Posts Tagged ‘bitter’
AG#112 – Challenger Bitter
Posted on: January 5, 2014
Challenger Bitter – An English hopped Bitter hopefully with a massively malty presence. I’ve been wanting to do a 50% of each Munich+Vienna malts for a while, ideally as an IPA but I thought this would work quite nicely as I’m planning to serve it through a BeerEngine from either Cask or Bag-in-Box.
Fermentables:
Munich Malt – 43%
Vienna Malt – 43%
Caramalt – 9%
Crystal Rye Malt – 5%
Hops:
Cascade (UK) – 5.7 % @ 60 mins – 53g
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 0 mins – 100g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.046
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 32 EBC
Mash: 67c for 90mins
Yeast: Safale us-05 repitched from last brew
The usual and predictable photo of the malts:
Here’s a shot of the Galcium Chloride flakes, using the Mild water profile from THBF calc:
Lovely colour, it was a deep chestnut red:
Just about to drop a half protafloc:
Nice fulsome 100g late steep of Challenger:
Not the best start to the day, I found I hadn’t cleaned out the hops from the copper from the last brew so dug them out and gave the IC and ball-valve some extra TLC Boiling it while the mash was on.
*8th Jan ’14 – just got this in the brew-fridge, it is at 1017 but had got quite cool at 16.6°c, now set to warm up to 20°c so should finish fermenting in a day or two. Its amazing the difference in fermentation speed when re-pitching yeast skimmed of a previous brew, its made it easier to do this while I’ve been brewing every week. It wastes alright too 😉
*Racked to Bag-in-Box 11th Jan ’14 with 15g priming sugar and Allkleer Isinglass Finings.
A Brewday with Matt at Truefitt Brewing
It was last June during our wedding anniversary week in Whitby that me and Emma paid Matt a visit in his new Brewery, less than a year later Matt was coming up to his 100th brewed Gyle and had plans for brewing that beer the day I was there. He was not working full time last year, but now having stopped working for The Lions Den and taken on his first employee, he is out on his own.
Best laid plans! The day before our brewday a fused spur had blown and Matt had to cancel a brew doe to lack of hot liquor, so our brewday was Gyle #99 though I suppose in spirit it was still #100, it was to be a big 7%+ IPA hopped with recently released Mandarina Bavaria Hops from Germany.
I was on holiday, it felt wrong getting up this early but I got to Truefitt for 7.30am and found Matt had just started mashing in:
Run-off starts from the Mash Tun via the converted Keg Underback:
He said he was attaching the hop filter!:
The Copper Stand, this is where the last or late hops get to steep in the hot wort giving them time for the hop oils and flavours to infuse into the wort:
He aerates the wort via a sprayball while transferring to the fermenting vessel:
Matt is currently contract brewing for the one for the last breweries he worked at so was going some back-fills for us at Saltaire:
The Beer was named ‘Trembler’ after a previous and differently hopped brew of the same strength, its 7.4% and a Double IPA… I’m hoping to get my hands on some of this in bottle so I can add some tasting notes to the blog.
I had a good day with Matt and his new apprentice Jack, I hope to see Matt down at Saltaire sometime.
The last thing to note is that a Sausage & Tomato butty in Middlesbrough is at least 40p cheaper than in Shipley!!
You also can catch Matt on:
@TruefittBeers
Facebook/TruefittBeers
Some of his regular beers are:
All Bottle-Conditioned, Matt has chosen to hand bottle his beers to keep the full flavour, I’ve also got some other bottles from Truefitt Brewing to try soon 🙂
Click the Pics below to see what i thought of the beers 😉
- In: Brewing | Random
- 3 Comments
My Challenger & Fuggles plants were starting to get some brown bits on some of the hops so I diecded to pick them the other day, I plan to do a Gree-hopped beer so I vac-packed and froze them.
Some of the brown bits:
The red-tinge on the tops of the cones is not the brown you see above but the colouring of the Challenger hops:
Hops picked, me and the wife picked thru these again to remove any twigs and leaves:
All packed up and ready for the freezer:
I got 1.1kg of a mixture of Fuggles & Challenger, all the bines were entangled so I just picked the lot, so I’ll brew an English Homegrown green-hop bitter in a few weeks time.
I’ve still got a WGV plant to pick but I’m not too fussed about what WGV brings to a beer!
I arranged to go over to Dark Horse Brewery the other week to buy some local beer for a family member, a 12-pack of Hetton Pale bottles and the brewer, Richard, was kind enough to let me have some quality looking branded glassware.
Again it is nice to get another brewer’s perspective on brewing and beer and find out about how they do things and the process they follow to get a glorious Yorkshire pint of beer into the drinkers hand.
Richard runs a 15bbl plant at 10bbl brew-length which used to belong to Sharp’s in Cornwall, he treats his hard Dales Limestone water from his own bore-hole to soften it, ferments with his house yeast (I think he said it was originally Holts Brewery yeast) in square fermenters before transferring to conditioning tanks before racking to cask, all brewery effluent is treated on-site with a reed bed system… very ethical and must save a fortune long term.
The Brewery building:
A section of the Reed bed:
I won’t write about the beer as others with more eloquence have already done it for me, just click the links below, and do try a pint from the Dark Horse Brewery when you see it.
Hetton Pale Ale – paganum.wordpress.com
Yorkshire’s Perfect Pint – Craven Herald
Hetton Pale Ale – Good People Eats
Hetton Best Bitter – paganum.wordpress.com
Dark Horse Brewery – YourRound
Dark Horse Brewery – Quaffale
Magic Rock Brewing Co.
Posted on: November 11, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
One of Huddersfield’s newest breweries is Magic Rock , Rich is the boss who you might already know of from myBrewerytap, Stu is Head Brewer (Famed for eating Pork Pies on Youtube), recent addition is Scott the Drayman.
I’m not going to waffle on about Magic Rock too much when there is a great article in the Independent by Will Hawkes.
Needless to say, Magic Rock are brewing some stunningly excellent beers with my current personal favourite being ‘Highwire’ a thoroughly hop-forward & dry-hopped mouth coating loveliness of a beer.
The brewery was built and installed by www.malrexfabrication.co.uk who, as you can see from the following photos, have done a very professional job.
Its a bugger of a job making a Glass & Bottle look good with a torch in the kitchen!
From Left to right and anti-clockwise, Mash Tun, Bottom of Copper, Hopback:
I’m sure on the inside there is a sticker that says ‘Caution – Hop Surface’:
Bottoms of two conical fermenters:
The long-legged gas-fired Copper boiler:
Wort flow sight-glass and pipework, wort from the mash tun is re-circulated for clarity before being pumped to the copper:
Stu & Scott preparing the ‘Curious NZ’ hops for the Hopback:
Top of the copper:
Fermenter top hatch:
Another angle of the copper, through the plastic flaps is the Malt Loft; you can just see the grist case which is above the mash tun downstairs:
Filling the Hopback with lots of lovely whole-leaf hops:
Obligatory Sight Glass shot:
Two of the other fermenters, front filled with tasty Imperial Stout and the back has RockStar (the MagicRock & DarkStar collaboration brew):
Check them out on Twitter…
@MagicRockBrewCo @MagicRockRich @MagicRockStu @MagicRockScott @MagicRockJonny
Thanks for talking the time out of your day to let me take photos and talk beer ‘n brewing, it was good to hear Stu’s alternate views on yeast. I’m sure I learned a few things from you all 🙂
AG#66 – Centennial Blonde
Posted on: October 9, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Centennial Blonde – A blonde ale made with mostly lager malt, hopefully I’ll get somewhere close to www.drinkmallinsons.co.uk ‘Centennial’, at least hop Flavour-wise.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 79.1%
Wheat Malt – 7.9%
Oat Malt – 7.8% (using up a part bag, should add some fake body)
CaraHell (Weyermann) – 5.3%
Hops:
Centennial Whole 11.5 % @ 60 mins – 25g – (FWH)
Centennial Whole 11.5 % @ 10 mins – 20g
Centennial Whole 11.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g – (20 minute Copper Stand with the boil just cooled a little)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.036 (I actually got about 1038-1040)
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.1 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.1 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 36 EBU – I’ve set the hop utilisation in BeerEngine to 25% for this to see if things turn out a bit more realistic.
Colour: 5 EBC
Liquor Treatment: Gypsum 6.3g, Calcium Choride 6.3g, Epsom Salts 3.3g
Blended malts:
The garage brewery Corner, I thought I’d add a bit of an overview of my setup:
A few Centennial Hops, bag-ends from work are handy though this will last me for ages:
The Mash, lost 2°c over about 70mins:
Another view of the Brewery Corner, the other side of the garage is rather less tidy:
First sparge running into the copper onto the First Wort Hops, Just over 77% Mash efficiency:
Flameout hops going in:
The Money shot, hydrometer says a bit above what the Refractometer said:
All done and cleaned up in about 5 hours, Mashed in at 8.30am for 60mins, Batch Sparged, boiled for 60mins, Hop steep for 20mins, cooled, stood for 20mins then ran to fermenter and pitched Safale us-05 at 20°c
*Bottled 22nd Oct ’11 with 75g White Sugar – FG 1008 @ 18°c, tasting pretty good.
*Early taster was very nice last night, 27th Oct ’11, bitterness is much more believable with the 25% Hop utilisation figure and could maybe be set to 30% for subsequent brews. Though maybe one more brew at 25% with different hops and a higher IBU to double check.
AG#65 – Nelson Brucker II
Posted on: September 18, 2011
Nelson Brucker II – This will actually be my third use of this Hop combo but this version is truer to the first brew with tweaks and will be an entry into the www.gbhomebrew.co.uk competition. I’ll update the recipe after the closing date.
Malts:
Pale Malt – 79%
Crystal Rye Malt – 8%
Munich Malt – 8%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Hops:
Hallertauer Hersbrucker 6EBU @ 60mins
Nelson Sauvin 25EBU @ 60mins
Hallertauer Hersbrucker 60g @ 0mins
Nelson Sauvin 40g @ 0mins
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 26 EBC
Yeast: Safale US-05
Mash: 66c for 75mins
Boil: 60mins
Liquor: General Purpose Salts as per GW Calc
Malts etc:
Sparging Liquor Temp:
Mash Efficiency 77.4%:
Hops being weighed:
First Wort Hops, Hersbrucker & Nelson Sauvin:
Immersion Chiller in to sanitise during the last 15-20mins of the boil:
Wort cooled to about 80c before adding the Steep hops:
Lots of lovely Hersbrucker & Nelson Sauvin hops:
Break material while cooling, I cooled to 20c:
Its a lovely wort colour, I liquored back about 800ml to ensure I was getting 1044:
The wort is smelling fantastic, I’m looking forward to tasting this beer again 🙂
*Bottled 3rd Oct ’11 with 71g of White sugar, tasting great 🙂
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Yesterday I took the short trip over to Elland Brewery, West Yorkshire to meet Gordon the head-brewer for a proper chat after our first brief initial meeting at work (Saltaire Brewery). Elland use the same original Thwaites brewery yeast as we do at Saltaire.
The Mash Tun & Fermenters:
Gordon’s enthusiasm and excitement for brewing beer is very obvious and I thoroughly enjoyed a good few hours of nattering with him, tasting a few from their retained samples, and looking round their 10 Barrel Brew House.
My personal favourite sample was his Brewers Reserve which he’d dry hopped with New Zealand Motueka hops (Though not available in the shops, this was just an experiment) yummy stuff.
Gordon tells me that the plant originally came from one of the Firkin Brew-Pubs, with its all wood cladding and copper-domed boil kettle. He has a lot more technical know-how than myself with his Chemistry background, and is really got a handle on the entire brewing process with accurate process measurement and documentation and good practice procedure.
Gordon and the guys from Elland are not doing too shabby with their recent SIBA awards for the 1872 Porter, getting the 2010 Winter Gold and the 2011 National Gold. You’ve gotta love a full complex dark beer!
Mash tun to the front with valentine, Copper boiler behind with Fermenters to the left:
The Man himself with his FV’s:
Hopefully Gordon is enjoying my Home brewed beers I left with him, you can catch up on his Tweets @GJMcKiernan
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