Sunday Paper, English Mild

It smelled so good...

For the past three summers a group of friends, that happen to homebrew meet up for a simple brew off.  In the past we selected a BJCP category and people can brew whatever beer they like, as long as it fits into the chosen BJCP style.  This year we decided to pick a special ingredient kinda like the "Iron Brewer" concept but on a local level.  The base recipe could be anything the brewer wanted as long as the special ingredient stood out.  As a group, we had eight brewers that tossed in 2 ideas each.  Danny and I got together and picked one of them out of a bowl and send the video to each brewer.  The winning ingredient? Coffee.

When the ingredient was picked, I was fired up.  Knowing that I have a couple great coffee recipes worked out, this could be simple.  My Coffee Porter or my Cucuy with Coffee would be ideal choices.  Then I started to second guess the point of the challenge.  Being a special ingredient category the purpose of the challenge was to create a beer that pushed my brewing outside the norm.   I started looking at different ideas, creating a coffee beer that would have a clear coffee taste, staying away the normal stouts and porters.

Dreg Series: Baby Solidarity/Russian River

This is a continuing series on harvesting yeast from production beers.  The focus of this is to collect, grow and ferment a beer with these Brett or wild yeast strains.  The majority of the wort for this experiment is collected by brewing 7 gallons instead of the typical 6 during a normal Homebrew session.  Each of these post will develop slowly as the Brett/Funk matures over time.

Base Recipe: Solidarity Black Mild

Production Beer Harvested (Dregs): Russian River Supplication and The Bruery Oude Tart blended 50/50.

Oude Tart description from The Bruery

Russian River Supplication

This beer could be interesting.  The very complex malt bill might play havoc on the sour yeast blend from the 2 blended additions.  This beer took off in the fermentation chamber and had a good amount of activity with-in 24 hours. 

Solidarity Black English Mild

I love The Brewing Network and all of their shows.  Last January they had Eagle Rock Brewery on Can You Brew It.  I've never been to Eagle Rock Brewery but the recipe sounded so tasty and delicious I had to scribble down the recipe and brew it.  Below is the actual recipe converted into 5 gallons.  I rounded the 5.3 oz below to 6 at my LHBS's.  I have to admit, it is one of the most complex recipes I've brewed so far.  I had a little bit of a line forming behind me waiting for the scale as a frantically grabbed an ounce of this and that.

Picture Credit Eagle Rock Brewery