Posts Tagged ‘brewday’
AG#128 – Belgian Hop Burst
Posted on: September 21, 2014
Belgian Hop Burst – I wasn’t going to brew today I was going to trim the hedges, I decided to skim the yeast from the Belgian Extra Blonde in the fermenter so I could experiment more with WLP575. The yeast had thrown off a lot of sulphur while fermenting I’d guess for one of two reasons; 1/ its just a yeast that does that sort of thing, 2/ the liquor treatment I used had too much in the way of sulphates in it so it made the yeast express this with co2 as it fermented. The FV had been left on the garage floor and the thermometer strip on the side said it was at a pretty steady 22c, if that thermometer was actually a bit wrong the beer could have fermented too cool and the lack of vigorous fermentation may have stopped enough of the sulphurous odors from gassing off, though its not like I’m saying the yeast didn’t ferment vigorously as it went off like a rocket spewing out all over the garage floor 🙂
So yeah, the hedges are still in need of trimming but I have made wort! I am aiming for a fruity, malty & sweet sort of beer, this recipes lack of sugar will hopefully be compensated for by the lower mash temp than that of AG#127… we shall see.
The yeast flavour is actually quite clean so the double edged sword of a warmer more controlled ferment coupled with no added sulphates, just a simple Tsp of CaCl, will hopefully bring out more of a Belgian character and gas-off any volatile sulphur compounds.
Recipe Specs
Batch Size (L): 20.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.166
Total Hops (g): 90.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048 (°P): 11.9
Final Gravity (FG): 1.010 (°P): 2.6
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.03 %
Colour (SRM): 11.3 (EBC): 22.3
Bitterness (IBU): 27.2 (Rager)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60
Malts:
3.334 kg Pale Malt (80%)
0.208 kg CaraGold (5%)
0.208 kg Dark Crystal 340 ebc (5%)
0.208 kg Munich I (5%)
0.208 kg Vienna (5%)
Single step Infusion at 65°C for 60 Minutes.
Hops:
2.0 g Willamette Leaf (6.4% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (First Wort) (0.1 g/L)
44.0 g Ahtanum Leaf (4.5% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Flameout Stand) (2.2 g/L) (Software calculated as 5min boil)
44.0 g Columbus Leaf (16.5% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Flameout Stand) (2.2 g/L) (Software calculated as 5min boil)
My yeast was raring to do with just a little wort added to it at the start of transfer so I’ll probably end up making a yeasty mess of the fermentation fridge… which is set to 24c
Malts and Calcium Chloride:
A massive 2g of First Wort Hops!
Liquored back to 1048:
*22 Sep ’14 – Gravity at 1014.5 thats fair ripped through the fermentation since pitching yesterday and no sulphurous odors and flavour is still quite clean, hop flavours tasting good.
*Bottled 4th Oct ’14 – with 70g of sugar in just short of 20L, tastes good, has more character with the warmer ferment, could use a touch more Dark Crystal to boost the colour a bit and hit a deeper red.
*15th Oct ’14 – This is tasting rather good, it has a nice slick mouth coating body, I could go a touch heavier on the hops but otherwise has good depth.
AG#117 – Waimea Amarillo Ahtanum
Posted on: March 22, 2014
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Waimea Amarillo Ahtanum – I’ll think up a better name than this! This is my brew for the bar at Saltaire Brewery / NCB Competition, I’ve gone for Flaked Oats & Barley in there and the water profile is for a Mild to try and keep some good body. I plan to dry hop this brew in the FV and probably a light dry hop in the cask too. Oh, btw… its a ‘Hoppy Blonde’ 😉
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 71.3%
Munich Malt – 9.6%
Flaked Barley – 6.5%
Caramalt – 4.8%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 4.8%
Flaked Oats – 3.1%
Hops:
Cluster Pellet 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 3g (FWH)
Waimea Pellet 14.9 % @ 15 mins – 22g
Amarillo Whole 10.1 % @ 15 mins – 22g
Ahtanum Pellet 5.2 % @ 15 mins – 16g
Waimea Pellet 14.9 % 0 mins – 40g
Amarillo Whole 10.1 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Ahtanum Pellet 5.2 % @ 0 mins – 20g
Cluster Pellet 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 6g (Just ‘cos 6g isn’t worth keeping)
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.041
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 29 EBU
Colour: 9 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mash: 68°c for 90mins
Liquor Treatment: THBF Mild profile
The Malts:
A Massive 3 whole grams of bittering hops:
The Waimea Turd, smelled great and were really sticky:
Running off the mash and heating the copper:
In go the 15min hops:
Flameout hops for a 20minute Copper stand:
Ended up with an OG of 1049 so liquored back to 1041 giving me 26.22L in the FV, using a fair amount of hop pellets in the boil has stopped hop absorption in comparison to whole hops, this should leave plenty of beer to fill a cask and get some bottles 🙂
*26th Mar ’14 – Gravity at 1010.5 so Dry Hopped with Amarillo 32g, Ahtanum 34g & Waimea 39g so round about 4g/litre
*Cask & Bottled 3rd Apr ’14 – Tasting good, decided not to dry hop the cask.
*12th Apr ’14 – This won the show of hands for ‘Best Cask Ale’ at the Northern Craft Brewers Competition at Saltaire Brewery 🙂
*26th Apr ’14 – Having a bottle of this now and its rather blooming good, its quite dry but a lovely flavour, more of a 4% IPA.
This years Homebrew review of the year isn’t going to be as lengthy as other years as I’ve simply not brewed as much and didn’t try that hard when it came to the National Homebrew Competition, some serious time was spent building a car-port style affair at the side of the house, so the list bellow is the best of what I had time to brew…
- AG #110 – Ring of Fire IPA
This one is also still fermenting, but it smells & tastes so good I thought I’d add it to my end of year round up, it has promise whether I dry hop it or not 😉 - AG #109 – Mittlefruh Junga Blonde
This isn’t actually bottled at the time of writing this but tastes from the FV have been displaying some the traits I was wanting so I have high hopes for another easy drinker like AG#108 but with more spicy character. - AG #105 – Summit 73 E366
This is bloody marvelous, I hope they re-release Experimental 366 in future years and let us know what its going to be called. - AG #104 – NZ Sour Wheat
My Sour Mashed wheat beer, this is a style I’d like to pursue further, I dropped lucky and got a really nice balance between the Sour and the balancing sweetness and body. - AG #103 – Farmhouse Rye Noir
My first attempt at a Saison and it turned out damn well too 🙂 - AG #102 – Gods of War
Easy drinking mix of under-used hops, worthy of a re-brew but with more cara/crystal/hotter-mash/flaked-barley. - AG #101 – SCAN
Mental but good, in hindsight I’d go a bit easier on things to ensure more of a crowd-pleaser. - AG #100 – Altitudinous Cable
Everything to the MAX, a touch too much Max which has taken time to settle down, VERY hoppy, this is going to age really well over a few years 🙂 - AG #99 – BoomStick
Massively easy drinking simple recipe. - AG #98 – Robust Wheat Porter
It seems these user-upper brews always turn out well, this is a mega solid porter with hints of smoke. - AG #96 – Bravo+Apollo=Citra?
An experiment that turned out good. - AG #94 – Hooded Embarrassment
Maybe not my best beer but it ticks enough boxes and made for enjoyable drinking. - AG #93 – Pacific Rim
Nice little hop-combo and worthy of a re-brew.
A nice surprise this year was this book through the post from Andy Hamilton featuring a couple of my homebrew recipes, its full of good stuff and obviously some cracking recipes 😉
Too many hops and so little time!
My Hop-Freezer is bulging, I should make 2014 the year when I don’t buy any hops!
Sad to say the 50L copper I am building and said in last years review I would finish, is still not complete just the hop-filter to sort out and a mate to finish the socket wiring, I obviously need to get my finger out once the wiring is done.
What I want to do in 2014 is get an upt-to-date Liquor test by Murphy & Son and maybe get my digital Thermometer calibrated so when I mash in at 69°c I am really mashing in at 69°c! (for most beers 69°c seems to be the mash temperature that makes us-05 get to the FG that BeerEngine says it will!)
Happy New Year to all
AG#110 – Ring of Fire IPA
Posted on: December 27, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Ring of Fire IPA – if you recall sometime last year I did a brew called ‘Ring of Fire‘ which had some big orange notes to it from hopping, this is the IPA version with added Nelson Sauvin, the NS should add a good muskiness.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70%
Flaked Wheat – 13%
Munich Malt I (Weyermann) – 10%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 4%
Cara Hell (Weyermann) – 3%
Hops:
NZ Pacifica – 6.1 % @ 60 mins – 40g
Pacific Jade – 15.1 % @ 60 mins – 23g
Pacific Jade – 15.1 % @ 5 mins – 30g
NZ Pacifica – 6.1 % @ 5 mins – 30g
Nelson Sauvin – 13.0 % @ 5 mins – 30g
Dry Hops:
Pacific Jade – 35g
NZ Pacifica – 35g
Nelson Sauvin – 35g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 78 EBU
Colour: 11 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 67c
Yeast: Safale us-05 x2
The Malts, it was actually 11c once it had settled down:
The First Wort Hops:
Recirculating the first runnings:
Sparge number 1:
Break material after cooling, just half a Protafloc Tab:
Running off to FV, 2 packs of yeast used rather than 1 pack which would be slightly under-pitching:
Bit of a late start, my day didn’t go to plan, but the wort tasted great and the hops smelled just right 🙂
*29th Dec ’13 – Gravity at 1023.5 and tasting all woody and musky, very nice, smells ace 🙂
*2nd Jan ’14 – Tasting really good before dry hopping so I’ve decided to leave it as it is, from experience the main hop character from dry hopping would have been the Nelson Sauvin.
*Bottled 11th Jan ’14 with 129g White sugar, tasting good.
*22 Jan ’14 – Tasting good, a nice blend of all three hops with nothing over powering, maybe a touch more bitterness would be nice.
Mittlefruh Junga Blonde – Another easy drinker which might just be ready in time for over Christmas, this time using German Mittlefruh & Polish Junga, I’ve tweaked the malt bill a tiny bit from my last brew loosing 2% Carapils and making sure I hit my 69°c mash temp.
I’m hoping the addition of Junga will add a spice-character, I’ve also increased the bitterness just a touch to try emphasize this.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 82%
Vienna Malt – 10%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 8%
Hops:
Junga – 12.3 % @ 60 mins – 11g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.9 % @ 60 mins – 10g
Junga – 12.3 % @ 5 mins – 24g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.9 % @ 5 mins – 24g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.037
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.6% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 25 EBU
Colour: 4 EBC
Mash: 60mins @ 69°c
Yeast: Safale us-05
The malts:
Recirculating the first few jugs of wort and a tiny amount of FWH:
These Junga are smelling particularly nice:
Running off to FV:
Gave my FV a thorough clean/sanitise as the last thing that was in here was my Kraftwort smoked beer and it still had a slight taint to it.
Left it cooling really slowly while we went out, got back and it was at 12°c (oops) and I’d hot-liquored back on the FV with 2 litres from the HLT so only had 620ml to liquorback in the FV so no chance to warm things up with that, its now in the Fermentation Fridge set to 20°c so should warm up pretty soon.
*Bottled 30th Dec ’13 – with 127g of sugar
*8th Jan ’14 – Early-ish taster, this is rather good, a little bit of sweetness, a nice amount of body with subtle tasty hops. (I’ll taste again when my cold has gone, but I reckon this is a good one)
AG#107 – iFuggle
Posted on: November 9, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
iFuggle – I’ve been threatening doing this for a while, a big-ass Fuggle IPA, its an experiment and I may not like it but thats no reason not to try! And its a while since I made a British IPA.
The Dextrose will go in with the Protafloc in the last 10 minutes so as not to effect the hop utilisation, I’m using a couple of @MagicRockStu’s tips too.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 80%
Dextrose – 12.4%
Vienna Malt – 5.5%
Amber Malt – 2%
Hops:
Cluster Pellet – 7.9 % @ 75 mins – 150g (Start of boil)
Fuggle Whole – 5.1 % @ 5 mins – 150g
Fuggle Pellet – 4.3 % @ 0 mins – 100g (Dry Hop in FV)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.083
Final Gravity: 1.019
Alcohol Content: 8.4% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 137 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC
Mash: 60-90mins @ 63°c (I actually hit 64°c)
Boil: 75mins
Yeast: Safale us-05 – 2 packs
The malts, a fairly full bucket with just over 7kg:
150g Cluster T90 pellets:
Second batch sparge running in:
In go the pellets at the start of boil:
The late whole fuggles go in at 5mins left:
I liquored back from 1085.5 to 1083, and ended up with 22.3L in the FV:
Yeast pitched at 20°c, in the fermenting fridge set to 20°c too, cleaned up, no fuss as usual 🙂
*16th Nov ’13 – Gravity at 1021, tasting rather sweet, could that 1°c higher than my planned 63°c mash temp be to blame? I was hoping for nearer to 1010 by now. I have dry hopped with with 100g Fuggles pellets and given it a good rouse, hopefully it will drop a few more points.
*18th Nov ’13 – Gravity at 1013 this is more like it, a couple more points and I’ll be happy.
*20th Nov ’13 – Gravity at 1008! Makes this 10% which is quite a big beer and about 2% stronger than planned 😀
*Bottled 30th Nov ’13 – with about 75g white sugar, my scales were messing me around, tastes strong and traditional, good dark straw colour. It actually finished fermenting at 1006.5 making it 10.2%!
I went down to see Shane at www.cheshirebrewhouse.co.uk yesterday to do a collaboration brew.
The brew was to be a Black IPA made with, among other things, Weyermann Sinamar Carafa Extract and Warrior hops, we stuck to a simple malt bill with Pale malt and a little Munich and adding sugar at the end of boil to take us into the 6.7ABV area.
The dry goods in the Mash Tun, Shane Underlets to mash in, this was a first for me as I’ve always used a Hydrator so the malt and liquor are already mixing as they hit the tun. For those that don’t know, Shane built all his brewkit from second-hand vessels and insulated and clad them himself:
The FV’s:
Shane paddling hard at the mash:
All the FV’s have a name, this is the temp controller belonging to Gertrude:
Underback and pump:
Sparge arm spinning:
Shane rubbing up the 10minute hops:
This is his take on a hop filter (Used to be Hop-back), the copper has a big 4 inch butterfly valve on the base of the cone so the spent hops in the copper are simply poked down thru the outlet to clean out:
This was either the late sugar addition or the late Steep hops going in:
Some beery treasure I brought home with me 🙂
We had some fun and games with a stuck mash and the copper was on a go-slow at getting to the boil, it was hopped with first Wort Warrior hops then 10 mins before the end of boil more Warrior & US-Magnum, finally finished with a late 85c steep of Simcoe, Chinook and Experimental 366. The Sinamar was added while recirculating and the colour checked…. It was black 😉
The wort was tasting great with little to no roast character, this is what we were aiming for with the Sinamar… so look out for “Stormy Point” Dark and Moody IPA from @shaneswindells you might see @pdtnc or @SaltaireBrewAde on the bottle labels & Pump Clips etc
Cheers for a great day Shane
AG#104 – NZ Sour Wheat
Posted on: September 22, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
NZ Sour Wheat – This is the start of my brewday on Sunday, but its still Wednesday!
I have just mashed 2.45kg of Pale malt in my old mini-mash Tun, 66°c for 60mins, then added about 2-3L of cold water to bring the temp down to 49°c with another 1kg of pale malt added to the mash to add some Lactobacillus to the Mash. I have put my little mash tun into my FV fridge set at 46°c and i hope to keep the temperature above 35°c as it says here http://beerandwinejournal.com/fossil-cove-sour-mash-experiment/ I did as it states and I covered the mash with cling-film and topped it off with a blanket of co2.
The Sour Mash:
My Main Mash is to be on Sunday and I’ll update this more then.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 40%
Wheat Malt – 25%
Wheat Malt, Dark (Weyermann) – 25%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Melanoidin (Weyermann) – 5%
Hops:
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @ 60 mins – 20g
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @10 mins – 30g
NZ Hallertau Aroma – 8.2 % @0 mins – 30g
Pacific Jade – 15.1 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 22 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC
Mash: 75mins @ 69°c
Boil: at least 75mins
Yeast: NBS Weiss, I assume this is Munich Wheat yeast.
Copper Finings: Protafloc @ 10mins left to boil
I’m expecting a fair few spec-changes, I’m thinking of my combined Run-off / sparge to be no more than 30L, I may get more, I may boil down, I will no doubt have a gravity change which will also effect the bitterness…. 
**Sunday**
To start off with I prepared my malts while the HLT was heating:
Then Checked the Sour Mash, it was 33°c in the center and smelled like the waste malt skip at work, I’m pretty pleased it managed to stay at 33c as @lugsy51 tells me that should be alright:
The top of the mash, even though it was covered in Cling-film had changed to a darker shade than the rest of the mash underneath:
I added about 3.8L boiling water to the Sour mash and gave it a good stir before running off about 7L into the copper, these are the weirdest first runnings I’ve ever had, the photo below shows them as clear as they were going to get:
The copper was pretty full after the main mash was sparged with about 32L in total, I liquored back 3L as the boil progressed checking with my Refractometer:
I did a 10min & Flamout (90°c Steep) additions, I’m hoping the Pacific Jade will give some Orange notes which i think will compliment the Wheat beer yeast:
I liquored back 3L to 1048, 2 points above my original predicted OG:
I tasted the Sour wort after it had 15mins of boiling, it was very sour (like so sour I went to spit in the sink!), I boiled it down to 5L with the hope of driving off some of the smell…! Things calmed down after today’s main mash was run to the copper with the wort ending up with just a subtle tang behind the malt sweetness at the end of boil, I’m told the sour will increase as the wort ferments and the sugars are used up.
Yeast was rehydrated and pitched into 30L at 20°c.
Things went very smoothly even with extended boil times running off the small sour mash worked well while the main mash was having its mash rest then the rest of the brewday was as per usual with just a slight lingering smell of the sour mash in the house, I was expecting worse! 🙂
Fingers crossed on this one as its all new to me!
*24th Sep ’13 – Gravity at 1019 and tastes pretty ok, a cider-like bite/tang.
*27th Sep ’13 – Gravity at 1018 and looks to have finished, have given it a rouse and will check again tomorrow, at this rate the beer will be really balanced against the lactic sourness.
*28th Sep ’13 – FG seems steady and I’ve just dry hopped this with 22g Motueka I had in the freezer.
*Bottled 5th Sep ’13 – Primed about 24L with 165g White Sugar, its got a permanent haze and tastes like cheap orange juice, though the balance of sweet to sour is quite good, hopefully it will carbonate up well and give it a crispness. With its starting and finishing gravities this beer is actually 3.9% ABV.
*16th Oct ’13 – Taster time… Yeasty Clove on the nose, quite light sparkling body on the pallet with a tang like fresh squeezed oranges. I’m hungry and this is making my belly rumble, bitterness is subtle and quite chalky but its hard to detect as the sourness and prickly carbonation cross the tongue first, with a few more mouthfuls the body feels to have a slick quality like a good Belgian Wit.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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