Norweigian Style Juniper Ale

Last night some friends and I brewed up a batch of juniper ale. Juniper ales are typically brewed on farms in Scandinavian countries. They are somewhat sweet, you drink them "flat" or only with the carbonation they have after the secondary fermentation, and they are slightly smokey. Gotlandsdricku (dricka/dricke) is a traditional juniper ale brewed in Gotland which is an island off the coast of Sweden. There are not many sites that agree on the same steps and procedures for making this beer and so I just took the ones that sounded best to me and designed my beer off of them. I read that the malt is slightly smokey and I have been wanting to use this peat smoked malt at the brew store but didn't know what I was going to use it for. I've heard that there is rye in it and also wheat. I used Mount Hood hops because they are described as having a minty quality and they pair well with spicy rye flavors. Most of the recipes online call for sugar, but I do not have a lot of experience brewing with sugars and wanted to really see what a plain juniper ale would taste like. The pictures that I have seen of this beer are darker than what we brewed I pretty much stuck with plain base malt colors. Anyways this is the recipe:
Malt:

• 10 lbs Premium 2-row
• 1 lb Dextrin (for body)
• 1 lb Malted Rye
• .5 lb Peated Malt (smokey flavor)
• .5 Torrefied Wheat (for head retention and body)

Hops:

• 1 oz Mount Hood 5.5% @ boil 

Yeast:

• California V

Misc:

• 1 oz Juniper Berries @ 5min
• Mash tun layered with juniper branches

 Since I have wanted to brew this kind of beer for awhile I had been searching for a good juniper tree to pull branches from. The juniper that I have seen in videos and pictures looks like the low shrub kind that is really spiky. I used a not so spiky version but it was covered in berries. I have seen people add hops to the mash tun. I have seen/read of people making a juniper branch tea and then mashing with the strained water along with branches in the mash tun. Unanimously they all say to put the branches in the mash tun. I guess back in the day that was what was used to strain the grains.

Here are a list of sites I used to figure out what I was going to do:

• Gotlandsdricku Recipe 
• Beer and Loafing in Las Vegas 
• Farmhouse Juniper Ale 
• Odin's Glass Of Nectar 
• Video of Farmhouse Ale (they have the coolest wort chiller!)
• Video Of Dudes Making Gotlandsdricku 

I heated a pot of 26 quarts (2 quarts/lb) to 165° F and added it to my mash tun layered with juniper branches. I let that sit for a minute or two covered to let the cooler heat up and then we added the grains at 6:05 pm. I stirred around until it dropped to 150° F so that It would feel a little thicker in the end. The temperature stayed at 150° F for the whole hour. Then we drained the wort out into the kettle and poured with a pitcher boiling water over the grain bed with an aluminum foil strainer so we did not disturb the grain bed to much. We collected around 6.5 gallons brought that to a boil and added in 1 oz of Mount Hood 5.5%. We boiled it for an hour but added 1 oz of dried juniper berries from a spice shop in with 5 minutes left in the boil. Cooled it, racked it, and pitched the yeast. I didn't warm the yeast up before I pitched it I just shook it in the jar I had it in and dumped it into the carboy. The wort was pretty cool because it was so cold outside while we were transferring it.

I also bought an L' Auto-Siphon from Fermtech Ltd. It's pretty much awesome. The guys at the brew store kept telling me "oh you got to get one" and I just thought they were trying to sell me something but in reality I should have gotten one a long time ago. Not only do I not have to suck in bleach/starsan into my mouth any more but it also drains the wort from the kettle to the carboy so smoothly that it left all the hot break at the bottom of the kettle.
Last night we also transferred our Breakfast Stout from the primary into the secondary with french pressed coffee, molasses and maple syrup. I went from a 6.5 gallon carboy to a 5 gallon carboy and ran out of room in the secondary so I filled up a big pitcher full of flat beer to drink. I don't see any reason to waste it. Plus I got to use my new glass her name is Guzzlestaff.

Nut Cheese, Chili, Kombucha, Plus More Cherries

I have a link to a blog that explains how to make Vegan Cheese out of nuts off to the right side. A couple of weeks ago I decided to try and make some myself. I used two metric handfuls of walnuts, one handful of almonds and I sprinkled in some small pumpkin seeds for good measure. I added into the blender some fresh sauerkraut brine teeming with lactobacilli, some vegetable oil and a hunk o' homemade sauerkraut too. The blog I got the info from said to add seaweed and coconut creme but I couldn't find coconut creme that was unsweetened and I did not want to put seaweed in it. I just blended all that stuff up until it was good and creamy. It took forever and next time I will blend the dry stuff up first so it doesn't take so long. After it was mush I put it into a swing-top jar and let it sit for four days. It was only supposed to take 14 hours but I put the lid on the the jar. The mush is supposed to ferment and rise like bread but since I put the lid on the gas had no where to go and the mush didn't rise. So I burped it everyday until I thought it was good to go. One day waiting for the train I turned to my girlfriend and exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear that "I needed to go home and burp my nut cheese." It tasted really good actually! The sauerkraut brine had a lot of garlic in it so it ended up tasting like a more puckering sour cream and onion/garlic dip. I had a bunch and then gave it to my girlfriends sister who is vegan and she liked it too. Actually there wasn't anyone that I gave it to that didn't like it. Plus I got to make nut cheese jokes after everyone took a bite.

After Four Days

A purple layer on the top formed but did not taste bad at all

I made a batch of Chili and Kombucha on the same day. The Chili came out great and I took it camping with me but the Kombucha didn't come out as planned. It didn't taste bad I just should of let it ferment longer than five days. During the summer I could put the batch out in the sun-room and if I left it longer than 4 days it would have been pure vinegar. Now it's cold in the house and five days just won't cut it. It came out too sweet and the ginger I used ended up tasting too root like and not spicy enough. I also didn't boil it for very long and didn't get enough lime zest flavors. I didn't use tea bags either and it made it kind of cloudy. So if I were going to do it all over again I would boil it longer, use tea bags to hold both the tea and the ginger and zest, and I would ferment it longer or taste it at least before I bottle it!

Mothers

One more thing that I would take into consideration is that I had the mothers in the fridge prior to the fermentation. I did not give them enough time to get used to the warm temperatures. Now I have been storing them at room temperature in some juice.

Kombucha Recipe (for this batch):

• 4Tbs Black Tea
• 4 Tbs Green Tea
• One zested lime
• About a golfball sized grated piece of ginger 
• ~2 cups of sugar (perhaps too much)

Finally a couple of days ago I tasted my Cherry Brett Ale and it tasted different from the last time I tasted it but it still was not sour enough for me and it didn't have enough cherry flavor or aroma. So I grabbed 4.75 cups of sour cherries and proceeded to boil them down to make some sort of syrup. I used an immersion blender for a long while to make it as smooth as possible and also added in 3 Tbs of white sugar to make sure I wasn't going to drop the alcohol content to much. Its been bubbling (but not blowing over) since I put the cherries in and it smells a lot more like cherries too. I thought that maybe I waited to long to add the brett into the beer because most of the sugars might have gotten eaten up before the brett could work its magic. So hopefully this will give the brett more to work with and make the ale a little more sour.

Boiled

Blended

Added To Batch

Sad face rock I found hunting with Tom

Pumpkin Ale's and One Lager

I should have posted this right after it happened so that the tastes and smells of the beer would be fresh in my mind but I didn't and so they are not. We had a themed beer night before Halloween where we tried four different pumpkin beers. I had never tried pumpkin beer but I heard it tasted like a pumpkin pie. I've wanted to do a themed beer night before and since I didn't want to get one crappy pumpkin beer and then think they all tasted like that we tried a whole bunch.

We tried Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale, Lakefront Pumpkin Lager, Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale, and Dogfish Head Punkin Ale.

It's hard to remember the exact tastes of the beer because I didn't write anything down. I was not drinking with a bunch a beer geeks just regular people that would have made fun of me and it probably would have taken away some of the fun for them. Anywho from what I can remember Buffalo Bill's and Lakefronts were the most mellow tasting. Both of them had a good pumpkin pie flavor but Buffalo Bill's felt thicker and I prefer it that way. They both had similar pumpkin and spice smells and were certainly the most beer-like. Shipyard is pretty sweet and has a lot of spice flavor. It's got a really thin mouth feel and almost tastes like a graham cracker. It sounds kind of weird but I thought it was really tasty. Shipyard might be the only beer I would buy again out of these four. It was the most unique without being too strong so I could drink more than three without getting sloppy, and it wasn't super pricey.

The first beer we tried was Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale because it's 9% and we paid the most for it and had to justify that by drinking it slowly and savoring the flavor. Also to justify the price I scrutinized this beer the most and so its flavors are the most memorable to me. First off kudos to anyone that can make a 9% beer taste like it's not 9%! It really bugs me when someone tells me to try a beer because its 8-9%+ ABV and then it tastes like someone poured a shot of vodka or whiskey into a perfectly good beer. That being said you can tell this is 9% after a few sips. One thing I can remember most is that it smelled like there is brett in it. I do not know how to describe it any other way. This ale is spiced and so it has a lot of cinnomon and clove smells and maybe I was smelling some of that and interpreting that as brett. It has a creamy mouthfeel and when you taste the pumpkin along with that it is really good. It still has the taste of beer the whole time and doesn't taste like you are drinking some novelty Jone's soda soft drink. I liked it a lot, but might not buy it again. On the other hand themed beer nights kick ass and I will do that again for sure!