Posts Tagged ‘homebrewing’
AG#134 – Trapped Nerve Red
Posted on: May 13, 2015
AG#134 – Trapped Nerve Red – I’m off work due to a trapped nerve in my lower back, so thought I’d do some low impact homebrewing. Its based around an old recipe from 2011 which turned out a pretty good red-ish in colour and had bags of malty sweet toffee body making the hops all juicy-fruit yumminess! So a fine excuse to use up some open packs of hops in the freezer 🙂
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 78%
Vienna Malt – 10%
Crystal Malt, Extra Dark – 4%
Caragold – 4%
Crystal Malt – 4%
Hops:
Triskel Whole 4.82 % @ 60 mins – 22g (FWH)
NZ Cascade Whole 8.5 % @ 15 mins – 10g
Experimental 366 Whole 15.7 % @ 15 mins – 10g
Amarillo Whole 10.9 % @ 15 mins – 10g
Citra Whole 15.0 % @ 0 mins – 9g (20min Hop Stand at 80c)
Amarillo Whole 10.9 % @ 0 mins – 31g (20min Hop Stand at 80c)
Riwaka Whole 5.9 % @ 0 mins – 34g (20min Hop Stand at 80c)
NZ Cascade Whole 8.5 % @ 0 mins – 66g (20min Hop Stand at 80c)
Experimental 366 Whole 15.7 % @ 0 mins – 49g (20min Hop Stand at 80c)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.057
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 28 EBU
Colour: 50 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mash: 69c for at least an hour depending on how lazy you want to be.
Boil: 60mins
I drilled a few extra holes in this before I used it:
The Malts:
First Runnings onto the Hops:
A Rather Large Stack of hops:
Yeast to pitch after a good aeration:
Took things steady, the only heavy thing to move was the full FV which Emma helped me with.
*Bottled: 24th May ’15 with 80g priming sugar.
AG#127 – Belgian Extra Blonde
Posted on: September 14, 2014
Belgian Extra Blonde – A mix of Pale (didn’t have any Lager malt), Carapils, Dextrose (partly sugar as I didn’t have enough of either), Oat malt & Wheat malt.
Hops are a tiny amount of Magnum to bitter then a subtle amount of Mittlefruh in the last 5 minutes and about half the coriander you’d expect to add to a Wit.
I’m fermenting with WLP757 which I revived from a 2 year old Whitelabs tube.
The Malts, mashed at 69°c for about 90mins:
The 9g of bittering hops!
The Coriander:
Second sparge running to copper:
Hit 3 points over my target so liquored back to 1047:
I’m hoping for just a hint of coriander and a light coloured, light bodied beer with enough but not overpowering Belgianiness! I’ve used sugars for part of the bill to keep the strength at 5% ish without adding too much colour.
*16th Sep ’14 – Yeast spewing all over the garage floor this morning, the ambient temp is about 19c and the FV is a fairly steady 22c, the WLP575 is smelling quite sulphurous, this could just be the yeast or I could be encouraging the sulphur because of my Sulphate additions (Calcium Sulphate & Magnesium Sulphate) all of which should dissipate as fermentation completes.
*Kegged 20th Sep ’14 – its about time i used my cornies!
*30 Sep ’14 – taster from keg, quite a soft carbonation, has Duvel-like properties some of the Sulphur is going but some of it could be the Coriander thats confusing me. I let the keg for 24 hours at 20psi and 24 hours at 30psi then left it until now, Ive put 30psi on it again and will test it again tomorrow.
AG#124 – Big IPA
Posted on: July 13, 2014
AG#124 – Big IPA – Using BrewMate instead of BeerEngine as it lets me set attenuation so hopefully the beer should turn out about 9.2%, its loosely based around a recipe in the Mitch Steele IPA book.
Recipe Specs
—————-
Batch Size (L): 25.0
Total Grain (kg): 8.230
Total Hops (g): 469.50
Original Gravity (OG): 1.080 (°P): 19.3
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 9.35 %
Colour (SRM): 6.5 (EBC): 12.7
Bitterness (IBU): 287.5 (Rager)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 90
Grain Bill
—————-
4.625 kg Pale Ale Malt (56.2%)
1.877 kg Wheat Malt (22.8%)
0.905 kg Dextrose (11%)
0.593 kg Vienna (7.2%)
0.230 kg Caramalt (2.8%)
Hop Bill
—————-
60.0 g Apollo Leaf (19.5% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (2.4 g/L)
16.8 g Warrior Leaf (18.2% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.7 g/L)
17.7 g Zeus Leaf (16.7% Alpha) @ 90 Minutes (First Wort) (0.7 g/L)
60.0 g Columbus Leaf (16.5% Alpha) @ 45 Minutes (Boil) (2.4 g/L)
45.0 g Amarillo Leaf (8.6% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (1.8 g/L)
35.0 g Centennial Leaf (9.7% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (1.4 g/L)
35.0 g Columbus Leaf (14.2% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes (Aroma) (1.4 g/L)
100.0 g Chinook Pellet (11.4% Alpha) @ 0 Days (Dry Hop) (4 g/L)
100.0 g Nelson Sauvin Pellet (11.5% Alpha) @ 0 Days (Dry Hop) (4 g/L)
Misc Bill
—————-
Single step Infusion at 66°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Safale US-05
I’ve basically made Hop-Stew 😉 And hit the OG I got 1082 and liquored back to 1080.
A few of the hops in the recipe changed as I went along due to what I found in the hop-freezer, I’ll dry hop in two parts half will go in when FG is reached then half 2 days later when I start chilling the beer so a half warm and half cold dry hop.
*19th Jul ’14 – I dry hopped this with 50g of Chinook & Nelson Sauvin, gravity was at 1011.5 @ 22°c
*22nd Jul ’14 – FG seems to be 1010 and steady, chilled to 17°c and dry hopped with the same T90 hops again.
*24th Jul ’14 – Chilled to 13°c, will chill to 8c before bottling.
*Bottled 2nd Aug ’14
*9th Aug ’14 – Tastes bloody good, the right level of bitterness with a medium carbonation and a good effect from the dry hopping, as you’d expect quite boozy with its 9% abv 🙂
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.
AG#114 – Magnam Style
Posted on: February 9, 2014
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Magnum IPA – or ‘Magnam Style’ I’ve been wanting to try this for a while and I got some T90 off the jolly nice @Misterjk from Quantum Brewery, swapped for some homebrew Nice simple Malt bill, the T90’s will be used to dry Hop the FV.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 82.5%
Munich Malt – 17.5%
Hops:
Magnum Whole 12.7 % @ 60 mins – 40g (FWH)
Magnum Whole 12.7 % @ 5 mins – 60g (20min Stand)
Dry Hops:
Magnum Pellet 100g when fermentation has finished
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.056
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 65 EBU
Colour: 14 EBC
Mash: 60mins @ 68c
Yeast: Safale us-05
Weighing the malts:
First Runnings:
To be liquored back to 1056:
Not so many pics today, ended up with 1.5 litres more than my target volume 🙂
*13th Feb ’14 – Dry Hopped with 100g Magnum T90 pellets as it was close to final gravity.
*Bottled 24th Feb ’14 – with 122g white sugar, tastes pretty bland with some light grassiness from the dry hop 🙂
*14th Mar ’14 – This is actually not bad, crisp carbonation and smooth bitterness, very easy drinking.
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.
AG#111 – SAC IPA
Posted on: January 1, 2014
SAC IPA – You might see some similarities with this brew and my ‘Summit 73 E366‘ brew mainly the amounts and times of the late hops, I’m using up the last of my Pale & Lager malts along with the Cara/Crystal and some Dark Wheat.
I think this is the third year that a bunch of homebrewers have made the effort to brew on New Years Day, but its my fifth NYD brew in 5 years.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 44.3%
Munich Malt – 20.3% (some of this was English Munich and some was German)
Pale Malt – 19.5%
Wheat Malt Dark (Weyermann) – 6%
Flaked Wheat – 3.6%
Crystal Malt – 3.4%
Cara Hell – 3%
Hops:
Cluster Pellet – 7.9 % @ 60 mins – 40g (First Wort Hop)
Summit Whole – 17.5 % @ 15 mins – 15g
Apollo Whole – 19.5 % @ 15 mins – 15g
Cascade Whole – 7.9 % @ 15 mins – 15g
Summit Whole – 17.5 % @ 0 mins – 85g (20min steep)
Apollo Whole – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 40g (20min steep)
Cascade Whole – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 45g (20min steep)
Final Volume: 25 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.057
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 5.6% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 59 EBU
Colour: 24 EBC
Mash: 67°c for an inordinate amount of time
Yeast: Safale us-05 re-pitched from last gyle
Malts & Temp:
First batch sparge running off:
Big fat hit of flamout hops:
Skimmed straight off the FV of Ring of Fire IPA, mixed with a little fresh wort and pitched at 20c:
Maybe a touch darker than style, though beating it with a paddle it was smelling really good:
It was a bit of a drawn out brewday as i was supposed to be viewing a second hand car or two but one sold and the seller of the other was a bit shit at replying to txt messages.
*Bottled & Casked 8th Jan ’14 – with 15g sugar to the cask and half a Tsp to each of 6 bottles, also the cask was dry hopped with a 60g blend of Summit, Apollo & Cascade. I think it tastes good, my smell and taste are a bit buggered at the moment thanks to a cold.
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)
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