Spontaneously Fermented Beer

Coolship
Coolship

I’ve been brewing for over two years, and I’ve made everything from Pale Ales to Stouts, Red Ales to Belgian beers.  I felt it was time for a challenge, so I decided to create a spontaneously fermented ale, similar to a Belgian Lambic beer.

It started yesterday, when I brewed a very light beer, with a bit of organic wheat from the local co-op.  The wheat, which has not been malted, is used for the long fermentation by the natural yeasts.  Since lambics do not have any hop profile (bitterness, flavor, or aroma), low amounts of aged hops are added only for antiseptic properties.  I decided to use what was left of my homegrown hops, dried and aged to reduce the amount of bitterness displayed in the beer.

After the beer had been brewed, I poured it into several aluminum roaster pans on our three-season porch.  Then I opened the windows, and let the breeze in.  This is similar to the Belgian brewers, who pump the boiling hot wort into a device called a coolship (the Americanized way to spell it).  The liquid is allowed to cool overnight, then placed in a fermenter, usually oak barrels.

Spontaneously fermented beers take at least one year to mature, because the wild yeasts and bacteria take a very long time to do their thing.

Have you ever tried to make a Lambic or a spontaneously fermented beer?  What was your result?

EDIT: This beer and the technique used were featured on the October 20, 2011 episode of Basic Brewing Radio.

Hop Growing Update

Tettenang Hop Vine
Tettenang Hop Vine
Cones on the Vine
Cones on the Vine

Since I last posted about growing hops, the Tettenang hops continued to flourish.  There were enough ripe cones that this past weekend, I brewed a German Fresh Hop Ale (Harvest Ale) using 2.5 oz of fresh Tettenang hops, picked off the vine Saturday morning.  It should be ready within the next couple of weeks, and I’m excited to try it!

Did you grow hops this year?  What was your result?

The Week Before Our Wedding

Since there’s a lot to tell, I’m going to break up the stories, first starting with the week leading up to our wedding.

My future wife, myself, and another friend of ours drove from Iowa to New Jersey a week before our wedding.  We traveled well and made great time (mostly because we drove overnight and I slept).  The first few days were dedicated to planning, and as friends and family began to arrive, we started to hang out with them as the wedding plans started to fall into place.

McSorley's Old Ale House
McSorley's Old Ale House

The first big event we did when our friends from Iowa arrived on Wednesday was go to one of our favorite spots in Manhattan, McSorley’s Old Ale House.

We love this place because they only have two types of beer: light (similar to a pilsner) or dark (kind of like a darker red ale).  McSorley’s is so old-fashioned, as a great example of an old-style ale house, they didn’t allow women (even the owner) in the bar until the early 1970’s.  When you order a beer, they bring you two 12 ounce mugs, and with almost 20 people in our group, they kept bringing mugs of ale.  After we left, we were congregated outside the front door, and the barkeep who kept our table full of beer chatted with us.  He had a bit of an Irish accent, and I mentioned why we were there, and that we were planning on going to Ireland for our honeymoon.  He wished us well and called us “Lucky”.

Morning Wood
Morning Wood

On Thursday, we had our rehearsal dinner.  At the dinner, I handed out the special beer I made for my groomsmen, called “Morning Wood”.  From the blurb I wrote on the label:

Take a luxurious dark breakfast stout, made with oatmeal and chocolate, infused with three types of coffee: Sumatra, Kona, and Peruvian Dark, and you get something to wake up to.  But, take that stout and age it for several months with toasted oak to give it nice vanilla overtones, and now you have “Morning Wood”.

The name made this beer unique enough, but we tried it to celebrate, and it was delicious.  It smelled like coffee, and had a nice smooth roasted chocolate flavor.  The oak was just right, and gave it a slight oak and vanilla flavor.

Summer Bryed
Summer Bryed

In addition to the “Morning Wood”, I had also made two 5 gallon kegs of a dry-hopped rye pale ale to commemorate our wedding.  It was named  “Summer Bryed”, after my own summer bride.

With almost 50 people at the rehearsal dinner, the 10 gallons only lasted a few hours.  It was nice and light, and had a great hop aroma and flavor.

That brings up to the day before our wedding, so stay tuned for more stories, and more beer!

What Are Harvest Ales?

Freshly Picked Hops Go Into a Harvest Ale
Freshly Picked Hops Go Into a Harvest Ale

Sierra Nevada just released their Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale 2010, but what are harvest ales?

Simply put, when the hop cones are ready to be picked, normal procedure is to dry the hop so it has less than 10% moisture, and then the hops are stored in vacuum sealed or nitrogen-packed bags to prevent oxygen from getting to them.  With a harvest ale, the fresh hops are picked off the vine, and then added to the boiling wort right away without drying them, so instead of ounces there are pounds because of the extra water weight.  With a harvest ale, you still get the standard flavor you would expect from the hops, but you also get an overwhelming “grassy” hop flavor, because the hops were newly picked live plants.  Talk about fresh!

Most times, the harvest ales are done in the fall, when it is harvest time in the northern hemisphere, but Sierra Nevada has agreements with hop farmers in New Zealand that allows them to have the freshly picked hops delivered to them within 12 hours, and they are placed right into the brew pot.

If you like pale ales, be sure to try one of the harvest ales because I’m sure you’d like it.  If you’ve had a harvest ale, how did you think it compared to your normal pale ale or IPA?