Smuttynose Short Batch #7, Redux: Strawberry Short Weiss

Smuttynose Strawberry Short Weiss, our take on a Berliner Weisse, is lightly tart, refreshing and incredibly drinkable.  It's also one of our staff's most beloved beers.

We'll be releasing bottles exclusively at Smuttynose on Thursday, August 9 between 5pm and 7pm in our tour nook.  Bottles are $15 each and we've chosen a four bottle limit to try and spread the beer around a little better.  Kegs begin shipping on August 20.

As the name implies, this style is indigenous to the German capitol and serves as a sharp contrast to traditional Bavarian weizen beers.  Traditional Berliner Weisse are highly carbonated, served in special wide-mouthed, bowl-shaped glasses and are packaged without flavoring.  The beer's light body and tart flavors are the result of a partial lactic fermentation.  The lactobacilli consume a portion of the wort sugars, creating lactic acid.  This accounts for the tartness and lightness of body, since the bacteria can consume sugars that brewers yeast can't.  We've chosen to add strawberries to our beer as a nod to the Berliner custom of offering a shot (mit Schuss) of either raspberry or woodruff syrup to the glass of beer.

So, why are we calling this a redux?

Our first Berliner Weiss was brewed in the winter of 2008 just as the "ice storm of the century" glazed a very large portion of the Northeast.  New Hampshire was hit particularly hard, with 400,000 customers losing power, including Smuttynose.  Our plan for the beer was to divide the batch in two, a small lactic fermentation and a large, traditional yeast fermentation that would then be blended back together.  Thanks to poor timing, we lost power right as the yeast batch was at the peak of fermentation, causing a massive temperature spike which filled the beer with headache-inducing fusel alcohols.  The large yeast portion had to be dumped, leaving only seven or so barrels of bacterial ferment.  Running a clever bootleg, our brewers added a healthy slug of ale yeast to complete the fermentation while bags and bags of organic strawberries followed a few weeks later.  The batch was kegged off and distributed with little fanfare. 

When our packaging manager asked about revisiting this for his wedding beer (Congratulations, Chris and Emily!), everyone who remembered the first batch got really excited.  We hope you'll get to try it and see why.

Cheers,

The Smuttynose Team


Strawberry Short Weiss Vital Stats

Starting Extract: 8˚ Plato
Finishing Extract: 1˚ Plato
5 IBU   3.7% ABV

Malts: North American 2-Row, Wheat
Hops: Saaz (for both First Wort and Whirlpool additions)
Yeast: WLP-300 Hefeweizen Ale
Other Ingredients: Natural Strawberry Puree, Lactobacillus

Batch Size: 27 barrels  (30 cases of 750 ml bottles, 121 5.2 gallon kegs)

Portsmouth Beer Week Rare Kegs

We've got a number of special beers being tapped during Portsmouth Beer Week.  To help you plan better, here's a short list:

Tuesday, February 28 at the TJ's IPA Tap Takeover, we'll be pouring Finestkind IPA and Big A IPA.  The hops start flowing at 8pm.

Wednesday, February 29 (Leap Day) brings around the annual J. Lohr vs. Smuttynose Beer vs. Wine Dinner at The Blue Mermaid.  Our line-up features rarities like Satchmo, Bourbon Barrel-aged Robust Porter, and the newest batch of Vunderbar Pils.  You will need reservations for this seated, pairing dinner.

Thursday, March 1 will see the new batch of Brett and I, on tap at The Press Room along with 2006 Wheat Wine and Vunderbar Pils.  The show starts at 8 and your cover charge goes entirely to (H)Eat.

On Friday, March 2, The Flatbread Company will be tapping a log of 2007 Farmhouse Ale at 8pm. 

There isn't anything rare on tap for Saturday's Pub Tour, but you won't want to miss it.  The gathering begins at 1pm at The Press Room and the groups depart at 2.

The River House's Brunchfest on Sunday morning will feature another log of Brett and I, in case you miss the Battle of the Bands.

The full details can be found on the official Portsmouth Beer Week website, run by the 2BeerGuys.

We'll see you out and about in town!



 

2011 Imperial Stout and a few other notes

We're sad to say that the release of our 2011 Imperial Stout, the second release in this year's Big Beer Series has been pushed back.  Shipping will now begin on March 14.   This is a part of our marketing ploy to compete with Guinness.

Also, I want to remind you that it's not too late to sign up for the The Big Beer Series Subscription.  Some newer subscribers have asked which beer will be the first of their subscription.  That's be determined by when you sign up.  If we've already released a Big Beer, then we can't include it in your subscription.  If there's a beer you know you definitely want, then don't delay, sign up today!

We will be participating in the 15th annual NERAX festival.  If you're a real ale lover, please stop by the George F. Dilboy Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Somerville, MA sometime between March 30 and April 2.  In addition to sending a firkin of Shoals Pale Ale, we're very proud to be sponsoring pint glasses this year.  We've designed a great Smuttynose/NERAX imperial pint glass that will available for rent or purchase exclusively at the festival.  Check out http://www.nerax.org/ for more info.

Finally, Portsmouth Craft Beer Week is fast approaching.  We've got a slate of events leading up to Portsmouth Brewery's Kate the Great release on March 7.  We will be offering a 2pm Smuttynose tour on March 7.

That's it for today.  Hopefully, I'll have a positive new bottling line update about the new filler tomorrow.

Have a great Wednesday,

JT

A few of you may be missing something...

...and boy do I mean a few.

A rare outtake from the Hanami label shoot.  That giant lizard finally won.

Hanami Ale, our spring seasonal release, has been discontinued.  We've had one or two emails asking for release dates, but being discontinued doesn't lend itself to scheduling a release date.  Instead, we decided to extend Winter Ale season and begin Summer Weizen earlier (we just bottled the first round right before we removed our old bottle filler last week), essentially bridging the gap left by Hanami.

There were several reasons for this, but none more vital than slow sales.  Slow sales in and of themselves aren't always a problem, but with seasonal beers, conventional wisdom says they need to sell so a brewery maintain its placements on shelves and in coolers.

Hanami was an odd beer in the sense that it wasn't easy to classify.  Sure, it was a fruit beer but "fruit beer" typically means one of two things.  The first fruit beer style is typically a light, innocuous, golden beers, which may or may not be brewed with wheat, and then get a dosing of  fruit or fruit extracts.  Once the modifier "Belgian" gets thrown in, a second sub-style of sour, tart, fruited lambics enters the discussion..

Hanami wasn't really like any of these beers.  It lacked a dryness that would have accentuated the tartness from the cherry juice, which basically means it wasn't "lambicky" enough.  What the beer did have, was a broader range of flavors beyond the typical American-style fruit beers. This neither-one-nor-the-other character of Hanami left beer drinkers, wholesalers, and sales people scratching their heads.  Some people really loved it and a few actively hated it.  I'm not haughty enough to claim that this beer was ahead of its time, but I'm also not willing to say it was bad; it was just very unique in the most literal sense.

So with this blog post, I officially put Hanami to rest, while wallowing in the irony of several pallets of freshly-bottled Summer Weizen in our warehouse, while over a foot of snow sits on the ground, right outside my window.

Thanks for making yours a Smutty!

JT

Smuttynose Short Batch #10- Belgian Stout

         If you had eight freshly-emptied whiskey barrels, what would you do?  This is the situation we found ourselves in after we packaged the Ry(e)an Ale.   Sawing them in half and turning them into planters was definitely not an option, so we had to think of a new Short Batch beer.  We didn’t want to do another barrel-aged version of an imperial stout but it was difficult to stop thinking of how tasty the combination of roasted malt, caramel malts, bourbon and oak is.  The obvious choice was to make a Belgian-style stout.  

         Belgian-style stouts aren’t very different than regular imperial stouts.  The most obvious difference is the choice to use a Belgian yeast strain.  Our house American ale yeast leaves a pretty neutral flavor profile but Belgian strains are known for adding very particular flavor profiles from clovey, to fruity to spicy. 

         To accommodate the spicy flavor our Belgian strain contributes, we needed to adjust the flavor profile of the beer by dropping out some of the roasted malt character.  This enables the caramel character to come forward and blend nicely with the bourbon and oak character.

         The challenge was to figure out the volume of beer.  Short batches are always a small portion of the full volume of our brew system.  If we were just going to fill the barrels, then we’d need exactly 424 gallons of beer, which is only about 13.5 brewer’s barrels of volume and there’s no way we could make that small of a batch on our 50-barrel system.  This means we get to release two versions of this beer, a barrel-aged version and a non barrel-aged version.

         The non-barrel-aged version was kegged on 11 June 2010.  The barrel-aged version is still aging at press time.

Stat Box

Malts: 2-Row, Carawheat, Munich, C-120, Chocolate, Roasted Barley, Brown Malt

Hops: Magnum, Glacier

Other Ingredients:  D2 Belgian Candi Syrup

Starting Extract 19° Plato

Finishing Extract 4.2° Plato

50 IBU

Champion Firkin Friday!

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?  We've all heard this philosophical quandry and yet the answer is still profound: the tree doesn't make a sound.  

Well, after Big A IPA was named the Best American Beer at the Great British Beer Festival, we thought it would be best to make a sound in our own town.  

This Friday, September 10, our friends at the Portsmouth Brewery will be hosting a special Firkin Friday.  David Yarrington, Director of Brewing Operations will be tapping a firkin of Big A at the Portsmouth Brewery at 4 PM.  This cask was dry-hopped with Santiam, Simcoe, Centennial, and Cascade hops, the exact same ones that were in the winning cask.

We hope to see you all at the pub on Friday so we can share this special beer with you.   Since Portsmouth Little League didn't have the same success as in years past, we hope that this provides a fun, if slightly more adult alternative to celebrating a hometown champion. 

L'Chaim!

Vunderbar! Short Batch #11

Guten tag!  Short Batch #11 is kegged and ready for delivery!  

Here are Dave's notes about the beer:

Ah, Vunderbar.  So simple.  So elegant.  The impetus of this beer was two-fold.   The first part stemmed from drinking a snot load of Sam Adams Noble Pils this spring.  Great beer.  The other was a visit by Cornelius Faust from Faust Brewery in Germany.  He brewed a pilsner with Tod Mott down at the Portsmouth Brewery that was also quite beautiful.  We, of course, couldn’t possibly let Mott show us up and so had to try our hand at the style.  We’ve made several lagers in the past but this was our first attempt at a beer this delicate.  Luckily, we stole Cornelius’ great idea of boiling the brewing water to soften it before use.  We bumped up the acidulated malt to balance the mash pH and were able to mimic a traditional pilsner quite well.  Hopefully you agree.  Prost.

The Stat Junkie Corner


Weyermann Pilsner Malt
Weyermann Acidulated Malt

Saaz Hops for all hopping

15 IBU, dryhopping at ½ pound per barrel.

5.11% Alcohol by Volume
Starting Extract 10.9° Plato
Terminal Extract 1.9° Plato.


Vunderbar Pils marks a departure from the last few short batches we have brewed.  It's not high in alcohol.  It doesn't use any kind of wild yeast, nor is it barrel-aged.  It's a beer in the classic, if not archetypal, sense of the word.  Best of all, it's blindingly delicious and drinkable.  The low bitterness and moderate body make the beer conducive to some serious elbow bending; we went through five gallons here in less than twenty-four hours. 

After all the kegging was done, we ended up with (27) 15.5-gallon kegs and (60) 5.16-gallon kegs.  Final allocations and destinations have yet to be determined.

We also have designed these swank Vunderbar t-shirts.  Wearing one tells the world "I'm formal, but I like to party," just in German.  Greg Blanchard, our Head Brewer, models one below just before going to the cellar to take some Zahm hits off of BB 8, while blaring side two of the Dio classic, "Holy Diver."

The run is limited and will be on sale soon through our website and retail store.  We'll let you know when they are available through the blog and Facebook/Twitter. 

Isles of Shoals

The Isles of Shoals are a group of islands and tidal ledges about ten miles off the coast of the New Hampshire-Maine border region (Portsmouth, where we are located, is right on the Piscataqua River, which forms the border between the two states). There are nine islands in the chain, five belonging to Maine and four to New Hampshire. The islands have a long history, serving as seasonal fishing camps for Native American populations with the first Europeans arriving in the early 1600's.

The history of the Shoals encompasses a range of people and events so diverse, I'll just make a list: Captain John Smith, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the legendary pirate Blackbeard, the poet Celia Thaxter, several hotels, an artist colony, a grisly ax murder, a Unitarian-Universalist retreat, and a 2000 film starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn.

The islands have also been a source of inspiration for our branding. If you've looked at the map above, you'll notice Star Island, Smuttynose Island and as well the name "Shoals." Our logo even boasts a harbor seal, which are commonly found around the backside of Star Island and occasionally in Gosport Harbor.

The Shoals are still a vibrant community now although there are no more incorporated towns.

The Unitarian-Universalist church has a retreat/conference center (http://starisland.org/) on Star Island, which is easily the most developed of the nine islands.

Smuttynose Island is still home to the Samuel Haley house, the structure on our Shoals Pale Ale label. There is also a replica period building next to it which serves as a caretaker's house.

Appledore Island plays host to the University of New Hampshire/Cornell University Marine Sciences lab.

Cedar Island and Lunging Island are privately owned.

Duck Island was once a naval bombing range but is now home to a wildlife sanctuary and a population of harbor seals.

White Island is home to the White Island Lighthouse and the light keeper's cottage. The structures are now currently owned by the State of New Hampshire and in need of some maintenance. A local charity, Lighthouse Kids (http://www.lighthousekids.org/) has been raising funds to restore the light and the keeper's cottage with an ultimate goal of having a museum on site. Please visit their website to learn more about the work they're doing.

Sue Reynolds, a retired teacher and founder of Lighthouse Kids, also runs day-boat trips to the Isles as well as fishing charters on The Uncle Oscar, a converted lobster boat. She was kind enough to take me out to Star Island for a few hours. I had a great picnic lunch on Star Island and snapped some great photos which you'll see below. If you ever need to go to the Shoals, The Uncle Oscar (http://www.uncleoscar.com) provides an excellent experience. Our captain that day, Tom Davis possesses a wealth of information and knowledge about Shoals history and lore and he's not afraid to use it.

On to the photos:

This view from the side of Star Island provides a great vantage point to see the Unitarian-Universalist retreat center. The most interesting part of my visit was the sense of peace and calm you feel when you're on Star. It'd be a great place to get away for a week in the summer. I didn't see any mermaids or bright red beehives though...

The UU folk have great welcome station right on the dock. You can even make reservations to have lunch out there during the summer.

Gosport Chapel, on Star Island, is an austere and charming church. This simple, one-room chapel has such a presence that's apparent from your first step in the door.

The bridges of Portsmouth as seen from the Isles of Shoals. The largest bridge, though it looks like it might from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, is actually the Route 95 bridge that spans the great Bay and connects New Hampshire to Maine.

Looks like a great place for draft line!

Finally, the obligatory product shot! Two different sides of the Samuel Haley house, brought to you by Smuttynose Brewing Company.

Bikes, Ballistics, and Beer

Craft brewing has never been a particularly competitive community. Breweries tend to help each other out, sharing tips, tricks, ingredients, and pints with each other. In my mind, this is the most unique and best thing about our community. Despite the harmonious nature of our “industry,” we’ve decided to put our support behind two competitive endeavors; one involving spandex and muscle power and one involving projectiles and pressurized air.

We are the title sponsor for the Portsmouth Criterium. “The Crit” is a bicycle road race that takes place in the heart of downtown Portsmouth, passing right through Market Square. Six different categories of cyclists, ranging from kids to level two professionals, will race around the 1-kilometer, hay bale-lined course. Our owners, Peter and Joanne are avid cyclists and can be seen infrequently, clad in spandex, around the Portsmouth Brewery after a long ride. After all, studies have shown that beer is better than water for replenishing nutrients after strenuous exercise. The Portsmouth Brewery will be hosting a pancake breakfast for the public as well as a private reception for volunteers. For more information, visit The Crit's website.

Our second competition is something so wacky that we couldn’t help but say "yes" when we were approached for sponsorship. American Chunker is a Brookline, NH-based team of engineers and fabricators as well as the name of the world’s first fully automatic, air-powered pumpkin cannon. The team has been working since the middle of November 2009 to design and build a cannon that will launch a pumpkin over a mile and challenge for top honors at the World Championship Punkin’ Chunkin’ in Bridgewater, Delaware November 5-7, 2010. Check out their blog for New England events scheduled during September and October or go cheer them on in Delaware. We'll have more details on our cross promotions soon, so keep an eye on our Facebook page and our monthly email newsletter.

Smuttynose Short Batch Gaps

One of the most intriguing things about the Watergate tapes from Nixon's Oval Office is the 18.5 minute gap. Very few people probably know/knew what was originally on that section of tape. Most everyone else thinks the 18.5 minutes had vital evidence that would have implicated Nixon in the scandal surrounding the break-in. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that incomplete records do people a disservice. I hope to use some of the next blog entries to fill in some of our gaps in the Smuttynose Short Batch Series records. These gaps may not have the national security importance of the Watergate tapes, but I'm sure there are plenty of you out there that want this information and there's really no reason for you to not have it.

We've been brewing Short Batches here since 2006. Here's the official list of releases, complete with keg dates as available. This includes what we have scheduled and in fermenters as of July 7, 2010.

SSB #1) The Gnome -Belgian IPA kegged 3/29/07

SSB #2) Brett and I -Belgian Ale finished with Brettanomyces kegged 10/5/07

SSB #3) Smutt-a-roni -Wild Rice Ale kegged 11/20/07

SSB #4) G-Bock -Experimental Strong Lager kegged 1/22/08

SSB #5) Hopfenweiss -Hoppy German Hefeweizen kegged 1/5/09

SSB #6) Belgian Tripel kegged 5/28/09

Oak SSB #6) Tripel aged in J. Lohr Chardonnay Barrels with Brettanomyces kegged 4/20/10

SSB #7) Strawberry Short Weiss- lactic wheat ale, fermented with Lactobacillus and strawberries, part of an aborted attempt at a Berliner Weisse. kegged 8/5/09

SSB #8) Imperial Stout aged in Apple Brandy barrels kegged 8/19/09

SSB #9) Rouge d'Shire lactic ale aged on raspberries and oak kegged 3/30/10

SSB #10) Belgian Stout kegged 6/11/10

SSB #11) Pilsner kegged TBA

Oak SSB #10) Belgian stout aging in whiskey barrels from the Ry(e)an Ale project. kegged TBA

As time goes by, I'll write more about some of these beers over the next few months. Stay tuned!

Thanks,

JT

Smuttynose Short Batch Series #9--Rouge d’Shire

Charlie, our barrel master is funky. Not intergalactic, Atomic Dog funky. Funky like smelly-feet funky. And the man makes funky beer-beer with wild yeasts and bacteria. Sour beers, tart beers, crazy beers. Charlie is a special one to say the least.

The initial premise to Short Batch #9 was to make another soured beer that would take less time than the Strawberry Short Weiss, which was left to get lactic and ferment in a large plastic tote in our lunch/hospitality room for about a year. We would periodically add strong wort to the batch until it expressed a sour character that we were happy with; only then did we add 300 pounds of strawberries. The total yield was about 200 gallons and it was a year and a half late from it’s expected ready date. There had to be a better way.

After some field research, our friend Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts shared a technique that shortened the lactobacillus portion of the beer from a year to a long weekend and (as we think) made it taste better.

We began by mashing in and lautering like normal. The plan was to get twenty barrels of wort with an extract of twelve degrees Plato. Normally, the wort would get boiled and hopped immediately, then cooled and sent to a fermenter with brewer’s yeast. Instead we added a double pitch of lactobacillus to the kettle and left it at 100 °F for the next three days. This allowed the lactobacillus to happily eat sugar and make lactic acid while we were ringing in the New Year’s and sleeping it off the next day. By Sunday morning, the wort was perfectly soured. We still needed to ferment the rest of the sugar out (for alcohol) without sending bacteria through our hoses, heat exchanger, and fermenter gaskets. Lactobacillus can be very difficult to eradicate and nobody wants a lactic Brown Dog. Wouldn’t be prudent. So we boiled the hell out of it. Seventy five minutes of rolling, ripping pasteurization.

Being a Belgian influenced beer, we pitched our house Belgian yeast strain to finish up the fermentation. Like a lot of things life, balance is important in a beer like this. If it’s too acidic, it gives you raging heartburn. If it doesn’t express enough acidity, then you’ve kind of missed the point. If there’s no alcohol, you’ve kind of missed the point to. It’s not even beer.

All that was left to decide now was if the beer needed fruit. And then one day, Charlie just blurts out “raspberries” at the lunch table. “We need like, 400 or 500 pounds of raspberries.” So that’s what we did (well, we settled on 458 pounds). We got buckets and buckets of red raspberry puree. We also got 60 pounds of oak chips. Then we aged the beer with the twigs and berries for several months until it was ready. We weren’t sure when it was going to be ready, it kind of just was ready.

One morning at around 8:15, I see Charlie walking towards me with a huge smile, carrying a plastic cup with some kind of brownish beer with a slight red hue to it. “Dude, try this! A little CO2 and this is naughty.” The beer was tart, moderately fruity with a really thin body and a clean finish. There was barely a hint of sweetness. You could drink this beer for days.

And that’s the tale of Short Batch #9 d.b.a. “Rouge d’Shire.” I guess it goes to show that special beer comes from special people; and maybe, just maybe Charlie does have some kind of magical, beery, Mothership Connection after all. Try it and see for yourself.

Rouge d’Shire Statistical Breakdown

Starting Plato: 12°

IBU: 10

Malts: Pale, Aromatic, Carared, C-60, Special B

Hops: Crystal

Other Ingredients: 458 pounds of Red Raspberries, 60 pounds of medium toast oak chips

Suggested food pairings: The acidity in this beer will cut through any rich fatty foods. Our resident chef, Joe Drouillard recommends a pan sautéed duck breast or for dessert, cheesecake.

Dave’s Spring News

It’s early May and we’re just getting our heads clear from our annual jaunt to the Craft Brewers Conference. This year’s host was the fine city of Boston so there was plenty of Smuttynose flowing throughout town. Luckily the week went without incident and we managed to lose Judi just that one time. We return to blistering weather where we hit 95 degrees in April. Thankfully, we have this year’s Summer Weizen ready to go. The evolution of this beer continues with an addition of chamomile flowers into the end of the boil. We got the idea from our resident cask master, JT. He made a few firkins of Summer Weizen last year that he tea-bagged with chamomile, adding a beautiful and piquant twist on one of our favorite beers.

Our Short Batch Series will soon have another offering. We currently have a Belgian style Triple conditioning on about 25 lbs. of oak chips. The beer’s tasting great right now. The oak character is just starting to show, but there’s a huge fruit nose from the Chimay yeast we used. The grain bill utilized a good amount of Weyermann Pilsner malt as well as some Munich and Wheat malts. We dried it out with the addition of cane sugar, and the beer should finish around 10% ABV. We’re hoping to have it ready in about a month so you should be seeing it out and about this summer.

Dave