Cranberry Brown Ale - Tasting

A mild, "makeshift" brown ale using Brett Trois and local cranberries. I brewed this back in the Fall for Thanksgiving. There's a reason I have held off reviewing it...

Henry Hall Ale

Appearance - Deep brown with some ruby highlights. Clear. Thin, spritzy head that quickly dissipates - I wonder why there's so little foam?

Aroma - Very subdued. What aroma is there is all malt with a little "dark" fruitiness.

Flavor - Also rather subdued. Little hop bitterness, but an astringency that I attribute to the cranberries. Slightly fruity. Dry - probably a combination of the Brett used for fermentation and the cranberries. Honestly, kind of bland. Neither crisp and refreshing nor complexly flavorful. When this was younger I remember it being more fruity and flavorful. Has not aged well.

Mouthfeel - Thin. Low carbonation. Drying. Again, I remember this being not quite as thin or dry when it was younger

Overall - Not a particularly good beer. I had hoped that the cranberries and the crystal malts would play well together, and that the Brett Trois would add some nice fruit notes. I had some hope when it was young. But instead, I think the Brett chewed through the crystal malts leaving behind a thin, dry beer, and the tannins from the cranberries left too much of an astringent bite. All in all, another disappointing result using cranberries. I should probably close the book on using them...except I'm thinking I just may need to try them in a simpler English-style brown ale using an English yeast that will leave behind some residual sweetness to help balance the flavor. A project for the Fall.

Cranberries and Brett...again...but different

I should probably ditch this fascination I have with trying to use cranberries in a beer, but there's something about using a locally-grown, native fruit that I just can't let it go.  My first attempt at using cranberries was HIGHLY experimental and had disappointing results (though I am geared up for another tasting to see if time has helped).  Cranberries contain a lot of tannins and they seemed to add a fair amount of astringent bite to the last beer, which was too much for such a dry beer to handle.  But, I've been thinking that a richer, maltier, "sweeter" beer would work well with cranberries.  Especially if I don't overdo the cranberry addition.  So, I brewed up an English-style brown ale sort of beer that will hopefully hold up to the cranberries.

As you can see from the grist bill below, this is decidedly not a standard brown ale recipe and is not the way I would build a brown ale if I were starting from scratch.  But I wasn't starting from scratch.  You see, I had grain already milled for another version of my ongoing attempt to perfect a hoppy red ale recipe I've been playing with the past couple of years.  However, I never got around to brewing it, and I wanted to brew up this new beer so that it would be ready in time for Thanksgiving, and I didn't feel like wasting all this grain.  So, I decided I could start with the grain I had, add some more crystal malt and some chocolate malt and...voila...turn it into a "brown" ale.  Some of the grain weights are a little weird too since I had too much grain in the original red ale recipe for the lower gravity I was looking for with this beer, so I pulled out a couple of pounds of grain and just extrapolated the remaining grain weights based on percentages.

As for the yeast...I decided to go with the Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois strain I harvested from my multi-grain farmhouse style ale I brewed over the summer.  I absolutely loved the fruity character I got from that strain and I am thinking that it will complement both the malt and the cranberries.

Speaking of the cranberries....I am planning on picking up some freshly harvested fruit from one of the original cultivated cranberry bogs on Cape Cod.  This bog is now currently owned by "Annie's Crannies", but was originally farmed by Captain Henry Hall, the man credited with being the first to commercially cultivate cranberries.  I'll add the fruit to secondary once the fermentation is fully complete.  I'm not sure yet how much I will use, but am thinking on the order of 0.25 pounds per gallon.  I figure it is better to be conservative.  I may also bottle some of the base beer without the cranberries just in case the cranberry version turns out to be not so great.

So much for trying a simpler approach this time around....

[UPDATE 10/21/12 - I decided to rack the entire batch onto 1 pound of cranberries.  The cranberries were picked up fresh from Annie's Crannies, as mentioned above. I vacuum-sealed them, and then froze them, thawed them, then froze them again, before thawing them a second time before racking the beer.  I'll let the beer sit on the cranberries for 10 days or so.  Not sure if this is enough time, but I want to get it in the bottle in time to be ready for Thanksgiving.]

Henry Hall Ale
brewed on 9/26/12

Recipe Specifications
Batch Size: 3.75 gal
Estimated Color: 22.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 16.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
OG: 1.046 SG
FG: 1.012
ABV: 4.5%

Grist
3 lbs 10.0 oz Pale Malt - 58.9%
12.0 oz Pilsner Malt - 12.2%
6.0 oz Crystal 120 - 6.1%
6.0 oz Crystal 60 - 6.1%
6.0 oz Munich I - 6.1%
6.0 oz White Wheat Malt - 6.1%
3.0 oz Chocolate Malt - 3.0%
0.7 oz Roasted Barley - 0.7%
0.7 oz Acidulated - 0.7% (for mash pH)

Hops
9 g EKG [4.50 %] - 60 min
7 g Challenger [7.20 %] - 30 min

Misc
1 lb of fresh cranberries added to secondary

Yeast
Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois (WLP644)

Mash Schedule
Single Infusion, 150ºF, batch sparge

Vaccinium - update

It's been a little while since I've said anything about my attempt at a sour cranberry ale with Brett. Well, this beer has been quietly sitting on the cranberries and the Brett for several months now and had developed a nice pellicle on and around the floating raft of cranberries. Much of the pellicle has actually fallen away by now and I figured it was time to get the beer off the fruit and into a tertiary vessel. So, I racked it into a 3-gallon glass carboy and added 0.5 ounces of medium toast Hungarian oak cubes that had been soaking in some Deep Purple zinfandel (BTW, this is a spectacular wine).

The beer is a a hazy pink with some nice sour and Brett aromas. The taste is actually quite mild, but not too mild - I definitely taste the cranberries and the Brett character. I'm assuming the Brett character will increase a bit more as it ages. I'm excited about this beer - I think it just might turn out really good, despite all the crazy things I'm trying with it (e.g. 14% acidulated malt, primary fermentation with a wine yeast, cranberries, Brett, wine-soaked oak cubes). However, the one thing that is concerning me is that the gravity is only down to 1.018-1.020 (I think my hydrometer is reading a little high, thus the range). I really expected this thing to be much lower by now. It still tastes great - much drier than I would expect given a 1.020 gravity. Everything I've read and heard seems to indicate that Brett pretty much eats through anything. This is precisely the reason I mashed high (~160°F) and used a wine yeast - to leave some residual compounds for the Brett to metabolize. I'm not sure why the gravity is still as high as it is. I've posted about this over at the Burgundian Babble Belt homebrew forum and the only thing that seems to have any consensus might be that the Brettanomyces claussenii isn't a particularly strong attenuator.

So, for now, my plan is to let it sit in the tertiary vessel for a month or so and see where it goes. I'm hoping to be able to bottle by the end of August so that it has a few months in the bottle before Thanksgiving. Not sure yet what my bottling plan is - I'd like it to highly carbonated, so ideally I'd like to cork and cage with 750 ml champagne bottles, but I'm not really set up for that and I'm not sure I should splurge for the equipment for just this beer (though if it turns out well, there will certainly be similar beers to brew in the future). In any case, I have some time to think about this.

Feathertop Pumpkin Ale (Redux)

Generally, I'm not a huge pumpkin beer fan, but I wanted to try my hand at brewing one this past fall. I did a fair amount of research on this, finding inspiration and insights from here and here, which helped me craft my own variation of this style. I envisioned Colonial New England, crisp fall weather, and changing leaves. I wanted something that was not too heavy and certainly not too spice-laden. I also wanted something with a nice orange color. As is my wont, I eschewed the conventional advice of only using hops for bittering and went ahead with some late additions thinking (accurately IMHO) that the EKG would compliment the pumpkin and the spices.

For the pumpkins, I used 2lbs of pie pumpkins generously donated from the Roger Williams University student organic garden. I did not precook the pumpkins. Instead, I scooped out the innards and cut the pumpkins into chunks and sent them through my Cuisinart with the grater attachment (skin and all). I then combined the grated raw pumpkin with the rest of the grist in the mash.

This was the first attempt at using my new 5-gallon MLT, which I decided to build because of this recipe. I was hoping this would be my first all-grain batch (no sparge, 3.5 gallons), but I missed just about every number possible. I was low on my mash temp so I added some boiling water, but only managed to raise it a couple of degrees. My efficiency sucked, even for no sparge, so I ended up using a pound of extract to make up the difference.

To top it all off, even though I made a starter, my initial pitch of yeast never took off, so after 72 hours of no fermentation I repitched with a packet of dry yeast. Fermentation took off after that.

Even with all the issues, in the end, I think this turned out to be a really good beer. I hit the color dead on and it has a nice solid spicy-ness to it without being too much. Good body. Very tasty.

(the name is based on Nathaniel Hawthorn's short story, Feathertop)

Feathertop Pumpkin Ale
Brewed on 9/6/10

Recipe Specifications
All Grain, No Sparge, Partial Boil
Batch Size: 3.50 gal
Boil Size: 2.56 gal
Estimated Color: 13.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 28.7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 34.00 % (?!?!?!?!?!?!?)
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
OG: 1.052
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.21%

Grist
5 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter - 47.62 %
2 lbs Pumpkin, fresh, raw, grated - 19.05 %
1 lbs Caramunich I - 9.52 %
8.0 oz Melanoidin - 4.76 %
8.0 oz Vienna Malt - 4.76 %
8.0 oz Wheat Malt, Pale - 4.76 %
1 lbs Extra Light DME - 9.52 %

Hops
1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] (60 min)
0.25 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] (15 min)
0.25 oz Goldings, East Kent [4.50 %] (1 min)

Spices
0.50 tsp Cinnamon, ground (Boil 1.0 min)
0.50 tsp Nutmeg, grated (Boil 1.0 min)
0.25 tsp Allspice, ground (Boil 1.0 min)
0.25 tsp Ginger, ground (Boil 1.0 min)
0.125 tsp Cloves, Ground (Boil 1.0 min)

Yeast
SafAle US-05
(original yeast WLP001 never took off, so repitched with the SafAle)

Mash Schedule
Single Infusion, 149F, No Mash Out, No Sparge