#10 Biere de Table

For my first beer with the Wyeast 3725 Biere de Garde yeast, I chose to go with a sessionable Biere de Table. I've never actually had a Biere de Table, but it seems like a more traditional take on the Biere de Garde style. With most modern Farmhouse ales (Biere de Garde and Saison), the alcohol level has steadily increased, especially in the American Craft  interpretations of these styles. I thought that a more reserved and traditional version would be better for spring and aimed for an original gravity of about 1.043, which would have given me a beer of about 3.5% ABV.

I was also excited to begin using starters prior to fermenting each batch of beer. After repitching yeast cakes from previous brews for the past few months and experiencing how much repitching fresh yeast has improved the quality of my beers, I thought making a starter prior to each batch was the next best step to take as I try to improve the quality of my beer. Starters should allow me to pitch a population of healthy, nourished yeast that is large enough to cleanly ferment beers of varying strengths. 

The starter being stirred (after 1 day)

Biere de Table

Batch Volume (Gal): 6.00

Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): 6.16

Total Grain (Lbs): 10

OG: 1.052   

Anticipated FG: ~1.012   

Anticipated ABV: ~5.3%

IBUs: 23.1

SRM: 7.6

Brewhouse Efficiency: 83%

Boil Duration: 65 min

Grain                                               (Lbs/oz.)   (%)

British 2-row Pale Malt (Pearl)            8           80

Biscuit Malt                                         8 oz.        5

CaraMunich 45                                   8 oz.        5

Victory Malt                                        8 oz.        5

Wheat Malt                                         8 oz.        5

Hops    (AA%)   (IBU)   (Oz.)    (Boil[min])

Saaz        3           12.2       1              60

Saaz        3           10.9       1              45

Yeast

Wyeast 3725 Biere de Garde (Pitched Activator packet into a 1 L starter for 1.5 days)

Water

1 tsp 5.2 pH stabilizer (in mash)

1/2 tsp Calcium Chloride (65 min)

1 tsp Calcium Sulfate (65 min)

1/2 tsp yeast nutrient (10 min)

1 Whirlfloc tablet (5 min)

I mashed in at 1.5 qts/lb and hit ~151-152 initially. I then brought it up quickly to 156 F and brought it back down to about 152 F (I was aiming for 153 F, so finally settled on 152 F). Hopefully the mash created a medium attenuable wort, leaving a nice malty sweetness behind.

The new and improved base for the malt mill

Unfortunately I think I ran into the same problem I experienced with the Scottish 60 Ale. I'm fairly certain I must have a bacterial infection in my 5 gallon mash tun, bacteria that must have taken over after I left the grains in the mash tuns after brewing the barleywine a few weeks back. The larger 10 gallon mash tun seems clean after cleaning it a while back with PBW cleaner. I'm starting to think that the older 5 gallon mash tun however has too many scratches in the plastic that must be harboring these bacteria, that then go nuts when I mash my grains and provide them with food. The same banana-esque aroma was present; a slightly funky/dank smell to the wort and the same aroma when smelling the spent grains. The wort tasted a bit thin too, which I think may be the result of bacteria consuming some of the more complex sugars left in the mash, sugars that would have ultimately otherwise provided body to the finished beer.

Collecting the wort during the sparge

After tasting the Scottish 60 the other day, it tasted fairly strange. It was clean but very watery and dry. Even though it's a low gravity beer, it should have been somewhat sweet as it was brewed with a large portion of specialty malts and mashed in at a high temperature. I'll have to see if I can clean out any remaining bacteria in the 5 gallon mash tun cooler, but it's more likely I'll be buying a new cooler, which won't set me back too much. It's a better solution than ruining another batch of beer.

I also overshot my targeted OG by quite a bit. I wanted to use up the rest of my 55 pound bag of British base malt so I intended on collecting less runoff from the mash, leaving more sugar in the mash and sacrificing efficiency a bit. I was a bit preoccupied though and the sparge ran a little fast. I collected more than I intended but chose to go with it. The beer will be a little bit less sessionable (if it's even drinkable) but should be a good spring beer if it turns out well.

The brewday went well otherwise, so it's too bad I may lose another batch of a session ale that would otherwise be in the keg for the spring, but at least the Biere de Table and the Scottish 60 were fairly inexpensive to produce. I'd rather screw them up than an IPA. The starter did take off fairly quickly, even if the wort I brewed today is a little bit less ideal after the bacteria got to munch on it before I was able to boil it. And although the Scottish 60 ale may not turn out to be a good beer, the yeast repitched from the batch produced a great tasting Wee Heavy after two weeks of fermentation. I'm thinking that the same will happen when I brew a soured Biere de Garde in about two weeks. The yeast should propagate and be just as healthy as if they fermented a healthy batch of beer.

The yeast starter after chilling in the fridge to make the yeast settle to the bottom

The English Pale Ale with American hops and the German Kolsch are still carbonating. I've had lots of trouble trying to get these beers to force carbonate. They foam immediately when I pour them off of the tap, which may be the result of me shaking the kegs too much in an attempt to dissolve carbon dioxide into the beer faster than simply hooking the beer up to gas and letting it sit. It definitely is not be a technique I will be using in the future. Luckily I've been brewing so much, I still have some bottles available to drink. The Belgian Dubbel I brewed in January is finally fully carbonated after a long period of conditioning. 

After taking a sample of the beer I brewed for Laura, the "laurabelle" barleywine, I think I'll be bottling it soon. It tasted unbelievable, and I'm excited to get it into 12 oz. bottles so it can begin to carbonate and condition, (possibly for up to a year) but with the way it tastes at this point, it may not be around that long. I'll have to finish the label as well. It finished out fairly dry for a barleywine (final gravity of 1.025) but is still fairly sweet, and comes in at a whopping 12.3% ABV. It should be a great beer for next fall and winter.