Posts Tagged ‘home brewing’
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#80 – Nit Wit
Posted on: May 26, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Nit Wit – Something Decocting going on! The plan was to brew a Belgian style Wit, I’m taking some reference from ‘Radical Brews’ & ‘Brewing Classic Styles’ books along with Leedsbrew‘s brewday. This is the first time I’ve done a Decoction Mash and I started out using Beer Alchemy on the iPhone then later Switched to Brewzor on the old HTC Android, though the recipe was designed in good old BeerEngine.
I decided on the morning of the brewday to go with all Crystal Hops rather than my initial idea of blending them with Green Bullet (which I find like a very strong Styrian / Bobek)… however I had just slightly less Crystal than I wanted so added the 6g of Citra in the Flameout steep for that little touch of, what I hope will be, a complimentary herbal edge.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 50%
Flaked Wheat – 43%
Flaked Oats – 5%
Cara Vienna (Dingemans) – 2%
Hops:
Crystal – 4.9 % @ 60 mins – 12g (FWH)
Crystal – 4.9 % @ 30 mins – 30g
Crystal – 4.9 % @ 0 mins – 6g (30min Steep)
Citra – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 6g (30min Steep)
Other additions:
Orange Zest – 27g
Lemon Zest – 5g
Orange Juice – 300ml from the 3 Oranges
Crushed Coriander – 11g
Camomile – 3g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 65 % (I lowered this as I thought the mash may struggle with all the Flaked Adjuncts)
Bitterness: 17 EBU (BeerEngine Hop Utilisation set to 25%, which looks to compare with Rager setting in Beer Alchemy)
Colour: 3 EBC
The plan was to do a single decoction with the initial mash temp being 50°c, I mashed in and hit 51°c and left to rest for 15mins, then calculated the decoction using Beer Alchemy to raise the temperature to 68°c, so I brought the 5.92L of Mash to the boil then added back to the main mash. This increased the mash temp to 61°c which was nowhere near so I let rest for a further 15mins and did it again but this time using Brewzor… this is where i managed to punch the wrong numbers into the phone and only boiled up 2.9L which when added back to the main mash took me to 63°c, so again I rested the mash for 15mins! So now I’m onto the third decoction, and punched the right figures into the phone and boiled up my final 4.3L of the mash and added it back to the main mash to attain my 68°c that the first decoction should have given me.
Something obviously went a drift somewhere, be it software or operator error, anyway… I enjoyed myself 🙂
Now I’ve dipped my toe in the decoction, so to speak, I’m eager to use my Whitelabs Hefeweizen yeast and do a German Wheat beer with a shed load of Decoction steps!
Flaked goods and Cara Vienna, I added 2.1g Gypsum to the mash which started at 8.25am:
Doing a Decoction, I added the first back to the main mash at 9.15am:
Iodine test for Starch, this was after I’d been out shopping for oranges and it was 12.10pm with the last Decoction being added back to the main mash at 10.10am, I got a pretty mental 86% efficiency:
Second sparge running off into the copper with First Wort Hops, I used a Stout profile in THBF Liquor treatment calculator and added 14.6g Calcium Chloride / 2.3g Magnesium Sulphate / 3g Salt (Sodium Chloride) to the copper with the hops that I’m going to give it a further slick oily mouth-feel to the finished beer, this is something I will have to report back on later:
I have a massive crack… in my Mash! It was amazing the way the decoctions turned the mash from a gloopy gelatinous mess into something that ran freely and looked like wort!:
Crystal hops for 30min addition:
Orange & Lemon Zest with the juice of 3 oranges, I appreciate that the Orange Juice may cause a pectin haze… Good:
Crushed Coriander seeds with a couple of teabags-worth of Camomile:
Looks like its going to be a nice pale colour, had to do a load of Liquoring back to hit correct OG, I ended up with 29 litres so had to split the wort between my regular FV and a smaller new one I’d just got:
So with all that extra wort I put some in an Oxfam bucket and pitched T-58 into that to see what the differences are, the Oxfam buckets are really thick strong plastic and mega cheap too:
It was a pretty long brewday but I actually found it all rather entertaining, even though the Decoctions didn’t have the desired affect to begin with, Whitelabs WLP400 Belgian Wit Yeast pitched from an 800ml Starter that I’d chilled and poured most of the beer off the top.
Oh! and i didn’t realise until later that this was my 80th All Grain Brewday 🙂
*30th may ’12 – T-58 batch has finished at 1013, so a nice amount of body left. The WLP400 has stopped at 1035! Meh! Just given it a good thrashing with a sanitised paddle, fingers crossed all the yeast that was sat on top will get back to work and stop slacking!
*Further days up-to 1st Jun ’12 – it seems this yeast requires regular attention, the yeast seems to ferment and then rise to the top then stall, so two days running I have roused the fermenter and each day I have come back to find the yeast trying to escape the bucket with a subsequent gravity drop.
*4th Jun ’12 – Gravity at 1008 now after some further rousing, fingers crossed its finished there.
*Bottled 10th Jun ’12 primed in bulk for 2.5 Volumes of co2
BeerRitz in Headingley, Leeds and are holding a Home brewing competition with Copper Dragon in Skipton, the idea is to re-mix their beers creating your own version with their ingredients… this one is mine.
I’ll add the recipe after judging has been done so here is my pictorial brewday, and not forgetting today is National Homebrew Day.
Today is National Homebrew Day, this is my recipe:
The old tiny 15 Litre bucket Mash tun:
Tiny Mash tun’s copper manifold:
Malts, Gypsum & Temp:
Decide to use the THBF Water treatment calculator today so most of the salts go in the boil rather than in the mash, the mash only gets the gypsum for the volume of the Mash Liquor:
Aimed for 68°c & got 68°c for a 1 hour mash, I got 81.6% Efficiency:
The Tiny Mash tun only just squeezes a 15 litre brew-length sparge in:
Late Hops:
First runnings going into the copper with the First Wort UK Cascade hops and remaining liquor salts:
Bandit the brewers helper, chews plastic and stuff:
NZ Cascade hops:
Nice clear wort as the break material settles in the copper:
The money shot, near enough 1037 for me:
A pretty fast no fuss brewday, chilled to 20°c and pitched Safale us-05 yeast, fingers crossed I’ll get this fermented and dry hopped / Bottled in time for the closing date! Again I used the iPhone and Instagram for taking the brewday photos, its really very easy!
My previous National Homebrew Day brews AG#25 May Day and AG#54 – C.C.A.N
*8th May ’12 – Checked gravity 1013 @ 23°c dry hopped with 19g US Cascade Pellets, I’ll do a further 40g once the beer can be chilled down after reaching FG.
*9th May ’12 – Gravity 1010 @ 20°c Tastes lovely with the pellet dry hops already making a nice impact.
*12th May ’12 – Chilling to 17°c and dry hopped with over double what the first dry hop was. Will further chill to 13°-11°c then 4°c to drop the pellet hops out.
*Bottled 20 May ’12 – with 60g white sugar, tasting pretty good 🙂
Leedsbrew & BroadfordBrewer’s take on the ReMix Competition, anyone else done a blog of their entry?
I didn’t win so here’s my recipe in full
CopperRitzFermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 5 lbs. 6.7 oz 2460 grams 100%Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
UK Cascade Whole 5.7 % 60 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 25%
Columbus (Tomahawk) Whole 16.5 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 0.7 oz 20 grams 16.7%
NZ Cascade Whole 8.5 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 25%
Cascade Pellet 5.9 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 1.4 oz 40 grams 33.3%Final Volume: 15 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.037
Final Gravity: 1.009
Alcohol Content: 3.6% ABV
Total Liquor: 22 Litres
Mash Liquor: 5.9 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 36 EBU
Colour: 6 EBC
This is actually drinking pretty well, i could happily drink quite a few of these and not get bored 🙂 If I changed anything it would be to do a third or second heavier dry hop, and if it wasn’t to the competition rules I’d add a touch of wheat & 10% Carapils for body.
The winners are here http://ghostdrinker.blogspot.co.uk/2012 … er-is.html jolly good brewing guys 🙂
AG#75 – Mr Brown Hawk
Posted on: March 10, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Mr Brown Hawk– A Columbus Hopped American Brown Ale (Brown IPA!) My first American brown, all Columbus hopping with a substantial Dry Hop in the FV with a bit of vague reference from the ‘Brewing Classic Styles’ book, the recipes in there use a heck of a lot of Crystal so I’ve sort of gone for the middle-ground as i don’t think a 6.3% beer needs all that. I’m using liquor treatment for ‘Sweet Pale Ale’ which will hopefully bring out the maltiness.
I started and realised I didn’t have enough Pale malt so some of it is sub’d with Vienna & Lager malts, I’ll give it at least a 90min mash to try compensate for a: crap Bairds Pale & Lager, b: the less convertibility of Vienna malt.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 36.2%
Vienna Malt – 17.2%
Wheat Malt – 17%
Lager Malt – 16.6%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Caramalt – 3%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 3%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 1%
Chocolate Malt – 1%
Hops:
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 60 mins – 25g (FWH)
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 10 mins – 29g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 41g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – Dry Hop 84g
Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.017
Alcohol Content: 6.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 30.8 Litres
Mash Liquor: 14 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 % (actually got 75.8%)
Bitterness: 66 EBU (BeerEngine Hop Utilisation set to 25%)
Colour: 76 EBC
Mash: 90mins @66c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05 (2 packs)
The usual malts shot:
Checking for starch to see if fully converted, other than bits in the husks it was good after 2 hours:
First Wort Hops:
Flame-out hops steeped for about 20mins:
1057-ish, should have been 1065:
It was a total pain, running off to the FV it clogged up really quickly and I had to resort to a jug and a sieve, these Columbus hops have some fine particles! Pitched 2 packs of us-05 even though I didn’t hit my gravity 1058 vs 1065, the quicker the yeast gets going the better after all that sieve and jug malarkey! It looks as though I got about the right volume in the fermenter even if some of it looks rather murky from break material and some hop debris. Another reminder that I should make a big mesh hop-stopper!
So… presuming I’ve not infected it with a shed load of extracurricular home brewing activity, I’ll be giving this a nice big dry hop once its got to FG.
*17th Mar ’12 – after reaching FG 1012 and being chilled in 2 stages (17c for 24hours then 11c for 24 hours) I had a 50mm thick layer of hop debris, trub and yeast at the bottom of the FV, I’ve racked the clear beer off the top into a 15L bucket and dry hopped with 84g Columbus, I gave the bucket a blast of co2 prior to racking onto the hops. This has been put back in the FV Fridge and I’m cooling to 5c, I’ll give the hops a stir in later on.
*Bottled 24th Mar ’12 with 30g sugar to 15 Litres of beer, this should be around 2 volumes of co2 @ 5°c tastes very Dry-Hopped, quite possibly too much flavour and Lovely colour.
*29th Mar ’12 – Very Early taster bottle 😉
A little under carbonated, its a Juicy fruit bomb maybe too too fruity as I’d actually like to taste some of the Choc malts underneath the hop flavour. Tiny bit of sweet alcohol on the nose, I’m surprised the dry-hop character seems to have mellowed out quite soon though this is my first time with a singled hopped Columbus beer. I’m thinking I should have reserved myself more than half a kilo from the 5kgs I had, I think I could have given it a bit more bitterness which would off-set the fruitiness a little.
*5th Apr ’12 – Just having a glass of this… even though its carb’d pretty low, if i splash it into the glass it gives a lovely head that clings down the glass and the carbonation actually fits pretty well with the beer.
Fruitiness is settling back, bitterness is starting to come through, tasty beer…. I’m happy with this 🙂
AG#74 – Is it cos I is Black?
Posted on: February 26, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 6 Comments
Is it cos I is Black – A Black IPA to be served from Cask at the forthcoming NCB Competition meet at Saltaire Brewery. Ali-G reference 🙂 init! This wall be heavily dry hopped in two stages, first in the FV with Pellet hops, and secondly in the cask with whole hop cones.
I’m managing to use up a few bag ends too, Flaked Wheat, Munich Malt, NZ Cascade & Motueka 🙂
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 70.7%
Flaked Wheat – 8.7%
Munich Malt – 7.9%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5.9%
Carafa Special III – 2.4%
Black Malt – 2.4%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 1.9%
Hops:
Magnum – 14.5 % @ 60 mins – 20g – First Wort Hop
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16 % @ 60 mins – 20g – First Wort Hop
Simcoe – 12.2 % @ 0 mins – 30g – 80c Steep
Chinook – 11.5 % @ 0 mins – 20g – 80c Steep
Nelson Sauvin – 13.0 % @ 0 mins – 20g – 80c Steep
Citra – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 30g – 80c Steep
Summit – 14.3 % @ 0 mins – 30g – 80c Steep
Motueka (B Saaz) – 13.8 % @ 0 mins – 13g – 80c Steep
NZ Cascade – 10.2 % @ 0 mins – 11g – 80c Steep
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 34 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 60 EBU
Colour: 129 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mash for 90mins, Boil for 60mins
Liquor Treatment: General Purpose with the Graham Wheeler Calculator
Malts, malt temp & Salt additions:
Recirculating the first 4-5 litres, first Wort hops in the copper:
154g of 80c steep hops:
Should have been 1055, I got 1050, will do for me:
Pump Clip Design:
Mash efficiency was 83%, I added an extra litre in the sparge to compensate for extra hop-losses in the copper.
Another easy brewday followed by some messing around in Photoshop 🙂
I’ll update this post when I settle on which Dry Hops I’m going to use.
*4th March ’12 – Dry Hopped in FV with 20g of each of the following Pellets; Summit, Nelson Sauvin, Chinook & Cascade. Further whole hop dry-hopping in cask in about a weeks time.
*9th Mar ’12 – Racked this to cask and dry hopped with a further 25g Nelson Sauvin & 38g Simcoe (last of two bags), Allkleer Finings & 25g priming sugar used.
Bit of an pain having a homebrew FV fully dry hopped with Pellets, my Tea-ball syphon worked pretty well until the last couple of litres (critical litres to fill the cask) when it turned into a furry-pellet-blob and stopped flowing, the last little bit I had to jug a little murky beer into the cask.
So that is a Note-to-Self, don’t fully dry-hop the FV with pellets! I feel a mix of pellets & flowers would have not blocked up and a fully dry-hopped FV with flowers has no trouble at all syphoning.
I’d expect that if I had a chill-able Conical FV I could avoid most of this and draw-off the beer above the pellet sludge of rack-off the pellet debris first a day or so earlier.
*31st Mar ’12 – The first cask ale to run-off at the Northern Craft Brewers English IPA Competition at Saltaire Brewery
The Saltaire Brewery presents The Northern Craft Brewers IPA Day 31st March
Posted on: February 3, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Northern & Midland Craft Brewers are having a Competition & Meeting at the Saltaire Brewery, Shipley, (Map) Saturday March 31st 2012
This year we are running an English IPA competition, to be judged by Derek (The Brewery Manager of Saltaire Brewery), Zak Avery (Beer Blogger & of BeerRitz in Leeds) Rob Derbyshire (Blogger of Hopzine.com), among others.
Sadly Tony, the owner & Head Brewer of Saltaire, won’t be with us as he has family arrangements he cannot break, if anyone wants to leave him a bottle or two I’m sure he’d be very pleased.
We invited the Midlands Craft Brewers, to make things a little different as last year it was just the NCB, so this will be a bit of an Inter region competition, as well as a good meeting, get brewing your best English IPA recipe, this promises to be a great meeting and competition, not to mention we are hoping to see lots of Leeds Homebrewers too.
One entry per person only & entry is 2 pint/500ml brown (Magners style) Bottles, with Gold crown corks, (entries to be brought on the day).
Prizes will be awarded as usual, & the brewery will have 8 beers on Tap and guess what… all 8 beers are being brewed especially for the occasion, Saltaire’s IPA will fill one Tap and the other 7 Taps are being brewed by a few local Homebrewers, the beers will all be IPA’s so make sure you bring a fresh pallet as we hope to ravage yours.
We are running this as a charitable event so other than the Saltaire IPA the other homebrewed beers will be for a donation, we’d hope donations will be as last year with people giving the usual Saltaire price of £2 a pint.
We are expecting a large amount of entries for this competition, therefore to enter, please
Email: shane@bridestone.com
Closing Date for entries is Friday 16th March 2012
2 Bottle labels and entry number will be posted out to each entrant.
£3.00 Competition entry on the Day.
English IPA, any English hops, 1050-1070 (Please see this PDF of Hops allowed, no american C hops or NZ varieties please this is an English IPA Competition), any Malts allowed and your choice of Yeast.
| OG |
FG |
IBUs |
SRM |
ABV |
| 1.050 – 1.070 | 1.010 – 1.018 | 40 – 80 | 8 – 14 | 5 – 7.4% |
The Original announcement: http://www.northerncraftbrewers.co.uk/futureevents.html
Other stuff to note, we’ll be meeting at 12 noon for a 1pm start, doors will be open earlier but we’ll be setting up so if you’re early take a seat and chill while we’re ready.
Bring food if you need it as there is nothing closer than a 10 minute walk, the ground floor has level access.
And of course, beer swapping, tasting of homebrew is very much encouraged… we’re on for a fantastic day! 🙂
I shall update this post if any other details crop up, Turn your brewing dial to ‘Eleven’ and get that Copper boiling!
AG#71 – Abyss Imperial Stout
Posted on: January 1, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 8 Comments
Abyss Imperial Stout – The big brew! New years Day 2012, a beer to brew-bottle-and-leave until New years Eve (or as long as you can wait! 6 months +) 🙂 Brewing today was the idea of @Leedsbrew and a number of us Homebrew Forum and Twitter users are having an Imperial Stout Brew-a-long, the results should be interesting if we get to taste each others fully matured beers in a years time.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 69%
Munich Malt I (Weyermann) – 7.2%
Sugar, Date Molasses – 4.9%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 4.5%
Roasted Wheat (Simpsons / Barley Bottom) – 4.5%
Sugar, Molasses (Blackstrap) – 3.8%
Roasted Rye Malt – 2.7%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Carafa Special III – 1.8%
Hops:
Target – 10.2 % @ 60 mins – 83g
Bobek – 5.2 % @ 60 mins – 37g
Centennial – 11.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 30 mins – 35g
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 0 mins – 21g (20-30mins steep)
Hersbrucker – 3.0 % @ 0 mins – 20g (20-30mins steep)
Fuggle – 4.9 % @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Stella – 15.6% @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.096
Final Gravity: 1.022
Alcohol Content: 9.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 21.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 65 % (reduced from a regular 75-80%)
Bitterness: 154 EBU
Colour: 625 EBC
The Malts, 8.455kg of them:
The Sugars, Date Syrup & Blackstrap Molasses:
The day so far:
The mash was on last night at 00:50 and the temp was 66°c, at 9am this morning it had dropped to 59°c.
I did 1 sparge at 80°c with an hour’s Mash-out and collected my pre-boil volume in the copper, as I had expected this was lower than the predicted pre-boil gravity (10 points too low).
I did a second sparge at 80°c with a 30min Mash-out of 12 Litres while boiling the first run-off hard, ran off about half the mash then boiled down some more before running off the rest of the mash. I also added the sugars at this point, and continued boiling down until I reached 1086/7 when the bittering hops went in which will hopefully put me in the 1096 area for the end of the boil.
7 Degree drop over about 8 hours:
Pretty full mash tun with the sparge liquor added:
Today’s hops:
The Molasses going in:
Flameout steep hops, I threw in a 19g sample pack of Stella too (very nice smelling hop):
Dirty Copper, break material forming as the wort cools:
173g Safale US-05 yeast skimmed from previous brew and kept in the fridge for a week at 4°c, I’ll pitch the lot at 18°c:
OG: 1095 Temp corrected (Brix 23.8 with Refractometer = 1096):
Running to FV:
Pretty much hit my predicted OG, yeast pitched (still smelling of Nelson Sauvin hops from AG#70, if it wasn’t that I’ve just ruined an entire brew!) **Update, the beer in my Glass is Ta Moko, it smells just like the yeast, beer is fine)**
Copper is being very slow to run off, must be the thick sticky wort.
Its almost time for a beer, a Chilled very-early taster of Ta Moko just to see how its doing 🙂
I think I’ll be buying some more Basra Date Syrup as it tastes very good and would lend its self very well to a Belgian Ale.
Other peoples NYD Imperial Stout brewdays: (I’ll add more as they are posted)
Spikesdad’s Imperial Stout
Barney’s Imperial Stout
Leedsbrew’s Titan Imperial Stout Parti-Gyle brewday
Lugsy’s Super Massive Black Hole Imperial Stout
Jimp2003’s Event Horizon RIS (Slightly Belated)
Tom Dobson’s Old Black Imperial Stout
*3rd Jan ’12 – Gravity is currently 1064-ish, Tastes good, some of the hopping coming through and some Fruity stuff which might be the Date Syrup.
*4th Jan ’12 – 1050
*Bottled 18th Jan ’12 – with 60g of White Sugar, filled 50-off 330ml bottles.
*29th Feb ’12 – Taster:
The Carbonation is just about right, a good hiss when popping the cap and a solid mouth tingle.
Beer Colour is dark as it gets, if i shine a very bright LED torch at one side of the glass I can only just see a very, very faint red shape thru the glass.
Smells a leathery, dry, with a touch of alcohol and coffee.
Tastes, full mouth oily coating body, a fair amount of alcohol which lasts as long as the mouth coating, some coffee & liquorice.
I am, again, glad that i used sugars in this beer 🙂
*2nd May ’12 – Just having a bottle of this, its rather good… maybe more like a Black IPA as the sugars have obviously helped to dry it out, very drinkable 🙂
*6th Jun ’12 – Taster time! This is rather bloody good, a full smooth and oily mouth feel, crisp tingly carbonation, its getting to the stage of being like Warm Boot leather and just as chewy 🙂
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:
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
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