JWR 2.0 - Our Belgian Tripel, returned to Andy's original formula. Hopefully, that doesn't bite us in the ass.
The Story of JWR:
JWR, like Cecilia’s Grace, was originally brewed to celebrate the coming of a child, this time, my son Johnathan. With our first child, Cecilia, I brewed my favorite style of beer, a Belgian Quad and named it Cecilia’s Grace. My hope was to recreate my favorite beer, St. Bernardus Abt. 12, as a homebrewer. I knew this was going to be a difficult task, but I had time on my side, about nine months. I brewed had just finished the book Brew Like a Monk: Trappist, Abbey, and Strong Belgian Ales and How to Brew Them by Stan Hieronymus. I built a recipe and took a stab at brewing the recipe I developed. I primed the beer (put a little sugar in it to induce carbonation in the bottle), bottled it, and popped the first one the day our daughter was born, in the hospital. It was better than I had hoped.
When my wife, Ann, told me that we had another baby on the way, I wanted to stick with the Belgian theme. I homebrewed a Trappist-style Trippel with golden raisins and I brewed it on the dryer side with an idea to pair it with steak. Both beers turned out stronger than I anticipated, in terms of ABV. And, much like Cecilia’s Grace, JWR turned out better than I thought it would. With Cecilia’s Grace, I was new to brewing with all grain and with JWR, I was using a weird ingredient, golden raisins. Over time, I tweaked both recipes slightly. With JWR, I changed the second Belgian candi sugar addition (occurring during fermentation) to honey. This was an attempt to add body and additional sweetness. It won a few awards for me as a homebrewer, and I was proud of all three of my Belgian style beers, Ann’s Sweet White Ale being the first beer I brewed. When we opened, I scaled my final version of JWR up and it became one of our most requested/popular beers on our menu.
Reason for the change:
We last brewed JWR in 2022. It was released in either October or November. When I sampled it prior to the honey addition, it was where it should be, still somewhat yeasty, but on track to where we wanted the beer to be. After I added the honey, it developed an odd flavor that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. We sampled it at the bar with several customers and our bartenders. We all agreed it was different, we also considered the agricultural aspect of the honey and how it can change from month to month, year to year. At the end of the day, we carbonated and released it.
After carbonation, I was able to put my finger on the weird flavor I detected, it was almost plastic. A plastic flavor in beer typically comes from unfiltered, chlorinated water. We pulled the beer after only half a keg was sold. That off flavor is a group of phenols known as chlorophenols. It can also be caused by chlorinated sanitizers and improper cleaning procedures. It was easy for us to eliminate the water as the cause because we brewed a beer the day after we brewed JWR and it did not contain any trace of that plastic flavor. We also eliminated our sanitizer as a cause, as it does not contain any chlorine. The flavor wasn’t as strong as what normally comes from chlorine. The next thing I checked was the cleanliness of the hose used to transfer the honey to the fermentation vessel. I sent a swab off for testing and I brewed a small batch of beer using all our smaller hoses and was unable to replicate the flavor. At the same time, I brewed a small, gallon batch of mead with the left-over honey to test the honey. My next step was to brew a tea using the raisins. The raisins did not put out that flavor. The swab test came back clean. However, when the mead was done with primary fermentation, I pulled a sample and immediately knew I had found our culprit. Our “local honey” was sourced and blended as “wild honey” from hives all over greater Cincinnati, with several being in the city itself. Honey comes in several varieties, clover, wild, orange blossom, meadow foam, etc..., but bees are a wild animal, able to cover miles of territory. Honey that is “clover honey” is gathered in areas where there is a lot of clover growing, at a time that clover is in bloom, but the beekeeper can’t guarantee all of the bees brought back strictly clover pollen and nectar. The bees could have got into some weird weeds, the honey could have sat too long in its plastic container, causing the plastic flavor to leach into the honey, or the container could have been sanitized using a chlorinated sanitizer. Long story short, we got a bad batch of honey.
Returning to the Original:
Beer is an agricultural product. Brewers use data provided by maltsters and hop suppliers to determine which adjustments need to be made to each batch of beer year over year, batch after batch. Sometimes we don’t need to adjust because this year’s harvest may have had the slightest of differences from the year’s before. Sometimes, we have to make big adjustments. However, we are provided a certificate of analysis from both hop suppliers and malt suppliers, giving us the information we need to make these adjustments.
With a small, local honey operation, we aren’t going to get any data other than the type of honey. Over the years, we have had several people say they enjoyed batch x vs batch y of JWR, and ask, “What did you do different?” The honey has always been the answer and the biggest variable in JWR. This is one of those rare times that my brewer side and my CEO side came to an agreement to eliminate the inconsistent variable.
The question that immediately came to me was, “Why did I add honey in the first place?” The answer was to add some body back in after producing such a dry product (“dry” is typically associated with “light body”). I found my original formula and started researching and brewing it on a small scale. The result of my work and research is what we will be tapping this week. Keep an eye on Facebook and Instagram for release dates. Personally, I think this year’s batch of Cecilia’s Grace and JWR are the best I have made. Hopefully, you agree.