100 Bottles of Beer - Unlucky Number 13

That's where we are on this journey, fourteen down, and eighty-six to go. We will start with a tale of two porters.

Brew #11, Happy Cat Peculiar Porter, comes from Homebrew Favorites and is credited to Jim Richardson of Washington DC. It is a clone of a heavy English Porter known as Old Peculiar.

Happy Cat Peculiar Porter

3 lbs M&F Amber DME

3 lbs Brewmaster Australian Dark DME

1/2 lb Cara-Pils Malt (Dextrine Malt)

1/2 lb British Crystal Malt 53L

1/2 lb roasted barley

1/2 cup (4 oz) Blackstrap Molasses

2 cups dark brown sugar

2 oz Willamette hop pellets (45 min)

1 1/2 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)

2 pkg Edme ale yeast (23g total)

Priming: ¾ cup corn sugar and ¼ cup light DME

I made a few mistakes on this one. First mistake; it was supposed to be 1 lb crystal malt, not ½ lb. Second mistake; tried using a food processor to mill the roasted barley and ended up with barley flour instead of just milled or ground. Third and fourth mistakes; did not use enough water to mash the grains and ended up with a mash that was too thick and too much for the strainer to hold and sparge. Also, I scorched the mash fairly heavily on the bottom of the pot.

One of the extracts was substituted from what was called for (both should have been M&F) due to availability. The molasses should have been Lyles Black Treacle which is an English version of molasses which has a lighter flavor.

This was a bit more complex process than previous brews. Heat 6 qt cold water to 150 F and stir in extracts. When fully dissolved bring to boil for 30 minutes. Keep a close eye on this as it will try to boil over. While you are doing this; in a separate kettle, add milled grains to 2 qt cold water (not enough, use a full gallon) and heat to 150 F. Hold the mash at that temperature for 45 minutes. Another mistake, mash temperature briefly reached 190 while I was tending to the boiling wort. After the extract wort has boiled for 30 minutes and after the mash temperature is stabilized at 150 for most of the 45 minutes, slowly raise the temperature to 170 and strain into the wort.

Well, that is how it was supposed to work. As I stated, the mash was too thick, both from not enough water and the roast barley ground into flour. So, since the mash would not strain and the sparge water would not run through it, I just dumped all the mash into the wort and used the strainer to dip it back out and sparge each strainer-full as it came out.

This was really my first experience with what is called a "stuck" mash. This is a situation in which the grain bed is either too thick or becomes too compacted for sparge water to pass through and rinse out the sweet liquor. This is usually only a problem with all-grain brewing so I will address it in more detail when it comes up again.

So, after this ordeal is complete, bring the entire wort to a boil, stir in the brown sugar and molasses, add the hops and Irish moss at the specified times. Boil for 45 minutes.

Pour cooled wort into fermenter with enough water to bring to 5 gallons. Pitch the re-hydrated yeast.

This worked very vigorously, bubbling out of the fermentation lock and threatening to blow the lid off of the bucket. I had to replace the lock with a blow-off hose into a kettle of water. I was quite concerned about contamination with this mess but it turned out fine.

Happy Cat was a very dark porter with a surprisingly light bittersweet flavor and a light touch of molasses in the finish. The OG was 1.050, should have been 1.060, probably the difference made by the ½ lb short crystal malt; and the FG was 1.021 for an ABV of about 3.7%

Brew #12, the second of our two porters, Portly Porter also comes from Homebrew Favorites and is credited to Aubrey P. Howe III from Santa Barbara, CA.

Portly Porter

6.6 lbs M&F Amber LME

1.4 lbs Alexander's Amber LME

13.5 oz black patent malt

10 oz chocolate malt

9 oz British crystal malt 53L

2 oz Willamette whole cone hops (50 min)

2 oz Cascade whole cone hops (50 min)

1 oz Cascade whole cone hops (10 min)

1 oz Northern Brewer whole cone hops (2 min)

1 1/2 tsp Irish Moss

Wyeast 1098 British

Priming: ¾ cup corn sugar and ¼ cup light DME

Only 7 lbs of extract was called for in the original recipe and neither DME nor LME was specified. The quantities of malts were adjusted a little based on what I had on hand at the time. This was the most hops I have used in any beer up to this point.

Compared to the first of our two porters, this was an easy uneventful brew day. Brought the milled grains to a boil in 2 gallons cold water, strained out and sparged the grains with 1-2 qt. hot water, added the extracts and returned to boil; no problems. Added the hops and Irish Moss at the specified times during the 60 minute boil. Cool wort, top to five gallons in fermenter and pitch yeast.

OG was 1.056 and FG was 1.026 for an ABV of about 4%

This porter was also very dark but tasted lighter than it looked. It had a strong hop aroma and bitterness but retained a very subtle underlying malt sweetness and finished with a nice smoky aftertaste which dissipated quickly.

Both porters were very good and very different from each other. Happy Cat was a sweet porter and Portly was a hoppy dry porter. Points out very nicely how two beers of the same style can be very different.

That brings us to brew #13. This was perhaps an overly ambitious brew at the time and I will freely admit; it was my first real failure. Not because it was a bad recipe, no, it was because of a comedy of errors. This comes from Charlie's Joy of Home Brewing and he states it is his favorite stout to brew and enjoy.

Cherry Fever Stout

3.3 lbs John Bull Dark LME

3.3 lbs John Bull Light LME

1.5 lbs M&F Dark DME

1 lb Crystal Malt British 53L

8 oz roasted barley

9 oz black patent malt

2 oz Northern Brewer whole cone hops (60 min)

1 oz Willamette whole cone hops (2 min steep)

8 tsp gypsum

5 lbs fresh cherries crushed

2 pkg Edme ale yeast 23g total

Priming: ¾ cup corn sugar and ¼ cup light DME

Charlie's original recipe called for slightly less hopped light LME and less hops. I chose to use unhopped LME and increased both hop additions by ½ oz each. Charlie did not specify what Lovibond crystal malt so I chose 53L British. I also increased the black patent by 1 oz because that was what I had. Charlie also suggested using a mix of 3 lb sour cherries and 2 lb choke cherries or just straight 5 lb sour cherries. I chose to use 5 lb sweet Bing cherries.

The brew process went just fine. Brought the milled grains to a boil in 1 ½ gallons cold water, strained out and sparged the grains with 3 qt hot water. Added the extracts and gypsum and returned to boil. Added the Northern Brewer hops and boiled for 60 minutes. Removed from heat and added the cherries, covered and let steep for 15 minutes at 160 - 180 F. This pasteurizes the cherries. It is important to note that you do not want to boil the cherries as this will set the natural fruit pectin causing the wort to thicken and leave a cloudy haze suspended in the finished beer. Added the Willamette hops for the final 2 minutes of the steep.

So far, so good, the only thing I would do different now would be to add the gypsum to the mash water with the grains instead of after the mash.

Pour the wort, cherries and all, into the fermentation bucket containing 2 ½ gallons of cold water. This is where it all went to Hell in a hand-basket! The wort was very thick and goopy with the cherries and hops still in it. There was a lot of plopping and splashing trying to pour this into the bucket, so I employed my wife's help to control this splashing. I had her hold a towel up around the top of the bucket. Unfortunately, the hot wort splashed on her hand, caught the towel, and washed it INTO THE BUCKET!

Guess what? I didn't think to grab a clean towel for this, just used the dirty one that was on the kitchen counter. Imagine the delightful collection of bacteria lurking in that towel.

Although I snatched the towel out of the bucket very quickly, it still was very soaked in wort which was no longer hot enough to sanitize. Wonderful! Fortunately, Nancy was not burned by the hot wort and I was not mad at her. It was not her fault.

Oh well, lets just cross our fingers and see what happens.

Strong activity began in less than two hours after pitching yeast, becoming extreme in only a few hours. I had to attach blow-off hose just as with the Portly Porter. But, just as quickly as the fermentation had started; it had nearly stopped by the next day. I let it sit a couple more days with no sign of continued activity.

Racking to secondary fermenter was also not a good experience. There was a thick layer of cherry and hop debris floating on top of primary which I removed with a strainer. I had a terrible time keeping the siphon going as it kept plugging up with debris in the bottom of the bucket and suspended in the beer. I washed my hands very thoroughly with anti-bacterial soap and reached into the bucket to keep the siphon unplugged and clear of debris. Yet another perfect chance for contamination!

It still tasted very sweet, like unfermented wort, so I knew it still had a long way to go. I hoped activity would resume in the secondary. After 24 hours, nothing was happening, so I asked Keith at Highlander Homebrew what I should do. He said the sugar content of the cherries can sometimes overpower the yeast causing sugar-shock. He suggested re-pitching the yeast and adding 1 tsp yeast energizer. This is also known as yeast nutrient and is usually used in making wine or mead to provide nutrients for the yeast that are missing in fruit or honey.

So, I added the yeast and energizer and waited, for five days nothing happened. Then I had to go out of town on business for five more days. When I returned, much to my surprise, I had very strong activity! When did it start and why did it take so long? I do not know; and, is this yeast activity or is it bacterial activity? I can only wait and see.

After about two weeks the activity had stopped and the beer had settled out and cleared very nicely, time to bottle. I had obtained two or three cases of 12 oz Tivoli bottles so decided to use these for this brew.

A quick story on the origins of these bottles:

The Tivoli Brewery was an old brewery near downtown Denver which had been in operation under various names from 1859 to 1969. The building has been in the National Register of Historic Places since 1973 and features a large stack with the name "Tivoli" visible for miles from the downtown area. It had been converted to a shopping mall and included the Tivoli Brewing Brewpub from 1995 to 1997. It is now part of the Denver University (DU) campus.

During renovation of the building into a mall, a contractor, who was also a home brewer, was asked to dispose of the cases of bottles still in the brewery. He kept these bottles and sold some to the local home brew shops for resale to customers. Unfortunately, these bottles dated from the days before modern glass recycling and the practice of breweries only using new bottles like today. In those days, the bottles were returned to the brewery for a deposit and the bottles were cleaned and reused; truly recycling with the current process of remanufacturing omitted.

So these bottles required meticulous cleaning and sanitation for the home brewer to use. Some included some very unpleasant surprises, cigarette butts, dead bugs and even long decomposed mice. Overall, not a good idea, but I did clean them; disposing of the worst ones and using the best to bottle this stout.

The FG was 1.026 which was right on target per Charlie's recipe. I do not know why I bothered to take a gravity reading because I had not taken an OG reading. Assuming I was also right on with Charlie's OG of 1.068, that would give this an assumed ABV of 4.7%

The first bottle I tried had no apparent cherry flavor and a metallic, bitter taste; not good. The next bottle two weeks later was a little better, not as metallic and had a dry, puckering, tartness; still not good but drinkable.

The stout did continue to improve for a while; even developing a nice cherry bouquet but never did develop any cherry flavor. But, it did eventually deteriorate and the metallic bitterness began to reassert itself.

Looking back on this brew I realize I had inadvertently created a Cherry Lambic, which is a Belgian style of beer also referred to as Belgian Sour, brewed with wild yeasts and specific bacteria, Brettanomyces and Peddiococcus. I just didn't create a very good example of the style. We will get to intentionally brewing one of these before we are we done with our journey.

Was it the dirty dish towel, was it the hands in the bucket, or was it the questionable bottles? We will never know; but it was a learning experience. I did dispose of these bottles after using them for a root beer for my son. The bottles over-carbonated and some exploded which leads me to believe they never were completely sanitized.

I had hoped to cover more than just three beers on this part of the journey. The problems experienced with Happy Cat Peculiar Porter and Cherry Fever Stout were just was too big of a story.

So, that's three more down; eighty-three bottle of beer on the wall...

To be continued...

References:

Charlie Papazian, The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, 2^nd edition, October 1991

Karl F. Lutzen & Mark Stevens, Homebrew Favorites, Third printing, February 1995