Rating my Mother's Day Farmhouse Ale

Brewed this organic Seven Bridges Cooperative Richard's Farmhouse Blonde Belgian Ale (Mash-Extract) on January 17, and conditioned it in the cellar at 54 ºF for three months. 

Aroma: 8 out of 10

Appearance: 4 out of 5

Taste: 7 out of 10

Palate: 3 out of 5

Overall: 16 out of 20

Total Score: 3.8 out of 5

There are two different pours possible from this brew, one being careful to leave the yeast cake undisturbed, is a clear orange-honey-amber.  The other, allowing some of the lighter top layer of yeast to mix in with the body, is half-opaque with white cloudiness. And the beer gains a bit of flavor complexity from the stirred up yeast. 

You don't want to leave a freshly opened bottle sitting for too long, as the carbonation is very active. In a minute or two, foam will issue forth from the bottle top and erupt over the counter. Even the most careful initial pour will produce a massive off-white mousse of a head that takes some time to fade. Lacing is minimal. 

Aromas of slightly under-ripe banana, honeydew mellon, and clove, with a whiff of alcohol. And you can tell from across the room, this is going to be a great farmhouse ale. Taste is chewy fresh-baked bread, apricot, ripe white currants, cinnamon, black pepper, and faint coriander. Sparkly mouth feel and a clean fresh finish. This one took twelve weeks in the cellar to condition, and it was worth the wait.

Hops Planted Along Fence

Cascade (4.5 - 7 AU), Chinook (10 - 14 AU), Columbus (11 - 18 AU), Fuggle (4 - 5.5 AU), Halertau (3.5 - 5.5 AU), Northern Brewer (6 - 10 AU).

We have less than ideal growing conditions for hops, with 25 almost-old-growth fir trees blocking most of the Eastern morning sunlight. But I decided to plant my six hop rhizomes along the property line cyclone fence with my Western neighbor. The East Puget Sound region has seen a La Nina influenced cool winter/spring that has kept nighttime temperatures in the mid to low thirties for as far back as I can remember. Besides diminished sun exposure, three of the hops are planted inside our chicken habitat so I've had to protect the base plantings with hardware cloth enclosures. The fence is only five feet high, and the rhizomes are spaced five feet apart, so I'm planning on training them to grow across the fence, back-and-forth, to make both a visual wall and to give the bines space to grow. I'll be really surprised if we get enough days of warm sun for the hops to mature this growing season.

Rating my Northern Lights Organic IBA/CDA/B-IPA

Aroma: 6 out of 10 Appearance: 5 out of 5 Taste: 7 out of 10 Palate: 5 out of 5 Overall: 17 out of 20 Total Score: 4.0 Thin but persistent dark tan head with minimal lacing. Body is deep dark brown at the edges, but mostly solid black. Aroma is hickory nut and lightly toasted fresh bread and a floral hops. As dark as the body looks, the taste goes in the opposite direction; light, and sparkly Pilsner malt with a bit of grapefruit zest and a hint of walnut wood. Mouthfeel goes on forever - chewy at first, with a slightly smokey, dry finish. This came out almost exactly where I hoped it would, between HUB Secession and Southern Tier Inequity for flavor and body, and a little smoother than Stone Sublimely Self Righteous. In relation to this brew's name, (my first original recipe) I found this amazing time-lapse video of the Northern Lights: The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Tomme Arthur vs The World Comic

Picked this up from today's blog post by the Mad Fermentationist, and it is a pretty funny web comic.

If the strip has to be explained to you,
then you probably should try
some more expensive beers once and a while.

Nice (Secondary) Rack

Since I aerated the Scottish Ale with heather using the Williams Oxygen aeration system, and pitched with a solid yeast starter, the beer was ready to be racked to secondary after just three days. Trub formed a solid one inch cake, a mixture of spent yeast and some stray heather flowers. Maybe in a case of not leaving well enough alone, I went through with adding three ounces of StaVin smoked American oak cubes, that I've been soaking three months in Kentucky Bourbon. If the brew ends up tasting weird, I will chalk it up as an experiment. But I will begin to learn about the combination of a couple of age old brewing & conditioning techniques the only way I can. By trying them out. If the brew tastes great, it will give me inspiration to find other ingredients I can forage from the local high country.

I'm really feeling my Scottish heritage come forth in this brew. Archeologists have found traces of a fermented beverage containing heather dating to 2,000 BC. More recently, an English law aimed at Scotland from 1711, threatens to  throw anyone brewing with heather into the Tower of London for life, or charging them a fine of 200 Pounds. The law was intended to make citizens of Scotland buy only English hops for making beer. The law still stands.

Here's a background video I first found while looking for inspiration one night searching YouTube on our TV.

Brew Day in Photos: Organic Scottish Ale with Heather

Another kit brew from 7 Bridges Cooperative. This one is a 90 Shilling organic Scottish Ale with Heather. I plan to add American oak cubes that have been soaking in Bourbon for three months to see how closely this approximates one of my favorite local beers, Black Raven's Second Sight Scotch Ale aged in Bourbon barrels.

Brew day starts: bring in the equipment.

I get the yeast starter from the refrigerator, pour off the wort, and bring to room temperature.

Washing the breakfast dishes to make room for brewing.

Overflowing compost has to be emptied to make room for spent grains.

Ack! No oven. Thought we would have the new one installed by now.

Two quart measuring cup is ready on a clean work space.

Insulated wardrobe should hold lautering temperature pretty well.

Steeping pot wrapped in a wool blanket and nearby heating pad should stay near 155 ºF.

Lautering temperature dropped to upper 140 ºF's after 30 minutes. First tried adding two cups of near boiling water, then took pot to the flame for a couple of minutes.

Sanitize glass carboy and other utensils while lautering finishes.

Sparging spent grains through cotton bag and colander with 170 ºF water.

The final mash. Boy, it looks dark.

Spent grains go into compost.

Chickens also like the spent grains.

Washing dishes again. And again. And again.

Just added the liquid barley malt extract.

Time to bring the kettle back to a boil.

Six and a half gallon mix of hot water and mash almost boiling.

Whole New Zealand Hallertaur hops added for bittering. 

The hops settle into the boil.

Phone timer is very handy during all steps of the process.

Lunch break while boil continues - beans and hot dogs. And a homebrew D-IPA.

Wort chiller goes in with fifteen minutes left to the boil for pasteurization.

Eight oz. of heather tips and flowers added with ten minutes remaining in the boil. They smell like an alpine meadow.

Cold water flow begins at end of boil to bring temperature down to 68 ºF.

Pepper laying an egg in the nesting box.

After racking to the primary fermentor, there's still a lot of compostable material in the brew pot.

O.G. came out to 1.066, exactly where it should be.

Sixty seconds of pure oxygen prepares the wort for pitching the yeast starter.

Cold Lagering Begins

After one week in the freezer, the batch of Pre-Prohibition Lager has reached 32 - 33 ºF. Now it just needs to stay at this temperature for six weeks before bottling.

With chest freezer plugged to the digital temperature controller, I stepped down by 4 º F each day. With a 1 ºF range, the fermenter will drop to 32 ºF and cool from 34 º F as needed.

With my 7 Bridges Organic Pre-Prohibition Lager finally settled in at the optimal cold lagering temperature of 32 º F to 33 ºF, now it is just a matter of waiting six weeks for cold conditioning to complete before bottling. The temperature controller is a pricey little piece of hardware, but has performed flawlessly up to this point.You turn the chest freezer to its lowest cooling setting, then plug it into the temperature controller and set the cooling point you want. With a one degree variance, for example, the freezer kicks on whenever the temperature probe reaches 34 ºF, and shuts off the freezer when the probe reaches 32ºF. Very slick. I wish I had two of these.