Posts Tagged ‘yeast’
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#99 – Boomstick
Posted on: April 20, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
BoomStick – I’m brewing this for NCB member Paul Bromley who runs a back-garden charity event, he asked me if I’d brew something pale for it, so here it is, its an evolution from my Chinook Blonde recipe, using some of the same hops (but more of them) and adding some Weyermann Munich Type I, and mashing at 69°c, fermenting with Safale us-05.
This time the name again comes from a line Ash says in Army of Darkness “This… is my Boomstick!”
Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This… is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That’s right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 20%
Flaked Oats – 5%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Hops:
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 60 mins – 21g (FWH)
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 30 mins – 21g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 10 mins – 21g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 21g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 49g (94c Steep for 25mins)
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 49g (94c Steep for 25mins)
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.037
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.7% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 9 EBC
Mash: 69°c for 70mins
Boil: 60mins
The malts, all pretty pale:
The hops:
Second batch sparge liquor going in at 78°c:
In go the Cascade & Chinook for the flameout steep:
I decided to rehydrate my yeast today to try and get things underway faster, I want a speedy ferment with time to put this beer in cask to condition before Paul’s event:
The money shot, I got 1044 and liquored back to 1037 with 4 litres giving me a total volume of 25.7 Litres, a goodly amount for filling a plastic pin cask:
No messing, done and dusted.
*25th Apr ’13 – Steady gravity reached, exactly as predicted FG, chilling down before casking this beer.
*Casked 27th Apr ’13 – with 20g white sugar and Allkleer finings, got a few 500ml bottles from it too which I give 3/4 Tsp white sugar each.
I’m going to give the cask a couple of days of warm then chill it down to cellar temps.
*1st May ’13 – Had a cheeky bottle of this, and its bloody good, plenty of juicy hops with a nice balance between the Cascade & Chinook, Chinook not overpowering just nice 
AG#98 – Robust Wheat Porter
Posted on: March 24, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 8 Comments
Robust Wheat Porter – The Pancake Day of Homebrews! I’m using up a load of bag-ends, so my base malts (Lager & Wheat) are now totally depleted.
I’m not too fussed if its something odd-ball, it should hopefully be entertaining and I can start from fresh malts for subsequent brews.
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 44.9%
Lager Malt – 26.6%
Munich Malt – 5.9%
Jaggery (Cane) – 5.5%
Brown Malt – 3.7%
Chocolate Malt – 3.7%
Rauch Malt (Weyermann) – 3.2%
Amber Malt – 2.6%
Peat Smoked Medium – 1.8%
Munich Type II (Weyermann) – 1.4%
Roasted Barley – 0.7%
Oat Husks – 3% (This works out at 103%, added after calculating recipe)
Hops:
Bobek – 4.5 % @ 60 mins – 408g
Saaz – 4.15 % @ 0 mins – 48g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.077
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 8.1% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 181 EBU – (This is going to be bogus, the hops are old and like confetti)
Colour: 148 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 67°c
Yeast: Safale US-05 skimmed from last weeks brew before I dry hopped it
Liquor Treatment: General Purpose copied from AG#55
The Malts, I added a few Oat Husks as a precaution:
408g of Bobek Hops in the copper:
Recirculating the first few jugs from the mash tun until it runs clear:
Jaggery Goor, or Unrefined Cane sugar:
In go the late Saaz hops:
Quite a lot of spent hops left in the copper:
I ended up with 1079 so liquored back 0.54L to 1077, I feel a few things worked in my favor to get the right OG and 21.46Litres:
- Predicted Mash efficiency be set low.
- The 3.7L bellow the Mash Tun’s false bottom which I usually deduct from the first sparge.
- 80c second (technically first) sparge, I normally go for 78°c, and 15min rest before running off.
All cleaned up and yeast pitched, I expect it to kick off quite soon and spew all over the kitchen floor, the fermentation fridge is still full of Brown Ceas which I just dry hopped.
*25th Mar ’13 – The fresh yeast has taken off well, still in the bucket… just!
*31st Mar ’13 – Gravity at 1018 so this has been pretty fast at fermenting, and it tastes rather good with quite a bit of smoke and the Brown/Amber/Choc malts definitely playing their parts, bitterness is coming through but not overly
*7th Apr ’13 – Gravity at 1018 still so chilling it down before bottling sometime next week.
*Bottled 10th Apr ’13 – with 76g White Sugar, tastes bloody good too
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#95 – WheatArillo
Posted on: February 23, 2013
WheatArillo – With 5kg of fresh Amarillo in the garage I’d be silly not to, I’ve also got a fair bit of Wheat Malt that I could do with using up too…
I’d have preferred to brew a big bad Amarillo Wheat like I did back in AG#36 but I figure this could be my entry into the NCB/Saltaire Comp on 13th April, I’ll be brewing again next week so I’ll pick the better of the two to enter.
**Won’t be dry hopping, ferment-out & bottle as soon as possible.
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 69%
Lager Malt – 23%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 8%
Oat Husks – 5%
(You may notice the % don’t add up, this is because I added 5% extra Oat Husks after calculating the recipe in BeerEngine)
Hops:
Amarillo – 8.7 % @ 60 mins – 24g
Amarillo – 8.7 % @ 30 mins – 24g
Amarillo – 8.7 % @ 10 mins – 40g
Amarillo – 8.7 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (Reduced a little as I’m using a lot of wheat)
Bitterness: 49 EBU
Colour: 5 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 68c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
Liquor Treatment: General Purpose copied of a previous Brewsheet of similar Mash quantity & OG.
The Malts, its pretty cold in the Garage today:
First Breakfast while the Mash is on, Red Jade Tea & Porridge with Golden Syrup:
Just adding the second batch sparge liquor:
The First Wort Hops in the copper:
I think you’ll agree that was a particularly poor photographic effort!
I wasn’t messing about and made this as easy as I could, it will be nice to have some Amarillo homebrew in stock again.
*2rd Mar ’13 – **I actually just dry hopped it with 1g/L of Amarillo Pellets I’d have regret it if I hadn’t, its should be subtle but add an element of freshness.
*Bottled 8th Mar ’13 – with 110g white sugar to 22 litres of beer, tasting good, should be drinkable as soon as its carb’d up
AG#93 – Pacific Rim
Posted on: January 27, 2013
Pacific Rim – Light coloured beer stocks are low so I hope this to be a hoppy easy drinking beer, bittering from Simcoe and very kiwi Flame-out steep, I had a hop-freezer rummage and found a half pack of Riwaka… nice
The name ‘Pacific Rim’ is sort of an evolution from my Ring Of Fire which was all New Zealand grown hops, I didn’t realise until afterwards that there is a movie of the same name which looks pretty cool.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 62.6%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 24.4%
Caragold – 8%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Hops:
Simcoe 14.2 % @ 60 mins – 12g (FWH)
Simcoe 14.2 % @ 30 mins – 12g
Pacific Gem 17 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Pacific Jade 15.1 % 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
NZ Cascade 8.5 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Riwaka 5.9 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 8 EBC
Mash: 67°c for 70mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The Malts, 1kg of Weyermann Munich I & some CaraGold are my body & sweetness:
The hops:
First Wort Hops, I went with an open pack of Simcoe rather than opening up my first choice, a new pack of Magnum:
100g Flame-out Steep, all these hops were smelling amazing, the Pacific Jade are really sticky too:
Pre-liquorback gravity 1046, target is 1040:
No messing today, added some spacing pieces inside my Mesh Hop-Stopper so that it can’t lay too flat, compact & block, had lovely clear and timely run-off to FV.
Slight Schoolboy error was miss-reading the calculator and liquoring back an extra litre doh! Not the end of the world!
Tucked up in the fermentation fridge at 20°c, the yeast should make fairly short work of this.
*2nd Feb ’13 – This is tasting pleasantly light and drinkable, down at 1008 pretty sure its finished, happy so far
*Bottled 5th Feb ’13 with 100g White Sugar.
*12th Feb ’13 – this is very drinkable, subtle orange and berry with some light woody notes, a crisp bitterness and finish. I could easy drink a few of these
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Non Terrestrial Intelligence – I’m using stuff up and have no Pale or Lager malt so I bought some Oat Husks from TheMaltMiller and added 5% to the recipe to aid sparging with so much Wheat Malt. I’m hoping for a fairly big hit of American hops with a good amount of bitterness.
The name comes from the Abyss movie.
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 76%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 8%
Special B – 8%
Oat Husks – 5%
Black Malt – 3%
Hops:
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 60 mins – 25g (First Wort Hop)
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Summit – 17.2 % @ 0 mins – 70g
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Citra – 13 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Topaz – 16 % @ 0 mins – 10g (I just threw in a Sample I was given at work)
Nelson Sauvin – 12.1 % @ 0 mins – 11g (End of a bag)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % – (Reduced from my regular 75%)
Bitterness: 62 EBU
Colour: 125 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mash: 66°c for 2 hours, I did an iodine test at about 90mins which had a tiny bit of starch left.
Malts in the bucket, I added some gypsum to the mash and Calcium Chloride & Mag Sulphate to the boil:
Adding the Mash Liquor to the Mash Tun, added a few degrees higher than my strike temperature and allowed to cool / Pre-heat the tun before mashing in:
I was originally going to use Magnum for bittering but decided to go with the open packs of hops instead so it was Simcoe all the way:
The Oat Husks in the mash:
20min Steep of the Flameout hops:
Initial Gravity reading was 1061, liquored back 2.5L to 1054:
The usual go-to yeast, its easy and clean fermenting:
A good brewday, the Oat Husks / Sparge worked really well and the wort was pretty clear for such a high percentage of Wheat Malt. The wort was smelling great too, put to bed in the fermentation fridge set to 20°c.
*7th Dec ’12 – Gravity at 1014 @about 22°c think its done but will give it another day before chilling it down. The Hydrometer sample tasted very nice too
*10th Dec ’12 – Down to 1013.5-ish, put on to chill down before bottling, still tasting good
*Bottled 16th Dec ’12 – with 100g White Sugar into about 20L of beer, still tastes good, would probably have been epic if I’d dry hopped
AG#89 – Big Malty Smoke Beer
Posted on: October 27, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Big Malty Smoke Beer – The name says it all, this is what I want, it has to be Big, it has to be Malty, and it has to be Smokey
I should maybe give it a smokey German name like Rauchfaktor / KraftWort or something….
Fermentables:
Rauch Malt (Weyermann) – 48.5%
Munich Malt – 20.8%
Munich Malt II (Weyermann – 13.4%
Oak-Smoked Pale Wheat Mal – 6.9%
Cara Munich Type I (Weyer – 6.9%
Melanoidin Malt – 3%
Carafa Special III – 0.4%
Hops:
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.2 % @ 60 mins – 43g
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 60 mins – 43g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.2 % @ 0 mins – 22g – (30min Steep)
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 9g – (30min Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 6.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 35.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 17.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (Reduced from usual 75% as unknown malts)
Bitterness: 34 EBU
Colour: 53 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 69°c I want to keep this Malty & Sweet which I hope will display the smoke well or at least create a background to carry it.
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: 2x Safale us-05 (It was going to be a Whitelabs Kölsch starter but it didn’t start!)
Quite a heap of malts going into this one, most are fresh from @TheMaltMiller the other week:
12°c in the garage today, a good temp for all the beer in there:
The colour of the mash run-off was a deep straw colour, there was no first sparge so I did a decoction to achieve a good Mashout temperature before running off:
This was the second sparge, i did a 30g carafa steep for 15mins to adjust for colour:
Start of boil hops:
Flameout hop steep of what remained in the two packs of hops:
1079 with temperature correction, 4 litre Liquor-back required to hi OG and final volume, I actually got almost 80% Mash efficiency, the decoction obviously had a bearing on this:
Put to bed in the fermentation fridge with it set to 18°c:
Fairly straight forward brewday, new fermenting bucket cleaned and tap fitted my older (original) buckets are getting a bit chalky looking inside I need to de-scale them at work.
I think I may have let a load of fine malt particles through into the copper as the run-off from the Mesh Hop-stopper was feeble at best, but the cold weather helped.
I managed to chill the wort down to 17°c and then after liquoring back from the HLT I got 18°c which is pretty much what I was aiming for as I want to ferment this cool to try and limit any possible ester production and keep it clean, I’ll warm it up towards the end to let the yeast clean up its bi-products.
*12th Nov ’12 – Looks to have finished at 1021.5 @22°c pretty high though not totally unexpected with a mash temp of 69°c (5.6% vs predicted 6.4% ABV).
*Bottled 24th Nov ’12 – Primed with 100g White Sugar in about 20 Litres of beer… should probably have been bottled a week ago, hopefully some time in bottle and carbonation will bring out the smoke, there is a very slight sourness in the finish though could it be the Rauch or maybe the Melanoidin??? I shall be reserving judgement until its had a week or two in bottle.
*30th Nov ’12 – I had a sneaky taster of this last night, I didn’t detect any of the previous sourness, its smokey but not that smokey more akin to a smoked Cheese than my desired “Stood Next to a Bonfire”, its actually quite light to drink with enough Body and Sweetness which I suppose is a Bready Maltiness… If I re-brew, more smoke!!! Maybe even a bit of bastardization with a touch of Peat Smoked Malt. Schlenkerla’s smoke hit really must be down to a rapid succession from Maltsters to Smoke House to Milled & Mashed with a cool fermented clean yeast. Safale US-05 has done an admirable job even if it wasn’t my first choice yeast, I should get more Whitelabs Kölsch yeast for the next attempt.
I think there is scope to reduce the amount of body and increase my carbonation and maybe a subtle alteration on the hopping for ‘Less is More’.
