Brew #20 : Lambic
Yesterday, while hanging out with my buddy Kurt and his family, we each brewed up a batch of beer. Kurt made his spiced beer (which was smelling wonderful by the way!) and I brewed a Lambic. Lambic beers are traditionally made in Belgium and are spontaneously fermented in the open air. As well as wild yeast, plenty of other bacteria and yeasts like lactobacillus, pediococcus, and brettanomyces will be fermenting the wort. The resulting character of the beer is often described as “earthy”, “horsey”, and varying degrees of sour. Sourness builds slowly over time and can vary greatly even with age. I’ve read that one end of the spectrum of sourness is undrinkable and the other is just barely sour (maybe like a Lemon Drop candie). The commercial lambic breweries will typically blend an old (3 to 5 years) with young (1 to 2 years) lambics to produce a more consistent product. Since I don’t have the luxury of storing several of these beers for multiple years I’ll have to cross my fingers and hope this (and maybe one other) lambic comes out good.
The fermentation stage is really interesting with big bubbles, slick oily spots, or even ropy mucous membranes floating in the wort depending on which bacteria or yeast is dominate at any given time. Despite how gross this might sound, the resulting beer is safe to drink and tastes rather good (in my opinion)..it reminds me of a more complex tasting Mikes Hard Lemonade believe it or not.
Later that evening we had dinner and played a few games (Cranium, and Left Right Center) with the Clevelands and the Hardin crew. Wendie and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening with some great friends! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Beer recipe detail follows and over time I’ll try to catch pictures of the pelicle (bacteria colonies) and any other oddities I run into over the next year.
Lambic
——
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Straight (Unblended) Lambic
Batch: 5.50 gal
Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.047 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 27 IBU
Recipe Color: 7° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.012
Alcohol by Volume: 4.7%
Alcohol by Weight: 3.6%
Ingredients
———–
Light D.M.E. 4.00 lb, extract
Wheat malt extract 2.00 lb, extract
CaraPils 0.25 lb, steeped
Saaz 2.00 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Lambic blend yeast and bacteria1.00 unit,
Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:
This may take a year or more to age properly.. I overshot the bitterness with these hops but the Saaz are supposed to have a subtle bitterness perception so it may work out.. time will tell. I’ll add pictures every now and then as this progresses.
12/30 : Innoculate with Lambic Blend nasties from White Labs. Prepare for nasty fermentation take off!
12/30/2007 : Transferred from the bucket to a carboy to help clarify the beer.. The taste is really unusual, a little malty, but super sour and a little vinegary. There’s no hop aroma, or flavor but maybe a touch of bitterness. I wouldn’t say this is as acidic as squeezed lemon juice, but definitely approaching that sourness. FG was 1.010. I plan to blend maybe 1 gallon of this in a 5 gallon pale ale and then decide what to do with the remaining 4 gallons. If the blend works out well, I’ll go ahead and start another 1 or 2 lambics for aging.
Here are a few neat pics, looks tasty yea?!
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) looks cool!
I’ve been interested in AJAX style applications ever since I heard of the term and recently spent some time investigating what GWT had to offer. I heard of GWT quite some time ago but wasn’t in a spot to give it much thought and energy.. Well, the time has come and I’m glad to see what Google has to offer. GWT is quite trick in that it provides the developer the means to code web applications directly in Eclipse using the regular Java language. The bonus here is that the developer can debug the web application in Eclipse using all of the regular Java debugging features and not have to wade through the pages and javascript one at a time.
By the magic of GWT, compiling the Java code in Eclipse creates javascript and html pages linked such that the application works like any other AJAX style application, except better! Google has set the bar a tad bit higher with bookmarking capability. Most applications developed in an AJAX fashion would not allow the user to “bookmark” or “add to favorites” on anything but a few main pages. As the user interacts with the application, the web browser doesn’t know whereabouts they are because the main URL rarely changes.. I’ve seen recommendations by several people with how to address this, but all of the solutions I read seemed a bit clunky. Well, now I won’t have to worry about it because GWT has this built in and can be enabled should the application need this sort of functionality. I’m still learning more about GWT so I’ll stop blabbering for now, though I may post a link to my very own application built using GWT in the near future. For now, if you want to see why I got all geeked up on this, take a peek at Googles very own GWT example project page. I’d recommend trying the KitchenSink application so you can see what all of the widgets do and how they work. Disclaimer for the uninitiated; these are all demos and have little or no goal other than to demonstrate the widgets in action.
Eye dun n’ graju-eighted.
Last night I turned in the final assignment of the last class required for my Associates degree. Barring any unforeseen catastrophic grading issues, I’m now finished with my Associates. My first year was spent at Linn-Benton Community College to bone up on some math and business classes. The past 4 years have been at Portland Community College because they have an Associates of Applied Science in Computer Information Systems program entirely online. Even though it took 5 years to complete while I was working full-time, in retrospect it seems like it went by pretty quick!
Since I’m going to have some more free-time soon, I’m planning on taking an art class (basic drawing) next term on Tuesday nights just to have some fun and get back into my artistic side. On the blog side of things, as time goes by, expect to see an occassional example of something I’ve drawn or painted..
Brew #19 : Scottish 80 #1
Big day today with lots of shopping followed by an evening brew. I recently got a bonus from work and decided to treat myself with a totally frivolous purchase. While we were in Salem we stopped by BestBuy and I bought a Sanyo 4.9cu/ft compact refrigerator. I’ve read on the brewing discussion forums that this refrigerator is perfectly sized for a kegerator setup (two corny kegs, co2, lines) or as a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. A couple c-notes later we were packing the new beer-geek toy in the back of the CR-V. To finish off the setup, I’ll be ordering a temperature controller which measures the temperature of the beer and turns the refrigerator on if it needs cooling. For now, I’m using the ol’ put a few frozen 20oz bottles in the chamber. From what I’ve read, the primary key to making “damn good” beer is to keep the fermentation temperatures steady and at the lower range for the specific yeast. As well as making cleaner tasting ales, I’ll have the option of setting the temperature controller to a lower setting so I can make lager style beers. Anyhow, cool gadget!
Our friend Ann gave me a gift certificate to Homebrew Heaven in Salem for my birthday. Thanks Ann! :) So while we were up in Salem we stopped by to buy the ingredients for the Scottish 80 that we brewed in the evening. Here’s the recipe I built using Ray Daniels “Designing Great Beers”.
Scottish 80 #1
———–
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Scottish Export 80/-
Batch: 5.50 gal, Mashed
Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.052 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 19 IBU
Recipe Color: 14° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.013
Alcohol by Volume: 5.2%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.1%
Ingredients
———–
British two-row 8.50 lb, mashed
American wheat 0.50 lb, mashed
Crystal 40L 0.50 lb, mashed
Roasted barley 0.25 lb, mashed
Belgian biscuit 0.50 lb, mashed
Fuggles 1.00 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Fuggles 0.50 oz, whole, 30 minutes
Irish Moss 1.00 unit, clarifying
American Ale yeast 1.00 unit, package, Wyeast 1056 activator pack
Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:
Formulated from Ray Daniels, “Designing Great Beers”.
Batch Notes:
Mashed 3.5ga @ 154F for 70 minutes. Sparged 5ga @ 168F. Collected 6.34ga. FG measured 1.045.
2/7: Beer sat in the secondary in the garage (30s at night, 40s during the day) for several weeks before one of my kegs was available. I kegged and carbonated the beer, and let me tell you that it tastes pretty damn good! This is probably the cleanest/smoothest tasting beer I’ve made. I get a biscuity, roasty flavor with a little bit of initial bitterness… this is a malty beer, but not sweet. I don’t really detect much of a hop aroma, but definitely more of the roasty notes. This is a really easy drinking beer!
8/26: Easy to drink, clean and maybe a little grainy flavor. Its not my favorite, but a good beer nonetheless.
