Anacostia Ale

The river that spawned a beer, not the first time in history a waterway has influenced brewing. Historically breweries (as many industries) located themselves along rivers to have easy accessibility to water for their day to day uses. Obviously today with water and waste systems in many municipalities its easier to locate a brewery away from your natural resources. That doesn't mean that these natural resources are any less important and we recognize that. Here locally in the D.C. Metro we're very thankful to organizations like the Anacostia Watershed Society.

In the spirit of these efforts we here at Franklin's decided to partner up with AWS and spread the word, by brewing Anacostia Ale in hopes of bringing more attention to protecting and restoring our natural resources is an important issue.

Anacostia Ale is an amber colored ale that starts out with an assertive upfront bitterness that leads into a toasty malt body with a crisp dryness. Very sessionable at just over 5% ABV this ale is brewed with a large percentage of German Munich malts and hopped with Vanguard. Re-pitching yeast from our 10th Anniversary Ale and fermenting cool to help keep this beer clean and minimize fruity esters.

Drink the beer, save the river...or better yet get involved, learn how through the link above.

10th Anniversary Ale

Wow, ten years! Even though I've only been here the last two years of Franklin's first decade in the brewing industry, I'm extremely happy to be a part of this celebration. Ten years is a great feat for any business and obviously it would have never happened if it wasn't for the loyal friends of Franklin's who grace our front doors on a regular basis. Many people were surprised when I announced that our 10th Anniversary Ale was not some exotic alcohol bomb of a beer. A pale ale may not seem exciting to some, but I felt it was the perfect way to acknowledge what Franklin's is and what we represent. Our roots began with a general store and then snowballed into a brew pub, something that no one could have predicted would happen twenty years ago, let alone become a success and undoubtedly a keystone of the Hyattsville community. Pale ales are meant to be solid easier drinking ales for a wide variety of palates and I feel that sums who many of our supporters are. The difference with this pale ale is that we made it unique, just like a brew pub with a general store attached. This is not an American nor an English pale ale, its a true hybrid, just like we are.

The grist bill started with Weyermann Pilsner and Munich malts,honey malt and biscuit malt. Combining German Tettnang and American Cascade at a equal ration and making hop additions at 90,30 and 0 minutes to provide about 25 IBUs in a 5.3% ABV beer. We used a unique blend of two ale yeasts including a European strain that mellowed the beer out by minimizing the amount of fruity esters, leaving behind a clean beer. After fermentation we dry hopped it with Tettnang and Cascade to complete the circle. Left unfiltered of course despite a lowly flocculant yeast left this beer with a haze from the first to last glass of this batch. The aroma was a combination of earthy spiciness and piney citrus. Medium bodied with touches of bread, sweet malt and balanced by a firm hop bitterness and medium dry finish made this beer an extremely session-able pale ale. Here's to everyone who helped get us here and to another ten years of success.

The Brewery Blog Challenge

Let's face it, I've had trouble keeping up with this blog for the last few months and frankly its unacceptable. So I have come up with a way to help me avoid procrastination and stay on top of things, a consequence. I'm issuing a blog challenge to anyone who calls me out publicly if I fail to post anything for more than seven days. The first person to post a comment on my last blog entry calling me out for not posting wins a $50 gift certificate to Franklin's.


Cheers,
Mike

Bitter Markie & Rauchroggen Bock -Restrospective

The Hippity Hoppity Series
Volume 7

Bitter Markie

Have you ever met a beer that you tried to drink
But sip after sip it made you think
I wonder who else has been drinking this beer
That you get so jealous you refuse to share
So take this message with you to the end
Don't ever drink a beer that says it just has a friend

The seventh installment of our Hippity Hoppity Double I.P.A. series was an aggressive attack on your palate with loads of hop bitterness and aroma backed up with a prominent malt backbone. The malt bill started with a 50/50 blend of Weyermann Pilsner and Munton's Maris Otter malt, a touch of Weyermann Wheat and a dash of Weyermann Carabelge. Malt wasn't the only thing we added to the mash tun as we also loaded in 26 pounds of whole leaf Centennial hops which makes for one deliciously smelling mash. The wort was then boiled for 100 minutes with a bittering addition of Chinook, which was added again along with Centennial and Columbus towards the end of the boil. All in all we used 48 pounds of hops on the hot side (mash tun & boil kettle), which is my personal record so far. After fermentation BM was dry hopped twice, the first time with Simcoe and Amarillo, the second with just Simcoe.

When we tapped this beer it had an amazing aroma of grapefruit, pine and a touch of spice. Assertively bitter yet drinkable from start to finish with a moderate body and medium dry. Very well received by our customers as well as the beer judges at the 2011 Great International Beer Festival were it took Gold in the Double I.P.A. category.

Rauchroggen Bock

Rauchbeirs have always been a favorite of mine since I had my first Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier several years ago. What's not to love about a beer that's as smokey and filling as good wood smoked barbeque? Smoked beers are always very polarizing so you have to be all in when making one in my opinion and recognize it will be a beer that not everyone will like and that's fine, in fact embrace it fully. Rauchroggen Bock was no different as it was not an entry level smoked beer. We went heavy with nearly 50% Weyermann Beechwood Smoked Malt, about a third Weyermann Dark Munich and the remainder with Weyermann Rye. Smokey, toasty with a touch of spicy grain is what we shot for and I think that's what we accomplished. Overall the beer was very smokey with some elements of sweet and spicy malt. Perhaps a bit smokier than most people would have liked and perhaps that will be something to take into consideration the next time its brewed.

Vanilla Bean Stout

My first trip to the Great American Beer Festival was back in 2002 as a representative of Martha's Exchange Restaurant & Brewing Company of Nashua, New Hampshire. My friend and former co-worker Greg Ouellette was celebrating his first year as brewer at Martha's with a trip to the mile high beer festival. Greg's most popular beer at the festival was by far his Velvet Elvis, a vanilla bean stout. Its a seasonal favorite for stout lovers at Martha's ever since. Now almost a decade later I found myself taking a shot at such a beer here at Franklin's.

In order to handle the vanilla bean flavor without it overpowering the beer the grist bill was loaded up with Maris Otter pale malt, crystal malts, oats, and the trio combination of chocolate malt, black patent malt and roasted barley. To insure there would be a nice residual sweetness in this beer lactose sugar was added to the boil. For a mellow bittering hop addition we stuck with English Fuggles and fermented with our house English yeast strain. This stout finished out with a rich malt body, creamy mouth feel, with notes chocolate and roasted goodness.

After fermentation was finished Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Beans were split,cut and steeped in the beer. After a couple weeks the combination of the stout with the beans produced a very pleasing combination of aromatic vanilla and chocolate decadence. We've tapped this on our nitro line for a rich,creamy indulgent dessert in a glass. Enjoy!

Ludicrous

There's been a lot of interest in this beer since we tapped it,including a lot of questions from home brewers, so here we go. This project has been years in the making since I can recall having my first ever sour mash beer, Spuyten Duyvel, a Flemish-style red ale from the Seven Barrel Brewery in West Lebanon, New Hampshire ( at the time the sister brewery of Vermont Pub & Brewery in Burlington, Vermont) way back in 2001 . I believe the beer originated at VPB with Greg Noonan (R.I.P. )& his crew and made its way to 7B, as the long time brewer there Paul White( R.I.P.) once mentioned to me " I hate that fucking beer, Greg makes me brew it". Paul was always one to tell it like it is and his statement about the Duyvel could never be more true that some beers are extremely polarizing, even to brewers.

So why has it taken me a decade to make an attempt such a procedure? Well, the situation was never right to try it. In my mind two things would need to come together for this to happen, 1) the proper brewing facility and 2) an owner who would give me carte blanche to try such a crazy endeavor. So now 10 years later equipped with a mash tun that has not only the ability to seal and hold pressure but can also sustain temperature due to its own heating jacket I was off to the races.

One small piece of equipment was eluding me however, an Argon regulator. You read that right,Argon and its not typically found in a brewer's tool box so even after many attempts at reaching out to brewers near and far to borrow one, contacting tool rental companies and even the company that was going to rent me the tank of gas I had nothing. Finally I was able to locate a equipment supplier locally who had one for sale so one small investment latter I had a new tool for my box.

Brew day was actually split into two days, day one consisted of mashing in a grist consisting of Pilsner, Rye and Munich malts into the mash tun and holding it at 147 F for 90 minutes. Then the mash was recirculated and run off into the brew kettle. After the spent grain was removed, the mash tun was rinsed out of as much remaining debris as possible. Then using the heat exchanger the wort was pumped back into the mash tun from the kettle bringing the temperature down to just above 120 F. Fresh pilsner malt was then milled into the mash tun to inoculate the wort with the naturally occurring lactobacillus that is present on the surface of the grain. The heating jacket on the mash tun was then set to 120 F in attempt to keep Acetobacter ( a bacteria that will convert ethanol into acetic acid in the presence of oxygen ) out of the wort otherwise we'd be producing vinegar. To aid in the anaerobic aspect of this process we used Argon gas to flood the mash tun and keep oxygen out of the wort. Then we waited...

After two days and a significant PH drop in the wort we returned to the brew house and ran the wort from the mash tun into the kettle,boiled and processed it as any other normal beer. Repitching our house Saison yeast and allowing the fermentation to free climb. The temperature reached the upper 80s and the resulting combination of an acidified wort and high fermentation saison yeast fermentation was nothing short of amazing.

I've never encountered in beer what I was smelling and tasting in the days after fermentation. Never in beer is what I said, and that's because what I was encountering was that of a young white wine. Reminiscent of young Chenin Blanc in appearance as well as aroma and flavor, it was remarkable. The unique aspect was a sharp note of citrus, very much like freshly squeezed grapefruit juice lingering in the background.

As this beer has aged the sour character has smoothed out and the wine character is a little more subtle, as is the grapefruit. All in all this was a fun project and the results were delicious. Look for more sour mash beers to come.

Sorachi Samurai

After the success of our Nelson Ha Ha this past year I thought about doing another pale ale to showcase a unique hop variety. This time it was Sorachi Ace hops which originated from Japan and our now available to the US market. Straight forward and simple as it gets this recipe is simply 2-row barley malt,some Millenium hops for bittering and Sorachi in the late stages of the kettle as well as the dry hop. Summer is the also the best time for this pale ale as Sorachi Ace hops showcase a fragrant lemon citrus zest that I hop you find very refreshing.

(Hattori Hanzō sword not included)