No. 25: Spanish Cedar IPA

I've never been a huge fan of wood aged IPAs.  I suppose more specifically oak aged IPAs.  But when I came across this thread on Homebrew Talk, I was intrigued. Somebody had pieced together a recipe for Cigar City's Humidor Series IPA based on interviews with Wayne and possibly other people at Cigar City.

I have heard a lot of good things about Cigar City, but I've never been able to get my hands on any of their beers.  It seemed like a perfect opportunity to try to make something similar to the Humidor Series IPA, and at the same time try and interesting twist on an IPA.

The one problem people in the thread seemed to have was getting a hold of some Spanish Cedar.  I did a quick google search and found a specialty wood store down the street from my work.  A few days later I stopped into the store and picked up a 2 foot long piece of Spanish Cedar for $5.  When I got it home I weighed it and it was approximately one pound.

For the recipe I kept the grain bill very similar to the one in the thread. I adjusted the hops based on what I had in the freezer, but I tried to keep it somewhat similar to the original recipe in the thread on Homebrew Talk.

Spanish Cedar Tea Bag                                     

Adding the Spanish Cedar was a bit trickier.  I wanted the finished beer to have a noticeable Spanish Cedar flavour, but not overpower everything else. The piece of wood I bought was not very aromatic.  I had only a very slight smell if your nose was right up against it, so I knew I had to use a fair bit of it.  My plan was to cut up about 4oz into cubes and let it soak in the beer along with the dry hops for up to 2 weeks.

I made sort of a tea bag out of a paint strainer bag and some dental floss and suspended the Spanish Cedar in my conical. This allowed me to taste the beer over the two week dry hop period and remove the wood when the flavour got to where I wanted it.



The recipe I used is as follows:

No. 25 Spanish Cedar IPA:

Batch Size: 5.75 gal     
Boil Size: 7.25 gal
Estimated OG: 1.072 SG
Estimated Color: 10.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain

13.50 lb     Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)    
0.75 lb       Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.75 lb       Caramunich Malt (34.0 SRM)
0.25 lb       Victory Malt (25.0 SRM)

Hops

0.50 oz       Chinook [12.50 %]  (30 min)   
1.00 oz       Simcoe [12.50 %]  (10 min)    
1.00 oz       Cascade [5.40 %]  (10 min)    
1.00 oz       Amarillo Gold [6.90 %]  (10 min)     
1.00 oz       Cascade [5.40 %]  (0 min)   
1.00 oz       Simcoe [12.40 %]  (0 min)         
1.00 oz       Amarillo Gold [6.90 %]  (0 min) 

2.00 oz       Simcoe [12.40 %]  (Dry Hop 14 days)           
2.00 oz       Citra [12.30 %]  (Dry Hop 14 days)  

Yeast
     
San Diego Super Yeast (White Labs #WLP090)       
       

Mash Schedule 

Mashed @ 151F for 60 Minutes

Fermentation Temp

62F ambient temperature for 2 weeks

Dry hopped for 2 week at 62F

 

Spanish Cedar

 

12 cubes (3.4oz weight) for 2 weeks

Actual Numbers

Measured OG:  1.074

Measured FG:  1.012

ABV:  8.1%

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It turned out the Spanish Cedar needed the full two week soak in the beer to impart a noticeable flavour.  At the time of bottling my brothers girlfriend described the beer as smelling like a lumber store.

Tasting

After about 3 weeks in the bottle the beer was fully carbonated but the nice "lumber store" aroma it had before had already faded away.  The only aroma remaining was a big citrus hop smell.

Citrus flavour upfront, and as the beer warmed a woody tannin flavour from the Spanish Cedar became much more pronounced.  The flavour from the wood was fairly harsh and took away from the overall enjoyment of the beer.  There was a little bit of alcohol heat in the finish, and in addition the beer had a slight phenolic flavour, which further detracted from my drinking pleasure. 


Lynn's Take

"Hop water.  Seriously, its like a hop tea.  Is that all you know how to make?  I feel like your beers are losing complexity, and all you know how to make is hop tea."

Thoughts for Next Time

This beer missed the mark for me.  I think it really came down to the wood.  The aroma was very subtle and it took quite a lot of contact time with the beer to really get anything out of it.  By having it in contact with the beer for so long, I ended up extracting tannins from the wood, which made the beer kind of... I don't want to say suck, but the beer kind of sucked.  

I think the key here is to try to get a fresher piece of wood, and have less contact time with the beer.  I would try this again at some point, but I would need to try to find a much more aromatic piece of Spanish Cedar.  

No. 23: Kate The Great Inspired Imperial Stout

My plan was to brew a really big (~11%) imperial stout, and to add some sort of flavouring such as chocolate, oak, chillis, etc.  My only previous experience brewing a big stout was my Founders Breakfast Stout clone. While that beer turned out really well, I wasn't ready to rebrew it just yet.  I wanted to try a different recipe but I didn't feel like I knew enough yet to create my own.

I spent several days scouring the internet looking for either winning homebrew recipes, or recipes for well regarded commercial Imperial Stouts.  I eventually came across this thread on Homebrew Talk with a recipe for Kate the Great (KtG), directly from the brewer at Portsmouth.

KtG is one of those legendary beers that is so limited that I may never get a chance to try it, so I instantly knew that was what I was going to brew.

The recipe from the head brewer at Portsmouth is as follows:

When we brew a batch of Kate we use 77% Pale malt, 2% Crystal 45, 1% Caramel 120, 1% Chocolate malt,1% Black malt, 3% Carafa DH# 3 (Weyerman),3.5% Wheat malt 3.5% Flaked Barley, 2% Roasted malt,3.5% Special B, 2.5% Aromatic. We dough in at 166 to stabilize the mash at 149 degrees F. Saccrification rest for 45 min. or until conversion occurs. Vorlauff (recirculate) 'til clarified and run off. Collect about 1/3rd of your wort and sparge to collect 6.5 gals (for a 5 gal. yield) at 26 degrees Plato or 1.104 degrees Specific Gravity. Yea it's big.... but we like it like that!! (So you are going to need to use your mash tun efficiency to figure out how many pounds of malt you are going to need in total. But to tell you the truth when you get to this thick of a mash your efficiency is going to drop 3-4%).

Boil the wort for 5 mins. for the hot break and then add your bittering hops for 75 mins. We bitter at 38 IBUs with Magnum, 10 IBUs with Styrian Golding and 15 IBUs with Perle. This is the bittering addition. We add a flavor addition for 15 mins with Centennial for 2 IBUS. Our final addition of Palisade, Styrian Golding and Willamette account for about 3 more IBUs at whirlpool. Cool wort and pitch a good amount of White labs WLP 001 or Wyeast 1056 and ferment til it is done. Put into conditioning for about 5 or 6 months and you'll have an amazing imperial stout.

A little more digging and I came across this thread on The Brewing Network in regards to the oaking process Portsmouth uses.

Their process is:

As far as the Kate's oaking goes. All of Kate is lightly oaked. We make our own Portwood simply by infusing oak spirals ( The Barrel Mill, Avon, MN- 800.201.7125) with local Port. Of course if I told you the amounts and proportions I have to kill you!! Actually, we take 6 spirals and break them up, place them into a 10 gal. corny keg and pour 3 bottles of Tawney Port over the spirals. We add about 10 PSI to the keg and let the concoction sit for 18-25 days. Then we fill the remainder of the 10 gal. keg with Kate. Let it sit at ambient temp for 45-60 days then inject the 10 gals back into the 440 gals of KtG. Once the keg is empty we then back fill the 10 gals and let the Kate sit on the oak for another 6 months. This become the double oaked Kate. Very rare, only about 56 bottles produced. Hope this helps. Kate can age for 6 years once in bottles, if truth be known!! Cheers! Tod Mott

My Recipe

With 11 different malts, this is by far the most complicated recipe I have ever come across, but with KtG being so highly regarded they must be on to something. I always thought that I had simplified the grain bill a little bit, but looking at my recipe just now I realized that I have 11 malts also. I tweaked the original grain bill slightly based on my intuition, and closing my eyes and pointing to random bags of malted barley. 

My mash tun maxes out at a little over 20 lbs of grain, so in this case I knew I would have to add some extra fermentables to hit the required starting gravity.  These included a pound each of pale DME, and Muscavodo sugar.

The hops were simplified slightly to just Warrior for bittering, and Palisade plus Willamette for the late addition.

No. 23: Kate the Great Inspired Imperial Stout

Ready to be bottled                                                              

Batch Size: 5.50 gal     
Boil Size: 7.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.105 SG
Estimated Color: 55.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 63.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain 

10.00 lb     Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)   
6.50 lb       Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)    
1.00 lb       Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM) 
0.75 lb       Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM)
0.75 lb       Special B Malt (180.0 SRM)     
0.50 lb       Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)    
0.50 lb       Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)    
0.50 lb       Crystal Malt - 45L (45.0 SRM) 
0.25 lb       Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM)    
0.25 lb       Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)       
0.25 lb       Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)

1.00 lb       Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)      
1.00 lb       Muscovado Sugar (25.0 SRM)

Hops
    
1.50 oz       Warrior [17.00 %]  (60 min)
0.50 oz       Palisade [6.70 %]  (10 min)   
0.50 oz       Williamette [5.50 %]  (10 min) 
0.50 oz       Palisade [6.70 %]  (0 min)   
0.50 oz       Williamette [5.50 %]  (0 min)

Yeast

Safale US-05

Mash Schedule

Mashed @ 149F for 75 Minutes

Fermentation Temp

62F ambient

Actual Numbers

Measured OG: 1.104
Measured FG: 1.030
ABV: 9.7% (9.8% after Port addition)

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Port & French Oak Addition

French Oak Soaking in Port              

I used French oak chips and Vintage port raided from my parents wine cellar.  Somehow I managed to miss Portsmouth's batch size in the post on The Brewing Network, so I had to take a guess on how much Port to add. 

Thinking back to my Bourbon Vanilla Porter recipe, where I used 350ml of Bourbon, I decided to start with 250ml of port. 1oz of french oak chips were soaked in the port for 2 weeks while the beer was fermenting.  I added the mixture after the beer had spent about 6 weeks in the fermenter.

Pretty much immediately after adding the port and oak mixture I realized that Portsmouth did state their total batch size for KtG.  Based on that batch size, they add 25ml of Port per 5 gallons of beer.  So I ended up with about ten times more Port than the real thing.

Tasting

At this initial tasting the beer has been bottled for 7 weeks, after spending 2 months in the primary fermenter.

Port is definitely the most prominent aspect of this beer.  The aroma all port, maybe with a hint of malt sweetness. The port is at the forefront of the flavour, but it doesn't completely overpower everything. Immediately following the taste of port is a subtle roastiness, finishing with a slight lingering bitterness and some acidity from the port. It has a slight bit of heat from the alcohol, and the French oak is nowhere to be found.

Overall it turned out quite well.  The excessive amount of port hurt the final product a little bit, but its still quite pleasant to drink. It will be interesting to see what a couple more months in the bottle will do to the flavour.

Lynn's Take

"Chocolate?  Is this a chocolate stout?"

What do you think?

"No thoughts really, my mind just kind of went blank."

Thoughts for Next Time


I wouldn't hesitate to brew this beer again, in fact I'm sure i will at some point.  I would leave the recipe exactly the same with the exception of reducing the port and trying to get a little more of the oak flavour.

The oak chips were pretty much junk, with almost half the bag being slivers or pure dust.  Next time I'll try to track down some cubes or a spiral.  I would probably use just enough port to cover the oak, and possibly discard some of it depending on the amount, when it came time to add it to the beer.