Starbucks Selling Beer and Wine

Du-uh!!!  As if they wouldn't be able to make it work!

Oh, hey, friends... How've you been?  I'm good, thanks.  Now back to the great brew news!

I wrote about Starbucks' foray into another adult market offering tasty premium beverages with their launch of two secret beer and wine bars in a Pacific Northwest test roll-out.  Just as they kicked the market in the beans with their ubiquitous coffee shops, they brought people more of what they want:
A great environment to sit back and relax with carefully crafted brews.

But the secret's out -- Starbucks won't have to disguise any of the new beer and wine bars with a phony mustache and glasses like the two test joints which were named after the cross-streets at which they were located.  You'll now start to see these rustic, somewhat industrial lounges under the flowing locks of the lady in the green circle, Starbucks be thy name.


I'm looking forward to getting confused when I go out for coffee but end up in line for beer and wine (one's for me, one's for the lady over there with the awesome shark socks).

To commemorate this debut, here's a recipe for a great homebrew beer, black as freshly brewed Venti cup of Joe, but crisp and rich with roasted malt off the top, and finished with grassy, spicy hop notes.  Add a bit more "wildflower nectar" notes (I realize how much I sound like Martha Stewart here) with an aroma addition of Willamette, the best hop in the world*.

As always, if you have any questions from what you see here or anything about beer and brewing, drop a line to AskAHomebrewer@gmail.com.  -- top question for the month of June gets a $10 gift certificate to Midwest Homebrewing Supplies.

Café Vienna Lager
(5 gallons, partial mash)

Ingredients:

    * 1 lb. Vienna malt
    * 0.5 lb. dark Munich malt, 10° to 12° Lovibond
    * 0.25 lb. malted wheat
    * 1 lb. lager malt
    * 4 lbs. unhopped amber malt extract syrup
    * 1 oz. Perle hop pellets, for 60 min.
    * 0.5 oz. Hallertauer hop pellets, for 20 min.
    * 0.5 oz. Spalt pellets, for 20 min.
    * 0.5 oz. Willamette hop pellets, for 10 min. (Brewty and the Yeast suggested addition)
    * 0.125 lb. coarsely cracked (not ground) light-roast coffee beans
    * 1 broken cinnamon stick
    * 14 g. dry lager yeast or liquid culture (Brewty and the Yeast suggests Wyeast Budvar ACT2000)
    * 3/4 cup corn syrup


Step by Step:
Heat 1.5 gals. of water to 132° F, crack and mix in malts and malted wheat. The mash should settle at 121° F. Hold 30 minutes, then remove 3 qts. of liquid from the mash and boil it 15 minutes. Stir heated mash back into the mash tun. This should raise the whole mash to 137° F or so. Hold another 30 minutes, then remove 3 qts. again and bring to a boil. Boil this 15 minutes, add it back to the mash tun, raising the whole to about 152° F. Hold here for 60 minutes, then lauter and sparge with 2 gals. of 168° F water. To this runoff (about 3 gals.) add extract syrup and bring to a boil. Add Perle hop pellets, boil 40 minutes. Add Hallertauer and Spalt pellets, boil 20 minutes.  Brewty and the Yeast option hop addition -- Willamette pellets, boil 10 minutes.

Remove from heat, set in ice water to cool, and add coffee beans and cinnamon stick. Steep at least 15 minutes, then chill and top off to 5.25 gals. with pre-boiled chilled water. At 75° F pitch dry lager yeast or a liquid culture (I’ve had great luck in this recipe with Wyeast 2308 Munich, Brewty and the Yeast suggests Wyeast Budvar ACT2000 "Smack-pack" yeast -- pulls out a little more flavor with higher flocculation). Seal and ferment for two days at 65° to 70° F, then place in a cooler (50° to 55° F) for a week. Rack to secondary and, if possible, place in a cold place (40° F or below) for three to six more weeks. (Otherwise, maintain at 50° F for three or four weeks.) Prime with corn sugar and bottle. Age cold (40° to 50° F) six to eight weeks, space permitting.

Notes:
Experienced decoction mashers will probably laugh at this primitive partial-decoction-mash recipe. I know it is not quite a usual triple decoction, but it seems to work for this recipe. If you have a better all-grain Vienna recipe, go with it. If you are going to mash at all for this recipe, I strongly encourage you to try it as a decoction, if only for the lovely color you can produce by boiling the mash.

Extract brewers who can’t even partial mash, don’t worry; an additional pound of amber dry malt extract will give you enough body and fermentables to make this work. I would suggest steeping some cracked Munich (see mash recipe) in your brewing water before you add the extracts, for color and grain aroma.

Dark-roasted coffee should be avoided, because it will darken the beer. You want to give a hint of coffee and cinnamon, not make them the dominant flavors, so don’t steep them in the cooling wort too long, but just long enough to give some brownish color and coffee-cinnamon aroma.


From "Brew Your Own" Magazine's website, Recipe published 2009:  Café Vienna Lager

CHEERS TO BEERS!

* Yup.  Willamette hops are the best in the world.