South Bay, Los Angeles County, California

When Tomme Arthur, Brewmaster at Pizza Port in Solana Beach, thinks of Big Beers, he thinks of fun beers. As he explained during his session at NHC 2001, Big Beers make you warm and fuzzy and often feeling a little stoopid. At Pizza Port, Tomme has a hand in brewing 35 different beers, and at least a dozen of them are Big Beers. He helps organize the San Diego Strong Ale Festival, where a Big Beer is defined as any beer over 8% alcohol by volume (ABV). Tomme, though, believes that a Big Beer is an opportunity to make a beer with big flavor, and not just one with a large amount of alcohol. He believes that Big Beers are not hard to make, you just need to follow a few simple rules when making them. During the conference session, he described these rules while he poured some examples of the Big Beers he brews at Pizza Port.

Tomme brews only two lagers at Pizza Port. One of them is Brown Bag Malt Liquor, which is brewed to commemorate April Fools Day each year. Although this beer is just a malt liquor, Tomme takes it very seriously, and strives to produce a strong beer while maintaining the low ester production and great drinkability of a lager. The ingredients are 6-row and carapils malts, with rice, maize, and sugar as adjuncts; Sterling hops are used to 12 IBU; and the wort is pitched with an American Lager yeast. Its vitals are OG 1.077 and FG 1.010.

Big Beers require large amounts of yeast, and lagers require at least double the volume of ales. For Brown Bag Malt Liquor, Pizza Port uses a 7-bbl batch of pitchable yeast from White Labs that they propagate twice prior to brew day. Three days before brewing, the yeast is fed a full barrel of wort and allowed to grow for 48 hours. The yeast is then fed another barrel of wort, and the brew session occurs on the following day. The proper pitching temperature is essential when making Big Beers, and even more so when making a lager, since much of the ester production occurs very early in fermentation. Since Pizza Port does not have the ability to leave the cold break in the kettle, they pump the wort into a prepared fermenter and chill it down to pitching temperature. The wort is then pumped off the cold break into a second fermenter with the yeast at the proper pitching temperature.

Blackball is Pizza Port's Imperial Stout. It is brewed with 2-row, 4 varieties of crystal, chocolate, roast, black and wheat malts, and then aged in Jack Daniels oak barrels. During the aging in oak, this stout picks up a little oxygen that softens the beer's character a little. This slight oxygenation led Tomme into discussing the oxygen requirements of Big Beers. For his regular beers below 6% ABV, Tomme uses 6 liters per minute of oxygen during knockout; for Big Beers, though, he increases the oxygen to 8 to 10 lpm. He says that it's very difficult to over oxygenate, but notes that too much oxygen can cause problems with the yeast if it is repitched. Yeast from Big Beers, though, should never be repitched.

As for aging in oak, Tomme believes that Big Beers do very well. He stresses that you should make sure, however, that your beer has enough residual dextrins to support the oak character you plan on giving the beer, and that you will need to allow the beer to spend some serious time in the oak.

Tomme was able play with some new ingredients when he brewed his Belgian-style SPF 8 Saison. The ability to try new ingredients is one of his favorite things about Big Beers. These types of beers work well with unusual ingredients since they have more margin for error than smaller beers. His SPF 8 Saison was made with buckwheat honey and caramelized raisins. Before making this beer, he didn't know if these two ingredients would work well together, but he did know that each of the ingredients had characteristics he was interested in putting in a beer. He caramelized 30 pounds of raisins on the stove with a bottle of Port, and added orange peel and fresh rosemary to the brew. Tomme suggests adding small amounts of unusual ingredients at first, since you can often increase the amount later.

SPF 8 was modeled after the Saisons of Wallonia, especially those of the Fantome Brewery. It was designed to appear dark, without much of a dark malt character. The caramelized raisins helped intensify both the color and the flavor. The grain bill included pils, carawheat, roasted, wheat, Special B and meloidinin malts, with flaked barley as an adjunct. The hops were Amarillo, Fresh Gold and Tettnang to about 30 IBUs. This beer was boiled for 4 hours, and ended at 8.25% ABV.

The last beer that Tomme poured at the session was The Mother of All Beers. Not one to stick to rigid definitions of beer styles, Tomme described this beer as a Belgian Barleywine. It was brewed to OG 1.106 with 100 pounds of candi sugar and 30 pounds of raisins. The wort was pitched with 30 liters of yeast slurry, which was twice the amount as usual. Tomme believes that he should have propagated the yeast first, since he had some fermentation problems with this beer: the terminal gravity stopped at 1.028, about 8 points higher than desired. At 10.5% ABV, this Big Beer was really brewed as an experiment. It was allowed to condition for six weeks after reaching terminal gravity, before being racked into an American oak barrel with three strains of Brettanomyces and some sour cherries.

Tomme stresses that there are no rules for making Big Beers, only examples which make the beer taste better. He described a Black Barleywine being planned as a commemorative beer for the 5th Annual San Diego Strong Ale Festival. The beer will use high-maltose corn sugar to boost the gravity, hop extracts to reduce the kettle volume, and the White Labs Super High Alcohol yeast strain. The target OG is 1.140, and with a FG target of 1.020 the beer will have an alcohol content of about 15% by volume. Tomme plans to do three different mashes for this batch. Two will be no-sparge, 6-barrel mashes brewed on one day. The wort will be allowed to ferment for 2 to 3 days, before a 3-barrel batch with corn syrup and oxygen is added.

All of the beers sampled during the session were excellent. Tomme certainly has a creative viewpoint when it come to Big Beers.

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