Micro Pig Brewery

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IPA in London

To celebrate the birth of my baby daughter a well known street artist friend designed me a label. It's A Girl beer is a 5.7% milk stout. A beautiful milk stout too, just like my daughter. The piglets stand proud.

Time to brew!

There's been a ton on at the Micro Pig Brewery over the past 2 weeks but we've had time to brew another Milk Stout. I've been excited since brewing the Left Hand clone for the Brooklyn Wort competition tomorrow. After doing some research I found a recipe from an old brewery in the UK, Whatney's in BYO. -- Watney’s Cream Stout Clone 5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains; OG = 1.063; FG = 1.020; IBU = 37; SRM = 39; ABV = 5.5% Ingredients 3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) Dark extract syrup 3.0 lbs. (1.4 kg) Light dried malt extract 0.5 lbs. (0.22 kg) Belgian Special B malt 0.5 lbs. (0.22 kg) Belgian CaraMunich malt 0.5 lbs. (0.22 kg) Belgian roasted barley 0.5 lbs. (0.22 kg) Belgian roasted malt 0.5 lb. lactose (at bottling) 0.25 tsp. Burton water salts 9 AAU Cascade hops (2.oz.) 7.8 AAU Bramling Cross hops (1 oz.) Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) yeast 0.5 cup corn sugar (for priming) Step by Step Crush the grains, place in a grain bag and steep them in 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) of 168 °F (76 °C) water for 20 minutes. Remove grain bag and bring grain tea to a boil. Stir in malt extract and resume boil, add Cascades hops once boil resumes. After 45 minutes, add the Goldings hops. (60 minute total boil.) Ferment at 68 °F (20 °C) Hipster piglet and I even managed our first starter ever. This should be an amazing beer, probably better than the competition beer. Will make sure to do a taste test next month. Exciting!

I'm now hooked on brewing Milk Stouts and since we have a new little baby girl, my wife has insisted I brew another just for her. This article from BYO is absolute solid gold advice!

Never thought I'd buy them but some speciality pink caps finish off the bottling session of the Micro Pig Brewery's Milk Stout. It's finished at 4.6% ABV and an FG of 1.026, which a little heavier than I wanted but man, this is pretty clean and has a nice smooth, silky. We've got just about time to carbonate before the competition, so if this does what Rumpelstiltspig and Legolas hope, we could be looking at our best beer yet!

More details to follow, can't wait!

Tasting notes at the Micro Pig Brewery and it isn't good news. Remember the rosehip saison we bottled a few weeks ago? We'll let me tell you that the combination in this beer has not worked out. Legolas (the two legged piglet) has understood some fundamental flaws in the making of this beer that I think would would be good to share. The first is from the phenolic odor and flavour caused by a high temperature fermentation, which would normally be perfect for a Belgian saison yeast (temps can range up to 90F) but we blended the Belle Saison at pitch (temps only as high as 74F). Fermenting at close to 84F, the Belgian yeast would have been chugging away nicely but the Belle would have been blasting it's way through the sugars generating that nasty phenolic off-flavour. To combat this, it would have been better to have completed primary with the Belgian and then finished off with a pitch of the Belle Saison yeast at a lower temperature. You live and learn. I wouldn't abandon the rosehip idea completely because there is depth to this beer but I would use less than an ounce in a 5 gallon batch next time. It had a lingering bitterness to it that can be just a little like you grandmothers bathroom. A great experiment and learning experience but this beer is headed for the drain... A sad Legolas will keep one bottle to see how it ages, in hope rather than anything else.

Zwanze Day celebrations with Cantillion on tap in Brooklyn. The piglets rejoice!!

Competiton beer brewing at the Micro Pig Brewery this weekend and the piglets get to use their new toy, a fermentation chamber. :-) After receiving confirmation we have a place in the Brooklyn Wort for the second year in a row, we've decided to brew a sweet stout. I'm thinking a beer that close to the quality of Left Hand Milk Stout might go down well with the judges, so we're using lactose and plenty of roasty chocolate. Shooting for a 5.3% beer, the piglets are hoping to blend oats, caramel 60L, roast 375L, US chocolate, flaked barley, pale extract and Munich 10L; I'm hoping for a smooth and silky milk stout. Now that I have complete control of fermentation temps with the Micro Pig Brewery's with the fermentation chamber, I can only blame myself and Rumpelstiltspig for off flavours. That beard of his definitely needs a wash. Set to 67F, the Johnston A419 thermostat controls the chest freezer's temperature, and all it takes to set it up is to plug the thermostat into the power cable and tape the probe to the carboy. Even a piglet can do that right?

Bottling the Rose Hip Saison this week and we've run into some annoying problems... Dark and rich raisiny in flavour but too sweet caused by missing my OG by 8 points. The other problem with the finished wort is it's phenolic odor, which I learned at my local homebrew club to be the yeast blend I chose. According to a friend, it would have been better to do primary fermentation with the Belgian Wyeast strain at 85F and then reduce the temperature and finish with the Belle Saison yeast. Belle Saison at those high temps early in the process cause the phenolic off-flavour but if is have added it to a cooler secondary it would have finished the fermentation when the lazy Belgian yeast strain would have tapped out. You live and learn, get mad and brew more. The piglets will pop this open in a couple of weeks and we'll see how bad this really is...

Marmalade Rye Saison tasting at the Micro Pig Brewery! If I'm honest, Saison's are never really my style, but this beer has a really nice balanced dry, spicy rye backbone. It's yeasty complexity combined with the orange caramel we added gives it lingering a bitter finish that's pretty tasty. I still think we could improve this beer with a lower mash temp but hey, where am I going to get that mistakenly created orange caramel my wife made again? Probably nowhere. So who cares! A success. Piglet score: 8.5/10

Clearing out some old beer that got too warm in Brooklyn this summer and over carbonated. The piglets are feeling a deep sense of sadness this evening...

A little roast rose hip saison krausen... Yummy.

Sure! It worked a charm but am yet to try it. https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/blueberry-berliner-weisse-1The only thing that isn't noted is the mash was left for 24 hours after a rest of 140F. There's another post about it on the blog. Let me know how it goes!