A German wheat ale brewed with coriander and salt. Perfect for a hot summer day.

This post is part of a series on “All-Day Beer“.  Designed to let you enjoy your favorite beverage throughout the day while still remaining an upright and functional human.  You can check out the full set here.

Last time, we were talking about what makes a beer refreshing.  So here’s an example of a beer with those qualities.

I have a thing for obscure beer styles and I haven’t been able to find a commercial version of this one locally.  Gose (not to be confused with Gueuze) is a German wheat ale brewed with coriander and salt.  It’s somewhere between a Wit and a BerlinerWeiss.

Coriander gives it a bit of citrusey-ness even without the orange peel.  Salt adds more of a background flavor – this version doesn’t taste “salty”.

It finishes fairly dry – under 1.010 – and has a light sourness or tartness.  A little like a lemonade but not nearly as sour as a Berliner Weiss.  And then a high level of carbonation to play up the dry and tart components.

This recipe is a modified version of one that appears in Radical Brewing.  It calls for Acid malt – which is malt that has been allowed to sour before drying – to achieve the sour flavors.

I didn’t think it was quite strong enough so I added another 15 ml of Lactic Acid to the keg.  To figure how much Lactic Acid to add, get a measured glass of beer and add the acid a few drops at a time until you get the flavor you want.  Then multiply by ~50 glasses in a keg.

You could also use a Lactobacillus culture (Wyeast 5335 or White Labs WLP677) after primary fermentation is complete.  I was kind of worried that might over-do it but I’ll probably try it at some point.

In reading up on the style, there’s not much consistency in how the few commercial examples are brewed – so feel free to adjust it to your liking.

There’s no extract version because the high amount of Acid Malt needs enzymes to convert.   If you want to brew an extract version, drop the Acid malt and use a 50% Wheat/50% Pilsner malt blend then sour with either Lactic Acid or Lactobacillus culture.

This post is part of a series on “All-Day Beer“.  Designed to let you enjoy your favorite beverage throughout the day while still remaining an upright and functional human.  You can check out the full set here.

Now that you’ve finished up breakfast, maybe it’s time for a little yard work.  You want something thirst quenching that won’t interfere with your ability to operate heavy machinery.  Is the World’s Most Refreshing beer your only choice?  Let’s look at what makes a beer (or any other drink for that matter) refreshing.

Lots of things that contribute to the sensation – but a high level of acidity seems to be the key.  The acids get the saliva glands working when you’re feeling a bit parched.  It should finish fairly dry – too much residual sweetness seems to interfere with that crispness.  Also a higher carbonation level will create additional carbonic acid and a bit more spritz on the tongue.

Temperature seems to play a role as well.  A nice English style bitter is perfectly quaff-able at 55ºF but you might perceive it as too warm on a hot day.  We know that serving beer too cold will also mute some flavors – so you have to find a balance.  But in this case I’d lean towards a slightly colder than normal serving temperature.

We could apply these attributes to easily a dozen different styles.  And we haven’t even started talking about the ingredients yet.  So can the most refreshing and drinkable beers be limited to one style?  I think not.

What do you think?  What makes a beer refreshing to you?

Stay tuned for some recipes as we try to find a new king of lawnmower beers!

Photo by Rennett Stowe.

This recipe is part of a fun series we’re doing on “All-Day Beer“.  Designed to let you enjoy your favorite beverage throughout the day while still remaining an upright and functional human.  You can check out the full series here.

Continuing the theme of breakfasty beers – for this one I was looking to fresh baked muffins for inspiration.  Maybe you like blueberry or banana-nut but my favorite are cranberry.

The muffin base has a little sweetness which is balanced by the tartness of the cranberries.  So the base beer I think should mirror the muffin base – soft and slightly sweet with some melanoidin or biscuity-ness around the crust.

For the cranberries – I tried adding them in layers.  I really like the concept of adding the flavors throughout the recipe instead of all at once.  But I think I overshot the mark a bit.  As you can see the beer has quite a pink hue to it.

The first cranberry addition was added to the hot wort during cooling – after it had dropped to about 170ºF.  Then I also racked them into the primary.  Post fermentation there was a hint of cranberry but I wanted a bit more.  So I racked the beer off of the yeast and added the second round of cranberries which  I lightly crushed.  This is where the color came from.  All of these were whole frozen cranberries by the way.

The Verdict?

Close – but not quite there.  That’s why this is version 0.1!

First, the base beer dried out too much.  That kind of killed the sweetness and the tartness overwhelms.  While still quite session-able, the extra attenuation also boosted the ABV a touch more than originally planned.

I think next time I’ll use a less attenuative yeast.  Maybe something with an English character.

Second, the later cranberry addition should be about half what it was.  It needs some character, but I don’t think it should be totally dominant.

On the Bright Side

This is still a really good beer.  Even though it’s a bit one sided – it’s also very refreshing.  The dryness and the tartness really work to quench your thirst on a hot summer day (like the kind we’ve been having here).  Definitely worth a brew even if it wasn’t quite what we were aiming for originally!

Cranberry Madness

Fruit Beer

Cranberry Madness

Fruit Beer

Use the insulator thing so your hand doesn't warm it up too much!

This recipe is part of a fun series we’re doing on “All-Day Beer“.  Designed to let you enjoy your favorite beverage throughout the day while still remaining an upright and functional human.  You can check out the full series here.

Quad, venti, half-caff, one pump sugar-free vanilla, two pumps sugar-free hazelnut, extra-hot, ristretto latte, with half soy, half lowfat organic milk, with two paper cups.  Seriously?

Start your day off right with a glass of this instead.  At a whopping 2.5% abv, you might even have a “tall”.  Just don’t blame me if you get fired, or a DUI, or whatever.

Seriously though, I see no reason why a responsible person couldn’t enjoy one or two in the morning.

Plus, its about the same number of calories as a large Iced Caffe Latte, and less than half of those Frappuchino thingies from you-know-where.  If you’re worried about that kind of thing.

Boring you say?  Skip the trip to  *bucks.  Save the $7 and try some of these beer-based variations instead.

Basic Black

Mild roast?  Brew the recipe as is.

Something a little darker? Bump up the Roasted Barley another 4-8 oz.

Super dark burnt acrid stuff your cup ‘o joe?  Add a couple ounces of Black Malt.

Cream or Sugar?

I wouldn’t go so far as to use actual cream or sugar (ask me how I know).  But by adjusting the lactose and the mash temperature you can alter the body and residual sweetness.

Lactose is almost completely unfermentable, so adding more will increase final gravity.  As will increasing the mash temperature.  Reduce the lactose and/or mash temp to dry it out a bit more.

Don’t go too dry though or it will taste a little too thin and watery.  1.020 Final Gravity seems fine to me.

If you’re using extract, then you won’t have much control over the mash temperature.  But you can control the carbonation and serving temperature, which also have an effect.

A lower carbonation level and warmer serving temperature (50-55ºF) will help round out the body a bit more.

Flavor it up

So now that we have a solid base, its time to experiment a bit more.

Those flavored syrup shots at the coffee bar?  They work here too.

Hazelnut and raspberry are my favorite but vanilla and caramel are good too.  Just add 1-1.5 tsp to the glass and pour the beer on top.  I prefer this to flavoring the whole batch so I can try something different each time.

You could also add a bit more real coffee or chocolate flavor with “dry-beaning”.

Sanitize a mesh hop bag (Star-san makes this easy). Put an ounce of whole beans in the bag and stick it in the keg or secondary for a day or two.  Taste every 12-24 hours until it seems right to you.

The sky’s the limit really.  Use your imagination and go crazy. Let us know in the comments if you come up with something really cool.

I’m a big fan of session beers.  Anything I can drink 5 or 6 of and not feel completely awful the next morning.  And not worry that I’ll end up with a Shrek-like waistline.

Session type beers are definitely not a new invention.

- We know people used to drink beer when water wasn’t safe.  But I doubt they were getting sloshed on Imperial Oaked Porter.

- The abbey monks were allowed 5 quarts a day when fasting.  Though it probably wasn’t the 11% Quadrupels we go crazy over.

- Farmhands needing refreshment in the fields gave us Saison and the other farmhouse ales.  But not the 6-9% versions we drink today.

But this year they seem to be experiencing something of a renaissance (at least in the US) after several years of “Brew-it-Bigger!”

So I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a series of session beers, but in a more interesting way than just brewing normal styles with half the alcohol.  Because that just seems too, easy.

Then I got to talking to one of my co-workers the other day, about beer (not work of course).  He mentioned that his neighbors were also huge beer fans.  Such great fans that when they saw him moving into the neighborhood, they offered him a cold beer.  At 8:30 in the morning.

Turns out they’re actually fans of beer in cans.  But not the good kind of beer in cans.  The kind with “cold-activated mountains”.  Because they need an  “All day beer”.

So I have 2 thoughts on all of this.

1.  Good on these people for starting the day right.

2. If you’re going to drink beer literally all day, why on earth would you drink the same one… all day?

Instead, how about a series of different beers that you could drink throughout the day yet still remain a functioning human being.

Beyond just “pub session” beers, they could be centered around different activities you might do during the day.  Breakfast, something for the office-dweller, lunch and dinner, yard work, some for pub time, a late night snack, and so forth.

They could even become replacements for soda or sports drinks.  Maybe even replacing the odd unhealthy snack.

Having now brewed the first couple of test batches, I can tell you that making a 2-3% ABV beer that actually tastes like anything is a challenge for sure.

If you’re looking to flex your brewing-muscles, I would argue this is more difficult than brewing the high gravity counterparts.

So stay tuned.  I think we’re going to come up with some interesting beers.  The first of which is coming up this Friday and it will help you get the day off to a proper start!