Probably Due To Network Congestion

Big Malty Smoke Beer – The name says it all, this is what I want, it has to be Big, it has to be Malty, and it has to be Smokey 🙂
I should maybe give it a smokey German name like Rauchfaktor / KraftWort or something….

Fermentables:
Rauch Malt (Weyermann) – 48.5%
Munich Malt – 20.8%
Munich Malt II (Weyermann – 13.4%
Oak-Smoked Pale Wheat Mal – 6.9%
Cara Munich Type I (Weyer – 6.9%
Melanoidin Malt – 3%
Carafa Special III – 0.4%

Hops:
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.2 % @ 60 mins – 43g
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 60 mins – 43g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh – 4.2 % @ 0 mins – 22g – (30min Steep)
Tettnang – 3.8 % @ 0 mins – 9g – (30min Steep)

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.065
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 6.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 35.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 17.3 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % (Reduced from usual 75% as unknown malts)
Bitterness: 34 EBU
Colour: 53 EBC
Mash: 90mins @ 69°c I want to keep this Malty & Sweet which I hope will display the smoke well or at least create a background to carry it.
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: 2x Safale us-05 (It was going to be a Whitelabs Kölsch starter but it didn’t start!)

Quite a heap of malts going into this one, most are fresh from @TheMaltMiller the other week:

12°c in the garage today, a good temp for all the beer in there:

The colour of the mash run-off was a deep straw colour, there was no first sparge so I did a decoction to achieve a good Mashout temperature before running off:

This was the second sparge, i did a 30g carafa steep for 15mins to adjust for colour:

Start of boil hops:

Flameout hop steep of what remained in the two packs of hops:

1079 with temperature correction, 4 litre Liquor-back required to hi OG and final volume, I actually got almost 80% Mash efficiency, the decoction obviously had a bearing on this:

Put to bed in the fermentation fridge with it set to 18°c:

Fairly straight forward brewday, new fermenting bucket cleaned and tap fitted my older (original) buckets are getting a bit chalky looking inside I need to de-scale them at work.
I think I may have let a load of fine malt particles through into the copper as the run-off from the Mesh Hop-stopper was feeble at best, but the cold weather helped.
I managed to chill the wort down to 17°c and then after liquoring back from the HLT I got 18°c which is pretty much what I was aiming for as I want to ferment this cool to try and limit any possible ester production and keep it clean, I’ll warm it up towards the end to let the yeast clean up its bi-products.

*12th Nov ’12 – Looks to have finished at 1021.5 @22°c pretty high though not totally unexpected with a mash temp of 69°c (5.6% vs predicted 6.4% ABV).

*Bottled 24th Nov ’12 – Primed with 100g White Sugar in about 20 Litres of beer… should probably have been bottled a week ago, hopefully some time in bottle and carbonation will bring out the smoke, there is a very slight sourness in the finish though could it be the Rauch or maybe the Melanoidin??? I shall be reserving judgement until its had a week or two in bottle.

*30th Nov ’12 – I had a sneaky taster of this last night, I didn’t detect any of the previous sourness, its smokey but not that smokey more akin to a smoked Cheese than my desired “Stood Next to a Bonfire”, its actually quite light to drink with enough Body and Sweetness which I suppose is a Bready Maltiness… If I re-brew, more smoke!!! Maybe even a bit of bastardization with a touch of Peat Smoked Malt. Schlenkerla’s smoke hit really must be down to a rapid succession from Maltsters to Smoke House to Milled & Mashed with a cool fermented clean yeast. Safale US-05 has done an admirable job even if it wasn’t my first choice yeast, I should get more Whitelabs Kölsch yeast for the next attempt.
I think there is scope to reduce the amount of body and increase my carbonation and maybe a subtle alteration on the hopping for ‘Less is More’.