Probably Due To Network Congestion

Amber Motueka – I should really be brewing for a Twitter #BlackIPAoff beer swap with @Broadfordbrewer & @BrotherLogic but I decided to use up the end of a sack of Lager Malt and use some of the wonderful Motueka hops I have stashed in the Hop-Freezer. Motueka works rather well as a dry-hop so I’ll be using up the remainder of the bag once initial fermentation has died down.
This will ‘hopefully’ be a nice Amber coloured Hoppy IPA-like beer with a nice malt presence and a firm smooth bitterness.  🙂

Fermentables:
Vienna Malt (Weyermann) – 40%
Lager Malt – 37.2%
Wheat Malt – 16%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 3.7%
Cara Munich Type III (Wey – 3%

Hops:
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 60 mins – 20g (FWH)
Magnum – 14.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (FWH)
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 15 mins – 20g
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 40g

Dry Hops:
Motueka (B Saaz) – 20g (or whatever is left from the 100g packet)

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.049
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.8% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 55 EBU (Utilisation set to 25%)
Colour: 39 EBC
Mash: 60mins @ 66c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05
Liquor Treatment: Burton Pale Ale using the Graham Wheeler treatment calculator

HLT temperature:

Some of the malts:

Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate) being weighed out:

First Wort Hops and a small Sodium Chloride (Salt) addition in the Copper:

Flameout hops and half a Protafloc tab, it ran off pretty clear so 1/2 is all you really need for 5 gallons:

Hops steeped for 20-30mins with an occasional stir:

Target of 1049, near enough:

Wort dropping from copper into fermenting vessel, given a good thrash with a paddle and dry sprinkled the yeast:

A wide shot of running to fermenter, the all important clock in the background:

A no fuss brewday, everything works, hit gravity, yeast pitched, put to bed in the fermentation fridge for the first time!
Safale us-05 has a temperature range of 15-24c so I’ve set the cooling to come on at 24c and left the heating turned off so it can increase in temperature naturally.

*12 Nov ’11 FG  1012 reached, loose Dry Hopped with 20g of Motueka and set the fermentation fridge to cool to 17c.

*Bottled 18th Nov ’11 with 75g white sugar, tasting nice, nothing over-powering just nice.

*23rd Nov ’11 – About 1 week bottled taster, fruity with sweet malty bits, good mid-to-light-amber colour (Just been eating chocolate so maybe not the best pallet cleanser), maybe not the IPA-esque beer I was after but tasty, bitterness is smooth and pallet-coating. This beer would make a very nice Belgian ale with the appropriate yeast.

*1st Dec ’11 – now its had a bit more time in the bottle its drying out and the bitterness is coming through, its a lovely smooth bitterness. I’m happy with the results.

*17th Jan ’12 – This is a bloody good beer now 🙂