Low-ish alcohol and big-ish flavor are the order of the day. I’m aiming for a sessionable ~5.3% hazy pale ale with lots of hop character.

The hop blend will be an old favorite of mine: amarillo, citra, and simcoe. But for something a little different, I’m going to use all cryo hops.

The solera project is about to turn one year old. Before I can package the first year’s beer, I need get year two’s refill ready to go in.

I’ll be brewing two batches to get enough volume for this year. I expect to need about six gallons to refill the barrel and the rest will age in a keg that I’ll use to keep the barrel topped up. I think I’ll get enough extra in the keg for about two years of top ups.

Last year, top ups were the most error prone and annoying part of the barrel aging process. Each time I topped up the barrel, I had to rack the top up beer into smaller and smaller vessels to avoid leaving excessive headspace. In the end I wasted a lot of the top up beer, and the top up beer that remained at the end of the year didn’t taste great.

Storing the top up beer in a keg and topping up the barrel with a picnic tap should be a much nicer way to keep the barrel full. I’ll never have to rack the top up beer around again, and it’ll always be protected from oxygen.

Happy almost winter! This batch will be an oatmeal stout to test out HBC 472 as a dark beer flavor hop.

472 is a newer hop with some pretty unusual taste descriptors: wood, coconut, vanilla.

I got to try an IPA that was dry hopped with this a little while ago. It was definitely different. I didn’t really get the wood/vanilla but there were some coconut notes. It was a bit odd in IPA form but I thought it might make a good dark beer.

Today’s brew is going to be a pale beer/wine hybrid.

In the past, my approach for combining wine and beer has been to blend finished commercial wine into my beers at a rate between one cup, and a whole bottle in five gallons of beer. Results have been good, but a bit on the subtle side. Today I want to try to make something more wine forward – a real beer/wine hybrid instead of just a beer with a little bit of wine in it.

Whole grapes would be great for this, but that’s a large and expensive purchase. I’m going to need some planning and confidence when I do finally buy a 5 gallon pail of frozen grapes.

Instead of whole grapes, for this batch I’m going to add the undiluted contents of a one gallon (~5 bottles) wine kit a few days into primary.

I love dry, rustic, funky ciders. This style is a small but growing segment of the commercial market, still quite hard for me to find reliably, and expensive when I do find it. Home brewing to the rescue! If the market isn’t producing what you want, produce it yourself.

Last year, I did a two hasty experiments into non-traditional cider fermentation. One of them is in the top three ciders I’ve ever tasted! The other is a drain pour. So it goes when you experiment sometimes.

In 2020 I’m going all in on funky cider with 4 different single-strain 100% Brett batches. That post is coming soon. For today, I wanted to share some my experiences from last year: some lessons learned, what worked and what didn’t.

Eight years ago, Adrienne and I planted hop rhizomes in the corner of her parents garden: cascade, and nugget I think. Since then they’ve been neglected, growing kind of wild. We never trellised or harvested them. I thought they might not survive like this, but they seem to be hardy plants!

This year, a deer fence went up around the garden. The hops climbed all over it and produced an unexpected bounty. With so many hops just sitting there, I decided I’d finally try making a beer with them.

Some beers can transport you to another time and place. English Bitter does that for me. I really came to appreciate the style a few years ago on a trip around England. The trip was a ton of fun, and I got to enjoy a variety of English ales in their traditional cask presentations.

Of the styles I tried, Bitter was my favorite. Like many of the traditional English ales, it is flavorful, low in alcohol, and a refreshing change of pace for a palate that’s suffering a bit of IPA fatigue.

Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting old, but in the last few years I’ve gained much more appreciation for subtle beer – “beer flavored beer”. Bitter is high in the running to be my overall favorite beer flavored beer

Many of my brewing ideas come from trying a great commercial beer and wanting to replicate its flavors at home. Today’s subject is Sapwood’s The Dragon which used a hop blend that I had never tried before: Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, and Hallertau Blanc.

Both Nelson Sauvin and Hallertau Blanc are typically described as having wine-like qualities. Nelson Sauvin in particular has a reputation for being very unique, and a bit polarizing. I thought The Dragon was delicious though, so I guess I might be a fan.

This won’t be a clone, just a recipe inspired by the hop blend from the original.

I’ve been on a bit of a saison kick lately, starting mixed fermentation batches in April and May. Those are still bulk aging with probably a few months left to go before bottling. In the meantime, I feel like experimenting with a quicker 100% Saccharomyces saison.

I’m going to try out a new (to me) yeast for this brew, Omega Saisonstein’s Monster (OLY-500). It’s a hybrid strain, bred from Belgain and French saison parents.

I came across this yeast in Union’s Tart Saison, and liked it enough that I thought it was worth a try at home.

Omega says:

“[Saisonstein] is versatile, aromatic and attenuative with a silky mouthfeel. It excels in high gravity and it ferments more reliably and thoroughly than its parents. It is spicy, complex, tart, dry and crisp with some bubblegum character present from its Belgian parent, and more fruit and fewer phenolics than its French parent.”

This test batch won’t be as tart as Union’s. Theirs was definitely soured somehow, but I couldn’t find a firm answer. This beer will use a simple recipe with just the Saisonstein’s Monster to let the yeast show what it can do.

In some unlucky timing, both DIPA variants and the last kolsch all kicked within a couple days of each other this week. An empty kegerator is a sad thing. This is going to be a quick “what do I have on hand?” recipe. Happily, what I have on hand is a buch of citra.

After having NEIPA and DIPA on my hoppy taps for the last few months, I’m in the mood for something easier drinking.

I’m aiming for a nice light pale ale in the low 4% abv, moderate bitterness, and solid hop flavor.