Beer recipes #233 & #235 - "Bourbon Barrel" Aged Barleywine and Godfredus Wing's Flemish Red

Fear not! Although last month's epic rant took a lot out of me, I'm still kicking, and still brewing. Today we have two recipes - one a variation on my holiday barleywine, Solstice Celebration, which variation I'm brewing as a reward for friends who came and picked up their holiday sampler 6-packs. (Yes, I'm saving some for myself!) The other is something new, a first attempt at brewing a sour beer, releasing the dread Brettanomyces into my brewery. Well, into one fermenter anywhere, where, Ninkasi willing, it will kindly and politely stay...

(In case you're wondering, #234 was another batch of #220 Vanilla Smoked Porter, brewed at Dr. P's request.)

Bourbon Barrel Solstice Celebration

I sympathize with Santa Claus - 300 bottles a beer is a lot to deliver to good little boys and girls (basically, everyone on my XPmas list), particularly when you don't own a car. So a couple of years back, I started asking people to come to my apartment to pick up their own holiday samplers. When the response was lackluster, I made a party out of it (serving beer, naturally). That still left me with lots of beer to hand-deliver, so this year, I added a bonus - a raffle for a free case of a beer of their choice, for everyone who picked up their beer before New Years. That managed to get about half the beer out the door. What the hell do you want, people?!?

Anyway, the winner asked simply for something BIG and STRONG, so I decided to brew a version of my holiday barleywine, but aged on bourbon-soaked oak chips like my Zwarte Piet Imperial Stout. The barleywine itself has changed over the years. The last few, I've actually used the recipe for Magnolia's Old Thunderpussy, which I cribbed stole was delighted to receive when I helped them brew it, as part of my reward for taking best-in-show at the first Oakland Eat Real Festival homebrew contest, with my saison.

Mash:
10 lbs domestic 2-row
1.25 lb 120L crystal malt
1 lb wheat malt
0.25 lb English brown malt


Additional fermentables
3 lbs amber malt extract
2 pts caramel syrup (2 cups table sugar, caramelized, dissolved in 2 cups water)

Hops:
3 oz Target @ 10.1% AA 60 min.
3 oz  Challenger @ 8.2% AA 20 min.
1 oz Challenger 5 min

Yeast: White Labs Dry English Ale Yeast WLP 007

Extra: At racking, dry hop with 2 oz Target; add 0.25 lb medium toast French oak chips soaked 1 week in bourbon. Age 8 weeks.

Godfredus Wing's Flemish Red

So, after much nagging cajoling hectoring haranguing encouragement from Dr. P, I finally decided to try my hand at a beer I never thought I might, namely a sour.

Sour beers, as we've discussed before, are made so usually by a long secondary fermentation with either the wild yeast Brettanomyces (as opposed to the Saccharomyces that's typically used to ferment beer, and is used here in the primary fermentation), and/or the bacteria Lactobacillus (benign, and also used in making yogurt, cheese, and pickles) or the related Pediococcus (also benign, and used in making sauerkraut). It's often introduced by aging the beer in used barrels, where the organisms permeate the wood and infect successive batches of beer. These organisms produce lactic and acetic acid as metabolic byproducts, which cause them to be sour. They also produce other byproducts that Saccharomyces doesn't, whose tastes can be variously described as "cidery," "earthy," "leathery," or "horsey;" or in more unpleasant cases, "metallic" or "plastic."

Because "Brett" and the other organisms as "wild," their behavior can be somewhat unpredictable. They also tend to take much longer to do their jobs, so sour beers need to age long months or years before being ready to drink. And, the organisms tend to be tough to kill, so one needs to take great care in sterilizing one's fermenting and bottling equipment (or getting a separate set of gear altogether) lest they infect everything you brew.

I decided to name my new beer after my recently-discovered ancestor, 12xgreat-grandfather Godfredus Wing (1526-1597) of Liège, now in Belgium (at that time a prince-bishopric within the Holy Roman Empire). And, I'm calling it a Flemish red, although technically:

• I used the bruxellensis (Brussels) varietal of Brettanomyces, and Brussels isn't in Flanders; or at least, being the capital, it's the most mixed part of Belgium. It's sort of in the middle of the spectrum of souring organisms.
• Liège is in Wallonia, AKA the French-speaking part of Belgium, not Flanders, the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium. Don't be a smart-ass. Nobody likes a smart-ass (and I should know). It's my blog, and my beer!)Walloon beers tend to be of the non-sour Belgian varieties - brown, amber, pale, and golden ales, and of course the local pils varieties.

Anyway, Godfredus married an Englishwoman, Levina Grant, and apparently moved to England, likely Oxfordshire in the 1540s. His great-grandson Daniel Wing (1617-1697) would leave Kent for the New World, and Daniel's 5xgreat-granddaughter, Emma Louisa Wing, would marry my great-great grandfather, James Kern Polk Garner.

Malt:
5 lbs pilsner malt
5 lbs Vienna malt
1 lb Munich malt
0.25 lb Belgian aromatic malt
0.25 lb caramunich malt
0.25 lb Special B malt
0.25 lb wheat malt

Hops:
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.3% AA 60 min.

Yeast:
Primary: White Labs English Ale Yeast WLP 002, 1 week
Secondary: White Labs Brettanomyces Bruxellensis WLP 650, as long as I can stand to wait (at least 6 months, preferrably 9-12); add 0.25 lb medium toast French oak chips, steamed 5 min.

Beer recipes #231 & #232 - Compleat Breakfast Oatmeal Stout and Dooper Hopper Double IPA

Although the holiday season is the busiest here at Barbary Coast Brewing, with ~300 bottles to brew, ferment, age, bottle, and distribute, the fun never really stops--because, of course, the drinking never really stops (except briefly, after a bad weekend or ill-considered just-one-more pint of something a wee bit strong). The last bottle of Old Titan or Pink Nightmare usually gets capped around December 11th, and after that I take a couple of weeks off. But usually, round about new years, the supply of drinkin' beer (as opposed to giftin' beer) is running out. Not only that, by that point aikido camp is only 6 or 7 weeks away, barely enough time to get a good ale ready for the thirsty martial artists. As I like to say, I am a river to my people, and here's what flowed up to Sonoma this past President's Day weekend:

Compleat Breakfast Oatmeal Stout

The man who organizes our winter camp loves a good, strong, dark beer, and this year I thought to please him with a variation of a beer I've often brewed as my first beer of the new year. Rather than just oatmeal (which adds body and some residual sweetness), I also decided to include lactose, a la a milk stout, which adds a sugar indigestible by yeast, and so adding a subtle sweetness. And then, hitting on the "breakfast" theme of milk and oats, I added some orange extract and cinnamon to "compleat" it. (I considered adding coffee too, but since I haven't worked with that before and didn't want to risk it, that will have to wait for another time).

Mash:
7 lbs British 2-row
1 lb 120L crystal malt
1.5 lb steel-cut, rolled oats
0.5 lb rice hulls
0.5 lb carafa malt
0.25 lb black patent malt
0.25 lb roast barley
0.5 lb lactose

Hops:
1 oz Challenger @ 8.2% AA 60 min.
0.5 oz Willamette@ 7.5% AA 20 min.
0.5 oz " 5 min

Yeast: White Labs Irish Ale Yeast WLP 004

Extra: In 4 oz house vodka (180°), soak for 3 weeks 0.25 oz curaçao orange peel, 1 cinnamon stick cracked. Add prior to bottling

Dooper Hopper Double IPA

Although I'm a big hop-head, I've refrained from making a really hoppy beer, just because I wasn't sure anyone else would drink it and a) didn't want to get stuck drinking 2 cases of the same beer by myself, and b) didn't want production of that beer to mean I didn't have other beer for other people. Having gauged that there'd be sufficient drinkers at aikido camp, however, I decided to make a glorious double IPA, and to my pleasure, they drank almost every last bottle. The malt bill is a variant of my dooper cooper double-oak-aged pale ale, with a super-charged hops bill:

Malt:
8 lbs domestic 2-row
4 lbs domestic Munich
0.5 lb 120L crystal malt
0.5 lb Belgian biscuit malt
0.5 lb wheat malt

Hops:
2 oz Columbus @ 13.9% AA + 1 oz Chinook @ 14.2% AA in wort during spage
1 oz Centennial @ 9.5% AA 60 min
2 oz Amarillo @ 7.8 % AA 5 min
1 oz Centennial + 1 oz Columbus dry-hop in primary
2 oz Amarillo dry-hop in secondary

Yeast: White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP 001

Recipe #229 - Brit-a-porter Belgian caramel porter

This one is a bit of a fanciful hybrid that I made for Dr. P about a year ago, combining aspects of a British porter and a Belgian dubbel.

Malt:
9 lbs British 2-row
1.5 lb 120L crystal malt
0.5 lb chocolate malt
0.5 lb carafa malt

Additional fermentables:
1 qt caramel syrup. In a saucepan, heat 2 cups sugar carefully over medium-low heat until liquid and dark brown. You can move the pan off the heat or swirl it around to keep it from burning, but do not stir, or you'll get rock candy instead. Carefully add 2 cups water (watch for splatters, this shit is like napalm if it hits you), and return to heat until all caramel re-dissolves.

Hops:
1 oz Fuggles @ 5.6% AA 60 min
0.5 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.6% AA 20 min
0.5 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.6% AA 5 min

Yeast: White Labs Belgian ale yeast.

Recipes #226, #227, and #228 - Pink Nightmare, Grandma Dot's Bock, and Old Titan

It's time now for the last of my holiday beer recipes: Pink Nightmare cranberry wheat, Grandma Dot's Bock, and Old Titan spiced honey porter.

Grandma Dot's Bock

GDB was my very first holiday beer, and the 11th beer I'd ever brewed. I brewed it because I'd recently found out from my mom that her grandmother, Leora "Dot" Blaine, had homebrewed bock beer, presumably during Prohibition. Sadly, I don't have her recipe.

Bock beers are German lagers, and actually cover a range of beers, that generally tend to be stronger, heavier, and less hoppy than pilsners: helles, light-colored bock; dunkel, dark-colored bock; doppel,  double-bock (which is what GDB is); and weiss, bock with wheat.

Lagers can be a nuisance for the homebrewer, since they're supposed to, well, lager, meaning, age for several weeks around 55F, which is a difficult temperature to achieve. Refrigerators top out at around 45F. Enterprising brewers will install an electrical cut-off attached to a thermometer that turns off the power to the fridge if they go below 55, but that generally makes the refrigerator useless for anything else (and very few of us have the luxury of a dedicated lagering fridge, much less a proper German lagering cave). After several years of bottles that were overcarbonated, or outright exploded, because I tried to lager them in the fridge and they were under-fermented when they went into the bottle (and therefore overfermented in the bottle), I decided just to rely on San Francisco's naturally cool temperatures to do my lagering, and let the yeast deal with it. So far, the results have been pretty good.

Malt:
5.5 lbs German Vienna
3 lbs German Munich
1 lb caramunich
0.5 lb carapils
0.5 lb wheat malt
0.5 lb English brown malt

Hops:
2 oz. Perle @ 7.1% AA 60 min
1 oz. Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 4.0% AA 20 min
1 oz. Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 4.0% AA 5 min

Yeast: White Labs German Bock Yeast WLP 833

Allow 4 weeks in secondary.

  
Old Titan
Old Titan spiced honey porter was my second holiday beer and the twelfth batch overall. The malt bill changes very little over the years, but I'm still trying to find just that right mix of spices for the infusion. 

The name "Old Titan" comes from a story that I used to tell to amuse and confuse my Latin students, back when I taught high school Latin, as follows. (Most of it is true; see if you can determine where it veers off the rails...)

In Roman mythology, Saturn was the king of the Titans, powerful giants who werethe parents of the gods. The Saturnalia, which began on 17 December andlasted for a nine-day Roman week until the winter solstice on 25 December, wasthe forerunner of the modern Christmas. The Romans celebrated Saturnaliaby feasting, exchanging gifts, and decorating their homes with lights andevergreen boughs. And Saturn himself, depicted as an old man with a long whitebeard, dressed in robes and pilus (the peaked freedman’s cap), andcarrying a cornucopia filled with the gifts of the earth, is the sourceof our modern “Santa Claus” (whose name comes from Saturnuculus, meaning“Little Saturn” or “Uncle Saturn”).

Malt:
9 lbs British 2-row
1 lb 80L British crystal
0.5 lb Special B
0.5 lb English brown
0.5 lb carafa

Other fermentables: 2 lbs honey during boil.
Hops:
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.6% AA 60 min
0.5 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.6% AA 20 min
0.5 oz East Kent Goldings@ 5.6% AA 5 min

Yeast: White Labs Dry English Ale WLP 007

Infusion: To 4 oz house vodka, add 1 cinnamon stick, 6 cloves and 6 allspice berries (rushed), 1/4 tsp fresh nutmeg, 1/2 tsp fresh-grated ginger. Steep 1 week, then add to secondary.

Pink Nightmare

Fruit beers are always tricky, because the fruit will have some residual wild yeast in it, and you never know how that will behave. It's also hard to get rid of. If you try to freeze it, it will just go to sleep. Boil it, and the pectin in your fruit will set and you'll get jelly instead of beer. The second time that I made this (and the first year it was called "Pink Nightmare;" the original batch was "Solstice Celebration," the name that would ultimately go to my barleywine), it literally exploded out of the fermenter, spewing fist-sized globs of what looked like strawberry moose 4 feet up the walls of the "beer closet." Nowadays, I usually puree the cranberries, microwave them for about 5 minutes, pour partially chilled wort (~120F) over them, and then hope for the best (which usually means replacing the airlock with a blow-off tube and cleaning up a moderate-sized mess.

(The name comes from the movie A Christmas Story, when Ralphie's father, seeing him in the bunny jammies his aunt sent him, pronounced that he looked like "a pink nightmare.")

Malt:
5 lbs Weyerman pils
4.5 lbs white wheat malt
0.75 lb oats
0.5 lb carapils
0.25 lb  honey (asidulated) malt
0.5 lb rice hulls

Hops:
1 oz Styrian Goldings  @ 5.0% AA 60 min
0.5 oz Spaltz @ 3.2% AA 20 min
0.5 oz. Spaltz @ 3.2% AA 5 min

Yeast: Belgian Wit WLP 400

Fruit: 1.5 lbs fresh cranberries, blended 6 oz at a time with 1/3 cup of water each until pureed. Microwave 5 min. Add to 120F wort, let stand 10 min before topping fermenter with water and pitching yeast. Recommend using a blow-off tube.

Infusion: In 4 oz house vodka, soak 1/4 oz curcao orange peel, 1/2 tsp ground corriander, 8 cloves crushed, for 1 week, then add to secondary.

Recipes #224 and #225 - still mead and spiced gravenstein cyser

As I mentioned early on, you can ferment pretty much anything with sugar in it (or starch that you can convert into sugar). One of the earliest sources of sugar available to humans was honey, and yet, one of the oldest fermented beverages is also one of the least familiar in modern times: mead.

Mead is simply fermented honey. To ferment honey, you have to dilute it with water, since the high sugar content in honey actually turns water molecules it comes into contact with into hydrogen peroxide, and draws the water out of cells, both of which have the effect of killing microorganisms like yeast and bacteria.

In addition, since honey is almost completely composed of fructose and glucose, it's lacking most of the nutrients that yeast need to grow, prosper, and metabolize it into alcohol. Consequently, making mead requires either adding these nutrients (usually in the form of diammonium sulphate and/or the powdered yeast remnants).

You can also add other fermentables to the must (the water with dissolved honey), such as fruit juice or grain, which will both provide these nutrients and change the character of the finished beverage. Mead made with fruit juices is called melomel, and with grape juice specifically, pyment. Mead can also be flavored with herbs and spices; spiced pyment is called hippocras, allegedly after the father of Greek medicine, Hippocrates; in fact, the Celtic word for spiced mead is metheglin, from which derives the English word "medicine," because as we all know, a spoonful of sugar...

Mead is typically still, but can be made sparkling like beer or wine by adding sugar at bottling to feed the living yeast in the bottle. Like beer, mead can be strong or weak, sweet or dry, depending on how much honey you use and how alcohol tolerant your yeast strain is. The main thing required to make mead is patience, because it's much more like wine in the time it takes to mature.

Mead made with apple juice is called cyser, and that leads us to today's two recipes.

Still mead (3 gallons)

A lot of mead recipes call for you to boil or at least pasteurize the honey, but it doesn't seem like that's really necessary, since the honey itself is pretty close to sterile, and you'll boil off any volatile flavor or aroma compounds in the honey, which is usually pretty subtle to start with. In general, the better honey you use, the better your mead will be, but also, the more expensive!

1. Add 6 quarts warm water, 1.5 tsp diammonium phosphate, and 1.5 tsp yeast nutrient (dried yeast remnants) to sanitized fermenter.
2. Add 10 lbs honey to fermenter, mix as much as possible by swirling fermenter.
3. Add warm water to fill each honey container about halfway, seal and shake vigorously. This will help get all the honey out, and aerate the mixture, since the must will be low in oxygen. Pour into the fermenter.
4. Add warm water to bring the fermenter to 5 gallons, then pitch yeast and seal. You can use liquid mead yeast, or a dry mead or wine yeast like grand cuvee.
5. Rack after 4 weeks. During primary fermentation, you may want to gently agitate the fermenter a couple of times, as the must will tend to accumulate dissolved CO2, which can cause issues when you rack.
6. Rack after 3 additional months.
7. Bottle after 3 additional months.

Spiced cyser (3 gallons)

I like to make cyser - apple mead - with Gravenstein apple juice. Gravensteins are a variety local to Sonoma, north of San Francisco. It's typically only available in the fall after the harvest. They've got a good balance between sweet dessert apples, and tart savory apples. Sadly, as demand for California wine has increased over the last couple of decades, many Gravenstein orchards have been torn out and replaced by vinyards. This stuff makes a delicious holiday treat (or gift), like Christmas in a bottle.

1. In a large pot, combine: 6 quarts Gravenstein juice; 8 lbs honey; 2 sticks cinnamon, cracked; 8 cloves, crushed; 8 allspice berries, crushed; 1 tsp fresh-ground nutmeg; 1/2 dried curacao (bitter) orange peel.
2. Bring to a low simmer, heat for 20 minutes, cover and let stand until the pot is cool to the touch, then pour into a sanitized fermenter.
3. Warm 2 more quarts Gravenstein juice, fill each honey container about halfway, seal and shake vigorously. This will help get all the honey out, and aerate the mixture, since the must will be low in oxygen. Pour into the fermenter.
4. Pitch yeast and seal. You can use liquid cider or mead yeast, or a dry mead or cider yeast, or wine yeast like grand cuvee.
5. Rack after 4 weeks, then bottle after 3 additional months.

Recipe #223 - Saison's Greetings

Since I love saisons, a few years ago I added one to my holiday line-up. I spice this one a little bit differently than my standard saison (although who am I kidding, I've thrown all sorts of stuff in there...), and age it on wine-soaked oak chips.

Mash

7.25 lb domestic 2-row
2 lb domestic Vienna
.05 lb flaked wheat
0.5 lb asidulated malt
0.5 lb flaked oats

Hops

1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5.4% AA @ 60 min
0.5 oz Saaz @ 4% AA @ 20 min
0.5 oz " @ 5 min

Yeast

White Labs Saison Ale Yeast WLP 565

Tincture

Soak in 4 oz 190 proof house vodka for one week: .5 tsp crushed coriander, .25 oz curaçao orange peel, 1 g crushed grains of paradise, 1 tsp fresh grated ginger. Strain and add at racking.

Aging

8 weeks on chardonnay barrel chips.

Recipe #222 - Rump Umpkin ale

People have always fermented pretty much anything with sugar in it. In colonial America, farmland for barley for beer was scarce, and importing it from England was dear, so colonists found other things to ferment - corn, molasses, apples (cider was actually a much more popular drink in colonial America than beer), and... pumpkins?

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin are all believed to have brewed beer with pumpkins. Beginning with Buffalo Bill's, pumpkin ales have been a fall staple.

But, for homebrewers, pumpkins aren't easy to work with. They're mostly starch, so they need to be roasted, and even then can gum up the works - and, they don't taste like much on their own. When most people think of the pumpkin, what they taste is pumpkin pie, so they the beers usually get a generous portion of spices like cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg, which can be tricky to make balanced and not overpowering.

I make mine with canned pumpkin, so that it's already pureed, baked to break down the starches; and with an infusion of spices made with dark rum rather than vodka, to capture the volatile essences of the spices as well as the molasses character of the rum. 

Mash

8 lb domestic 2-row
1 lb domestic Munich
1 lb red wheat
0.25 lb Special B
0.25 lb Belgian biscuit
0.25 lb English brown malt

Other fermentables

3 x 15 oz cans pumpkin cooked 45 min @ 350F

Hops

1 oz Mt. Hood 5.4% AA @ 60 min
0.5 oz " @ 20 min
0.5 oz " @ 5 min

Yeast

White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP 001

Tincture

6 oz gold or dark rum,1 cinnamon stick, 6 allspice berries, 6 cloves, 1/2 tsp fresh grated ginger, 1/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg

Recipe #221 - Zwarte Piet Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout

(First, a quick review. Turns out that there was a second version of Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch, aged in congac barrels rather than calvados barrels. It was also delicious. That is all!)

Yes, it's already time to brew the holiday beer! Well, technically, it was time to start brewing the holiday beer back in June, when I brew my Solstice Celebration barleywine. But now that Fog Season has (hopefully) passed here on the Barbary Coast and Indian Summer has arrived, it's time to gear up for production of our holiday beers, particularly since some, like Zwarte Piet, need several months to mature.

I introduced ZP to my holiday lineup a few years back, and it was an immediate hit. It's my homebrewing attempt to reproduce a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. In this case, toasted oak chips soaked in rot-gut bourbon (my preferred poison is Ancient Age, or whatever they're selling as their "house" brand at Trader Joe's, at around $10 a fifth) for a week or so and thrown into the fermenter for the secondary fermentation. The results were so good that I started aging other holiday beers on chips soaked in TJ's Charles Shaw (AKA Two-Buck Chuck) Shiraz.

The name stems from an unusual bit of Dutch folklore. Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) travels with a servant, Zwarte Piet, "Black Peter," who was apparently a bound demon servitor (see also the German Krampus), but later morphed into a dark-skinned Moor.

Zwarte Piet's job is to put naughty children in his sack, and take them to Spain. (I should be so lucky, or so naughty...) Zwarte Piet has caused some controversy in recent years, as he's depicted with exaggerated Negro features, or portrayed by Dutchmen in blackface, not exactly politically correct in the generally liberal and tolerant Dutch society.

Zwarte Piet Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout

Mash
6 lbs domestic 2-row malt
6 lbs domestic Munich malt
1 lb 60L crystal malt
0.5 lb roasted barley
0.5 lb carafa malt

Other fermentables
1 cup white granulated sugar
0.25 cup blackstrap molasses

Hops
1 oz Falconer's Flight* hops @ 11.4% AA 60 min
1 oz Falconer's Flight 20 min
1 oz Falconer's Flight 5 min
*Originally I used Citra, but according to the boys at SFBC, they're no longer available, at least not to homebrewers. This was their suggested substitute.

Yeast
White Labs Dry English Ale Yeast WLP 007

Other
Soak 0.25 lb medium toast French oak chips in bourbon for 1 week, add to secondary for 8-10 weeks.

Recipe #220 - Vanilla smoked porter

The last batch of beer that I brewed in 2011 was a smoked porter, based on the book from Stone Brewing, one of my favorite breweries, in Escondido CA. (After all, their flagship beer is Arrogant Bastard, how could I not love them?) My beer wasn't quite as robust, or as smoky, as I wanted, however. Then, a couple of months back, Dr. P and I found a bottle of their special release Smoked Porter with Vanilla Bean, which was really, really tasty, so Dr. P encouraged me to try my hand at it. She's good that way.

Mash:
9 lbs domestic 2-row
2 lbs domestic Vienna
1 lb 80L crystal malt
1/2 lb chocolate malt
1/2 lb carafa malt
1/2 lb smoked malt

Hopping:
1 oz. Columbus @ 13.9% AA 60 min
1 oz. Mt. Hood @ 5.4% AA 20 min
1 oz. Mt. Hood @ 5.4% AA 5 min

Yeast:
White Labs Dry English Ale Yeast (WLP 007)

Other:
Vanilla infusion - split 1 vanilla bean, soak in 4 ounces of undiluted house vodka (~190 proof) for 1 week, add to secondary.

Recipe #219 - RJ-11 Rye/Jasmine Summer Ale

I actually brewed this 2 weeks ago, but figured I'd go ahead and post it now. This is based on a recipe from San Francisco Brewcraft, my FLHBS. I've actually had a commercial beer flavored with jasmine, Avatar Jasmine IPA from Elysian Brewing in Seattle, which is quite good and has inspired me to try making jasmine pales in the past.

For those keeping track, this is my 219th batch of beer.

Mash:
7 lbs domestic 2-row
3 lbs domestic Vienna
0.75 lb rye malt
0.5 lb cara-pils
0.5 lb flaked oats
0.25 lb rice hulls*

Hopping:
1 oz. Liberty @ 4.9%AA 60 min
1 oz. " 20 min
1 oz. " 5 min

Yeast:
White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP 001)

Other:
I gathered about an ounce of jasmine flowers from around the neighborhood, and macerated them in about 4 ounces of undiluted house vodka (~190 proof). This will be strained and poured into the secondary after about 2 weeks, just before bottling.

*Because the rye and oats don't have much hull, they can gum up the running of the mash. The rice hulls provide extra filtering "roughage" to compensate for this. I usually poor them into the mash tun first, and then they get mixed into the bottom portion of the mash.