|BACKGROUND|

To be fair, I’m actually still relatively green in the sour making game, despite my proclivity towards drinking them.

I’ve done a little bit of secondary fermentation with Brett, namely on a golden raspberry saison and a failed attempt at a tropical wild wheat (the Brett got oxidized during a transfer to secondary). Worth noting, that beer was really my only “failure” during my experiences as a homebrewer thus far. It was not a complete failure, as I achieved my goal, but sweaty meat Brett flavors left the beer essentially undrinkable unless you blended it into something else.

So, this foray into the world of 100% Brett beers was going to be a fun one.

The main reason for the season on this one was that I had chewed through all of my yeasts from last season’s Bootleg Biology’s release of the critters except for my satchel of Funk Weapon #2. That, and I had a good 14 oz. or so of Cashmere hops left over from brewing the Sour As A Weapon a few months ago too. Necessity is the mother of invention, yeah?

The beer ended up being a marrying of the two worlds: it riffs off of my traditional IPA base and it also ends up pulling a little from my sour/wild production that I’m hitting a nice stride in.

Them Digits

Batch Size: 5.5 gallons

Mash Temp: 150F for 60 min.

Boil Time: 60 min.

Batch Efficiency: 72%

Original Gravity: 1.052 // 13.3 P

Final Gravity: 1.010 // 2.6 P (“finished fermentation”)

Estimated ABV: 6.3%

IBUs: 76

SRM: 8 EBC // 4.1 SRM

Recipe

Malts

7# Fawcett Pearl| 63.5%

2# White Wheat | 18.5%

1# CaraPils | 9%

1# Flaked Oats | 9%

Hops

1 oz. Cashmere @ 20 min.

2 oz. Cashmere @ 15 min.

1 oz. Ron Mexico (HBC438) @ 10 min.

1 oz. El Dorado @ 10 min.

1 oz. Cashmere @ 0 min.

1 oz. El Dorado @ 0 min

1 oz. Cashmere @ hopsteep (170F for 15 min)

1 oz. Ron Mexico (HBC438) @ hopsteep (170F for 15 min)

2 oz. El Dorado @ hopsteep (170F for 15 min)

2 oz. Cashmere @ dryhop (split for two rounds, 1 oz/session, 3-day contact)

2 oz. Ron Mexico (HBC438) @ dryhop (split for two rounds, 1 oz/session, 3-day contact)

2 oz. El Dorado @ dryhop (split for two rounds, 1 oz/session, 3-day contact)

Yeast

Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #2 – Fermented at 74/75F

Spices and Stuff

~3.5# Fresh Kiwi Puree

7 Gin-infused Oak Staves

2 Tbsp CaCl (so… like 20g -_-“)

2 mg Lactic acid (88%) added in mash water

|BREW LOG|

Coming in hot on the heels of brewing Steam Machine, it wasn’t too bad of a rush with this. I had the grains milled and ready to go, but the kiwi was the first step of the process that I had actually done for the beer.

Fun fact: eating one or two kiwis is fun and simply. taking 4 pounds of kiwis and skinning them is kinda shitty work, no matter how much of a pro you are with using a spoon. I’d say it took a good 15 minutes of work to get them completely skinned, and tossed into a blender. I got a little excited, at that point, seeing that I now had a pitcher full of green smoothie. A local brewery (and personal friends) had just recently done a kiwi gose that had dubbed “Green Meanie” and that shit was fucking green (not to shit on your dreams, but I also had the magic ruined for me by the assistant brewer telling me they also used a little matcha tea to get it that green too). I was hopeful. I mean, I wasn’t thinking Ectocooler Hi-C fluorescent green, but I was hype to get a little color (spoiler: didn’t). Oddly, the color shifted slightly after I pasteurized it on the stove, from a bright vibrant green to a darker, dank weed green. It also got a little less tart and a little more sweet. Still delicious af though.

I’m not entirely sure why I pasteurized the fruit, because I was already making a wild beer, not anything clean, but… I did. I just took the puree and heated it up to over 185F, threw a lid on it, and let it sit at the temp for 20 minutes. Then I put it in the fridge to cool. Part one, finished.

Then next step was actually starting the brew. Under the sweltering Summer sun, beating down on my like a red-headed stepchild, I overheated my mash water. Second time that day. By this point, despite my chugging copious amount of water, I could tell I was dehydrated, as I had started to sweat less than a gallon a minute and it felt like Athena was going to burst out of my goddamn skull. Yet I persisted. I mashed around the same temp as I typically do for my IPAs because it was a Brett IPA, which to me said the Brett is going to eat everything, so why try to get a little bit of proteins out of this for some mouthfeel at the end. 150F it is. Came in almost a degree high. In my piss-poor mood, I called it close enough.

It’s also a fun point to note that I misread my shitty, chicken scratch handwriting in my journal about how much CaCl to add to the water. For some reason, in my delerious state, I said that “2 Tbsp sounds about right”, not bothering to actually check and see that I had written tsp next to that number. So… yeah, I put 2 mg of Lactic acid and about 3/4 oz. of CalCl into the 4 gallons of mash water. Gonna see if that comes back to bit me in the ass. Consellation was that if almost 2 ounces of pickling lime in the Belgian-Style Imperial Graff didn’t fuck up everything, then I’m probably okay. It’s NE-Style IPA anyways, so fuck it.

As has become the custom since I got shiny the shiny new toy a few months ago, pH check after 15 minutes, combined with slamming 4 ibuprofen. Came out on the money, so that was at least one point for the day that I couldn’t actually complain about.

While the pH meter was settling, I finished organizing the hops that would go in the boil as well as pulled out the packet of yeast to let it warm up slightly to room temp (ha, more like 80F that day in the house) and I started to clean up after the double brewday.

After a 60 minutes mash and vorlauf cycle, I collected about 7.5 gallons of wort in the kettle and began heating.

Considering that there were no bittering charges, as everything was going to be hop-bursting at the end, I organized all the additions in nice little glasses and marked them, as to not mix them up (knowing that I probably would, given the tone of the afternoon). All 11 oz.

The boil went off without a hitch, but I did almost fill my hop spider entirely. No whirlfloc was added to the boil since I was shooting for a super haze juice monster in this batch. Once the boil was completed, I dropped the temp to about 175F with my immersion chiller and placed the last 4 ounces of hops into a sanitized painter’s bag for the 15 minutes steep. At this point, the sun had begun to set. The beer was still pale in color, but it had already started to take on a slightly hazy, green color from all the hops that have been stuffed into it. While the wort was steeping, I poured the kiwi puree into the carboy so it would be ready to rack onto after the steep and chill.

After 15 minutes has elapsed, I restarted the pump, removed the bag, and continued my cold crash. The aroma of the beer was absolutely insane – it was pretty much just dank fruit juice. Knowing that I was going to be racking onto the puree, which was still about 85F, I chilled the beer down to about 64F to try and combat a little of the heat and get closer to the 70F ideal I wanted to start fermenting at before ramping up to 76F. After all the wort had been collected, I pitched the Brett and set up the temp probe/heat wrap combo, which indicated that I was already at 75F. So, shit out of luck, but still okay. My tank of fucks was beyond empty for the day, and there was little I could do at this point to really affect the outcome.

Having never done a 100% Brett fermentation, there were a few things that I had… neglected? Not researched thoroughly enough? Whatever the term is, there most certainly naivete involved. 3 days in, there were no active signs of fermentation and no visible krausen (which I had read was supposed to happen). But, I reassured myself it was going to be okay. The pack said that it was a cell count high enough to pitch into 5 gallons and almost every forum post or blog I read (which was mainly a lot of Mad Fermentationist) noted that Brett is a notoriously slow starter, but was advised that I should have made a starter. Well, fuck. Finally, on day 4, I got an update that there was, in fact, the 1/2″ head of krausen that I was told would happen. Success.

However, after the krausen faded 2 days later, the gravity was checked. Clocked in at 1.010. Little higher than I expected, but also not outside the realm of reason. I Figured that dryhopping my be a slight risk for oxidized Brett, but also might end up helping kickstart a little more fermentation, as well as capitalizing on some possible mid-fermentation hop biotransformation shit that every freaks out about with the haze monster IPAs. At this point, we were coming up on the planned bottling day, so along side the first 3 oz. of dryhops that went in (sanitized painter’s bag again, plus some marbles to weigh it down), the gin-soaked oak chips I made during the first brew of the double brewday also went in, but just loose as to not pull them out after with the hops. After 3 days, the first bag of dryhops were pulled and the second bag went in for another three days.

Bottling day came soon after. I was a little giddy and a little nervous, as I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. After checking the gravity, my dad had tasted both the beers, noting that he liked the Steam Beer, but said the IPA was “interesting” and that he “didn’t get much kiwi or hops,” noting that it tasted “earthy and malty”. I love my dad, and he likes homebrewing and craft beer, but his beer vocabulary, despite being a teacher, is a little stunted. Needless to say, that sounded nothing like it should have and I had no idea what to expect.

I was slightly shocked at bottling that an additional week for the IPA had barely shaved any points off the gravity. The beer clocked in at 1.008 (which including the fermentables from all the kiwi landed me about 6.3% ABV), which I was leery about bottling. I had read an interview with Gabe Fletcher (Anchorage Brewing Co.) and he talked explicitly about bottling with Brett and gravities. He said that if you were priming, he wouldn’t bottle anything over 1ºP (1.004). The number he throws out is it only takes about 0.5 degrees Plato of sugar to carbonate to 2.5 volumes of CO2. The beer I was bottling was going to be at 2.1ºP – a potential recipe for disaster. I’m willing to put some faith in Gabe’s numbers, since he is wholly more qualified than I am, but it also sounds really high for those numbers.

However, there are two saving graces. First, I had low-balled what I wanted for the CO2 vol for the IPA – I had made a simple syrup solution for about 2.2 vol of CO2 with a 1/2 cup (3.5 oz) of sugar. Second, I had under estimated my yield on this batch. I had assumed that with the puree, the double dryhopping, and what looked like a lower yield in the fermenter, that I was maybe going to get 4.5 gallons if I was lucky. I got a full 5 gallons of hop nectar, by the grace of god. So, combining the slightly higher final volume with underpriming with sugar, it looks like I have eked by without creating a complete batch of bottle bombs. On the other hand, it is an IPA. I would hope that anyone I share with isn’t going to try and age this beer for long enough to get to the point where it could be an issue. Regardless, I bottled, labeled, and waxed, because I’m an over achiever and I like using my art degree.

So… I don’t know why the Brett stalled, but hopefully it will not come back to bite me in the ass. Under pitching? Maybe. Some weird strain that has a low alcohol tolerance or some other weird issue? All I know is that I hope to fuck that nothing explodes during bottle conditioning.

Tasting Notes

Well, once again, I succeeded on the haze front. It’s definitely a NEIPA. Super juicy and tropical. MGF has a crackly white head that fades slightly fast, but laces on the way down the glass. It smells like hoppy multi-vitamin juice (which I’ve only ever had in Germany and that shit is bananas – it’s almost the only non-alcoholic drink I pounded when I was there). Super citrus and tropical with hints of berry.

The mouthfeel is well-rounded, but not chewy (like a good stout), despite being on the mildly drier side of things. Also, despite my mathematical illiteracy, it’s definitely not chalky either. Mid-to-low carb, but that is definitely going to change with a little more time in the bottle as well.

Originally, it had a slightly raw taste, which I think had to do with the fact that I added another shot of the oak gin into it at bottling to amp up that flavor a little more. It ended up being a little more oaky-vanilla than sprucey-juniper. I should have thrown some juniper berries in with the oak while it was soaking to help drive the gin-y qualities.

The Brett sure did work though. The beer is pretty dry, which is to be expected. Funk Weapon #2 also provided a nice level of tartness as well, with some fruit tones that end up highlighting the hops too.

The kiwi though… had I done a bit more research, it would have been nice to know that the kiwi itself would blend into the hops. Then again, kiwi doesn’t exactly exude a particularly strong flavor by itself. Still tasty as fuck, but it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly what flavor it contributes in the mix.

Real light bitterness, though. This is a hazy, juicy, funky bomb. If there wasn’t Brett in this, it’d be that stereotypical OH/Treehouse/Trillium wheelhouse kinda shit.

Things I might consider doing differently? I think pasteurizing the kiwi on the stove helped keep the beer “clean”, which doesn’t really matter that much in this scenario, but it also broke down some of the tartness of the kiwi. I think that the fresh kiwi may have had a slightly more prominent flavor.

Also, I might have held back on adding the extra shot of gin/oak “extract”. I think this has imparted a little odd flavor to me. I keep picking up something on the middle/back palate that hits me as “off”, but not un-enjoyable, just unintended.

Also, I’m not as worried about the “bottle bomb” aspect as I was when I wrote the first part of the post. I talked with another brewer friend of mine and he felt that Gabe was full of shit and that the Brett was not likely to produce that much CO2. So, now I’ve got some conflicting ideas, but hey! IPAs are meant to be drank fresh, so to hell with it.

At the end of the day – I live for the funk, I die for the funk. Machine Gun Funk.