Absolutely! Dry Beer.

Rather than respond to Sjoerd’s question in the comments, I think it is worth discussing it in it’s own blog post.

Here’s the question (I’ve edited it a bit to summarize):

I wonder if it is possible to create an absolutely dry beer, by first doing the alpha-step on 73 degrees, and then adding beta-amylase enzymes and continue mashing at 60 degrees. I remember reading that enzymes reside in the liquid parts for the most. Most of the starch, however, resides in the non-liquid parts.

So it would be something like this:
Heat to 60 C and mash it for 10 minutes. Drain and save half of the liquid. Raise the heat of the remaining mash to 73 C and let it rest for one hour. All the starch will now be converted by alpha-amylase into long-chain sugars, but the beta-amylase is denatured. Let the mash cool back down to 60 C, and add the remaining part of the liquid in which there still is a lot of active beta-amylase.
Now we can start the beta-amylase rest, which will convert the long-chain sugars into simple sugars. The only starch left should now be the starch from the liquid that was set apart, and I believe that this is not much.

What are your thoughts on this?

It is an interesting proposition – in essence that you would be doing a backwards multi-step mash. I did a quick search for this idea on Google, but nothing really came up. I may not be searching using the right terms though. But it does seem as though it is not being discussed on home-brewing forums. (I’ll just venture to suggest that this may be because very few home-brewers can directly heat their mash-tuns effectively, and of those that can (using computerized recirculating wort systems) may find it difficult to remove wort, then add it back later. Just guessing though)

I think the theory behind your proposal is sound. The only problem I see is that a lot of the starch does actually dissolve into the liquid before being broken down into sugar (this is proven by starch conversion testing – the iodine readily reacts with dissolved starch at the beginning of mashing). So a large part of your starch will have to be mashed in a normal method (it will sit with the beta-amylase while the rest of the mash is being heated to 73 C). To convert this dissolved starch, you would have to then raise the whole mash back to 73 C at the end to ensure its conversion. This means two mashings. But, it would probably result in a drier beer, and improved efficiency, but at the cost of twice the time (and energy).

This leads me to think that perhaps you could do a double mash – just mash half of your grain in a multi-step, but don’t raise the heat and mash out. Instead then mix in the remaining grain and water, and start over. This would mean that the beta-amylase from the second mashing would get at the long-chain sugars from the first first; and there would be a lot of alpha-amylase around from the first mashing to ensure complete conversion in the second mashing. The advantage to this method is that you can do it all in one mash-kettle, and you don’t have to mess around draining off half the mash then adding it back in (hot, sugary water is kind of scary to handle).

I think the broader question is whether this is even worth it. These days my mashing method involves:

1. Using half the water (bringing the mash thickness closer to what non-BIAB home-brewers use – results in improved efficiency and makes raising the temperature of the mash during intermediate steps easier),
2. Doing a three-step process (the 63 – 67 – 70 C) with 20 minutes at each rest,
3. Then adding in the rest of the water (at 52 C: temperature of the water that comes out of the hot water tap),
4. Which drops the temperature back down to around 63 C, then raising the heat to 75 C for mash-out.

This method has been giving me brew-house efficiencies around 80% consistently, and it does not take much longer than my usual mashing (the time it takes to heat up between steps is around 5 minutes, and the final heating takes around 20 minutes). Is it worth doubling my mashing time to get efficiency up to 83 – 84 %? Maybe on a commercial scale, but for me, the extra points of efficiency are not worth it.

As well, you would probably end up with beer with no character or flavour.

The final thing I want to point out is that alpha-amylase on its own is a very effective enzyme at producing simple sugars. Think about it – animals, including humans, get by with only alpha-amylase. Many ‘beers’ (e.g. chicha) in traditional economies are made with grain mashed using human saliva. If given enough time and the right conditions, alpha-amylase can convert starch into simple-chain sugars. It’s just faster utilizing beta-amylase.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 8 (finally!)

Hey,

So I’ve been otherwise engaged for the last few months. Sorry. Maybe this will make Sjoerd happy? The cliffhanger I’ve left you with was how will I make the Champagne of Beers ‘dry’? Actually, the cliffhanger is more like how did the beer turn out!

In regards to the dryness, I aimed to ensure a complete conversion of starches to simple sugars (as far as possible) by regulating the temperature. I started relatively low (around 63 C) and stayed there for 30 minutes. Then raised the heat to 67 C for another 30 minutes, finally I brought it up to 70 C for 30 minutes. The first step is ideal for beta-amylases, so they get to make a lot of simple sugars. Unfortunately, they leave behind a lot of starch because they are stumped by branches on the starch molecules. So the rest at 67 C (the typical homebrew saccharification rest) tried to get the alpha-amylase into the action to break apart the big starches into smaller ones – but still allow the beta-amylase to continue its work chewing up the starch into simple sugars at the new end-points of the starch molecules created by the alpha-amylases’s snips. The final rest, at 70 C is to get the alpha-amylase into its happy place. Unfortunely, this is hot enough to cook the beta-amylase, but my hope was that it would have finished its work by now. However, the alpha-amylase could still snip apart ‘branch-limit dextrines’ and other complex sugars in to smaller, hopefully simpler ones, that the yeast could then tear into (and so drying out the beer).

The other contributor to dryness in the Champagne of Beers is all the cane sugar I added to it. This is a bit counter-intuitive (isn’t sugar sweet, which is not dry?). Being completely composed of a simple sugar, the yeast can convert all of it into alcohol. So no worries about sweetness. In addition, by relying on cane sugar for a substantial part of the extract in this recipe, the proportion of complex, unfermentable sugar is correspondingly lower. Further, I believe that the taste of alcohol itself balances sweetness, so the added alcohol content in this beer also will make it taste dryer.

The yeast for this beer ( Wyeast’s 1388 Belgian Strong Ale yeast) is also known for finishing dry – one of the considerations in choosing it.

Finally, I have been fermenting it a long time in secondary – several months now. With hope, the yeast will have become desperate enough to try eating any sugars in the beer. This may take some time to be noticable, because the activity level of the yeast is so low, but that’s why this long period is partly for.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 7

Getting near the end of this series on the Champagne of Beers – you may have noticed that I combined two characteristics – low bitterness, and no hop flavour or aroma. That was simply because it really didn’t serve any purpose to separate them – both related to the use of hops. Here are all the characteristics I am aiming for, with the one’s already discussed struck out.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticeable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

8. Fruitiness. When beer is described as being fruity, it usually means that some of the flavours noticed in the beer are more usually associated with fruit – raisin, prune, plum, wine, cider, banana, citrus, etc. Occasionally it means that fruit have been literally added to the beer at some point.

Champagne, being a wine, is made from grapes, a type of fruit. So while champagne is not usually described as fruity, it is only because that would be stating the obvious (wines are sometimes described as being ‘fruity’, if fresh fruit flavours are very noticeable). Fruitiness in beer is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes undesirable, depending on the style and the drinker’s expectations. Many Belgian ales, continental wheat beers, and English ales have pronounced fruit flavours. Golden lagers – the major type of beer produced currently – are generally devoid of them, and they would be considered a fault. Certain American ales have strong citrus flavours that come from heavy hopping with certain types of hops.

These fruit flavours come from many sources – the malts used, the yeasts used, and the hops used. In my case, my malts will not contribute much fruit flavour. On the other hand, using a lot of cane sugar as part of the grain bill is said to contribute to wine or cider flavours, although this is a result of the yeast more than any flavour in the sugar. Usually beer makers try to avoid this cidery-ness by using dextrose – a sugar different from sucrose. Another thing I hypothesized may help is using jasmine rice for the rice in the beer – thinking the jasmine is somewhat fruity. I have just cooked a batch of the rice, and it really does not have much of a scent other than rice. So either the rice I bought does not have a strong jasmine scent, or that the scent is so subtle that it is unlikely to make it through mashing and fermentation.

Yeasts are not just the agents of fermentation in beer, they also contribute enormously to the flavour profile of the beer. Many beers with essentially identical grains and hops nevertheless taste very different due to different yeast strains at different breweries. Even if the breweries started with the same strain, the yeasts will evolve differently in the different breweries, leading to differences in flavour. Yeasts produce the esters and polyphenols and other chemicals that cause the fruit flavours in beers. The yeast strain I’m using (I just activated it an hour ago) is known for making fruity and spicy flavours in beer. This obviously works well for my objective – even the spicyness is not really a problem I think. It also likes to ferment at relatively high temperatures. Higher temperature ferments tend to produce more flavours – again sometimes a good thing (as in many ales) and sometimes not (as in many ‘clean-tasting’ lagers and ales).

In terms of the hops – in theory I could add some American-style hops to the secondary fermentor to provide the citrusy flavours associated with them, and not worry about bitterness. However, I’m holding off because strong citrus scents are not usually associated with wines, and because dry-hopping would add a lot of regular hop flavours, something I am trying to avoid (in order to distance the ‘champagne of beers’ from beer.)

In sum, I hope to get fruit flavours from using a lot of cane sugar, from using a yeast known to produce fruity flavours, and from fermenting at a relatively high temperature – around 20 to 22 degrees.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 6

At this point in this series on the Champagne of Beers I will finally provide a photo for us to look at. Here are all the characteristics I am aiming for, with the one’s already discussed struck out.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticeable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma. Superficially, this should be an easy characteristic to achieve – just reduce or eliminate the hops altogether! But hops play a complex and many-faceted role in beer, so it isn’t that simple. Or maybe it is, and I’ve just fallen for the mystery surrounding beer making…

Hops are traditionally associated with the bitterness of beer, which they do indeed impart. Less appreciated is their contribution of flavours and aromas to beer. Also less known are their anti-bacterial and anti-oxidative roles.

The bitterness and flavours of hops come from prolonged boiling in the wort. The boiling isomerizes some of the hop oils and resins, making them soluble. The longer the boil, the more bitter the beer (within reason). Adding more hops obviously also adds bitterness and flavour. Hops also impart aromas to beer from volatile oils. These are, paradoxically, driven off by long boiling, so hops tend to be added in several additions to the wort – some at the beginning, some at the middle, and some near the end. Sometimes brewers also ‘dry-hop’ beer – adding hops to their secondary fermentors – to get extra hop aroma. I do this usually, as I like the hop aromas.

Of course, we’re talking about the champagne of beers, not just any beer. This means that, like champagne, this beer should not be bitter, and should not have strong hop flavours or aromas. Beyond simply imitating champagne, I’ve read that bitter and acid flavours don’t work well together. Researching this, I came across an interesting article about Lambic beers in the NY Times. Meant as a come-on to wine snobs, what struck me was the author’s repeated comparison of lambic beers to champagne. This is a good sign, as what I am brewing is somewhat like a lambic in it’s lack of hop flavours or bitterness.

But as I allude earlier, achieving this is not a matter of simply eliminating the hops, because the anti-bacterial and anti-oxidative properties (I’ll call them preservative power) of hops are still valuable. This is where the accumulated expertise of lambic and ‘plambic’ brewers really helps out.

Hops have an ‘interesting’ or frustrating property, depending on how it affects you: they gradually go stale, or become ‘aged’, meaning that they lose their bittering power over time. It is frustrating when making normal beers, as your hops require special storage conditions, and you need to keep recalculating their bittering power over time to compensate for the aging. However, in the case of making lambics, or plambics (pseudo-lambics brewed outside of Belgium), this property becomes interesting, as brewers can used aged hops for their preservative power, without the bitterness.

As I haven’t owned hops long enough to age them (2-3 years) properly, I had to artificially age them (artifice within artifice! Artificially aging hops for an artificial champagne). This involved heating the hops in a 95 degree (200 F) oven for several hours. Here you can see the difference between the fresh (on the left) and ‘aged’ (on the right) hops:

Sorry about the focus, but you can clearly see that the aged hops became much lighter in colour – even yellowish. They lost their hop aroma (which pervaded my apartment during the baking – as warned, it smelled quite cheesy at times) as well. I guess to ensure the perservative power, lambic brewers use ridiculous amounts of these aged hops – equivalent to between 3 or 4 ounces per 5 gallons (i.e. multiples of the amounts usually used).

How much of these aged hops to use? On one hand, why not use 4 ounces for the batch? Well, I’m not convinced that these artificially aged hops have truly lost all their bittering power. When I crushed some of the hops, the some hop aroma was apparent, so perhaps some bittering power is hiding in there as well. As well, Micheal Tonsmeire reckons on his (awesome) blog that inoculating your wort with a pure culture of yeasts and maintaining generally sanitary conditions during the fermentation reduces the need for the preservative power of the aged hops – the chances of the beer becoming infected with unwanted microbes are much reduced compared to the conditions of traditional lambic breweries.

I’ll probably use 2 ounces of aged hops – a bit more than Mr. Tonsmeire, and a bit less than traditional lambics.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 5

I’m realizing that this series on the Champagne of Beers has become my longest and wordiest yet. The previous 4 posts discussed how to achieve a very light colour, fizz without head, higher alcohol content, a noticeable acidity, and light body. Here are all the characteristics I am aiming for.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticeable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness. Cloudiness, or haze, in beer is a bugbear for homebrewes (and I guess brewers generally). In most commercial beers, people expect perfect or near perfect clarity – the only exceptions being bottle-conditioned beers, and some wheat beers. If the beer’s expected clarity is not found, people will assume the beer has gone bad. This spills over into the homebrewing world.

Generally homebrewers, and drinkers of homebrew are much more forgiving of haze in their beer – they understand that it is a natural part of minimally processed beer. However, even homebrewers often feel that a clearer beer is a better beer. In some ways this is only due to the standards set by commercial breweries, but in others way it is an indicator that the beer may contain too much protein, and may not be ’stable’.

Wine, like beer, is expected to be clear. Even champagne that has been yeast conditioned is always crystal clear. Such clarity is probably beyond my simple methods, but I do have a few techniques. As I explain in my post about homebrewing, my usual grain bill includes considerable unmalted wheat flour. Further, I use a ‘corona-style’ grain mill to mill my malts – I set it to a fairly fine grind, so it produces a lot of malt flour. Both unmalted wheat and finely ground grain are infamous for producing hazy beers.

This has lead me to use two main methods to clarify my [regular] homebrew. First, during the boil, I add Irish moss, a type of seaweed. This acts to bind together some of the haze forming proteins and precipitate them after the boil. The other thing I do is to add dissolved gelatin to my beer when I rack (transfer) the beer to my secondary fermenter. Gelatin also bonds to proteins and precipitates them, leaving them as trub at the bottom of the fermenter, which is left there when I bottle the beer (see http://www.beerbrewer.co.uk/beer/beer-clarity-part-3/ for some details). I believe that both Irish moss and gelatin act by clumping together the proteins, which then become large and heavy enough to fall out of suspension in the beer. Although their action is similar, I think they bond differently with the proteins, so they act on different proteins. Kind of a one-two punch!

Beyond filtering (which I won’t be doing), another method used by brewers to clarify beer is to let them age for a while. Some proteins and haze particles simply need enough time to settle out. Others will oxidize or otherwise bond together over time and then settle out. For my regular homebrews I haven’t utilized this method as I tend to drink my beer fairly young. It seems that there’s always a party or something to bring some beer along to, and that wipes out my cellar! People don’t seem to complain about the clarity of my beer…maybe because it’s free?

For the champagne of beers I plan to age the beer for about 9 months, so the aging effect on clarity should kick in. Thinking about the aging process, I’ve started worrying a bit about how the champagne of beers will carbonate after aging so long. The yeast may have gone into hibernation by then, so will not be able to effectively bottle-condition the beer. I think I will pre-bottle a a bottle a few weeks before the main bottling, and then test the carbonation after two or three weeks. If it has not carbonated sufficiently I’ll probably add some dry yeast to the bottling bucket.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 4

Onward on the quest to brew a champagne of beers! So far I have discussed how to achieve a very light colour, fizz without head, higher alcohol content, and a noticeable acidity. Here are all the characteristics I am aiming for.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticeable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

5. Light body. I’ve already discussed this somewhat in the post about the alcohol content because both the level of alcohol, and the body of the beer relate to the type of grain used for mashing. A lot of the ‘body’ in beer comes from proteins and residual sugars that remain in the beer after fermentation. In contrast to beer, wine does not contain much protein, or residual sugar (in dry wines anyways), so this beer needs to reduce the amount of protein and sugar left.

The first strategy to achieve this was already discussed – namely that I will use a considerable amount of refined sugar and rice. Refined sugar can be completely fermented, leaving no residual sugars, as long as the alcohol content is not too high (which it won’t be in this beer). It can also act as a sort of ’subsidy’ to the yeast, giving it ‘cheap’ energy so it can devote more effort to breaking down longer-chain sugars. This is referred to as drying out the beer. This dryness is also a phenomenon of the palate, as the fermentation of the refined sugar increases the alcohol content without a proportionate increase in residual sugar or protein, so the beer tastes dryer or more alcoholic (alcohol and sugar balance each other somewhat, in terms of taste; that’s why most cocktails are sweet – to hide the alcohol).

Rice is partway between using refined sugar and using barley malt. During mashing, the starch in rice will be broken down in the same way as it is in barley malt – it will produce mostly simple sugars, but also more complex long-chain and branching sugars that yeast finds difficult to ferment, and so they make it into the beer. These residual sugars usually don’t taste that ’sweet’, but do make the beer taste thicker, richer, and maltier. While rice will contribute residual sugars, it does not contain much protein.

The protein content of beer is one of it’s defining characteristics. Without the protein, beer would feel like pop. But in this case, I do want it to taste pop-like, within reason. Wine does contain tannins, phenolics, and polysaccharides among other chemicals that contribute to mouth-feel. I think that with the exception of wine tannins, many of these are also found in beer. To reduce the protein content of the beer, I will use refined sugar and rice, as these both contain little or no protein. Further, during the mashing, I will utilize the protein rest.

John Palmer, in his excellent on-line book How to Brew describes the protein rest as being around 52 degrees, for 20 – 30 minutes. He warns that using a protein rest when mashing well modified malts (like the 2-row barley malt I will be using) is unnecessary, and “would break up the proteins responsible for body and head retention and result in a thin, watery beer.” Perfect.

Changing the mash temperature is another way to reduce the body and sweetness of beer. Regular mashing temperatures (the saccharification rest) are around 67 degrees. Palmer states that: “A lower mash temperature, less than or equal to 150°F [65.5°C], yields a thinner bodied, drier beer”. Again, perfect for my needs, so my target temperature will be between 65 and 66 degrees. This is because the lower mashing temperature favours beta amylase, which produces a lot of simple sugars. There is a bit of a cost to this – the mash efficiency declines because some of the starch will not be converted. Beta amylase is not able to break apart starch molecules where the molecule branches – alpha amylase is needed to break off the branched sections.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 3

This is the third installment of a series of posts on how to brew a beer that is like champagne. In the last two posts I discussed how to achieve a very light colour, fizz without head, and higher alcohol content. Here are all the characteristics I am aiming for.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticeable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

4. Noticeable acidity. This may be the most involved part of making this beer, as it is a new process for me. Unlike most beers, wine balances its flavours, alcohol, and sweetness with acidity, whereas most beer balances these with bitterness. From most accounts, it sounds like it’s an either-or situation, as bitterness and acidity don’t seem to go well together for most people’s palate. In any case, I am trying to emulate a champagne, so I need to make my beer acidic, and not bitter (see Characteristic #8).

Beer was originally bittered with hops as the anti-bacterial action of the hops helped preserve it. Using aged hops contributes some of that action without bittering much, but the acidity (and higher alcohol) also help to preserve the beer, and allow it to age. This is, in principle, the same reason wine can be aged, due to it’s higher alcohol content and acidity.

There are several approaches to acidifying beer: using sour malt, making a sour mash, souring the fermenting beer, or simply adding food grade acids directly to the beer. I don’t have sour malt, so I will not be using that approach, and I don’t have and don’t want to use food grade acids. That leaves using a sour mash, or souring the beer.

Sour mashing creates lactic acid from the wort, before yeast fermentation. It can occur spontaneously because the production of malt creates ideal conditions for naturally occuring lactobacillus (and other souring microorganisms) to multiply on the malted grain. By boiling the sweet wort soon after mashing, brewers prevent their beer from souring due to these bacteria. However, if after mashing the sweet wort is innoculated with unmashed grain (the temperatures during mashing are high enough to knock off a lot of the bacteria), and allowed to ferment at temperatures around 50 degrees for two or three days, the wort will sour considerably. In fact, it will sour so much so that it becomes unpalatable for most – too sour, and too many ‘off’ flavour (cheese, etc). This is easily remedied by only sour mashing a portion of the grain, and then adding the sour mash to the rest of the grain at the end of the mashing, and boiling all the wort collected.

This allows you a fair degree of control over the amount of acidity. To properly mash a beer as light as the one here, I would have needed to add a bit of acidity anyway – using around 5 – 10% of the grain in a sour mash would contribute enough acidity to lower the pH of the entire mash enough for efficient mashing. At this level however, the acidity is not apparent to the palate. It is recommended that first time makers of sour mash beer use up to 20% of the grain for sour mashing. As I wish to have a noticably sour beer, I will use a little above that recommendation: 25% of the grain.

The other approach I could use is to sour the beer during fermentation. I’m leaning away from this due to several problems. One, I don’t have a good innoculum, and don’t wish to spend much, so won’t ship it in. I could possibly use a soured beer as an innoculum – but they have the problem of containing Brettanomyces and other ‘bugs’ that taste good in the beer in question, but are not really appropriate for champagne, I believe (not sure though…).

I’m also a bit nervous about souring the fermenting beer as it can be unpredictable at the best of times. Raj Apte has written the best explanation of brewing sour beers I’ve found (http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/flemishredale.shtml), and even he states that “Lactic [acid] levels are notoriously hard to control…” in the context of souring fermenting beer.

Furthermore, he suggests that using a sour mash is a good way to make sour beer quickly – he notes that it is not a method for replicating Belgian sour beers, as they need time to develop the Brett culture and flavour, but is good for such beers as Berliner Weisse. In a way, this beer is like a strong version of Berliner Weisse – light bodied, sour, etc. They even add sweeteners to it, much like they do to champagne (cassis, etc).

So here’s my proposed method to sour mash. Take 1/4 of my pale malt and rice grain and mash it (I’ll use distilled water to ensure the pH is low enough on this first mashing). This I will place in one or two (depending on it’s final volume) plastic 4 liter jugs, along with a handfull of unmashed malt grain and some cold water to reduce the temperature to 50 degrees. To keep the sour mash at 50 degrees for three days, I will hold it in a cooler, along with enough mini Christmas lights to maintain the temperature (see my tempeh making post to see a picture of what this would look like, approximately). On the third day, the sour mash will be mixed into the regular mash just before ’sparging’ (not the best term when dealing with BIAB).

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 2

In the last post I explained why I am planning to brew a ‘Champagne of Beers’, essentially a beer that is an attempt to clone champagne. Here are the characteristics I am aiming for. I already discussed how to achieve a very light colour and fizz without head.

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv

4. Noticable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

The next aspects of brewing a champagne clone are:

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv. I think part of the appeal of champagne is that it is the closest wine comes to being beer (ignoring wine-beer blends). It has the carbonation and lightness of some beers, but has the alcohol content of wine. So people drink it much more easily and quickly than wine generally (lest the carbonation dissipate), so they get tipsy quicker and more so than usual – leading to good times! I also understand that a lot of its appeal is marketing and its association with significant events.

So the Champagne of Beers needs to be significantly stronger than typical beer. At the low end, wines are around 8%, which happens to be at the higher end of beer. I could go higher, but it gets complicated, and harder to control flavours and body. This would interfere with other objectives like a light body, and dryness.

Achieving 8% alcohol is not that difficult – the grain bill is simply increased enough to ensure enough sugar is created, and so enough alcohol will be fermented. However, barley malt is a flavourful grain, and mashing can produce significant quantities of long-chain sugars that do not get fermented, contributing body, sweetness or maltiness, and flavour to beer. These are generally good things, making beer palatable.

However, I don’t think they’ll work well in this case – obtaining higher alcohol content strictly through barley malt would add proportionately more unfermentable sugar, making the beer thick and sweet/malty tasting – things I am trying to avoid. The solution to this problem is to use neutral grain adjuncts (non-barley) and refined sugar. Grain adjuncts commonly used include corn and rice – corn adds corn flavour, but rice is practically tasteless. The grain bill I am looking at would call for about 58% barley malt, 21% rice, and 21% sugar. The sugar is completely fermentable and does not contribute any flavour  or residual sugar. Yeast fermenting refined sugar can add some cidery flavours – not a bad thing in this case. As well, if so much sugar is added that the alcohol content kills off the yeast before all the sugar is fermented, sugar will be left in the finished beer adding sweetness. This is unlikely in my case as I am only aiming for an alcohol content of 8%, below the toxicity level of most yeasts.

Speaking of yeast, I will be using Wyeast’s 1388 Belgian Strong Ale yeast. It is well adapted for higher alcohol content (good), produces some fruity flavours (good – see Characteristic #9) as well as spice flavours (not so good), finishes dry and tart (good – see Characteristics #4 and #10 ), and has low flocculation (bad – see Characteristic #6). It’s recommended fermentation temperature range of 18 – 27 degrees is good for the fermentation conditions I have. JJ recommended it, and while not perfect, I think it probably is the best yeast for my beer, overall.

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On a different note, last night I had a Budweiser – haven’t had one in years, and the only other choices at the Korean place we were at were Coors Light or Coors Canadian. In many respects, the Budweiser was like what I am aiming for with the Champagne of Beers – it was very light coloured, minimal hop aroma or flavour, not bitter, light body, very clear and had zero head (it may have been partly the plastic cup I was drinking from). I think if it had had more alcohol, acidity, and fruity flavours, it would have fit my characteristics! Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but it confirms that you could brew a beer much like champagne.

One other thing I noticed is that it’s bubbles were big and formed everywhere, like a pop, rather than small and forming from individual spots like in a champagne. The good news is that I have noticed that my homebrews form bubbles much like champagne does – I think it may have to do with bottle conditioning.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’

(My earlier poll for what to write about is currently tied 0-0-0-0-0, so I feel free to write what I want)

Next summer is my ‘champagne birthday’ – where the age I’m turning is the same as the day of the month on which my birthday falls. The only problem is that I don’t really like champagne / sparkling wine. It’s better than still wine, and I can drink it, but I don’t truly enjoy it – especially for more than a glass or two.

SO, I’ve decided to try brewing a beer with characteristics similar to champagne:

from http://www.riedel-store.co.uk/acatalog/Riedel_XL_Champagne.html

1. Very light colour

2. Fizzy, but without much head

3. Alcohol content of around 8% abv (yes, I know it can be stronger)

4. Noticable acidity

5. Light body

6. Clear – minimal cloudiness

7. Low bitterness and no hop flavour or aroma

8. Fruitiness

9. Dry (i.e. not sweet)

My next few posts will be my thoughts on how to achieve these objectives:

1. Very light colour. This isn’t too hard; I will only use base malt (2-row barley malt), uncoloured sugar, and rice (minimal colour) as an adjunct. The colour from this should be around 2 SRM.

2. Fizzy, but without much head. A bit more involved. I will try a protein rest during mashing at 50 degrees for 30 minutes (see http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-4.html). This should break down the protiens that usually cause big heads (foam) on beer when it is poured. This has the added ‘benefit’ of reducing the body of the beer, making it feel more watery (see Characteristic #5).

Another aspect to this will be the use of aged hops for bittering. Hops usually provide chemicals that link with  protiens in beer to promote head retention (see http://www.byo.com/departments/884.html). Aging removes a lot of this power. Using aged hops has the added ‘benefit’ of reducing hop flavours and aroma (see Characteristic #7). One downside is that certain hops (esp. US grown Cascades and related hops) can impart a strong citrusy aroma to beer, so using aged hops works against this – which would have helped with Characteristic #9.

Fizz-wise, I think that regular bottle conditioning (together with the lack of body and foam) should be sufficient carbonation.

BIAB / Brewing Update

Thanks PistolPatch for the tip about doughing in! (“You will find it easier to add your water to your kettle first, … add your bag and THEN pour your grain in. You’ll have no doughballs this way and no heavy stirring to do either.”)

I’ll post some pictures soon of my new 5-gallon batches (the photos in the earlier post are of my 3-gallon system). About the tip, I’m not sure why, but I still got dough-balls using your method. I ended up having to very slowly pour in the grist, while constantly stirring, to prevent them. Perhaps I have a finer grind, and the substantial amounts of flour make dough-balls an inevitability. On balance, I think this was easier than adding the water to the grist though, so I will continue to do it this way.

Changing gears, I want to quickly describe an experience I’ve gone through home-brewing, hopefully it will add to the general level of knowledge about homebrewing (i.e. others avoid my mistakes!).

I live in Toronto, and rather bizzarely for a large city with an active beer culture, there are no home-brew shops. There are one or two brew-on-premises places that sometimes sell a bit of extra grain or hops, and maybe a place way out in the hinterlands of Brampton (not an great option for the car-less, or car owners for that matter – it is a substantial trip of unproven utility). But otherwise homebrewers are limited to mail-order, or banding together to buy wholesale via a very helpful local microbrewery.

In short, getting malt is a real hassle. To stretch my malt, I use whole wheat flour as an adjunct – usually equal in wieght to about 1/3 of my base malt. As well, I found an Italian coffee substitute called Orzo that is simply roasted barley (kind of like black patent?), and a Korean ‘tea’ made from lightly roasted barley grain (SRM of around 65?). Unfortunately, I ran out of Orzo, and kept forgetting to go up to Corso Italia on St. Clair Ave to buy some more – realizing this only after I had already started a brew session. So in a pinch I just used ground coffee. Yup, just dumped about 100 g of it into my mash.

The results? Well, regular roast coffee has less darkening power than I would have thought – maybe around 250 or 300. And I believe it adds an acrid taste to the finished beer. Perhaps if I had added brewed coffee, rather than the actual grounds, I could have avoided this – but that would have involve a bunch of new variables, so I never did that (not realizing that it would end up tasting weird). The other unknown is the flavour effect of the Korean tea barley. I made a little trial batch with a bit of pale malt and the tea barley – didn’t taste great, but I did end up boiling off most of the water, and had to keep adding more to maintain a boil.

In the end, I was able to get a selection of malts including Carafa from Justin. So in my last batch I did not use either coffee or the tea barley – I may never know which the acrid taste actually came from.