This is a recipe that came to me from a few angles.  One of which is my wife, who rather enjoys her coffee prepared “au lait” (with milk).  Combined with the fact that we both technically mispronounce it as “olé.”  As in…bullfighting.  That explains the exclamation point on the name.  No one says “olé.”  They say “OLÉ!”

Anyway, enough with that.

I know people have made sweet/milk/cream stouts before.  And I know people have made coffee stouts before.  They’re both delicious.  And I know people have combined the two before.  But I haven’t found one to try yet, and I haven’t made one yet.  And I didn’t want to wait any longer to make it.

So I took advantage of the 20% off Black Friday Sale at the local Northern Brewer shop here in Milwaukee, picked up my first glass carboy, and got to work.

Here’s the recipe:

Specialty Grains:

• 0.75 lbs English Roasted Barley
• 0.5 lbs Briess Caramel 60L
• 0.5 lbs flaked barley
• 0.5 lbs flaked oats
• 0.25 lbs Briess Organic Munich

Fermentables:

• 6 lbs Maris Otter liquid malt extract  (at 60 min)
• 1 lbs lactose (milk sugar)  (at 15 min)

Hops:

• 1 oz Centennial (9.7% AA) hops (at 60 min)

Yeast:

• 1 pkg Wyeast 1098 (British Ale)

Adjuncts:

• 14 fl oz cold-brewed coffee (made with approx. 4 oz Victor Allen’s Kona-blend coffee) (at flameout)
• 1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (at 15 min)

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.014
• IBU: 28
• SRM: 34
• ABV: 5.3%

Brewday -1

November 24, 2012

Ground up about 4 oz (should have measured, dangit) Victor Allen’s Kona blend coffee in the coffee grinder.  They roast good coffee here in Wisconsin, and this is also a really good value when you get the 2lb bag at Costco.

Tossed that into my falling-apart French press and topped off with cold water.  I didn’t want to heat anything because I didn’t want to bring out any of the acrid tannins and other flavors that can come out when you overdo coffee.  And since it was going to be going into a recently-boiled kettle of wort, I wasn’t concerned about infection from the cold water.  I did soak the press in StarSan, though.

I’m crazy, but I’m not nuts.

Let that all sit and steep in the refrigerator overnight until brewday.

Brewday

November 25, 2012

Brought the steeping water up to 174˚.  I decided, this time, to pay attention to what temperature I start the steeping process at, and what I end at.  Ultimately, over the 20-minute steeping process, the temp dropped down to 158˚.

The steeped wort smelled very chocolately, despite not using any chocolate malt.  There was a very minor coffee note from the coffee malt, but not much.  Thinking next time I’ll up that.  The little coffee aroma there is here never appears again throughout the boiling process.  But I’ll make that final decision on tasting day.

After adding the LME at the 60 minute mark, the unhopped wort smells like…the steeped wort.  But a little moreso.  No other way to really describe it.  Coffee is already almost gone.

Right after adding the hops (after bringing the wort back up to temp), the aroma is very floral, very bitter, slightly citrusy, but not much on that. Malt and chocolate have taken a back seat to the hops for the moment as I’d expected.

At the 30 minute mark (carboy cleanup time), the hop aroma is still dominant.  Hadn’t quite expected that.  But the malt aroma is returning. Most of the floral notes are gone, now just mostly bitterness and citrus.

At 15 minutes (Whirlfloc, lactose add), the hops have mostly faded, and the maltiness returns.  Back where we should be.  The lactose adds a milky, sweet aroma.  Didn’t quite expect that, but hey, that’s pleasant.

At the 0 minute mark (flamout, coffee add), the addition of the coffee brings the aroma of the wort completely into balance.  More than I would have thought.  The malt is full-on, hops are just there, coffee is just right.

What a great smell.

Got about 3.5 gallons of fully-boiled wort.  Topped off with water in the carboy, and lugged that heavy sonofagun down into the basement to bubble and burble away.

I’m really looking forward to tasting this one.

The post Recipe: Au Lait! (Cream Coffee Stout) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

Okay, I’ve relied on pre-fab extract kits for long enough.  Okay, yeah, two batches may not seem like a lot, but when you’re as impatient as I am, and am limited by equipment to one batch at a time (at 3+ weeks per batch), it seems like a long time.  And did I mention I’m impatient?  Strange hobby for an impatient person, but I love it.

So, to the beer.  And with the Christmas season now officially “here,” I figured why not get a holiday brew ready?

I’ll start by saying I got the idea for this recipe from the king of home brewing, John Palmer.  He did a video a while back about doing an oak aged, all-grain, English Mild, and kept talking about how it was going to get a lot of nice cookie notes in the final product.  Well, me being the chubby kid that can’t pass up a good cookie to save his life, I decided to take the idea to the next level, and bring out all the cookie a beer can possibly have.

At least all the cookie a beer can have and not be super-sweet or like drinking an actual cookie.

As for the name, “Kekse” is the German word for…you guessed it…”cookie.”  And, so you’re not pondering it too hard, it’s pronounced CAKE’-seh.

So here’s the recipe:

Speciality Grains:

• 1.0 lbs Weyermann Carawheat
• 0.5 lbs Belgian Special B
• 0.5 lbs flaked oats (toasted 30 min at 300˚)
• 0.5 lbs flaked wheat (toasted 30 min at 300˚)

Fermentables:

• 6 lbs Maris Otter Liquid Malt Extract (at 60 min)

Hops:

• 1 oz East Kent Goldings (at 45 min)

Yeast:

• 1 pkg Wyeast 1388 (Belgian Strong Ale)

Adjuncts:

• 1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (at 15 min)
• 1 stick Mexican cinnamon (at 5 min)

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.049
• FG: 1.012
• IBU: 13
• SRM: 23
• ABV: 4.8%

Before I go too much further, let me explain something so the laypeople out there about cinnamon.  That stuff you’re shaking onto your toast with sugar in the morning?  That’s not cinnamon.  That stick you have steeping and making the house smell incredible in your potpourri crock?  That’s not cinnamon.  That stuff that’s ladled all over your cinnamon roll? That’s not cinnamon.

That’s cassia.

And cassia is often used in these situations for two main reasons.  1. It’s easier to grow (and thus much less expensive) and 2. It’s MUCH more intense that true cinnamon.  I didn’t want intense.  It’s a “mild” beer.  I wanted balance and delicateness.

I just wanted to make that clear.

Brewday:

November 18, 2012

I finally got myself a fry thermometer for my brewing.  I also fry a lot of things day-to-day, so it will get plenty of use.  I used that thermometer to bring the water up to 165˚ to steep the specialty grains, assuming carry-over would take the temp to the desired 170˚ (which I was a little more cautious about after the previous brewday’s adventure of letting the steeping water getting to a near-dangerous 182˚).

After steeping the specialty grains for 20 mins, I noticed the water never got quite up to that 170˚ I was after, but alas, not a big deal.  Hung around 168˚.  The steeped grain water spelled chocolatey and bready…yet unusually “clean.”  That’s the best I can describe it.  The color was a beautiful, reddish copper.  However, I noticed the larger-than-usual specialty grain bag pulled in a lot of water, so I had to top off the kettle before I got back to work.

Once I got the water back up to a boil, I broke out the Maris Otter extract.  And may I just say…it’s delicious on its own.  I’ve heard other homebrewers openly consider pouring it over pancakes before.  I can now see why.

After mixing the extract into the wort, the kettle smelled like toasty caramel, but otherwise seemingly neutral.  That “clean” aroma again.  A little bit of bread character, but not a lot.

At 45 minutes, I added in the first and only round of hops.  The East Kent Goldings, which are very mild but rather aromatic and spicy, added a spicy, floral aroma to the still toasty caramel smell in the pot.  But the floral notes actually started fading within minutes of adding the hops to the wort.

I decided to make my first venture into clear-beer brewing by adding Whirlfloc to this beer at the 15 minute mark.  For those who don’t know, Whirlfloc is a tablet-ized Irish Moss, which takes the proteins that cause hazy beer to coagulate and sink, leaving a clear brew. So when I added the half-tablet to the kettle, I noticed I was starting to get some of those cookie aromas I was after.  The hops were still present in the aroma, but still fading.

At 5 minutes, I tossed in the cinnamon stick.  Uncut, uncrushed, just raw, intact, cinnamon stick.  I wanted the cinnamon to be there, but not powerful.  The cinnamon aroma mixed beautifully with the toast and caramel and spice already in the kettle.  It seemed balanced at this (admittedly) early stage to the nose.  Exactly what I was after.

But at 0 minutes (flameout), the cinnamon intensified a bit.  More than I had hoped.  I immediately pulled the stick out of the still-hot wort.  Cinnamon is now the dominant aroma.  I hope that fades.

After chilling the wort and getting it into the fermenter, the cinnamon aroma has already calmed down.  I can see the Whirlfloc in action.  Globs of protein are gathering and swirling, waiting for their opportunity to sink.  And with the raw, flaked oats and wheat, there’s going to be plenty of protein to work out.  I’m expecting plenty of trub at the bottom of the bucket when I bottle everything.  Going to have to be careful not to drag that back up.

Assuming I can manage that, and the cinnamon stays calm, I think this is going to be a great beer.

Update: Here’s how it tasted!

The post Recipe: Kekse (Christmas Cookie Mild) – First Self Made Brew! appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

Thanksgiving/Christmas shindig we’re putting together here at the Metzger house), I wanted to have some

beers in the bottle by the time people came.  And this is one kit I picked up at the Northern Brewer shop here in Milwaukee, and my second overall beer.

One small niggle at the NB shop, however…they didn’t have the “recommended” yeast the kit called for (Wyeast 3711 French Saison).  So, at the recommendation of the guy behind the counter, we made the swap for White Labs WLP565 (Saison ale), one of the yeast starters in what looks like an unblown 2-liter bottle.

Recipe:

Once again, I stuck strictly with the NB kit’s recipe guide, with two small, and unintentional exceptions.  One was the yeast, that I already mentioned.  The other is the steeping temps.  The guide called for bringing the water up to a boil and then steeping the specialty grains until the temp dropped to 170˚.  That seems to be their recommendation on any extract recipe kit that has specialty grains.

At the store, when we did their brewing newbie class, the guy running it recommended just bringing the water up to 170˚, and then steeping for about 20 mins in order to avoid extracting harsh tannins from the grain.  That’s what I did with the NB White House Honey Porter kit I already brewed.  However, this time, after I placed the grain bag in the water, the temp somehow climbed up to 182˚, putting me in what I can only believe is a tannin danger-zone.  I don’t know how I managed that, but I did.

That being said, here’s the recipe, and MAN is it a sugar bomb!

Specialty Grains:

• 0.5 lbs Belgian aromatic malt
• 0.25 lbs Weyermann Carafa III
• 0.25 lbs Weyermann CaraAroma

Fermentables:

• 6 lbs Pilsner LME (at 60 min)
• 1 lb D-90 Candi Syrup (at 60 min)
• 1 lb Briess Pilsen DME (at 15 min)
• 1 lb Dextrose/Corn sugar (at 0 min/flameout)

Hops:

• 1 oz US Magnum (at 60 min)

Brewday:

October 21, 2012

The steeped water, without fermentables, looked very dark.  When I pulled the grain bag, some of it got on my finger and looked darker than I remember the White House Honey Porter finished wort looking.

After adding the base malt/sugar (the Pilsner LME and the Candi), the wort just smelled sweet.  No DME or dextrose added yet, but the smell was very pleasant.  Bready and chocolately.  The Candi, despite having a very noticeable taste (I had to try some out of the bag) didn’t seem to add anything to the aroma.  However, I’m sure it’s going to do plenty for the taste.

Also, unlike the White House Honey Porter brewday, I remembered the Fermcap-S.  And it was a godsend.  Simply put, I was able to do much closer to a full boil without fear of boiling over.  Okay…the fear was there…it just wasn’t realized.  And that’s what counts, right?

I got more than four gallons of boil in a five gallon pot.  It didn’t even really foam at all.  Good stuff.  If you don’t have it, get it.  If you’re worried about what it will do to your beer, just remember, it’s in the craft beer you’re already drinking (it’s not listed since it’s a processing agent, and not an “ingredient,” per se).  Good stuff.

Shortly after the first hop addition, at the 60 minute mark, I could smell a mild, floral, hoppy addition to the aroma, but it was very neutral.  Hops are not a major element of this beer, and this was already apparent.  But since there’s a truckload of sugar in this recipe, the bitterness is going to be very needed in order to balance the flavor.

At the 15 minute mark, that’s when I added the supplemental Briess Pilsner DME.  The hop aroma is almost completely gone.  The aroma is 95% malt, I would say.  Depending on how well the yeast performs, it’s going to be interesting on just HOW sweet the final product is going to be.

However, the first (and only) chink in the Fermcap-S armor was found here.  As you’re supposed to, I removed the pot from the burner to add the DME.  When I returned it to the heat, the foam suddenly arrived, very quickly, and almost led to a boil-over.  I already had my mitts on (since I hadn’t taken them off from returning the pot to the heat), so was able to remove the pot from the burner before a sticky disaster struck.  After the foam dissipated, I returned the pot to the heat…and it just acted like nothing had ever happened.  It was just jerking with me.  Crisis averted!

At 0 minutes (dextrose add/flameout), the hop aroma was all but gone.  I’d say down to 1%.  Just enough to know I added hops, but nothing else.  Very dark wort, though it did lighten up from the initial grain-steeped wort.  Hazy too.

In the end, I collected 3.5 gal of fully-boiled wort.  Topped off with cold water to 5 gal.

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.070
• FG: 1.021
• IBU: 41
• SRM: 34
• ABV: 6.4%

So, it looks like this is going to be strong, and if the yeast performs like it should over the three week fermentation, it should be more balanced than I originally thought.  I’m looking forward to knocking one of these back!

I have one more Northern Brewer kit I want to run (in order to know I have the methods down) before I start designing my own recipes.  But I have one already in mind that I’m working on.  Stay tuned!

EDIT: Updated the Vitals calculations with the change to the new Brewers Friend recipe calculator, that I will be going with for the foreseeable future.  The original TastyBrew stats are listed below.  You’ll notice the differences in OG, SRM, and ABV are relatively minor.  But differences in FG and IBU are HUGE.  And, as you will soon see in the tasting of this beer, are much more in tune with the final product.  Here’s the originals:

Vitals (according to the handy TastyBrew.com):

• OG: 1.073
• FG: 1.018
• IBU: 70
• SRM: 29
• ABV: 7.1% (holy cow, this one will keep you warm in winter!)

Update: Here’s how it tasted!

The post Recipe: Northern Brewer Saison de Noel appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

This is the first beer I’ve ever brewed.  Only stands to reason that it should be the first beer I review.  But before I dive too far, I should explain how I intend to do these.

First, recipe/brewing and tasting posts will normally be kept separate.  But with this being the first, and the idea for the blog coming a little after the time I actually brewed this batch, we’re combining the two here.

Second, since the recipe/brewing post will come before the tasting, I’ll just order this one in the same way.  With that said, let’s get to the beer!

Recipe:

With this being my first beer, I stuck 100 percent with the kit from Northern Brewer, which was assembled to mimic the actual Honey Porter recipe cooked up at the actual White House.  There were a few differences.  For one, the good folks at the Northern Brewer store here in Milwaukee swapped out the original Nottingham dry yeast for a package of Wyeast #1056 liquid yeast (one of the handy-dandy smack-packs).  So this is the recipe and instructions provided with the kit.  For the link-averse, it looks like this:

Specialty Grains:

• 1 lb Briess Caramel 20
• 0.75 lbs Briess Munich Malt
• 0.625 lbs English Black Malt
• 0.188 lbs English Chocolate Malt

Fermentables:

• 6.3 lbs Gold malt syrup (at 60 min)
• 1 lb Honey (at 60 min)

Hops:

• 0.5 oz Nugget hops (at 45 min)
• 0.5 oz Nugget hops (at 30 min)
• 0.5 oz Hallertau hops (at 0 mins/flameout)

Vitals (according to the EXTRA handy Brewer’s Friend):

• OG: 1.058
• FG: 1.015
• IBU: 35
• SRM: 33
• ABV: 5.7%

Brewed September 30, 2012, Bottled October 21, 2012

Following the instructions I put 3.5gal water in the pot (it was probably closer to 4, but my kettle doesn’t have markings), and heated it up to 170˚.  The instructions actually called for bringing it up to a boil, and then placing the specialty grain bag in to steep until it cooled to 170˚.  However, one of the guys at the store recommended only heating it to 170˚ and letting them steep for an even 20 minutes in order to keep from extracting harsh tannins from the mash.  So I followed the advice of the guy who had done this kind of stuff a lot.

After steeping the specialty grains, I pulled the bag, and brought the mixture up to a full rolling boil.  Pulled the kettle off the burner as told, and added the fermentables, stirring it with a big brewing spoon as if the whole thing were a vinaigrette getting its oil-add.  After returning the newly-made wort to the burner, I remembered something the guy at the store mentioned.

A helpful little product called “Fermcap S.”

Specifically, I remembered I didn’t get any.  And it prevents boil-overs beautifully as I found on a later brew day.  But on this one, the wort foamed up, and would have boiled over, despite the pot only being a little over half full, had I not been able to fumble on my oven mitts and remove the kettle from the burner as I did.  Crisis (narrowly) averted.

The second attempt to boil was much calmer.  It foamed up, but came about an inch shy of the rim of the kettle, and then settled back down.  The unhopped wort smelled like dry, chocolately cookies.  VERY pleasant.

At 45 minutes, I added the first hop addition.  The Nugget hops made the wort smell more like chocolate flowers, if you can imagine that.  Almost like a chocolate cake made with an IPA.  HEY…that sounds like an idea!

At 30 minutes, the second round of Nugget hops went in.  The floral qualities returned from the new hops, but the bitterness was apparent to the nose.  The chocolate aromas also began to fade a bit.

Curiously, at 0 minutes, when the final Hallertau hops were added and the wort was pulled from the heat, the chocolate aromas returned, smelling more like the first hop addition, but with an added malty/bakery note.  That was interesting.

Everything was cooled using a cold water/ice/running water bath in the sink.  Everything cooled in about twenty minutes.  Overall, I was able to rack about 2.5 gal of wort into the bucket.  Yes…I have a bucket.  Told you it was my first round.  Topped off with cold water, but apparently only to about 4gal.  The problem with the bucket fermenter is that you can’t tell what’s wort and what’s foam.

In the end, I racked it into the bottling bucket three weeks later with 3.2oz of table sugar for priming.  Ended up with 38 complete bottles.  Much less than I originally thought I should get.

Tasting:

Appearance: (2.5/5) Dark.  Very dark.  To the point of opacity.  Maybe that’s because it’s only been conditioning for two weeks at the time of this writing, but maybe it’s because I don’t try to leave the yeast dregs entirely in the bottom of the bottle.  I like them.  So sue me.  The head is a light tan, and very thick, but dissipates within about five or ten minutes, leaving little lacing on the glass.

Aroma: (3/5) Very malt forward.  You can’t get much of the hops at all on the nose, but you do get that chocolate, bakery, cakey aroma over anything else.  There’s also a bit of fruitiness to it, perhaps cherries.  Yeah…that’s cherries.  Pleasant to the palate.

Taste: (3/5)  Again, the maltiness dominates, with a high sweetness from the honey.  Much more sweetness than the 1.012 final gravity would have me think.  But at this point, I’m not experienced enough to tell if the calculator is off, or my palate isn’t tuned to fine beer tastings yet.  But the sweetness is there, the chocolate isn’t as much.  Instead it’s malt, honey, and a little bit of that cherry.  No hop flavor, and just enough bittering to keep this brew from being a complete sugar-bomb.

Drinkability and Mouthfeel: (4/5)  Infinite.  I’m sure that doing this recipe as an all-grain (which I may, some day, given more money) would be more complex, and a little more fun, but as it is, an extract kit with specialty grains, I could drink this all day.  Especially with the Milwaukee autumn weather chilling off more and more.  It’s not as heavy as you a porter could be, either.  I think part of that was getting the carbing right.  The bubbles are just the right size and quantity to make this an overall pleasant beer.

Design: (3/5)  As with all the beers I intend to brew, I’m making a set of bottle labels out of simple address labels.  Enough space to tell me what it is, when it was made, and to have a little fun with it.  And small enough to be a perfect neck-wrap label.  You could see it in the image above on the bottle.  I like it.  I like how the design conveys the source of the recipe (the fancy-schmancy White House), but cleanly juxtaposes it against the hardy origins of English robust porter ales.  What do you think?

Final Score: (17.5/25)  Overall, this was a great first run.  Furthermore, it was a successful first attempt at brewing.  It was very satisfying, all the major pitfalls were avoided (no infected, band-aid beer!), and it made me want to get the second batch going before I had even had a chance to rack and bottle the first.

That being said, it’s an extract kit, and there’s much more that can be done with beer.  Not much more with my own limited selection of equipment, but more overall.  And if I want to score this beer in fairness with other major-craft-label offerings, I have to ding the hell out of myself.  And that’s what I’m doing.

EDIT: Updated the calculations with the new Brewer’s Friend calculator.  When I tasted everything, I thought the beer was a bit sweeter than the TastyBrew’s 1.014 FG would indicate, and that the bitterness from the hops was nowhere near 51.  I think the 35 from Brewer’s Friend may be overstating it a bit as well, but I may change my mind with a little more experience.  The OG and the SRM were both very close, and seemed to match the recipe well enough, but I also thought the alcohol content was a bit more noticeable than the pedestrian 5.3% figured by TastyBrew indicated.  One of the big strengths of the Brewer’s Friend calculator is it lets you add in what yeast you’re using, a feature lacking in TastyBrew’s configuration.  Here’s the original stats:

Vitals (according to the handy TastyBrew.com):

• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.014
• IBU: 51
• SRM: 35
• ABV: 5.3%

The post Recipe/Tasting: Northern Brewer White House Honey Porter appeared first on The Midwest Guy.