It was mentioned on BSJ last month that Stone Brewing, Bear Republic & Fat Head’s Brewing were collaborating. The result of that pre-Christmas collaboration is TBA the newest collaboration to roll out of Stone. TBA follows More Brown Than Black IPA, Continue Reading →
Bottleworks is a specialty beer store based in Seattle, Washington. They have close to 1,000 bottles, growlers, and cellared beers, even chocolate. This year they celebrate their 13th Anniversary. Each year they do a special collaboration with a Continue Reading →
Stone Brewing has had a big 2011. 16 new beers, $250,000 raised for charity. Announcements of expansion, new retail, farm, restaurants, even a hotel location. Soon the brewery will announce a European brewery location. Yes, Stone has had a huge Continue Reading →
Just a quick note on Stone Brewing’s next collaboration. Today they release More Brown Than Black IPA. The next collaboration begins today – another IPA, brewed with Bear Republic & Fat Head’s Brewing.
Stone, Ninkasi, and The Alchemist have collaborated on a new brew benefitting the Vermont victims of Irene. The floodwaters of Irene completely destroyed the The Alchemist in Waterbury, Vermont.
IPA, in American Craft Brew lexicon, has come to mean Continue Reading →
Have you had the chance to try Stone’s new Vertical Epic 11.11.11? It’s a Belgian strong pale ale brewed with Anaheim chilies and cinnamon. Those home brewers wanting to re-create the recipe, now you can- courtesy of Stone.
It was mentioned on BSJ last month that Stone Brewing, Bear Republic & Fat Head’s Brewing were collaborating. The result of that pre-Christmas collaboration is TBA the newest collaboration to roll out of Stone. TBA follows More Brown Than Black IPA, brewed with The Alchemist in Vermont, benefitting Hurricane victims.
Nothing say Christmas like hanging out with good friends and brewing up something special. Thanks to Matt Cole from Fat Heads and Richard (Ricardo) Norgrove from Bear Republic for braving pre-holiday travel to come to Stone then week before Christmas holiday and brew this “sort of” old-school American (or Texas) brown ale. The recipe we came up with has a host of specialty malts, molasses, brown sugar, Columbus, Bravo, Brewers’ Gold, and for the first time at Stone, Cascade Hops! We’re hoping our brew brings back fond memories of the earliest classic craft brews. Enjoy your trip down memory lane!
Style: American Brown Ale Adjuncts: Brown Sugar, Molasses
Bottleworks is a specialty beer store based in Seattle, Washington. They have close to 1,000 bottles, growlers, and cellared beers, even chocolate. This year they celebrate their 13th Anniversary. Each year they do a special collaboration with a west coast brewery – last years being XII from The Bruery. This year’s Imagination Series beer is on from Stone Brewing – 13th Anniversary Ale.
13th boasts 13 hop additions, and 13 malt additions. Strong Ale anyone?
When it came time to brew Bottleworks’ 13th anniversary beer, we turned to Stoen to brew this behemoth. “The Matts” travelled down to San Diego in December to help create this 13-hop, 13-grain monument to our 13 years of selling great craft beer!
Style:American Strong Ale (or barleywine) Hops: Bravo, Target, Columbus, Cascade, Delta, Warrior, Magnum, Apollo, Calypso, Perle, Galena, Chinook, Mt. Hood Malts: Pale 2-Row, White Wheat, Aromatic, Weyermann Chocolate Rye, Light Munich, Brown Crisp, Oats, Crisp Light Crystal, Caramunich, Baird’s Chocolate, Lightly Peated, Simpsons Dark Crystal, Crisp Amber
Availability: 22oz bombers. Sales limited to Bottleworks. Seattle, Washington Arrival: TBA
Stone Brewing has had a big 2011. 16 new beers, $250,000 raised for charity. Announcements of expansion, new retail, farm, restaurants, even a hotel location. Soon the brewery will announce a European brewery location. Yes, Stone has had a huge year. Need a reminder? Check this Stone – Year In Review.
Stone/Ninkasi/Alchemist More Brown Than Black For Vermont
Stone, Ninkasi, and The Alchemist have collaborated on a new brew benefitting the Vermont victims of Irene. The floodwaters of Irene completely destroyed the The Alchemist in Waterbury, Vermont.
IPA, in American Craft Brew lexicon, has come to mean so much more than a hoppy British style ale designed for export. Brewing an IPA is an opportunity for today’s craft brewers to showcase the magnificence and versatility of the hop, and to explore the wonderful aromas and flavors that the myriad of hop varieties can provide to ales. It is without a doubt, the most exciting ale style for me to brew.
I am thrilled to brew this brown (not quite black) IPA with John Kimmich and Jamie Floyd. John is a New England brewing legend, and one of the very first brewers of the Black IPA (a style have come to love here at Stone) at the Vermont Pub and Brewery, and now at the Alchemist. And Jamie’s Oregon roots are no less impressive; his hop forward offerings at Ninkasi have been favorite of ours for a long time. The fact that the proceeds of this collaboration are going to help Vermont victims of Hurricane Irene (like John himself) is icing on the cake.
For this ale, we used only newer hop varieties. They were hard to get but totally worth the effort: Nelson Sauvin and Delta for flavor, and a dry-hop with Galaxy and Citra. Have fun tasting and enjoying these wonderful, fruity, herbal and spicy hop flavors!
Style: Black IPA Hops: Citra, Galaxy, Nelson Sauvin, Delta
Have you had the chance to try Stone’s new Vertical Epic 11.11.11? It’s a Belgian strong pale ale brewed with Anaheim chilies and cinnamon. Those home brewers wanting to re-create the recipe, now you can- courtesy of Stone.
We started off developing this beer by brewing a pilot size amber Belgian style ale using a nice variety of German and Belgian amber malts. It was a good start, a very nice beer, but was just missing that special something, that “twist” we like to have in the Stone Vertical Epic Ales. Then, one day last spring, I was in the Temecula Spice Shop in Old Town Temecula, just browsing around. I always like to look for interesting spices and teas and such, and I was looking at some chilies to possibly use for brewing…or to make a great chili for our annual Superbowl Chili Cookoff. The woman in the store told me that she had only one more bag of this wonderful Hatch Green Chili left, and she raved about the flavors from these chilies from New Mexico.
So I bought that last bag, and rather than cook with it, I decided we should try it in a pilot brew. As much as I love chilies, I’m not very well schooled in the different varieties, so I did a little research on the Hatch Chili, and was impressed by their reputation, and the idea of getting great, intense and unique chili flavor without a lot of heat. We also added a touch of cinnamon to that pilot brew, giving it a bit of a Mexican flair, and found the flavors worked amazingly well together, better than I had hoped for!
So here is the homebrew recipe. It’s a pretty basic brew in a lot of ways, so have fun with it. It’s 100% malt this year, no Belgian Syrup or Candi Sugar, so the beer ends up being a little fuller bodied than in the past few years. And as always, we suggest some musical selections that we think will pair well with each brewing step along the way.
Here is the grain bill:
Pale Malt 80.25%
Light Munich Malt 9.10%
Special B Malt 5.6%
CaraBohemian Malt 4%
Crystal 75-80°L 1.05%
As always, I am only providing the all grain version of the recipe, and just percentages, so you can figure out the weights based on the size of your brewing system and your normal efficiencies.
Target OG: 20.5°P (1.082 SG.)
OK, 11.11.11 is a Spinal Tap kind of day, so let’s start things off with the classic “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” which should get all of us in the mood for an Epic Brew Day!
Mashing:
Use a 30 minute conversion rest at 150°F. This is a moderately low conversion temperature for a relatively short time that should provide a nice balance of malt dextrins in the finished beer. If you are keeping up with these recipes, this particular mash scheme was designed to make a bit maltier, fuller beer than what we’ve done the past few years. If you can, raise your mash temperature up to 165°F after conversion rest to stop the enzymatic conversion of starches to sugars before lautering.
Lautering:
Recirculate your wort gently from the bottom over the top of the mash to deposit the fine particles of malt on the top of the grain and to “set” your bed. Avoid splashing the wort. Recirculate for 5-15 minutes, depending on your system, before diverting wort flow to your kettle/boiling vessel. You should remove almost all the malt particles from the wort flow, but some haze is ok.
Start sparging in the lauter when the wort level is about ½” above the grain bed. Starting earlier will decrease your efficiency, because the water will dilute your first wort. Sparge water should be between 165°F and 170°F to maximize extraction, but avoid going over 170°F or you’ll extract harsh compounds from the malt husks.
Fun trivia: Did you know the technique of sparging was invented by Scottish brewers in the 1700s? Up until that point, brewers would mash in, and then draw off all the liquid, and then add more water and mash again, repeating the process 3-4 times to obtain separate worts with decreasing gravities that were used for separate beers. Sparging as a standard brewing practice became common in the mid 1800s.
Sparge until you hit your target boil volume or until your wort gravity being drawn-off reaches 3°P (1.012 SG), whichever comes first. Don’t lauter past 3°P, because when the sparged wort coming off the lauter is that low in sugar content, you risk extracting tannins and other harsh character from the malt husks.
Be careful not to rush the mashing and lautering step, or your brewing efficiency will go down. These steps should be done gently, with care. A good music selection will assist in keeping things relaxed and gentle during lautering. Don’t go too mellow, just enough to keep you focused on the task at hand and inspired. Therefore, I suggest Spinal Tap’s “Hell Hole” or “Rock and Roll Creation” to keep things relaxed and focused.
Boil:
Here is the hop bill:
2.9 grams per gallon Warrior hop pellets (15% AA)
2.9 grams per gallon Perle hop pellets (10% AA)
All added at the start of boil. There are no other hop additions during the boil. This should get you about 65 IBU’s. Boil for 90 minutes.
You do know that hops are the flowers produced by female hop vines, right? Therefore, a perfect song choice when adding hop flowers to the boil is “Listen To What The Flower People Said” by Spinal Tap.
Always be safety minded, and beware of spontaneous combustion during flameout…
Whirlpool
Hop and Spice additions, to be added at the start of the whirlpool process:
2.9 grams per gallon New Zealand Pacific Jade hop pellets
1.4 grams per gallon U.K. Target hop pellets
1.4 grams per gallon New Mexico Hatch mild green chilies (dried and crushed)
1.4 grams per gallon crushed cinnamon stick
Pacific Jade is a newer hop variety from New Zealand, we first used it in the Stone 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA (How much more black could that beer be? The answer is none. None more black.) We just love the pineapple, citrusy, and spicy herbal flavors it contributes. UK Target is a high alpha English hop that provides both a characteristic English earthy hop character and hints of Orange Marmalade and Tangerine. We used this hop in our Stone 14th Anniversary Emperial IPA.
The dried crushed chilies we got from Biad Chile in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We went with the mild version, not hot, because we really wanted the wonderful flavor without a lot of heat. The varieties are a blend of NM 6-4, AZ-20 and AZ-19, and are referred to as “Anaheim type” chilies, even though they come from New Mexico. So if you can’t find New Mexico mild green chilies, perhaps dried and crushed Anaheim chilies would be an acceptable substitute.
The chilies and cinnamon stick we put in a mesh bag and hung in the whirlpool. The addition rate is fairly low. To paraphrase our lab tech Rick Blankemeier, we didn’t want to brew a chili beer, we wanted to brew a great beer with chilies. The low addition rate allows all the other ingredients to blend in. You can taste the chilies, but this is far from a one-dimensional beer. Be sure to bust up the cinnamon stick into small pieces to maximize flavor extraction.
The whirlpool step is where you separate out your proteinaceous trub. This is called, in brewing techno-speak, the “trub break.” An appropriate song choice here could be Spinal Tap’s “Break Like The Wind.”
Fermentation:
Yeast Addition: Pitch a Belgian yeast strain, enough to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter). We used the Wyeast 3220 Flanders Golden strain. This strain produces a lot of banana esters, which we found blended really well with the cinnamon flavors.
After the trub has been separated from the wort, chill the wort using an immersion chiller or a heat exchanger to about 65 °F. Add enough yeast to get a cell count of about 20-25 million cells per milliliter. We used a fairly high pitching rate (yeast addition rate) here, because we wanted to ferment at a lower temperature but still ensure the beer fermented out completely. This means that you will most likely have to build up your yeast culture at home using a starter. We fermented the Stone 11.11.11 Vertical Epic Ale at 68°F to maximize fruity ester formation and minimize the clove/spicy flavor formations, which form at higher levels with warmer Belgian yeast fermentation temperatures.
One thing about this yeast: it’s a powerhouse and ferments well below normal gravity limits. In this case, we formulated the beer to finish out between 4 and 4.5°P, but the yeast took it down to about 2.5°P, which resulted in 9.4% abv.
By the time you are pitching, your brew day is just about complete….so you can spin some “All The Way Home,” the very first Spinal Tap song co-written by musical geniuses Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins.
Aging:
After fermentation completes (should finish between 2.5 and 3°P), chill the beer down to about 35°F or so, and let it sit until the beer clarifies, at least one week.
Package the beer as normal.
Perhaps now is the time to start celebrating your successful brew, and celebrate by pondering the wonderful mysteries of brewing, a mysterious art which we now know was started in ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, by an ancient race of people… the Druids…. at their mystical brewing site “Stonehenge.” Nobody knows who taught the Druids how to brew, but their legacy lives on. Enjoy your brew day!
It was mentioned on BSJ last month that Stone Brewing, Bear Republic & Fat Head’s Brewing were collaborating. The result of that pre-Christmas collaboration is TBA the newest collaboration to roll out of Stone. TBA follows More Brown Than Black IPA, brewed with The Alchemist in Vermont, benefitting Hurricane victims.
