Ask Me Anything about Beer

In reply to ultraclyde :

Doing a run across state lines to stock up on things that aren't available local is a different animal, and totally cool. I've done that with liquor.

I'm more referring to the ultra-hyped whales that people on forums get worked up over.

I like dark beer, but most have become so heavily roasted they just taste like coffee. I hate coffee. Guinness has escaped this and is my favorite "mass produced" beer. 

The whole thing has driven me to mid-range IPAs. Any thoughts?

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

Black Butte Porter, if you can find it (it's by Deschutes). Great beer.

Murphy's is better than Guinness.

I have no idea what's available in your area.

Black Butte Porter is great! I'm actually drinking one right now

In reply to Beer Baron :

looks like its available. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

Try some Scottish ales too if you can find them. They're not super dark, and way closer than a pale ale to the flavors you're looking for. 

Beer Baron said:

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Newcastle is no longer imported from England. Instead, it's now brewed in California and seems to taste completely different from the old stuff that came in the clear bottles. Is this just a side effect of the venue change or might there have been some tweeks to the formula?

Are brown ales difficult to brew, or just not big sellers? There aren't that many good ones out there.

Just not big sellers.

I'd have to drink a new Newky to say for certain, but probably a bit of all of the above. Probably different equipment, different brewers, and sourcing different ingredients that are easier to get. Probably also that they aren't shipping it across the ocean.

If they got rid of the clear bottles, they're using completely different hop products for certain.

My nephew who home brews (very good stuff even if it's not whiskey) only uses dark bottles.  Your answer above implies that hops makes a difference in light affecting the beer.  Can you expand?  Also is it ok to store whiskey in clear bottles since no hops?

Black Butte porter *is* good. I prefer the Green Man porter to it. About half of that is taste preference and the other half is wanting to support an NC brewery when I can. 

Stampie said:

My nephew who home brews (very good stuff even if it's not whiskey) only uses dark bottles.  Your answer above implies that hops makes a difference in light affecting the beer.  Can you expand?  Also is it ok to store whiskey in clear bottles since no hops?

UV light interacts with hops. (Pretty certain the bittering substances therein.) It causes beer to become "light struck" or "skunky" fairly quickly. Like, I can drink a pilsner in the sun and taste it happening in about 10 minutes. When drinking outside, I do my best to keep my beers out of direct sunlight.

Brown glass absorbs a fair amount of UV light and slows this. It certainly does not STOP it.

Bottle shops will use windows tinted especially to absorb all the UV light to prevent beer spoilage.

Beers like Corona that are sold in clear glass bottles use light-stabilized hop products to prevent going skunky.

Whisk(e)y is totally fine in clear glass. You still don't want to store it for an extended period in the sunlight, but I'm pretty sure that's more a heat thing than a UV thing. That's a long-term concern for storing whiskey, not short term. You can have a bottle out in the sun for hours at a party, where a beer will go bad in a measure of minutes.

I got a sixer of these for my birthday this weekend and immediately thought of Beer Baron's hazy trend hate, haha. Seems like Double Mountain gets it too.

Also, this beer is quite good. 

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

Just based on that label - 5.6%, 25ibu, and "JUICY"... this sounds like the kind of IPA I actually like.

Our flagship IPA was originally 5.7%, but we kept getting pushback on being <6%, so I adjusted the recipe up.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Hopefully they export out your way, it's quite tasty. Didn't even get bitter as it warmed up. 

I need to preface this with I have strange thoughts and thought trains.  I was watching this video:

So first what are your thoughts on this Angel yeast?  I assume it has Alpha and Beta enzyme in it but the temps it's converting don't come close to the temps the logical side of my brain says are needed. 

My second thought is would this work on Oats?  Let's just say that I'm asking for a friend of mine that ruined a good pot trying to make unaged Oak whiskey.  This method seems like it could work.

Stampie said:

So first what are your thoughts on this Angel yeast?  I assume it has Alpha and Beta enzyme in it but the temps it's converting don't come close to the temps the logical side of my brain says are needed. 

My second thought is would this work on Oats?  Let's just say that I'm asking for a friend of mine that ruined a good pot trying to make unaged Oak whiskey.  This method seems like it could work.

Before even watching the video my first thought is, "They're skipping the standard mash process and going to rely on enzymes in the mix instead of the grain. Not sure if you'd need an amylase or not. Probably going to want some sort of Glucosidase."

Okay... umm... you're just going to have to put up with some scientific terms. I could explain these in laymans terms, but it would make this a LOT longer.

Shot at 1:18 shows the ingredients. Sure enough, it's alpha-amylase and glucoamylase. So, I was right about the glucosidase, but that makes tons of sense with alpha-amylase. Sooooo... science time. Go look up an amylopectin molecule. That's the primary starch in malt, and I think in many other grains. Similar enough to get the idea. What those enzymes are going to do is, the a-amyl will make a bunch of random cuts to chop up those large starch chains. That glucoamyl is going to then go to town on what's left. Unlike beta-amyl, it's going to take apart even the limit dextrins and break everything down into strait glucose.

So yeah. This makes perfect sense. 0.2% - 0.6% is a LOT. Like, if that were just grist weight, it would be nearly double our pitching rates on a lager yeast. But I suspect that includes water weight, too. So... around 5-8 times our normal pitching rates? That is relying on the enzymes in there to do all the work.

So you wouldn't even need to really bother with a mash. You'll want to grind and cook the grains like he does, but that's just to hydrate and gelatinize your starches so the enzymes can get to them. You're not worried about normal optimum mash temps since you're just dumping in a bunch of strait enzyme instead of trying to activate what's in your grain.

This would almost certainly work with effectively any starch grain. Same process no matter what. If you use flaked oats, you wouldn't need to mill.

Yeah. It's weird because distilling is dirty. This is what you can do when you use a bunch of added enzymes.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Thank you and that makes sense.  I actually thought if I got some of that yeast I'd get a friend that's fluent in Chinese to translate the original instructions for me.

So, a beer I love (North Sky, by Allagash) says it's "Belgian inspired" and has the following details:

BEER DETAILS

Grains: Allagash 2-Row Malted Barley Blend, Local Pale Malt, Local Oats, Torrified Wheat, Chocolate Malt, Roasted Barley, Midnight Wheat

Hops: Northern Brewer, Cascade

Yeast: House

Ideal Within: One Year

Suggested Pour Size: 16 oz. Chalice

Package Size: 16 fl. oz. Cans, 15.5 gal. Kegs, 5.17 gal. Kegs

ABV: 7.5%

It's silky smooth and malty. Is the wheat smoothing it out? Do you think their "house" yeast is a Belgian strain? I'd love to be able to homebrew something like this.

Not a beer question, but why did my wash turn to slime?

(10gal sugar wash with a few liters of apple juice for nutrients.  Yeast was generic hungarian white wine yeast that they sell in the garden stores)

I ran it through the still just for giggles, but it just turned to foam (as i predicted it would)

This is a regular recipe of mine and it's the first time i've had it turn to slime.  We did have a couple cold snaps though, and the demijohn was in the shed (uninsulated).  Maybe that had something to do with it?

Interesting stuff

Brett_Murphy said:

It's silky smooth and malty. Is the wheat smoothing it out? Do you think their "house" yeast is a Belgian strain? I'd love to be able to homebrew something like this.

Yep. Wheat and oats. Wheat and oats are high in protein and lend a silky texture to beer. Allagash generally does Belgian style beers, and their house yeast would be some Belgian strain.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

Not a beer question, but why did my wash turn to slime?

Too many possible variables for me to say for certain. Slime would imply some sort of bacteria. I want to say pediococcus are fairly common and known to produce sort of ropey strands. Any number of places that bacteria could have come from.

So what makes a "white stout"? I mean......it looks like a standard pilsner so the name is obvious, but what else?

I got a lot of random beers, including the new Raspberry Black Butte Porter so there will be more questions later lol

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

So what makes a "white stout"? I mean......it looks like a standard pilsner so the name is obvious, but what else?

I hate the "White/Blond Stout" thing. So stupid.

It's just a blonde ale or other light colored beer with coffee in it. The roasty character from the coffee is why people call it a "stout", but that's not a stout.

Beer Baron said:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

So what makes a "white stout"? I mean......it looks like a standard pilsner so the name is obvious, but what else?

I hate the "White/Blond Stout" thing. So stupid.

It's just a blonde ale or other light colored beer with coffee in it. The roasty character from the coffee is why people call it a "stout", but that's not a stout.

That makes sense and why it didn't really taste like a stout

The brewery has started a weekly livestream. 5:00 - 6:30pm eastern time. I'm on at least once a month. This week we're talking about beer and music, probably beer pairing in general.

So if anyone has questions they'd like to pose for me to talk about, let me know.

If you want to tune in, here's the linky: https://youtu.be/orPhE2Gl-do
And the FB event: https://fb.me/e/1pjIQhEUX

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions and for putting stuff like this out there for the world at large, Beer Baron. 

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

I'll chime in and say if you can find Breckenridge Vanilla porter, it has a touch of that vanilla that you get from Creme Brule' (which has one of the best noses on a beer I've ever had). It's not going to be as big and heavy as the Southern Tier one however.

I have also gotten the same sort of flavors from local places that do bourbon barrel imperial or double stouts.  That said, I live in Seattle and we have an enormous number of locals, it's a good place to be for beer.

Also, I homebrewed for almost 15 years, won some awards, locally and nationally, and am a recovering beer collector. Still have lots of beer in the basement, but I don't seek it out like I used to.

Agree on the biggest thing that made my homebrew better, it was controlling the fermentation temps.  I used a chest freezer with a temp controller, about 200$ to make it happen (chest freezer was 150,m controller was 50). Immediately made a big difference.