This Brewblog is Infected

My two week (and one day) vacation starts tomorrow. Yay! During those two weeks, this blog will mostly likely be inactive, seeing as the majority of my blogging occurs while I am at *cough*work*cough*.

Today's random blog post has a sour brewblog and then some sad pet news.

Brewblog, Entry Four

May 22nd, 2010 - Brewed Scott's Stout 4

Scott's Stout 2 and 3 were only marginally different from each other (2 had Crystal 80, 3 had Crystal 120; that's the only difference), but for Scott's Stout 4, I wanted to make some changes. Firstly, as mentioned in the last brewblog, I wanted to use a (theoretically) better quality yeast, a Wyeast London Ale yeast instead of our usual Safale S-04. Secondly, I wanted to actually use Roasted Barley in this Scott's Stout.

There has long been a debate about what defines a Porter vs a Stout. Both are roasty black beers, very similar in most regards. But if you research Porters vs Stouts, you will frequently come across a claim that the roasted flavours in a Porter are from Black Patent Malt and the roasted flavours in a Stout are from Roasted Barley. While this claim has some merit and is often true of many commercial examples of the styles, there are numerous exceptions. Two of those exceptions are our very own Scott's Stout 2 and 3, which only used Black Patent Malt but were very definitely Dry Stouts in my mind.

So, this time out, I wanted to actually follow the style guide for a Dry Stout and used a generous amount of Roasted Barley in the recipe. Scott's Stout 4 has not been bottled to date, so I can not comment on the differences in taste between 3 and 4 until probably the next brewblog.

We sampled the first bottle of Simon's Blonde on this brew day. The Amarillo hops gave it a distinctly grapefruity flavour and it was quite pleasant. It was Trevor that first commented on how it seemed to be sour.

May 28th, 2010 - Panic!

On the previous evening, I had had another bottle of sour Simon's Blonde, herein sometimes referred to as Sour Blonde. I didn't put much thought into the whys and hows it had gotten sour. Sour Blonde was not ruined by its sourness--in fact the sour grapefruit flavour is quite good--so no big deal.

I was home bored this Friday, having planned to plant my garden but been stymied by rain, so started drinking early. My first beer of the day was an Anniversary Bitter 2. It was very reasonable, significantly better than our first Bitter attempt. But there was a hint of sourness. Nothing quite so blatant and obvious as the Sour Blonde, but there was some sourness there that did not belong.

It was then that I remembered the Oud Bruin, aka Sour Brown, we were aging in my brew studio. "Oh, shit, the Sour Brown is infecting our other beers," I thought, starting to panic. "What else is sour?"

The fourth "brewniversity" beer, aka 112, aka Goldings Ale, was next to be bottled, so it was the first beer I sampled from its carboy. And it was unquestionably sour. And not in such a good way as Sour Blonde and Bitter 2 had been. "Fuck, that Goldings hops experiment was ruined! What else is sour?" And I was now full-on body-shakes panicking.

I next sampled Trevor's Blonde. I was particularly worried about this batch, because Trevor was particularly excited about it. But thankfully it seemed fine. Phew!

I had a big bottle of Blackout Stout, the Russian Imperial Stout I made up, in my fridge, so as I drafted an email to the group (subject: Hope you all like sour beers...), I drank that down. It was not detectably sour, but it sure got me fucking drunk.

My email kicked off a long discussion about possible causes. I was worried about proximity of the new beers to the aging Sour Brown, but that didn't make sense with the numerous air locks involved and was eliminated as a cause. That did not stop me from relocating the Sour Brown into my basement, away from beers that shouldn't be sour. Equipment infection didn't make sense, because the Sour Brown was only supposed to be dangerous after the wild yeast was added, which was done in the glass carboy after the beer was racked. And, according to our research, the sanitizing product we use should prevent the spread of infection (if used consistently and properly) anyway. But, we had (at least) three soured beers somehow!

I eventually formulated a reasonable train of events to explain the spread of sourness. Sour Brown was racked on April 20th, at which point the wild yeast was added, and Simon's Blonde was brewed on April 24th. It appears that Simon's Blonde was somehow infected by the wild yeast in its primary fermenter. The hows of that infection are still a complete mystery, as I thought I was pretty damn careful with that nasty stuff. But everything else that follows Simon's Blonde getting infected makes perfect sense. The 112 was brewed on May 8th and was fermented using an unsanitized scoop of yeast cake from Simon's Blonde. This helps account for why the 112 is the most disgustingly sour of the three beers; it was infected from day one. On May 15th, we bottled Simon's Blonde; the sourness at this point was rather subtle and was not detected by anyone. Immediately following the bottling of Simon's Blonde, we rinsed (!) the racking cane and bottled Anniversary Bitter 2, which was absolutely not sour at this stage; I remember its original taste quite clearly. Bitter 2 was infected by the unsanitized racking cane and only started souring in bottles, which is why it is still subtle.

In the evening, the brew group came over to help me sample the rest of our beers, sanitize equipment, and bottle the infected 112. We detected no sourness in any of our other batches.

And we will hopefully not detect sourness in any other beers in the coming weeks.

May 29th, 2010 - Brewed Willamette Ale, aka 114

Although the Goldings Ale (112) experiment had gone sour, I didn't let that interfere with my plan of next doing a simple beer with all Willamette hops. The 114, so named because of its similarities with the 124, required 4 ounces of Willamette hops divided evenly into seven additions, one at every 15-minute interval during the boil. The only malts used were Pale for the base and Munich for sweetness. For yeast, I stuck with our typical Safale US-05.

June 5th, 2010 - Brewed Matrimonial Ale 5

Matrimonial Ale is basically our experimental American (India) Pale Ale series. Every Matrimonial Ale has been different, despite the fact that we would be happy to repeat the fluke success of the original batch each time. MA1 was a quite nice American Pale Ale created with citrusy Columbus hops, MA2 was similar but accidentally boozier and somehow better, MA3 was less boozy and slightly less successful because of a change of hops, and MA4 was (in theory) the refinement of all of the lessons learned from the first three MAs as well as the Punk IPA clone.

MA5 was a further refinement of the excellent MA4, but with the booziness of MA2--on purpose!--and, new to the series, piney Chinook hops. It may go down as an unsuccessful diversion from the series like MA3, but I suspect it will be amazing.

All Matrimonial Ales have had effectively the same malt recipe: Pale for the base (where increased quantity equals increased booziness) with 500g of Crystal 40 for sweetness. In MA5, I added some Munich malt for additional sweetness, in an experiment that will probably go unnoticed in this super high IBU beer.

In terms of aroma, MA4 is by far the best of the series, with a pleasant citrusy Amarillo hops aroma from 2 ounces that were added in the secondary a week before bottling. I have not decided what aroma hops I will be using for MA5, but I intend to add the aroma hops only a couple of days before bottling to maximize freshness of the aroma.

MA5 was also planned to be the first test beer for the liquid yeasts we have ranched over the past few weeks. I used the Denny's Favorite 50 Wyeast that was collected from the Bushwakker Imperial Stout yeast cake. I made at least one mistake, and quite possibly two, in this process, which was a complete failure this time. My first mistake was forgetting to do a starter, thus not really giving whatever small amount of yeast cells had been collected half a chance with this big, big beer. My second mistake may have been a misunderstanding of what to keep from the yeast washing process in the first place. In the end, Safale US-04 to the rescue!

Because I am heading out of town for the week, I will not be hosting a brew day this coming weekend, and I have to make sure I remember to rack MA5 tonight, as it is still in its primary. All of our other beers will get an extra week to age in their carboys. The Belgian IPA is next to be bottled, followed by Scott's Stout 4 and the 114. The Bushwakker Imperial Stout could also be bottled at any point, I think.

Pets

My 13-year-old cat Cinnamon was euthanized yesterday. It was a long time coming, but that doesn't make it easier. For most of the past year, she has been very un-cat-like in using my basement carpet as her bathroom instead of one of the two litter boxes available for her. She was also throwing up after almost every meal, and then eating her own throw-up. Yeah, gross.

Cinnamon was a very cuddly, friendly cat, almost always monopolizing my lap. Although I was frequently angry at her for the pissing and shitting and throwing up all over the place, I couldn't bring myself to put her down without having a better reason than that. As long as she seemed happy and healthy--and she always did, right up to the end--it seemed wrong. The tipping point this week was the fact that I am having my dad look after my cats while I am away. I may be willing to put up with cleaning up shit and piss and puke every day, but there is no way I am subjecting someone else to that, especially someone that is doing me a favour like looking after my cats.

While Cinnamon was doing her thing, I was also embarrassed to ever invite anyone into my basement--because it always smelled like cat pee!--so while it is sad that I had to resort to euthanasia, I am also very relieved to be done with that huge frustration. It will probably take me months to destroy/hide the smell of cat pee that is now ingrained in the carpet, but I will give it my best shot. And no more worrying about stepping in fresh cat piss or shit on my floor while stumbling around in the dark.

So, the basement cat population is now only two. The remaining basement cats, Furlicity and Fritzy, should be with me for many more years yet; many more years of being complete shits and destroying my basement. Fun!

You may notice that I specified "basement cat population." Total cat population is now three, because lately Squeak has been back as a full time resident of my house. She will most likely spend some time later this summer back in Calgary, but don't be surprised to hear that she's back with me come September. That's presuming that she is still alive and annoying come fall, which I expect will be the case. I'm starting to suspect that Squeak is immortal.

Vacation!

Countdown is at 4 hours...