Archive for January 2012
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Revolutions Brewery Comp Entry – Revolutions Brewery in Castleford are holding a Brewing competition, the beer has to be brewed with European hops.
I’ve just brewed my entry, fingers crossed! I know I’ll like it ‘cos I’ve brewed something like it before 
Here’s the ambiguous recipe 
Fermentables:
Lager Malt
Wheat Malt
Caramalt
Hops:
‘Some European Hops’
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 33 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 41 EBU
Colour: 6 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mashed at 66-67c for at least an hour.
Mash efficiency was 92.5% apparently!
Boiled for 60 minutes with hop additions along the way, ‘some hops’ were steeped for 20mins
No photos as I did this after an early shift at work, tired head and feeling groggy! Hydrometer says I was a couple of points low but the Refractometer says I was bang on! I’ll clean up tomorrow.
*Bottled 18th Feb ’12 with 55g White Sugar, I’m not sure this is tasting as good as it should which is probably due to me not bottling it about 10 days ago, I’m sure almost 3 weeks in the fermenter can’t be good. Bottling can be such a pain in the ass. Probably won’t be entering this unless it bucks up in the next week, which I doubt.
When this had just hit FG this was tasting lovely, should have got my finger out!!!
*Update 29th Feb ’12, I didn’t enter it… I can do better be it my process or additional bittering that didn’t go well with the noble hop.
The actual recipe is here:
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 65%
Wheat Malt – 30%
Caramalt – 5%
Hops:
Magnum – 14.5 % @ 60 mins – 20g (First Wort Hop)
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 30 mins – 30g
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 10 mins – 20g
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 50g
And was based on a previous brew of Kolsch Wit which was very classic Lager-a-like flavour and didn’t last long once it was bottled 🙂
AG#72 – Toasted Oatmeal Stout
Posted on: January 21, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 7 Comments
Toasted Oatmeal Stout – Its about time I made a Roasted Barley based Stout so the other week I toasted some oats in the oven, checking every 5 mins and turning them, they just began to catch so I stopped at this point (Slight oven-smell to them, hope this doesn’t come through to the finished beer).
Nice solid bittering from Northdown and a little Challenger thrown in at the end too. The Malt bill is just an altered Guinness recipe splitting the 20% Flaked barley between Caramalt & Flaked Oats (should be better than Guinness).
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70%
Flaked Oats, Toasted – 10%
Roasted Barley – 10%
Caramalt – 10%
Hops:
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 60 mins – 42g (FWH)
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 30 mins – 42g
Northdown – 6.2 % @ 0 mins – 15g (15min Steep at 100c)
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 0 mins – 15g (15min Steep at 100c)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 4% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 45 EBU
Colour: 211 EBC
Mash: 67°c for over 2 hours as I had stuff to do.
Yeast: Safale US-05
The malts, this actually dropped to 10°c, the Oatmeal is at the top so you can see the colour:
Copper filling onto First Wort Northdown hops:
I managed the protafloc all by my self:
Flameout hops going in:
Malt Recycling, she turns it into poo amazingly well:
One division in the meniscus, 1046 on the nail at 20°c:
Pretty slow but no fuss brewday, left the copper to clean later, in the fridge set at 19.5°c
According to BeerEngine I just topped 90% Mash efficiency on this brew, I shall put this down to the Oatmeal which simply disintegrated in the mash and the extended mash rest.
*Bottled 5th Feb ’12 with 60g White Sugar.
AG#71 – Abyss Imperial Stout
Posted on: January 1, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 8 Comments
Abyss Imperial Stout – The big brew! New years Day 2012, a beer to brew-bottle-and-leave until New years Eve (or as long as you can wait! 6 months +) 🙂 Brewing today was the idea of @Leedsbrew and a number of us Homebrew Forum and Twitter users are having an Imperial Stout Brew-a-long, the results should be interesting if we get to taste each others fully matured beers in a years time.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 69%
Munich Malt I (Weyermann) – 7.2%
Sugar, Date Molasses – 4.9%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 4.5%
Roasted Wheat (Simpsons / Barley Bottom) – 4.5%
Sugar, Molasses (Blackstrap) – 3.8%
Roasted Rye Malt – 2.7%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Carafa Special III – 1.8%
Hops:
Target – 10.2 % @ 60 mins – 83g
Bobek – 5.2 % @ 60 mins – 37g
Centennial – 11.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 30 mins – 35g
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 0 mins – 21g (20-30mins steep)
Hersbrucker – 3.0 % @ 0 mins – 20g (20-30mins steep)
Fuggle – 4.9 % @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Stella – 15.6% @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.096
Final Gravity: 1.022
Alcohol Content: 9.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 21.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 65 % (reduced from a regular 75-80%)
Bitterness: 154 EBU
Colour: 625 EBC
The Malts, 8.455kg of them:
The Sugars, Date Syrup & Blackstrap Molasses:
The day so far:
The mash was on last night at 00:50 and the temp was 66°c, at 9am this morning it had dropped to 59°c.
I did 1 sparge at 80°c with an hour’s Mash-out and collected my pre-boil volume in the copper, as I had expected this was lower than the predicted pre-boil gravity (10 points too low).
I did a second sparge at 80°c with a 30min Mash-out of 12 Litres while boiling the first run-off hard, ran off about half the mash then boiled down some more before running off the rest of the mash. I also added the sugars at this point, and continued boiling down until I reached 1086/7 when the bittering hops went in which will hopefully put me in the 1096 area for the end of the boil.
7 Degree drop over about 8 hours:
Pretty full mash tun with the sparge liquor added:
Today’s hops:
The Molasses going in:
Flameout steep hops, I threw in a 19g sample pack of Stella too (very nice smelling hop):
Dirty Copper, break material forming as the wort cools:
173g Safale US-05 yeast skimmed from previous brew and kept in the fridge for a week at 4°c, I’ll pitch the lot at 18°c:
OG: 1095 Temp corrected (Brix 23.8 with Refractometer = 1096):
Running to FV:
Pretty much hit my predicted OG, yeast pitched (still smelling of Nelson Sauvin hops from AG#70, if it wasn’t that I’ve just ruined an entire brew!) **Update, the beer in my Glass is Ta Moko, it smells just like the yeast, beer is fine)**
Copper is being very slow to run off, must be the thick sticky wort.
Its almost time for a beer, a Chilled very-early taster of Ta Moko just to see how its doing 🙂
I think I’ll be buying some more Basra Date Syrup as it tastes very good and would lend its self very well to a Belgian Ale.
Other peoples NYD Imperial Stout brewdays: (I’ll add more as they are posted)
Spikesdad’s Imperial Stout
Barney’s Imperial Stout
Leedsbrew’s Titan Imperial Stout Parti-Gyle brewday
Lugsy’s Super Massive Black Hole Imperial Stout
Jimp2003’s Event Horizon RIS (Slightly Belated)
Tom Dobson’s Old Black Imperial Stout
*3rd Jan ’12 – Gravity is currently 1064-ish, Tastes good, some of the hopping coming through and some Fruity stuff which might be the Date Syrup.
*4th Jan ’12 – 1050
*Bottled 18th Jan ’12 – with 60g of White Sugar, filled 50-off 330ml bottles.
*29th Feb ’12 – Taster:
The Carbonation is just about right, a good hiss when popping the cap and a solid mouth tingle.
Beer Colour is dark as it gets, if i shine a very bright LED torch at one side of the glass I can only just see a very, very faint red shape thru the glass.
Smells a leathery, dry, with a touch of alcohol and coffee.
Tastes, full mouth oily coating body, a fair amount of alcohol which lasts as long as the mouth coating, some coffee & liquorice.
I am, again, glad that i used sugars in this beer 🙂
*2nd May ’12 – Just having a bottle of this, its rather good… maybe more like a Black IPA as the sugars have obviously helped to dry it out, very drinkable 🙂
*6th Jun ’12 – Taster time! This is rather bloody good, a full smooth and oily mouth feel, crisp tingly carbonation, its getting to the stage of being like Warm Boot leather and just as chewy 🙂
Probably Due To Network Congestion 