Odyssey happens to be my favorite non-sour from Allagash.  Essentially, it is a big stout, brewed with a healthy portion of wheat, fermented with belgian yeast, and aged in new American Oak barrels for some amount of time.  I highly recommend trying this beer – my first taste of it precluded the recent belgiany-stout rash that seems to be going around, so it will always be special to me.

A few years back Rob Todd, owner of Allagash, was at a “Meet The Brewer” type event at the South Philadelphia Taproom.  I kept gushing about how much I loved Odyssey, so after encouragement from my wife and prodding via text from Brett, I worked up the nerve to walk up to Mr Todd, tell him how much I loved Odyssey, and ask him how to brew it.

“I can’t tell you that, it’s secret! … Just kidding” he began with.  He proceeded to give me an array of pointers which got me on the right track to brewing a similar beer.  It was an awesome experience, and Rob Todd is a straight up awesome dude.

My general notes from my conversation with Rob:

• A lot of cane sugar; cheap and easily fermentable to ensure dryness
• Roughly approaching it like a stout in terms of proportions of roasted grains – but trying for a pretty even (40/60 or 50/50) ratio of wheat to 2-row/pale
• Belgian Wheat (not wit) yeast strain that will give good phenolics & mild spices while playing off the wheat, and being able to ferment a high gravity beer
• Age a portion on New American Oak (American oak is more vanilla-y & aggressive than French oak) and the rest in stainless (and then blend)

Since this was going to be such a big beer (10+% ABV) and I had just used Wyeast 3942 Belgian Wheat, I decided to dump the wort on top of the used yeast cake from my Belgian Mild.  I generally try to target 6 gallons at the end of the boil, getting 5.5 gallons into the fermentor on most of my beers, so this recipe reflects that.

Ingredients:

• 9lb US 2-Row (42%)
• 7lb 8oz white wheat malt (35%)
• 1lb roasted barley (5%)
• 8 oz Belgian debittered black malt (2%)
• 3.5 oz flaked barley (1%)
• 2 lbs sugar (9%)
• 1 lb light dried malt extract (because I missed gravity)
• 6 oz wheat malt extract (because I missed gravity)
• Wyeast 3942 – Belgian Wheat
• .7 oz Galena (14.1 AA%) at 60 minutes
• .4oz Hallertau Hersbrucker (3.8 AA%) at 5 minutes

I had major efficiency issues with this batch.  I inadvertantly opened up the rollers on my grain mill too much, and ended up with a pre-boil gravity off by nearly 14 points!  To compensate, I added 6oz wheat DME and 1lb light DME and boosted the sugar to 2 pounds (from 1.5.)  The DME & extra sugar helped close the gravity gap a bit – my OG ended up only being 4 points off (1.085.)  I fermented this batch at 68, using a chest freezer with a temperature regulator.  This strain has a range up to 74, but I really wanted to keep the phenolics to a minimum.

After 12 days fermenting (very vigorously, very quickly – I had to rely on a blowoff for this batch) I was down to 1.016.  At this point, I transferred into a corny keg and added the oak.  I used 2 oz of American Oak cubes from Williams Brewing (Boiling in water for 15 minutes to sanitize.)  I aged this keg for 8 months at basement temperatures (for me, mid 60s in the winter), the final 2 being at 55 (back into the chest freezer.)

The final verdict?  I loved this beer.  Rich mouthfeel, pleasant roastyness, excellent head retention.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it tasted very much like Odyssey – the phenolics in this beer were much more pronounced.  I actually think it tasted a lot like the Stone Belgo IRS (the last iteration – not the current one spiced with Anise, which I find to be quite vile.)  In hindsight, I wish I would have bottled the majority of this batch to make it last longer – it was too easy to pour off 6 oz at a time from the tap for tastes “just to make sure it still tasted right.”  I’ll definitely brew this again – hopefully hitting my gravity marks – though I might ferment it a few degrees cooler, using a big starter rather than a yeast cake, which I think would make it more Odyssey-esque.

Two things that keep Costa Rica’s economy running are coffee and chocolate. Unfortunately, the sad reality is most of the cash crops grown in Costa Rica are stripped out by enormous agribusinesses, leaving behind pollution and exploited impoverished communities. Fortunately, not everyone is trying to F things up for this beautiful place. There are a number of businesses and organizations working with local farmers to promote environmentally sensitive organic farming and sustainable, community-empowering trade policies. In Puerto Viejo, we had breakfast at a place called Mighty Rivers, one such organization trying to make a difference. Part of Mighty Rivers is a “Coffee Factory,” where fair trade organic coffee and cocoa is roasted and sold as Caribean organic coffee and chocolate. I picked up a pound of whole cocoa beans and a block of bakers chocolate.  Crucial ingredients for a homebrew recipe I had thought up while relaxing in the hammock in our cottage. The cocoa, along with some old Dean Beans Italian Espresso seemed like a nice touch to an organic Imperial Porter, which I named The Great Potoo after a crazy red-eyed bird local to C.R. From our cottage, we heard the eerie cries of the Potoo in the middle of the night and wondered what the hell was about to attack us. Evil.

So a few weeks back, Kevin came up to Albany and helped brew up the porter, along with my friend Reed. Here is the recipe I came up with, using all organic grains from Northern Brewer.

14.00 lb  2-Row Malt
2.00 lb  Munich Malt
1.50 lb Caramel 60L Malt
1.00 lb Organic Quick Oats (added to the recipe last minute – see below)
.50 lb Chocolate Malt

1 oz Chinook (08 crop from my garden) 90 min
.5 oz Organic German Saphir pellets (4% AA) 15 min

2 packs Safale US-04

2.5 oz bakers chocolate (15 mins)
3 oz Dean’s Beans coarsely ground espresso beans (flame out)

1.5 oz Cocoa beans (secondary)

I attempted to Mash at 154 with 4.3 gallons of water, but it was a bit lower – maybe 152. That quickly cooled down to around 150 before we could get boiling water into the mash to bring it back up. To add some body I lost with the lower mash temp, I added a pound of quick oats I had on hand. Mashed for about an hour, then sparged and collected about 7.75 gallons of wort. I hit the gravity I estimated I would end up with, based on the shitty efficiency I keep getting (65%, which is, sadly,  good for me).  Pre-boil gravity 1.059. After a 2.5 hour boil, I ended up with 5 gallons of 1.082 wort. I tried to melt the bakers chocolate with some hot wort, before adding it to the kettle. It did not melt completely, but I expected the rest to liquefy in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Turned out to be a huge mess, as most of the chocolate did not melt and just gunked up the kettle with a waxy chocolate coating.

Fermentation was a little warm, despite the room temperature being in the low 60s. It started at about 68 and climbed up to about 70 – 72 for a day or two before finally dropping down to 66 for the last few days of fermentation. When I transfered to secondary, my gravity was 1.012, which is about .10 points lower than expected. Way over attenuated, hot tasting, and thin boddied. Not sure how this will come out. The color is off too – almost brown ale color. I would normally add black patent, but NB did not have any organic. Maybe more chocoalate malt could have helped with that.

Anyway, I removed the skins from 1.5 oz of cocoa beans, crushed them into nibs with a coffee grinder and added to the secondary.

I’ll keep it on the cocoa nibs for about two weeks and see how it tastes. I may brew up another full-bodied robust porter to blend with this to cut out the boozyness and give it more body. Just not sure if I want 10 gallons of heavy porter going into the summer.