Smuttynose Brewers Notes

Dave’s Spring News

2009-05-08T09:03:00.003-04:00

It’s early May and we’re just getting our heads clear from our annual jaunt to the Craft Brewers Conference. This year’s host was the fine city of Boston so there was plenty of Smuttynose flowing throughout town. Luckily the week went without incident and we managed to lose Judi just that one time. We return to blistering weather where we hit 95 degrees in April. Thankfully, we have this year’s Summer Weizen ready to go. The evolution of this beer continues with an addition of chamomile flowers into the end of the boil. We got the idea from our resident cask master, JT. He made a few firkins of Summer Weizen last year that he tea-bagged with chamomile, adding a beautiful and piquant twist on one of our favorite beers.

Our Short Batch Series will soon have another offering. We currently have a Belgian style Triple conditioning on about 25 lbs. of oak chips. The beer’s tasting great right now. The oak character is just starting to show, but there’s a huge fruit nose from the Chimay yeast we used. The grain bill utilized a good amount of Weyermann Pilsner malt as well as some Munich and Wheat malts. We dried it out with the addition of cane sugar, and the beer should finish around 10% ABV. We’re hoping to have it ready in about a month so you should be seeing it out and about this summer.

Dave

Schmutzig Hopfen Weisse, our newest Short Batch

2009-01-30T10:24:00.004-05:00

Last fall I received an invite from Dave Brodrick to help celebrate the marriage to his beautiful wife, Iris. Dave (of Blind Tiger renown) asked me to brew a beer for the event. Happy to oblige, I tossed around the idea of several different styles but kept coming back to late-addition hoppy beers. I knew I wanted a session beer for the wedding and had recently been enjoying the Brooklyner Schneider Hopfen Weiss. I wasn’t looking for a beer quite that strong and so dialed back the starting gravity to be inline with a more traditional hefeweizen. The beer itself ended up with a bit too much banana character from the yeast as the ’Shire was hit with a massive ice storm the day after we brewed. We lost power for a day and a half (even that wasn’t too bad as some folk were out of power for weeks) which caused a warmer fermentation than desired. Instead of a nice mix of fruit and clove, it was definitely skewed toward the banana character, but the huge, floral notes of the hops actually balance quite nicely. Think Juicy Fruit. All in all, I think it’s an excellent beer.

Malt:
Pilsner
Wheat
Munich

Hops:
Bittering: Magnum
Flavoring: Sterling
Dry Hop: Sterling & Centennial

IBU: 15
S.G. 15° Plato
T.G. 2.6°
ABV 5.8%

Cheers,

2008 Scotch Ale & Really Old Brown Dog

2008-10-25T23:00:00.004-04:00

Well, it looks like we’ve made it through the Summer of Sans Hops. We received our first shipment of 2008 harvested Cascades last week and it was almost enough to make this old brewer cry. The initial reports are of a bumper crop and it looks like we’ve turned the corner on the hop shortage. Of course the prices haven’t come down yet, but I guess expensive hops are better than no hops. Even though new hops are slowly arriving we’re still have a few malt forward beers lined up in the Big Beer Series.

Right now we have our Scotch Ale bottled and in the stores. This is a classic Scottish style ale which we’ve brewed with a touch of smoked grain. Last year we tried peat smoked malt, but returned this year to a beech wood smoked malt as we felt it added a smoother character.

Next up will be the long awaited return of the Really Old Brown Dog Ale. This beer was initially brewed in honor of our friend and mascot, the late Olive Francis Egelston. The original batch was more in the vein of a brown porter / old ale. We’ve revised the recipe to be more like an old ale / English barleywine. It’s fermenting away right now and smells amazing. We’re planning on finishing the beer with a few weeks on some port soaked oak chips. I have really high hopes for this beer and can’t wait to check out the blend of big malt notes with the port wood. As we head into winter here in New England I can only imagine how great this beer will be on a cold evening. You should be able to see this beer in stores by mid-December.

Cheers,

David

Working through the Hops Shortage

2008-09-12T10:13:00.002-04:00

So it seems that the experiment with strategic hopping of our Big A IPA worked out well. I think that beer came out great and we’ve been hearing real positive feedback. I’ll be heading down to the Publick House in Brookline for the 5th Annual HopHead ThrowDown this Saturday to personally see how the Big A stands up to this countries best DIPA’s. Man, do I ever stop working? It’s tough, but dern it, someone’s gotta do it.

Luckily we got our creative hop juices flowing as we’re starting to make some changes to our Finest Kind as certain varieties become scarce. After dropping an obscene amount of money we were able to secure an extra amount of Magnum so our bittering addition hasn’t changed too much. We’ve decided to use some Super Styrians as a substitute for the Simcoes we were adding with the Magnums in the bittering addition. This was mostly done to save the Simcoes for the flavoring additions where that hop can really shine. As Simcoes are incredibly tight right now we’ve starting blending some Centennials into the flavor additions. We’ll run out of those and start to look at Summits, Glaciers, and Nuggets depending on what kind of horse trading (or straight up theft) we can do. Our whirlpool addition changed a bit as well as we’re now blending Cascades, EKG’s with the Santiams we’ve always used. The dry hopping has remained the same with Amarillos adding their distinctive aroma. The first batch is tasting great and should be out in the stores in the next few weeks. As we get closer to harvest and supplies run low we may have to make some other changes. It’s certainly been a challenging year but thankfully early indications are pointing to a great hop harvest this year. Maybe even a bumper crop. Hopefully that happens but we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

DY

Note, Dave's post was originally written in mid-July. Recent signs point to an excellent hop harvest, which is taking place at this very moment, but there is still a good deal of uncertainty in the market. Stay tuned...

Big A IPA - 2008 Edition

2008-03-31T15:24:00.004-04:00

It’s Big A IPA time of year again and the fearless brewers at Smuttynose have thrown both caution into wind and a vast amount of their ever dwindling supply of hops into the kettle (and fermentor, and bright tank) for your (and our) lupulinic enjoyment. This was our first beer which required a different approach because of the current hop shortage.

Typically we would contact our supplier and see what interesting hops were available, usually looking at varieties we hadn’t used before, and make the Big A recipe from that starting point. The twist this year was to see what we had enough supply of in our ’07 contract and then build the beer around those hops. I think we’ve succeeded, though I’ll let ya’ll be the judge of our efforts. For our hopping regime we went with Cascade and Nuggets in the boiling addition. Centennials were added every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes of the boil. We added Crystals into the whirlpool. Dry hopping was done in both the fermentor after primary fermentation and the bright tank. We used a mixture of Chinook, Nuggets, and Sterlings in the fermentors and whole leaf Centennials in the bright tank.

Hopefully we won’t have to use this kitchen sink approach too many more times, though it’s certainly an interesting creative exercise as well as a unique insight into what Tod Mott must go through on a fairly regular basis at the Portsmouth Brewery.

Baltic Porter - First Edition

2008-02-06T18:11:00.001-05:00

2/6/08 - Baltic Porter - I gotta say that it's been a while since I've been this excited about the upcoming release of a new beer. This is our first attempt at a Baltic Porter and it's been tasting great out of the fermenter. Huge body with lots of fruit notes balanced by dark roasty goodness. We've even been getting hints of licorice which I find intriguing.

Our decision to add this beer to our Big Beer Series was based on having a beautiful label that had already been designed by Miss Teen USA, Joanne Francis. Years ago we released a Winter Porter with a great image of Father Time on the label. That beer eventually evolved into our Robust Porter. The label sat dormant, sadly biding its time (get it?) waiting for another shot in the show. Since I'm always happy to add styles to the Big Beer Series I figured it'd be fairly easy to change Winter to Baltic and we'd get a new beer to brew.

The biggest decision in terms of what we wanted this beer to be was whether to brew an ale or lager. There always seem to be conversations about this in the beer world. We decided to take the lager route and I'm glad we did. It adds a nice twist to the big chewy dark beer. Considering that our Imperial Stout is the next release this will be an interesting comparison to taste the two side by side. I hope ya'll enjoy drinking this beer as much as we liked making it.

Malt:
Pilsner
Munich
CaraHell
Dark Crystal 120
Carastan 35
Chocolate Malt
Black Malt

OG - 22.3° p
TG - 6.6° p
ABV - 8.7%

Hops:
IBU 40

Bittering - Magnum
Flavoring & Aroma - Liberty

Short Batch - Smutt-a-Roni

2007-09-01T18:17:00.001-04:00

Smutt-a-Roni (first sampled summer'07)
Smutt-a-Roni is a wild rice beer, the recipe of which we stole from the Portsmouth Brewery, which in turn stole from Mike Luparello. Mike is the finest brewer I know currently living in a yurt. He's also a veteran of the Baja 1000. I don't know how that's relevant, but I think it's cool. Anyway, he used to brew at the Portsmouth Brewery and remains both an inspiration and a good sounding board for my own efforts.

The wild rice needs to go through a separate gelatinization than the barley malt, so we took advantage of our decoction capabilities and were able to boil the rice before mixing into the main mash. I used 125 lbs of 100% wild rice, I'm assuming it was Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris.) The typical wild rice package at the supermarket is a blend of wild and white rice. This ended up being about 7% of the grain bill. If I brew this beer again I'll end up bumping up this percentage. The base of this beer is meant to be a real pleasant and somewhat hoppy pale ale. We used Sterling for all the hop additions. Such a nice hop. It adds a really noticeable cherry character to the beer. The wild rice contributes a nutty flavor as well as an earthiness to the flavor.

Malt:
Weyermann Pilsner Malt
Caramel Wheat
Munich
Carafoam
Wild Rice

OG - 14° p
TG - 3.0° p

Hops:
IBU 35

ABV 5.5%

Short Batch - Brett & I

2007-07-31T18:15:00.001-04:00

Brett and I (first sampled late '07)
"Brett and I" is a beer brewed in homage to the great Down East humorists Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan (with Tim Sample getting the honorable mention.) If you haven't listened to the "Bert and I" tapes, go ahead and call LL Bean for your copy. They'll give you a good idea of the daily insanity of living in Northern New England. Of course that begs the question of exactly what I'm doing here. But, oh well, it's a great place to drink beer at least. And Brett and I is hopefully a great beer to drink while talking socialism over the back fence with your neighbor Enoch.

Brett and I is obviously brewed with Brettanomyces. We used Brettanomyces claussenii and in our case we used it for secondary conditioning. The original beer was a Belgian strong ale brewed with the Chimay yeast cropped from The Gnome. Still gave us that nice fruity character and still hasn't dropped bright. We ended up kegging the beer after six months of conditioning, but the brett character is still developing. It gives off an interested pineapple aroma and flavor, which I hope will continue to evolve.

Malt:
Weyermann Pilsner Malt
Munich
Wheat
Acidulated Malt

OG - 16° p
TG - 3.5° p*

*This will drop as the brett continues doing its thing.

Hops:
IBU 35

Bittering - Magnum
Flavoring - Liberty
Flavoring - Saaz
Aroma - Santiam

Really Old Brown Dog - First Edition

2007-07-26T18:09:00.002-04:00

7/26/07 - Really Old Brown Dog - As many of you know by now, our friend Olive Francis, the Old Brown Dog, passed this winter. The original photo for our brown ale label was taken when Olive was quite young and so last fall Peter and Joanne had some new pictures commissioned. The photos were taken out on one of Olive's favorite beaches and with her favorite easy chair. The desire to use one of these images for a new Big Beer was the inspiration for our Really Old Brown Dog Ale. Usually the style of beer is decided before Joanne works on the label design, but in this case the tail was wagging the dog. Since the name was already decided we figured that something in the Old Ale / Double Brown Ale realm would be interesting. The one definite ingredient I wanted to play with was Brown Malt. I've always really liked the fudge brownie character derived from it. I feel we slightly overdid the addition, as that flavor tends to dominate the beer. For the most part though I was quite pleased with this beer as a nice tribute to our faithful friend and Head Squirrel Wrangler.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Pale Ale Malt
Crystal 60L
Brown Malt
Special B

OG - 18° p
TG - 4.5° p; ABV - 7.0%

Hops:
IBU 40

Bittering - Liberty
Flavoring & Aroma - Crystal

Short Batch - The Gnome

2007-01-30T18:20:00.001-05:00

THE GNOME (first sampled in early '07)
In the fall of '06 I met Chris Bauweraerts from the Brasserie d'Achouffe at an MBAA meeting in Brooklyn. Having seen one of possibly many Smuttynose logos that are generally strewn throughout my attire, he thanked me for advertising his brewery. After bemusingly accepting his thanks, I had to inquire if he had mistaken me for someone else. But he said no, the IPA we make has two old men sitting next to a "chouffe." I had to laugh. I then asked him if he was taking credit for every gnome in the US. With a quick nod, he curtly and somberly replied, "Yes." So, I figured if Chris could steal credit for all gnomes he certainly wouldn't mind if I poached on the name.

The Gnome was brewed in homage to the recent arrivals of hoppy Belgian beers that we're starting to see here in the US. I was really shooting for that beautifully soft hopping that's found in the Houblon Chouffe, however, the Gnome has developed its own unique characteristics and flavor profile. The base beer is a Belgian triple brewed with White Labs Chimay-style yeast. I really liked the fruit character from this yeast, but man, that stuff still hasn't dropped bright. The hopping was done with Vanguard, Sterling and East Kent Goldings. I think this beer has a lot of potential, though I'd like another shot at brewing the style. There is a very limited amount of this beer, so if you happen to see it on tap, go ahead and share a pint with your gnomies! (Dan Schubert made me put that in. Really. I know it's corny. You gotta blame him. Really: dan@smuttynose.com)

Malt:
Weyermann Pilsner Malt
CaraHell
Cane Sugar

OG - 20° p
TG - 4.2° p

Hops:
IBU 75
Vanguard Bittering Hops
Sterling Flavor Additions
East Kent Goldings Dry Hop

Wheat Wine

2006-12-29T18:08:00.001-05:00

12/29/06 - Wheat Wine - The word for this year's Wheat Wine is smooth. Smoother than butter on a baby. Smoother than Reagan in a scandal. Smoother than Charlie in a camel hair coat in Jimmy LaPanza's Lounge. Well, maybe not that smooth.

Of course, last year's Wheat Wine certainly received much attention and seemed to be well regarded. Perhaps it was the 4 month delay in release which built up expectation? After it took a gold medal in Denver it's a bit presumptuous to say we're going to improve upon the recipe, so my focus switched to the process and trying to smooth out some of the heat and other rough edges from last year. We did this by backing off the cane sugar a bit and controlling fermentation temperatures better. At this point it seems like our efforts have paid off. The beer is certainly recognizable from last year, but will hopefully be more approachable in its pre-aged form. Enjoy.

Malt:
Pilsner
Golden Promise
CaraWheat
Wheat Malt
CaraHell
Cane Sugar

OG - 23° p
TG - 4.0° p; ABV - 11%

Hops:
IBU 70
Bittering - Warrior
Flavoring & Aroma - Liberty
Dry hops - Horizon (as well as medium toast oak chips)

Big A IPA - 2006 Edition

2006-07-18T18:07:00.001-04:00

7/18/06 - Big A IPA - It's the Return of the Son of the Killer Kielbasa. That's right, Stash Wojciechowski is back from winter training and ready to compete in the Alpha King Challenge. After working with our Lucha Libre friends in Oaxaca he meandered north to sample the great west coast hop offerings. Ever alert, looking for the edge, that minute detail that'll set him apart. How will he fare? We'll see in September.

Stash's judicious study has led him to feel it's all in the late hop additions, the dank aromas. We've been playing with our dry hop technique all winter and now feel we're close. By adding pellets into the fermentor after primary and then transferring onto whole flowers in the bright tank I think we've achieve the quality of aroma we've been searching for. The rest of the beer hasn't changed since last year. Still a very simple grist bill of Pilsner and Pale Ale malt. Bittering hops are the same with Warrior and Cascade. The flavoring and aroma hops are making all the difference. Centennial, Crystal, Amarillo and Ahtanum, can't ask and any better than that. Hopefully you'll enjoy this beer as much as we do. Cheers.

Malt:
Pale ale malt
Pilsner malt

OG - 21° p
TG - 4.2° p

Hops:
IBU 120
Bittering - Warrior, Cascade
Flavoring - Horizon, Centennial
Aroma - Crystal
Dry hops - Amarillo, Crystal, Ahtanum

Farmhouse Ale - First Edition

2006-04-01T18:02:00.001-05:00

4/1/06 - Farmhouse Ale - Like almost every other brewer who read Phil Markowski's book "Farmhouse Ales" last year I decided that it was time for Smuttynose to try its hand at a saison. An interesting style considering that in reality the guidelines are so broad. There are some classic examples, as well as some interpretations that are becoming so. We began, as all good brewing should, with tasting. Luckily for us our good friend Lindsey Altshul, who runs a beautiful café in South Berwick (SoBo to those in the know) called "Pepperland," has a cellar full of Belgian beers the likes of which would make a grown brewer cry. He brought a dozen or so varieties of saisons including a vertical tasting of Saison De Pipaix, from La Brasserie a Vapeur of which we tried 3, 9 and an 18 year old examples (if my foggy memory serves). If you have the chance to try an 18 year old Pipaix please do, fantastic.

We decided that it was all about the yeast so we had White Labs send us a pitch of their saison yeast, which I believe is in the Dupont vein. Dr. White suggested that we ferment the beer without cooling and let the temperature rise to wherever it wants to go. Easier said than done, believe me.

The grain bill was very straightforward with a bit of Wheat and Aromatic malts for some subtle character and 6% sugar to lighten the body. We used Sterling throughout the hopping. Once fermentation commenced the temperature went up to 92° F or so. The beer itself fermented very quickly but finished around 4° P. I was really hoping for a dryer finish, and will be looking to correct this for next year. We actually brewed this beer in August of 2005, but are releasing it now because we were unsure if the yeast would continue to drop the gravity and cause gushing. No worries, but it ended up a tad sweeter with a fuller body than I was hoping. There's a gorgeous nose from the yeast. No spices added and yet there's a real nice complexity in the aroma.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Aromatic Malt
Wheat Malt
Cane Sugar

OG - 17° P
TG - 3.5° P, ABV - 7.4%

Hops:
IBU 25
Sterling - Bittering
Sterling - Flavoring
Sterling - Aroma

Imperial Stout Returns

2006-03-15T18:00:00.002-05:00

3/15/06 - Imperial Stout - After a one year hiatus the Imperial Stout is back in action. We figured that after catching a bit of flack for its absence we'd have it return with a bang. We bumped up the starting gravity from 20° P to 24° P. This allowed the beer to finish just over 10% ABV. Like this year's Barleywine, we've decided to play with the hop character, specifically the dry hop presence. Trying to avoid the fiasco of my previous attempt at adding pellets to the fermentor, I did what any good manager would do: I made Charlie add them. He had the advantage of being able to add the hops directly through a top manway and so his besting me in this challenge is not necessarily a sign of his superior brewing skills but more a reflection of my adventurous, try anything spirit (or at least that's the story I'm stickin' to). The Charles added 44 lbs of Cascade, split evenly between two batches, or about half a pound per barrel. We then transferred the beer onto seventy-eight pounds of an even mixture of Centennial and Columbus whole flowers, about one pound per barrel. The beer is a little top heavy in terms of the hopping but it seems to be smoothing out a bit as it's aging. I'd give it six months or so, if you can wait that long. If not, hey, enjoy it anyway.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Munich Malt
Crystal 120L
Carastan 35L
Chocolate Malt
Roasted Barley
Cane Sugar

OG - 24° P
TG - 6.3° P

Hops:
IBU 90
Magnum - Bittering
Cascade & Crystal - Flavoring
Cascade - Aroma
Cascade - Dry Hop in Fermentor
Centennial & Columbus - Dry Hop in Bright Tank

Barleywine

2006-02-01T17:52:00.002-05:00

2/1/06 - Barleywine - Ye Olde Barleywine. Once again we were interested in playing with the hop profile of this beer. Last year we ended up dropping the IBU's to 80, which we found to be just about right. The aspect we decided to play around with this year was late-addition hops. I've always loved having that bouquet of fresh hops, especially in a beer of this size whose malt profile adds so much character in its own right. The thought (or lack thereof) was to add some pelletized hops into the fermentor after primary before we transferred into a bright tank on top of whole flower hops. My tragic flaw was to try and back flow beer into a keg full of pellets. Once the beer hit the hops the mixture expanded into a slightly damp compact mass of green vegetable matter. Smelled great, but there was no way those hops were heading back into the fermentor. Nothing left to do but empty the sucker. Remember when you were a juvenile delinquent and you lit off snakes behind the elementary school? How the little disc erupted into a cylindrical mess? Imagine the disc being a half barrel and the cylindrical mess being forty-four pounds of Cascades shooting out of the 2 inch opening at the top. Opps, guess I'm still a bit of a JD. We still managed to get some nice hop aroma with seventy-eight pounds of Columbus whole flowers in the bright tank. That came out to be about 1 lb./ bbl of beer. When we first tried the beer there was a definite note of over-ripe peaches (en regalia, as it were).

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Pale Ale Malt
CaraMunich
Aromatic
Special B.
CaraHell
Brown Sugar

Hops:
IBU 80
Simcoe - Bittering
Santiam & Cascade - Flavoring
Santiam - Aroma
Columbus - Dry Hopping

OG - 23° P
TG - 3.3° P

S'Muttonator Doppelbock

2006-01-10T17:51:00.001-05:00

1/10/06 - S'Muttonator Doppelbock - S'Muttonator is once again back on the shelves and perhaps a bit is in the old belly, eh? It's been interesting trying to be creative brewing a style that has a fairly narrow interpretation in terms of historic examples and modern guidelines. My first real knowledge of this style was drinking Optimator. I love that beer. I used to drink three or four while cooking dinner for my housemates at Compound I in Oakland (OakTown Get Down, yeah!) I was working at Golden Pacific (the cellars of hell) and living in a collective warehouse that was in the old Jelly Belly factory. What great karma (or would that be plump karma?) I'd head down to the (original) Berkely Bowl, get my veggies and load up on the Spaten goodness, crank some Ween and proceed to drink my way through making a meal for ten. A drinking cook is a happy cook Mama J used to say. It's such a great sipping beer and a fine complement to food. So with those memories on my mind and palate, I think last years version was really close to what I like in a double bock, big and malty. The main thing I changed this year was to drop the starting gravity from 21 plato to 20. I thought the alcohol presence was just a bit much. I really like the balance now, though I'll probably add some dextrin malts next year to bulk up the body. My biggest issue was with our filter. It just flat out failed us. Not entirely it's own fault, I mean we have abused that sucker for years. And let's face it, it is kind of ugly and sad looking, especially next to our new(er) 8 square meter Velo we procured from Goose Island. Ah, to have real live brewing equipment at my disposal. What a treat. It's like we're becoming a real brewery. Upwards and onwards I guess, eh?

Malt:
Pilsner
Munich Malt
Caramunich
CaraFa II

OG - 20° P
TG - 4.5° P

Hops:
IBU 42
Bittering and aroma - Hersbrucker Hallertau

ABV - 8.5%

Scotch Ale

2005-11-01T17:50:00.000-05:00

11/1/05 - Scotch Ale - The Scotch Ale this year is completely unaltered from last year's incarnation. We just didn't see a need to change anything. That being said we will most likely be putting the Scotch Ale on hiatus next year. I guess I'd consider this fair warning if you'd like to cellar a few bottles to tide you over. I know some of you don't want to hear that, but it's just part of the evolution of the Big Beer Series (I'd call it intelligent design, but we are talking about the Smutty crew here.)

A Note about our Wheat Wine

2005-09-15T00:05:00.001-04:00

The much-anticipated debut edition of Smuttynose Wheat Wine, brewed and bottled early in 2005, was delayed until September due to problems stemming from the federal label approval process. The Tax and Trade Bureau (formerly ATF) rejected our original label approval application, claiming that use of the word wine in a beer name would confuse and mislead the consumer and retailers. We didn't agree (barleywine, anyone?) and appealed their rejection of our application. Ours is the first, but definitely not the last, wheat wine application the federal government has seen, so they had to create new guidelines regarding the use of this name. At last, the issue has been put to rest, and although there are several outstanding examples of this style offered at brewpubs, we are pleased to say that Smuttynose Wheat Wine Ale is the first, and so far only, commercially bottled beer that carries the name Wheat Wine on the market. We're hoping that more are on the way.

Wheat Wine - the First Edition

2005-08-24T17:49:00.002-04:00

8/24/05 - Wheat Wine - Smuttynose Vs. The Feds: or how our heroic brewers spent the summer stickin' it to the man. We finally convinced the bureaucrats that Wheat Wine isn't actually all that confusing, in fact it's fairly straight forward. For those of you who haven't heard, we brewed the Wheat Wine in April and have been waiting on label approval since. The governments intention was that regular folk out there would be unable to understand what a Wheat Wine denotes. As if Smirnoff Ice is obviously not a vodka drink but a malt beverage. Anywho, we finally managed to get ahold of a person of reason who allowed us to use the term, though with a bit of explanation beneath as you can see on the label. The beer however has been aging nicely, though stocks have dwindled thanks to Charlie.

I'd been toying around with the idea of brewing a Wheat Wine for a while now. I first tasted one at the Craft Brewers Conference in Portland a few years ago. Terri Fahrendorf from Steelhead had brought some to the banquet and it was awesome. Best beer I tried out there. I didn't have much of an opportunity to brew one until I was asked to start overseeing the Portsmouth Brewery and helping with some quality issues there. I quickly decided this was the perfect chance to brew a Wheat Wine as well as some other styles I'd been dreaming of trying. As an aside the Hop Harvest we did was spectacular, I wish we could afford to fly out that much unkilned hops for a Smutty sized batch, but alas some things are destined to be brewed in the smaller brewhouses of this world.

The Wheat Wine that Keith Gosselin and I came up with was also very well received. Unfortunately, in another casualty in scaling up in volume, we were unable to use only Golden Promise as our pale malt base, cause both the cost and the physical difficulty in schlepping that many bags up to the mill was a tad overwhelming. Anyway, we backed off the Golden Promise from 45% to 10% with the remaining pale malt being made up with our Pilsner silo malt. It hasn't made too big of a difference but it definitely changed the malt profile. The hopping was done with a mix of Warrior and Liberty and meant to balance the malt profile but not dominate. The biggest character is the alcohol presence. At around 11% ABV this is definitely worthy of it's Big Beer status. With all that alcohol flavor, Graham over at Flag Hill Winery suggested we add medium toast French (or should they be Freedom?) oak chips in with the dry hops to add a bit of that vanilla Chardonnay flavor. I think it added a nice level of complexity to the beer as well as a bit of dryness.

Malt:
Pilsner malt
Golden promise
Cara wheat
Wheat malt
Cara hell

Cane sugar

OG - 23° p;
TG - 3.1° p
ABV - 11.0%

Hops:
IBU 70
Bittering - Warrior
Flavoring - Liberty
Aroma - Liberty
Dry hops - Horizon (plus medium toast French oak chips)

Big A IPA - 2005 Edition

2005-05-31T17:48:00.001-04:00

5/31/05 - Big A IPA - After being forced to smell the glove at last years' GABF by judges who declared the Big A just not big enough, Stash decided to see if he would like a true West Coast style Double IPA and went about reformulating. The first thing to change was the malt bill by losing the Belgian malts, which was felt to be too close to the Barleywine in character. The malt additions were just a mixture of Pilsner malt and British Pale Ale malts. The biggest change was jacking the hops up to 120 IBU's as well as increasing the flavoring additions, which was felt to be lacking in last years' version. We kept the Horizon hops for the flavoring addition but added Warrior to the bittering and Sterling in the aroma. We dry hopped with Columbus and Sterling at a rate close to 1 lb. per barrel, booyah!

The nose is full of orange and other citrus, but not quite as pungent as I'd hoped, Stash will have to work on that. The body is nicely balanced with a hint of malt and a bunch of alcohol, perhaps a tad of honey? The beer lingers nicely with beautiful hop dryness.

Well done, Stash.

Malt:
Pale ale malt
Pilsner malt

OG - 21° p;
TG - 2.9° p
ABV - 9.2%

Hops:
IBU 120
Bittering - Warrior, Cascade
Flavoring - Horizon
Aroma - Sterling
Dry hops - Columbus, Sterling

Barleywine

2005-02-01T17:46:00.001-05:00

2/1/05 - Barleywine - Barleywine Time! Easily my favorite beer. We were quite happy with the 2004 version and receive a bunch of positive feedback from ya'll. The Celebrator was also in agreement as they ranked our beer with the best of the barleywines they tasted last year. We sent some more bottles out this year and though I haven't seen the issue I believe we have once again been well ranked. The two aspects of last years beer that we decided to alter was bitterness and mouthfeel. We felt the beer a tad over hopped and so dropped the IBU's from 90 to 80. We also added CaraHell into our malt profile to add a bit of the residueals this dextrin malt leaves behind.

The nose is a bit understated and we'll work on bumping up the dry hopping next year. Can never add too many dry hops. I definitely like the hop and malt balance better this year. Could it perhaps use a tad more body? The flavors linger beautifully with that great warming in the ol' belly. I look forward to meeting this beer again next fall after it's had a chance to grow up and mature a wee bit.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Pale Ale Malt
Caramunich
Aromatic Malt
Special B
CaraHell
Brown Sugar

SG - 23° p
TG - 3.4° p

Hops:
IBU 80
Simcoe - Bittering
Santiam & Cascade - Flavoring
Santiam - Aroma
Warrior - Dry Hopping

S'Muttonator Doppelbock - First Edition

2005-01-20T17:44:00.004-05:00

1/20/05 - S'Muttonator Doppelbock - S'Muttonator had been released and is probably lurking in your local liquor store ready to butt heads. Watch out, though, don't ram it home 'cause this sucker's 9.6% ABV and right now they're going down pretty smooth. This is the first new release in the Big Beer Series since the Big A IPA in 2002, and I'm glad to get the ok to put out some new distinct beers. We once again utilized the dreaded double decoction to give this beer its unique malty sweetness. Like all our Big Beers this was double batched to hit the starting gravity we look for in these beers, and each batch did take about 15 hours which is a long time to wait for that end of shift pint (especially for The Charles.) I'm looking forward to trying this beer in a year of so, but right now it's tasting swell though slightly immature. Remember that this beers decocted so you don't have to be.

Malt:
Pale (2-Row) Malt
Munich Malt
Caramunich
CaraFa II

ABV - 9.6%

Hops:
IBU 42
Bittering and aroma - Hersbrucker Hallertau

Scotch Ale

2004-11-01T17:42:00.002-05:00

11/1/04 - Scotch Ale - Once again this beer changed very little. We just can't mess too much with it or Shag will give us a right thumpin'. The only difference, again, was a slight increase in the smoked malt profile. We upped it from 1.5 to 2%. It's still a very subtle smoked character, but comes out just enough to add a bit more intrigue.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
10L Munich
35L Carastan
Chocolate Malt
Rauch Malt

SG - 18° p
TG - 3.6° p

Hops:
IBU - 28
Willamette - Bittering

Big A IPA - 2004 Edition

2004-08-30T17:41:00.002-04:00

8/30/04 - Big A IPA - Well I guess Stash got tired of Sy and Paul laughin' away at him on their lawn chairs (rumor has it he's the one that kicked in the trailer door) and so the Polish purveyor of prodigious potables decided to up the ante by revamping his Big A IPA. 6.6 percent alcohol? Please, try 9. 70 IBU's? Stash figures 100 will do just nicely, thanks. The malt bill has pretty much stayed the same, but the hopping has been totally updated for the challenge of it all. The bittering's done with Magnum and a tad of Cascade for the harsher notes it imparts. Once again the flavoring additions were added every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes of the boil. These were done using Horizon with Ahtanum added at the very end of the boil. Columbus were used in the bright tank for dry hop aroma.

It's the end of the summer and this beer still has a long way to go to reach maturity. The beer is still a tad hot and I'd sit bottles down for at least 6 months. The flavor is quite nice with the Belgian malts showing their beautiful characters. I think the flavor additions in the hopping could use to be bumped up and I'm sure Stash will look into that next year. All in all I think this is another fine effort by the Smutty crew. Enjoy.

Malt:
Pale (2-row) malt
Belgian pale ale malt
Aromatic malt

ABV - 9%

Hops:
IBU - 100
Bittering - Magnum and Cascade
Flavoring - Horizon
Aroma - Ahtanum
Dry Hopping - Columbus

Maibock

2004-04-30T17:40:00.000-04:00

4/30/04 - This year's Maibock is about to hit the shelves and it's not even May yet, how about that. The production gods must be smiling down on the Smutty boys. We once again pulled off the double decoction and are quite happy with the results. The difference from last year was a matter of color. We were trying to lighten it into the golden range, by dropping some of the specialty malts. We went from 33% Munich and 12% Belgian Pale Ale malts to 15% and 26% respectively. However, the decoction still darkens the beer to such an extent that we ended up in the amber range. It's a beautiful color but not exactly what we wanted. I may try 100% pilsner malt next year.