The Summer of Brews, Part II: Helles Lager

Richard Wagner was an asshole.  There’s no other way to say it, really.

In addition to being vain, conceited, histrionic, self-serving, and an all-round Machiavellian, he was also a rampant anti-Semite.  His polemic 1850 essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music) is an atrocity and without a doubt one of the great embarrassments of modern Western culture.  The adoption of his music by the National Socialists 50 years after his death sealed his fate as a problematic figure for posterity.

But the fact remains that he was a musical genius: without a doubt, he nearly single-handedly changed the course of western art music in general, and opera in particular.  To ignore Wagner because of his politics would be (somewhat) akin to ignoring Pablo Picasso because he was a womanizer, or Leonard Bernstein because he was a pædophile.  Wagner’s chromatic harmonic language, orchestral writing, and sense of the dramatic paved the way for both the post-tonal revolution of the early 20th century and the neo-Romantic style of the late 20th century.  He invented a new brass instrument.  He designed his own theatre and wrote his own opera librettos.

sequential unresolved diminished 7th chords…as delicious as a Munich lager…

Thus, even as we lament Wagner’s misguided philosophies and condemn his racism, we can nevertheless acknowledge his musical greatness: we’re all sinners, after all, and the St. Cecilia Brewery celebrates good composers, not necessarily Upstanding Human Beings.  As we brew up a Munich-style Helles (“Bright”) Lager, there’s no denying that one can’t get much more Bavarian than Wagner.

Brewing Methods: All-Grain vs. Extract

The Great Brewing (Self-)Debate of 2012 here at St. Cecilia Brewery is whether or not (or when) to make the plunge into All-Grain Brewing.

Here’s a break-down of the pros and cons of each.

EXTRACT BREWING
Pros:
* Ease of method
* Less Equipment required
* Tried-and-true
* Takes less time.
* Shorter, fewer-steps process means less opportunity for contamination or screw-ups along the way
Cons:
* More expensive than All-Grain batch-by-batch, particularly when designing my own recipes and not staying with pre-designed packaged kits
* More stylistically limited
* Have to deal with %$¢´£ messy and hard-to-work-with jugs of liquid malt syrup and bags of DME
* Some styles harder to perfect: difficult to make light-coloured beers consistent.

ALL-GRAIN BREWING
Pros:
* More control and flexibility of product
* Access to a wider array of styles not possible with Extract Brewing
* More economical and cost-effective (at least in the long run), particularly when designing my own recipes
* More hands-on and from-scratch sense of pride and production. More authenticity to the brewing art.
* Don’t have to deal with %$¢´£ messy and hard-to-work-with jugs of liquid malt syrup and bags of DME
Cons:
* Longer, more involved process means longer brewing days
* Longer, more involved process means more opportunity for contamination or screw-ups along the way
* Up-front equipment costs (although there are options here, some homemade)
* Learning curve involved with new processes means my first couple batches will be shots in the dark.
* Have to pay more attention to nuances such as water temperature, pH, and chemical makeup not necessarily important to Extract brewing

At the end of the day, I know that All-Grain is going to win out. It’s mostly a matter of shoring up my courage to try something new, and my willingness to spend the extra time with the process.  Reading about the Brew-in-a-Bag method has also piqued my curiosity.

Brewing is Back

As I mentioned in a previous post, graduate school is doing its best to take over my life.  Now that summer is here, though, I’m attempting to make the most of time and brew while I can, and hereby declare summer 2012 “The Summer of Brews.”

First up in the summer rotation, last month, was an English Best Bitter in the style of Oxfordshire’s Brakspear.  The recipe and ingredients were from Northern Brewer’s limited-release “Broken Spear” kit, to which I added 1/2 oz UK Pilgrim hops to the dry-hop bill.  In honor of Oxford’s finest, I named it Taverner’s Bitter.  Along with this brewing re-boot I’ve also given my labels something of a facelift as well.

Full disclosure: John Taverner is one of my favourite composers of all time.  It’s fitting, therefore, that he finally get his own label, and doubly fitting that it be for one of my favourite beer styles (and, fortuitously after the fact, one of my favourite homebrew recipes). And what an especially apt name for a beer.

Historical trivia:  Taverner, appointed by Wolsey as the first organist and master of the Choristers at Cardinal College (later renamed Christ Church), Oxford, was reprimanded in 1528 for heresy (consorting with Lutherans), but was spared punishment on account of his being “but a musician.”  He retired from musical life at the College in 1530, enjoying a comfortable 15-year retirement as a landowner in Lincolnshire.  An old legend states that he worked as a spy and agent for Thomas Cromwell, assisting in the dissolution of the monasteries, but this is most certainly not true.  He was, interestingly, one of the very first English composers to write for the viol consort, inventing and popularizing the form of the In nomine which was to remain a mainstay of English instrumental writing through the time of Henry Purcell.

While I’m still brewing extract (aside from the occasional partial-mash), I’m on the verge of moving to all-grain brewing. It’s a bit intimidating to ponder, but I know that in the long run it will be a good move, allowing not only cost savings but also more control and versatility.  Stay tuned for updates on this technique shift.

At the end of the day, after an 8-month hiatus in brewing, it’s good to know that I can still cook up a tasty brew.