WindRiver Brewing Internet Newsletter
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WindRiver Brewing Internet August 1999 Newsletter WESTSIDE HOMEBREW CLUB MEETING THURSDAY 8/12/99 ! For everyone living in the Minneapolis/St Paul Metro area. Meeting schedule of the Western branch of the MhBA: 9/16, 10/14, 11/11, 12/16. All meetings begin at 7:00 pm at WindRiver Brewing. Bring a glass or mug and some homebrew (or unusual commercial beer if you're in a bind). Hope to see you there. A map to WindRiver is here. This month's theme is wheat beer, with a focus on fruit beer and Belgian Witbier. These are excellent beers to make during the summer, and make a great addition to a summer picnic or barbecue or other festive setting. A Fruit Beer Retrospective For anyone who has paid attention to the beer scene during the last few years, fruit beers have become almost a cottage industry unto themselves. But don't think that this is a new invention. Like many fads, the fruit beer craze is actually just a reinvention of something that began centuries ago. As with many eccentric brewing procedures, the Belgians were the first to add fruit to their brews. The earliest fruit beers were made with "lambic" as a base. Lambic is one of the oldest beers produced in Europe. If you look at the paintings of Bruegel, you can find depictions of beer being drunk from earthenware crocks that date back to the 15th and 16th century. This indicates that lambic had become very popular among the peasantry by then, and was probably first made at least several hundred years before this. A lambic, in the most simplest sense, is just a wheat beer. What differentiates a lambic from a wheat beer is twofold. First, the term lambic as actually an appellation similar to champagne. Lambic is a corruption of the word "Lembeek" which refers to a town just outside of Brussels in Belgium. The wheat beers produced by breweries in an area close to the original town of Lembeek eventually gained the name lambic, and was restricted only to those producers who originated in this area (the story of the origin of the term "lambic" is rather complex and convoluted. For more details see Michael Jackson, The Great Beers of Belgium). Second, lambic has a very distinctive flavor. A lambic is made with yeast and bacteria naturally present in the air and also inside of the lambic breweries. The flora which produce lambic are a combination between an ale yeast (uvarum cervesiae), a wild yeast (bruxellensis or lambicus) and a lactic acid producing bacteria (usually a Delbruckii strain). This spontaneous fermentation produces a beer with very sour flavor and horsey or leathery aroma. Sometimes these beers are sweetened with sugar (Faro), served plain (Gueze) or are refermented with additional fruit. A cherry lambic (Kriek), raspberry (framboise), peach (peche), are the most popular varieties, but one can, more rarely, find examples made with grape, pineapple, banana and pear. The most traditional lambics tend to be dry and tart, but other examples are now available that use fruit syrups instead of real fruit, giving these beers a much sweeter more dessert-like quality. In the tradition of using fruit to balance sourness are the style known as Berliner Weisse. Unlike the traditional weizenbier, which has a rich malty body and a clove-banana spice flavor, Berliner Weisse has an extreme sour flavor and a very dry and light body. In order to make these beers more palatable, it became traditional to serve them with fruit syrups. This gives their weissbier a sweet and sour characteristic. Finally, there is the more recent trend, to create more wine-coolerish beers by adding fruit syrup to light beers. This gives many of the recent microbrewed fruit beers an overwhelming sweet flavor, which tends to overwhelm the other flavors of the beer. It is also common to find some darker beers such as porters and stouts made with fruit. These examples tend to meld with these very flavorful recipes, creating a much more balanced final product. Fruit Wheat: A Recipe Wheat beers make a great recipe to use for your fruit beer because they are already fairly light in color and flavor, so any fruit you add to the mix will have the most impact. The sweetness of fruit also acts as a nice balance to the somewhat tart flavor a wheat beer can exhibit. Also, the fact that wheat beers can be fermented at warmer than average temps, and the fact that fresh fruit becomes much more readily available during the summer, make them a perfect combination. The choice of fruit is very important. Although you can use just about fruit, try to pick one that has a fairly aggressive flavor and is very aromatic. This reasoning makes raspberry one of the most popular choices. A wheat beer made with raspberry has an aroma that you can just about smell from across the room. Cherry also works well, but tends to come across more strongly in the flavor than the aroma. Blueberry has more subtle flavor than either of these two and its presence is indicated mainly in the aroma. Cranberry can also be used, and is perceived mainly as a tart flavor, perhaps better served in a recipe with more sweetness than that of a wheat beer.
What is the attraction of fruit wheat beer? During the summer, these beers
(as long as they are not too sweet) offer a refreshing alternative to light
beers. They are wonderful when served very cold on a hot day, especially if
you have any chores. Fruit beers also pack so much flavor that they can be
well made, even if your fermentation temperatures are on the high side.
If this has piqued your interest, take advantage of this offer:
SALE GOOD UNTIL SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER COMES OUT A Brief History of Witbier: If you have been to the liquor store lately, you might have noticed a 'new' type of wheat beer adorning the its shelves. Some companies call it a Summer Ale, others call it simply a Belgian style wheat beer, those seeking to connect with the purists call it by its Flemish name Witbier, while still others use the French tern Bierre Blanche. Whatever it is called, wit has become an extremely popular summertime product for more and more craft and microbreweries. At the most obvious level, wit is just a wheat beer. The beer traces its early origins to the middle ages, and reached its early climax in the area east of Brussels, centering primarily around the cities of Louvain and Hoegaarden. By the 19th century, crystal clear lagers, which looked much prettier in Bohemian glassware than the cloudy, somewhat turbid Witbier, had begun their drive to almost completely eliminate Witbier from the beer landscape of Belgium. In fact, for a period of 10 years (1955 - 1965) no Witbier was produced in the village of Hoegarrden. That is when Pierre Celis took up the cause, and producing traditional Witbier once again, under the name Hoegarrden from the De Kluis brewery. Today, Celis has moved on and now makes Witbier in Texas at the his own Celis brewery. Other readily available examples of Witbier include Blanche de Bruges and Dentergem's. The flavor of a traditional Witbier appears, from historical records, to have been intensely sour. The beer attained its sour character from a lactobacillus fermentation, usually introduced the secondary stage. Modern breweries are very precise in controlling the sourness produced by the lactobacillus (the beer is pasteurized after the correct amount of sourness has been achieved), but traditional examples aged for several months must have been quite sour indeed if the beer was not pasteurized and the process halted. The traditional recipe called for about 54% malted barley, 41% unmalted wheat, and 5% unmalted oats. The beer was lightly hopped and often spiced with coriander, sweet and bitter orange peel, and sometimes a third mystery spice. For homebrewers, it is strongly recommended to use flaked wheat as a substitute for unmalted or raw wheat (it is hard to find and is very difficult to mash with as it has a strong tendency to form a sticky glue). As far as souring goes, you can use an actual lactic bacteria culture. You first culture it in a specialized medium, then reserve about 1 - 2 gallons of wort (per 5 gallons) and inoculate it with the souring bacteria. Then, when you are ready to transfer to secondary or bottle, pasteurize the sour wort and add it to the rest of the wort. This will give your wit the sourness to complement its spicy, herbal palate. If this seems like a lot of work, you can just use 1 or 2 tablespoons of lactic acid, depending upon the degree of sourness desired. Showing off your dry Wit: A recipe and a sale As much as we might like to deny it, summer will be reaching its conclusion before we know it. Now is a good time to brew the last of your "summer" beers. Brewing a Belgian wit is a great way to finish up the summer in style. Belgian wit, or "Witbier" or, translated "white" beer is particularly well suited to summer brewing because its citric and herbal flavors taste great on a warm summer day. And its dry character makes Witbier a great before meal treat (the crisp, herbal flavor stimulates your appetite). No summer is complete without making at least one Witbier. The recipe included here has a few options, which we highly suggest you follow. We highly recommend using liquid yeast. The recipe also has the option of using 1 tablespoon of lactic acid. This is used to impart the tart, "tangy" flavor associated with traditionally produced Witbier. If you prefer a sweeter flavor, just skip this step. If you really want to highlight the acidic character of your very own Witbier, then feel free to increase the dosage to 2 tablespoons. Enjoy! Whitewater Witbier
6 lbs Wheat malt extract
ASK DR. ZOOT ABOUT WITBIER & FRUITBEER Q. When brewing a beer that should be pale, how can you prevent the wort from darkening during cooking when using malt extract? A. This is a very good question as witbiers are among the palest beers made, and darkening during boiling can be a real problem when using malt extract. To minimize this effect, boil as much liquid as you can (up to about 6.5 gallons). During boiling, make sure that the boil is not overly vigorous, all you need is a gentle, rolling boil. An overly vigorous boil can contribute to caramellization in the brew pot, leading to darkening. Since the recipe above only uses 3.3 lbs of malt extract, it is less susceptible to this darkening during the cooking process. Q. What does a Witbier taste like if you do not using lactic acid or sour the wort? A. I have not ever used a souring culture or lactic acid, so my witbiers usually come out with a sweeter flavor, with some malt highlights. This tends to downplay the contribution of orange peel to the flavor (the acidity helps bring out a tart citric flavor). But the beer is very enjoyable, probably a bit more drinkable than those with a pronounced sour tang. Q. When should I add the fruit extract to my fruit beer? A. The fruit extract comes in a very sanitary form, so it does require boiling to pasteurize it. That means that you have some latitude as to when to add the fruit flavoring. The later you add the fruit extract in the fermentation process, the more prominent the flavor will be. The caveat is that, if you decide to add it at bottling time, make sure it is very well mixed into the beer or you may encounter some inconsistency in your beer. Q. What can you tell me about yeast choice and its effect on the flavor of a fruit beer? A. To get the most out of your fruit beer, use a neutral yeast like Wyeast 1056, 1098 or 1338, or even 1007. Very flavorful yeasts like Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan weizen or Wyeast 3056 Bavarian wheat sometimes mask the flavor a bit. A dry ale yeast is also an option if you want a very fruity tasting beer.
Cheers and Good Brewing!! | ||||||