The Hardest Styles to Brew
We at Brew Your Own recently posed a question to the readership on social media asking what styles they find hardest to brew, and why. The answers, as you’ll see, varied from lagers to traditional ales, to newer styles and specialty beers. Well, the editors of BYO aren’t just going to leave you hanging and questioning why you can’t get that elusive style just right! So, we recruited “Style Profile” columnist Gordon Strong to see if he can get you past the landmines these styles pose with some pointed and quick-hitting advice, so your next batch is your best batch. While we couldn’t get to every style readers offered up, we chose the ones that were repeated the most often and pose the biggest problems. So, here are the hardest styles to brew, and how you can brew them to perfection every time.
Pilsner
“You can’t hide off-flavors.” – Bob Savage
I like judging Pilsners in good competitions because it seems to draw the best brewers for much the same reasons that Bob notes — you just can’t hide a bad beer. Some of the more common problems I see when judging Pilsners involves yeast and fermentation issues (acetaldehyde, diacetyl, esters), insufficient lagering (lack of smoothness, overly sulfury), balance problems (too much body, not crisp enough in the finish, overly hoppy), lack of character (ingredients with too neutral a flavor profile), and issues that come from packaging/handling (oxidation, not fresh enough).
There are no real shortcuts for this style; you have to understand how to brew well and pay attention to every step in the process. If you try to cut corners, it will show. If you are unsure of any of the steps, review Greg Noonan’s New Brewing Lager Beer — it provides an excellent foundation.
First, you have to start with very soft water (low mineral content) and fresh ingredients — preferably continental Pilsner malt, German or Czech lager yeast, and German or Czech noble hops (depending on whether you are brewing a Czech/Bohemian Pils or German Pilsner). Stale ingredients will show (malt will have a honey-like flavor, hops will seem dull and cheesy, and yeast will underperform). I don’t like to use domestic “Pilsner” malts because they don’t seem to have the right flavor profile of the best German and Czech examples. Spend some money and get good ingredients. I’m OK with using some US hops if they are markedly fresher than imported ones, as long as you are substituting hops with a similar flavor and aroma profile.
Second, you have to pay attention to stylistic details. German Pilsners are dry and crisp with a lighter body, so conducting a mash program for attenuation is important (step mashes are traditional). A good mash program will also help develop the necessary nutrients for the yeast. I sometimes do a short protein rest for clarity purposes around 131 °F (55 °C), with the main saccharification rest around 143 °F (62 °C), and a short alpha amylase rest at 158 °F (70 °C) to help build a little body.
Conduct a cool fermentation (around 50 °F/10 °C), otherwise you might have unwanted esters. Allow the fermentation to complete and fermentation byproducts to be reduced. Adding oxygen at the start of fermentation will help, and kraüsening can help the fermentation complete. I tend not to crash-cool my lagers since I do want to take advantage of the yeast continuing to clean up after fermentation is complete.
I don’t like my lagers to be too sulfury, so select a low sulfur-producing strain, don’t add excessive gypsum to the water, and run a traditional lagering program. I can tell the difference when someone rushes a lager, so take your time, lager at as close to freezing temperature as you can get, and rack once done. If you don’t have the time or patience to brew a Pilsner correctly, then choose a different style of beer to brew instead.
I generally don’t do a diacetyl rest because I don’t choose yeast strains that produce significant diacetyl and I run healthy fermentations. But I always do check to see if it’s present before reducing the temperature for lagering, just in case something unexpected happened.
Package your beer cleanly, not introducing oxygen. Keep the beer at cool temperatures for serving, and enjoy it while fresh. Keep the recipe simple, use classic ingredients, and resist the urge to add unusual ingredients. One of the best things about Pilsner is its simplicity. So embrace the “nowhere to hide” approach, and don’t try to hide anything. Pilsners certainly are one of the hardest beer styles to brew, but they are also some of the best when brewed with care.
Related Link:
• Looking for more on brewing Pilsners? Digital Members can find a story I wrote on award-winning Bohemian Pilsners here: https://byo.com/article/bohemian-pilsner/
Belgian Tripel
“Little to hide, challenging to brew to its appropriate final gravity.” – Holger Michaelis
I’ll tell you an embarrassing secret – I used to not like Belgian tripels. But enough people that I respected thought they were wonderful that I figured I must not understand the style well enough. So I did what any self-respecting beer geek would do; I took a trip to Belgium with the specific goal of learning about tripels.
Yes, I really was missing the point by tasting many American-made examples of the time. They often seemed more like pale barleywines with odd yeast than anything Belgian. Americans were focusing too much on the alcohol level and not enough on the mouthfeel. So the beers I was tasting were often heavy and sweet, in addition to being boozy and having an unusual yeast character.
Sometimes American brewers would understand that tripels should be highly attenuated. That’s true, but if your starting gravity is too high then a highly attenuated tripel will still have a high finishing gravity and seem sweet or heavy. This is also a major problem with saisons, by the way. The trick is to start low and finish lower. If you have a finishing gravity below 1.010, do the math and figure out where you need to start to reach 8.5 or 9% alcohol. Hint: It’s nowhere near where you’d start a barleywine.
A typical Belgian tripel recipe is dead simple: Belgian Pilsner malt and white sugar (I use around 20% in my recipes). A saccharification temperature on the lower end of the range or a step mash helps develop a fermentable wort – don’t rely solely on the sugar for fermentability.
Many Belgian tripels seem sweet because of the high final gravity, but some also seem sweet because the IBUs are too low. One thing I learned in Belgium is that paler beers tend to be more hoppy and bitter than equivalent darker beers because there is less interest from the malt so the hops are providing the character (along with the yeast). As with saisons, many homebrewers make tripels with not enough IBUs. Add too many and it seems like you’re making a Belgian IPA, but too little is also a problem that leads to a beer with a perceived sweetness.
The yeast provides a great deal of the character and there are differing opinions on which yeast to use. I found many small breweries in Belgium getting their yeast from the larger Trappist breweries. The two yeast strains that I saw most often used in Tripels was the Westmalle yeast (also used at Westveletern) and the Orval yeast. The Westmalle yeast is available commercially as Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) and the Orval yeast as White Labs WLP510 (Bastogne). Either of these yeast strains will make a fine homebrewed tripel.
Belgian yeast strains can be used in different temperature ranges. While Westmalle and Westvleteren use the same yeast, they ferment at different temperatures (Westvleteren ferments higher). I recommend experimenting to find the ranges that taste the best to you; there is no one right answer. However, know that the 3787 yeast does not like to be chilled. It performs best when the temperature rises during fermentation. It is quite sticky and a blow-off tube is frequently needed. If it stalls, rouse it and warm it up a little.
With these active Belgian strains, the fermentation temperature inside the fermenter can be quite a bit higher than the ambient temperature. Some Belgian brewers ferment in shallow fermenters, which helps control the fermentation temperature, so be careful about fermenting too warm. Some strains (like the one from Chimay) will give unpleasant flavors if fermented hot (banana and nail polish remover is what I frequently taste). The dreaded headache-inducing fusels are also produced at warmer temperatures. Stay on top of your fermentation temperature inside the fermenter.
I like to warm condition my Belgian beers on the yeast to give them time to fully attenuate and to reduce some of the fermentation byproducts. This can be taken to the extreme, of course, but a couple weeks won’t hurt and often helps keep the beer from being too rough. Once packaged, continue to condition the beers as you would for any beer of that alcohol level. Bottle-conditioning tripels is traditional to get the high carbonation level with the creamy, tiny bubbles and rocky, persistent head.
Above all else, brewers must remember that tripels are not barleywines.
Irish Red
“Getting the color right.” – Joel Rakoski
Irish red ale in Ireland is similar to English pale ale in England, but in North America the beer is often a bit bigger, maltier, and darker in color. I am assuming you are talking about the American version of Irish red ale with this response, so it is the style that I will focus on with my response.
The color in Irish red ale comes from a combination of medium color crystal malt (40–60 °L) and a small dose of highly kilned grain, such as roasted barley. As with any recipe, the color and the flavor need to be matched because not all grains of a certain color give the same flavors. The medium crystal malt gives a caramel flavor while the roasted barley mostly contributes a drying note in the finish rather than an overt
roast flavor.
Other recipe ingredients don’t generally add much color. The base is often pale ale malt, there might be some oats or Carapils® present since the beer has a bit more body than an English pale ale, but the color generally comes primarily from crystal malts and roasted barley.
Most malts range in the color scale from yellow to brown, passing through amber and copper on the way. None of these are truly red, so don’t set your expectations to be able to accomplish this through crystal malts alone. A light copper color is about as close as you can get. But remember that the darker crystal malts bring along stronger flavors than the medium color ones, and this often isn’t what you want in this style.
Try an experiment sometime — take a little roasted barley and put it in a small grain bag. Heat up a pot of water to mashing temperature. Now dip the bag in the water and watch what happens. You don’t see black right away, you start to see ruby red. If you leave it in long enough then you’ll get black colors — but in small amounts and shorter exposure, you will get red. So if I want a red beer, I will often do just this. Steep a small amount of grain in my strike water until I get the color I want, then remove the grain and brew the beer.
You can also use this trick at the end of the boil to adjust the color. Taste it first, because you don’t want to taste the roasted barley much. If it already has enough flavor, try using a debittered black malt like Carafa® III Special to make the adjustment. It’s easy to go overboard, so I often do this by eye in the way I describe.
Because the reasoning from Joel for Irish red ale as one of the most difficult beer styles to brew was focused simply on color that is what I have focused on here. And, really, the rest of the style is a rather straight-forward brewday. But, if you want more tips on brewing Irish red ales, you can find the “Tips from the Pros” in this issue (pages 18–19) on the subject of brewing Irish reds (which includes their own tips for getting the color just right).
Related Links:
• For a more complete rundown of Irish red ale and brewing techniques, check out Jamil Zainasheff’s “Style Profile” column at https://byo.com/article/irish-red-ale-style-profile/
New England IPA
“Oxidation is hard to avoid with all the hops involved.” – Luiz Felipe Franco Garcia
I think the hardest part of making New England IPA is scraping up all the money needed to buy huge quantities of expensive hops. But I digress . . .
The question really comes down to how to use large amounts of hops without oxidizing them. I break this down into supply chain, hot-side use, cold-side use, packaging, and storage phases.
In the supply chain phase, the process starts with getting fresh hops. Not just well-stored hops, but hops from the current season. Then look at how the hops were packaged and stored. I prefer getting hops in oxygen-barrier bags that are nitrogen-filled. Finally, these hops should be stored in a freezer. Not just by you after you buy them, but from the point in which they were first packaged. I personally store my hops in a freezer set close to 0 °F (-18 °C). I only open them when I first am going to use them, and immediately reseal them and store the remainder in the freezer.
If your hops are old or oxidized when you buy them, they aren’t going to be miraculously transformed into something wonderful. They stay oxidized and you can taste the difference. Look at the hops for signs of age. Fresh hops should be bright green with yellow lupulin glands. Stale hops will be dull green and brown, and have orange lupulin glands. Rub the hops between your fingers; reject any that have a cheesy aroma. They should smell fresh.
When making New England IPA, there may be a few hops used first wort, but most of them are going to be used post-boil. Again, do not break out the hops until you are going to put them into the wort. Add hops to the whirlpool (for homebrewers, this is usually the kettle once the heat has been turned off). Stir gently (don’t whip) so that you aren’t introducing oxygen on the hot-side. Once enough time has elapsed, chill and transfer the wort in a way that separates the whirlpool hops gently.
You can add pure oxygen to aid fermentation but only right before you pitch the yeast. The yeast should be active and ready to go. Even if you have sufficient yeast, you should still make a starter so that you are pitching actively fermenting yeast so there is as short a lag time as possible.
Some recipes call for hops to be added during fermentation, aiming to biotransform hop oils into new aromatic compounds. Again, get the hops from cold storage and use them immediately. When opening the fermenter, add the hops as quickly as possible and reseal it. Any oxygen incidentally introduced during this process is not a problem as the yeast will either metabolize it, or it will be pushed out by the carbon dioxide generated by fermentation.
Once fermentation is complete, you will begin transferring the beer and dry hopping. Many recipes call for doing this three times. So remember to always get the hops from cold storage right before usage every time.
Practice transferring wort without introducing excess oxygen. This means to transfer under cover of carbon dioxide, not just running a hose or racking cane into one container and filling another open container. Fill an empty keg with carbon dioxide. The easiest way to do this is to fill the keg with water and then push it out using CO2. Once emptied and full of gas, the beer can be added to the keg. You can use gravity to do this as long as the fermenter is above the keg, and the keg is vented as it is filled.
Add dry hops in a mesh bag and put in the water-filled keg before pushing the water out. Then push the beer from the first keg into the now-empty second keg that contains the hops. Dry hops are usually used for two or three days, then discarded. If you want to cold-crash the beer before the last transfer, go ahead.
New England IPA is not the most stable of beers, so keep it stored cold and drink it right away. It won’t get better over time no matter what you do, so keep it in a keg and enjoy it fresh. If given the choice, I would not package it into bottles as there is too much risk of adding oxygen then. You can take steps to minimize this, but you won’t totally eliminate it. Only do the minimum number of transfers as necessary.
British Bitter
“Easy brew day, simple ingredients, difficult to master.” – Robert Merrall
I’m not sure I agree that it’s difficult to master; I guess it depends on what your goals are. Bitters in the UK can be quite different, so you aren’t going to brew a single recipe that makes you think of all of them. You have to choose a target and visualize your goal. And you have to make sure you’re actually making a bitter like in the UK, not a heavily oxidized or over-strength one that might be imported into the US.
I had this problem for a long time, until I actually went to the UK and tried them there. I was wondering why bitters in the US were caramelly and those in the UK tended to be fruity and hoppy. It was oxidation, plain and simple. Way back then, I trusted judging guides that said oxidation was sensed as cardboard and paper. Well, yes, but there are other ways of sensing it, and it turns out that amber beers often oxidize into a sweet, caramelly state with duller hops and lower bitterness. Some great beers are imported but the import formulation is different than the domestic formulation (cask versions can be different than bottled, as well). Try a fresh cask bitter if possible.
So, back to ideas for brewing bitters. Yes, there are simple ingredients and an easy brew day. But you have to source good-quality, fresh ingredients nonetheless. English pale ale base malts can have a wide range of flavors; not every malt is Maris Otter (nor should it be). Experiment with different varieties and maltsters to find ones that you like. Personally, I’m a fan of the maltsters Crisp and Thomas Fawcett, and I absolutely love Golden Promise malt.
There are a wide range of crystal malts as well, and they also have different flavors from maltster to maltster, especially the darker versions. So again, try different products and find the ones you like. Or at least understand their flavor profiles. If you aren’t getting consistent results, make sure you aren’t changing maltsters along the way.
The British aren’t afraid of using brewing sugars and adjuncts, many of which have interesting flavors and/or mouthfeel effects, so don’t be pompous about keeping your beer all-malt. Some of my favorite recipes use some corn or sugar (but rarely simple white sugar).
Traditional English hops are wonderful, but many UK brewers are using some US hops in their brews. Always go with fresh hops. Definitely learn what good Goldings smell and taste like; they are a great go-to hop for bitters.
Traditionally, English brewers use a simple infusion mash, often as part of a parti-gyle brew day (so it can be complicated after all). However, for a simple bitter, I wouldn’t bother with that; single-step infusion is fine.
Pay attention to the gravity, alcohol, and bitterness levels for bitters. They are much lower than for most American beers, and that is part of their appeal. When in doubt, try to make a best bitter. You want to taste the hops, malt, and yeast, and the bitterness shouldn’t make you pucker up. Remember that you are making a session beer – it should be easy-drinking.
Finally, try different yeasts to see what you like. They often emphasize different characteristics in beer. Some can be fruity, malty, minerally, sulfury-dry, or have other characteristics. One of my favorite all-around yeasts is Wyeast 1335 (British II), which is quite balanced but still has a good English character. I also like Wyeast 1968 (or White Labs WLP002) for its fruitiness and it is absolutely a great cask yeast since if flocculates so well. But many different British yeasts work for this style. Since bitter is low gravity, it’s often easy to make a double batch and split the fermentation between two different strains as an experiment.
And please do try a cask-conditioned bitter. I like to serve them young and dry hop them in the cask. It’s a great beer for a party since you don’t have to worry about it going off over time because it will be long gone by then.
Sweeter Beers
“Getting the right balance.” – Mark Armstrong
This is an interesting answer to our “most difficult style” question since it doesn’t relate to a particular style. I tend not to brew many sweet styles, but I think there are some interesting things to say about this topic.
When people want to talk about sweet beers, I try to understand if they really mean sweet or if they mean malty. I enjoy malty styles like doppelbock, wee heavy, and English barleywine, but I don’t like them to be excessively sweet. Malty means the flavor of malt, while sweet usually means the basic flavor of sugar. Some beer styles like London brown ale are back-sweetened with sugar, and that flavor is pretty obvious.
Balance plays a role in the perception of sweetness and maltiness, of course. Some styles that seem sweet on your palate just are lacking balancing bitterness (or sourness, or tannin). The final gravity of the beer measures how much unfermented sugar (or residual extract) remains in the beer, and ultimately how much bitterness it can take to balance the sweetness.
So if I’m trying to make a malt-forward beer that has the impression of sweetness, I try to reduce the IBUs to change the balance. If I go too far in the sweet direction, it’s easier to add something to balance the beer (blending with a more bitter beer, age the beer on wood, encourage more attenuation using kraüsening, etc.) than it is to
remove sweetness.
I sometimes make beers with intentionally less bitterness than a style demands. For example, when I make a braggot, I often blend a malty beer and a sweet mead. Too much bitterness in the beer tends to clash with the sweetness of the honey, so I like to be gentle with the IBUs. Or if I know that a beer will be barrel-aged I reduce the bitterness to account for the tannins that the wood will add.
These examples cover the cases of recipe design where sweetness is a big consideration. But sometimes there are cases where you need to adjust the balance of a specialty beer. My favorite approach to this problem is blending and using your palate to fine-tune the final product.
I was once asked to make a chocolate imperial stout for a retirement party. They didn’t really give me enough time to brew an imperial stout, but fortunately I had a half keg of one I could use. I also had an experimental beer that had a large portion of chocolate malt in it, maybe 25%. I blended some of that in to increase the chocolate flavor, but the beer the person envisioned clearly had added chocolate in it. So I had to look at ways to bring those flavors in.
I used a combination of cocoa nibs, Dutch-process cocoa powder, and chocolate extract first. I soaked the nibs in vodka, blended and skimmed the powder, and added the extract. Still not enough chocolate flavor was present, so I tried blending in some Godiva chocolate liqueur. This combination had a good chocolate flavor but still was missing something – sweetness. So I kept adding lactose until the chocolate had enough balance. I know this has more of a feel of making a cocktail than brewing a beer, but it was a one-off project to fill a time-sensitive request. The person loved it, by the way, and we also made some great stout floats with it and some vanilla ice cream.
People that experiment with milkshake IPAs know that lactose provides the balancing sweetness and helps fill out fruit flavors. In the past, I had tried increasing sweetness in fruit beers by using sweet fruit meads to some success. Lactose provides a different type of sweetness, and gives creamy flavors to the blend. If that’s what you’re looking for in your sweet beer, I think it works very well.
Since lactose is unfermentable, it really can be added at any point. When I was using it to sweeten a fermented beer, I just boiled it for ten minutes in a little water to sterilize it, then let it cool and blended it into the beer. There is some trial and error involved, and expect to do repeated tastings to get the balance right.
