I brewed a Tripel again on August 3rd. Why am I just posting about it now, you say? I'm lazy.

This time around I planned to use table sugar instead of corn sugar for 20% of the fermentables. Shortly before brew day I decided I wanted to try to make my own invert sugar instead of using straight table sugar. I searched the web and some books and couldn't find a definitive method for converting table sugar to invert sugar. I did find instructions for making candi sugar, but I wanted to make a sugar syrup instead of a hard sugar product. I decided on a combo/hybrid of various instructions I found online and from advice I got through the AHA TechTalk email forum. Here's what I did: I combined 2 parts table sugar and 1 part water (by weight) with about 1 gram of citric acid powder and heated the mixture slowly on the stove until the sugar was dissolved and the mixture was simmering. I simmered for about 15 minutes, until it was a very pale straw color. Then I cooled it to add to the fermenter. You may ask yourself, "Did he really make invert sugar?" That's a very good question, and I have no way of knowing the answer. At the very least I made a sucrose syrup which was easy to add to the fermenter. At best, I fully inverted the sucrose into fructose and glucose. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but I don't have any way of knowing to what extent the sugar was inverted.

The other difference between this batch and the last was that I split it between Wyeast 1214 and 3787. 1214 is an idiot-proof yeast that has attenuated very well without any extra fuss in every beer I've used it in. 3787 (supposedly Trappist High Grav) is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I love the flavors it imparts in a beer, but other than a small Belgian Pale I haven't been able to coax reasonable attenuation out of it. I used it in the quad-style beer that went into the club's bourbon barrel project, and it petered out at about 1.030 (from around 1.100). I learned later that it prefers incremental feeding of sugars (hence my desire to make a sugar syrup that was easy to add to the fermenter). This time around I held back all the sugar on brew day and added it later. I added all the sugar to the 1214 half of the beer a couple days after fermentation started. I added half of the required sugar to the 3787 portion after a few days, then the other half a couple days later. It still petered out at 1.030. Frustrated, I gave it a couple more weeks (and roused the yeast and bumped the temp up a tad), and it only dropped 2 more points. At this point I gave up on old 3787 and when I transferred both halves to secondary I poured the slurry from the 1214 carboy into the 3787 secondary. Active fermentation started up again within a day or two, and after a few weeks good old reliable chewed it down to 1.010. The straight-1214 half of the batch finished at 1.009 before I transferred to secondary.

After transferring to secondary I had about 1/2 gallon of the 1214 beer left over, which I put into a 2L PET bottle, chilled, and carbonated with my carbonator cap. I had about 1 gallon extra of the 3787 half, which I split between two growlers. I gave one of the growlers to Matt and kept the other for myself. I drank the leftover 1214 beer a few days ago, and I gotta say it was pretty tasty. I moved the 3787 leftovers into the 2L bottle yesterday, carbonated it, and had a glass last night. Again, pretty tasty. I can't wait to get these beers into bottles and compare them side-by-side. Bottling should happen within the next couple of weeks for the 1214 half, and a few weeks later for the 3787.

My recipe and procedures were essentially the same as my last tripel, so I won't go into the nitty gritty details. The only changes were I formulated for 1.080, used self-inverted table sugar instead of corn sugar, added it to the fermenters rather than the kettle, and split the batch between the two different yeasts.

I know, I know, you thought this blog was dead. It's been a busy summer, and when I have had time I haven't had motivation to update you on my brewing adventures. I've brewed several beers that I haven't posted about, and other beer & brewing related stuff has been going on as well.

I've been meaning to post for some time about the schwag I got for the gold medal my Tripel won at NHC. Here's a picture of the haul. I got the 5 Star cleaning kit (big bottle of Star San and a big tub of PBW), an AHA glass, a Sam Adams chilling bucket, the book "The Best of American Beer & Food," a bottle of The Sixth Glass Quad from Boulevard Brewing Company, and the gold medal. Pretty cool. Also, recipes and mugshots for all the gold medal winners were published in the Sept/Oct issue of Zymurgy. You'll find my recipe on page 46.

Here are a few more pics:

  

I was pleasantly surprised Saturday evening to discover that my Tripel took the gold medal in Category 18 at the National Homebrew Competition. I certainly wasn't expecting such a favorable result considering the fact it was going up against the best home-brewed beers in the country, and that it placed 3rd in the NW Region 1st round. I guess the two months of aging between the 1st and 2nd rounds helped a lot. I can't wait to receive my score sheets and see the judges comments.

Since I can't leave well enough alone, I plan to brew it again soon with some minor modifications. I think I'll use table sugar instead of corn sugar this time around, and ferment half of it with that mysterious beast known as Wyeast 3787. I'll use 1214 again on the other half as a control. I was pretty disappointed with the performance I got out of 3787 when I used it for the Bourbon Barrel Big Belgian Beer. I think it petered out at about 69% attenuation that time. One mistake I made is I didn't allow the temperature to rise during fermentation. Also, Wyeast says it benefits from incremental feeding of sugar, which I didn't do last time either. Oh, and I'll probably use Weyermann Pilsner malt instead of Castle, since Castle has become very hard to come by of late, locally at least.

My tripel placed 3rd in Category 18 in the 1st round (NW Region) of the National Homebrew Competition. Placing in the top 3 makes it eligible for the 2nd round. For the first round, the country (plus Canada) is split up into 10 regions. Each region judges beers separately and the top 3 beers from each region in each category advance to the 2nd round. There were 5,643 entries total in the 1st round with a possibility for around 840 beers, meads, and ciders to advance to the 2nd round. My beer was up against 28 other entries in Category 18 in the 1st round and assuming everyone eligible sends their beers in for the 2nd round there should be a total of 30 entries in that category. I'm curious to see how well it stacks up against the best home brewers in the country. 2nd round judging will take place June 19 during the National Homebrew Conference.

Whatever happens in the 2nd round, I'm pretty happy with the results so far considering this is the first Tripel I've ever brewed and the first time I've entered a beer in the NHC.

I wasn't the only club member to place in the 1st round. Matt's Lil Jib Saison took 2nd in Category 16. Maybe one of these days he'll get around to posting something about it.

Saturday was Big Brew. The club gathered at Steve & Frances Shaw's again this year. The setting is beautiful, but the weather wasn't as cooperative as it has been in recent years. It rained the entire day. Undaunted, we set up tents and our gear and six of us brewed a total of 45 gallons of beer. The pic at left is my rig trying to stay dry during the boil. More pics can be found in the gallery on the main club page.

I brewed a Blonde Ale again this year, and again it is destined for a family get-together. My wife's sister is turning 40 this summer and I've been tasked with bringing the beer. Last time I brought beer to one of her gatherings a lot of her friends showed up with their fizzy yellow Mexican beer or industrial American light lagers. My hope is that this Blonde Ale will be a gateway to honest beer for Corona and Bud Light drinkers who might be at the party, but at the same time be something that a real beer lover can appreciate. Am I a beer snob? Yes. And not to worry, I'll also be bringing a hearty Scotch Ale (which I brewed a few weeks ago but haven't posted about yet) and maybe a stout or a nice hoppy IPA.

Anyway, for this beer I wanted to go as light colored as possible and to focus on one hop. To that end, I used German pilsner malt as the base and just 1 lb of CaraPils for a little body. I hopped with Styrian Goldings, which is a hop I've used in the past but never as the focal point of the beer. I mashed at 150° for one hour with a mashout at 170°. I also decided to use a yeast I haven't used in primary before, Wyeast 1007 (German Ale).

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

Chris Devlin, who blogs about beer as the Seattle Beer Examiner, ferried over to Kitsap to see what Big Brew is all about and to brew his first batch. Matt brought the ingredients for a Pale ale and I brought some of my old gear from my extract days and we walked Chris through the process. Chris doesn't drive, and he couldn't easily carry a carboy full of fermenting beer home with him on the ferry and bus, so his beer is fermenting in my bathroom. He'll trek back over when it's time to bottle and then he'll have to figure out how to get two cases of beer back to Seattle.

You wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but I have been brewing this year.

Besides the ESB I brewed on MLK Day, I brewed a Bock in February and an Oktoberfest in March.

Bock: 2/23/2008
I wanted to try out Wyeasts Hella-Bock VSS, and I also wanted to get a head start on brewing at least 4 lagers this year, so I decided to brew a Bock in February and then an Oktoberfest in March using the yeast from the Bock primary. Looking back I should have switched the beers around since the bock is higher gravity and darker, but I was fixated on brewing the Oktoberfest in March. Oh well. Without going into details, I did a protein/saccharification/mashout step mash and ended up with about 11 gallons of 1.076 wort in the fermenters. I started fermentation at 49° and after some initially vigorous fermentation things got really sluggish after a couple weeks. I raised the temp to 58° to try to get things going, which worked with only marginal success. I transferred to secondary after a total of 5 weeks and the gravity was only down to 1.029. I kept it warm in the secondary for a few more days and the gravity didn't drop much, so I decided to pitch some German Ale yeast (1007) to ferment it down a few more points so it wouldn't taste like syrup. As I type this it's down to about 1.020, which is right about where I want it, and I'll probably crash cool it to drop the yeast then keg it for extended lagering soon.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

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Oktoberfest: 3/30/2008 (phew! just in time)
I went with a pretty basic recipe based on Bob Allen's award winning Cure of the Mouth Maerzen. On brew day I got a late start and had a commitment in the evening, so in the interest of speed I decided to just do a single step infusion mash at 152°. Then I sparged at 170°, boiled, and ended up with about 11 gallons of 1.051 wort in the fermenters. After just 2 weeks in the primary the gravity is down to 1.020 and I decided to kick the temp up to 65° for a diacetyl rest (as recommended by Wyeast). After a couple days I'll crash it and transfer to secondary after I keg the Bock.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

I bottled the other half of the batch of Tripel today. Netted nineteen corked 750ml bottles and thirteen 12 ozers. I primed with table sugar and shot for 3 volumes of CO2. John's corker worked great. I may have pushed the corks in a little too far, but I'm hoping that the pressure will push them back out against the top of the cages. There's about 3-4 mm of space between the top of the corks and the top of the cages. I can't wait for this stuff to carbonate, but I do have a keg of it to tide me over.

Jay over at the Hedonist Beer Jive posted about how underwhelmed he was with Victory's Golden Monkey Tripel, a beer I was very disappointed with myself. Read the comment I left (under the userame muddball) for the reasons I didn't like it.

I had planned to cold condition my tripel for another week or two, but after tasting the sample I brought to the Barleywine Meeting I just couldn't wait. I kegged half of the batch (5 gallons) today. I was planning to only keg 2.5 gallons, but again my desire to drink this beer got the better of me. Since it had been cold conditioning for two weeks @ 40° already, I was able to force carbonate it right away rather than having to wait overnight for it to chill. After I let it sit for a couple hours to settle, I pulled off the first glass. Mmmmm. Now that's a tripel. I may be slightly biased, but the only bad thing I can say about this beer is that it's a little dark for the style, and since it is still very young it will (hopefully) only improve with age. Even my wife was impressed ("It tastes like a tripel, like the tripels you tell me are good." - OK, she's not a big Belgian beer fan).

The other half of the batch is destined for the bottle. I have 19 750ml Belgian beer bottles (and counting) that most of the remaining 5 gallons will go into, complete with corks and wire cages. The rest will go into 12 ozers. Those will be allowed to condition and age while I nurse what's in the keg.

In what's becoming a MLK Day tradition, I brewed today. After the Barleywine Meeting yesterday I knew I'd be getting a late start and would want to do something quick and easy, so I just brewed a basic Extra Special Bitter. Single step mash @ 148°, mashout (direct heat) at 170°, sparge at 170° and a 60 minute boil. I doughed in around 12:30 and was chilling by 4:05. Pretty quick and efficient day.

Here's the recipe: Promash | HTML

Since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd recap my year in beer. Looking back, it was a pretty good year. I brewed more volume than I ever have, and probably pretty close to the most number of batches. Brewing mostly 10 gallon batches helped a lot in the volume category. A lot of the beer I brewed was earmarked for special occasions; a family reunion, a 40th birthday party or two (not mine), etc. And of course the Bourbon Barrel project claimed a lot of my production.

One thing I noticed is that I only did one lager in '07. I plan to rectify that error, and perhaps reclaim my title of "lagerboy" by brewing at least 4 this year: a Pils, a Dort, a Bock and an O'fest. I also need to brew beer for at least two extended family get-togethers (another 40th b-day, a 50th anniversary), plus my normal consumption. I better get going...

Here's the list. The recipes are available as either Promash .rec files or HTML web pages:

Name	Date	Volume	Recipe
Pacman IPA	1/6	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
I.H.A.D. Barleywine	1/15	5 gal.	Promash | HTML
Irish Stout	2/17	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout	3/3	8 gal.	Promash | HTML
Earwig APA	3/24	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Blonde Swill	5/5	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Bourbon Barrel Barleywine	5/19	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Not Brown Ale	5/20	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Nut Brown Ale	6/10	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Scotch Ale	7/14	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Bourbon Barrel Big Belgian Beer	9/15	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Dortmund	9/29	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Reverse Hopped IPA	11/10	10 gal.	Promash | HTML
Tripel	12/22	10 gal.	Promash | HTML