, but since the beer was still very slowly fermenting, I transferred the beer to a C02 flushed carboy instead of kegging.

4/8/2011 – Crash cooled beer in basement fridge.  FG: 1.017

4/10/2011 – Kegged and carbonated to 2.6 volumes.

Tasting Review

Bourbon Wood-Aged Tripel

Every beer geek can probably remember back to the first craft beer they had that opened their eyes to the vast array of flavors that can be present in a beer.  For me, that beer was Chimay Grande Reserve.  Unlike anything I had ever had before, it drove my curiosity to explore other Belgian styles and before I knew it, Tripels became my new favorite.  To this day, I still love how the spiciness from the yeast and alcohol plays well on top of the soft malt character while the high carbonation helps to aid in a dry, slightly bitter finish.

As a homebrewer, brewing a Tripel isn’t the most exciting beer in the world to make.  Granted that it can be difficult to achieve the dryness and the right characteristics from the yeast without producing an overly hot beer, a grain bill comprised of mainly pilsner malt and cane sugar just doesn’t hold the same appeal that maybe a barleywine does.  To up the ante a little bit, I wanted to add another layer of complexity by incorporating the flavors that a beer often receives during extended aging in a bourbon barrel.

Before getting too excited about the simulated bourbon barrel aging, I wanted to make sure that the base beer wasn’t neglected and that it still retained the properties of a high quality Tripel.  To me, a lack of dryness and excessive alcohol heat are two of the most common flaws in this homebrewed style and so to combat this, I wanted to make sure that the base beer had plenty of easily fermentable sugars and that the fermentation temps were restrained.  The grist of primarily German pilsner malt was mashed long and low at a temp of 147° and then to the boil, nearly 18% of the total fermentables were added in the form of cane and candi sugar (it would have been fine with 100% cane sugar, but since I had a 1lb bag of clear candi syrup on hand, I decided to throw it in).  As for the fermentation, I pitched a 1500ml starter of Wyeast’s Trappist High Gravity yeast to the wort at 64°.  Even though this strain of yeast can handle much higher temps, I decided to keep it low initially to restrain the heat and excessive phenolics.  After a period of 36 hours, the temp was raised 1° per 24 hours until a max temp of 72° was reached to finish out the beer.

After primary fermentation, I started the simulated bourbon barrel aging process.  The beer was racked into a keg which contained 1 oak stave that had been soaking in Makers Mark for about 2 weeks.  I knew that this would not be quite enough oak or bourbon to impart the desired flavors, but I wanted to take it slow.  Part of my problem with other Bourbon Aged Tripels is that the bourbon is too forward and the subtleties of the base beer are lost.  I wanted this beer to be a quality Tripel first, with just a hint of bourbon and oak on the finish.  After three months, you really couldn’t perceive any bourbon or oak character, so I added two more oak staves and an 8^th of a cup of bourbon.  With another two weeks passing, the bourbon still wasn’t quite where I was aiming.  After letting the beer rest for one more week, I pulled out a glass and using a 1ml dosing syringe, I continued to add more bourbon until the appropriate balance was reached.  Scaling this amount up for the volume that I had in the keg, I ended up adding another 12mls.  

Bourbon and Oak aged Tripel

Recipe Specifics

------------------

Batch Size (Gal): 5.5

Total Grain(lbs): 10 ¼

Anticipated OG: 1.070

Anticipated SRM: 4.5

Anticipated IBU: 32.0

Wort Boil Time: 90 minutes

Anticipated AVB: 9%

Grain/Fermentables

--------------------

78.4% - 10.0 lbs German Pilsner

11.8% - 1.5 lbs cane sugar

7.8% - Clear Candi Syrup

1.5% - 3 oz. Aromatic Malt

0.5% - 1 oz. Biscuit Malt

Hops

-------------------

60 minutes – 40 grams Styrian Goldings (Pellets, 5.2% AA)

10 minutes – 20 grams Czech Saaz (Pellets, 5.5% AA)

Yeast
-------------------

Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity (1500ml Starter)

Water Profile and Additions
-----------------------------

Charcoal filtered Seattle Water

Mash Additions: 1 gram/gallon Calcium Chloride, ¼ gram/gallon Epsom Salt, 0.085 gram/gallon Baking Soda, and 0.2 gram/gallon Salt.

Sparge Additions: 1.3 gram/gallon Calcium Chloride

Mash Schedule

----------------

60 minute rest at 147°

15 minute mash out rest at 168°

Sparged with 170° water

Notes

----------------

10/28/2010 – made starter with 1 liter of 1.35 wort.

10/29/101 – added 500ml of wort to starter.

Brewed 10/30/2010 – solo.

Hit dough-in temp of 147 exactly and rested for 60 minutes.

Whirlflock and yeast nutrient added with 15 minutes to go in the boil.

Chilled down to 64°.  Ended with 6 gallons of 1.070 wort.  Aerated for 60 seconds with pure 02 and pitched yeast starter. After 36 hours, temp was raised 1 degree per day until 72° was reached.

12/11/2010 – Transferred to secondary.  Added 1 oak stave (1 inch by 1 ½ inch by ¼ inch) that had been boiled for 10 minutes and then soaked in Makers Mark for 12 days.  Secondary was moved down to the basement which was about 63°.  Gravity down to 1.005.

3/6/2011 – Bourbon and oak are extremely subtle…almost non-existent.  Added two more oak staves (both had been boiled) and about 1/8 cup of Makers.  Moved to fridge to lager.

3/11/2011 – Added 1 more oak stave.

3/29/2011 – Taste wasn’t exactly where I wanted it, but I started carbonating to 2.4 volumes anyway knowing I would add more bourbon later.

4/10/2011 – Using an 8oz sample, I gradually dosed bourbon until the right balance was reached.  After scaling this up to the full batch, I ended up adding another 12mls to the keg.