Brown, Belgian and Bourbon-barreled: welcome Zinneke to the Big Beer Series!!

Zinneke

2012 Smuttynose Big Beer Series Release #6

"Zinneke" (pronounced zinn-eh-kuh), Smuttynose's new Belgian stout and Big Beer Series release, will begin shipping to wholesalers on November 12!   

This relatively new sub-style combines Belgian, American and English influences to create a beer whose total is more than equal to the sum of its parts.  Here’s how Zinneke breaks down and adds back up.

Part 1) Start with a strong stout.  This is the Big Beer Series after all… 

Part 2) “Belgianize” it by altering the grain bill and fermenting the wort with a Trappist yeast strain. We backed off the heavy caramel and roasted malts to create a more complimentary flavor profile for the yeast, which contributes fruity esters and leaves a light body for deceptive drinkability.

Part 3) Put some wood on it!  10% of the batch was brewed early and aged in bourbon barrels for 10 months.  Why? because it adds complimentary vanilla and toasted oak flavors to what’s already there.  Think of it as an infusion of awesomeness!

These three parts combine to create a beer with dark color and light body with prevalent flavors of dark fruits, vanilla and toffee, while subtle chocolate flavors appear in the finish.

This deep brown-colored beer has lots of dark fruit flavor and a nice chocolate highlight in the finish.  We'd suggest pairing it with creamy desserts, roasted vegetables and rich, roasted meats, like duck.

What in tarnation is a "Zinneke?"

The name of our new beer is endearing Brussels slang that originally described the mongrel dogs that lived around the River Zenne during the Middle Ages.  The multi-cultural residents of Belgium’s capitol city, have since reappropriated the term as a tongue-in-cheek nickname for themselves.

 

TRIVIA: Zinneke began life as Short Batch #10: Belgian Stout in September 2010, but like several other of its series-mates, it has graduated to a larger release.

Vital Stats

8.4% abv 50 IBU
Starting Extract 18.9° Plato

Finishing Extract 3.75° Plato

Malts: North American 2-Row, Carawheat, Munich 10L, C-120, Chocolate, Roasted Barley, Brown
Hops: Magnum, Glacier
Mojo: Dark #2 Belgian Candi Syrup

Yeast: WLP-500 Trappist Ale Yeast

Batch Size: 200 barrels (6200 gallons)

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