Bacchanalia and Lisztomania

One bill, two beers, and a very full mash tun

Cheers, friends! Last weekend, I had a wonderful time brewing up my two Belgian beauties--beers whose inspiration (and names) literally came to me in a dream--Bacchanalia and Lisztomania. After making a nice starter of Wyeast 1214 on a stir plate, the big beer took off like a shot and fermented quite completely in only about four days. On Saturday evening, I brewed up the first, big beer by utterly filling my mash tun to the brim, then I re-sparged to collect the volume for the second batch and finished the second batch on Sunday afternoon. Here is what the two beers will look like, and the grain and hopping that I used for these beautiful batches:

Bacchanalia, a big dark Belgian strong ale:
Original specific gravity (measured by refractometer!): 1.096 (Target ABV: ~10%)
Bitterness: 32 IBU
Color: 15°L (deep amber)

18 lbs Belgian Pilsener malt
6 lbs white wheat malt
2 lbs dark Munich malt

Mash at 153° for 60 minutes

1 lbs Belgian dark candi syrup (90° L)

1 oz Phoenix hops (pellets 8.4% AA) @60 minutes
1 oz Phoenix hops (8.4% AA) @30 minutes

1 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker (whole cone 4.5% AA) dry hop, 14 days

Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast, 1.5 L starter

Aged on medium-toasted French oak (perhaps soaked in red wine) for 1 month

This should be a big, dark, complex beer with lots of dark fruit and spicy notes from the Belgian yeast and some real vanilla smoothness and light tannins from the French oak aging. As we found with my Sea Symphony Barleywine, whose last bottles we tasted on my birthday (mid April) this year, a good high-alcohol beer will age beautifully and improve in subtle complexity for years if you have the patience/willpower to let it do so. My plan for Bacchanalia is to try and be patient and taste a couple bottles per year, with a few careful tastes in the first year to gauge the potential of the brew. Luckily, we won't have to wait nearly as long for Bacchanalia's virtuosic little brother, my "small" second-runnings beer, Lisztomania:

Lisztomania, a virtuosic Belgian mini-IPA:
Original specific gravity: 1.036 (Target ABV: ~3.7%)
Bitterness: 32 IBU (but the bitterness balance will be very different in a smaller beer)
Color: 13°L (amber)

Same grain bill as above! Second runnings collected after first batch by sparging with ~180° water.

5 oz Belgian extra-dark candi syrup (180°L)

First-wort hop: 1 oz Belma (9.7%AA, notes of citrus, pineapple, strawberry, melon)
1 oz Citra (9.4%, notes of citrus, papayal, tropical fruit) @ 5 minutes left in boil
1 oz Belma @ flameout
1 oz Citra @ flameout

1 oz Belma dry-hop 7-10 days
1 oz Citra dry-hop 7-10 days

Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast

This beer should be drinkable as soon as carbonated, with a bright, juicy, fruity hop character and a little bit of extra fruitiness/spice from the Belgian yeast. A virtuosic fresh, flavorful session beer with under 4% ABV, and in the ballpark of 115 calories (about the same caloric content as a BudLight, with about 50 times the flavor). I designed this beer to be a sort of mini Belgian-IPA, inspired in flavor profile by big Belgian IPAs like Green Flash Le Freak or Houblon Chouffe but with half the ABV.

We'll have the best of both worlds with these two dream-beers...a deep, complex dark Belgian strong ale that well likely age well for years to come, and a fruity mini/session-IPA that will be delicious, bright, and flavorful right out of the bottle once it's all carbonated. I will miss the speed and ease of my kegerator, but it'll still be great to make some tasty bottled beers in the meantime. I'll be tasting both soon to see how they are doing, and then we'll enjoy Lisztomania nice and fresh and savor Bacchanalia over the years...early tasting notes and a delicious coffee cream stout yet to come from the new setup here in MA!

The stuff on which dreams are made...literally

Greetings and cheers, readers! This entry finds me back in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, back where my wonderful journey with this hobby all began. As stated via Twitter earlier in the year, I have been sitting on ingredients for a couple of batches for a little while now. Since then, life happened and all of a sudden I found myself traveling, moving, and finally setting up shop back in my old stomping grounds. I am now finally in a place where I can actually get to brewing again. First up is a highly exciting project, one that literally came to me in a dream...

...Bacchanalia/Lisztomania--one grain bill, two beers. As previously seen with my Sea Symphony Barleywine, the last of which we drank on my birthday this year (nectar of the gods at 4 years old and around 10-11% ABV), I will do another go of one of the coolest and more historic brewing practices in existence--partigyle brewing. For the brewing novice, this is where we take one gigantic grain bill, this particular one involves 27 lbs of grain, and make two glorious batches from it. It is highly common in a home system to lose efficiency when brewing a super high gravity beer, so this process involves WAY overshooting the grain bill, making a large 10-12% beer from the first runnings with no sparge, then resparging and making a 3-4% small beer with the leftover sugars. This is great because we will end up with a delicious session beer that can be drunk right away and big ol' strong ale that will get better literally for years to come. But enough of the technical nonsense, let's get onto the beer.

Beer 1 - "Bacchanalia": a 10-12% dark Belgian strong ale with some oak aging (perhaps some wine-soaked oak aging). Expect lots of dark fruit, spicy complexity, and warming alcohol that will mellow over time.

Beer 2 - "Lisztomania": a virtuosic 3-4% pale ale with Belgian yeast, this experimental guy will be a sort of "mini-IPA" with Belma and Citra hop varieties, which carry lots of juicy, tropical fruit notes and a soft, mellow bitterness. I have a feeling this one will be gone in a flash.

More info to come once I get brewing. Until then, Prost!

Partigyle Brewing: Sea Symphony Barleywine and Ralph Bitter

A nice, healthy dose of Chinook for the SSBW

Hey readers!  I just realized that I had completely neglected to tell you all about my most recent brewing adventures, which are definitely quite exciting.  Last week, I was able to crank out an American barleywine and bitter over the course of a couple days using partigyle methods, which included setting the mash one afternoon, going to an evening class, coming back, collecting the first runnings (the barleywine), boiling the first runnings and getting them into the fermenter, sparging and collecting the second runnings (the bitter), going to sleep, waking up and going to class, then doing the boil when I got home later in the afternoon.  The crazy thing is, I realized when the second gyle wort was almost at a boil that I was out of propane, so I had to move my six gallons of nearly-boiling wort up to the kitchen stove (whose BTU are not quite up to snuff with the turkey fryer) and employ every resource necessary to get the thing to a boil and keep it there.  Whew, what a session it was.  I did, however, get two beers out of it, so that leaves me with a big smile on my face.  You may be wondering about the names of the beers.  Well, I used a proprietary hop blend for the barleywine (which admittedly toes the line of imperial IPA) that is known as Falconer's Flight Seven Seas (7Cs), and knowing full well that this ale will be a symphony of flavor, I am referring to it as the Sea Symphony Barleywine (in homage to the amazing work of Ralph Vaughan Williams).  At that point, I thought it would be awesome to refer to the second runnings bitter as Ralph (which, for all you non-music kids out there, is pronounced "Raif"). Here are the recipes that I created for just such a brew session:

Sea Symphony Barleywine(/Imperial IPA maybe??):
OG: 1.105 (Measured, will translate to about a 10.2% ABV--boom shakalaka)
IBU: 90 
Color: 14°L (beautiful dark amber)
 
23 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb Munton's Dark Crystal 85°L

3 oz Chinook (whole, 13.9% AA) @60
2 oz FF Seven Seas (pellet, 11.5% AA) @10
2 oz FF Seven Seas @0, 10 minute steep

2 oz Falconer's Flight (pellet, 11.4% AA) dry-hop
1 oz FF Seven Seas dry-hop

White Labs 250 Rebel Brewer American Pub Ale (yeast cake from JuniorSenior Amarillo Rye)

Ralph "American Bitter":
OG: 1.049
IBU: ~35
Color: ~8°L

[Same grain bill, second runnings]

0.6 oz Chinook (whole, 13.9%AA) @60
1 oz Falconer's Flight (pellet, 11.4% AA) @5
1 oz Falconer's Flight @0, 10 minute steep

1 oz Falconer's Flight dry-hop
.4 oz Chinook dry-hop

WLP250 harvested from same yeast cake (I was really all about bang for my buck here)

So here's the lowdown: 

• the bitter will be ready to drink really soon, once we've dry-hopped it a little bit and thrown it in a keg...I'm definitely excited to drink it, because I feel like it will be similar to 21st Amendment's Bitter American, which I just had for the first time last night
• if we treat the barleywine as a barleywine, it will really be best in about a year or so, or at least several months down the road--it will be bottled and savoured over time
• if I sample a taste of the Sea Symphony and it's too good to pass up, I'll go on ahead with the dry-hopping right away and we'll drink it as an Imperial IPA (but still save some bottles so that it can also be experienced as an American barleywine, particularly if it is really boozy)
• both of these brews are going to be hoppy, delicious American delights, and I don't really give a damn what you call them because they're going to be tasty as hell

I love reusing yeast...saves a great deal of money!  WLP250 is going to be a "house" strain of mine :)