While it has yet to be officially posted online, the Garrison Brewing competition this year will be a Weizen/Weissbier (wheat beer http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/style15.php#1a). We thought we’d start early as we are new to this style of beer (as far as brewing goes)
This week’s brew is a recipe that Shean put together called “Blick Aufs Meer” which translates loosely to either “Sea View” or “View of the ocean”
Blick Aufs Meer
2.78 Kg Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1.61 kg Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM)
500g Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM)
1.00 kg Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
1 pkg German Wheat yeast (Wyeast Labs #3333)
10g Hallertauer (60 min)
10g Hallertauer (20 min)
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.051
Est ABV 5.2%
To be honest neither of us are big fans of wheat beers, so this is definitely new territory.
The goal with this batch of straw coloured gold is to figure out what we can tweak and adjust for our actual competition brew submissions. According to German law at least 50% of your recipe needs to be wheat, and the rest a pilsner malt, given that German pils is also a 2 row, Shean decided a Canadian 2 row would likely do the trick for the first rough run. The next batch will be a tad more pure and use nothing but Germany’s best malt, but for tastes sake we wanted to have 2 different samples to compare and see if we could pick out the difference between the Canuck and German varieties.
On to the evenings tastings!
A great place to start given the recipe
The Schneider Weisse Hopfenweisse
Starting with the nose it comes off very yeasty and it has a really nice head. Murky and straw coloured. Light clove, hint of grass and a good bite on the back end. A seriously lingering bitter which is surprising. We happened to be having some Chinese food during the tasting and it pairs really well with the tartness of the plum sauce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawinigan_Handshake
Not very strong on the nose, but notes of pineapple. Pineapple! pineapple! pineapple! We would almost want to say this is strictly a malty fermented pineapple juice but saying that would rob it of complexity that came forward as we sampled this. Medium body, very little head retention. Fairly malty but not overwhelmingly so. As the beer warmed up a bit this beast became an entirely different offering. The pineapple started to fade and the yeast flavours came forward, a bit more spice showed up as well and the mouthfeel was evened out by the bite in the finish. All in all, a very pleasant experience. A brew that any prime minister could be proud of (excluding the obvious sweater-vest wearing conservative).
The colour really grabbed us on this IPA. A nice dark copper-amber. Notes of resin, and hop oils on the top of the mouth. It has a good malt backbone and caramelly tastes, and is fairly dry on the finish. Spills well on a brown sweater. Medium body, light citrus and a hint of pine. It also spills well on grey pants. It tastes like antlers on a bear. 😉
Side note:
Learning to pick out different notes when tasting beer is an ongoing experience and we are each still expanding our abilities here. We didn’t notice the brief description on the side of the bottle until AFTER we had given our mutual 2 cents. 2 copper pennies if you will. As it would turn out, we actually might have an idea what we’re talking about. We were pretty happy that our combined notes matched up to the commercial description. Shean described the copper colour, resin and dry finish while Peter picked out the pine, caramelly backbone and hop oils sticking to the top of his mouth. Everything matched up precisely with what was written. We’re pleased to announce that as it would turn out, we’re not totally full of it.
The Garrison Baltic Porter
(Obviously, as the night went on, we decided to get creative with our beer photos.)
Sweet molasses aroma and also boozy on the nose. Molasses continues in the taste with dried fruit.
We named off figs, dates and (a little) plum. Great sipper.
Baltic Porter was developed as a style in response to the Russian Imperial Stout that was being shipped through the Baltic area to Catherine the Great and her court. It was developed into a dark, sweeter beer brewed (usually) with lager yeast instead of the ale yeast used in the imperial stouts that were made and shipped from Britain.
Propeller Revolution Russian Imperial Stout.
The first thing we noticed on the aroma was sweetness and alcohol notes on the 8% ABV brew. We immediately pick up chocolate (baker’s chocolate perhaps) in the taste of the beer once we got past sniffing our glasses. A solid, lingering bitterness in there. Leather and tobacco hints were not hiding too hard from us. There was something else we couldn’t put our finger on which we will now refer to as glittinous***
We believe, and it is somewhat hard to tell from year to year through recollection only, that this is superior to last years version of the Propeller RIS.
We put the Weizen into the primary fermenter and recorded the starting gravity as 1.050. Right where we wanted it.
We’ll of course let you know how it turned out in a few weeks time.
Until next time, cheers from Mashed In Hfx!
***From this day forward, any flavor or aroma we can’t quite put our finger on will be described as glittinous
Mashed In Hfx 