Category Archives: Beer Making

The art and science of brewing.

Morganna’s Mystical Merkin (M3): A Bourbon-Oaked Imperial Stout

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Today I brewed the M3. This is the sixth iteration of this one. My friend, Mike, and I brewed the original of this one back in 2018. This was on my old brew set up. His recipe was out of this world. We really enjoyed that beer … my only problem was I couldn’t find the recipe the next time I wanted to brew it! Haha.

I didn’t get around to brewing it in 2019 (I was still enjoying all the bottles from the previous batch). I used Maker’s Mark Bourbon in this first batch and all following batches. In that first one I used “small french oak” blocks I was given from a local supplier. I soaked the chips (but didn’t char them).

In 2020 and 2021, I crafted a recipe and bounced it off Mike. He said it sounded good–I used my French Oak Blocks again in 2020 but I made a mistake and bought pre-soaked (bourbon) chips for 2021. I found that I had the wrong kind of oxidation in that batch. They both were so big that they blew out the fermenter each time! I brewed these two batches on my old system. I think the 2021 batch was the last one before the new system arrived!

In 2022, I brewed it for the first time on the new system. This time, I made my own “oak staves.” I bought some American Oak, cut them to length, and then charred them on my grill. I soaked them in Maker’s Mark and then dropped them in to the secondary fermentation. I found that 3 days was just about the right length of time for that. I used those staves in 2023 and plan on using them again on this batch.

In 2022, I put 20 pounds of grain in my new brew system to make the Imperial Stout–it was too much! I was lucky to have some DME to use in the boil to boost up my gravity to make it an imperial stout. Last year and this year, I used around 18 pounds of grain (still too much) and added 3 pounds of Traditional Dark DME.

This year’s batch definitely has the viscosity appropriate for an Imperial Stout. The gravity was up around 1.095 … pretty happy all the way around.

About 3 weeks, and the sixth iteration of the Merkin will be available for all to enjoy! 🙂

Beer Mentor

La Prugna — A Lambic-style Beer with Plums

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As stated in a previous post, I started brewing a lambic-style beer in December 2021. In December 2022, my friend gave me a bag of Italian Plums from the tree in his backyard … I used a couple of gallons of my wild-fermenting lambic-style beer as a base and, bottled in March 2023, La Prugna was born! Another 6 months later (October 2024), and it was ready to drink. Here it is March 2024 and I’m down to two bottles remaining. However, no need to worry that I will run out … I’ve bottled the next batch! This batch is from the December 2022 wild-fermenting lambic-style beer. Unfortunately my friend’s plum tree didn’t produce in 2023–again, no worries–I was able to obtain some locally grown plums again!

Here’s a couple of photos of the “initial pitch” of plums … It’s sitting in my “Lambic Cellar (under the stairwell).” It looks pretty plain with some initial fermentation activity — this was from 13 Dec 2023.

In the background of the photos you can see my “wood staves” to be added to my lambic (my simulated cask staves …)

I pulled the fermenter out of my Lambic Cellar a couple of weeks ago planning on bottling it, but it kept fermenting. I felt the gravity could go a touch lower, so I left it sitting in my “brewery.”

You can see the plums are pretty “squishy” looking — I know I got full sugar conversion on them, even without cutting them up or pulping them. I didn’t pit them either — my friend thought it would help with a “tannic” characteristic.

I bottled it on 16 March 24. Ended up with close to 1.75 gallons (about 18 33cl bottles). Really like the color and the flavor of this Fruit Lambic — the brett is evident but well supported by the plum. Now to wait 90 days or so for it to carbonate …

I hope you enjoy the process discussion!

Beer Mentor

Yeast Wrangling

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One of the things I’ve tried to do in recent years is to recapture and harvest yeast from the beers I’ve been brewing. Even one pack of dried yeast is $6 bucks! If you go with some of the specialty yeasts (liquid/what not) you are looking at $12 to $15 a package. With 9 brewing sessions this year, that would add up to about $100. I’ve worked really hard on capturing and storing the yeasts I use the most often. Here’s a picture of those in my beer fridge:

You’ll see I have one vial of “Brettanomyces Bruxellensis” from White Labs. The rest of the vials are all recaptures. I’ve got WLP 550, WLP 565, Hornindal Kveik, a few misc Orval (Brett Bs). I still have some dry yeasts packets as well.

Knock on wood, so far I’ve had great luck by re-pitching a starter (2 cups water, 1/2 cup DME) about 2 to 3 days ahead of brew day. I usually check my yeast health and do some random cell counting.

If it’s a big brew, I’ll do a bigger starter. I have a couple of 1 liter, a 2 liter, and a 5 liter flask if I need them! I had built a laminar flow hood, but I “gifted” it to a local brewery while I was living in Tucson (hopefully they are still using it). I would like to do some yeast culturing, so I’m probably going to have to build a new one — I’d like to build a smaller version — I’ll just have to figure out the noise reduction/venting issues in my “brewery.”

One of my goals over the next couple of years is to try and capture a local yeast (from one of the many fruit orchards near here) and see if I can make a passable beer from all British Columbia ingredients. The Gambrinus Malt house is about an hour north of me. I can get locally grown hops — I just need the yeast! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I can capture some and it doesn’t smell like dirty socks. Stay tuned for more of this adventure!

Beer Mentor

Frosty Billy: My Aventinus Eis-bock Clone …

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My favorite German Beer is the Schneider-Weisse Aventinus (Weizen Doppelbock). It is a BIG beer and has an awesome flavor. You will see several posts here on my blog about this beer. I’ve enjoyed a tour of the brewery, attended the Aventinus Festival in Kelheim, and generally have determined that it is definitely an A++ beer.

A Weizen Bock is a strong wheat ale. Weizen in German means “Wheat.” The term Bock is more nebulous but really, in this sense, means “Strong Ale.” Another meaning for Bock is “He Goat.” That’s why on most traditional bock beers, you will find the image of a Goat (or Ram). Here are a couple of examples:

However, on Weizen Bocks, the label usually references some historical figure or religious saint … in Schneider’s instance, it is Aventinus, a (local to Kelheim, Germany) historical figure. Aventinus is actually called a Doppelbock — meaning an extremely strong (over 8% ABV) beer.

From Schneider’s Aventinus beer comes the Aventinus “Eis-bock.” An “Eis-bock” is made from “freeze distillation” — a fermenting “wort” (in this instance the Aventinus beer) is frozen and the ice is removed. In this instance, to get to 12% for Aventinus Eis-bock, they remove approximately 31.6% of the water content.

If you’ve had a Weizen beer, you recognize that the flavors/aromas are typically a sweet malt character supported with Banana esters and Clove phenols. These are yeast derived characters that support the sweet malt character and make Weizens some of the tastiest of beers (in my opinion). Making it even stronger requires great balance and skill — something Schneider demonstrates time and again. Both of these beers are the best examples (see here) and that’s why I wanted to try and clone them.

To get the big beer I wanted in my current brew setup, I had to use some dry malt extract with my other grains. I used what I called a “fake decoction” process (a step mash really) and an open fermentation to try and match the ester/phenol character in the Weizen doppelbock. I think I hit it pretty well–ending up with an 8.7% beer. Then, I tried the freeze distillation — my target was to remove about 27.5% of the ice to get to that 12% ABV level. I was not patient enough and only removed about 8% of the ice … ending up with a 9.5% ABV “Eis-bock.”

Because I didn’t have any patron saint or historical figure in mind to name my beer after, I took the traditional meaning of Bock and a winter theme and came up with “Frosty Billy.” Here are the two beers compared side-by-side.

The one on the left is my Eis-Bock — the one on the right is the Aventinus. The middle, single glass is the Aventinus … so clear! Mine is the one on the right. Both have really good flavor. I can tell the Aventinus is aged — it has a great oxidized character of plums/raisins/molasses. So good! The flavor/alcohol are balanced nicely. The flavors are there in mine — since it’s only been in the bottle for a week or so it needs time. In another couple of months, it should really be entering its prime!

I really enjoyed making this beer … I’m hoping it will be my annual February Beer. We’ll see.

Beer Mentor

Ziggy Brau: The Beers!

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My “new” brewery is now more than two years old … and I’ve been brewing away on it!

Keoni Blond from Ziggy Brau

The Brewtools B40 — their smallest (40L) integrated system — has really worked well for me. I will say that every comment I’ve seen on reviews are spot on — if you don’t know the process you are using and you don’t have a good idea why you do certain things in the process, you will be a little challenged. The only issue I’m having (currently) with my system is mash efficiency — it has been in the60 to 70 percent area … I’d like to get it up closer to 80 percent. I’m changing up my grain crush now to see how that goes. In the meantime, I’ve been using the recipe scaler on the brewfather app and it is helping me hit my targets.

My focus the last couple of years (as mentioned previously) is on German and Belgian-style beers (and a couple of miscellaneous American-styles). So far I’m having excellent success with my process, my equipment, and my ingredients—only one of my recent beers didn’t turn out the way I wanted.

Here is my current library of beers:

  1. Belgian-style Blond (second/third editions of this one!). I brewed the first iteration of this beer on the day my grandson was born! April 11, 2021. Version 2 and 3 were right around his birthday as well. [ 1a — is a Brett one off from my extra wort]
  2. (Double) American-style IPA (fourth iteration). I brewed the original version of this for my wedding and have continued to make it.
  3. Belgian-style Pale Ale. I made two of these right in a row. The first one not so great, but the second one was nice. It is coming up again on the radar!
  4. Barrel-aged Imperial Stout (Yum — 3rd iteration!). This beer has been great–I’ll do a whole post on this one later. 
  5. Belgian Lambic-style Ale. This is a continuing experiment — I just brewed the third version of it and will be making a Gueuze out of it at the end of this year! Oh, I also make a Fruited-Lambic with locally-grown plums.
  6. German-style Pilsner. This is a mid-winter beer for me to make — so it can lager into the early spring summer. This year I’ll be substituting the following beer for it instead.
  7. German Eis-bock. Another entry on this beer (quite involved). lol.
  8. Belgian/Monastic Dark Strong Ale –– also known as a Belgian Quad. This beer turned out very well (and has aged very well). 
  9. Monastic-style Dubbel and Tripel. These two were also good. The Tripel was a little under-carbonated — I put it in the cold storage too soon. Flavor was nice. Both do overs!
  10. Baltic Porter — I brewed this beer last year on my second grand-child’s birthday! Yum.
  11. Belgian-style IPA — I brewed this one to make a clone of the Poperinge Hommelbier. It’s close — I need to work on my dry hopping … flavor and color are awesome.
  12. American Brown –– I made this one and it ended up having Brett in it. Still tasted good, but want a do over as well. haha.
  13. Orval Clone — my favorite beer — my clone is so close in flavor–I’m just off on color now–next iteration should dial it in!
  14. Sahti — My experimental Finnish beer — next on tap for brewing! Stay tuned.

I enjoy the process of coming up with labels, too. Check out my collection for the current beers! No Sahti label yet …

I hope you enjoy the post!

Beermentor

My Home Brewery: Ziggy Brau!

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After 20+ years of using a hodgepodge of brewing equipment — albeit it worked (mostly) well — I decided to invest in a new “brewery” for myself this year. Actually, I had a design in place for my brewery since 2002+ … here are a few drawings I’ve done through the years representing what I wanted. The first two images were my original design … some time later I did the next two drawings. The final drawing was a recent design for my brewery based upon all Blichmann equipment. I was trying to incorporate it with my existing Blichmann equipment — that’s the reason I didn’t just go with a Breweasy system.

After doing some research and looking to see how my brewing process, plus my location, matched with an integrated brew system, I decided to go with the Brewtools B40 — their smallest (40L) integrated system. It looked like the right match for my location/process. Having cleared customs here in Canada it came nicely packaged to the house.

Brewtools B40 Pro Brewing System

My wife and I agreed that it should be set up in our basement shop — it is an electric kettle system. My major goal with this system, besides to brew great beers, was to reduce the amount of heavy lifting involved. I found lifting 40-50 lbs of near-boiling water was probably not in my best interest.

Before I could get my brewery up and running, I had to have a little work done. I had a 240V isolated circuit installed to plug into directly — 30A worked nicely — no popped fuses! Next, I searched around for a rolling table to use with it–one low enough to see into the kettle. After much searching the folks over at Okanagan Stainless were kind enough to build me a fantastic Stainless Steel table — perfect for my need! They do such awesome work!

Here’s a look at the table. You can see the swing-arm installed–I’ll show how that works in a follow-on photo.

As a side diversion (lol), I tried to 3d print a block-and-tackle pulley system to use with my swing-arm (see photo). Although it worked, I needed something a little smaller.

With my table and power ready, the final piece of the puzzle was venting the steam out of the “Brewery.” Fortunately, I had two extraneous vent pipes leading out of the house from the old furnace — I decided to attempt to use one of those in the process. I drew up my design and bought the pieces/parts to see if I could make it work.

We set up the system (here you can see the initial layout) and tried boiling some water to see if it would work — come to find out, the exhaust pipe was a cardboard tube. haha. That wasn’t going to work! So I replaced that with a standard exhaust pipe — still not a good seal — too much leaking. I needed another solution — back to the Okanagan Stainless guys! They built me a stainless steel exhaust system to use … here are a few photos of the installed product.

With everything in place, I was ready to test out the system! I ran through about 3 test batches (water only) to understand the best way to attach all the valves. I purchased a few extra valves, the steam hat, and the wort chiller to have a complete solution. Here’s how the system looks set up when I’m brewing a batch of beer …

Overall, I love my system — however, I’m having issues with my brewhouse efficiency — I’m hovering at around 60% for mash conversion — that’s after 4 full batches. Fortunately, the beers still finished in style and are tasting great, but I want an efficiency closer to 80%. Still more research to do. In one of my follow-on posts I’ll talk through my process (I just brewed a Trappist-style Dark Strong Ale) — maybe someone will have some ideas.

I already have a few “upgrades/enhancements” planned for the brewery to make it even easier and more efficient to use. Oh, here’s an updated picture of my steam exhaust … I wanted to show the finished product there as well!

Stand by for more from Ziggy Brau!

Beermentor

The Year of the Belgian-Styles

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Ok, Just in case you were wondering, I’m still around. lol. I apologize for the long time between posts — I have absolutely no excuse — however, I have still been exploring the World of Beer during this time. This year, 2021, I’ve determined to focus on Belgian-style beers, with an emphasis on two categories: a) Trappist-style, and b) Lambics.

For this post I will stick to discussing the Trappist-styles, leaving Lambics for a follow-on.

The two ways I’ve been focusing on Trappist-styles are a) drinking them (haha) and, b) brewing them. I’ve already brewed a “Single/blond,” a Dubbel, a Tripel, and will be brewing a Dark Strong Ale tomorrow.

The Single/Blond Ale was a strange brew … it was hard to characterize it … the yeast I used had been cultured from an Achouffe strain (WLP550) [of course, that’s like saying I came from Europe even though my family has been in the USA since the 1700s] — so not a Trappist yeast. Originally, I wanted to clone the Poperinge Hommelbier … I put together my recipe and brewed it up — it is (characteristically) like the Trappist Single but the ABV is too high for that style … but too low for the Strong Ale category … Oh well! It tastes great. I love that yeast! I brewed it on the day my Grandson was born — so I named it after him (Keoni Blond) …

Before I brewed that one, I brewed “Sainte Dubbel” … this was my attempt at a Westmalle-clone. I used the WLP 530 yeast … definitely the right strain. I did have an uncontrolled temperature spike the first night, but everything came back under control … the flavor is very similar to the Westmalle Dubbel … however, it lacks that subtle oxidation character … it needs a little more time in the bottle, I think.

The next beer I brewed was the Drei Punkte … my Trappist Tripel … I went for another Westmalle-clone … maybe leaning a little towards the Chimay. I’m still trying to dial in my new brewing system … more about that in another post … so I didn’t hit my targets, but this is a nice Tripel. I used the WLP 550 yeast (I captured some from the Blond-brew). It is a very nice yeast … great flavor profile in both of these beers.

A couple of bottles seem low in carbonation, but the rest are a nice, big thick head. This is obviously a low carbonation one … haha.

Besides brewing these Trappist-styles, I’ve been able to find bottles from Chimay, Westmalle, Rochefort, and Orval. Also, the St Bernardus Abt 12 and few other Abbey beers. As my beers mature, I’ve been doing some side-by-side comparisons. Additionally, I’ve captured the dregs from a few Orval bottles (my favorite beer). I’m using these in two different ways. First, I captured some of the wort from the Keoni Blond and pitched the Orval yeast into secondary … definitely getting that Brett character … needs to mature a little more, but a really tasty beer. Also, my next beer (after my Quadrupel) will be my attempt at an Orval clone (hence the Label for “Liquid Valor.”) I haven’t designed my Quad label yet.

Here’s a shout out to Stan Hieronymous — his book “brew like a MONK” is a great reference guide when I’m trying to build my recipes, choose yeast, additional ingredients and what processes to follow. Thanks, Stan!

Enjoy!

Beer Mentor

Brazil Microbrewery: Hop n’ Roll!

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I visited Curitiba, Brazil (a city of 5 million) last week and my girlfriend and my new friends took me to a Cervejaria … Hop n’ Roll!

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Who knew Brazil was starting to brew beers other than Lagers?? Actually, Brazil is the fourth largest producer of beer (recently surpassing Germany in production).  Apparently there are microbreweries in all of the large cities … some notable ones are Cervejaria Colorado and Choperia Baden Baden.  

This was a very cool place — great layout and decor … check the photos here.  They had an outdoor beer garden and a nice indoor pub.  They had parking in the rear … no problem.

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Great artwork.  Below pictures show the chalk board with the available beers.  You could get local craft beer, American microbrews, and several Belgian options to include Trappists.  Really a nice selection of beer!

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Not only could you drink there, you could also brew!  They had a brew your own set up … it takes about 4 hours — if we had more time I was going to brew a batch for my friend to drink later.  Here’s a few photos of the setup …

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I can’t say enough about how nice the folks were — great location.  The food was good too.  They had an interesting way of tracking your consumption (thank goodness for my Portuguese dictionary … haha).  Here I am paying the tab … inexpensive too … $58 for all of us to have a bite and drink a few beers.  Very nice.  If you are in the area, stop in for a brew!

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Enjoy!

Beer Mentor