Episode 16: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad tasting
Hey, you know what’s a good idea? Lets get four different homebrewed altbiers together, and invite a friend to taste them with us. Yea, that’s a great idea.
Well, sometimes things go terribly wrong.
The alternate title for this episode is “Broken Bottles and Missing Teeth. A Virtual Barfight”. “When Homebrew attacks” might have been apt name as well.
Let me tell you, it was rough. Jerry and I got together to brew some altbiers. He brewed a recipe heavier in munich than the one I was making, and we both split our batches and used Kolsch yeast (WLP 029) on half, an Dusseldorf Alt Ale Yeast (WLP036) on the other half.
WLP 029 German Ale Yeast
White Labs Web site
Sourced from a small brewpub in Cologne, Germany
Known for accentuating hop flavor and bitterness while creating crisp, clean lager like characters.
You’ll have to watch to see everything that went wrong.
Homebrewing is about experimenting, having fun, and learning as you go. If anything, this episode should show you that we don’t hide anything from our audience 🙂
What did we learn? The big takeaway that we have from this one is that the Düsseldorf really mutes the hop flavor, and lets the malt come to the forward. The Kolsch lets the hop bitterness shine. Jesse noticed more of a floral character from the beer made with Kolsch yeast. That, and make sure you have paper towels on hand.
WLP036 Düsseldorf Alt Ale Yeast
White Labs Web site
A traditional altbier-style yeast from Düsseldorf, Germany. It produces clean, malty German brown and amber ales. This strain keeps the contribution of hop bitterness in the background while promoting sweet malt notes.
