An Experiment In Brewing: Genever Pale Ale
8Now I don't claim to exactly have a ton of time outside of the mediocre work I do around here, but I do have some time for hobbies. One of them happens to be home brewing. I'm not exactly hard core into it yet, but I feel pretty comfortable around my equipment and am slowly expanding my facilities. Unfortunately for now I am limited to doing partial-grain brews of the 5.5 gallon variety (due in no small amount to my current living conditions).
But I want to take my brewing in a different direction for a batch. In addition to beer, I have great fondness of gin. And, being a bit of history nerd, I was always fascinated with the history of the drink and it's genever roots. It got me thinking, could I possibly make a beer that carries forward the notes of gin's genever roots? What the hell, I'm going to try it, and you fine members of the community are going to help me from gardening tips to ingredient choices.
To start off here of the things that I have decided upon:
- The beer needs juniper berries as an adjunct (duh)
- The beer will be in the harvest style (I'll get to that soon)
- Other adjuncts should be historical additions only (lemon, lime, grapefruit and bitter orange peel, anise, angelica root and seed, orris root, licorice root, cinnamon, almond, cubeb, savory, dragon eye, saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, grains of paradise, nutmeg, cassia bark)
- The base beer should likely be an Imperial Red like Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale (to keep in line with the oude style of genever which is moderately malty, but still plenty of room for hops to accentuate the juniper flavor)
So the first part of the endeavor is the beer malts. From what I can tell, for an extract beer to work the total amount of grains should come in around 1-2 lbs. Then comes the extracts, 6-9 lbs total to bring the O.G. in line (1.075 min). Of course the extracts need to be balanced to keep the beer from going off the deep end into porter or stout territory. That brings us to the first two questions:
- What would be a good breakdown within that range of commonly available grains?
- What LMEs and/or DMEs should I use?
The target brewing date for this beer is middle of August so we have some time to plan but obviously that's going to depend on my horticulture... I will post other threads on the progress of my garden, the progress of other beers I might be brewing, and to discuss the other ingredients for this undertaking.
- 9 comments, 28 replies
- Comment
So here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what I'm working with. First of course would be the reason why I want to do a harvest style, starting with Galena hops:
Then Columbus:
And finally Willamette:
As an added bonus, here is my current project. I am turning this old fridge into a lagering chamber. I have a relay on the main power and I'm wiring up a cheap digital thermostat on the inside so I can set the temperature to whatever I want.
@NigelF Do you think you could convince the buyers to look at home brewing equipment? Preferably something like BrewPi? :) As far as I know, I think DME is only there to bump up the percentage of alcohol, and won't give it much body. Have you looked at Brew In a Bag? That's a good alliterative to all grain brewing with out using a mash tun.
@Kevin I'll be sure to bring up the notion of brewing kits as well as equipment like a BrewPi. I had heard of DME being used in that way, and also in place of priming sugar as well so it might well be left off the bill of materials in this case if I can reach the requisite gravity with the grains/LME. My mention of it is purely in the sense that it may have some benefit in raising the OG without altering the malt profile should I find the right balance. As to brew in a bag, the biggest issue I have is getting a burner with enough BTUs to heat 8+ gallons of water. What I may do in the future is run my brew kettle out on the patio and then move inside once I no longer need the heat. To that end I am also considering options for mobile sparging, mash tun, and the other equipment I would need to advance beyond brew in a bag.
@Kevin Thanks for mentioning the BrewPi, it had completely slipped my mind. I might replace the thermostat with a Pi instead so I can get more out of it. Their Fridge Hacking Guide is quite interesting.
@NigelF Fridge hacking is a bit overwhelming for me. I really want to build a fermentation chamber, but there is a lot for me to learn. The strategy I have right now is to find a mini fridge, rip the door off, and build an insulated box around it. I still need to learn more about relays before tackling it.
@Kevin A relay is a light switch, and the thermostat/Ras-Pi is the finger on the switch ;)
I don't get why you're posting this here instead of on a homebrewing forum. There's probably only a few people here who could help you out, maybe, instead of a bunch on a forum dedicated to it. I guess you wouldn't have that mediocre cred on another site.
@molfsontan @JonT requested that I post about my project since there seems to be several community members also involved with homebrewing. That said, this is by far not my only source of know-how. There is a local homebrew store that has a lot of good resources and very helpful workers. I also have a friend who is a botanist at the arboretum helping me with keeping my hop bines healthy. And I of course am a CoE by trade so I can handle some minor electronics with ease.
@NigelF I get why you're posting this here. It's a community. My homebrewing is limited to an annual batch of Mr. Beer but I'll be following this thread.
@molfsontan I think it's interesting to see other peoples hobbies. I like to brew beer too, but I wouldn't mind learning about someone else's hobby.
@molfsontan @editorkid & @Kevin nailed it. Even if people can't offer direct advice or input it might still be interesting to them, I know it is to me. This is one of the things I love about our forum and community, we don't have to stick to any one set of topics and I can learn about a whole bunch of different topics and interests.
@JonT Yes, now show us your Barbie Doll collection already...
@molfsontan @NigelF I don't brew beer. I like to drink beer. This means that joining a homebrew forum is a bit over the top for me, but seeing occasional talk of homebrewing in other little communities I frequent is awesome.
@Kevin
I know next to nothing from a brewing point of view, but from a drinking point of view… have you considered something more along the lines of a sahti - that is, using juniper in lieu of vs. in addition to hops? Would this get you closer to the concept of a genever/gin? That's about the closest thing I have to input, but I love the idea. Juniper rocks my socks off, and there are very few beers out there that play with it.
@brhfl It was something I had considered, but with having fresh hops available it seems like it would be a waste of good resources. Additionally, while juniper is the primary flavorant, genever is made up of a broad profile of botanicals. The minimum number of ingredients in addition to the juniper berries is 6. The role of the hops then is to accentuate the predominant flavor of the juniper, and the maltiness of the base.
A brewery nearby is in the process of aging a farmhouse/saison in gin barrels. I had never heard of such a thing until yesterday, and then I read this. Good luck!
@marklog depending on the gin, it should give the saison and nice, subtle, fruityness and piney taste. If on the otherhand they're using something like Bombay Sapphire it might end up a little more on the drier side. As a rule of thumb I'm a Tanqueray man with tonic, and a Bombay Sapphire man for my martinis.
@marklog honestly, I'm not sure how much gin flavor those barrels will give off. They might just as well pour in a bottle of gin into the fermenter.
So last night I stopped at the local growler fill station for a few brewskies. One of the offering was Martin House brewery's Mind On My Money. I shouldn't have to tell you the flavors they were shooting for... Unfortunately the "juice" aspect came through far more prominently than juniper. It was still a good beer of course, but not very good as reference for this experiment. I don't know if that proves I'm headed in the right direction, or it's foolhardy and I'm just insane.
@NigelF Probably tastes better if you sip on it while rollin' down the street as well as smokin' indo.
Hop bines are all doing quite well. Need to figure out what to do about building an indoor trellis before they tear down the blinds tho...
@nigelf How did the brew come out?
@marklog I could be wrong, but if he is brewing using homegrown hops, he probably won't be brewing until late August or September, since hops harvest begins in August. Edit: he says August at the end of his post. =P Unless you're talking about a different brew, in which case I'll be quiet!
@grum ha no, i just tl:dr'ed and asked the question :)
@marklog It's all baby gravy, I'm throwing down a scotch ale tomorrow night so I'll take pictures of the process. I have all the ingredients, including buying 7.5 gallons of water, just need to put it together.
@NigelF ... baby gravy? I do not think that means what you think it means.
@marklog One night, when playing games with my cousin until 4am, he attempted to say "It's all gravy baby". It came out instead as "It's all baby gravy" and has been an integral part of our vocabulary ever since. That and Offensive Linebackers instead of Outside Linebackers for OLB, another product of our late night gaming.
Ok so I called an audible and decided to brew a dunkelweizen instead. Here are a few photos of that effort.
Here's me starting off, bringing the water up to temp. Hard to bring 4 gallons of water to temp on an electric cooktop...
Next picture is after the bittering hops have been added and boiling away. 50 min here, 5 min with aromatic 1, 5 min with aromatic 2.
Of course, while making a dunkelweizen, one must consume dunkelweizen
My cat decided to supervise to make sure I did things to her satisfaction, that or she wanted bacon.
Yeast pitched, time for bed. Notice the lack of a blowoff tube, this is important.
My wife woke my up this morning and told me that something was weird with the beer. So I leapt out of bed to discover the krausen had reached the airlock and was blowing out of it. As I hastily put together a blowoff system and sanitized I heard a loud pop and found that the bung had departed from the carboy and I had krausen flowing out of the top. Rather than take a video of this hilarious development, I put the system in place first to save the integrity of the young brew. However, here is a video of the system happily working shortly after the crisis.
@NigelF nice!
@nigelf looking good! blowoff always means good beer. Or is it, blow offs mean high ferm temps. i can't remember which. Do you leave the beer out like that all time time, or is it covered up/in a dark place? Unrelated... I wonder when our tasting is going to be?
@marklog It's at 72 so on the high side of the safe temp, going to give it the wet t-shirt treatment when I get home to bring that down a bit (I don't have my fridge hacked yet). That area typically stays dark, had the lights on to take the picture/video. The S.G. was 1.058, which is also on the high side for the beer, but only slightly. ~10 days of fermentation, 10 days of secondary, 10 days of bottle conditioning, so second week of June until this batch is done.
@marklog It's also worth mentioning that this is the first batch where I used liquid yeast. Most of the time i pitch dry yeast directly into the wort which leads to a slower buildup and no need for a blowoff. The liquid yeast obviously is superior in its performance so far, which means I will likely use it in future batches.
@NigelF I'm a huge fan of liquid. check out www.brulosophy.com. Lots of exBEERiments surrounding things like dry hop or no dry hop, liquid yeast vs. dry, starter or no starter. interesting stuff.
So I moved the dunkel off to secondary and took a gravity reading. Well it's definitely beer, 1.010. Taking a S.G of 1.058, we're at a nice 6.3% APV. I'm sure that will climb a touch by the time bottle conditioning is all said and done but it's looking good and smelling good so far.
@NigelF "Well it's definitely beer" — glowing review! :D
@brhfl I haven't tasted it yet :P I have had prior batches that were assuredly not beer due to bad yeast.