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.

Strawberry Short Weisse

Oh, the exciting and ever unpredictable world of sour beers! Bugs - they’re not just for fly fishing anymore. We’re a bit late entering into this aspect of the brewing world, but I like to believe that our pace of experimentation is mindful and deliberate. Or we may just be a bit slow. That being said, we’re about to send out our first sour beer: Strawberry Short Weisse. This started as an attempt to brew a Berliner Weisse for the 2008 Extreme Beer Fest in Boston. The beer didn’t quite make it in time - in fact it’s a year and a half late. However its tardiness is no indication of its tastiness (or something like that).

The original thought was to brew 25 barrels of an 8° Plato wheat beer. Separate off a third of it for souring and ferment the rest with a traditional hefe strain. The soured portion was pitched with a mixture of Chico and Lactobacillus. We hoped to blend the two portions, but after a few months it became clear that the sour part wasn’t going to be sour enough to make the whole batch interesting. We ended up dumping the wheat beer portion and focused on the remaining third. Over the last year we added several additions of first runnings to give the lacto a bit more food to consume. Once we finally reached the sourness we liked we decided to add 300 pounds of frozen strawberries, mostly just for the hell of it. Luckily, when Peter saw all those strawberries he kind of just walked on by with naught but a raised eyebrow. The berries kicked off a bit more lactic activity and added flavor and a real delicate and beautiful aroma. The final beer has a nice clean sour character and is extremely drinkable at 3% ABV. Hopefully you get a chance to try this unusual and rare offering.

Cheers,

Dave

Specific Gravity: 8° Plato

IBU: 5

ABV: 3%

Grain Bill:

Pale Malt

Wheat Malt

Hop Bill:

Saaz

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

Schmutzig Hopfen Weisse, our newest Short Batch

Last fall I received an invite from Dave Brodrick to help celebrate the marriage to his beautiful wife, Iris. Dave (of Blind Tiger renown) asked me to brew a beer for the event. Happy to oblige, I tossed around the idea of several different styles but kept coming back to late-addition hoppy beers. I knew I wanted a session beer for the wedding and had recently been enjoying the Brooklyner Schneider Hopfen Weiss. I wasn’t looking for a beer quite that strong and so dialed back the starting gravity to be inline with a more traditional hefeweizen. The beer itself ended up with a bit too much banana character from the yeast as the ’Shire was hit with a massive ice storm the day after we brewed. We lost power for a day and a half (even that wasn’t too bad as some folk were out of power for weeks) which caused a warmer fermentation than desired. Instead of a nice mix of fruit and clove, it was definitely skewed toward the banana character, but the huge, floral notes of the hops actually balance quite nicely. Think Juicy Fruit. All in all, I think it’s an excellent beer.

Malt:
Pilsner
Wheat
Munich

Hops:
Bittering: Magnum
Flavoring: Sterling
Dry Hop: Sterling & Centennial

IBU: 15
S.G. 15° Plato
T.G. 2.6°
ABV 5.8%

Cheers,

DY

2008 Scotch Ale & Really Old Brown Dog

Well, it looks like we’ve made it through the Summer of Sans Hops. We received our first shipment of 2008 harvested Cascades last week and it was almost enough to make this old brewer cry. The initial reports are of a bumper crop and it looks like we’ve turned the corner on the hop shortage. Of course the prices haven’t come down yet, but I guess expensive hops are better than no hops. Even though new hops are slowly arriving we’re still have a few malt forward beers lined up in the Big Beer Series.

Right now we have our Scotch Ale bottled and in the stores. This is a classic Scottish style ale which we’ve brewed with a touch of smoked grain. Last year we tried peat smoked malt, but returned this year to a beech wood smoked malt as we felt it added a smoother character.

Next up will be the long awaited return of the Really Old Brown Dog Ale. This beer was initially brewed in honor of our friend and mascot, the late Olive Francis Egelston. The original batch was more in the vein of a brown porter / old ale. We’ve revised the recipe to be more like an old ale / English barleywine. It’s fermenting away right now and smells amazing. We’re planning on finishing the beer with a few weeks on some port soaked oak chips. I have really high hopes for this beer and can’t wait to check out the blend of big malt notes with the port wood. As we head into winter here in New England I can only imagine how great this beer will be on a cold evening. You should be able to see this beer in stores by mid-December.

Cheers,

David

Working through the Hops Shortage

So it seems that the experiment with strategic hopping of our Big A IPA worked out well. I think that beer came out great and we’ve been hearing real positive feedback. I’ll be heading down to the Publick House in Brookline for the 5th Annual HopHead ThrowDown this Saturday to personally see how the Big A stands up to this countries best DIPA’s. Man, do I ever stop working? It’s tough, but dern it, someone’s gotta do it.

Luckily we got our creative hop juices flowing as we’re starting to make some changes to our Finest Kind as certain varieties become scarce. After dropping an obscene amount of money we were able to secure an extra amount of Magnum so our bittering addition hasn’t changed too much. We’ve decided to use some Super Styrians as a substitute for the Simcoes we were adding with the Magnums in the bittering addition. This was mostly done to save the Simcoes for the flavoring additions where that hop can really shine. As Simcoes are incredibly tight right now we’ve starting blending some Centennials into the flavor additions. We’ll run out of those and start to look at Summits, Glaciers, and Nuggets depending on what kind of horse trading (or straight up theft) we can do. Our whirlpool addition changed a bit as well as we’re now blending Cascades, EKG’s with the Santiams we’ve always used. The dry hopping has remained the same with Amarillos adding their distinctive aroma. The first batch is tasting great and should be out in the stores in the next few weeks. As we get closer to harvest and supplies run low we may have to make some other changes. It’s certainly been a challenging year but thankfully early indications are pointing to a great hop harvest this year. Maybe even a bumper crop. Hopefully that happens but we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

DY

Note, Dave's post was originally written in mid-July. Recent signs point to an excellent hop harvest, which is taking place at this very moment, but there is still a good deal of uncertainty in the market. Stay tuned...

Big A IPA - 2008 Edition

It’s Big A IPA time of year again and the fearless brewers at Smuttynose have thrown both caution into wind and a vast amount of their ever dwindling supply of hops into the kettle (and fermentor, and bright tank) for your (and our) lupulinic enjoyment. This was our first beer which required a different approach because of the current hop shortage. 

Typically we would contact our supplier and see what interesting hops were available, usually looking at varieties we hadn’t used before, and make the Big A recipe from that starting point. The twist this year was to see what we had enough supply of in our ’07 contract and then build the beer around those hops. I think we’ve succeeded, though I’ll let ya’ll be the judge of our efforts. For our hopping regime we went with Cascade and Nuggets in the boiling addition. Centennials were added every 5 minutes for the last 30 minutes of the boil. We added Crystals into the whirlpool. Dry hopping was done in both the fermentor after primary fermentation and the bright tank. We used a mixture of Chinook, Nuggets, and Sterlings in the fermentors and whole leaf Centennials in the bright tank. 

Hopefully we won’t have to use this kitchen sink approach too many more times, though it’s certainly an interesting creative exercise as well as a unique insight into what Tod Mott must go through on a fairly regular basis at the Portsmouth Brewery.