Posts Tagged ‘first gold’
AG#78 – Pioneer’s Gold
Posted on: April 28, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Pioneer’s Gold – A Barley wine for the National Homebrew Competition (or maybe the Year after) and using fresh live yeast from work. I’ve been meaning to try this for a while and after seeing Graeme Coates’ brewday I thought I’d go for it. I’ve gone for 15 litres as i don’t think its something I’ll drink very fast and its nicely left room in the copper for an extra 10L sparge to extract more from the mash. Hopping is some Pioneer pellets and older First Gold that were in the Hop-Freezer.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 90%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Caramalt – 4%
Amber Malt – 1%
Hops:
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 25g (after a long boil down first)
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 17g
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 17g
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 10 mins – 17g
First Gold Whole 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 39g
Pioneer Pellet 9.5 % @ 0 mins – 56g (What was left in the bag)
Golding Whole 5.1 % @ 0 mins – 3g (I ran out of First Gold so made a small extra addition)
Final Volume: 15 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.100
Final Gravity: 1.024
Alcohol Content: 10.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 26.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 17.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 %
Bitterness: 73 EBU (The First Gold are pretty old now so i don’t expect to make this figure)
Colour: 22 EBC
Yeast: Thick skimmed yeast from Saltaire Brewery, fresh as you like.
Mash: 3 hours at 65°c, aimed for 66°c.
Liquor Treatment salts, shown here is the Calcium Chloride with Magnesium Sulphate on top:
Malts, Temp & Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate):
I went back to my old HTC Android for Strike Temp & Batch sparge volumes, this is even though I just got Beer Alchemy on the iPhone:
Pretty full, but I’m sure I could get a fair bit more in sometime:
First runnings, I recycled about 12 litres:
From the first sparge I collected 20 Litres @ 17.4 Brix so did an extra 10 Litre sparge and got 32 Litres @ 13.8 Brix, just over 64% Mash efficiency on the First sparge which I am quite happy with:
The first sparge was added kind of on the fly, then the extra 10 L sparge was added via my beta-version spinning sparge arm and the solar pump:
On the boil, I had to simmer for a while until I could turn up the heat:
Boiled off about 12-13 litres before adding the first hops, 3 hours 20 mins total boil time!:
Pioneer Pellets & First Gold hops:
I didn’t realise at this point but I think my refreactometer may have been exaggerating a bit:
Steep hops in for 30mins at Flameout:
I ended up collecting about 18 litres after doing some liquoring back towards the end of the boil (Thanks Refractometer, I should have stuck with my instincts as I would have been right!) did some small sugar additions to rescue a few OG points ended up with 1091. I pitched 100g of fresh, thick live yeast from work, MrMalty said 80-100ml, yeast pitched at 17°c:
A fairly relaxed day, second breakfast, drop the Mrs off at the train station, and walked the dogs while the mash was on, left the copper cleaning until the day after. Fermenter in the fridge set at 18°c for the first 24 hours then will hold at 20°c for a day or two before letting it free rise to 24°c, if its anything like at work this yeast will need a bit of TLC with a rouse every now and then.
This was my first Brewday taking all the photos on the iPhone, cracking photo quality and much easier than using the Canon DSLR, I use Instagram without any filters which kept everything in the nice square-blog-able format 🙂
*1st May ’12 – gravity at 1041 @ about 20°c, tasting very fruity almost like US hops!
*3rd May ’12 – Gravity 1027 @ 22°c tonight, not far from 1024 predicted FG, given it a good rouse… still tasting pretty sweet, hope some of this will dry out a bit.
*8th May ’12 – Down to 1015 @ 22°c I’m hoping its going to stop soon, it was 1016 yesterday so its getting close.
*9th May ’12 – Steady at 1015 now, chilling in stages probably 17°c then down to 11°c before bottling.
*12th May ’12 – Bottled with 90g White Sugar, got 45ish 330ml-ish bottles, the waiting game begins…..
*10th Sep ’12 – Tasting rather good, a nice malty toffee mouthful with warm lingering alcohol, a sweet lemoniness is also apparent.
AG#69 – Northdown IPA
Posted on: December 3, 2011
Northdown IPA – hopefully this will be a well bittered beer, I’m going easy on the late hops as I want the flavour to be balanced with the bitterness, the dry hopping will hopefully add some lighter flavour and aroma too.
My 69th All Grain brewday, ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’….
This brew is part of my research into brewing a good English IPA for the forthcoming NCB meeting / Competition at Saltaire Brewery in March next year, I may or may not enter the competition but either way I’ll be brewing for charity for the bar.
The Malt bill is a little off piste as I’m using Lager Malt as the base with some Munich to add back some maltiness to create a Faux-Pale-Malt with a touch of Dark Crystal for colour. I’ve currently got more Lager Malt, hence the reason for using it over Pale Malt.
It seems I have a mouse in the garage who has been nibbling the corner of my malt sack so its now been sealed up safely away from it in my usual blue HDPE bins.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 4620g – 75%
Munich Malt – 920g – 15%
Wheat Malt – 490g – 8%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 120g – 2%
Hops:
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 55g (FWH)
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 30 mins – 55g
Northdown – 7.5 % @ 15 mins – 20g
Northdown – 7.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g (20-30min steep)
Dry Hops:
Northdown – 50g after initial fermentation has settled down and the beer is being cooled to 17°c
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 6% ABV
Total Liquor: 34.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 83 EBU
Colour: 26 EBC
I’m not taking any photos today, they are bound to look identical to a lot of other brewdays.
Post brew:
I mashed for 60 minutes at 66°c, sparge liquor at 77°c with 2 batches each time recirculating between 4-6 litres to attain a nice clear wort flow into the copper. Apparently I got 72% Mash efficiency, Bairds malt seems to be getting consistently worse at work so it follows that it will at home too (Maybe when I’ve got some spare cash I’ll buy a sack from another Maltster).
Boiled for 60 minutes with hop charges as First Wort, 30mins, 15mins and Flameout steep hops for 28mins.
Cooled to 20°c and let stand for 20 minutes for the hops and trub to settle before recirculating about 1 litre to get a nice clear wort. Wort looking a good fairly deep colour.
Actually got about 1058 so probably missed out on the 6% mark slightly depending on how the yeast ferments out.
Pitched Safale US-05.
OK, just a couple of photos of the FV in the Fermentation fridge:
Temperature sensor taped on with a piece of insulating foam:
I’ve set the fridge to 20°c and will raise it 1 degree each day to no higher than 23°c
*9th Dec ’11 Dry Hopped with 49g Northdown, OG 1014-1016-ish, this should give me a good idea what the hop is like dry 🙂
*13th Dec ’11 – Northdown Dry hopping is currently tasting rather bland, I may well add a similar amount of First Gold.
*14th Dec ’11 – More dry hopping done, First Gold 49g + East Kent Goldings 46g
*Bottled 24th Dec ’11 with 70g White Sugar – and having a bit of a taste…
Its not bad, the dry hopping has worked and although not as in-yer-face as US/NZ hops its still very present, it has the grassy notes that a German Dry-hopped beer would have and I know will settle down in a couple of weeks.
I’m sure the Northdown didn’t contribute much to the dry hopping so its the First Gold and EKGs that have added the mouth-coating hoppiness. This might be a good beer, which has surprised me after the initial Northdown hopping.
Note to self: Pellet dry hops would probably add to the intensity (Skim yeast and dry hop bit by bit for a week while cooled?).
*4th Jan ’12 – Taster bottle, carbonation is right, Bitterness is nice and smooth, flavour & aroma remind me of Bobek / Styrian and what-dry-sawdust might taste like, I’m bot a huge Bobek fan, not my best effort. For the amount of dry hops I had thrown at this I would have expected much more intensity, some grassiness is just there, alcohol is fairly noticable in the finish, it gets better as you go down the glass and your taste buds realign, I’m going to need an expert second opinion on this… who knows it might improve with a couple more weeks or a month.
*31st Mar ’12 – This just took 3rd place in the Northern Craft Brewers / Saltaire Brewery English IPA competition.
We had a busy but brilliant day of running the bar and tasting some excellent home-brewed beer both from Cask on the bar and bottle tastings. It was great to see some familiar faces and lots of new faces from Twitter & the home brewing forums. We had almost 40 entries to the English IPA competition and it took the beer judges a great deal of deliberation to pick the top three and further Highly Commended beers.
*12th Jun ’12 – This is ‘Smooth as’ and chilled from the fridge is really hitting the mark, I dare say I’ll brew a big English IPA again, with even more dry Hops 😉
AG#57 – Paper 23rd June
Posted on: May 29, 2011
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
AG#57 – Paper 23rd June
To celebrate our first wedding anniversary an easy drinker that will hopefully go into a cask to be served on my Handpull.
I’ve run out of Amarillo, I’d have preferred a little more in at Flameout, I might dry hop the cask with a handful of Mittlefruh for a nice subtle floral touch.
Here’s today’s recipe, which is a mix of interesting malts 🙂
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 1290g – 33.2%
Lager Malt – 1290g – 33.2%
Vienna Malt – 455g – 11.8%
Cara Red – 290g – 7.5%
Munich Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Oat Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Wheat Malt – 185g – 4.7%
Hops:
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 15g (FWH)
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g (FWH)
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 10 mins – 10g
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 10 mins – 10g
Amarillo – 9.5 % @ 0 mins – 15g (80c Steep)
First Gold – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 10g (80c Steep)
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16 % @ 0 mins – 10g (80c Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.2 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 11 EBC
Mashing at 68c for an hour to keep some body in case the US-05 finished a bit dry.
Malt temp:
Today’s hops, I must find a use for the other 400g of First Gold:
Spargings running from the tun onto the First wort hops:
I reckon there are 2 divisions in the meniscus, making me 2 points lower than I should be, so 1038:
Got 89% Mash efficiency today, collected 31 Litres @ 1033
*Bottled 6th Jun ’11 with 1/4 Tsp per 330ml bottle and two Bag-in-a-Box 10Litre polypins, primed with 45g of sugar dissolved in 90ml of water, one box given 50ml and the other 40ml, fined with Allkleer. Final Gravity is 1008.
AG#47 – Bramling Cross IPA
Posted on: January 16, 2011
Bramling Cross IPA – I wasn’t actually planning to brew today, so I started late after throwing this recipe together. Its serving two functions; 1. I want to smell &taste Blackcurrant in an IPA from the Bramling Cross Hops; 2. It uses up a selection of Hops from the Freezer and pretty much depletes my base malt stocks.
I’d have preferred to have more Bramling Cross in the 80c steep but hopefully it will be adequate to give some of the characteristics I’m after.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 50%
Wheat Malt – 35%
Flaked Oats – 10%
Crystal Wheat Malt – 5%
Hops:
WGV @ 60 mins – 35g – (First Wort Hop)
Pilot @ 60 mins – 45g – (First Wort Hop)
First Gold @ 15 mins – 28g
Bramling Cross @ 0 mins – 39g – (80c Steep for 20mins)
Final Volume: 21 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.056
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.2 Litres
Mash Liquor: 12.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 68 EBU
Colour: 17 EBC
Mashed at 66c and lost 2c of 60min period, achieving 86% Mash efficiency.
Boiled for 60minutes, old Lager yeast added as nutrient and Protafloc tablet added for the last 20mins.
Yeast is Safale us-05 pitched at 20c, dry sprinkled.
First Wort Hops in the copper:
80c Steep hops in along with the cooler:
Must be 1054 with a couple of divisions in the meniscus, Refractometer said 14.2 Brix (1055), so about a point lower than Target:
Pretty Seedy these hops:
My first IPA type thing with Bramling Cross Hops back in April ’09
*Bottled 29th Jan ’11 with 50g white sugar primings
Current Hops in the Freezer!
Posted on: July 6, 2010
Hmm, I think I need to do some serious brewing 😉
Úber Brewing Nerd!
Admiral
Ahtanum
Amarillo
Bobek
Bobek
Bramling Cross
Brewers Gold
Cascade
Centennial
Columbus
East Kent Golding
First Gold
Fuggle
Golding
Green Bullet
Herkules
Hersbrucker
Home grown Fuggle
Liberty
Mittlefruh
Motueka
Nelson Sauvin
Pacific Gem
Pilot
Pioneer
Progress
Rakau
Riwaka
Saaz
Simcoe
Soverign
Sticklebract
Target
WGV
Williamette
That works out at 2.79kg across 35 hops!
Need something distinctly Hoppy & Pale between 4 – 5.5%
….Suggestions???
AG#23/24 – CNC 2.8 / Hemp Bitter
Posted on: April 25, 2010
CNC 2.8 is going to be a Hoppy low ABV, AmeriZealand Pale-ish Hopped with NS and 2 of the C’s.
Hemp Bitter is going to be a Goldings based bitter with 200g of ground hemp seed in the last 15mins of the boil
Couple of pictures from today’s prep for tomorrows double Brewday and the Recipes, I’m probably not going to do much in the way of water treatment though might add an odd Tsp of Gypsum here and there
The Grist; Maris Otter, Munich Malt, Oat malt, Crystal Malt, Caramalt, Wheat malt, Chocolate malt:
CNC 2.8
Fermentables:
Maris Otter 1740 grams 54.5%
Oat Malt 500 grams 15.7%
Munich Malt 400 grams 12.5%
Crystal Malt 200 grams 6.3%
Caramalt 200 grams 6.3%
Wheat Malt 100 grams 3.1%
Chocolate Malt 50 grams 1.6%
Hops:
Centennial @ 60 mins 5g (FWH)
Cascade @ 60 mins 5g (FWH)
Nelson Sauvin @ 60 mins 5g (FWH)
Centennial @ 15 mins 10g
Cascade @ 15 mins 10g
Nelson Sauvin @ 15 mins 10g
Cascade @ 0 mins 10g
Centennial e @ 0 mins 10g
Nelson Sauvin @ 0 mins 10g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.030
Final Gravity: 1.008
Alcohol Content: 2.8% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 30 EBC
Malts; Golden Promise, Crystal malt, Wheat malt; 200g of ground hemp seed for the last 15mins of the boil:
Hemp Bitter
Fermentables:
Golden Promise 2080 grams 85%
Crystal Malt 240 grams 10%
Wheat Malt 120 grams 5%
Hops:
Fuggle @ 60 mins 30g (FWH)
First Gold @ 20 mins 10g
East Kent Golding @ 0 mins 20g
Hemp Seed, Ground @ 15 mins 200g
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 18.6 Litres
Mash Liquor: 6.1 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 35 EBU
Colour: 25 EBC
Both brews will be 60mins, Mash will be 90mins, CNC will be 67-68c, Hemp will be 65-66c, yeast will be US-05 for both.
Mashes on:
First real use of the new HLT, worked a treat and didn’t hang around at heating the water:
First Wort Hops:
Sparge water in the 2nd mash:
Running off the Mash:
I’ll get organised, eventually:
Coming to a good boil:
Lots more lovely hops:
Pretty much Bang on the money:
The sweet wort:
US-05 Yeast:
FWH:
More hops:
Raw Sewage, Hemp seed Floaters!:
I seemed to boil the crap out of it, and had to liquor back 1.3L:
Hemp seed causes practically NO foaming when running off! Goodbye head retention:
Lots of pictures!! I got tempted by a big bag of Bobek in the freezer so added 1 small handfull every 5 mins in the last 20 mins of the boil (Might do an all Bobek IPA in the ‘Dogfish head 60 minute IPA’ style doing 2 good handfull every 5 minutes)
I also bottled last weekends Bramling XB around the end of boil/ cooling/running off.
*Bottled 3rd May ’10 Hemp with 40g Sugar & CNC with 30g Sugar/ 40g DSM
Both brews tasting pretty good, CNC especially lots better body than expected & Loads of Hemp Flavour in the Hemp Bitter.
AG#11 – Pale, Wheat and Rye
Posted on: October 24, 2009
Fermentables:
Maris Otter 1040g
Wheat Malt 520g
Rye Malt 520g
Crystal Malt, Pale 205g
Hops:
Target @ 60 mins 16g (FWH)
First Gold @ 15 mins 10g
First Gold @ 0 mins 10g (I ended up doubling this to 20g)
Protafloc @ 20 mins
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.042
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 18.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 5.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 46 EBU
Colour: 14 EBC
1tsp Gypsum to each Mash & Boil, 90 minute Mash which stretched to 105 minute.
Yeast Safale s-04
The grains an 1 tsp gypsum for the mash:
Grist temp:
Mashed in spot on (I forgot to take an end of mash temp):
pH looks good:
The colour of the first batch sparge (with the second batch added its going to be a nice straw colour):
Running off, had a bit of sticking but the wort was going to be a bit cloudy anyway with the wheat:
Hops all sorted, I decided to double up the 10g 0 mins to 20g:
Just started boiling:
10min steep of 20g First Gold @ flame outs:
Cold break:
Hit about the right OG:
Splish splash:
Dry Sprinkled Safale s-04, left to sink for 15mins then thrashed with a paddle:
Left overs:
Front left is todays brew, back left is Yorkshire Trappist red with experiments on top, front right is the JBK Anniversary brew, back right is Amber Otter:
Fermentation less than 24 hours later:
I’m hoping the Target hops will have kept some flavour to add some extra zing to the First Gold.
*Bottled 3rd Nov ’09
AG#8 – JBK Anniversary Brew 09
Posted on: October 2, 2009
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
The instructions:
Jim wrote:I would look for something around a maximum of 55 OG, with crystal malt to give it body and a bit of darkness from roast barley and good old English hops – plenty of fuggle with a bit of golding for aroma and around 45 to 50 IBUs.
So this is what I’ve come up with:
Fermentables:
Maris Otter 1880g
Dark Crystal Malt 205g (no mention of which crystal, so this gives me a chance to try out some Dark Crystal)
Torrefied Wheat 78g
Roasted Barley 26g
Hops:
Challenger – 60 mins 19g
Progress – 30 mins 16g
First Gold – 5 mins 11g
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.041
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Bitterness: 48 EBU
Colour: 64 EBC
The Grain weighed out, 2 Tsp of Chalk and Gysum for the Mash:
The Intended Yeast slurry from a previous brew which is coming back to life and releasing some bubbles, will decant off the beer and pitch some of this:
The new manifold in my 15L tun, note the support sleeving to support my warm floppy pipe. I may need to make this a rigid arrangement in future:
Grist Temp:
The Mash Tun:
Mashed in @ 67C, leaving for 90 mins:
Mash pH looks near enough:
Hops, Generous weighing as I know the Burton Ale yeast will subdue them:
End mash temp:
First Runnings being recycles, sparging went brilliantly, no sticking and pretty clear wort:
First Wort Hops going in with first batch spargings:
Leftovers:
Bacon butty:
5 min hops addition with cooler already in:
Sanitising with Starsan:
Pretty clear hitting the FV and a good deep colour:
Pitching Whitelabs Burton Ale yeast Slurry @ 24C:
Well Aerated:
Hops and Trub:
My exceedingly happy brewing cupboard, FV1 is JBK, FV2 is Blauer Vogel, in the back the Top crate is full of TTL, underneath and to the left there is my Otter Dark Stout:
Just a bit of clearing up to do, hit OG1042 @ 24C so that’ll do me 🙂
Happy Anniversary JBK, Live long and prosper and all that 🙂
Hope this will be a good one, I needed a darker ale under my belt 🙂
Bottling Update FG hit 1010/1012 ish
Full Crate:
Sun shining through then bottle, lots of Burton Ale yeast in suspension, should take a few weeks for it to settle out:
2 weeks of warm followed by 2 weeks of cool and these should be ready.
Something for the JBK Anniversary bottles 🙂
Probably Due To Network Congestion 