At the zenith of laziness. Or, simplicity.

And you thought I'd stop there, after doing BIAB, no sparge, no chill. Nope! I do believe now that I've hit the ultimate in AG-brewing, simplified. On top of my usual time-saving BIAB, no sparge, no chill procedure, I've moved on to further streamlining my fermentation and conditioning process - a single-vessel fermentation.

Berliner Weisse update #2

I have a huge backlog of brewing-related posts which haven't been published yet, but I'm going to try to concentrate the same topics together. So yes, we're back to the obsession with the Berliner Weisse. To summarise again, Batch 1 was sour mashed in a keg then boiled (with hops), and Pacman yeast was pitched into it. Batch 2 was a no-boil batch with hop tea added, and pitched with Wyeast 3191 Berliner Weisse Blend. As expected, the prediction of a possible stuck ferment (due to the low pH) did happen. Or so I thought.

Cherry Weisse!

Berliner Weisse update #1

Batch 1

If you remember from the Berliner Weisse brewday, Batch 1 was allowed to convert into a sour mash in the keg. 3 days into pitching the raw grain and L.acidophilus, I took a quick taste. It was very light yellow and very cloudy with chunks of grossness floating around, and it had a noticeable sourness. It's quite a nice sourness - tart, but not aggressive or jarring. I continued to let it run for a full week though, as I wanted the sourness to really come through.

So Day 7 - boil day. The plan was to rack the sour mash back into the tun for a short 15 minute boil with hops, before cooling and fermenting as a conventional beer.

Reprise of a Berliner Weisse

I couldn't resist trying to make it rhyme! =)

OK, cheesiness aside, I recently bought 2 packs of Wyeast's Berliner Weisse blend packs that were expiring, so I got them at a good deal. It was purely an impulsive act, alas. I had (and still have) no idea how a Berliner Weisse tastes like. Here goes!

A very pale, very "raw" looking un-boiled wort used for the Berliner Weisse

"Esplanade Explosion" - what a blast!

This beer had been sitting in the carboy for 2 years. Yes - 2 YEARS. And I finally picked up the courage to taste it just one more time, and dump the whole load today.

Chinese Rice wine

With baby Bryan's EDD coming up, we've been busy making preparations for the nursery. What's more, the Chinese have an archaic confinement period during which the new mother is supposed to take various "healing foods". One of them, happily, involves brewing - Chinese rice wine!

Oldenlandia Ale - a trial

It just so happens that one of our friends is getting married soon, and the local popular practice is for the aspiring groom to survive a hazing on that day (usually thinly masqueraded as "gate-breaking" and intellectualised into having the meaning of sacrificing for the bride). One of the must-have options is to have the groom and groomsmen eat 4 food items, each representing the tastes of sourness, sweetness, bitterness and spiciness. Of course, the girls came up with the ingenious idea of dishing out a beer so bitter, they'll never forget it.

We all know that the bitterness from hops counter-balances the malty sweetness of the wort. Prior to the widespread use of hops, a bunch of other herbs have also been used for this same purpose. To the best of my knowledge though, no one has really tapped on the wealth of traditional Chinese herbs for this. Which is shame, since most traditional Chinese medicines taste so bitter, they make Stone Ruination look like sack mead.

And now, enter Oldenlandia diffusa. 


My mom used to make me suck on 1 of the leaves as a remedy for sore throat, and it really is bitter. I just can't describe it - it's a deep, intense bitterness that just lingers on your tongue for ages. So for our beer, we decided to use this stuff as one of the bittering additions.

Since it's going to be punishing to guzzle 5 gallons of this stuff, I decided to brew a base recipe and decant off 6 litres separately to use.

This is the recipe:

4kg Maris Otter
600g Carapils
100g Wheat
50g Acidulated Malt
1 tsp Burton Salts

Mashed at 64C for 1 hr, mashed out at 73C, then first wort hopped with 2oz Styrian Goldings until the wort started boiling. 6 litres was decanted off, and the remaining continued on its own hop schedule to make an ESB.

The 6 litres was placed on a stove top to complete the rest of the crazy hopping.

In all, I added 2oz CTZ (15% AA), 2oz Magnum (12% AA) and 2 sprigs of Oldenlandia diffusa to the boil, which continued for 90 mins to maximize hop extraction. At the end of it, we stole a small sample to taste, and holy crap!! Can't wait to see how the finished product ends up.

The wort was put into a small cube as per my usual no-chill routine, and cube hopped with 1oz of Nelson Sauvin and 1oz Cascade. It'll eventually be pitched with Nottingham yeast - stay tuned for the results! I'm just hoping that Oldenlandia doesn't contain any yeast-inhibiting compounds.

The final product was bottled for the groom and his henchmen, and I'm totally digging the label idea that wifey gave me! It's meant to imitate traditional bats of Chinese wine, except with the Chinese word for bitter on it. :) 

A weekend of beer!

All I can say is "WOW!". It started out with Beerfest Asia on Friday night, followed by a Brew-Together session at Eric's house on Saturday, and finally my own brewday on Sunday.

SC having a little too much fun

Fruit Wheat ... gone wrong?

Another reason to fear girls' nights out (other than the shopping) - they talk about your beer and make specific requests. So I came home to find that SWMBO will be inviting her girlfriends over, and Sharon requested that I try to clone a rosé beer. I was utterly confused for a while, until she described it as a pink-coloured, sweet beer. Turns out she was referring to Witterkerke's Rose Beer, essentially a wheat beer infused with raspberries. This beer is hardly the pinnacle of manliness, but I rose to the challenge anyway (pun intended).