805 & 815 (805 tribute)

After many versions of this beer and years in between I've consolidated the information about this journey that would eventually become my "everyone" Fridge ale I called 815 but first here is the back story!

- First Wort Thoughts - 

 805 is a nice lightly hopped American Blonde Ale by Firestone Walker. It’s a beer that both My girlfriend and I enjoy. It’s also a real approachable beer and when it’s fresh it’s the best to me. This beer can last on the shelf for some time due to the low/noble hopping to it. I decided to brew this to test myself and my equipment out. I had just got done with Brewed at Birth #2 and had dumb issues. I also wanted to brew a version of this “everyone” drinker and incorporate elements that I enjoyed about my Chicago favorites: 3 Floyds, Solemn Oath, Revolution Brewing (I've been moved out of IL for a while now so I'm a little dated, but at the time of these ideas, these are the breweries I was drinking). I basically wanted a Hoppy Blonde Ale but not overly bitter. This beer was the grab a 30 rack on a Friday night and we all just hang and drink, bullshit, play drinking games - small town enjoyment. "815" to me is what we should have been drinking rather than National Light or any of those macro cheap beers. I wanted to do a clone of the example I would be basing my recipe off before just diving in, I feel like this is just good practice.

- 805 Clone -

After looking around I was able to find a few examples that seemed to be close to Firestone Walkers version. I wasn’t looking to get a perfect clone as these are just from the internet and not from Firestone. The now inactive Brewtoad (RIP) seemed to be the closest. I adjusted it to fit my system.

805 - First Look

Recipe:

I no longer have the XML nor the Beersmith file. (My note taking wasn't/isn't the best, I've gotten better)

Malt:

9.75 lbs:2-row Pale Malt

.70 lbs: Honey Malt

.70 lbs: Torrified Wheat

Hops: 

3oz: Willamette hops (I followed the Brew Toad hopping schedule - First wort, 30 and 15 I believe

Yeast:

WLP013 London Ale Yeast (White Labs)

Water:

All distilled, I thought I had the salts going into the brew day only to find out I was missing two important ones. This was supposed to have adjusted water so I drove around looking for the salts I needed as the Local Homebrew Shop was closed and I wanted to start earlier than 11am when they opened the next day, I moved on - - -

- Brew Day -

This was a simple step mash schedule with only three steps (Protein rest, Sacc. rest and Mash out) but anyone with a cooler knows it can still be challenging, my biggest mistake this day was taking a long time to get water to temps. During this time in my brewing, I had to carry my pot of wort down a flight of stairs and outside in order to boil, This was the last time I did that. I also took a long time to get to my Temps due to not heating full volumes but rather only heating the amount of water for each step. If I do step mashes anymore, I heat the full volume, take out what I need for each step at that temp and keep heating while that rest stop is being performed during the mash. 

Starting Gravity - 1.050

My old Ice bath ways

Final gravity - 1.012

I wanted to make this a sort of a blind taste test if it happened to turn out close. Being a fan of this beer I was able to collect 805 bottles and I had the boxes still left over, as you can see 805 is our Fridge beer.

I swear I don't have a problem, just saved over time.. okay maybe a little problem.

Some Notes:

First Taste. 

"Didn’t taste too good or ready yet." That was my note at the time, I feel it was just under carbonated and had that homebrew taste to me. I will open on March 17th."

Week Later:

“This was close, but I feel it dried out a bit as it’s not as sweet as a fresh 805 (bottle condition probably is the reason plus the extra day or two in the fermenter probably could have pulled this 
 off at 2nd reading. Rather than bottle on March 3. The 12th day.”

 - Nah kid, you were fine, I just didn't have the ability to cold crash so you get it all when you bottle. I bottled it when it needed to be.

Left: My Clone || Right: 805 

- Final Thoughts -

I initially had my thoughts on this but it has now been updated: The dryness is due to bottle conditioning and since I didn't do any fining, no cold crash, the beer was unfiltered. I've been able to achieve clear beer without any fining and only use time. The beers were similar but you could easily tell them apart. The goal wasn't to create a perfect clone, rather get an idea of what these flavors and these ingredients created. One thing I've taken away from all this is a little bit of Honey Malt goes a long way, lighter the beer, lighter the use of Honey malt. Don't over think the beer, make sure you're at least close to your numbers but don't stress it, if you have a good process and clean fermentation, you'll make a good drinking beer. This beer was a challenge at the time due to not having all the bells and whistles of a chest freezer, a pump etc, It was also the last time I carried a pot of hot wort up and down a flight of stairs and now brew in my kitchen, My back thanks my new process!

815 #1

- First Wort Thoughts -

Taking what I learned from the 805 clone and from what know about First wort hopping and late addition High alpha acid hops, I used a similar malt build, using Honey Malt as a way to round off and sweeten up the beer and a little caraform for head retention. I left out the wheat in this version in attempts to not over complicate the beer. Taking a note from Firestone, I kept the hops low.

Recipe:
 Beersmith||XML 

Malt: 
10lbs: 2 row- Pale Malt.
0.80lb: Honey Malt  
0.50lbs Caraform 2L

 Hops: 

I pretty much kept the same hopping schedule as what I did with the 805 clone and balanced out the amounts per the Alphas to get roughly the same IBUs

 0.25 oz: Warrior - First wort
1.0 oz: Citra - 5 min addition

 Yeast:
Safale US-05

Brew day:

Playlist: Savatage 

I started my brewday like another day, but rather than prep a place outside do the boil, I prepped my indoor space to do this. I adjusted my water and hit my P.H at 5.4. I don't have that information as my computer crashed and it was on that computer. I now use BeerSmith3's water tool and it's been working great for me.

OG: 1.050|| Beersmith EST: 1.053. I’ll take it -1.050 I’ll take those numbers.

Almost complete.

9 days into fermentation signs of fermentation are complete. FG 1.014/1.012 -

sorry about the foam, I didn't get a better picture.

March 15th, 2018.

I don't follow fermentation this closely any longer, I check it usually at the end of fermentation now, like 12th day. If I'm going to dry hop, I'll check again at bottling, if not, I just monitor it and if it's at it's FG at the 12th day and activity hasn't been present in a few days, I'm pretty confident it's complete, read up on the yeast you used and it's fermentation characteristics, Me checking this throughout isn't making it a better beer, I still control it, but I trust it does it's thing and let it rise in temp to finish up. Even when I don't use my chest freezer and use an ice bath, I don't stress it too much and plan out my days for what the weather is predicted to be, in fact as we speak I'm holding off on a Saison (Blog coming soon) because it's actually too cool right now.

Bottling day! 

At the time of racking, I had a little issue with shaking the carboy during transfer and stirred some stuff up. I did my best to keep it out of the bottles, all in all the bottles looked clean with no settlement.  

First taste at Bottling: 

“just the right amount of sweet to hop kick. Can’t wait to try this when it’s finished.” 

 - Final Thoughts -

Basically this beer should either be balanced to work for bottle condition or kegged because I feel like it was carbonated after the first week just fine. The first week in the bottle seemed to be where I wanted it to be flavor wise. On the second week which is the time it usually takes from bottling to naturally carbonate my beers, It was a lot drier than I would have liked which I chalk up to it bottle conditioning. It could have been bad storage temps as well. When I first tasted this there was a nice orange essence to it that faded and was completely gone by the second week. The hops fell fast and this became a dry honey blonde. It wasn’t bad, we enjoyed it quickly – I had to save two bottles because it was going too fast. I had one of those bottles a few months after bottling and not much had changed in the beer once the hops dropped out. No strong notes of pine either, something that Citra I feel does with age.

815 #2:

I originally was going to use an Abby Ale yeast to encourage both some fruity components (ferment cool if you don't want the phenol characteristics) and use it to build up for a big IPA I was planning but instead I just used my harvested yeast from my Pale Ale a few months prior... Imperial Pub09 yeast, I loved the yeast so much I decided to use it again. It's also the same yeast strain I used in the 805 clone, just Imperial Yeast's version.

- First Wort Thoughts - 

I did enjoy the first version of this beer and didn't mind what I got out of it. It dried up a little in the bottle but that's my lack of bottle condition skills, I knew I'd keg this version and wanted to blend the hops I used for the 805 clone and change up the malt build. Like I have been doing with my recent recipes, mixing the specialty grains up a bit almost making a simple grist more complex than it needs to be, I added wheat to help with body, I also upped the hops just a bit, but nothing out of style and something that still will be for "everyone". I felt the Citra hops helped on version one so I knew I wasn't going to leave out this addition and with the addition body I felt it will help.

Recipe: 
Beersmith||XML 

Malt: (switched to percentages here as I feel it's easier to adjust to any size system)

Pale 2-row malt - 72-73%
Caraform - 7.3%
Honey Malt - 7.3%
Flaked Wheat - 7.3%
Acid Malt - 5.5%(Option you could use lactic acid to bring p.h down)

Hops:

Willamette - 0.50 oz- First Wort

Willamette - 0.50 oz- 30 minutes

Huell Melon - 1oz - Steep - 30 minutes

Citra - 0.50oz - Dryhop - 3 days

Huell Melon - 1oz - 3 days

Yeast:

Imperial Yeast - 09 - Pub

Water:

Ca: 60.5ppm ||  Mg: 30ppm || Su: 86.5ppm || Ch: 107ppm

- Brew Day -

Admittedly I wasn't looking forward to this brewday as I didn't want to do another double brew day on my current system and knew I would have to get started early so I started my Saturday at 4:30am. Knowing my system I was able to get a bit of sleep while the strike water heated up. I didn't hit my Mash PH, it was a little lower than expected - about 5.0 rather than 5.2-5.4, this is probably due to either too much acid malt or because I didn't mill in (I have one now!!!) and used a coffee grinder to crush the grain.. oops! oh well.
I didn't hit any of my numbers this day and had to extend the boil to get within range of my FG. I did a 30 minute hop stand/Whirlpool (this means every few minutes I use my spoon and stir the wort as fast as possible and I let it slow down and do it again) and then chilled my wort. Because this was a double brew day, I had my chest freezer at 34F, transferred the 90F wort into a clean and sanitized fermentor and placed it in the freezer to condition.

Tasting Notes: 

No yeast, Honey malt dominates the palate with a nice bite of citrus fruit but subtle. With that said, it's not that sweet. This did end of clearing up quite a bit which was refreshing. The hop bite hit you like a pale ale but finished how you'd expect a blonde to finish. It can be better, fresher hops, better technique, this beer is on me, I think the recipe is good with a little adjustment to hops and process.

- Final Thoughts -

Early on I believe this got oxidized just a little bit, the yeast did eat up a lot of it but it's not exactly what I was looking for. The Huell Melon hops I think didn't really add anything and the 2 hour boil defiantly gave it a little darker color than I'd like (oxygen probably helped too). I think one of the issues is the yeast fermenting too cool, which gave this a clean finish but also showed my flaws. Not a bad thing to have, time to fix that!

This beer sort of broke my heart as I brewed this thinking it was going to be easy and smooth sailing, instead of focusing on making one great beer, I attempted to balance two beers, both new and never brewed, but this beer did still turned out good and drinkable, I think minor tweaks and I'll have my blonde. I didn't include a lot of notes on this final version and I think the only thing I'd change is the hops, I felt the malt and yeast will work good together. The surprising thing about this version of my "everyone" beer was even though I didn't hit my numbers, the bite was a little too much for style IMO, this was still the best version and best tasting blonde I've made thus far. Which just goes to show, making good beer isn't impossible and if you're struggling to make good beer, learn from your mistakes and mine and others, take your time and don't rush the beer.

Thanks for reading all this as this will be the last blog that is in this format, rather than just blog about the journey of the beer, I'm going to just do one beer at a time per blog. Even if it's a massive fail.

Until next time...

Go Brew!!!!!