Boulevard Wort Transformation 2013

Boulevard is doing a wort transformation project where they give you 5 gallons of their wort and then you do the rest. You have to bring back 6 bottles of beer, tell them what you did, why you did, etc. So it's not completely free but hey, it's a super cool idea. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it so I thought I'd come here looking for ideas.

Here's the info I've got to work with:

12.2 plato
12.4 IBU
12.7 EBC

93% pale malt
7% munich malt

Magnum and Bravo hops (equal portions) added early for bittering only.

This leans towards an APA to me but with the Munich malt does that push it towards a German Ale where I should use a German Ale yeast?

I'm thinking of using an APA yeast along with dry hopping with Ahnatum and Amarillo in the secondary. Thoughts?

Awesome you got in.
I saw this last week and signed up but didn't get selected.
When did you sign up?

Do you have to use only their wort strictly as is?
Could you make another mini wort to add specialty grains and blend with theirs?
I would think you would want more then five gallons so you had some to boil off.

Aw, lucky!

If it were me, I'd try the saison route and dry hop it. Too bad I didn't hear about this sooner, I would have loved to got in on this one.

Aw, lucky!

If it were me, I'd try the saison route and dry hop it. Too bad I didn't hear about this sooner, I would have loved to got in on this one.

Srceenplay said:

Awesome you got in.
I saw this last week and signed up but didn't get selected.
When did you sign up?

Do you have to use only their wort strictly as is?
Could you make another mini wort to add specialty grains and blend with theirs?
I would think you would want more then five gallons so you had some to boil off.

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I signed up May 2nd in the morning. I heard it just took off about late morning/early afternoon. That's when it got posted to a few well followed facebook pages.

You can do whatever you want with the wort but the info I posted is all that I got from them. Which makes me think they want to keep it in the APA route but watch what people do with it. Then again I'm one that thinks they're looking to start brewing an APA and want ideas.

The more I think about this the more I want to completely change this beer and try the Biere de Garde route. But with 93% pale malt and 7% Munich malt I don't know if this is even possible.

Love that it's open but at the same time it's driving me nuts because I don't know the exact ingredients and I usually have a beer in mind, then search for the recipe. Now I've got to find a recipe that defines the beer type to get in mind. AHHH!!! ;-)

I signed up about 5 on Thursday. I was wondering if it was first come first serve or was it a random lottery. Maybe that I'm in Wichita is why I couldn't get in.

Boulevard pale ale is their flagship beer. Unless they are trying to reinvent/rebrand it like their pils.

The route I was going to take was like at all the beers the did have and find a style that they are not brewing yet. But that is just me. I was thinking of smokey brown or something.

I tried to search for other comps like this to gather ideas for recipes but could not find many. Good luck and have fun brewin'.

If you're just looking to pitch yeast and maybe dry hop I'd go with either something fruity like the Cali V yeast from white labs or something clean with character like Kolsch yeast. Otherwise I'd steep some roasted malt like carafa III and go either bock or German lager yeast. Given the grain bill and bittering only hops this is wide open and you can definitely do almost anything...Even a steam beer with some noble hops dry hopped would be pretty good.

As I was looking around HBT I was thinking I wouldn't have enough time to do a Biere de Garde since I found most people saying they taste best after a year. Since I only have 2 months I've decided to move up a bit in the family and go with a saison.

I also found this recipe: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f71/saison-brett-255734/. As you can imagine I was stoked because the grain bill looks similar to Boulevard's. The hops obviously aren't the same but at 12.4 IBU's I figured it didn't really matter. SO! Here's what I've got drawn up and am going to stick with.

I'm going to boil up a half gallon of water, dissolve the candi sugar and once that's dissolved add the saaz hops for for 15 minutes and another ounce at 5 minutes. According to the recipe that should give me another 9.3 IBU to bring it up to 21.7 IBU's which is just under the 25 that "defines" a saison. Then I'll add that to the wort, pitch the 3724 which I've just heard is phenomenal. So after a few weeks at 75 degrees I'm going to start raising the temperature moving up to 92 or 93 degree's. With about 2 or 3 weeks left I'm going to dry hop with Ahtanum hops. Then after a month and a half I'm going to cold crash the primary to clear up the beer and then bottle.

Below is the list of ingredients I'm going to add:
1 lb clear candi sugar
1 package of belgian saison
1 ale (WYeast 3724)
2 oz Saaz -
1 oz @ 15 minutes and
1 oz at 5 min
Ahtanum - 1 oz for dry hopping


Thoughts?

That's exactly what I was thinking (see post #3). Let us know how it turns out!

looneybomber said:

That's exactly what I was thinking (see post #3). Let us know how it turns out!

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Day 8 in the primary and it's gone to just fizzing up the sides of the carboy. I'm going to transfer it to the secondary this weekend and dry hop with amarillo (pellets) for week or so.

I'll repost with the gravity reading out of the primary tomorrow. I've got a good trub on the bottom and a good hop layer at the top. Then of course there's the stuff that's clinging to the "rings" that stick out of the carboy (it's the plastic kind). No one ever said making beer wasn't messy I guess.

I've never dry hopped or crash cooled a beer before so this will be quite interesting for me.

Just a general update:

It's been 12.5 days since I pitched my Wyeast 3711 at 1.060 but it's only down to 1.010 right now. I moved it to the secondary because well...12.5 days should have been enough in my estimation. I've heard this finishes around 1.006 to 1.000 or even below 1.000.

Did I just not shake the primary up enough after pitching the yeast?
Now that it's in the secondary does anyone think the gravity will keep dropping?

Other observations....this is quite similar to tank 7 so I'll be curious to see if the dry hopping gives me a very close copy of tank 7.

Marc77 said:

Just a general update:

It's been 12.5 days since I pitched my Wyeast 3711 at 1.060 but it's only down to 1.010 right now. I moved it to the secondary because well...12.5 days should have been enough in my estimation. I've heard this finishes around 1.006 to 1.000 or even below 1.000.

Did I just not shake the primary up enough after pitching the yeast?
Now that it's in the secondary does anyone think the gravity will keep dropping?

Other observations....this is quite similar to tank 7 so I'll be curious to see if the dry hopping gives me a very close copy of tank 7.

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Did you make a starter or just pitch the activator pack? Did you oxygenate or just try to splash/shake to aerate.

egravy81 said:

Did you make a starter or just pitch the activator pack? Did you oxygenate or just try to splash/shake to aerate.

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Just pitched the activator pack.
Splashed and shook. It's all I could do without transferring to a carboy and then aerating as I transferred it back.

Marc77 said:

Just pitched the activator pack.
Splashed and shook. It's all I could do without transferring to a carboy and then aerating as I transferred it back.

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Ok based on Mr Malty's pitching calculator, you underpitched. Even if we assume the yeast production date was the day before you pitched (which is not very likely but possible) you would have needed at least 2.2 packs of yeast. A stir plate starter would have required a 1.1 L starter.

The older the production date on the package, the bigger the starter required (and more packs of yeast with or without a starter).

The other point to look at is ferm temps. I generally start saisons at 68 degrees for one day, then 70 degrees for 2 days, then ramp them up over a week or more into the upper 70s. The first few days at lower temps limit/prevent production of fusel alcohol and off flavors. The high temps at the end of fermentation help finish attenuation and help create all the crazy esters and phenols the saison should have.

Can you do anything to get the last few points of attenuation? Yes, but it may be more work than it's worth. You could try to add more sugar and yeast but you already have a fairly alcoholic solution so this may not help much. Yeast nutrient additions really help with early stages of attenuation so adding them now may not much and you risk infection.

Frankly I'd let it clean itself up, maybe transfer to a 2ndary at some point (depending on how long you have before entries are due), then add some fresh yeast and sugar before bottle conditioning.

egravy81 said:

Ok based on Mr Malty's pitching calculator, you underpitched. Even if we assume the yeast production date was the day before you pitched (which is not very likely but possible) you would have needed at least 2.2 packs of yeast. A stir plate starter would have required a 1.1 L starter.

The older the production date on the package, the bigger the starter required (and more packs of yeast with or without a starter).

The other point to look at is ferm temps. I generally start saisons at 68 degrees for one day, then 70 degrees for 2 days, then ramp them up over a week or more into the upper 70s. The first few days at lower temps limit/prevent production of fusel alcohol and off flavors. The high temps at the end of fermentation help finish attenuation and help create all the crazy esters and phenols the saison should have.

Can you do anything to get the last few points of attenuation? Yes, but it may be more work than it's worth. You could try to add more sugar and yeast but you already have a fairly alcoholic solution so this may not help much. Yeast nutrient additions really help with early stages of attenuation so adding them now may not much and you risk infection.

Frankly I'd let it clean itself up, maybe transfer to a 2ndary at some point (depending on how long you have before entries are due), then add some fresh yeast and sugar before bottle conditioning.

Click to expand...

Just got done bottling this last night. It had dropped from the 1.010 to 1.006 so the 3711 continued doing it's thing. I bottled it using Beersmith's calculator to get 3.0 volumes of CO2 and ended up with just over 3/4 cup (4oz and change) of corn sugar.

I tried the sample I got for my hydrometer reading..after I got my reading of course. It tastes quite good but the hop smell and after taste are quite pronounced right now. I'm hoping with some bottle conditioning and aging that'll die down a bit. If not it's still damn good beer, plus 7% ABV isn't anything to sneeze at. I'm going to get a bottle of tank 7 when I open the first bottle to taste test. From what you and others have told me this is basically tank 7. Here's to hoping at least. :rockin:

Marc77 said:

Just got done bottling this last night. It had dropped from the 1.010 to 1.006 so the 3711 continued doing it's thing. I bottled it using Beersmith's calculator to get 3.0 volumes of CO2 and ended up with just over 3/4 cup (4oz and change) of corn sugar.

I tried the sample I got for my hydrometer reading..after I got my reading of course. It tastes quite good but the hop smell and after taste are quite pronounced right now. I'm hoping with some bottle conditioning and aging that'll die down a bit. If not it's still damn good beer, plus 7% ABV isn't anything to sneeze at. I'm going to get a bottle of tank 7 when I open the first bottle to taste test. From what you and others have told me this is basically tank 7. Here's to hoping at least. :rockin:

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Sounds awesome! Generally the hop aroma will mellow out in time - not sure about flavor/bitterness.

egravy81 said:

Sounds awesome! Generally the hop aroma will mellow out in time - not sure about flavor/bitterness.

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I had a Tank 7 last night when I was out...after I'd had a Long Hammer IPA from Redhook...and then a Chainbreaker IPA from Deschutes...and then a Inversion IPA from Deschutes...and THEN the Tank 7. Thankfully this was about 4 hrs later so I didn't have the hop head going. The beer I've made is almost exactly what Tank 7 tastes like. As it bottle conditions I think it'll mellow out some of the flavors I was tasting. SO stoked for this!