UPDATE: Belgian Witbier bottle conditioning

I finally got around to bottling the Belgian Witbier, which had been sitting neglected in a corner of my room for five and half weeks. Because I am not one to rack to a secondary fermenter, unless necessary for processes like dry-hopping, I was a little worried that this batch may have picked up some unfavorable flavors from sitting on the yeast cake for so long. Generally, from what I have read, it is fine to ferment in the same vessel for up to four weeks, but after four weeks you risk adding some funk to your beer.

Like I said, I got a little worried that the witbier was going to taste and/or smell like farts, so I did some snooping around a few different forums. Sure enough there was plenty of people saying never let a beer sit in primary longer than two weeks, while others swear their best beers sat for six weeks (for whatever reasons). I chose to believe the latter... 

When I opened the lid of the bucket for the first time since January 11, the smell was way better than expected. To be honest, I had kind of forgot about this beer, but after smelling and tasting it, I feel like this could be one of my best ones yet. It definitely had a prominent grapefruit smell from adding the zest in at flame-out. And the flavor was sweet with oranges with earthy and floral undertones from the chamomile and coriander. The color was the best part. It was a very pale yellow with a lot of haze, which made it appear almost white. Usually brewers are doing everything they can to make as clear of a beer as possible (one of the reasons people vouch for racking to secondary), but witbiers are supposed to be cloudy and appear white, which is why the are often times referred to as "white ales.". But I digress...

Come bottling day I slaved away cleaning bottles in my bathroom and was ready to actually start the bottling process. I boiled two cups of water and added 4.7 oz of priming sugar (dextrose) for two minutes. The sugar water cooled for a bit on the stove while I did some cleaning and sanitizing, and then I put the water into the bottling bucket. Right after I got the siphon all ready, I looked into the bottling bucket and thought to myself, "Hm...Looks like there is some water on the bottom from the sanitizer." Naturally, I dumped it out, and immediately after realized what I had done...

Luckily cane sugar, which is sold at grocery stores, can be used as a substitute for the dextrose (aka corn sugar) from homebrew stores. I ended up getting highly refined baker's cane sugar because it supposedly adds the least amount of flavors. Depending on the beer and what flavors you are going for, honeys, brown sugar, and dry malt extract are just a few things that can be used as priming sugars. The brown sugar is intriguing...

Despite the sugar fiasco, things seem to have gone well. I am curious to see if I can notice the difference in priming sugars, but who knows. The gravity read 1.003, which is lower than expected. This will hopefully turn out as delicious as I wanted it to be.

Homebrew #6: Imperial Brown Ale/Double Brown Ale/India Brown Ale

BJCP.org

It was rather difficult coming up with the title for this post. Putting a style to my most recent beer I brewed was not an easy task. I went with a fairly renowned recipe called "Janet's Brown Ale" that I found in the book Brewing Classic Styles. It is classified as an American Brown Ale because of the prominent hop profile compared to the malt forward English version. However, I noticed the recipe created a beer with a ~6.8% ABV and 63 IBU, which is outside of the BJCP style guidelines (which are what are widely used for brewing competitions) for American Browns which states an alcohol percentage of 4.0-6.0% ABV and 25-60 IBUs. So where does that leave the ale that I brewed?

In the American craft beer world stronger, hoppier ales are often times given the label "Imperial," though historically the term was reserved for typically (though not always) dark ales, like stouts, that were brewed specially for royalty, particularly in Russia (thus the popular style: Russian Imperial Stout). The BJCP has categories specifically for Imperial IPA, Imperial Stouts, and Imperial Porters, but there is no explicit Imperial Brown category. They do mention Imperial Brown/Double-Brown under the "Specialty Beer" category which is more or less reserved for situations like I am in where there is a twist on a classic style that puts it outside of set guidelines. The term "double" (not to be confused with a Belgian Dubbel) is often times used interchangeably with "imperial" to describe a traditional beer style that has a higher alcohol content and/or a stronger hop profile.

So at this point I have tried American Brown Ale, but my homebrew does not fit the guidelines. Imperial Brown is tempting, but I like to maintain some sort of historical accuracy and, unfortunately, this ale will not reach the palette of royalty (as far as I know?). Double is tempting, though I feel the alcohol content being only 6.8% ABV does not earn my homebrew such a title, since the beers I think of when I hear "Double" are usually in the ~10% ABV range.

from growler-station.com

India Brown Ale seems to be a fairly prominent term that some craft breweries have taken to (check out Boulder Beer Co.'s Flashback). I assume this title came about because India Pale Ales distinguish themselves from regular pale ales through the use of more hops and higher alcohol content. Thus it seems to make sense that an India Brown Ale is a brown ale, but with more hops and a higher alcohol content. The theory is sound, but again, this title does not really jive with the history behind the name "India Pale Ale" (see my post on Homebrew #3 to get a brief idea of where the term IPA came from). Boulder Beer Co. seems to skirt around the issue by calling their Flashback an India-style brown ale.

I still can't decide what to refer to this beer as since it seems too hoppy/alcoholic to be an American Brown Ale, not majestic enough to be an Imperial Brown, not alcoholic enough to be a Double, and nonsensical to be labeled an India Brown Ale. Debates, like this one I am putting myself through, have been pretty common recently when trying to describe beers like Odell's Mountain Standard, which some refer to as India Black Ales while others refer to it as Cascadian Dark Ales. I won't go too deep into this anymore since this post is getting long and I haven't even started to write the recipe, but my point is that in the end they are just names. Unless you are planning to enter a competition, it really doesn't matter, and even if you are entering a competition, you can just enter under the "Specialty Beer" category.

Here is the recipe I put together in BeerSmith. Like I said I took the grain bill and hop schedule from a recipe in Brewing Classic Styles, but I tweaked the amounts and also added in another malt (mainly just because I had some available).

All the grains and hops for the mash

Brew day: 2/10/2012

Grains:
10 lbs 6.9 oz - Pale Malt (2 Row), US
1 lbs 1.4 oz   - Cara-Pils/Dextrine
1 lbs 0.3 oz   - Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L
13.9 oz          - Wheat, Flaked
6.5 oz            - Chocolate Malt
5.6 oz            - Brown Malt (this is the grain I added to the recipe)

*This recipe called for hops during the mash, which I have never done nor heard of before. Usually hops are added during the boil, but I tossed in 1.05 oz of Northern Brewer hops for the 60 minute mash in*

Mash tun all wrapped up to help
maintain temperature.

Mash Schedule:
Mash In:  17.7 quarts of water at 169.7*F. Hold at 154*F for 60min
Sparge 1: 3.2 gallons of water at 168*F for 10 minutes
Sparge 2: 1.65 gallons of water at 168*F for 10 minutes

Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons (about .15 higher than anticipated)

All the hop additions weighed out
(including the hops in the mash)

Boil:

1.31 oz Northern Brewer    60 minutes
1.05 oz Northern Brewer    15 minutes
1.55 oz Cascade              10 minutes
Super Moss                     10 minutes
Cascade                            0 minutes

Post Boil Volume: 6.1 gallons

kettle boiling out in the snow

*I had a hell of a time with the wort chiller. It was snowing so the hose was all frozen up. I thawed it out with boiling water, but the nozzle connected to the hose must have warped from the ice and wouldn't screw all the way in to my wort chiller. I ended up having to stand in the snow with my foot over where the wort chiller and hose connected to keep the water from spraying into my kettle, which can cause contamination. It really bummed me out and I subsequently forgot to take a gravity reading before I pitched the yeast. I am in the process of figuring out how to estimate the original gravity based on all the data I have.*



Cooled wort down to 67*F and pitched two smack packs of Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast.

The bucket is now fermenting at 67*F.