Batch #9: Doc Holliday Steam Beer (Timmy)

Following Wolf's Eye Brewery's tradition of naming brews after notorious historical figures, I named my first beer "Doc Holliday's Steam Ale." This dentist-turned gunslinger is famous for his skills in gambling, drinking, and killing. Doc was an educated man, however, and certainly would have preferred a higher quality beverage than the cheap swill known as "steam ale" sold out west in th 1800s.


Unlike the historical steam ales that were often made with adjuncts for the thirsty masses, this recipe is all-malt. I decided to go with a mix of German and American hops, since the original steam ales were an attempt to re-create the European lagers using the peculiar shallow-pan fermenting method at ale temperatures.

I used the California Lager yeast years ago when I first attempted a steam ale, but my house temperature was a little too warm (64-65 degrees) and I ended up with a fruity tasting beer that I eagerly gave away.

This beer should turn out much better. Wolf's Eye brewers lucked out in that we were able to ferment this beer in JP's garage in the dead of winter at an excellent lager-fermenting temperature of 40-50 degrees. JP reported that the brew fermented slowly and steadily- an encouraging sign. I am predicting this will be more like an all-malt American lager than a steam ale. It should turn out a strong, smooth, clean-tasting lager bursting with hop flavor and caramel - just the sort of classy brew that Doc would perhaps have ordered up between a hand of cards.

Recipe for Doc Holliday's Steam Ale, brewed 26 Jan 08:

0.5 lb Crystal 40
0.5 lb Victory malt
3 lb Light DME (1 hour)
4 lb Allexander's Pale LME (15 min)

1 tbs Irish Moss (15 min)
Hop bill:

1 oz Cluster (8.5%) 1 hour
0.5 oz Challenger (7%) 15 min
0.5 oz Challenger (7%) 5 min
1 oz Mt Hood (3.4%) 0 min
Yeast: California Lager Wyeast W2112

OG: 1.072 (!)

Introduction to the Anarcho-Syndicalist Brewing Collective Members

Chris Quade is a hop-head of the highest order, and has a penchant for stouts and irish cream ales as well, athough he is learning to love the brown and amber styles (and socialism). He once drank a Bud Light on the golf course, but only because he couldn't find any Gatorade. Chris is the Chief Bottle Washer for the collective, and as the man who works two days a week he often makes the beer store runs (this has nothing to do with the beer store being 500 feet from the Dogfish Head Alehouse). As an Irish and a professional tuba player, Chris' levels of beer intake reach the very limits of human endurance, and he avoids DWI charges only because the DMV took away his license for speeding. Frankly, the only reason he's not an alcoholic is because he doesn't go to the meetings. On a personal note, Chris would really hate his job if he ever went.

JP (Jean-Pierre) Pritchard is the Engineer for the brewing collective.  JP is a controls engineer for a major (unnamed) area manufacturing firm and an aspiring consultant (reference Dilbert definition of consultant).  Engineering issues are dealt with JP's "deliberate stealth" engineering method typically resulting in broken kitchen hardware.  JP is working on babbage style homebrew equipment made of common parts available from plumbing supply houses and area thrift sales.  [More comments forthcoming]

Tim "Timmy" Heath is the most recent member to join the Wolf's Eye Brewery team. Tim lends a hand wherever it is needed and provides advice in the formulation of recipes drawing from his experience with his own home brewery, "White Oak." Long obsessed with beer and homebrewing, Tim reads any homebrew books, magazines, and websites he finds and especially enjoys sampling fine American Pale Ales, malty British brown ales/ bitters, and the occasional Belgian.

James Mulvenon is obsessed with English brown ales, malty ambers, and hand-pulled English bitters. He used to drink Guinness stout and Russian imperial stouts, but now anything darker than a brown ale gives him criminal levels of flatulence. James buys every beer book he can get his hands on and subscribes to a pathological number of beer trade magazines. He is trying to develop a more sophisticated vocabulary for his love of beer, but the early pathetic attempts are captured at ratebeer.com for the rest of eternity. In the collective, James is the Creative Director, developing the labels and the branding for the beers. He wants nothing more in the world than to make a big pile of "fuck you" money, quit his job, and open a kickass microbrewery in his hometown.

Batch #1 (James)

Batch #1 was my first beer. As a lover of English brown ales, it was the natural first choice. I love malty brown ales like Newcastle, but am really obsessed with Rogue Hazelnet Brown Nectar these days. I wanted this brown ale to have the same combination of malty, caramel flavor with full body. Batch #1, however, was my first batch in over ten years. All of the old equipment was dragged out of the basement and cleaned. We had not yet found MyLHBS in Falls Church, so we made the mistake of ordering the ingredients from Jay's Brewing Supplies, which we thought was still located in the basement of Jay's parents house in Fairfax. Turns out, he had moved to North Carolina, so the ingredients did not even show up on time. Once they finally arrived, we made the batch and bottled it in 22oz bottles. I introduced the collective to the labeling style I used in Los Angeles, using black and white photographs of historical personages that were either appropriate for the style or amusing in some way. For a Northern English Brown Ale, the only choice was George Orwell, my favorite author and a noted lover of beer. His courageous struggle against Soviet totalitarianism mirrors our own desperate struggle against the corporate brewing, which has borrowed Moscow's playbook with respect to sucking the color and personality out of everything. This brown ale will always be my signature beer, and I committed to making it again and again until I found the perfect brown ale recipe. This batch, however, was a noble but doomed first effort. Derek from MyLHBS told us that the Briess extract we used is 10% more diluted than Munton's or Cooper's, and the batch tasted thin. Here was the recipe:

George Orwell Brown #1
11-C Northern English Brown Ale

Size: 4.44 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 112.61 per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.034 (1.040 - 1.052)
Terminal Gravity: 1.009 (1.008 - 1.013)
Color: 18.6 (12.0 - 22.0)
Alcohol: 3.34% (4.2% - 5.4%)
Bitterness: 35.84 (20.0 - 30.0)

Ingredients:

0.5 lbs Munton's Crystal 60
0.5 lbs Weyermann Carafoam
0.3 lbs Munton's Chocolate Malt
6.6 lbs Briess CBW Golden Light
1.5 oz Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
0.5 oz Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
0.0 ea White Labs 005 British Ale

Schedule:

Ambient Air: 70.0 °F
Source Water: 60.0 °F
Elevation: 0.0 m

Notes:

Brewed: 10/12/07
O.G.: 1034
Bottled on 10/23/07

First bottle sampled on 11/1/07: thin taste, resembling a hand-pulled bitter
Second bottle sampled on 11/8/07: still fairly thin taste, highly carbonated with small bubbles
Third bottle sampled on 11/17/07 for UM-OSU game: flavor smoothing out, but still not rich and malty (use of Briess was mistake)

Creation Myth

Hunkered down in Wolfsauge bunker complex, the members of the anarcho-syndicalist collective slowly raised the armored periscope, looking in vain for a wayward craft beer delivery truck. Unable to see past the mangled, perversely disfigured dead bodies stacked like cordwood outside the flame-scarred entrance door, they decided to brew their own, driven both by an unconscionable thirst and an intense and relentless desire to create obsessively authentic beer styles. What you hold in your hand is the humble product of their efforts. Enjoy, or get bent.