Chip: It is cool we both have our own color palette behind us.
You can almost, somebody will be like, "They are not in the same room.
It's split screen!"
William: Should edit it and make it weird to cross that line.
[laughs] Oh, thank you!
Chip: What's going on, everybody, this is Chip Walton and --
William: William Richartz.
Chip: And we are in one of Northern Brewer's many illustrious conference rooms to sample
a couple of beers.
These two beers were brewed as part of a forthcoming Northern Brewer University online course that
is basically an intro to Brew in a Bag.
For the demonstrations in that video class, I brewed two beers – one full-size in my
garage, one small batch on my kitchen stovetop.
I fermented both at home and also threw a couple of curve balls at them during fermentation.
So, William and I are going to taste and get real nerdy on a Dead Ringer IPA fermented
with a lager yeast at, or actually a bit above, the upper end of its recommended temperature
range, as well as an Imperial Kitchen Sink Saison fermented in the garage on a couple
of warm days.
Before we go bottoms up here and share our thoughts, if you dig this new generation of
Northern Brewer videos where we introduce new beer kits, walk-through new equipment,
or just geek out on what we’re brewing at home, please like this video, subscribe to
the channel, ring the notification ring, maybe share it with a buddy – much like I'm sharing
this beer with William.
The first brew up on our left.
Cheers!
This is the extremely popular Dead Ringer IPA beer kit from Northern Brewer.
William: Yep.
Continues to be one of our top sellers all the time.
Chip: The twist is it's fermented with a lager yeast strain above pretty much the recommended
temperature range.
So, maybe like a Dead Ringer IPL-ish?
William: Alright, if you say so.
[laughs]
Chip: Quick look at the brew day.
It's a five-gallon BIAB in the garage using the locking pulley system, which I absolutely
love.
The grist is simple: 11 pounds of Rahr 2-Row and 1 pound Briess C40. 4 oz total of Centennial
Hops: 1 oz at 60 minutes, 1 oz at 20, 2 oz at 5, then 1 oz Dry Hop.
The only freestyle on the front end of the brew is I dry hopped with Amarillo in hopes
of ramping up that orange-y, orange peel vibe I often get from that hop.
As a beer kit, Dead Ringer is usually fermented with a clean Chico-style American ale yeast
strain.
But, as we’ve been talking so much about Cold IPA as of late, I was eager to use a
lager yeast fermented warm to see what happens.
What I chose was the Imperial Yeast L26 Pilgrimage, which was a limited edition strain.
44-56F is the suggested temperature range.
The talking point for that is a clean fermentation balanced with an accentuated malt profile
for a balanced beer, which doesn't sound unlike a Chico strain anyway, right?
William: For sure.
Chip: Since our groundwater was already warming up about a month ago, it was tough to get
the beer chilled to the upper 50s where I would’ve liked to have started it.
I got it to the mid-60s, pitched the yeast, oxygenated, and put the fermenter bucket in
a large tub of cold mid-40s ice water with a towel and floor fan – you know the ol’
swamp cooler trick.
Lo-fi, no-buy is what I like to say.
After everything equalized, I was able to keep water in the tub at around 58-62F for
the better part of a week.
Fermentation took a day or so to start but once it did, it seemed very happy.
What we ended up with here is 1.060 OG, 1.009 FG, about 6.7% ABV.
Brewed over a month ago, kegged, and been chilling in the Brew Cave ever since.
So I'm going to consider that a lager, basically three weeks of lagering.
William: I'd call that a lager.
Chip: And all to see if we get any noticeable difference.
I think we both know this beer pretty well as a kit.
What do you think of it having that lager strain pushed pretty high?
William: It's clean.
I would say it's really clean for a lager at that temperature.
I was surprised.
Chip: What do you think most people hearing "lager yeast pushed high" think would happen?
The same kind of goes in the conversation we've been talking about Cold IPA.
It's like, what is the myth that you think people are going to go for?
William: I'd bet fruity, a lot of fruity testers.
I think fruity.
To me that's what I would expect more than anything.
Maybe some other just kind of weird off characteristics from it, but really just fruity yeast esters
more than anything.
Chip: Yeah, this beer is showing pretty much none of that.
William: No, it's definitely hops and malt.
It's actually, the hops come through the most.
I'm getting that increased orange characteristic too.
I think it's just citrus and orange.
Chip: A little bit of pine, but big orange peel, tangerine.
I was just a few points off the original gravity, 1.060.
The kit is 1.064.
Guess me and Abby didn't squeeze that bag quite well enough.
But, I think that kind of shows slightly in that the bitterness factor is just a little
bit higher.
I feel like a Dead Ringer doesn't linger bitter quite as long, it kind of goes into the flavor
hops.
We've been hearing more and more lately that people are pushing these lager strains, especially
something like 34/70 way up.
And I agree, you'd think it would be fruity.
I think maybe what's going on that people don't realize, it's like the fermentation
of a lager and the conditioning of the lager are actually two different things, and I think
a lot of the subduing of things is actually happening in the conditioning phase, maybe?
William: Sure.
I would agree with that.
And I bet you yeast companies have come a long way too.
I bet you that's one of those older stereotypes that have been around since before liquid
yeast was really huge.
Especially with pitch rate.
You know, you have Imperial so that's a nice big pitch rate in there too.
Chip: I don't know that I would recommend this over a clean ale yeast strain.
I feel like it pretty much did the exact same thing.
It's just cool to see the numbers in action.
William: I was going to say I actually like it better than the base kit, so I don't know.
I think ale yeast does give you some esters and I think you're getting more of the true
hop characteristic almost through this.
I'm really just liking that orange character in there right now, that's really nice.
But like you said, we've been having more and more IPAs with lager yeast, and for me
I think part of it is you're getting less of that ester character from the yeast and
you're just getting that cleaner hop characteristic.
Chip: That's the whole point of a Cold IPA, right?
You're pushing that ale yeast cold so it's giving no fruitiness.
Lager strain hot, which none of us maybe knew except for like the American Society of Brewing
Chemists.
William: The real smart people.
Chip: In all of our faces!
That's the only thing I had to talk about there.
Brew #2 is what I'm calling an Imperial Kitchen Sink Saison.
I put this together for a small batch BIAB demo on the stovetop from odds and ends left
over in the basement.
For 2.75 gallons of beer, the grist was 5.5 pounds of Pilsner malt, clean base malt, quarter-pound
pound of Victory malt for a bit of toastines, and one-eighth pound of acidulated malt - to
help the mash pH because I don't mess with that too much.
A bittering charge of half-ounce of German Tradition.
And a five-minute flavor addition of 1 ounce of Nobility Hop Blend from BSG.
I've had a few beers with Nobility hop; I think it has a really pop of lemon peel and
lemongrass that would be very nice in a saison.
Brewed to spec, the beer had an OG of 12 BRIX, which I nailed perfectly.
But for the sake of showing class students what adding a bit of DME can do if you need
to bump your gravity on a BIAB brew day, I added one pound of Pils DME, which might have
been more than an example needed to show a little.
Either way, it brought it up to 16 BRIX, or about 1.064.
For yeast, I used Imperial Yeast B64 Napoleon, a French saison strain with a temperature
range of 65-78F.
I hoped to push it beyond the upper limit in my over a couple of hot days when it was
in the upper 80s outside, but was shocked to find the temperature never got above the
mid-70s.
I pitched half of the pouch and fermentation was extremely vigorous.
You can see in this video that it was a very lava lamp like fermentation – big ol globs
of chunky yeast floating around the fermenter.
It was quite mesmerizing and actually a lot of fun to watch after not having had anything
in glass in quite a while.
Went from 1.064 down to 1.005 – no slouch weighing in here at almost 8%, 7.8% ABV.
Fermented out in about four days, I let it rest and condition in the cooler basement
for another week, and then kegged it.
Here we are again.
William: Cheers again!
Chip: Yeah yeah.
You're a saison man.
And you were the one who was like, "Put it in the garage."
William: I was excited for this one.
I'm always looking forward to having another saison from somebody.
Chip: What about a higher temp -- I didn't even get the temp I wanted.
But say if I had gotten into the 80, 82 for those couple of days for initial fermentation.
Do you think this would be something even --
William: It'd be a little different, maybe.
But in my opinion, the key with that higher fermentation is you still start off at a lower
fermentation for that first day or so.
That's when a lot of the yeast characteristics are produced, in that first couple of days
of fermentation.
That ramping temperature, that higher temperature, just helps a lot of the different saison yeasts
finish out because they're notorious for stalling out.
So, definitely higher temps, but don't start at higher temps.
I've had a few different, we have quite a few different active brew clubs around here,
and I've had a few different tastings of them where they pitch 68, 72, 76, all the way up
to like 94.
And, when you pitch it that high 80s, high 90s, it's super phenolic and you actually
get like a bitterness from the phenols that the yeast produce.
It can be pretty off-putting.
Definitely more bubblegum, which some people like, but you definitely start seeing more
of that bubblegum/banana character for sure.
Chip: Whereas this one.
Do you like my beer, William?
[laughs]
William: Yeah, I like that it's got a lemon-lime pith peel type of character, which is pretty
normal across the board for saisons.
I like that characteristic.
I feel like at 1.005 it's not quite as dry as I want the sensation.
Granted, this at home in the keg, I think it has a little more sparkle.
It went into a Grolsch bottle and then.
I also wondered to myself if it was that pound of DME that's doing the residual thing a little
bit.
William: Yeah, it does seem sweeter, I think for 1.005.
I could also just be some alcohol sweetness I suppose playing in there too.
Chip: True.
It is an Imperial Saison after all.
William: Maybe just a little bit more bitterness to you to help with that.
I think a lot of seasons should be more bitter than what people realize.
It's actually a pretty bitter style.
Chip: Yeah.
When we were, I can't remember what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago when I
was looking it up, I was like, oh, they actually can be intensely bitter.
And I wonder if they just don't come off as that bitter because the spice, the phenolics,
are working all these other things in, right?
Not just bone dry and bitter.
William: Yeah.
And a lot of them are bottle-conditioned, so it's easier to get a little more carbonation.
I think that helps play with the balance in your head too, with more carbonation on your
tongue just kind of dancing around in there.
And you still have some of that grainy quality too.
I like that the grain shows through.
Sometimes with saisons people push too much phenolics and you lose the grain characteristic.
Chip: I'm going to top off real quick with some Dead Ringer IPL, wannabe IPL.
William: Is this the proper serving vessel?
Chip: Yeah, that's what we do.
We grab big glasses and turn them into pitchers in the conference room.
Yeah.
I want to thank William for hanging out, having a few beers.
Check out the Dead Ringer kit, obviously.
If you don't want to rewind it and write down the recipe for the saison, I guess I could
write that up probably in the video description.
We got a Brew in a Ba class coming out on Northern Brewery University very soon.
Look for that if that's something you're interested in or if you know somebody who's an extract
brewer who you'd like to gently move into all-grain.
Or if you're just an all-grain brewer who like, hmm, I just want to make it's a lot
easier today.
Check that out.
Anything else?
Mr. William?
William: I just want to say that the DME trick is handy for any style of brewing.
I always make sure to have some Pils DME on hand in case something goes wrong and I want
to hit my gravity.
That's a pro tip, I guess.
Chip: Always have dry malt extract.
Because it's just easier to measure, right?
Like, you can say either/or (dry or liquid) but it's like, do you really want to be futzing
with a tablespoon?
William: No, I don't futz with anything on brew day.
Chip: That string of extract that you can't get to break and now it's burning on the side
of your kettle.
Alright, y'all.
Until next time.
William: Peace.
Chip: I did that once on Brewing TV where Dawson sat at his own table.
It was Dawson and Evil Dawson.
He sat at his own dining room table, and he had half the conversation this way and had
conversation this way.
For the most part it worked, but there were some slight -- like you could tell the sun
was changing slightly.
It worked enough to where people just appreciated the effort though.
Like, what are these guys doing?