Demeter Facile: Recipe

With this beer being my sixth time using Ambrosia Blend 005 to ferment, I wanted to try something very neutral in order to really pick out the yeast and bacteria profile that I have going.  This meant brewing a beer with a fairly-simple blonde malt profile, keeping the hops in check, and not using any spices or fruit.  Based on this process, I decided to go with "Facile" (French for "simple") as the name for this beer in the Demeter series.  For those who haven't been reading for too long, the Demeter series is a line of saisons using Brettanomyces and/or lactic acid bacteria, and have up until this point contained some sorts of fruit or spicing.  The name of the series comes from Greek mythology, where Demeter is the goddess of the harvest.

With the simple base beer, I'm hoping to be able to pull out fruity aspects that are coming from the yeast and bacteria blend, perhaps with a little bit of spice as well.  While I do appreciate saisons that tend toward the phenolic side, I vastly prefer to brew (and drink) saisons that focus on fruity esters.  I've generally picked out a lot of tropical fruit and citrus notes so far when using Ambrosia Blend 005 to ferment, though I've never been sure how much of that was due to hops and other aroma/flavoring agents I've added to those beers.  Here I use a bit of Centennial for some hop character, but by no means an excessive amount (1.5 ounces per 5 gallons).  For the grist, I used mostly pilsner, adding in some Munich, honey malt, spelt, and wheat to give a little extra flavor and up the mouthfeel a bit.

Here are the full details on the batch:

Batch Number: 95

Brew Date: September 27, 2014

Bottle Date: October 25, 2014

Batch Size: 10 Gallon

OG: 1.044 (est.)

FG: 1.002 (est.)

Fermentation Temperature: ~65*F.  (This is being fermented in the unfinished portion of our basement, which generally hovers in this area, staying warm throughout the winter as the boiler is located in the corner.)

IBU: 29.0 (modified Tinseth from BrewCipher)

ABV: 5.7%

SRM: 5.0

Mash: Single infusion for 60 minutes at 152* F

Boil: 60 minute

Fermentables

14.0 lb Pilsner Malt

1.50 lb Raw Spelt

1.00 lb Flaked Wheat

1.00 lb Munich Malt

1.00 lb Honey Malt

Salts & Water

All salts added to the kettle. Also added 14mL of lactic acid to the mash to get the pH to around 5.24.

5.2g Calcium Chloride

4.3g Gypsum

6.1g Sodium Chloride

Resulting water profile is as follows:

Mash pH (est.): 5.24 (BrewCipher estimate)

Calcium: 77

Magnesium: 12

Sodium: 50

Chloride: 125

Sulfate: 70

Hops

1.5 oz Centennial (8.7 AAU), pellet, at 60 minutes

3.0 oz Centennial (8.7 AAU), pellet, at flameout

Other

2.0 tsp. Wyeast Yeast Nutrient at 10 minutes

Yeast

Full batch used Ambrosia Blend 005 (now the sixth generation) from the cake of  an August 23, 2014 batch of Wallonian Pale Ale.  Each 5-gallon portion got approximately 125mL of dense slurry from that cake.  (Estimate based on 73% viability calculated at yeastcalculator.com.)  

Notes

I'm planning to take a portion of this batch and transfer on top of the spent fruit from two other batches that I currently have going.  The first is a Flanders Red that has been sitting on black raspberries that Amy and I picked in Michigan this summer, and the second is a version of Citrine that has been sitting on whole Montmorency cherries that Amy and I picked up at that same farm.  I stole this idea from Jester King, which uses this method with raspberries (La Vie en Rose) (process) and cherries (Detritivore) (process).

11.01.2014: I ended up not using a portion of this batch on the spent fruit, as the black raspberries had completely come apart, and were creating problems when I tried to bottle Amethyst.  Given that, I'll have to try the "second use" idea next year.  Instead of fruiting the second half of this batch, I blended it with some Citrine to create Science & Art #7.

For the first bucket, which stayed as straight Demeter Facile, I had around 4.5 gallons, so I used 130g of sugar, targeting 3.0 volumes of CO2.  For Science & Art #7, I combined 5 gallons of Demeter Facile and 1 gallon of Citrine, and added 175g of sugar, aiming for 3.0 volumes.

01.27.2015: Tasting notes.

Ruby (Batch 03): Recipe

This is my third time brewing Ruby, my Flanders Red Ale. The first batch was done in April 2012, and eventually was aged in a whiskey barrel. Unfortunately, this batch pre-dated me posting recipes, though hopefully I'll get tasting notes up for that eventually. The second batch was done in April 2013, and was bottled yesterday. I was really lax with notes on that one, as it was done right before we moved from Alexandria, Virginia back to Chicago last spring, so no post on that one either.

This recipe is quite similar to the base for the previous two, though this time I'm substituting in flaked maize for most of the wheat. I'll be using Roeselare for the entirety of this one, although may add dregs along the way. The first batch also used Roeselare and turned out quite well. The second batch was done with East Coast Yeast Flemish Ale (ECY02), courtesy of my friend Joe. Similar to batch 1, I will hopefully add in tasting notes for that one at some point.

The recipe for the full batch is as follows:

Batch Number: 81

Brew Date: February 23, 2014

Bottle/Keg Date:

Batch Size: 10 Gallon

OG: 1.050 (estimated)

FG: 1.002 (estimated)

Fermentation Temperature: ~65 F (ambient)

IBU: 19.1

ABV: 6.3% (est.)

SRM: 15.6

Mash: Single infusion for 60 minutes at 156 F.

Boil: 60 minute

Fermentables

9lb French Pilsner

4lb Munich Malt

2lb 8oz Maize, Flaked

1lb Wheat, Flaked

1lb Caramunich Malt

1lb Special B Malt

8oz Aromatic Malt

8oz Vienna Malt

Water 

Mash Water: 6.6 gallons 

Sparger Water: 7.7 gallons

Here, I added lactic acid to get the mash pH where I wanted it, and added enough calcium chloride to get the calcium level up past the recommended minimum of 50.

5.0g Calcium Chloride (all added directly to the kettle)

5mL Lactic Acid (88%) in the mash

Resulting water profile (based on EZ Water Calculator v3) is as follows:

Mash pH (est.): 5.44

Calcium: 59

Magnesium: 12

Sodium: 7

Chloride: 59

Sulfate: 27

I used lactic acid to adjust the pH of the sparge water, adding 5mL to the 7.67 gallons of water used for the sparge, which basic on the Homebrewing Physics calculator (available here), should give a sparge water pH around 5.0.

Hops

1.5oz Willamette (7.5 AAU), leaf, at 60 minutes

Other

2 tsp. Wyeast Yeast Nutrient at 10 minutes

Yeast

Wyeast Roeselare (1 packet for each 5-gallon portion)

Notes

02.23.2014: Brewday.  Each carboy got 30 seconds of pure O2.  The Roeselare packets were from October 29, 2013 and December 3, 2013.  I mixed them in a sanitized measuring cup and split evenly between the carboys.

07.28.2014: Took one of the carboys out to the garage for a bit of mixing.  The beer was moderately acidic, with a light lactic character along with a nice berry presence. Gravity was down to 1.008, and pH was 3.8. 3 gallons of it were added onto 6 pounds of black raspberries that we had picked in Michigan (and subsequently froze) over Fourth of July weekend, all into a 3-gallon Better Bottle.

The remaining portion was included in a blend for Science & Art #5.

Picking black raspberries in Southwest Michigan.
Also found a baby bird.

Adding the black raspberries to the carboy.

Nice and purple.

08.04.2014: After coming back from a nice weekend camping in Northern Michigan, the fermentation on fruit had really taken off.  The liquid in the airlock was light purple, and a bit had spilled over onto the garage floor.  Temperature during this time likely ranged from 70-75*F.

There was plenty of fruit pulp at the top that was not submersed in liquid.  Fearing any sort of acetobacter infection due to exposure to oxygen, I utilized the "punch down" technique to get the berries back into liquid, and then replaced with a clean airlock.  The punch down technique has been described on several occasions by Jester King, including here:

The blackberry refermentation involved a traditional wine making practice called a “punch down”. As the blackberries referment, they rise to the top of the oak barrel to form a cap. Several times a day we punched down the cap with a stainless steel mashing tool to break it up. This procedure was important to achieve good flavor and color extraction from the blackberries and to prevent the cap from drying up and becoming oxidized, which can lead to unwanted growth of acetobacter. Acetobacter, while harmless to consume, creates vinegary flavors and aromas that we dislike very much in beer. Punch downs and temperature control in our barrel room were important parts of our effort to keep acetobacter at bay.

11.01.2014: Was aiming to bottle the black raspberry version -- now named Amethyst -- but I had a ton of problems trying to bottle this with the Beer Gun out of the keg.  So now it's sitting under pressure with the bottling sugar, conditioning in the keg.  Based on this, it looks like I'll serve the beer on tap.  In the future, I think fresh juice might be the way to go for raspberries and blackberries.  They simply fall apart when left to ferment, and I'm not sure there's any benefit to having the whole fruit, as there isn't a pit or tannic skin to provide much additional flavor.