Posts Tagged ‘craft beer’
AG#94 – Hooded Embarrassment
Posted on: February 3, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Hooded Embarrassment – Thought I’d try squeeze in a brew for the Revolutions Brewery ‘Competition’ so I’m going for something a bit different after reading something about a Mittlefruh IPA in Stan Hieronymus‘ new book ‘For the love of Hops‘. I could have sworn that I had a pack of Mittlefruh in the Hop-Freezer, sadly I didn’t but what I did have was a pack of Mount Hood hops which are an American grown relation of Mittlefruh.
Vienna malt for some added maltiness and lots of carapils to retain body and hopefully balance the bitterness.
I’ve had a nice bottle of Mallinsons Brewery ‘Aramis’ and I thought it had a good spicy bitterness to it so that is forming my bittering additions, I’ll dry hop with Mt. Hood as soon as its passed 1020-1015 in the fermenter, then try and get bottled in good time to allow for it to condition up and mature before it has to be judged.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 2880g – 60%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 720g – 15%
Vienna Malt – 720g – 15%
Wheat Malt – 480g – 10%
Hops:
Aramis – 8.9 % @ 60 mins – 32g (First Wort Hop)
Aramis – 8.9 % @ 30 mins – 32g
Mount Hood – 7.5 % @ 10 mins – 30g
Mount Hood – 7.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g (Flameout steep for 30mins)
Dry Hops:
Mount Hood – 40g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.1 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 58 EBU
Colour: 6 EBC
Mash: 68°c for 60mins
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The malts, a very pale blend:
Some liquor treatment and First wort Aramis hops in the copper:
Hops prep’d, the full tablet of Protafloc went in with the 10mins hops:
Steeping hops, Mt. Hood, just turned the chiller on for a few seconds to kill the boil before adding the hops:
Everything sanitised with Starsan:
Got a little over 1052, I liquored-back to 1047, I must make another Brewday Record Sheet that includes the liquoring back:
No mucking about today, the mash was on at 10.55 (68°c) and I’m all cleared up and typing this now at about 16.00, I could probably have been done quicker if I’d tried.
Turfed out last weeks brew from the fermentation fridge and put todays brew in there set to 20°c, I’ll increase the temperature after a day or two to 21-22°c and hope to have it finished fermenting by the weekend.
Check out Revolutions Brewing on @RevolutionsBrew
Hopefully my yeast is good and I will make better beer than my un-entered attempt last year! 😉
*7th Feb ’13 – Dry Hopped at approx 20°c with 40g Mt.Hood, giving a good stir in through the yeast head, Gravity @ 1017.
*8th Feb ’13 – Gravity @ 1010.5 so gone a bit passed the 1012 predicted, again give the hops a good stir and squashed them against the side of the FV. Tastes rather good with a big woody/spicy flavour and spicy bitterness, I may well enjoy this 😉
*Bottled 18th Feb ’13 – with 90g White Sugar.
*22nd Feb ’13 – Early taster, a little green and slightly grassy, has a really solid spicy bitterness.
*25th Feb ’13 – Taster tasting good, nice sessionable ale, no big brash hops just a balance of bitterness and spice with woody orange tones.
AG#70 – Ta Moko
Posted on: December 18, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 10 Comments
Ta Moko – This is a tweaked re-brew of AG#16 Once Were Warriors The hopping is just about identical but I’ve changed the malts a little and dropped the ABV to 4% for a nice easy drinker.
The original was very tasty with a chalky bitterness, I’m hoping for the same again.
Some may have to forgive my beer naming, Wikipedia tells me there is a more acceptable term for Maori designed Tattoo which is Kirituhi meaning “Drawn Skin”. I have my own piece of ‘Drawn Skin’ on my thigh which was done in Auckland at www.mokoink.com
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 80%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 10%
Wheat Malt – 8%
Cara Munich Type III – 2%
Hops:
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 60 mins – 15g (FWH)
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 15 mins – 10g
Nelson Sauvin – 12.6 % @ 10 mins- 50g
Nelson Sauvin – 12.6 % @ 0 mins – 50g (80°c for 20-30mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 52 EBU (25% Hop Utilisation)
Colour: 8 EBC
Yeast: Safale US-05
Mash: 67°c for 60mins (I got 85% Mash efficiency)
Weighing out the Calcium Chloride & Magnesium Sulphate:
Malt was at 9°c this morning:
Mash temp 67°c:
Pacific Gem and lots of Nelson Sauvin hops:
Sparge running into copper:
The 10 min Nelson Sauvin addition, hops all sticky and smelling lovely:
Break material forming while cooling with the Copper Immersion Cooler:
OG: 1040 will do me, my neighbour just gave me a longer (hence hopefully more accurate) hydrometer:
All done and in the fermentation fridge at 19.5°c
*Bottled 28th Dec ’11 – with 70g white sugar, tasting good enough to drink from the FV, very clean and bags of Nelson Sauvin Flavour, this will be spot on once its carbonated up 🙂
*1st Jan ’12 – Very very early taster, Cat-Piss, Grapes, Muskiness, little bit of Kiwi maybe, classic Nelson Sauvin.
Thanks again to Rob at Hopzine for another glowing review:
Mallinsons Brewery, Huddersfield
Posted on: October 21, 2011
Today I drove the 50-or-so minutes over to see Tara & Elaine at Mallinsons Brewery in Huddersfield.
If you’ve never heard of or had a Mallinsons beer you’ll be sure to enjoy them as they make some really well balanced beers, nothing too mental and they hit a lovely hoppy-middle-ground… Something like the Beer equivalent of the Goldilocks-Zone.
Have a look down their rather long list of brewed beers on their website & Check the brewery installation photos too.
Out of their beers I’ve had they have always been superb, bags of flavour & aroma, and a nice amount of body, and all hand-filled & bottled-conditioned (even veggie & vegan friendly) and they even sacrifice their office space to lovingly warm condition them before a cold conditioning phase.
Tara and Elaine started life as school teachers, Before starting the brewery Tara was experimenting with small homebrew batches making beer with Malt Extract & Hops before doing a 3-4 day Brewlab course and a Mossbrew course, then the first brew was done with David Porter… after that they were in at the deep end! Doing 2 brews per week was all that one person could manage with sales / racking and deliveries, during this time Elaine was still working in her old job to help pay Tara a wage while the business found its feet. I think they’ve found their feet now and the all girl team is now three strong with Elaine now brewing too (When Tara is not around!).
They now brew four times per week to keep up to demand, a success story from Homebrewer to well respected commercial Microbrewery.
Here are a few snaps of the brew-house, this is the 6-Barrel Copper – Mash Tun – Hot Liquor Tank, all wood-clad / built & installed by David Porter:
Another view of the kit:
The 4 Stainless steel Fermenting vessels:
Sterilised bottles ready to be filled:
The simplistic approach to hand bottling, straight from un-fined casks, I thought it would be a bit more technical than this so its nice to see things kept simple & straight forward:
Thanks again for taking the time to talk to me about brewing and process, it is always very nice to see how others work. 🙂
AG#61 – Amarillo Weizen
Posted on: August 7, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Amarillo Weizen – Part 2 of my Weizen experiment, again using Whitelabs WLP300. It was another long Mash today as I had to go down to work for a while so it had a 2 hour 10 min mash!
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 50%
Lager Malt – 40%
Melanoidin Malt – 10%
Hops:
Amarillo AA 6.7 % @ 60 mins – 44g
Amarillo AA 6.7 % @ 5 mins – 38g
Final Volume: 21 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 30.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 38 EBU
Colour: 16 EBC
Malts, Salts & Temp (I used the Liquor Treatment calc at THBF today for a change):
I decided to have a play at recirculating the wort on both batch sparges (as Leedsbrew did last weekend), though sad to say I only managed a pathetic 68% mash efficiency. I’m again amazed at my False Bottom in the mash tun, I was recirculating at full throttle with a very good flow:
Late hops with protafloc tablet go in at 5minutes left of boil:
Some hops, the Amarillo were smelling lovely:
OG is 1054:
Yeast pitched from a split from last week, 330ml crown capped bottle at room temperature pitched into 20°c wort. I was about 4 litres down in the FV but I’m not going to Liquor-back, it will save on bottling!
*Bottled 21st Aug ’11 with 60g of White Sugar
A Tale of 3 Weizen
Posted on: July 16, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 11 Comments
I’ve been a fan of Schneider Weisse for a while now, their Hopfen-Weisse is lovely and @JamesClayBeers mentioned that it was *Amarillo hopped, and Schneider are bringing out a Nelson Sauvin hopped special version.
So I’ve got a vague brewing plan… having just started waking up some out of date Whitelabs WLP300 Hefeweizen yeast.
Current garage malt stocks are about half a sack each of Lager and Wheat malts, with a few kilos of Weyermann Munich I & II along with lots of cara/crystal-esque malts.
I’ve started the yeast off in 1 Litre of 1040 wort, which will hopefully get going ok, I’ll then add 2 or 3 Litres more after decanting the beer off the yeast sediment and let it ferment out and again decant off some of the beer then split the yeast 3-ways for three different Hefeweizen. One will be German hopped, one American Hopped and another will use New Zealand hops.
*Thanks to the kind email reply from Sandra at www.schneider-weisse.de I now know that its the Brooklyn Brewery Hopfen-Weisse which is hopped with Amarillo and the Schneider is hopped with Saphir. – Its brilliant when breweries are helpful towards homebrewers, gives you that warm fuzzy feeling 🙂
The following recipes could change! (assume Mash Efficiency: 75 %) I’d probably treat my liquor to a Lager profile and I would be using Protofloc copper finings.
Nelson Weizen – Brewday #1 Complete
- Wheat Malt – 50%
Lager Malt – 45%
CaraHell – 5% - Nelson Sauvin – 13.0 % @ 60 mins – 23g
Nelson Sauvin – 13.0 % @ 5 mins – 40g - Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.050
Bitterness: 40 EBU
Colour: 13 EBC
Amarillo Weizen – Brewday #2 Complete
- Wheat Malt – 50%
Lager Malt – 40%
Melanoidin Malt – 10% - Amarillo – 9.4 % @ 60 mins – 34g
Amarillo – 9.4 % @ 5 mins – 40g - Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.050
Bitterness: 40 EBU
Colour: 16 EBC
Then one of the following, either a Munich malt based or a really basic Hefe.
Munich Weißbier – Brewday #3 Complete
- Wheat Malt – 60%
Munich Malt I (Weyermann) – 30%
Munich Malt II (Weyermann – 10% - Hallertauer Hersbrucker – 2.9 % @ 60 mins – 20g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.1 % @ 60 mins – 20g
Hallertauer Hersbrucker – 2.9 % @ 10 mins – 10g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.1 % @ 10 mins – 10g - Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.050
Bitterness: 16 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC
Hefe
- Wheat Malt – 60%
Lager Malt – 40% - Hallertauer Hersbrucker – 2.9 % @ 60 mins – 40g
Hallertauer Hersbrucker – 2.9 % @ 10 mins – 20g - Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.050
Bitterness: 13 EBU
Colour: 5 EBC
Thoughts on recipes most appreciated, cheers 🙂
AG#56 – C.N.S Hops²
Posted on: May 28, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
C.N.S Hops² – For today’s brew I had the company of Gordon from Elland Brewery, we’d sorted our recipe idea via email using an interesting selection of Cara-Crystal style malts for a ‘hopefully’ multi-layered maltiness with a host of New-world hops. The Bittering addition was to be Pacific Gem & Magnum with the Citra, Nelson Sauvin & Simcoe as a 80c Steep… though… Just a slight hiccup, and subsequent name change, not a major problem just a bit more bitterness than planned 🙂 I managed to throw in the 80c steep hops as First Wort Hops!! (Doh!)
So the beer has been rationalised with its hop varieties now and about 30 EBU’s higher than the original idea.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 78%
Vienna Malt – 10%
Cara Red – 4%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 4%
Cara Munich Type III – 4%
Hops:
Citra – 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 30g (FWH)
Nelson Sauvin – 11.3 % @ 60 mins – 40g (FWH)
Simcoe – 12.9 % @ 60 mins – 20g (FWH)
Citra – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 25g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Nelson Sauvin 11.7 % @ 0 mins – 41g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Simcoe – 12.2 % @ 0 mins – 20g (80c Steep for 30 mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.057 (actually missed this, and got maybe 1050-ish)
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 94 EBU
Colour: 55 EBC
The rest of the day was myself & Gordon chatting about brewing and beer, tasting a few of my homebrews and a few commercial beers. Thanks go to my brew-monkey for the name change from P.M.C.N.S to C.N.S Hops² (Hops Squared).
Some of the Hops being weighed out:
The regular Mash Tun in the 3-Tier Setup:
First Wort hops should have been Pacific Gem & Magnum (oops!):
Good rolling boil with the chiller in to sterilise:
Think I may have over-sparged a litre or so due to being too busy nattering:
Hop Left-overs and Trub, now going into my new Compost Bin:
A good day, fairly simple recipe, fairly simple brewers! Good to see you again Gordon.
Probably not going to dry hop, though I may do a small trial with some Styrian Hop oil from The Malt Miller cheers for the freebie, dry hopping with drops… weird!! Cheers Rob.
*Bottled 12th Jun ’11 with 75g of White sugar
*17th Jun ’11 Early taster!!
This is a week-ish in the bottle so far, so a very early taster. Dropped bright and is a lovely amber-red colour.
It has a very full on juicy fruit aroma followed by a good fruitiness in the mouth and a smooth teeth sucking / coating bitterness, maybe just a tiny hint of alcohol warmth.
The flavour is one that lingers on the pallet, bitterness is quite balanced and the body good.
I think you get a bit of malt on the nose too.
Aroma = Spot on.
Flavour = Just a bit green, one more week and it will be getting good.
Bitterness/Body = balanced, maybe it will dry out as it matures.
*26th June ’11
This tastes bloody good now!! Very nice.. Mmmmm Bitterness just where it should be, nice body and fruity and feck Mmmm!
AG#55 – Imperial Smoked Porter
Posted on: May 15, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 3 Comments
Imperial Smoked Porter – This is serving a couple of purposes; First is a Trial run of a big beer in my newly finished False bottom Mash tun; Second is using up some odd bags of malt and some older hops I had in the freezer and some other part bags of hops.
I’m not expecting the stated bitterness from my hops – http://www.wellhopped.co.uk/Product.htm so I’m going semi-worst case scenario and adjusting AA for age and storage.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70.2%
Caramalt – 8.2%
Peat Smoked Malt, medium – 4.2%
Amber Malt – 3.9%
Oat Malt – 3.5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2.3%
Crystal Wheat Malt – 2.4%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Flaked Wheat – 1.6%
Chocolate Malt – 1.5%
Flaked Rye 0 EBC – 0.5%
Hops:
Bobek – 3.7 % @ 75 mins – 124g (FWH)
Admiral – 12 % @ 75 mins – 19g (FWH)
Herkules – 15.8 % @ 75 mins – 35g (FWH)
Brewers Gold – 9.1 % @ 10 mins – 68g
Cascade – 5.5 % @ 0 mins – 29g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Saaz – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 33g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Simcoe – 12.9 % @ 0 mins – 20g (Flame-out Steep for 20mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.076
Final Gravity: 1.021
Alcohol Content: 7.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 36.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 20.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (I collected 32L @ 1055 so hit efficiency but had too much liquor)
Bitterness: 121 EBU (I’m not expecting this as the bittering hops were fairly old so subtracting 30% from the AA will be more like 90EBU)
Colour: 140 EBC
Mashed for 90mins @ 66c
Boil for 75mins
Liquor treatment as per GW calc for General Purpose
Bigger bucket than normal with 8.5kg of malts:
New mash tun full of hot liquor:
Initial Mash a little high, cooled with cold liquor to 66c:
Tidy brewsheet (version 3, other two are scibbly works in progress) along with late hops:
Quite a heap of first Wort Hops in the copper along with the common salt addition:
What lies beneath, mash leftovers under the mash screen:
10 min hops going in:
Break material clumping in the copper:
Looks near as damn it to me (Showing 72 +2 divisions in the meniscus = 1076), not bad for a first outing of the new Mash Tun:
I had 3.7 Litres in the new mash tun to just cover the false bottom, the first sparge top-up was a little over 3 litres so I didn’t top-up and subtracted the difference from the Second batch sparge. This was to take into account the liquor under the screen, I ended up with 32 Litres in the copper which i thought too much but by the end of the 75min boil I was at my predicted gravity so I must have worked things out right!
Thoughts on the False bottom:
The mash ran off very well and after a few jugs of recirculating it was also very clear.
After stirring the second sparge and running off I came back to the mash tun to find it had run a load of malt particles into the copper as the last of the mash drained out. I’ll have to keep an eye on it next time to stop this just as it starts to show bits coming through, or have a go a Fly sparging so as to not actually disturb the Mash bed and hopefully limit the amount of malt particles coming through.
New cleaning game, poking bits of malt out of the perforated stainless!
16th May ’11
The usual, Stout+S-04 ferment 🙂 :
*Bottled 25th May ’11 with 71g of White sugar and a tiny sprinkle of Nottingham yeast into each bottle as a bit of a safety precaution as it had dropped very bright. Finished at 1016-1018 so about 7.7% ABV.
*4th JUne ’11 Taster bottle, tasting good the Peat Smoked malt works well with the Strength of this beer, Bitterness just right so I’m glad I adjusted the hop Alpha acids for my older hops.
- In: Brewing
- 10 Comments
I just finished building my 45L Igloo Coolbox with Stainless False Bottom its been a fair bit of grinding with an Angle Grinder to make the right shape to fit the moulding of the coolbox, finished off in a few places with some 5/16th beer-line for a snug fit and to fix a corner I took a bit too much off, Its all spaced off the bottom with stainless cap screws. I could have fixed the corner and put Beer-line all round the circumference but had done enough grinding to make-fit.
Some of the tools used:
Drilled out Tank Connector with modified Elbow fitted so it is level with the flat base of the tun thanks to the coolbox moulding where the tap fits:
Stainless Steel Cap Screws used as stand-offs so about 25-30mm up from bottom:
Another Cap Screw in the centre to lift it out with:
Outside with Tank Connector & Ball Valve fitted:
False Bottom Fitted:
I had to give the Perforated stainless a good soak and scrub in Washing Soda to remove all grease that came on it.
I have to say this was easier than cutting and soldering loads of bits of copper pipe… Just needs a test run now! Maybe a BIG beer or a Parti-Gyle brew.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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