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%.

AG#6 - IPA

Sun 30th October 2011

Another slightly damp but not too cold late autumn day just begging for a brew, so I unselfishly obliged !

This brew will be an IPA, adapted from a recipe I found whilst looking for a most elusive recipe for Fuller's Bengal Lancer. Suffice it to say UI didn't find a recipe directly but stumbled upon one "in the style of" it, which is as close as I came to finding it.

The recipe called for some 125g of Fuggles hops, with a late addition of the same at 20 minutes and flame out. I didn't want it quite so bitter so used 76g up front, with Styrian Goldings at 20 minutes and the rest of my Fuggles pack at flame out, 20g.

Grain

Brew monkey a-mixing

4500g Maris Otter pale malt
150g Amber Malt
150g Flaked Barley
150g Torrefied Wheat

Mash

Seasonal dress for the mash tun :)

Mash temperature: I went for 68'C and lost about half a degree over the 90 minutes which is great!











Hops


76g Fuggles @ 90mins
20g Styrian Goldings @ 20mins
20g Fuggles @ 0mins







Boil

The sparge this time only eventually got down to a hydrometer reading of .990 when I'd drained the HLT, and I liquored back a little during the boil due to evaporation loss, so expecting this to be fairly strong, close to the 5.3% Bengal Lancer gets in the bottle. Good old trusty Electrim boiler maintained a solid 99.6'C to 100'C for the whole boil. If only it was 30Lcapacity instead of 25L :) Touch and go again with the pre-boil foam up, but quick a blast from the hose, on sprinkle rather than power-hose this time, sorted that out.




Yeast

White Labs WLP002 English Ale yeast pitched at 23.5'C

Gravity

QBrew said the OG should be up around 1.061, but I got a temperature corrected 1.053, so looking for it to ferment down to 1.013 to give an ABV of 5.3%. Must look into why the gravity is always quite a lot lower than expected. It could be due to too much liquoring back during the boil, too thin a mash, or perhaps, as previously mentioned, too fast a sparge though this time it was 1L per minute which should be fine.

Quite a nice colour this one. Amber, due most probably to the amber malt:

Fermentation update

Dropped down to 1012 which gives and ABV of  5.4% - about right for an IPA :)

Bottled it looked like this - I used half a cup of DME boiled in about 400ml of water. Slightly cloudy because of this I dare say, as it was very clear before bottling.

Can't wait til this one is ready. Will give it about two weeks to condition then get stuck in!

AG#5 - Director's clone

Sun Sep 18th, 2011

All-grain brew #5 is an attempt at a Courage Directors clone. The recipe is adapted from Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale".

I am ably assisted today by the oldest of my three brewing apprentices. She has lately confirmed that she "likes the smell, but not the taste, but, well, I don't know, I might like it, but well, when I'm older I might ..." ;)

Brew Length: Aiming for 20L

Grains
Maris Otter Pale Malt - 3100g
White Sugar - 300g
Crystal Malt - 220g
Black Malt - 22g

Looked something like this (grain is piled up the side, not an egg shaped grain bucket thankfully :) )

Mash info
90 minute mash @ 66'C, Strike temp 76'C

I actually got 66.8'C after strike - close enough tbh. If I lose more than a degree or two with that lot on it something's gone seriously wrong :)

EDIT: Lost 2'C ! More than I had hoped for. Will look at insulating the lid of the tun properly for next time, as that'll be where most of the heat escapes I imagine

Hops
Target - 22g @ 90 minutes
Styrian Goldings - 4g @ flame-out

Boil
90 minute boil, with hops going in as above. Irish Moss and chiller in @15 mins

In an attempt to quell the rapidly rising pre-boil foam (below), a quick burst from the hose, which turned out  not to be on the "tap" setting but on "pressure hose", sent froth up the shed wall.

After that a mercifully uneventful rolling boil! 99.6'C sustained for the whole 90 minutes - not bad for a single element Electrim :)

Yeast
Safale S-04 @ 20-28'C

Pitched @ 26'C - got impatient.


Gravity
OG: 1046 - 1048
FG: 1011 - 1013
ABV%: 4.4 - 4.9

Actually achieved 1042 @ 26'C which temp. corrects to 1044. Not a million miles away, probably lost a couple of points when liquoring back during boil.

SO! All in all a very good brew day - no major problems, a couple of tight timing moments.

Yeast cracking on apace this morning:

Now to think about what next month's brew will be ...

UPDATE 2/10/2011
Final gravity was 1012, giving an ABV of 4.2% - a little low but will turn into a perfectly adequate session beer :)

And finally into the Corny keg:

Some brewing terms explained

Liquor: Just hot water.
HLT: Hot Liquor Tank, holds water to be used for mashing/sparging
Brew Length: Basically just volume, in this case 19L
Strike Temp: The temperature at which the liquor in the HLT hits the mash tun. Adjusted up by 10'C in this case, to account for the cooler tun and the grain temp of 20'C, so strike temp was to be 78'C (was nearer nearer 80 in truth)
Mash: conversion of starch in malted (roasted) barley into sugar at specific temperatures
Sparge: The process of extracting sugars from the mash, adding liquor to the mash tun.
Boil times: 90 mins means at the start, 15 mins means 15 mins from the end.
Flame-out: The end of the boil


More to follow ...

AG #4 - Apache Longbow APA

Sun Aug 07, 2011

I've munged together a recipe I found online for SNPA with what I had in my cupboard to hopefully come up with something APAish.

Qbrew tells me I should expect OG of 1052 and an FG of 1013. I came in at 1050 which I am really quite pleased with as my last few have been quite a way off.

Brew length 19L

Grain
3800g Maris Otter
600g Crystal (60L)

Hops
13g Target @ 90mins
13g Cascade @ 30 mins
28g Cascade @ 10 mins (along with Irish moss)
50g Cascade @ 0 (I know, it seemed a ****load of hops to me but I thought I'd go with it as per this recipe I found)

Yeast I used was Safale US-05

Post boil hopping is not something I've done before  so I did what I had look on The Home Brew Forum for the post boil hops, which said to chill to 80'C, pop the hops in for 20 mins, then chill down the rest of the way. Not sure how it will turn out but it currently smells great ! :D

In all a thoroughly enjoyable brew day. No pics unfortunately as my camera batteries needed charging but here's one of the yeast that's got going already:



Some additional pics of this one in the bottle. Still very cloudy but hopefully only a result of the priming DME.

AG #3 - Oldfort Brown Ale

Sun Jun 19, 2011

A Brown Ale on Father's Day Sunday (NBA from a clone book) for AG#3:

Brew length 19L
4200g Maris Otter
60g Crystal malt
60g Chocolate malt
30g Black malt

25g Target @ 90mins
15g EKG @ 45mins

Yeast S-04

OG 1051
FG 1013
IBU 26
ABV 4.7%


Found a distinct lack of Target hops existing in my brew cupboard so used my only alternative, Northern Brewer. Hope this will be ok, apparently its a similar AA level?!

Also forgot the campden tablet whilst being sidetracked by the The Boy (who also managed to sneak into some photo's as you will see). I put it in pre-boild wort instead, as I saw this can be done online somewhere. Again hope it will be ok

OG was 6pts below target, maybe because I liquored back too much despite only reaching 19L. I wonder if too quick a sparge may also have contributed? Anyway, wound up at 1042@29.5'C, which corrects to 1045. Maybe I'll get it below 1010 in the ferment and make it up at the other end. No huge shame if not, 4.5% is perfectly adequate for my general needs

At least the hoses stayed attached to my chiller this time.

Grain:



The camera steadfastly refused to focus on the thermometer whilst trying to capture the mash temp, but it was 67'C which is just about right according to the book. On to the boil:



Hoses on the chiller, where they belong:



A good day really, but a little disappointed with the low OG at the end