AG#87 – Chinook Blonde

Posted by: pdtnc on: August 12, 2012

• In: Brewing
• 7 Comments

Chinook Blonde – This is vaguely based on the Centennial Blonde beer I brewed before, its not meant to be too hoppy or too bitter and a nice easy drinking ABV, I’d be happy if it comes somewhere close to Goose Eye Brewery’s Chinook.
Its got about 16% cara-esque malts and some Flaked oats for body building and UK Cascade hops for the bittering with a restrained hit of Chinook at the end of boil.

Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 74%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 9.9%
Cara Belge (Weyermann) – 6.3%
Wheat Malt – 4.9%
Flaked Oats – 4.9%

Hops:
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 60 mins – 30g (FWH)
UK Cascade – 5.7 % @ 30 mins – 30g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g (Flameout Steep)

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.037
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 30.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 6 EBC
Yeast: Skimmed us-05 from previous brew
Mash: 90mins at 68°c
Liquor: GW Calc ‘Sweet Pale Ale’

The usual shot of a bucket full of malts:

Salts and FWHs:

Homebrewer’s implements:

Doing a full, two-way clean / sanitise of the Plate Chiller:

Recirculating via the heat exchanger:

Mostly an easy brewday, one slight glitch near the end was setting cooling to about 21°c with flow rates while recirculating in the copper, the swapped to filling the FV at which point the syphon effect and gravity take hold and the temperature goes up. So pitched the yeast a bit warm (Fridge probe saying 25-26°c) and bunged it straight in the fermentation fridge to chill it down to 20°c, the yeast I pitched was 130g of thick skimmed slurry from Ta Moko, fingers crossed it will be OK. I liquored back a couple of litres to OG at the end, should have been 3 litres but the FV was looking a bit full as it was!
The Plate Chiller is loads quicker but I’d have preferred the Immersion cooler on this occasion, I need to add a restriction valve to the outlet from the plate chiller to throttle back the pump / gravity syphon effect (When I bought the plate chiller and stainless fittings I also purchased a stainless ballvalve so its an easy mod).

*13th Aug ’12 – Messy yeasty fridge! Think this will be done fermenting very soon.

*18th Aug ’12 – Gravity at 1008 and tastes just how I wanted it, happy thus far 🙂

*Bottled 19th Aug ’12 – with 80g of white sugar, as I said above, tasting good 🙂

Tags: beer, blonde, Brewing, carabelge, Carapils, Chinook, garage brewer, homebrew, homebrewing, hops, lager malt, malt, uk cascade, us-o5, wheat malt, yeast