AppliedDisorder.com

Revgum.com has clearly become a beer blog for tracking my recipe history, competition results, and beer review notes.. I intend on continuing it in this manor, hopefully with more frequent beer reviews.

I’ve been sitting on AppliedDisorder.com for a bit now and finally decided to put together the pieces of the software to have a home for posting geek topics. To kick it into motion, I’m posting a short admission of my love for HAML (HTML Abstraction Markup Language).

Brew #73: Wendies Porter

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve brewed my last porter and this one is my favorite.. I started using hop bags in the boil and I’m really pleased with the adjustment to my process. I’m no longer clogging my drain tube with hops and cleaning the boil pot afterwards it much easier (hop matter is fussy to dump and clean).

Wendies Porter
————–
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: Robust Porter
Batch: 5.50 gal All Grain

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.067 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 36 IBU
Recipe Color: 38° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.017
Alcohol by Volume: 6.5%
Alcohol by Weight: 5.1%

Ingredients
———–
American black patent 0.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
American chocolate malt 0.75 lb, Grain, Mashed
American two-row 11.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
Crystal 40L 1.50 lb, Grain, Mashed
German Munich 1.50 lb, Grain, Mashed

Kent Golding(5.1aa) 1.25 oz, Whole, 60 minutes
Magnum(14aa) 0.20 oz, Whole, 60 minutes
Kent Golding(5.1aa) 0.75 oz, Whole, 15 minutes

Calcium Chloride 1.00 unit, Other, 1tsp in boil
Gypsum 1.00 unit, Other, 1tsp in mash
Irish Moss 1.00 unit, Fining, 1tsp @ 30 minutes
WLP001 California Ale 1.00 unit, Other, 1600mL starter
Yeast Nutrient 1.00 unit, Other, 1tsp @ 15 minutes

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:
Going back to the original robust porter recipe from Brew #25 because it turned out so well (albeit having aged a long time). Had to adjust the hops cause I didn’t have enough Goldings.. Magnum replaces some of the Goldings, but adds a clean bitterness.

Mashed at 153f for 60 minutes
Ferment at 69-70f for a week to 10 days

Batch Notes:
Hit my numbers and volumes perfectly. This is the first time I’ve used hop bags, came in really handy making the cleanup a lot easier and chilling the wort quite a bit faster too. It seems I need to increase my hop charges by about 10% as the extraction from bags seems a little lower than without.

OG 1.067
Just over 5ga collected, only about a half gallon left in the bottom of the pot.

The first sample tasted great.. lower end of the hop bitterness, malty aroma and definitely can smell some of the chocolate/roasty character. WLP001 has a really clean ferment so I expect the hops to pop more and the malt profile to shine through as well. This one stands to be a very good porter..

10/31: Nice robust flavor, dark chocolate notes and bitterness to balance the malt but not to overwhelm the roastedness. This did turn out to be a great beer, with a few weeks of age I think it’s going to come together quite nice. FG 1.015

Haiku, Belgian Beer, and Stinky Cheeses.. what a treat!

A few weeks back my wife sends me a TXT one morning saying “hey, you gotta enter that haiku contest at the brewshop!”. Ok, I thought that was a little out of the ordinary.. so I pull up Gmail and see a fresh newsletter from my friends down at Corvallis Brew Supply. Owner and beer guru, Joel Rea (aka Ol’ Lickspigot), mentions he’s got a spare bottle of the top rated, much loved Westvletern 12 that’s he’s going to sell to the winner of a haiku contest he’s holding. I’m a bit of a geek, and haiku is something I’ve toyed with, mangled, abused, and generally enjoyed over the years..clearly, it was time to bust out 17 syllables.

As Ol’ Lickspigot mentioned in his newsletter, this beer is not distributed outside of the Abbey..the monks brew the beer as one means for supporting themselves being monks. This is clearly one reason why this beer gets as much love as it does, is it just hype because its a beer that’s not available on the open market? I had no clue, but here’s my chance to get my hands on one (short of hunting it down on ebay or the like).

As I sit considering the inspiration of my poetry, I thought it was fitting to write something about the people who brewed the beer. A few minutes of word-in-at-ing and count-ing sev-en-teen syll-a-bles, I sent my entry;

monks brew beer for god
god can’t drink those badass brews
we drink beer for god

Votes are cast, a week or so passes, and I see a final email from Ol’Lickspigot and it turns out that my haiku had won the contest.. Because he can’t give alcohol as a prize (some law breakage or something?!) I’ve won the right to purchase the beer. What a kickass Friday! I finish up my day at work and head to the brewshop to make a purchase! Fridays are also a great day to pick up some quality beer as Corvallis Brew Supply offers 15% off of a 6 pack.

I’m standing in front of shelves full of kickass beer, drooling and mumbling to myself, and up walks Drew. Drew is one of the CBS beer geniuses, ready and willing to offer thoughts and recommendations on the beer for sale at the shop. We chat a little bit about the haiku contest, some congratulations were offered, and we discuss possibilities on why the Westvleteren 12 is rated the #1 beer in the world. And as obvious as it sounds, it hadn’t occurred to me that I should be buying the other two Belgian Quadrupels that are available at the shop, until Drew mentioned it. Its a perfect time to taste three of the five Trappist Monk brewed Belgian Quadrupel Ales and compare the qualities of each.

Mr. Lickspigot is free’d up after helping a customer, and moments later he returns from the basement of CBS wielding the bottle of beer as if it was a gift from god.. and in some ways, I guess you could consider it so! Again we discuss and compare beers which are thought to be equivalently as good in their own style categories. Beer is so subjective, and many share varying shades of kickassness.. this is one aspect I love about craft beer. I grab another 3 or 4 bottles to fill out my 6 pack, whip out the debit card and I’m soon the proud owner of the top rated beer on earth.. at $20 for a 12oz bottle of beer, I’m sporting a cheeky grin and ready to get my drink on.

In all of his beer drinking wisdom, Drew catches me before I wander out of the shop with what turns out to be a second epic suggestion.. stinky cheese! This is shaping up to be a kick ass session! I’m a big fan of Blue Cheese, I’ll put that on just about any type of food.. its so flavorful, I can’t help it. Drew points me to the First Alternative Co-op to get Roaring 40’s Blue cheese and Tete de Moine cheeses.. both are stinky and packed with character. To hedge my bets, I ask the lady at the Co-op for a third cheese that’s a bit more approachable just in case Wendie (and I) can’t handle one of the others. I’m recommended a P’tit Basque cheese, some crackers, and I’m on my way.

As Sunday night rolls around, Wendie and I pull out the cheese and beer to let them warm up a bit before we start our tasting. I poured our Belgian beers, and between tasting each of them we would clear our palate with these crazy cheeses. I didn’t take notes of the cheeses, but here’s what I recall;

Roaring 40’s Blue: An Australian pasteurized cows milk blue cheese. Lots of character, definitely a potent blue cheese.. definitely a cheese that I would buy again.

Tete de Moine: A Swiss cheese originally made 800 years ago by monks in Switzerland. This is dank and funky, easily the most remarkable cheese I’ve ever tried.. It had “earthy” qualities, some sort of rotten notes and stinky wet dog to say the least. Very strange.. and at the same time, really damn good. I’d definitely buy it again, and you wouldn’t need more than an ounce or two.

P’Tit Basque : French raw sheeps milk, it was creamy and kind of sweet.. a very tasty cheese for sure. You could easily eat a lot of this stuff.

As it turns out, I absolutely agree that Westvleteren 12 was the best of the three Belgian Quadrupels that we tried that night. Here are the notes, in order of which I thought was best;

Westvleteren 12 (10.2% ABV, rated #1 on Beer Advocate): Pours a dark brown with red highlights, opaque, with little to no head. While it was cold, it had big warming alcohol, little fruit / prune / fig and some caramel sweetness aromas that seemed fairly subtle. Low carbonation, dark fruit notes noticed first on the palate. As it warms up, it was tasting really good. Sweetness up front with honey or maybe brown sugar sort of qualities. As I was breathing out through my nose after each drink I would taste notes reminiscent of cherries! This is a beer that you definitely want to enjoy near room temperature, it was noticeably much more complex.

Rochefort 10 (11.3% ABV, Rated #16 on Beer Advocate) : Pours dark brown and murky and tons of rocky yeast in the bottom of the glass with really thin and soft head that didn’t stick around much. Medium high carbonation, bread crusty and grainy flavors with a little bit of pruney notes while it was cold, even more subtle than the Westvleteren. As it warmed up, the sweetness and caramel aromas were really noticable, warm alcohol on the nose.

St. Bernardus Abt 12 (10.5% ABV, rated #23 on Beer Advocate): Pours with the same dark brown and murky as the Rochefort but without the rocky yeast on the bottom. Silky smooth body, with big puffy white head that sticks around forever. Finished more dry than others, and seemed to have more bread and yeasty character along with dark fruits while it was cold. As it warmed up it seemed to turn toward floral and sweet flavors along with prune and raisin at the finish. Definitely enjoyable to drink!