Modern Homebrew Recipes (2 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The original dedication of this book was to every homebrewer who ever shared a full, complete, and accurate recipe when asked. But as I started to write
Modern Homebrew Recipes
, life reared its ugly head. An electrical fire started in my attic on Memorial Day, 2014. Fortunately, I was home, our smoke detectors worked, and our local fire department responded in five minutes. They saved the house, but smoke and water damage took out much of my home office and other nearby rooms.

I was able to grab my computers and some notes, and much of my work was backed up on Dropbox. Fast-forward five or so months; we were able to move back into our newly rebuilt and remodeled home, and I got my restored possessions back. Two things I am grateful to have had during this situation are full replacement value insurance, and good off-site backups. Given that a barrel attacked me while I was researching my first book, and a fire tried to destroy my research during my second, I’m kind of avoiding barrel-aged and smoked beers now. Why does writing a book always seem to involve something trying to kill me?

Back to the matter at hand, I have a long list of people to thank. First, I would like to thank anyone who bought
Brewing Better Beer
, and gave me encouraging feedback. So many passionate, enthusiastic brewers took time at conferences, book signings, and beer events to tell me how much my book helped them. I remember an almost tearful brewer at a Brewing Network party telling me how my book had changed his life. I know that same person subsequently became a professional craft brewer. There is no better feedback for an author than letting them know that their time and effort was worthwhile and personally meaningful.

I’m indebted to those knowledgeable peers who enjoy talking about beer and brewing as much as I do, and who helped me understand recipe
development and beer styles in greater depth. Thanks to Ray Daniels, Stan Hieronymus, Jamil Zainasheff, and Ron Pattinson. Writings from Roger Protz and Matt Brynildson also proved helpful.

I’d particularly like to thank those who shared recipes with me that I used or adapted in this book, including Frank Barickman, Kris England, Keith Kost, Jay Wince, Thomas Eibner, Darren Link, Jeffrey McElfresh, James Henjum, Dan George, William Shawn Scott, and Bob Kauffman. Thanks also to those who shared ideas or whose recipes inspired variations, including Curt Stock, Randy Scorby, Rodney Kibzey, Lee Jacobson, and Steve Fletty. I’d also like to thank Andy Tveekrem of Market Garden Brewery for inviting me to brew a professional craft collaboration beer with him.

I can’t write a book involving beer styles without acknowledging all those within the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) who have worked with me over the years, and those in my region who have continued to support me in elections. Involvement with the BJCP has fed my passion for beer and brewing, and has driven me to research and share what I’ve discovered. It’s also allowed me to meet great new friends from all over the world.

Speaking of friends, I wanted to take a moment to remember my good friend Tom Fitzpatrick who passed away much too young. I probably would have had a recipe of his in this book anyway, but I wish it wasn’t in here as a memorial.

My sincere thanks go to my long-time friend Randy Mosher for writing the
foreword
, and in helping me understand my place in brewing history. I’ve known Randy for as long as I’ve been brewing, and we’ve traveled together to many exciting places around the world. He gave me great advice and encouragement as an author when we were both speakers at a conference in Australia. Nobody beats Randy when it comes to passion and enthusiasm for homebrewing, so his endorsement is personally very meaningful.

Kris England deserves special thanks for his role as technical editor. An accomplished homebrewer for years before he went pro, he was one of the people who constantly challenged me for awards. It should then come as no surprise that he also challenged me over nearly every point in the book. He caught several errors, and worked with me to improve the book significantly. Even though it might look to some that we’re fighting like two cats in a pillowcase, he’s one of my closest and most respected friends.

Thanks once again to my publisher, Kristi Switzer, for her encouraging words as I’ve fought through the challenges of putting this book together, and thanks to Jill Redding and Betsy Parks, who both continue to publish my work in magazines.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Karla and my daughter Katya for continuing to put up with me as I obsessed over yet another beer-related project.

FOREWORD

A RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS

Brewing beer is a thrilling pursuit, but can be intimidating. While it may seem simple on the surface, it is a densely complicated art form, using a wide range of ingredients that are dependent upon complex biochemical transformations at every stage. To get the best results you can’t just dump things into a pot as you would with a batch of spaghetti sauce. It takes a carefully chosen combination of raw ingredients subjected to a precise sequence of mixing, heating, filtering, boiling, cooling, and finally fermenting, to yield drinkable beer.

That’s where a recipe comes in. A good one should offer the brewer a roadmap to success, with lists of ingredients and step-by-step guidance that culminates in delicious beer.

As long as there has been beer, there have been beer recipes. Shortly after the invention of writing, came a beer recipe—the earliest written recipe of any kind. Found in present-day Iraq and dating around 1900 BCE, the clay tablet contains
The Hymn to Ninkasi,
a song that steps poetically through the brewing process. Although quite foreign to us, there are parts (like the mixing of a mash and the rushing of sweet wort into a container) that are instantly recognizable to any homebrewer. In recent years, experimenters have filled in some of the gaps and actually brewed drinkable beer from this ancient set of instructions.

The Kalevala, a great Finnish-Hungarian epic compiled in the nineteenth century from ancient oral traditions, includes some thoughts about brewing. One section follows the travails of a brewster named Osmotar, who gives the loose outline of a brew:

“Osmotar, the beer-preparer,

Brewer of the drink refreshing,

Takes the golden grains of barley,

Taking six of barley-kernels,

Taking seven tips of hop-fruit,

Filling seven cups with water

On the fire she sets the cauldron,

Boils the barley, hops and water,

Lets them steep, and seethe, and bubble,

Brewing thus the beer delicious.”

The epic goes on to chronicle several failed attempts to start fermentation, including “the spit of bears in battle,” which would be a frightening way to brew, even for Vikings. At long last, honey “from the tips of seven flowers,” gets the job done. It may be a questionable fermentation starter, but honey does contain certain yeasts, and its presence in ancient beer has been chemically confirmed by vessel residue from Iron Age burials.

Despite these high-profile tales, brewing recipes from earlier times are few and very far between. In the medieval period before the use of hops, beer was flavored by a secret mixture called gruit. We have some clues to its composition, but no complete recipe has ever been found. Until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of malt required to brew a barrel of beer at a specific price was public information—mandated by law in most places—but, of course, it takes a lot more than the quantity of ingredients to make a recipe. Uncertainties around barley, malting and kilning techniques, hop varieties, and fermentation mean there are many pieces to the puzzle that have been lost, leaving us modern beer archaeologists to speculate and make somewhat educated guesses.

By the eighteenth century the world was exploding with brewing texts. Real, usable recipes show up in books such as
The London and Country Brewer,
attributed to William Ellis. With a little work, beers from Shropshire, Dorchester, Devonshire, London, and elsewhere saw new life in modern kettles (the versions I’ve brewed have been pretty tasty). However, at any given place and time, brewers made a limited number of products; often just one beer brewed in two or more strengths. Recipes were hardly needed when everybody in the town made the same kind of beer from the local malt using similar hops and yeast, so there are still lots of blank spots in the record.

By the early nineteenth century, advances in instrumentation and better recording of processes allow us to peer deeply into the minds of the brewers and recreate their beers pretty closely, although modern malting techniques don’t exactly reproduce the original flavors. Large-scale industrialization and the lager juggernaut it made possible displaced dozens of quaint local beers in Northern Europe. As variety diminished, beer recipes became more technical, aimed at efficiency and consistency in commercial situations. As a result, the actual formulations became less important.

After alcohol sales were banned in the US in 1919, it all went underground—literally into peoples’ basements. A typical Prohibition-era recipe stretches one can of hopped malt extract with an equal amount of sugar, fermented by baker’s yeast. The resultant beer may have been better than nothing, but it makes for an intolerably thin and cidery product. Nonetheless, these primitive recipes lingered on in the shadows of the postwar decades until homebrewing was finally legalized federally in 1976.

And then, almost on cue, we started our most recent beer Renaissance. At the beginning of the current homebrew era, ingredients and information were scant. Most recipes came from British sources like Dave Line’s books, referencing utterly unavailable beers and calling for exotics like golden syrup and treacle. But in those days of yellow, fizzy monotony in the commercial marketplace, even the humblest homebrew was a revelation and an act of rebellion.

As the hobby grew, so did the availability of information and ingredients. Fred Eckhardt and Greg Noonan wrote groundbreaking books drawing us into the world of all-grain brewing. Inspired by the writings and personal persuasions of Michael Jackson, the notion of beer styles began to take shape. At the same time, beer competitions started popping up, along with an organization to sanction and provide structure for them: the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP).

At some point Gordon Strong got involved with the BJCP. Volunteer organizations ebb and flow, but they depend on steadfast advocates—people willing to knuckle down and do the hard work year after year. BJCP has many such heroes, but for three decades, Gordon has been an active contributor. He took special interest in the continued clarification and accuracy of the BJCP style guidelines, and has helped shepherd them through at least two thorough revisions over the years. As the rest of the
beer world looks to the US for guidance and inspiration, these efforts have taken on even greater importance in the growing global movement.

As our understanding of traditional styles, techniques, and formulations gets better, so do the beers. The brewing world is riddled with spurious myths and misinformation, but we’re slowly building a clearer picture. Over the last decade or more there has also been progress in streamlining the homebrewing process to allow brewers to make the best possible beer without wasting time on unnecessarily complex techniques. Another trend acknowledges that each of us has different interests and priorities, and as a result, a wide range of techniques have been developed to suit everyone from the most casual weekend brewer to the paddle-wielding decoction warrior. It truly is a great time to be a homebrewer.

A brief overview of the evolution of beer recipes up to the present day would pale compared to the picture painted by the book you have before you. Developed and brewed by a keen enthusiast, organization stalwart, and creative brewer, the recipes in this book reflect the growth and maturation of brewing and recipe formulation in the twenty-first century.

He’s been a strong advocate for a rational brewing approach with minimum fussiness and a very human touch. That combination of intense focus and easy accessibility is something I’ve always admired about Gordon, and I’m proud to offer a few words to help put it all in context for you.

So turn the page, dive in, and start quenching your thirst for great beer.

—Randy Mosher

INTRODUCTION

“I hate the notion of a secret recipe.

Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared.”

—Molly Wizenberg, “Orangette”

Since the release of
Brewing Better Beer
in 2011, I’ve given dozens of talks around the world to homebrewers and beer geeks. I gave one of my favorite presentations,
Practical Applications of Brewing Better Beer
, at the National Homebrewers Conference in Seattle (2012) and Philadelphia (2013). In that presentation, I talk about how to apply the lessons and techniques of
Brewing Better Beer
to develop new recipes. This book is based on the feedback received from those talks, and the suggestions from homebrewers to provide more examples. I’m happy to oblige, and hope you enjoy the result.

Brewing Better Beer
included recipes, but wasn’t a recipe book. I wrote it as an advanced lesson for homebrewers looking to better develop their skills, and to create their own personal brewing style. As such, the recipes merely illustrated some ways to employ new techniques. But many homebrewers wanted more recipes they could brew immediately.