AG #11 - A Winter's Ale

Sun 2nd December 2012

First brew in over 4 months! You know how it is, one thing and another, time flew by and I found myself starting December without a Christmas brew on the go. I decided to rectify this with a leftover brew, having a load of old hops and a (dodgy) yeast hanging around. This vial of yeast I collected from a previous brew, which I decided I would ferret out from the back of the fridge and use in this one. It will work, or it won't. If it doesn't I'll just order up an S-04 from BrewUK and pitch that when it arrives in a couple of days.

I'm help!

All three brew monkeys were out today which, although quite useful from an underfoot perspective, left me without an assistant. Fortunately, help came in the form of our 6 month old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy, Bea. I don't know what I was expecting. Lassie perhaps? The Littlest Hobo? I was disappointed, but amused at the same time :)

I wasn't really sure what I was going to brew right up until the HLT was on, so I browsed through Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale". My eyes alighted again on Courage Directors, bringing back memories of the Directors "Stout" which graces this blog. I did hesitate for a moment, but decided to press on with something similar with what I had left over. I moved the entire operation from the shed to the patio today (saving only the frame) for several reasons. Firstly, the shed is full of crap and getting it out and messing around in the cold would not have been pleasant. Secondly, I was free to come and go from the house's warmth instead of traipsing up and down the frozen garden. Also, maybe most importantly, I was able to take the mash tun inside much more easily to preserve the heat therein.


Recipe 

A Winters Ale
Style         English Bitter
Batch         19.00 L
All Grain

Characteristics

Recipe Gravity         1.042 OG    
Estimated FG         1.010 FG
Recipe Bitterness         38 IBU    
Alcohol by Volume         4.0%
Recipe Color         11° SRM    

Grains

0.22 kg         Amber Malt         Grain         Mashed
3.30 kg         Maris Otter Malt         Grain         Mashed

I'm not sure what to expect from this one, being a hybrid of a known recipe thrown together with what I have left in my store cupboard. All indications are that it will be a medium color, medium bitter, medium hopped middle of the road average kind of beer. That usually means it will be exceptional or terrible. It's a dark art, brewing. I'm sure there's magic involved somewhere, and no small amount of blind luck.

Hops

Some leaves and road grit.

22.00 g         Target         60 minutes
10.00 g         Fuggles      10 minutes

The original Director's recipe called for Target for the bittering side and Styrian goldings. I have some targets left from the original recipe I tried, though the Styrians have been used up, so I plumped for Fuggles. Styrians, I recall from a previous blog ramble, are in fact a variation Fuggles that were exported to Styria and planted out there. That curious, brown powder at the back isn't sand, or fairy dust, it's simply brown, or unrefined, cane sugar. This I put into the boil towards the end as per some advice I found online, for better or for worse. Interested to find out what it does to the brew, if anything.

Mash

Makeshift sparge tower

Very strange mash today. I did the now far too common "oh *&% I forgot the *&^%ing filter again" though this time after literally a second or so of pooring in the grain. No huge nightmare today, I simply emptied the water into a handy FV, plugged in the filter quick smart and put the water back in. This though did lose me a couple of degrees that no amount of additions from the HLT were able to recover. This I can only attribute to the 3'C temperature in the garden where I doughed in. Mash temperature, therefore was 64'C which was maintained for the whole 90 mins.

... actually, it went up, from 63'C. I can only assume the thermometer was also feeling the cold in the garden ...


Boil
The trusty old Electrim single element boiler understandably took it's time to haul it's arse up to boiling point, despite starting from 50 odd degrees thanks to proximity to the kitchen and it's combi boiler. Once it hit 100'C tho it resolutely stayed there for the full 60 minutes. So impressive when the element size and the ambient temperature are taken into consideration. Cracking pre-boil hot break that didn't boil over, again presumably due to the cold?



Sparge

Aaah ... Bisto!

Brought you a slipper. I'll leave it here.

Uneventful sparge, though slightly inconvenient having to move 20l of sparge water onto a pile of books to get the height to accommodate HLT, mash tun and boiler. This was where I missed the rack in the shed, it's convenience can't be understated when you have to pick up 25l buckets full of liquid.




Yeast
Here's the interesting part. I have no idea what yeast it is or what brew it came from. It might be the US-05 from the last brew. I might be the S-04 from the on before. I have no clue. No signs of life yet after pitching at 19'C this afternoon, about 8 hours ago. Only worry really is that it doesn't start and I have to get something in. We're talking a couple of days turnaround during which the brew is susceptible to infection. I'll keep it sealed and check it tomorrow. (yeah right. I'll be looking in there again in about 10 minutes I'm sure.)

UPDATE
As expected, the mystery yeast kicked off the day after I ordered the S-04. The lower temperatures are slowing the fermentation down so it's touch and go whether it will be ready for C-Day, but there's always New Year's Eve ...

AG #10 - Summer Ale

Sun 27th July 2012

Hot on the heels of my last brew comes a hastily slung together recipe, which I've decided to give the imaginative working title "Summer Ale". This is actually being brewed for a special occasion coming along in late August. Some friends are tying the knot so we decided to give them something different, personal in a way, and definitely unique - no two brews ever turn out the same!

So, bearing in mind the insurance write-off  that was my last brew, I went back to basics and made sure I had my checklist to hand and followed it pretty much to the letter. I also had an idea of what I would be brewing but I only knocked the recipe up after I'd put the water on to heat for the mash :) Being a big fan of the APAs like Sierra Nevada, and having already brewed something similar with success, I decided to stick with a simple and effective cascade based hop-fest.

You put those hops in yet .. ?

I was assisted today by my apprentice brew-monkey, my usual monkey being otherwise engaged. New monkey saved me literally 30 seconds by putting the right lids on the right containers for my hops. A valuable service rendered - she is very proud and now positioning herself to become main brew monkey should and "accident" befall her sister ... I'll have to keep an eye on this. Usual monkey returned to label the containers, and reassert herself as chief brew-monkey.

Also making several cameo appearances was Aragog (or Shelob, depending on your age and fantasy adventure preferences). Aragog is the name I gave to a not insubstantial spider, who spent the day popping in and out of the crack in the shed ceiling keeping a weather eye on things.

Hastily scribbled recipe

Recipe 

Summer Ale
Style         American Pale Ale
Batch         19.00 L
All Grain

Characteristics

Recipe Gravity         1.045 OG       
Estimated FG         1.011 FG
Recipe Bitterness         38 IBU       
Alcohol by Volume         4.4%
Recipe Color         10° SRM       

Grains

0.20 kg         Amber Malt         Grain         Mashed
3.50 kg         Maris Otter Malt         Grain         Mashed


Aiming for a light, amber coloured ale which will be American in character. Having no crystal malt I decided to just go with amber to give it a distinct flavour and the sort of colour I'm after.

Hops
30.00 g         Cascade         60 minutes
30.00 g         Cascade         15 minutes
30.00 g         Cascade         0 minutes

I am a big fan of Cascade hops. They are rich enough in alpha acid to provide bittering when used in enough quantities, citrusy in flavour when used at the end of a brew and give a floral aroma when used to dry hop, which I shall be doing for the first time during fermentation with this one. I did think about using other hops in there too but nothing I have in the house would really add to it, and there's some I have that I don't know what would do to it, so I kept it simple in my "back to basics" frame of mind.


Mash

Grain filter. Where it should be.

90 minute mash. I took extra care to put the filter in the bottom of the mash tun today. 1-2'C lost over the 90 minutes across the mash tun this time for some reason. Not a huge problem I guess but it looks like the insulation isn't enough on the mash tun these days. May be time to insulate the lid, which is where most of the heat would be lost, with polystyrene or something. A lot of people use the hard trying spray polyurethane that's used in insulating cavity walls and the like. I'll give this a go at some point.


It's amazing the job that filter does. It's really very simple yet I've not had a stuck mash whilst using it so it does the job perfectly. I know there are copper manifold fancy affairs you can buy or make, so squeeze the extra litre or so from the bottom and improve efficiency, but while this one works I'll keep using it. Maybe I'm just over enthusing about it because I remembered to use it this time and saved myself a real PITA :)

Boil

Hop filter. Where it should be.

Hot break (or gypsy tart?)

I went for a 60 minute boil today to cut back on bittering, both from the cascades and  the amber malt which can add bitterness (apparently ?!), to lose less wort to evaporation, and to save a little time. Loads of hot break boil foam in this one, took about 10 minutes to calm down and get on with the rolling boil. A couple of blasts from the host and all was well. Aragog was lucky to escape a blast from the hose when he ventured too close to my head for comfort.




Sparge

Complex design

Straight forward sparge thankfully. I employed all of my engineering expertise and fashioned a device capable of controlling the flow of sparge water from the HLT (left). I'm thinking of going to market with it.

First signs are that the colour will be the sort of shade that I had in mind, quite similar to Sierra Nevada.






Yeast

I've gone with the cheap but always reliable Safale US-05 in keeping with the APA character. I pitched it at around 22'C and measure 1043 on the hydrometer which is close enough to what QBrew said it would be (1045). This should ferment down to 1011 or so to give an end ABV of 4.4%, which would be perfect. Even if the yeast goes nuts, like the S-04 did a couple of brews back, it shouldn't end up being too strong. Perfect for a summer ale!

The weather was reasonably well behaved today on the whole, and this coupled with the extra attention to detail meant the brew went pretty well and was infinitely better than the last debacle. There's ALWAYS the chance that the fermentation could be fouled by bacteria or something so I won't count those particular chickens yet, but on the whole a good day and a promising ale in the vat.

More to follow ...

AG #9 - Timothy Taylor Landlord

Sun 24th Jun 2012

Well, my first true "if it can go wrong, it will" brew. I knew I was long overdue one of these, and when it came to Saturday afternoon and I still had no idea what I was going to be making, the alarms bells should have started ringing. I think a 2 month gap between brews also contributed.

I wanted to choose something this time that had a good reputation, and having seen so many good things about Timothy Taylor Landlord clones in books and on the internet I decided this would be AG #9!

Characteristics
Recipe Gravity         1.042 OG  
Estimated FG             1.010 FG
Recipe Bitterness     10 IBU 
Alcohol by Volume         4.1%
Recipe Color         6°  SRM        

Grains
3.5Kg Maris Otter
25g Black Malt


This should make for a light amber/golden colour, the small amount of black malt darkening it a touch beyond lager colour.


Hops

Styrian Goldings

25g Styrian Goldings          90mins
25g East Kent Goldings      90mins
16g Styrian Goldings          10mins

Reading up on Styrian goldings, it turns out that they are in fact derived from Fuggle hops, which were exported to Styria (Austria/Slovenia border) and grown out there. This is why they resemble Fuggle hops in character. Whatever their derivation they make a great aroma/flavour hop! The recipe called for 16g at the end but I ran out and only had 12g to put in at the end ("go wrong" #1). Not a huge blow but might make a small difference in the end product. If it can be distinguished from among the results of the rest of the problems I'd be very surprised!


Mash

90 minute mash as usual, and here we encounter "go wrong" #2. In my complacency and haste I neglected to fit the mesh grain filter into the bottom of the mash tun. Realising this after I had doughed in, I had a few moments of "WTF do I do now?", before I finally decided I would have to ditch the mash into the now empty grain bin, insert the filter, and tip it all back in. Maybe this wasn't the ideal solution and I should have left it to chance as to whether it would have ended in a stuck mash...

Anyway, mash temp now 62'C so way under the 66'C I needed, so I ended up adding water from the HLT to heat it up. About 1-2 litres later and we had 65.9 - that would do. On the plus side I only lost a degree or so across the whole tun over the 90 minutes.

Sparge

Oh ffs ...

So 90 minutes later I came to draw off the first runnings. I opened the tap on the mash tun and was greeted with absolutely nothing ... "go wrong" #3. The merest trickle perhaps at first but then nothing more. It now dawned on me that I hadn't cleared the tap of grain when I plugged the filter into it, instead I had just rammed the filter in quick smart and got on with replacing the then rapidly cooling grain. The air turned blue for the third time as I fumbled around in my head to find a way forward. I Bashed the tap from the outside and inside hoping to relieve the clog of grain in there, to no avail. Coat hanger up the tap? Not very hygienic and to be honest not likely to do the job. Nothing else for it other than to dump the mash into the multi-tasking grain bin again, which in itself wasn't easy considering where it sits on shelf (above) and the weight of grain and water therein. This I did, and was relieved to see the usual steady trickle from the tun when I opened the tap again. I've no clue what effect this can have on "enzyme action" or anything else in a mash but I'm hoping it's nothing drastic. First runnings returned and all going with the sparge, best check the hydrometer reading to see where we are at. As you've probably already guessed, it was broken. Again, profanities rained down to go with the actual rain outside. So, with no way of telling when .990 was reached I had to wing it and take a guess.

Boil

Hot break just pre-boil

Boil was happily pretty uneventful. First hops went in after hot break had subsided and the boil was rolling. I did lose a lot of wort during the boil to evaporation and ended up having to liquor back quite a bit, a couple of litres easily. Not that this is a problem as such, it's just every time I've had to liquor back it has skewed the hydrometer readings and thinned out the wort leaving me with lower gravity than planned. Not that it matters in this case - the hydrometer is in the bin. Add this to the fact that I'm pretty sure I stopped short of .990 during the sparge and we could be looking at a bit of a weak brew. Again, not a problem in itself I suppose.

I was so pre-occupied with all the goings wrong that at I forgot to add the late hops (#5), remembering them only 2 minutes from the end of the boil. Having added them I left the boil running another 10 or so minutes in order to impart the flavour of late hops, which you will recall were already short by 4 grams. Sigh. I did see a ton of cold break material this time during chiller cooling, which his something I've not yet seen in any of my brews until now! Every cloud I suppose :)

Silver lining

Yeast, Safale S04, was pitched at 22'C. I couldn't aerate as my big paddle had disappeared, so I pitched it as it was, which was fairly well aerated already from the drop from boiler to FV. The paddle turned up just now down the back of the shelving in the shed amongst the spiders and dust, having fallen there at some point (#6 ... ?).

A very eventful brew day which started badly, got worse, but ended with 20litres of wort in a FV, so on can't be all that bad on average. I usually have a rough idea how my brews will turn out but this time I really have no clue, with so many contributing factors and unknowns! Here's hoping phoenix rises from these ashes :) I'll report back here either way.

AG #8 - Early Red

Sun 1st April 2012

Gleaming

What a day! Sun shining the whole day and about 16'C - perfect for brewing. I wouldn't normally do more than a brew a month due to time, and storage, constraints. However, since the local authority decided there wasn't enough water left on this lush green island surrounded by water, and declared a hose pipe ban to be in effect from April 6th, I've decided to cram another one in before the deadline.Couldn't have timed it better!

Ably assisted by my now 10 year old brew monkey I got a lot of prep work done the night before. I have to say it made a big difference on the day. It ended up being a thorough clean for all the equipment on Saturday afternoon, as I'd not taken all the taps etc.apart on any of it for a good few brews. I'm actually surprised I've not got an infection in any brew before now, looking at the state of some of those taps - definitely on borrowed time ;) I resolved there and then to clean thoroughly every time from now on. I also weighed out the grain and hops on Saturday too, meaning after a leisurely breakfast I eventually kicked off the brew on Sunday morning at about 9.45, with all the time in the world (yes this complacency did bite me in the arse, as you will see).

This time I was going for a hoppy red ale in the style of Shepherd Neame's Late Red. I grabbed a couple of these that were on offer in Sainsbury's a while back and it really impressed me. It is similar to the American pale ales like SNPA, and the label actually says there are cascade hops in there, a mainstay used in many APAs. The label also mentions East Kent Goldings so, armed with this info, and the experience of making an APA myself, I fired up QBrew and had a crack at a recipe.

Characteristics

Recipe Gravity 1.049 OG Estimated FG 1.012 FG
Recipe Bitterness 28 IBU 
Alcohol by Volume 4.7%
Recipe Color 14° SRM (black malt should make it closer to a darker, redder 18-20)
Alcohol by Weight 3.7%


Grains

0.25 kg Crystal 60L
3.80 kg Maris Otter Pale Malt
0.09 kg Roasted barley  Black malt

I opted for 250g Crystal malt (60L) to darken it up a bit and give deeper red. For the actual red colouration I originally opted for roasted barley, which I read somewhere is good for this. Having posted on THBF and asked for opinions and advice, I found out that some people use black malt as it doesn't give the "stout" taste that roasted barley would, being a staple of most stouts and porters. Very good call, so thanks for that! The rest is the base, Maris Otter pale malt.

Hops

20.00 g Cascade 60 minutes
15.00 g Cascade 30 minutes
15.00 g East Kent Golding 10 minutes
15.00 g East Kent Golding 0 minutes
20.00 g Cascade 0 minutes

As usual I used whole hops as opposed to pellets. I was going for a nice cascade finish here which should come through in the form a citrusy, floral aroma in the finished beer. I toyed with the idea of adding more than 20g of cascades into the post boil, as with the APA, but left it at 20g and added another 15g of the EKG to go with it instead to add complexity (he said, not knowing if it would actually do this or muck it up completely - we'll see :) ).

Mash

90 minutes as usual. I used just over 10l from the HLT for the mash using 2.5:1 ratio and got a reading of 67'C before I put the lid on. Only lost 1'C over the 90 minutes this time, probably due to more care taken when mixing to ensure even temp throughout the tun, and better insulation. It being a relatively warm spring day must also have contributed :)



 
Sparge

The sparge was uneventful but I got a couple of pics in order to gauge the final colour. Midway through it pretty looked close to the deep red colour that I had been hoping for. I got nearly 24l in the boiler before the hydrometer readings hit .990, so I liquored back about a litre so that any wort lost to boil off would take the final volume down to 22l or so, which after loss to the bottom of the boiler would give me 20l in the FV.






Boil

... oh balls.

Nice and steady ...

60 minute boil on this one, partly to hold back on the bittering and partly to conserve the volume. The extra 30 minutes in a 90 minute boil probably means a loss of another half a litre or more and I didn't want to liquor back too much and bring the OG down. Feeling rather pleased with how it was all going at this point, I switched on the boiler and went into the house to chat with Mrs B and a mate who was over for lunch. I glanced down at the desk where I had kept all my gear to dry off properly after cleaning it and saw the hop filter lying on the desk, staring straight at me blissfully unaware that it should in fact be in the bottom of my boiler ...

First thought: I'll stick my arm in and put it in. No, that would involve A&E at Pembury Hospital - oddly a more horrific though than second degree burns. Second thought: It will be okay if I leave it, surely. I dismissed this too as I invisaged more burns as I attempted to relieve a bunged up tap with cooling but still very hot wort. Nothing else for it, I'd need to empty it out and put it back in when the said hop filter was in place. I legged it back up to the brew shed and switched off the boiler, which I drained into the FV I had used to hold my grain (my actual fermenting FV being full of steriliser and various brew bits and pieces). I stuck the offending hop strainer in place and tipped the wort back in. The gentle run off into the boiler I had just done to avoid hot side aeration was now rendered pointless as I dumped the whole lot back in in under 4 seconds with the help of my mate. Boiler back on. Panic over.

Yeast

Monday morning

I used a packet of Safale S-04. Though cheap and cheerful, this yeast is the stalwart of many brews due to it's consistency. Works a treat for me anyway and, unless a recipe specifically calls for a particular strain of yeast to better emulate a specific beer or style, I tend to go for S-04 or it's American counterpart US-05. I pitched it at 25'C and took a hydrometer reading. I managed to hit a temperature corrected 1048, 1 point away from my target. Again I attribute this to not having to liquor back during the boil. If this does drop out to 1012 it will give me my 4.7% ABV target. Lovely!






Updates to follow ...

Those S-04 yeasts went mental.

Fermentation took this down to 1005! ABV therefore is 5.8 % - this was supposed to be an easy drinking light summer ale. No clue why the yeast gave 89% attenuation this time but apparently it can be expected with S-04 ...

Ah well :)

AG #7 - Hobgoblin clone

Sun 4th March 2012

First brew of the year! Very lax, I know, but it's been cold and a lots been going on etc. No more excuses, I was determined I would brew on Sunday come what may. What came was the wettest day of the year which I spent trudging back and forth between the brew shed, taking care to remove shoes and rain mack each time I came back to the house, lest the missus beat me with the mop she had to continually use. Oddly this extra diligence made me more careful with the brew as well, so it was a kind of back to basics effort, with attention to detail (with one exception) that has been lacking in my last few brews.

So, it was a Hobgoblin clone, which I have recently got into. Theres something about it that separates it from the crowd, maybe the leaning towards the Poachers Choice flavours. Again, there is nothing in the brew references I usually use, namely Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" and  Szamatulski's "Clone Brews", so I turned to the interweb for inspiration. Jim's Beer Kit forum had one or two suggestions but I settled on the one I found on the Brew UK forum (reposted from Matt's Beer Kitchen blog).

Grain

4800g Pale Malt
250g Crystal Malt
200g Carapils
150g Chocolate Malt
 

The recipe calls for 150g Chocolate malt. Recent errors and experience of how dark this can make your beer I opted to halve it to 75g, to ensure I didnt overdo it. Once again the brew-monkey was on hand to mix it up, but that was her second to last appearance of the day, the weather being the deciding factor in her decision. Can't say I blame her ...




Hops

Hop schedule was as follows. the 60 minute hops were added just pre-boil as it was coming to temperature , and the late hops after flame-out.

15g Styrian Goldings - 60 min boil
15g Fuggles - 60 minute boil
15g Styrian Goldings - 30 min boil
15g Fuggles - 30 minute boil
15g Styrian Goldings - 60 min post boil
15g Fuggles - 60 minute post boil




Mash

I used 13 litres for the mash for 90 mins @ 68'C, using the 2.5:1 liquor to grain ratio. It was very thin, the thinnest one I have had. Looked more like soup than the malt porridge I'm used to. Perhaps my measurements on the HLT need a revisit...

It lost about a degree over 90 mins in some areas of the grain bed, others seem to have gained half a degree. Need to revisit my thermometer too, as well as stirring the grain into the liquor better to reduce those hot spots. Overall the temperature stayed within a degree or so.

Mash out and sparge usually stops at 990 on the hydrometer, with subsequent "liquoring back" from the HLT to make up the volume, but curiously the reading didn't drop to 990 even when I had 23+ litres in the boiler. Might be a strong one ...

Boil

The trusty Electrim boiler managed an almost constant 100'C for the duration.  Boil foam at the start went mad whilst I was posting on Facebook and covered the shelf with hops - which was the aforementioned exception to the heightened diligence :). I rescued some and I think/hope the overall loss was negligable.

Being a 60 minute boil I opted not to liquor back and lost about 2 litres to the boil in evaporation. I added the post boil hops at flame out and stuck the chiller on, then went for a cuppa and some cake. Chilling from boiling to 27'C took about 25 mins and the temperature after dropping into the FV was 19'C. Was cold out there, no mistake.

Just shy of 20 litres made it into the FV.


Yeast

I used Danstar Nottingham. The instructions are a bit unusual in that you need to revive the yeast in water 35'C for 15 minutes then add it slowly to quantities of wort until it reaches the temperature of the rest of the wort. Not too arduous though, as the yeast was pitched within 30 mins and the FV currently looks like a movie still of a planet from Star Trek (left). Smells good too. This is the first time with this yeast, but I've read some good things about it.




Gravity

1060 @ 21'C...

I checked it again, and yes, 1060 @ 21'C. Depending on where this finishes up, we are looking at around the 6% mark. Hobgoblin is 5.2% so it may finish higher than the usual 1010-1015 and give maybe 5.5%. Not a session beer though this one :)

I can only assume that not having to add to the boiler (therefore dilute) to make up volume and not liquoring back in the short boil has led to this being higher in gravity than expected. What I would have expected was 1052-1055. Shows what I know ...

The colour is a little lighter than Hobgoblin, and I dont think the redness is there. I think my caution with the chocolate malt may be the reason for this, but it's not too far out. I'm still of the opinion that 150g would have been too much though. The taste will be the real test of course.

Fermentation updates to follow!

Oh my word... Not wanting to blow ones own trumpet as it were, but this is outstanding! No real credit to the brewer though really as the guy who came up with the recipe is the real star.

FG was 1016 giving an ABV of around 5.9%.