0 IBU 100% Brettanomyces fermented IPA

A Crooked Stave WWBG clone recipe

There are few things I enjoy more as a brewer and beer enthusiast than (1) randomly discovering a new brewery that makes excellent beer, and (2) being introduced to a new beer style or process that works out magically. My introduction to Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project gave me both.

I randomly stumbled across Crooked Stave while on vacation in Fort Collins in 2011, shortly after Chad Yakobson started gypsy brewing out of Funkwerks (another great brewery, if you don’t know about it). This was my first experience with 100% Brettanomyces fermented beers. The first two beers that I had from Crooked Stave were WWBR and Pure Guava Petite Sour. It was hard to believe – other than the fact that both were gushers - that they had gone from boil kettle to bottle in about 6 weeks time.

One of my favorite examples of this fast, 100% Brett fermented style is Wild Wild Brett Green (WWBG), a highly hopped, dank, tropical fruit bomb that when consumed fresh presents more like an IPA than anything else. I was intrigued and wanted to make something similar myself. Chad helped me design the recipe below. My recipe is almost entirely his recipe, except I substituted East Coast Yeast Brett blends for Chad’s proprietary Brett strains, and used Amarillo and Nelson hops instead of Galaxy due to the limited supply of Galaxy at that time.

 

WWBG (1.1) Amarillo

[Not so] American IPA

 

Type: All Grain	Date: 3/30/2012
Batch Size: 11.50 gal	Brewer: Luke
Boil Size: 14.73 gal	Asst Brewer: Eric
Boil Time: 90 min	Equipment: Blichmann 20 Gal brewing system
Taste Rating(out of 50): 30.0	Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 23.18 lb Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western) (2.0 SRM) Grain 79.99 % 2.90 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 10.01 % 1.45 lb Carapils (Briess) (1.5 SRM) Grain 5.00 % 1.45 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 5.00 % 2.25 oz Amarillo Gold [10.30 %] (0 min) (Boil) Hops - 7.75 oz Amarillo Gold [10.30 %] (15 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops - 7.75 oz Amarillo Gold [10.30 %] (Dry Hop 14 days) Hops - 5.47 oz Amarillo Gold [10.30 %] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops - 1.23 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.20 %] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops - 1 Pkgs BRETT blend #1 (ECY) (East Coast Yeast #ECY04) Yeast-Ale   1 Pkgs BRETT blend #9 (ECY) (East Coast Yeast #ECY05) Yeast-Ale
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.065 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.065 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.017 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.18 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 7.18 %
Bitterness: 0.0 IBU	Calories: 290 cal/pint
Est Color: 5.7 SRM	Color: Color
Mash Profile
Mash Name: Single Infusion, Medium Body	Total Grain Weight: 28.98 lb
Sparge Water: 4.82 gal	Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F	TunTemperature: 72.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE	Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Single Infusion, Medium Body Step Time Name Description Step Temp 60 min Mash In Add 36.24 qt of water at 162.8 F 152.0 F 10 min Mash Out Add 20.29 qt of water at 203.1 F 168.0 F
Mash Notes: Simple single infusion mash with fly sparge.
Notes
3/30/2012: 0 minute hop addition was at flameout, Aroma steep addition was 15 minutes post flameout, and the hops soaked for 15 minutes before chilling to 67F. Pitched one carboy with ECY04, and one with ECY05 Batch size of 11.5 gal yielded closer to 10.5 gal (5.25 gal into each fermentor) due to the large hop loss. 04/10/12: 10 day gravity reading (with shitty, non-precise hydrometer): ECY04: 1.014 ECY05: 1.025 Transferred to kegs for secondary/dry-hopping. ECY04 dry hop: 35g Nelson Sauvin/60g Amarillo (waiting on ECY05 to come down in gravity before dry-hopping) 4/19/12: ECY04 removed dry hops and added 2nd dry hop (110g Amarillo). Put in keezer to dry hop at 39 degrees for 2-3 weeks. (check back on 5/3/12). ECY05 - Added 1st dry hops (95g Amarillo). Gravity was still high. Will give it through 4/29/12 before switching out hops. *Additional gravity readings were taken, but not recorded. I believe both versions eventually got down to about 1.007 before cold crashing. ECY05 was left to condition for an additional month before the 2nd dry hop addition was added.

Tasting Notes and Thoughts:

ECY04 - Aromas were mostly tropical (papaya with some pineapple) and citrus, with slight traditional Brett earthiness in the background. The mouth feel was medium with some dryness from the hop compounds. After a couple of weeks on draft, the flavors became integrated and more complex. The Brett gained more fruit ester complexity over time at the expense of the "fresh fruit" aroma.

ECY05 - This version went to my friend Mark's house, so I was less familiar with it and am reporting based on memory. I remember more (but light) barnyard notes, with slightly less tropical flavors - more in the direction one would expect from a beer fermented with Brettanomyces.

While I would not call either version an outright “clone” of WWBG, I would say that both were cut from the same cloth as the beer that inspired them. The propriety strains that Chad used in the Crooked Stave version were specifically chosen for their clean, low ester profile, and their fast attenuation. Galaxy hops also have a distinct aroma and flavor that is difficult to achieve with other hops.

Both of these test versions were good, but I preferred the ECO4 to the ECY05 for this style. It's cleaner and the Brett doesn't compete with the hops. This could have been due to the faster fermentation and quicker consumption of the ECY04, but I would say it’s primarily due to the characteristics that ECY05 produces (barnyard, horse blanket, etc.). Even in the original WWBG version brewed by Crooked Stave, I noticed a big change in the character from when I had it fresh to when I had it a couple of months later. The hops faded and complex Brett notes began to develop. Even so, the next time that I try something similar I will use a more fruit-forward Brett strain (e.g., Trois, BKY C2/C3).

Recirculating Dry Hops: Extract More Aroma Oil in Less Time

When I think of a good “hoppy” beer, my mind conjures up interesting aroma and flavor profiles. Bitterness units barely factor in. A hop forward beer that has lost (or never really had) aroma becomes a boring and uninteresting beer.

What if you could get more aroma oil extracted from your dry hops with less time? Would you do it? That question almost sounds rhetorical.

Early last year I came across an Indie Hops blog post titled, “More Aroma Oil, Faster: The Dry Hopster’s Holy Grail.” With a title like that, I had to keep reading. The post cited a study by Peter Wolfe and Dr. Tom Shellhammer at the Oregon State University Department of Food Science which compared the aroma/flavor potential of two dry hopping materials (whole cone hops vs. pelletized hops) and the effectiveness of two methods for dry hopping (stirred vs. unstirred). All dry hopping took place at 23.2°C (73.76°F). Both sensory analysis (a tasting panel) and instrument analysis (measurements of compounds) were performed on samples taken at 0.5 hours, 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 24 hours, 4 days, 7 days, and 12 days of exposure to hops.

Peter Wolfe’s thesis, A Study of Factors Affecting the Extraction of Flavor When Dry Hopping Beer, is published on Oregon State University’s website. I read all 92 pages of it, which took me a while because I found myself searching Google every other page to research a new [to me] unfamiliar term.  There were several interesting findings in the study. Here are a few highlights:

• Pelletized hops resulted in faster extraction and more hop aromatic compounds compared to dry hopping with whole cone hops.
• Stirring hops resulted in higher overall aroma compound extraction and more intense aroma perception than unstirred hops.
• Stirred pellet hop aroma compounds were nearly fully extracted after 24 hours.

“Say what? 24 hours?!”  (That was my reaction, anyway.)

Aroma, Aroma, Aroma

As pervasive of a practice as dry hopping is in modern beer brewing, there is a lot of confusion as to what is exactly going on during the dry hopping process. This gives rise to all kinds of practices and procedures for how to achieve the best results. This post is not attempting to address every aspect of dry hopping (bitterness contribution, antimicrobial properties, etc.). For that, I would recommend reading Peter Wolfe’s thesis as well as the book, For the Love of Hops, by Stan Hieronymus.  This post is only addressing the primary goal of dry hopping: aroma.

By far, the greatest reason that dry hops are used today is to add hop aroma and flavor (a combination of aroma, taste and mouthfeel) to beer. While other hop components (alpha/beta acids, polyphenols, glycosides and bio-transformed hop compounds) affect the overall flavor experience (see section 1.3 of Wolfe’s Thesis), the primary components of hops that directly contribute to aroma while dry hopping are terpene oils and sulfur compounds. The goal when dry hopping is to extract those compounds out of the hops and into the beer.

Most homebrewers follow a similar procedure to one another when dry hopping: steep the hops in fermented beer. Regardless of whether whole cone or pelletized hops are used, if hops are placed in bags or allowed to free float, or if the dry hops are added to the primary, secondary or keg, the universal practice for dry hopping at the homebrewing level is to allow the hops to soak in beer post fermentation without any form of agitation.

On the other hand, the commercial breweries that are best known for aromatically hoppy beers all use some form of agitation or extraction beyond simply steeping the hops in the beer. Dogfish Head, Russian River Brewing and Firestone Walker use a “Hop Cannon,” Sierra Nevada uses a “Torpedo,” and New Belgium and Stone use “The Slurry Method” (chapter 8, For the Love of Hops). Commercial breweries have efficiency and time constraint requirements that homebrewers do not have, but as Peter Wolfe found in his study, a greater level of hop aroma compounds are extracted through agitation.

My dry hop agitation setup

After reading Peter Wolfe’s thesis, I was determined to come up with a way to agitate dry hops at the homebrewer level. The first idea was to build some sort of false bottom stir plate for my fermentation fridge, and then spin a large stirbar in a glass carboy to agitate the hops (I still like this idea). However, I recently obtained a stainless steel conical fermentor and wanted to move my fermentation of hoppy beers to the conical. What I came up with was the following setup, which as it turns out is almost exactly the same setup that was used for agitation in the study conducted by Peter Wolfe (I ran it by him).

Below is a diagram (and below that, a video) of how I do my dry hop agitation. The setup is slightly different than what is pictured below. I do not own a Blichmann brand conical, and I use the standard inline head rather than the center inlet head. I’m also sans a racking cane on the conical at the moment. I would highly recommend one is used with this setup. Without a racking cane, hop matter will come through the racking arm port. It will require a significant amount of dumps from the bottom to get all of the hops out. I waste a lot of beer dumping hops out of the bottom before I have clean enough beer to rack to a keg. A racking cane will allow the tube to point up and out of the hop slurry so that clean beer can be racked without having to dump any hops.

Here is a YouTube video of my setup in action:

Continuously recirculating dry hops in the fermentor

What you’ll need

Assuming you already own a conical fermentor, to pull this off you’re looking at purchasing the following:

• (1) March or Chugger Pump (I use one that I already had)
• 3-4 ft of 1/2” ID tubing (I use silicone, because I can boil it before use to sterilize it)
• 4 connectors for the inlet and outlet tubes. Everyone’s setup is different, so this will vary depending on your configuration. My conical uses 1.5” triclover fittings, and my pump is 1/2” NPT, so I purchased:
  (1) 1.5”x1/2” barb fitting and (1) 1.5”x1/2” barb with 90° bend (I like the 90° fitting more because it can get out of the way, so I’d go with 2 of those if I did it again).
  (2) Blichmann Stainless QuickConnector - 1/2in. 90° Elbow Barb. For whatever reason, the Blichmann elbow barbs barely have any barb at all on them. The Blichmann straight barb fittings are much more grippy and in line with what you would expect a barbed fitting to be like, so I would go with those next time.
• (4) hose/tubing clamps (large) for the fittings

Non-conical fermentor configurations:

I have not attempted this in any fermentor other than my conical. I would like to see how other brewers approach this situation with carboys and Sanke kegs. If you have recommendations to share in the comments, please do so.

Carboys:

In addition to the stirbar idea that I mentioned above, a carboy cap can be modified to accommodate two racking canes, like this. You can then follow a very similar process to what I did with my setup. You would want to ensure the hole was not cut too large, because oxygen making its way in will be counterproductive to the goal of making an aromatic hoppy beer. If you would rather use a stopper than a carboy cap, Morebeer sells a #6.5 stopper with 2-holes, but the 2nd hole is too small for a racking cane, which means that changes would be needed. A ball valve would need to be added to this configuration to be able to adjust the flow rate of the pump.

Sanke kegs:

Before I purchased my conical, I used the Sanke fermentor kit from BrewersHardware. As with the carboy cap above, the blowoff hole could be modified to accommodate a 2nd racking cane.

Results to come in a follow-up post. Stay tuned...

The freshest sources for hops

What I find interesting is that I rarely see the farm, brand or supplier of hops mentioned when discussing sources for hops. Typically, varietals are mentioned as a commodity. Someone will post, "[company name] has this year’s Cascade for $11/lb," as if Cascade from one source is the same as any other source, with the only difference being price. I never used to give this much thought, until this last year...

Last year I purchased Citra hops from two different suppliers (both the current harvest year), and there was a huge difference between the aroma of the hops. It wasn't even close. You could take one whiff from the first bag, and then a whiff of the other, and it was night and day. One had a big citrus/tropical aroma; the other, not so much when compared to the first. Had I not had the two there to compare, I might have thought the one with less aroma was fine. After all, it still smelled like hops. It's just that it was so much more muted than the other source that I dumped out the hops that had less aroma. Why use inferior hops in something that you’re going to spend a considerable amount of time, energy and money into making?

Shopping for hops is like shopping for produce. You can shop based on price per pound, or you can shop based on quality (however you define quality is up to you). Farmers that properly grow good crops in rich soil, wait to pick them until they’re ripe, and then deliver the fresh produce to local shops for immediate purchase, simply cannot compete on price with the mega farming corporations out there that are cutting costs at every step of the process. For example, I can buy oranges at the local grocery store that are decent (taste like what my mom bought, likely at the same kind of grocery store), or I can get oranges from a local farmers market or CSA that are the juiciest, most flavorful oranges I've ever had. It's like [excuse the pun] apples and oranges. This same analogy applies to hops.

HopUnion 1 oz and 1 lb bags

Of course, you can overpay for crappy, poorly treated hops as well (my LHBS, for one). Price isn't what makes one hop supplier better than another. I'm not familiar with every hop supplier out there, but I've ordered from several online sources and found HopUnion’s nitrogen flushed hops to be quite fresh and fragrant. I typically buy 1 lb bags from LabelPeelers because of the cost savings. This year my pound of Amarillo from LabelPeelers came in (16) 1 oz packages. I like the idea of the 1 oz HopUnion bags for the sake of freshness. Keeping the hops in a sealed, nitrogen flushed environment is better than opening the same bag several times throughout the year (even if you reseal it with a vacuum sealer).

Hops Direct 1 lb bag (partial)

HopsDirect seems to have fresh hops, too, but I find their 1 lb vacuum sealed foil bags a little difficult to work with. They often come hard as bricks, with the pellets being stuck together. Farmhouse Brewing Supply offers a wide variety of hops in convenient 4 oz packages, and the prices are good. I’m not a big fan of the packaging, but most of the packages remain sealed. I haven’t compared the hops that I’ve bought from Farmhouse Brewing Supply with other suppliers/retailers.

Farmhouse Brewing Supply 4 oz bags

I'd like to try hops from IndieHops. I like what they stand for and I hear good things about them, but the minimum order of 11 lbs per hop is prohibitive for a homebrewer, and they only supply a limited number of hop varietals. IndieHops seems to cater more to small craft brewers than to homebrewers, and sell first to contracted accounts. This might be a good company to do a group buy with.

Other than the big online homebrew shops, some other hop suppliers that I’ve seen people ordering from are Yakima Valley Hops (they package their own hops at reasonable prices), Nikobrew (not the best pricing, but cheap shipping), and some discount eBay sellers. I have no experience buying from these companies.

I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts on this subject in the comments. Has anyone else found a difference between hop suppliers? Are there other good sources for quality hops at reasonable prices?