Posts Tagged ‘caramalt’
AG#100 – Altitudinous Cable
Posted on: May 18, 2013
Altitudinous Cable – I’m hoping for a ‘MagicRockBrewing Highwire / PartizanBrewing Columbus Chinook Cascade IPA‘ type of thing, bags of flavour and seriously dry hopped.
My 100th All-Grain Brewday was supposed to be an all-Fuggle Double IPA with a great big Fuggle Dry Hop, have beery mates round and cook food / drink beer / forget the Protafloc etc We’ll have to plan that for another time as I wanted something that will be distinctly hoppy with in-yer-face dry hopping, so what beer to try imitate than MagicRock’s Highwire, a beauty of a beer at only 5.5%.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 82.5%
Caramalt – 8%
Vienna Malt – 5%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 4.5%
Hops:
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 60 mins – 27g (FWH)
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 30 mins – 27g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 43g (30min Steep)
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 43g (30min Steep)
Columbus – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 43g (30min Steep)
Dry Hops:
Chinook Pellets
Cascade Pellets
Columbus Pellets
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 55 EBU
Colour: 10 EBC
Mash: 69c for 60mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The malts, and a Teaspoon of Calcium Chloride (rough arse stylee):
First Wort Hops:
A healthy amount of flameout hops:
The OG before liquoring back to 1055:
Easy brewday, did a bit of a Garage tidy while I was at it.
I only gave the mash 1 Tsp of Calcium Chloride as I’ve had some comment on the dryness of my homebrew, so no other liquor salts for this brew just as an experiment.
AG#97 – Brown Ceas
Posted on: March 17, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Brown Ceas – This is my NCB / Saltaire Brewery brew for the bar, an American Style Brown Ale, loosely based on my previous ‘Steaming, Brown & Sticky‘ of last year, this is going to be a little lighter in colour as the other version was almost black, or at least a very dark brown.
‘Brown Ceas’ its like the 3-Cs Cascade, Columbus, Chinook and its brown! Bittering will hopefully be nice & spicy from the Aramis & Saaz, and I’ll have a Hop-freezer rummage for American Pellets and give it some dry in the fermenter.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 72%
Wheat Malt – 10%
Crystal Malt – 5%
Caramalt – 5%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2%
Chocolate Malt – 1%
Hops:
Aramis – 8.9 % @ 65 mins – 36g
Saaz – 3.95 % @ 35 mins – 40g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 60g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 77 % (Its too late now, I punched in 77 rather than 75%!!!)
Bitterness: 45 EBU
Colour: 46 EBC
Mash: 68°c for 60-90mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The Malts:
First Wort Aramis Hops:
Recirculating the Mash for Clarity:
The Hops all weighed out and ready:
85°c Steep Hops in for 30mins:
Top-Down view of the copper running off to FV, I got 1052 Gravity:
The spent hops in the copper, they soaked up a good couple of litres:
Bit of a late start but all done and dusted, liquored back just short of 3L from 1052 to 1045 getting a 21.92 Litre yield so only 1L short of target volume.
I almost forgot to add the Protafloc ‘cos I was messing about on Twitter too much, extended boil by 5 mins to account for lack of concentration!
I may dry hop this with Cascade Pellets, we shall see… 
*24th Mar ’13 – Dry Hopped with 20g each of Cascade & Amarillo, so approx 2g/litre, Gravity at 1011. I also skimmed the yeast to use in my Robust Wheat Porter.
*Racked to Box 31st Mar ’13 with just 20g White sugar primings, Alkleer Finings also added as this is to be served from Handpull on the bar at work. Smells nicely dry hopped 
AG#96 – Bravo+Apollo=Citra?
Posted on: March 2, 2013
Bravo+Apollo=Citra? – An experimental brewday with added Brew-Monkey! Its something I heard Stan Hieronymus say on a Brewery Network podcast (1H.27mins in) about the Bravo+Apollo=Citra so thought I’d give it a go, so ordered some Bravo to go with the Apollo I already had. If its any good I’ll maybe enter it into the Northern Craft Brewers & Saltaire Brewery Competition.
Thats experiment No.1, experiment No.2 was for SimpleOne on JBK (@Beehaveeor on Twitter) who wanted 5 beers marking for a hopping experiment he’s conducting, this second experiment also involved Dave @broadfordbrewer who came over to eat our food and drink our beer… and most welcome he was too.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 45%
Wheat Malt – 33%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 15%
Caramalt – 5%
Cara Munich III (Weyermann) – 2%
Hops:
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 60 mins – 25g (FWH)
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Bravo – 17.3 % @ 0 mins – 40g (80c Steep for 30mins)
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 40g (80c Steep for 30mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 55 EBU
Colour: 17 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05 (I’d actually meant to skim off last weeks brew but totally forgot)
Mash: 60mins minimum, as we had beers to drink!
Liquor treated to Pale Ale via THBF calculator
The Malts:
Dave Mashing in:
The part of the brewday where we had to be diligent:
Running into the copper:
The 80c Steep hops:
The wort was certainly smelling very good, hope the yeast works its magic and makes it taste like Citra, in any case the Bravo hops were smelling good too, though the Apollo just smell like Dank Onions
Did a 2.5 Litre Liquorback to get OG 1055, so less than 1 Litre short on predicted brew length.
*8th Mar ’13 – Gravity at 1020 and tastes rather nice, its definitely not Citra but its certainly good beer Might Dry Hop with a few grams of Bravo & Apollo.
*Bottled 16th Mar ’13 – with 110g of white sugar to about 20 Litres, tasting good, pretty Peach / Mellon type Uber-Cascade-Amarillo thing going on.
AG#88 – Casapollocade IPA
Posted on: September 30, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Casapollocade IPA – As the name sort of says, this beer uses Cascade & Apollo hops in abundance for the late steep though bittering comes from two very healthy doses of Willamette
This beer is not shy and promises to be brash on the bitterness with floral, “dank” and piney notes, the Apollo are pretty pungent and might be better suited rolled in some Rizlas than soaked in wort!
Its been a little while since I brewed so I decided to make this a bit of a Pancake-day, used up all my Pale, Lager, Weyermann Munich Type I, and Oat malts… out with the old and in with the new etc etc….:)
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 45.6%
Lager Malt – 18.1%
Oat Malt – 15.2%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 14.6%
Caramalt – 4.6%
Amber Malt – 1.8%
Hops:
Willamette – 6.4 % @ 60 mins – 75g – (First Wort Hop)
Willamette – 6.4 % @ 30 mins – 75g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 100g – (20-30min Steep)
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 100g – (20-30min Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.062
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 6.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.9 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 84 EBU
Colour: 18 EBC
Mash: over 90mins @67c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05
Liquor Treatment: GW Calc Dry Pale Ale
The Malts:
The Mash Temp, aimed for and hit my temp:
Liquor Salts & 75g of Willamette FWH:
Lots and lots of Hops:
First Sparge of the two batches:
Do you think 350g for a 23L brew-length is too much?:
Flameout Steep hops, 200g of them:
Chilled, nothing has settled out ‘cos there is a shed load of hops in there! Thinking logically this is a heck of a reason to use pellet hops for big heavily hopped beers as the retained wort would be much less:
All done, busy day; brewing, Exam revision, and tiling the kitchen…!
*7th Oct ’12 – Down to 1012 @ 22°c think its done, should I or shouldn’t I dry hop, wasn’t going to… Tastes to have a similar pungency to Green Bullet / Bobek in the mix. If I do dry hop I may use Magnum to test out an idea.
*Bottled 13th Oct ’12 – with 80g White Sugar
*22nd Oct ’12 – Taster bottle, this isn’t bad, bags of flavour it will hopefully dry out a little in bottle and become more of the IPA its meant to be, I never bothered dry hopping btw.
*1st Nov ’12 – I’m actually really enjoying this beer, bags of flavour, plenty of body and a tingle of bitterness without being too harsh.
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
I shall be abstaining from brewdays for a while, normal service will resume once I’ve got through some of the beer!
This weekend I bottled my last two brews, Ta Moko II & Chinook Blonde and I’m still warm conditioning my Double IPA HopZilla IPA… so thats *6 crates of beer sat in our office/study/room/thing *Crates hold 20 bottles of 500ml or 24 x 330ml
Garage beer stocks are pretty high with lots more full crates stashed in there too… the Temperature control on the fermentation fridge has been turned off and the HLT is empty! (Hop Freezer is Full!)
There are Whitelabs yeasts in the fridge to brew with once I get going again:
- Brett WLP650 (Something with Flaked Oats and Wheat malt, lots of Cara/Crystal malts)
- Belgian Blend (Might get some more Date Molasses)
- Hefeweizen (I’ll go the whole decoction hog but hop with Amarillo & Nelson Sauvin +dry)
- Kólsch (Ideas for an IPA, a Malty Smoke beer, and maybe a Red Rye)
- San Diego Super (I’m sure I’ll have plenty of options for this one… US Brown re-brew with tweaks?)
- Edinburgh Ale (Something British, might do a Fuggle IPA and a Coniston Bluebird-esqe bitter)
Malts are pretty plentiful too:
Pale Malt, Lager Malt, Caramalt, Choc Malt, Choc Wheat, Crystal, Extra Dark Crystal, Flaked Barley, Flaked Oats, Pale Crystal, Carahell, Roast Barley, Carapils, Cara-munich Type III, Carafa Special III, Special B, CaraAmber, Medium Peat Smoked, Roasted Wheat, Black Malt, Brown Malt, Roasted Rye, Crystal Rye, Cara Vienna, Pale Oat Malt, Melanoidin, Flaked Wheat, Muinch Type I, Munich Type II, Amber Malt, Rye Malt, Rauch Malt, Flaked Maize.
Bulging Hop Freezer:
UK Cascade, Columbus, Challenger, Fuggle, Bobek, Goldings, Magnum, Summit, Willamette, Apollo, Chinook, Hersbrucker, Simcoe, NZ Cascade, Tettnang, Green Bullet, Aramis, Junga, Mount Hood, Spalter Select, Marynka, Cluster, Amarillo, Lubelski, Centennial, Riwaka, Citra, Northern Brewer, Galaxy, Super Alpha, Summer, Stella, NZ Hallertau Aroma, Pacific Gem, Warrior, Delta, Topaz, Nelson Sauvin, Pacific Jade, Pacifica, Wai-iti, Kohatu, Wakatu, Motueka, East Kent Golding, Sticklebract.
I wonder how long I can go without firing up the HLT? AG#88 will be a….????
AG#78 – Pioneer’s Gold
Posted on: April 28, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Pioneer’s Gold – A Barley wine for the National Homebrew Competition (or maybe the Year after) and using fresh live yeast from work. I’ve been meaning to try this for a while and after seeing Graeme Coates’ brewday I thought I’d go for it. I’ve gone for 15 litres as i don’t think its something I’ll drink very fast and its nicely left room in the copper for an extra 10L sparge to extract more from the mash. Hopping is some Pioneer pellets and older First Gold that were in the Hop-Freezer.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 90%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Caramalt – 4%
Amber Malt – 1%
Hops:
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 25g (after a long boil down first)
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 17g
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 17g
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 10 mins – 17g
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 39g
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 0 mins – 56g (What was left in the bag)
Golding Whole 5.1 % @ 0 mins – 3g (I ran out of First Gold so made a small extra addition)
Final Volume: 15 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.100
Final Gravity: 1.024
Alcohol Content: 10.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 26.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 17.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 73 EBU (The First Gold are pretty old now so i don’t expect to make this figure)
Colour: 22 EBC
Yeast: Thick skimmed yeast from Saltaire Brewery, fresh as you like.
Mash: 3 hours at 65°c, aimed for 66°c.
Liquor Treatment salts, shown here is the Calcium Chloride with Magnesium Sulphate on top:
Malts, Temp & Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate):
I went back to my old HTC Android for Strike Temp & Batch sparge volumes, this is even though I just got Beer Alchemy on the iPhone:
Pretty full, but I’m sure I could get a fair bit more in sometime:
First runnings, I recycled about 12 litres:
From the first sparge I collected 20 Litres @ 17.4 Brix so did an extra 10 Litre sparge and got 32 Litres @ 13.8 Brix, just over 64% Mash efficiency on the First sparge which I am quite happy with:
The first sparge was added kind of on the fly, then the extra 10 L sparge was added via my beta-version spinning sparge arm and the solar pump:
On the boil, I had to simmer for a while until I could turn up the heat:
Boiled off about 12-13 litres before adding the first hops, 3 hours 20 mins total boil time!:
Pioneer Pellets & First Gold hops:
I didn’t realise at this point but I think my refreactometer may have been exaggerating a bit:
Steep hops in for 30mins at Flameout:
I ended up collecting about 18 litres after doing some liquoring back towards the end of the boil (Thanks Refractometer, I should have stuck with my instincts as I would have been right!) did some small sugar additions to rescue a few OG points ended up with 1091. I pitched 100g of fresh, thick live yeast from work, MrMalty said 80-100ml, yeast pitched at 17°c:
A fairly relaxed day, second breakfast, drop the Mrs off at the train station, and walked the dogs while the mash was on, left the copper cleaning until the day after. Fermenter in the fridge set at 18°c for the first 24 hours then will hold at 20°c for a day or two before letting it free rise to 24°c, if its anything like at work this yeast will need a bit of TLC with a rouse every now and then.
This was my first Brewday taking all the photos on the iPhone, cracking photo quality and much easier than using the Canon DSLR, I use Instagram without any filters which kept everything in the nice square-blog-able format
*1st May ’12 – gravity at 1041 @ about 20°c, tasting very fruity almost like US hops!
*3rd May ’12 – Gravity 1027 @ 22°c tonight, not far from 1024 predicted FG, given it a good rouse… still tasting pretty sweet, hope some of this will dry out a bit.
*8th May ’12 – Down to 1015 @ 22°c I’m hoping its going to stop soon, it was 1016 yesterday so its getting close.
*9th May ’12 – Steady at 1015 now, chilling in stages probably 17°c then down to 11°c before bottling.
*12th May ’12 – Bottled with 90g White Sugar, got 45ish 330ml-ish bottles, the waiting game begins…..
*10th Sep ’12 – Tasting rather good, a nice malty toffee mouthful with warm lingering alcohol, a sweet lemoniness is also apparent.
AG#76 – Steaming, Brown & Sticky
Posted on: March 11, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 10 Comments
Brown and Sticky – brewing again today because I want to test out my new Mesh-Hop-Stopper after yesterday’s fiasco with my US-Brown Ale, so today I’m doing another American Brown and throwing a shed load of Columbus at it again and a further shed load of pellet hops just to try and screw it up. This could lead to another crappy end to an otherwise good brewday, we shall see… fingers crossed!
I’m worried that the stainless mesh resting on the base of the Gas-fired copper is going to have a damping effect on the rolling action of the boil, it certainly does when tested with boiling water, so this brew is also to see if it kills the roll with wort too.
Seeing as this is a very impromptu brewday I might even throw in 2 packs Safelager W-34/70 and make it a Steam Beer, so instead of being called ‘Brown & Sticky’ it would be ‘Steaming Brown & Sticky’ I quite like the latter naming option Its obviously going to be a cross-over style American Brown vs Steam Beer.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 74%
Flaked Barley – 10%
Caramalt – 9%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 3%
Chocolate Malt – 2%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 1%
Hops:
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (First Wort Hop)
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Chinook Pellet – 12.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g
Cascade Pellet – 5.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 80g
Rakau (Organic) Pellet – 11.5 % @ 0 mins – 89g (all Late hops will have a 20-30min steep)
Dry Hops:
Maybe…
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (reduced as I only just hit 75% yesterday)
Bitterness: 47 EBU (25% Utilisation)
Colour: 75 EBC
Malt & Temp:
Lots of Pellet hops:
New mesh Hop-Stopper with first wort hops:
First batch spargings running onto the new Hop-stopper and First Wort Columbus hops:
Its an altered boil alright, it rumbles around to its self and splatters occasionally, seems active enough:
In go 80g of Whole Columbus and 129g of Pellet hops:
OG: 1043/44, Refractometer said I was right on the money at 1045:
Torch held at the back of the trial jar, wort was nice and clear in comparrison to some of the wort I’ve had lately:
Loads of sludge in the copper, the new Mesh Hop-Stopper worked a treat and drained right down with the syphon effect sucking loads of wort out of the pellet sludge:
Maybe not the nicest looking soldering but it blooming well worked:
The Mash was on at 12:25 and I was all cleaned up by about 17:00, it all went rather smoothly. Maybe its time to start using my Plate Chiller as leedsbrew suggested! 2 packs of Saflager W34/70 Yeast pitched at 19-20c I’ll leave it on the cold garage floor to cool down overnight and let it go from there.
*24th Mar ’12 – FG 1011-12 put in fridge to warm up a little for a, probably un-needed, diacetyl rest. No dry hopping this tastes fantastic and clean as it is with a nice bit of bitterness coming through, I may actually transfer to a secondary FV and Lager this for a while (must ask a few Lagering questions on JBK).
*7th Apr ’12 – Bottled with 75g of White Sugar, tasting rather nice it has so far exceeded my expectations I never bothered with any Dry hopping, I’ll be looking forward to this once its Carbonated up.
AG#75 – Mr Brown Hawk
Posted on: March 10, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Mr Brown Hawk- A Columbus Hopped American Brown Ale (Brown IPA!) My first American brown, all Columbus hopping with a substantial Dry Hop in the FV with a bit of vague reference from the ‘Brewing Classic Styles’ book, the recipes in there use a heck of a lot of Crystal so I’ve sort of gone for the middle-ground as i don’t think a 6.3% beer needs all that. I’m using liquor treatment for ‘Sweet Pale Ale’ which will hopefully bring out the maltiness.
I started and realised I didn’t have enough Pale malt so some of it is sub’d with Vienna & Lager malts, I’ll give it at least a 90min mash to try compensate for a: crap Bairds Pale & Lager, b: the less convertibility of Vienna malt.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 36.2%
Vienna Malt – 17.2%
Wheat Malt – 17%
Lager Malt – 16.6%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Caramalt – 3%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 3%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 1%
Chocolate Malt – 1%
Hops:
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 60 mins – 25g (FWH)
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 10 mins – 29g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 41g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – Dry Hop 84g
Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.017
Alcohol Content: 6.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 30.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 % (actually got 75.8%)
Bitterness: 66 EBU (BeerEngine Hop Utilisation set to 25%)
Colour: 76 EBC
Mash: 90mins @66c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05 (2 packs)
The usual malts shot:
Checking for starch to see if fully converted, other than bits in the husks it was good after 2 hours:
First Wort Hops:
Flame-out hops steeped for about 20mins:
1057-ish, should have been 1065:
It was a total pain, running off to the FV it clogged up really quickly and I had to resort to a jug and a sieve, these Columbus hops have some fine particles! Pitched 2 packs of us-05 even though I didn’t hit my gravity 1058 vs 1065, the quicker the yeast gets going the better after all that sieve and jug malarkey! It looks as though I got about the right volume in the fermenter even if some of it looks rather murky from break material and some hop debris. Another reminder that I should make a big mesh hop-stopper!
So… presuming I’ve not infected it with a shed load of extracurricular home brewing activity, I’ll be giving this a nice big dry hop once its got to FG.
*17th Mar ’12 – after reaching FG 1012 and being chilled in 2 stages (17c for 24hours then 11c for 24 hours) I had a 50mm thick layer of hop debris, trub and yeast at the bottom of the FV, I’ve racked the clear beer off the top into a 15L bucket and dry hopped with 84g Columbus, I gave the bucket a blast of co2 prior to racking onto the hops. This has been put back in the FV Fridge and I’m cooling to 5c, I’ll give the hops a stir in later on.
*Bottled 24th Mar ’12 with 30g sugar to 15 Litres of beer, this should be around 2 volumes of co2 @ 5°c tastes very Dry-Hopped, quite possibly too much flavour and Lovely colour.
*29th Mar ’12 – Very Early taster bottle
A little under carbonated, its a Juicy fruit bomb maybe too too fruity as I’d actually like to taste some of the Choc malts underneath the hop flavour. Tiny bit of sweet alcohol on the nose, I’m surprised the dry-hop character seems to have mellowed out quite soon though this is my first time with a singled hopped Columbus beer. I’m thinking I should have reserved myself more than half a kilo from the 5kgs I had, I think I could have given it a bit more bitterness which would off-set the fruitiness a little.
*5th Apr ’12 – Just having a glass of this… even though its carb’d pretty low, if i splash it into the glass it gives a lovely head that clings down the glass and the carbonation actually fits pretty well with the beer.
Fruitiness is settling back, bitterness is starting to come through, tasty beer…. I’m happy with this
