I’m sure we will be seeing a lot more Samuel Adams offerings in cans, now that the brewery has made the jump. Just recently, the brewery launched the flagship Boston Lager and Summer Ale in 12oz cans, and Boston Lager Continue Reading →
New Belgium Brewing (Fort Collins, CO) plays around with their seasonal releases every couple of years. It keeps the brewers creative, and the New Belgium drinkers happy. The above, PUMPKICK, has a lot in common with Lips of Faith release Continue Reading →
Stone Brewing Co’s Vertical Epic 12.12.12 marks the end of an era. The series, spanning more than a decade, was quite a game changer if you think about it. They were cellaring beer before it became Continue Reading →
Maui Brewing Co. introduces that last canned seasonal of 2012 – Aloha B’ak’tun. B’ak’tun refers to the end of the 3000 year Mayan Calendar. The beer? A Belgian style stout with chocolate, chipotle chilies, and cinnamon.
As the world spirals towards its last days, it’s a perfect time for The Lost Abbey to tweak their Judgement Day recipe. The original recipe is a quadrupel brewed with raisins. The label features the Four Continue Reading →
Samuel Adams Merry Mischief is now available. Tis the season drinkers.
This rich dark brew entices with the aromas of the holidays, hinting at the merriment and spices within. The flavor of gingerbread comes alive beginning with the smooth sweetness and Continue Reading →
I’m sure we will be seeing a lot more Samuel Adams offerings in cans, now that the brewery has made the jump. Just recently, the brewery launched the flagship Boston Lager and Summer Ale in 12oz cans, and Boston Lager is also planned for tallboys.
Late fall, you will soon see Winter Lager joining the aluminum lineup. Winter Lager is a seasonal beer, brewed with cinnamon, ginger and orange peel. Tailgating perhaps?
Style: Lager (w/ Ginger, Orange Peel, Cinnamon) Hops: Hallertau Malts: Samuel Adams Two-row pale malt blend, Caramel 60, Malted wheat, Weyermann Carafa Malt, and Munich 10
New Belgium Brewing (Fort Collins, CO) plays around with their seasonal releases every couple of years. It keeps the brewers creative, and the New Belgium drinkers happy. The above, PUMPKICK, has a lot in common with Lips of Faith release – Kick, a collaboration with Elysian Brewing.
Kick was a slightly sour pumpkin beer brewed with cranberries, aged in oak. Looks like no oak in PUMPKICK, but you can look forward to pumpkin juice, cranberries, and more.
What’s that bite of tartness doing in a pumpkin beer? Adding the unexpected kick of cranberry juice to brighten this traditionally spiced seasonal ale. PUMPKICK is brewed with plenty of pumpkin juice cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, but its the cranberries and touch of lemongrass that send your tastebuds sailing.
Stone Brewing Co’s Vertical Epic 12.12.12 marks the end of an era. The series, spanning more than a decade, was quite a game changer if you think about it. They were cellaring beer before it became popular. This edition of VE was pilot batched 8 times before getting to the recipe below. Homebrewers, take a crack at it. This is the all grain recipe. With musical numbers to go along with it.
Grain Bill
Pale Malt — 58%
Light Crystal (15°L) — 13.5%
Medium Crystal (60°L) — 11.5%
Vienna Malt — 9.5%
Midnight Wheat Malt — 7.5%
Dark Candi Sugar — 3.5% of total grain weight
NOTE: As always, I am only providing the all grain version of the recipe, and just percentages so that you can figure out the weights based on the size of your brewing system and your normal efficiencies.
Spices added to mash:
Cinnamon Stick, broken/ground — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Ground Allspice — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Ground Cloves — 0.0125 oz per gallon (0.36 grams/gallon)
Sweet Orange Peel — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Rosehips — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Make the spice additions on the basis of brew length (gallons wort recovered). Note that the orange peel is sweet orange peel, not Curacao or bitter orange peel. Rosehips should be purchased ground, not whole, as whole rosehips are very difficult to crush (we had to use a fork-truck to do it)!
Target OG: 22°P (1.088 SG).
Musical Selection: First up are some classics from the box set Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968: “Sugar and Spice” by The Cryin’ Shames. Follow that with “Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice” by Mouse and The Traps, “Falling Sugar” by The Palace Guard and, finally, “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love” by The Swingin’ Medallions. These songs just seem to fit, given the ingredients we are using in this beer!
If you haven’t listened to this 4 disc box set, keep it playing. It’s amazing. Let it all hang out, man. Groovy.
Mashing
Use a 60-minute conversion rest at 154°F. This is a fairly high conversion rest temperature that should provide enough body to balance the spices, hops and roasted malt characters in the finished beer.
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. If you cannot raise the temperature in your mash, reduce the conversion rest from 60 to 30-45 minutes.
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 a ½-inch 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.
Sparge until you hit your target boil volume or until the 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 with care. A good music selection will assist in keeping things relaxed and gentle during lautering.
Music Selection: I always like to listen to J.J. Cale during lautering. Something about his laid back vocals and front porch blues approach has always appealed to me. He’s a great songwriter and a guitar maestro. If you don’t know JJ Cale, he wrote some true classics like “After Midnight”, “Call Me The Breeze” and “Cocaine”. His style has influenced Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and countless others. JJ Cale now lives in California, somewhat near our brewery, another reason to celebrate his great music. Recommended listening is Anyway the Wind Blows, a two disc retrospective, or The Road to Escondido, a collaboration done with Eric Clapton.
Boil
Hop Bill:
0.15 oz per gallon (4.2 grams/gallon) Simcoe Hop Pellets (13% alpha) at the start of the boil.
0.20 oz per gallon (5.6 grams/gallon) EACH Tettnang (4.5% Alpha acid) and Willamette (5.5% alpha acid). Added 30 minutes prior to end of boil.
Spice additions (hung in a weighted down mesh bag):
Cinnamon — 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon)
Nutmeg — 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon)
Clove — 0.0045 oz per gallon (0/12 grams/gallon)
Boil for 90 minutes.
Music Selection: Alright, your brewing area should now have the aromas of holiday baking wafting tantalizingly through the house (or garage, or brewery). What better way to celebrate than to throw on some Christmas music? Yes, we realize Christmas has passed, but just as good Christmas beers taste perfectly fine in July, good holiday music can be listened to any time of the year. I recommend the following albums, these are some of my holiday favorites:Christmas with the Smithereens,Season’s Greetings from Moe and A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Hey, nothing says Christmas like The Smithereens!
Whirlpool
Spice additions-add at the start of the whirlpool process:
Cinnamon — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Clove — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Sweet Orange Peel — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Allspice — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Admittedly somewhat unusual for Stone, we did not hop this brew in the whirlpool. With the influence of the spices, we wanted to keep the hop presence well blended. Massive flavor hopping in the whirlpool may have clashed with the aromatic spice flavors.
The whirlpool step is where you separate out your proteinaceous trub. It’s going to be a large trub pile with all these spices, though the lack of hops should help enhance your wort recovery.
Music Selection: One of my favorite new bands is The Sheepdogs from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Influenced by early 1970s classic rock, I think they creatively blend elements of The Allman Brothers Band, The Guess Who, The Grateful Dead and early Grand Funk Railroad. They groove and they rock with great guitar work, strong songwriting and fantastic vocal harmonies. Check ‘em out.
Fermentation
Yeast Addition
Pitch a Belgian yeast strain, enough to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter). We used the Wyeast High Gravity Trappist yeast for this brew, the first time we’ve ever used this yeast. This yeast produced a lot of banana character, especially at a 68°F fermentation temperature. The banana esters combined well with the dark malt and dark candy sugar flavors, giving the beer a bit of a chocolate-banana dessert flavor.
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 like to use a higher pitching rate (yeast addition rate) here, because we wanted to ferment at a lower temperature but still ensure the beer ferments out completely. This means that you will most likely have to build up your yeast culture at home using a starter.
Music Selection: By the time you are pitching, your brew day is just about complete. I think “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones would be a great way to cap off this final epic brew day! “May be the last time, but I don’t know!” Alternative choice: Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly… just because! I like them!
So there you have it — the final homebrew recipe for the final edition of the Stone Vertical Epic Ale series. I hope those of you who have been brewing these recipes have enjoyed the experience as much as we have enjoyed brewing the beers here at the brewery. It’s been my pleasure and honor to supply you, our valued fans and brewing enthusiasts, with the last seven recipes.
Maui Brewing Intros Aloha B’ak’tun To Finish Off 2012
Maui Brewing Co. introduces that last canned seasonal of 2012 – Aloha B’ak’tun. B’ak’tun refers to the end of the 3000 year Mayan Calendar. The beer? A Belgian style stout with chocolate, chipotle chilies, and cinnamon.
Sure.. the scientists have published essays, the philosophers poems, the naysayers flyers.. but here at the center of the Maui Brewing micro-verse, we are publishing the ultimate in doomsday aloha – this year’s last canned seasonal, Aloha B’ak’tun! The word aloha conveys both greeting and goodbye in the Hawaiian language and B’ak’tun refers to the 3000+year cycle of the Mayan Calendar which is ending. This apocalyptic Belgian-style stout is brewed with Hawaiian chocolate, locally-grown chipotle chilies and cinnamon spice. Easy-drinking and full of flavor, this beer will help you feel the aloha as you say aloha to old and aloha to new!
As the world spirals towards its last days, it’s a perfect time for The Lost Abbey to tweak their Judgement Day recipe. The original recipe is a quadrupel brewed with raisins. The label features the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This edition features the Mayans. Dried chiles, cinnamon, and tamarind join raisins for this, the end of days.
Five thousand years ago the Mayan Calendar last turned over. Since then, Nostradamus. The Book of Revelations and random Shaman have all prognosticated that mankind would meet a fateful end. Currently, our demise is is scheduled for December 21, 2012for it has been so decreed our world is about end not in a Christian Judgement Day but rather a Mayan Apocalypse.
Funny thing is. The Mayan’s don’t actually believe in the concept of an Apocalypse. We at The Lost Abbey didn’t want to miss an opportunity to update our original judgment Day recipe to accompany us as we collide towards this impending Rapture. Like us, we’re pretty sure you can believe in dried chiles. Cinnamon and Tamarind working well together in this beer. This means, you can count on this little bottle of beer to help you survive this cultural Armageddon. Please pop the cork and enjoy this version. We’ve got you covered. See you on December 22nd wherever life may take us.
Sam Adams Merry Mischief Gingerbread Stout Arrives
Samuel Adams Merry Mischief is now available. Tis the season drinkers.
This rich dark brew entices with the aromas of the holidays, hinting at the merriment and spices within. The flavor of gingerbread comes alive beginning with the smooth sweetness and heartiness of dark roasted malts and a touch a wheat. But it’s intensity and spices of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, & ginger that add a wicked kick for a jolly playful brew full of merry mischief.
Style: Imperial Stout (w/ Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cloves, Ginger) Hops: East Kent Goldings, Fuggle Malts: Samuel Adams Two Row Pale Blend, Wheat, Special B, Paul’s Roasted Barley, Flaked Oats
