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 :)