Wellington BJCP Study Week 5
From SOBA
| Week | Date | Beer styles and tasting categories | Flavours, faults, ingredients, processes and other |
| Week 5 | 03/05/2007 | Fruit, Spice, Herb & Smoked Beer, Sour Ales | Alcoholic, solvent, metallic, vegetal, water, BJCP program requirements |
Contents |
[edit] Beer styles
[edit] Spice / Herb / Vegetable Beer
Beers Tasted:
Spice (green chilli): "Cave Creek Chilli Beer"
Spice (various spices): "Bennett's Four Seasons Ale"
[edit] Smoke-Flavoured and Wood-Aged Beer
Beers tasted:
Wood-aged (Brown Porter base beer): "Harrington's Big John's Special Reserve"
Wood aged (Old Ale base beer): "Green King Strong Suffolk Vintage Ale"
A couple of weeks later:
Smoke-flavoured (Double Bock base beer): "Invercargill Smokin' Bishop"
[edit] Sour Ale
Beers tasted:
Berliner Weisse: "Stu's Mystery Berliner Weisse" (atually a mix - 2/3 Hofbrau Hefe Weissbier + 1/3 Cantillon Kriek, note that this would have worked better with Boon Geueze instead of Cantillon Kriek).
Flemish Red Ale: "Rodenbach Classic"
Flemish Brown Ale: "Verhaeghe Duchesse de Bourgogne"
Unblended Lambic: No beer available
Geuze: "Boon Geueze"
Fruit Lambic: "Cantillon Kriek"
[edit] Flavours and faults
[edit] Alcoholic
Alcoholic
Problem
Hot spicy, vinous, warming from ethanol and higher alcohols
Solution
Lower fermentation temperature. Use a less attenuative yeast strain. Check yeast health. Use less fermentables. Use less sugary adjuncts. Check for possible infection. Raise mash temperature. Let beer age longer before consuming.
http://www.bjcp.org/faults.html
[edit] Solvent
Problem
Hot burning on palate
Solution
Lower fermentation temperature. Pitch a sufficient quantity of healthy, active yeast. Check for infection. Try a different yeast strain.
http://www.bjcp.org/faults.html
[edit] Metallic
Metallic
Problem
Tastes of iron, copper, coins, blood
Solution
Check water for metallic ions. Reduce water salts. Check equipment condition for rust. Make sure stainless steel equipment is properly passivated. Fully rinse sanitizer. Try using RO water and add salts as needed. http://www.bjcp.org/faults.html
[edit] Vegetal
Problem
Cooked, canned or rotten vegetables (cabbage, celery, onion, asparagus, parsnip)
Solution
Encourage a fast, vigorous fermentation (use a healthy, active starter to reduce lag time; this is often due to bacterial contamination of wort before yeast becomes established). Check sanitation. Check for aged, stale, or old ingredients (especially old liquid malt extract). Avoid oversparging at low temperatures.
http://www.bjcp.org/faults.html
Celery odour:
Hafnia protea contamination, probably from tainted yeast culture.
Bitter-vegetable taste:
From deteriorated hops (oxidized beta-acids)
Tinned sweetcorn ( Big Corn Bites) aroma and flavour:
Is characteristic of dimethyl sulphide (dms), from poorly malted barley especially sixrow; high moisture malt; hot wort not chilled quickly enough; coliform bacteria contamination.
[edit] Technical topics
[edit] Water
[edit] Wellington Water
Based on statistics from http://www.gw.govt.nz/section668.cfm
| Alkalinity (total), mg/L CaCO 3 | 55 | Calculated HCO 3 mg/L from CaCO 3 | 67 |
| Calcium (total), mg/L | 16 | ||
| Chloride, mg/L | 14 | ||
| Copper (total), mg/L | 0 | ||
| Hardness (total), mg/L CaCO 3 | 51 | ||
| Iron (total), mg/L | 0 | ||
| Magnesium (total), mg/L | 3 | ||
| Nitrate, mg/L -N | 0 | ||
| Sodium (total), mg/L | 16 | ||
| Sulphate, mg/L | 7 | ||
| Zinc (total), mg/L | 0 | ||
| pH | 7.7 |
One ppm is equivalent to 1 milligram of something per liter of water (mg/l)
[edit] Wellington compared to other cities of the world
| City | Calcium | Magnesium | Bicarbonate | SO4-2 | Na+1 | Cl-1 | Beer Style |
| (Ca+2) | (Mg+2) | (HCO3-1) | |||||
| Pilsen | 10 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Pilsener |
| Dortmund | 225 | 40 | 220 | 120 | 60 | 60 | Export Lager |
| Vienna | 163 | 68 | 243 | 216 | 8 | 39 | Vienna Lager |
| Munich | 109 | 21 | 171 | 79 | 2 | 36 | Oktoberfest |
| London | 52 | 32 | 104 | 32 | 86 | 34 | British Bitter |
| Edinburgh | 100 | 18 | 160 | 105 | 20 | 45 | Scottish Ale |
| Burton | 352 | 24 | 320 | 820 | 44 | 16 | India Pale Ale |
| Dublin | 118 | 4 | 319 | 54 | 12 | 19 | Dry Stout |
| Wellington | 16 | 3 | 67 | 7 | 16 | 14 |
From John Palmer http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-1.html
