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.

My Fridge Died

It wasn't a great fridge to begin with but it was coming together nicely. It had only cost me $45 but it was incredibly loud. I had gutted it down so that I could fit three corny kegs inside but the other day instead of just being super loud it crapped out on me and was pumping hot air all over my precious beer and kombucha mothers. So I've dispersed the contents into the other fridges in the house for the time being.

The good news is I have three brews going. A 1554 clone from Zymurgy that I tweaked a little by adding some rye into it and more hops. I also have an original recipe for a  dark cherry beer with brettanomyces bruxellensis that was added to the secondary. I basically started with a 5 gallon sweet beer recipe with a small amount of hops and added in a gallon of cherry juice that was fermented with the brett b. The guy at the brew store gave me the vial of yeast for free 'cause it expired 10 days earlier. I also have a Breakfast Stout in the primary that was brewed with a pound of lactose. I'll add in coffee into the secondary and perhaps some molasses. You can see the pellicle from the brett growing on the top of the beer in the carboy in the back.

 I also have a batch of sauerkraut with lots of garlic and fennel seeds going and some mushrooms marinating. For the mushrooms I started with vinegar that I had soaked dried chilies and oregano in. Then I strained it and mixed about equal parts water with a little salt, sugar, peppercorns, olive oil and thyme. 

I guess I started this blog because it can be hard to find free information on brewing brettanomyces beers or any kind of helpful information on making kombucha or other fermented tasty things. There are some resources I found helpful, and I plan on posting them here. So I guess I hope my projects might shed some light on things that are not always easy to find. I'll post the recipes that I've used with more in depth notes after they are done.