I’m expecting a delivery of freshly picked juniper twigs (like many things, harvesting wild juniper is bery much verboten in Belgium so I’m having mine imported from the French causses) so I’ll be brewing something with Juniper soon.
Here’s something loosely based on Jester King’s Viking Metal (which I haven’t tasted because Belgium doesn’t know jack shit about foreign beer).
For 20l (5.2 gallons) of 1.074 OG beer:
4 kg pale
1 kg lightly peated whiskymalt
1 kg wheat malt
1 kg rye malt
Mash at 67°C (154F) for 60’ in water infused with juniper (branches, needles, berries). Use the discarded branches to line the mash tun.
Should yield 25l of 1.058 wort.
Boil for 70’ with
40g EKG @T-60’
5g sweet gale @T-5’
5g dried crushed juniper berries @t-5’
Should yield 21l of 1.074 wort.
Pitch with French Saison (3711), starter using harvested cake from previous brew. Let rip at ambient temp.
Optionally (depending on how advenurous I’m feeling at this point), inoculate with lactic culture and age on wood chips (infused in either gin or Vlaamse jenever) for half a year or so.
The aim here is to get the rustic, “historic” character of juniper and gale, with a mild smokeyness from the whisky malt (note that it really is a very lightly peated malt, which was barely noticeable in a more robust Scotch-like brew I made earlier this year).
I was tempted to add some honey to dry out a bit, but I’m no big fan of honey flavours in beer so I decided against it.
Viking Metal is based on Jester King’s Gotslandrika which I am almost certain is closely based on the gotslandrika recipe in The Homebrewer’s Garden. I think Jester King will give out recipes if you email them so that might be an option to check how close you are to a beer you’ve never had.
I think the recipe is fine although I might quibble whether the flavor of peat smoke is more historically accurate for the style than a wood-smoked grain. Peat grows as far north as the Arctic Circle so it is possible that some gotslandrika has been made at some point over peat-smoked grain.
Yeah, peat is probably quite unauthentic, and a bit of a polarising factor. Suffice to say I love peat a lot, and this particular peated malt is so lightly peated I reckon it will only add a bit of extra complexity without overwhelming the brew.
I sent a message to Jester King and will get back if/when they reply
More rye. Sounds like a plan but then maybe I need to introduce the glucanase rest. A sahti I brewed last year got hopelessly stuck during the mash at similar levels (13-14%). Upping the rye will certainly get me in trouble unless I take precautions. Rice hulls maybe?
Dang!
No juniper branches coming in just yet, and by the time they’ll be arriving, I’m sure they’ll be all dried up. Reckon I’ll have to limit myself to just using berries instead then
Got word back from Garrett @ Jester King who kindly shared the recipe for Viking Metal and even more kindly allowed me to share the goodies with y’all.
[quote]Thanks for reaching out to us! Your recipe looks great, and perhaps more traditional than ours. I really like the idea of using the juniper branches in the mash tun. Here is our recipe:
44% Weyermann Beechwood Smoked Malt
40% Blacklands Birchwood Smoked Malt (a local Texas Maltster)
9% Flaked Rye
7% Weyermann Oak Smoked Wheat
Lots of smoked malt!
IBUs: 23
OG: 1.052
FG: 1.000
ABV: 6.8%
We add Juniper berries and Sweet Gale during whirlpool.
Primary fermentation with our house mixed culture, followed by extended aging in spent Gin barrels.
Best of luck!
[/quote]
So, apart from the rye, they use only smoked malts. Mine will use about a kilo of peated and I’ll probably swap 2 kg of pale for 2 kg of regular smoked malt. If I find some birch essence I might add that too. I’ve a bottle of birch sap in the freezer which I’ll add too, even though I doubt it’ll contribute much overall.
Juniper branches coming in a week or two so I’ll reschedule this brew session until then.
Mixed house culture will be replaced by 3711 for primary and Lacto delbrueckii in secondary.
While it would be deliciously decadent to brew bonsai beer, these are altogether the wrong subspecies. I need virginiana or at the very least communis.
Besides: those bonsai trees have suffered enough already. I don’t want my beers tasting of arboreal sorrow and conifer tears.
2 kg pale
2 kg weyermann smoked malt
1 kg lightly peated whiskeymalt
1 kg wheat malt
1 kg rye malt
Mash at 65°C (154F) for 5 hours(°) in water infused with juniper berries.
Yielded 22l of 1.060 wort.
Boiled for 70’ with
40g EKG @T-60’
5g sweet gale @flameout
5g dried crushed juniper berries @flameout
Yielded 16l of 1.065 wort. Still not hitting my volume marks.
Pitched with French Saison (3711), using harvested cake from last spring. A 1.5l starter, using the entire cake I stored in the fridge all this time.
Fermenting at ambient.
I’ll inoculate with lactic culture in a week or so and age on wood chips (infused in either gin or Vlaamse jenever) for about half a year.
Smoke is present but not overpowering, juniper is quite sticky in the throat but that’ll mellow down in time. Gale is not very present, or I’m just not very sensitive to it.
°)yes. A 5 hour mash. Because I need to plan brewing sessions outside of already-planned family outings. And because I wanted to test drive my ghetto-style mash tun insulation coat. And because I’m sure it’ll give the Belgian homebrew scene something to be offended about. And just because. It’s not like the vikings wore wristwatches, is it?
I live a mile from Jester King and absolutely know first hand that if you email, or call Ron Extract or Jeff Stuffings they will happily give you what ever recipe you want. I got the original Black Metal recipe from Jeff a few years ago and have brewed it a few times
Thx Tex. As you can read somewhere waaay up, Garett replied to my inquiry with the (almost entire) recipe for Viking Metal.
Mine’s borrowed a few things from that, but is not a clone.
Brew update: lively krausen, nice airlock activity. Yes, storing yeast cake really is as simple as, well, storing the yeast cake in a bottle in the fridge. Very much alive after 6 months.
Racked to secondary. Beer was 1.012 and still lightly fermenting so “secondary” is to be taken with a grain of salt.
Pitched a vial of L. delbrueckii (WLP677).
Sample tasted smoky and quite “authentic”(*), with the smoke pairing off nicely against the rye and the juniper. Still had a very raw yeast bite in the middle, but that’s to be expected with a beer this young. Although I’m told Gotlandsdricka is normally drank straight from the fermentor (à la sahti), I’m guessing they don’t do that when it’s fermented with 3771
*) there’s no way I can actually verify the authenticity of my brew but I can tell you it compares favourably with some brews I’ve tasted by Närke, so I reckon it’s got enough of a Norse viking thing going on to be considered at least halfway authentic.
Bottling introduced a haze, which, while not unattractive, is a bit of disappointment to me, having seen the crystal-clear pale blond hue of the beer as it left secondary.
Carbonation is mild, which imparts a soft, smooth mouthfeel. More carb would have made the smoke become too harsh, I think.
As it is now, it’s decidedly smokey beer, with some phenolics from the peat and juniper, but hugely drinkable, provided you enjoy smoke, peat and juniper in your beer.
Thus far, zero tasters have spat it out whilst cursing my penchant for peat malt.
Lovely beer, which I’ll definitely brew again.
Only thing I’ll probably leave out next time is the Lacto. Not picking that up at all. I reckon the poor critters never really had a chance.
