Posts Tagged ‘american brown’
AG#102 – Gods of War
Posted on: August 18, 2013
Gods of War – An impromptu brewday and a half-baked earlier idea to use Warrior & Zeus hops for the first time, I’m going all out with the Cara/Crystal with some Melanoidin Malt to make up for me not having any Munich which was substituted by Dark Wheat Malt.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 69%
Crystal Malt – 8%
Caramalt – 8%
Wheat Malt Dark (Weyermann) – 8%
Melanoidin (Weyermann) – 5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2%
Hops:
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 60 mins – 30g (FWH)
Zeus – 16.7 % @ 10 mins – 20g
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 10 mins – 20g
Warrior – 17 % @ 10 mins – 20g
Warrior – 17 % @ 0 mins – 30g (5-10mins Steep at 90c)
Zeus – 16.7 % @ 0 mins – 30g (5-10mins Steep at 90c)
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g (5-10mins Steep at 90c)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 91 EBU (55 EBU if you discount the 10min additions)
Colour: 60 EBC
Mash: 67°c for 60mins
Yeast: The Malt Miller’s West Coast Style yeast
The malts:
The Apollo hops really made the garage stink:
I’ve not used this yeast before, I’d be interested to hear others findings:
First batch sparge running into the copper:
A good rolling boil and the 10min hops go in:
Flameout hops go in at 90°c for a 5-10min steep after which I turned the Immersion cooler on:
Yeast was rehydrated in cooled boiled water as instructed, it will be fermenting at the ambient temp of the garage to start with as last weeks brew is still in the brew-fridge.
*24th Aug ’13 – Dry Hopped today with 30g of each hop, Apollo, Warrior & Zeus (almost 4.3g per litre) Hopefully bottle mid week.
*Bottled 29th Aug ’13 – with 80g white sugar, tastes sort of like a weird liquorice, unsure of this hop combo so far, maybe it will improve with some time in bottle.
*8th Sep ’13 – Taster bottle, this is coming along quite nicely, the colour is good and it has just enough dry hop presence, it could use a little more body but otherwise a pretty easy drinker. The hop flavours I was unsure about have gone and its light “Pithy” character (*Pithy used courtesy of @hopzine).
AG#81 – Olicana Rutilus
Posted on: June 10, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 5 Comments
Olicana Rutilus – This is my entry to the Ilkley Brewery / Leeds Homebrewers competition, an American Red/Amber/Brown style beer at 1038.
I’m doing a number of firsts for me with this brew:
- The first time using of my Plate Chiller which I’ve had for ages with intent to use!
- The first time I’ve done a 20 minute total boil time!
- The first time I’ve tried Hop-Bursting!
- The First time I’ve used Apollo hops!
Fermentables:
Lager Malt
Carapils (Weyermann)
Munich Malt I (Weyermann)
Chocolate Malt
Cara Munich Type III
Hops:
Columbus
Apollo
Apollo
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.038
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 17.6 Litres
Mash Liquor: 4.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 % (got over 81%)
Bitterness: 35 EBU
Colour: 39 EBC
Yeast: Safale US-05
Today’s Malts:
First run out of the Plate chiller (Heat Exchanger), with my second Solar Project pump:
Ye Olde mini-Mash Tun:
First Wort Hops, Columbus, with a THBF calc Mild profile for my liquor treatment:
Apollo hops, I’m using up the dregs, still sticky as owt and stinky:
Oh… Nooo!!! Hot Side Aeration! Recirc to Sanitise:
Flameout Hops:
This was actually a pretty quick brewday, didn’t quite hit my 1038 OG and got 1035-ish, this will be down to me guessing and 5% boil-off, it was actually a lot less as I collected 14 Litres in the FV rather than the planned 12 Litres. So something to adjust for next time I do a 20min boil. The break material formed in the bucket after cooling, I back-flushed the Plate Chiller and set it on a recirc for about half an hour with hot clean water.
Its been a long day as I’ve bottled 50-odd bottles of Nit Wit after brewing, then cleaned the FV and fridge from the WLP400 mess!!
I’ll post the full recipe details after judging 😉
Here’s Dave’s brewday blog of his entry.
And this is Neil’s Blog of his entry.
*14th Jun ’12 – Dry hopping time 🙂
Apollo hops whizzed up in a clean blender, about 4g per litre, a tip from @dredpenguin and his blog A Beer on the Downs though I didn’t puree mine I just dry blitzed them:
Dry hops tipped on the yeast head and stirred in, I’ll leave at current temp for a couple of days then stir again and drop the temperature to 17c then 11c for about a week before crashing it down to 4c to settle the hop debris out:
*Bottled 21st Jun ’12 – with 60g white sugar in 13 litres of beer.
AG#76 – Steaming, Brown & Sticky
Posted on: March 11, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 10 Comments
Brown and Sticky – brewing again today because I want to test out my new Mesh-Hop-Stopper after yesterday’s fiasco with my US-Brown Ale, so today I’m doing another American Brown and throwing a shed load of Columbus at it again and a further shed load of pellet hops just to try and screw it up. This could lead to another crappy end to an otherwise good brewday, we shall see… fingers crossed!
I’m worried that the stainless mesh resting on the base of the Gas-fired copper is going to have a damping effect on the rolling action of the boil, it certainly does when tested with boiling water, so this brew is also to see if it kills the roll with wort too.
Seeing as this is a very impromptu brewday I might even throw in 2 packs Safelager W-34/70 and make it a Steam Beer, so instead of being called ‘Brown & Sticky’ it would be ‘Steaming Brown & Sticky’ 😉 I quite like the latter naming option 😉 Its obviously going to be a cross-over style American Brown vs Steam Beer.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 74%
Flaked Barley – 10%
Caramalt – 9%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 3%
Chocolate Malt – 2%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 1%
Hops:
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (First Wort Hop)
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Chinook Pellet – 12.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g
Cascade Pellet – 5.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 80g
Rakau (Organic) Pellet – 11.5 % @ 0 mins – 89g (all Late hops will have a 20-30min steep)
Dry Hops:
Maybe…
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (reduced as I only just hit 75% yesterday)
Bitterness: 47 EBU (25% Utilisation)
Colour: 75 EBC
Malt & Temp:
Lots of Pellet hops:
New mesh Hop-Stopper with first wort hops:
First batch spargings running onto the new Hop-stopper and First Wort Columbus hops:
Its an altered boil alright, it rumbles around to its self and splatters occasionally, seems active enough:
In go 80g of Whole Columbus and 129g of Pellet hops:
OG: 1043/44, Refractometer said I was right on the money at 1045:
Torch held at the back of the trial jar, wort was nice and clear in comparrison to some of the wort I’ve had lately:
Loads of sludge in the copper, the new Mesh Hop-Stopper worked a treat and drained right down with the syphon effect sucking loads of wort out of the pellet sludge:
Maybe not the nicest looking soldering but it blooming well worked:
The Mash was on at 12:25 and I was all cleaned up by about 17:00, it all went rather smoothly. Maybe its time to start using my Plate Chiller as leedsbrew suggested! 2 packs of Saflager W34/70 Yeast pitched at 19-20c I’ll leave it on the cold garage floor to cool down overnight and let it go from there.
*24th Mar ’12 – FG 1011-12 put in fridge to warm up a little for a, probably un-needed, diacetyl rest. No dry hopping this tastes fantastic and clean as it is with a nice bit of bitterness coming through, I may actually transfer to a secondary FV and Lager this for a while (must ask a few Lagering questions on JBK).
*7th Apr ’12 – Bottled with 75g of White Sugar, tasting rather nice it has so far exceeded my expectations 🙂 I never bothered with any Dry hopping, I’ll be looking forward to this once its Carbonated up.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 