Developing a Recipe

Welcome back, beer lovers! I realize I've once again fallen into a posting schedule that is too few and far-between for my own liking and I'll try to post more often.

Let's start with a quick update on what's been brewing: The gluten-free pumpkin spice ale has been bottled. I attempted to cold crash the beer for about three days prior to bottling but with no fridge and the warmest winter on record, I think I was unable to keep the beer cold enough for long enough for the cold crash to noticeably clarify the beer. It went into the bottles pretty hazy but a cursory taste of the young beer revealed some nice flavor. The spices were a bit heavy on the palate but from my research on using those kinds of spices in beers they will mellow and blend as the beer ages. Bottom line- I think it will be a tasty beer, if not our most beautiful. The Boont Amber ale clone was racked to the secondary fermenter on New Year's Day and will be bottled fairly soon.

Today I'm going to talk about formulating a recipe from a concept. My dad tried a Brazilian dark lager called Xingu not long ago and really liked it. He detected some dark fruit notes, blackberry in particular, that he really liked and hadn't really experienced in a dark beer before. So with the intention of creating another beer like our Scottish strong ale, one that needs to be aged for a long time before it reaches its peak of deliciousness, we decided to brew a blackberry stout.

We've done a couple of stout-y beers in the past, the mocha stout and the Scottish strong ale, but this one called for some changes in style. Firstly, stouts are usually characterized by the roasted and highly kilned specialty grains like chocolate, carafa, and black patent to provide a roasty flavor and that wonderful silky black color. With this beer, we really want the blackberries to come through in the final flavor profile so I scaled back the quantities of dark malted grains in order to allow the fruit to shine through. I also read that it is essential to hold back on the quantities of hops used, particularly late-boil hop additions for aroma, in order for the fruit aroma to come through.

I started by looking at the recipe we used for the mocha stout and by doing some research about how to incorporate blackberries into beer. I cut out black patent grain from the grain bill and scaled back the rest of the dark roasts slightly. I decided that we should try a new hop strains, Willamette, that I'd read goes nicely with dark beers and provides some fruity notes on its own that I thought would pair well with the blackberries. I increased the quantity of malt extract in the recipe by a half pound to up the alcohol content slightly to make the beer more age-able. Higher alcohol content beers age well in part because the alcohol makes unwanted bacterial and fungal contamination less likely. For yeast, I selected a strain that will (according to my research and the guy at Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley) produce some diacetyl alcohols as well as the standard ethanols. These diacetyls add a slightly fruity flavor and some buttery tones and textures, as well. The buttery textures compliment the stout style while the fruity flavors, like the Willamette hops, will hopefully reinforce the blackberries.

The blackberries are to be frozen, then thawed, pureed, strained and added to the secondary fermenter. Freezing the berries accomplishes two things: first, it has a chance to kill some of the bacteria that could infect the beer. Secondly, freezing breaks the cell walls of the berries, allowing the flavor and sugar compounds to more easily be incorporated into the beer.

So here's the final recipe I settled on:


Blackberry Stout

6.5 # Malt Extract
1.5 # Maris Otter
1/2 # Flaked Oats
1/4 # 120L Crystal
1/4 # Roasted Barley
1/4 # Chocolate
1/4 # Carafa

1 oz Willamette Hops
1 oz. East Kent Goldings Hops

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast

6 # Blackberries, frozen, thawed, pureed, and strained added to secondary
1/4 # Chocolate nibs, isomerized in vodka for 24 hrs. added to secondary

I showed this recipe to one of the guys working in Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley and got the thumbs up from him, boosting my ego just a bit. This is only the second recipe that I've come up with myself (the first being the recent GF Pumpkin Spice Ale) so getting the thumbs up with no changes from one of the "experts" feels pretty good.

We'll brew this on Tuesday and I'll write another post then about how it went. Thanks for reading!

Cheers!