My Christmas Haul

I already have too much dang stuff, so my Christmas list this year was short. Homebrew gear is always appreciated, but I'm particular about the things I want. Then there's all the things I want but don't need yet; The keezer build isn't happening until summer. The list wasn't much more than suggestions for places to get gift certificates.

Santa (with help from Mom, Dad and Mrs. Zym) brought me all of this:

The photogenic pieces of my Christmas
beer-related gifts

• Goodnight Brew, a beer-themed parody of Goodnight Moon
• A bottle of Imperial Brown IPA, a collaboration between Heavy Seas and Stone [review coming soon]
• A beer mug ornament
• A gift certificate to NorCal Brewing Solutions (not pictured)
• A gift card to MyLHBS in Seven Corners (thoughtfully packaged with a branded keg-shaped glass and some hop-flavored candy - nice work Derek and staff!)

I spread my homebrew spending around a number of shops, but I specifically asked for NorCal since they have some nifty-looking Spiedel fermenter accessories. MyLHBS is my local go-to.

So Merry Christmas / Hanukkah / Festivus / Saturnalia / Kwanzaa / late December and here's to full kettles and kegs in 2017!

Fruitcake Holiday Ale - The Conclusion

Fruitcake Holiday Ale Part 1 and Part 2 covered the tincture recipe development and production. And now, the stirring conclusion!

Over the weekend I sampled the second iteration. It tasted a lot like the first iteration: fruit forward and sweet. I'm not sure the clementine added much. There still wasn't enough spice to round it out, so I added an additional clove and 3 allspice berries. I let it rest overnight then tried it again. Better, but still not enough spice.

I'm averse to overdoing clove since it may taste like a flaw, so I looked for something else. I found some whole grains of paradise in the jumble I call a spice cabinet. Grains of paradise look like tiny peppercorns but the flavor is milder. When crushed, it gives off what I'd describe as an piney, evergreen aroma. Seems like something that would make a tasty gin. I threw in ¼ tsp of crushed grains of paradise, then gave it another overnight rest.

I emptied the jar to strain out the tincture. (I use a silicone funnel with a removable screen plug.) After much pressing and stirring, I only got 8oz. I was aiming for 12oz. Uh oh. I scaled up the fruit and liquor 200% from the initial recipe (thus tripling the batch) but the output was only up 100%. I'm guessing liquid absorption isn't exactly linear.

Straining the tincture

I really didn't want to dump everything into the keg, but I couldn't press out any more liquid. The best solution I could come up with was to rinse the fruit with liquor until I hot my target volume. I scooped about ¼ of the fruit into the funnel then doused with roughly 1oz of liquor (I used Malibu pineapple rum and Dogfish Head vanilla vodka). The tincture flavor didn't change much, so I figure I got some more fruit and spice out if it.

I slowly depressurized the keg and added the 12oz of tincture to roughly 4.5 gallons of old ale. I gave it a quick shake, then pressurized to 8 psi. The leftover fruit went into the fridge for later use. Definitely good on vanilla ice cream. Maybe a fruitcake cookie? 

I pulled a pint the next day. The beer is a bit cloudier than the base, with some fruit skin in it. The mouthfeel is smooth and thick, almost syrupy. The flavor is fruity but not cloying. Cherry and raisin are noticeable up front, with ginger and spice bringing up the rear. The finish is raisiny with minimal aftertaste.

Parting thoughts

All in all, this turned out pretty well. I expect the fruit to fade some over time, and I'm crossing my fingers for a better fruit/spice balance. Next time I'll include some other fruits like fig and blueberry. The macadamia liqueur basically disappeared in this recipe. Short of adding toasted nuts, I'd look for a liqueur made with a stronger flavored nut. Frangelico (hazelnut) or Rivulet (pecan) would be good to try.

Beer Review: Stone Enjoy By 12.25.16 IPA - VA Prototype

Stone Brewing recently opened their east-coast operations in Richmond, VA, about 90 miles or so from Zymurginian HQ. They started releasing beers this summer under the "Virginia Brewery Prototype" banner, so I pretty much have to try them.

On November 20th, they put out Enjoy By 12.25.16 Unfiltered IPA. Yes Virginia, you should drink it before Christmas, though it won't suddenly turn to coal on the 26th.

Stone's Virginia Brewery Prototype of Enjoy By 12.25.16

My initial impressions are admittedly guarded, as I'm not much of an IPA drinker. I've had a few too many bitter hop bombs, so IPAs aren't usually my first choice. Anything billing itself as a "double" or "imperial" doesn't help matters either. It was $16.99/6 from MyLHBS, but it clocks in at 9.4% ABV, so the price is justifiable.

I poured it into a Spiegelau IPA glass and noticed that the gold-colored beer was fairly clear for being "unfiltered." The head was respectable and, thanks to the design of the glass, persistent throughout my sampling.

The first sip lets you know this is a double IPA, but there's enough malt to back up the 90 IBUs. Stone merely describes the flavor as "tropical, intense, hoppy" which sells it short. The hop bill is long:

• Nugget
• Super Galena
• Simcoe
• Delta
• Target
• Amarillo
• Cascade
• Galaxy
• Citra
• Nelson Sauvin
• Motueka
• Helga

... so there's a lot going on here. I get the Citra grapefruit flavor with a slight lemongrass and pithy aftertaste. These were more noticeable as I went along. This IPA skeptic thinks this is mighty tasty.

Is the VA Prototype different from the Escondido brewery's output? I don't know. The recipes are the same, and I presume Stone would make adjustments for the Richmond water profile, but the fact that this didn't have to go cross-country means it's a wee bit fresher than it would be otherwise. 

Fruitcake Holiday Ale - Part 2

In Part 1, I created a tincture for Fruitcake Holiday Ale. Now it's time to sample it along with the base beer.

The old ale base (SRM: 22.5)

The base is an old ale with some brown sugar and lactose added to make it finish a little sweet. It finished at 1.022, just off the scale of my FG hygrometer. The color is excellent, thought a little cloudy. I usually add Whirlfloc to my boil, but I forgot it this time. To speed things along, I carbonated a small amount of beer in an plastic bottle using a Carbonator Cap.

Tincture after macerating overnight.

Rakia (Bulgarian plum brandy

The tincture smells amazing and tastes even better. It was thick with ginger up front with plenty of citrus and raisin support. I couldn't really detect the clove or allspice, which isn't a bad thing but some earthiness might help later on. It manages to be both sweet and sour, but not in a Chinese take-out way. The fruit took up a fair amount of liquid, so I added 1oz of rakia (Bulgarian plum brandy). I gave it a stir then started adding liquid with a medicine dropper. Given how little it took to get Oktober Surprise flavored, I started small.

Adding the tincture

To check the progress, I alternated sips of the base beer and the tinctured sample.

10 drops in 12oz. Nothing.

20 drops. Not any better, but already past Oktober Surprise level.

30 drops. Long way to go at this rate.

It became apparent that I wasn't going to get nearly the same mileage out of fruit as I did out of spices. Before my palate got worn out, I went with a bigger dose: 10 drops in 1oz of base. That was about right. The fruit is noticeable, but not overwhelming or cloying. This dosing poses a problem though. At roughly 600 drops to the ounce (actually 591, but I'm an English Lit major so I round up), I would need 12oz of tincture to flavor a 5-gallon batch. I had only 4oz of liquid though.

First cut of tincture: 4oz

I broke out the fruit to triple the recipe. The ginger came up a half-ounce short, but given how ginger-forward it already was, this wasn't a problem. I played it safe on the clove and allspice (as you'll see in the recipe below) but I can readily add a bit more if needed. I no longer had an orange, but I did have a clementine, so I zested it with my Microplane grater. The little guy yielded a bit over one tablespoon. 

Clementine zest

I noticed that there was still some oils on the fruit, so I gave it a quick soak in 1.75oz of vanilla rum to get the rest of it. It was just enough to float it in my push-up measuring cup. 

Soaking the de-zested clementine

The second, scaled up recipe in words:

Fruitcake Ale tincture (yield: 12oz liquid)
pineapple rum	4oz
vanilla vodka	3oz
plum brandy	3oz
macadamia liqueur	3oz
clove	2
allspice	6 seeds
lemon zest	1T
orange zest	1T
clementine zest	1T
clementine	1, split
dried cherries	3oz
dried apricot	3oz
dried cranberries	3oz
golden raisins	3ox
candied ginger	3oz

And in photo:

Second iteration

That orange thing at the top is the clementine I zested. It might not add very much to this batch, but I'd throw it out otherwise.

Mrs and Mrs Claus were once again entrusted to safeguard the tincture overnight. 

In part 3, we'll sample it again and (hopefully) have some Fruitcake Ale on tap.

Fruitcake Holiday Ale - Part 1

After the rousing success of Oktober Surprise, I started thinking about what my Christmas beer would be. I've done winter warmers in the past, but wanted to do something different. After gingerbread and peppermint, there's nothing more Christmasy than fruitcake.

Fruitcake can be really good when it's done right. Problem is, hardly anybody makes it right anymore. Dad made a pretty tasty loaf, and he said the key was booze. The fruit should be macerated in liquor and the finished cake should be occasionally drizzled with it as well to keep it moist and unspoiled. (Good luck finding any store-bought fruitcake with alcohol in it.) Dark rum is a solid choice, but brandy works well. If you're feeling rustic, then go with applejack.

Since making a fruitcake and jamming it into a corny keg would make a bit of a mess of my dip tube, I'm going with my base & tincture method. Alton Brown has been a tremendous influence on my cooking, so I checked out his Free Range Fruitcake recipe to see what he used. He doesn't use any of the store-bought candied fruit (green and red-dyed oranges?!), instead macerating his own blend of dried fruits in dark rum along with lemon and orange zests.

Of course, a baking recipe will only go so far in creating homebrew. I did a little googling and found a Fruitcake Ale recipe in Sam Calagione's Extreme Brewing. Their fruit bill was similar to Alton's but not as broad (dried cranberries, pineapple, cherries, raisins, crystallized ginger) and it was added to the boil at flameout. It also lacked a spice component.

In the end, my tincture is closer to Alton's recipe:

Fruitcake Ale tincture
pineapple rum	2oz
vanilla vodka	1oz
macadamia liqueur	1oz
clove	1
allspice	3 seeds
dried lemon peel	1T
orange zest	1T
dried cherries	1oz
dried apricot	1oz
dried cranberries	1oz
raisins	1oz
candied ginger	1oz

My choice of liquors is mostly based on the flavors they would add. I didn't have any pineapple on hand, but I had plenty of Malibu. I wasn't sure I wanted to go so far as to toast pecans and add those, so I opted for some otherwise unused macadamia liqueur I picked up in Hawaii many years ago. The vanilla vodka wasn't all that great, (sorry Dogfish Head) but I'd rather use it than dump it.

My brewdog Bo ready to clean up anything that drops.

Long story short, I chopped up the fruit, smashed the allspice, zested the orange and mixed it all together. I covered and stored in a cool, dark place overnight. In Part 2, we'll give the tincture a try in a sample of the base beer.

The hooch

One clove and 3 smashed allspice berries

The finished product 

Mr and Mrs Claus keeping a watchful eye

The Magic of Tinctures

As I brewed an Old Ale for my holiday beer, I was wondering what I'd do to truly make it seasonal. While some brewers will try to add this dimensionality during the boil or in the mash bill, I prefer to use a tincture added to a base beer. 

Iterating One Pint at a Time

In a not-so-past life, I was an IT business analyst. My job was to define and design web applications in an Agile development environment, which is often likened to building the car while you are driving it. This approach - minus the story points and kanban boards - works well for brewing a flavored beer: Rather than try to figure out the flavor additions for an entire 5 gallon batch at once, you develop a starting point and make adjustments incrementally (one pint at a time) until you've got it dialed in. 

You can make up a "flavor bill" and add things during the boil, at flameout, in secondary, etc., but you run the risk of overdoing some flavors and cooking off others. Several HomeBrewTalk members mentioned how they had put in too much cinnamon late in the boil. It's a flavor that won't fade much over time, so now they have 5 gallons of fireball-flavored pumpkin ale. By using a tincture -- an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material --  the worst that can happen is you over-flavor one pint (or even one ounce) of beer. 

Finding the Right Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix

My fall seasonal - Oktober Surprise - was developed iteratively. I started with a base American Amber Ale that was low on aroma hops. I did put in a little bit of rye to add a wee bit of spiciness in the background. The base (4.2% ABV, 35 IBU) turned out to be a damn good beer on its own, but I needed a tincture to make it into a pumpkin-pie-spice ale.

A neutral, high-proof spirit like vodka is a popular and versatile choice for tinctures. I'd rather use a spirit that brings some flavor to the party, as Alton Brown would say. I started my tincture with roughly 2 ounces of Cruzan Single Barrel. I added a cinnamon stick, a little candied ginger, a pinch of whole grains of paradise, some grated nutmeg and one whole vanilla bean. Note: No pumpkins were harmed in the making of this beer. 

I had written out a recipe as a starting point, but I was feeling a little too carefree to follow it. This is bad. Don't do what I did. Stick to your first recipe then accurately measure and note later additions.

I left it to sit for a day, then added 10 drops to a pint. Not strong enough, so in went 10 more. The strength was about right, but I was getting more ginger than anything else. So I added another cinnamon stick, another vanilla bean and exactly one clove. Why one? Because Mrs. Zymurginian doesn't like clove, and when 30% of your "market" speaks, you listen. I let it sit for another day, then tested again. Much improved, but not quite there. I added a bit more nutmeg and a dash of vanilla extract (I was out of beans).  This third iteration was damn close to what I had in mind, so I stopped there. 

Now I had discovered that 20 drops per pint was the right level, but how does that scale up to 5 gallons? At 20 drops/pint and 40 pints/batch of beer, I'd need 800 drops of tincture. I certainly wasn't going to count out all those drops, so time to do math. One fluid ounce is roughly 600 drops, so I'd need 1.3 ounces of finished tincture. With the liquid loss to the ginger and spices, my starting 2 ounces of rum yielded 1.5 ounces of tincture. As dad used to say, close enough for government work.  

I slowly vented my keg and poured in the tincture. I gave it a shake then repressurized. I let it sit overnight before pulling a sample. It was heavenly. It was a little spicy and a little sweet, but not too much of either. The Mrs. was impressed. I took some to my homebrew club to try and it was a hit. It's a good sign when club members hunt you down to try it. 

More tinkering

A tincture turned an amber ale
into an Oktober Surprise

The beer turned out so well, I went so far as to give it a name and make a tap handle for it. Oktober Suprise will be on tap next year for Cherrydale Brewing ("Served in the finest basements!"). Nevertheless, there were two more things I wanted to try. I bought a creamer faucet (aka nitro tap) earlier in the year and had been serving small amounts of my beers on nitro just to see what would happen. It made my anniversary maibock smoother and my low-alcohol oatmeal stout drinkable, but what would it do for a spicy beer? It was great on regular CO2, but nitro turned it up to 11. The nitro head added a physical creaminess to the vanilla notes and made the other spices more noticeable. The club members said it was a genuine dessert beer. Jack up the ABV and this could be a great after-dinner sipper.

I wanted to get the graham-cracker crust flavor in, but I hadn't hit it yet. A club member suggested adding some biscuit malt to the grain bill. Good idea, but not much help for the finished beer. Then I found some graham cracker flavoring at MyLHBS. The aroma is spot on when its diluted. Sniffing straight from the bottle is more buttery than anything else. I treated like another tincture and added a few drops at a time to a pint. This was harder to gauge, but 10-15 drops per pint seemed right. I transferred some Oktober to a 1.6gal Torpedo keg and added a tablespoon (~75 drops) of the flavoring. Still tasty on nitro, but the graham flavoring came across as cloying. And to think the label says 4 ounces for 5 gallons!

The Takeaway: Tinctures Save Beer!

Unlike kettle or secondary additions, tinctures allow you to fine-tune your flavorings using small amounts of beer. You won't accidentally over-spice a batch by dosing one pint at a time. Tinctures also lets you add flavors that might weaken when cooked. A pinch in the tincture is worth two (or more) in the boil.