Archive for May 2011
AG#57 – Paper 23rd June
Posted on: May 29, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
AG#57 – Paper 23rd June
To celebrate our first wedding anniversary an easy drinker that will hopefully go into a cask to be served on my Handpull.
I’ve run out of Amarillo, I’d have preferred a little more in at Flameout, I might dry hop the cask with a handful of Mittlefruh for a nice subtle floral touch.
Here’s today’s recipe, which is a mix of interesting malts 🙂
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 1290g – 33.2%
Lager Malt – 1290g – 33.2%
Vienna Malt – 455g – 11.8%
Cara Red – 290g – 7.5%
Munich Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Oat Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Wheat Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Hops:
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 15g (FWH)
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (FWH)
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 10g
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 10 mins – 10g
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 0 mins – 15g (80c Steep)
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 10g (80c Steep)
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16 % @ 0 mins – 10g (80c Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.2 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 11 EBC
Mashing at 68c for an hour to keep some body in case the US-05 finished a bit dry.
Malt temp:
Today’s hops, I must find a use for the other 400g of First Gold:
Spargings running from the tun onto the First wort hops:
I reckon there are 2 divisions in the meniscus, making me 2 points lower than I should be, so 1038:
Got 89% Mash efficiency today, collected 31 Litres @ 1033
*Bottled 6th Jun ’11 with 1/4 Tsp per 330ml bottle and two Bag-in-a-Box 10Litre polypins, primed with 45g of sugar dissolved in 90ml of water, one box given 50ml and the other 40ml, fined with Allkleer. Final Gravity is 1008.
AG#56 – C.N.S Hops²
Posted on: May 28, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
C.N.S Hops² – For today’s brew I had the company of Gordon from Elland Brewery, we’d sorted our recipe idea via email using an interesting selection of Cara-Crystal style malts for a ‘hopefully’ multi-layered maltiness with a host of New-world hops. The Bittering addition was to be Pacific Gem & Magnum with the Citra, Nelson Sauvin & Simcoe as a 80c Steep… though… Just a slight hiccup, and subsequent name change, not a major problem just a bit more bitterness than planned 🙂 I managed to throw in the 80c steep hops as First Wort Hops!! (Doh!)
So the beer has been rationalised with its hop varieties now and about 30 EBU’s higher than the original idea.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 78%
Vienna Malt – 10%
Cara Red – 4%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 4%
Cara Munich Type III – 4%
Hops:
Citra – 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 30g (FWH)
Nelson Sauvin – 11.3 % @ 60 mins – 40g (FWH)
Simcoe – 12.9 % @ 60 mins – 20g (FWH)
Citra – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 25g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Nelson Sauvin 11.7 % @ 0 mins – 41g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Simcoe – 12.2 % @ 0 mins – 20g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.057 (actually missed this, and got maybe 1050-ish)
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 94 EBU
Colour: 55 EBC
The rest of the day was myself & Gordon chatting about brewing and beer, tasting a few of my homebrews and a few commercial beers. Thanks go to my brew-monkey for the name change from P.M.C.N.S to C.N.S Hops² (Hops Squared).
Some of the Hops being weighed out:
The regular Mash Tun in the 3-Tier Setup:
First Wort hops should have been Pacific Gem & Magnum (oops!):
Good rolling boil with the chiller in to sterilise:
Think I may have over-sparged a litre or so due to being too busy nattering:
Hop Left-overs and Trub, now going into my new Compost Bin:
A good day, fairly simple recipe, fairly simple brewers! Good to see you again Gordon.
Probably not going to dry hop, though I may do a small trial with some Styrian Hop oil from The Malt Miller cheers for the freebie, dry hopping with drops… weird!! Cheers Rob.
*Bottled 12th Jun ’11 with 75g of White sugar
*17th Jun ’11 Early taster!!
This is a week-ish in the bottle so far, so a very early taster. Dropped bright and is a lovely amber-red colour.
It has a very full on juicy fruit aroma followed by a good fruitiness in the mouth and a smooth teeth sucking / coating bitterness, maybe just a tiny hint of alcohol warmth.
The flavour is one that lingers on the pallet, bitterness is quite balanced and the body good.
I think you get a bit of malt on the nose too.
Aroma = Spot on.
Flavour = Just a bit green, one more week and it will be getting good.
Bitterness/Body = balanced, maybe it will dry out as it matures.
*26th June ’11
This tastes bloody good now!! Very nice.. Mmmmm Bitterness just where it should be, nice body and fruity and feck Mmmm!
AG#55 – Imperial Smoked Porter
Posted on: May 15, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Imperial Smoked Porter – This is serving a couple of purposes; First is a Trial run of a big beer in my newly finished False bottom Mash tun; Second is using up some odd bags of malt and some older hops I had in the freezer and some other part bags of hops.
I’m not expecting the stated bitterness from my hops – http://www.wellhopped.co.uk/Product.htm so I’m going semi-worst case scenario and adjusting AA for age and storage.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70.2%
Caramalt – 8.2%
Peat Smoked Malt, medium – 4.2%
Amber Malt – 3.9%
Oat Malt – 3.5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2.3%
Crystal Wheat Malt – 2.4%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Flaked Wheat – 1.6%
Chocolate Malt – 1.5%
Flaked Rye 0 EBC – 0.5%
Hops:
Bobek – 3.7 % @ 75 mins – 124g (FWH)
Admiral – 12 % @ 75 mins – 19g (FWH)
Herkules – 15.8 % @ 75 mins – 35g (FWH)
Brewers Gold – 9.1 % @ 10 mins – 68g
Cascade – 5.5 % @ 0 mins – 29g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Saaz – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 33g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Simcoe – 12.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.076
Final Gravity: 1.021
Alcohol Content: 7.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 20.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (I collected 32L @ 1055 so hit efficiency but had too much liquor)
Bitterness: 121 EBU (I’m not expecting this as the bittering hops were fairly old so subtracting 30% from the AA will be more like 90EBU)
Colour: 140 EBC
Mashed for 90mins @ 66c
Boil for 75mins
Liquor treatment as per GW calc for General Purpose
Bigger bucket than normal with 8.5kg of malts:
New mash tun full of hot liquor:
Initial Mash a little high, cooled with cold liquor to 66c:
Tidy brewsheet (version 3, other two are scibbly works in progress) along with late hops:
Quite a heap of first Wort Hops in the copper along with the common salt addition:
What lies beneath, mash leftovers under the mash screen:
10 min hops going in:
Break material clumping in the copper:
Looks near as damn it to me (Showing 72 +2 divisions in the meniscus = 1076), not bad for a first outing of the new Mash Tun:
I had 3.7 Litres in the new mash tun to just cover the false bottom, the first sparge top-up was a little over 3 litres so I didn’t top-up and subtracted the difference from the Second batch sparge. This was to take into account the liquor under the screen, I ended up with 32 Litres in the copper which i thought too much but by the end of the 75min boil I was at my predicted gravity so I must have worked things out right!
Thoughts on the False bottom:
The mash ran off very well and after a few jugs of recirculating it was also very clear.
After stirring the second sparge and running off I came back to the mash tun to find it had run a load of malt particles into the copper as the last of the mash drained out. I’ll have to keep an eye on it next time to stop this just as it starts to show bits coming through, or have a go a Fly sparging so as to not actually disturb the Mash bed and hopefully limit the amount of malt particles coming through.
New cleaning game, poking bits of malt out of the perforated stainless!
16th May ’11
The usual, Stout+S-04 ferment 🙂 :
*Bottled 25th May ’11 with 71g of White sugar and a tiny sprinkle of Nottingham yeast into each bottle as a bit of a safety precaution as it had dropped very bright. Finished at 1016-1018 so about 7.7% ABV.
*4th JUne ’11 Taster bottle, tasting good the Peat Smoked malt works well with the Strength of this beer, Bitterness just right so I’m glad I adjusted the hop Alpha acids for my older hops.
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I just finished building my 45L Igloo Coolbox with Stainless False Bottom its been a fair bit of grinding with an Angle Grinder to make the right shape to fit the moulding of the coolbox, finished off in a few places with some 5/16th beer-line for a snug fit and to fix a corner I took a bit too much off, Its all spaced off the bottom with stainless cap screws. I could have fixed the corner and put Beer-line all round the circumference but had done enough grinding to make-fit.
Some of the tools used:
Drilled out Tank Connector with modified Elbow fitted so it is level with the flat base of the tun thanks to the coolbox moulding where the tap fits:
Stainless Steel Cap Screws used as stand-offs so about 25-30mm up from bottom:
Another Cap Screw in the centre to lift it out with:
Outside with Tank Connector & Ball Valve fitted:
False Bottom Fitted:
I had to give the Perforated stainless a good soak and scrub in Washing Soda to remove all grease that came on it.
I have to say this was easier than cutting and soldering loads of bits of copper pipe… Just needs a test run now! Maybe a BIG beer or a Parti-Gyle brew.
Our dog in Zymurgy Magazine
Posted on: May 9, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Many thanks to Allison from Zymurgy Magazine / Homebrewers Association for sending me out a copy of the mag with our dog in it. Spook has now been in beer-related print 3 times that we know of… cool 🙂
The article is about uses for spent grain, dogs like spent.
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
C.C.A.N – Todays little hop-bomb. This actually started out as being an all Chinook idea as I’ve not done a single hop Chinook yet. I think this will be better though bittering comes from 2 additions of Chinook then a big Aroma Steep of Chinook, Citra, Amarillo & Nelson Sauvin.
This is also my National Homebrew Day (a day late ‘cos I had to work n stuff)
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 84%
Wheat Malt – 10%
Caramalt – 4%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 2%
Copper Hops:
Chinook – 12.7 % @ 60 mins – 27g (First Wort Hop)
Chinook – 12.7 % @ 30 mins – 27g
Chinook – 12.7 % @ 0 mins – 30g (80c Steep 30mins)
Citra – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 34g (80c Steep 30mins)
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g (80c Steep 30mins)
Nelson Sauvin – 11.7 % @ 0 mins – 34g (80c Steep 30mins)
Dry Hops:
Motueka: 28g (pellets, what I had left)
Amarillo: 30g
Chinook: 18g (what was left in the packet)
Citra: 10g (just a touch of Citra, I wasn’t impressed with them dry)
Nelson Sauvin: 30g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.051
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 5.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.2 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 60 EBU
Colour: 23 EBC
Liquor: Burton Pale Ale profile in GW Calc (should help accentuate the hops and the bitterness)
Mash: 67c for 60mins
Sparge Liquor: 76c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05
Malt Temp, with Liquor treatments added to the malts before mashing:
A collection of hops from ThriftyShopper, BarleyBotton, GrimsbyHomebrew and WorcesterHopsShop, Motueka dry hops are from CraftBrewer in Australia:
Some weighed out hops etc:
Late 80c Steep hops in for 30min soak:
Brewsheet notes and Yeast:
Suppose to be 1051, near enough eh:
Bit of a cock up, I was recycling my cooling water back to my HLT, watching a mark on my sight glass rather than the water level, showered water all over and wet a socket (eek!) Hopefully no damage done. Other than that a fairly lazy brewday, rehydrated my yeast for the first time in ages (reminded or guilted into it by others on Twitter, I should be nice to my yeast more often rather than the usual Dry Sprinkle on the wort).
*13th May ’11 Dry Hopped with 116g of Hops 
*Bottled 21st May ’11 with 75g White Sugar primings, I filled 20x 500ml bottles and 1x 330ml, there must have been a good litre or so soaked into the Dry hops.
*Taster 28th May ’11 – Mmmmm Dry Hopped lovliness. Tasting this good this early probably means that in a couple of weeks it will be amazing 🙂
*Reviewed 20th Aug ’11 at www.davelozman.co.uk/beer/ag-54/ Dave had the oldest and very last bottle of this Hoppy brew, many thanks for the kind review.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 