Brewday - 07/11/2018 American Amber Ale

American Amber

Time for another brew, in this case an American Amber Ale. As usual I did a four hour mash to fit around with work schedules. This recipe filled my pan to capacity. 

Recipe (BIAB)

• Mash for 240 mins at 65°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 33lt
• Maris Otter 4.25kg
• Wheat Malt 260g
• Amber malt 310g
• Crystal Malt 45L 260g
• Chocolate Malt 106g
• Northdown 7% 30g (60 mins)
• First Gold (homegrown) 15g (15 mins)
• Cascade (6.1%) 50g whirlpool 20 mins at 70°C
• Cascade (6.1%) 50g dry hop for 3 days
• Motueka (7%) 17g dry hop for 3 days
• Gervin GV12 Ale Yeast 11g pack pitched at 20°C
• Recipe in Brewer's Friend

Results

OG: 1.050

FG: 1.006

ABV: 5.75%

IBU: 39

Overall really pleased with this, apart from being a little bit darker than I anticipated. There is a good hop aroma and well balanced flavour between the hop bitterness and malty sweetness. The only stand out issue was the how low the final gravity reading was. I was expecting it to finish around 1.010, in fact I got 85% apparent attenuation which is far higher than I've had before with a yeast used several times in the past. I'm unsure what caused the additional fermentation but the beer tastes great so I'm not overly concerned.

Modifying my Homebrewing Kit

Modifying my Homebrewing Kit

One of things I enjoy about homebrewing (aside from drinking the beer) is the opportunity to tinker with recipes, method and kit. When I started using the BIAB method my system was pretty basic. I had a 40lt pan and a BIAB bag, I would fill the pan with about 30lt of water, insert the bag and add around 5kg of grain to get about 22lt of beer into the fermenter. It's a simple method and it works, there's no need for a separate water heater and mash tun, and there's no sparging involved either. However, there are drawbacks. Firstly my efficiencies were not great, usually below 70%, which means I was not utilising the fermentable potential of the grain. A more efficient system would get the same results from a smaller grain bill. The second problem is dealing with the grain bag at the end of the mash. A mesh bag containing 5kg of malt soaked in hot water is not the easiest thing to lift out of the pan. The bag is heavy, the wort is hot and sticky and tends to drip everywhere, and in my case I haven't got much space between the hob and the cooker hood. I know other homebrewers using BIAB have a pulley system enabling them to winch up the grain bag and suspend it above the pan allowing the wort to drain out. Unfortunately I haven't got the space or permission to do this so I had to think of something else. 

After a bit of googling I realised the best option for me would be to use a bucket with holes drilled in the base which could be lifted out and stood on an oven rack above the pan so the wort could drain out while the pan was heating up for the boil. I had a 15lt fermenting bucket which fits nicely inside my pan, so I just needed to drill holes in the base and I could then use my grain bag to line it. 

My original grain bag was really too big for this so I replaced it with a Youngs fine large nylon straining bag which has a cylindrical shape and fits neatly into the plastic bucket. This new setup has worked well so far. I've done two brews, achieving 73% and 76% efficiency scores and I've found it far easier and cleaner to handle the grain bag after mashing. The first beer I brewed in this way was this best bitter which tastes great and I've just brewed an American Amber Ale which I hope will turn out just as well.

This system also lets me sparge the grain bed so I've got greater control over the finished beer, I can work to a specific pre-boil gravity if necessary.

Other modifications I've made include adding a false bottom to the pan made from an old BBQ grill with 50mm steel bolts as legs. I've also made an insulated jacket from foil bubble wrap and a load of gaffer tape which the pan can sit in during the mash. 

As I still use the hob to heat the pan I have to be able to remove the pan from the insulating jacket. This is not a tight fit, the pot just slides in and out but since I've started mashing for over four hours this has enabled me to restrict the heat loss to 1-2°C.

Brewday - 05/10/2018 Best Bitter

Brewing Again, Finally!

For the first time since the end of May I have been able to brew some beer. The combination of an unusually hot summer and an unusually busy me meant home brewing was off the agenda for a few months. When the opportunity finally arose I decided to keep it simple and brew a nice easy-drinking best bitter. I fitted this brew-day around work which meant a long four hour mash in my recently insulated brewing pan. Despite the extended mash time the temperature only dropped by 1°C so I may try an overnight mash in the future. 

Recipe (BIAB)

• Mash for 240 mins at 67°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 30lt
• Maris Otter 3.45kg
• Wheat Malt 220g
• Amber malt 200g
• Crystal Malt 45L 80g
• Flaked Maize 170g
• Northdown 7% 25g (60 mins)
• First Gold (homegrown) 40g (15 mins)
• Crossmyloof Real Ale Yeast 11g pack pitched at 20°C
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results 12/10/2018

I bottled this after 7 days fermentation

OG 1.043

FG 1.012

ABV 4%
IBU 39

First Taste 26/10/2018

I managed to wait for two weeks before tasting the beer, first impressions were very good. It's not aromatically hoppy but still quite bitter. There is a bit of residual sweetness and it has a nice nutty flavour, really just like a traditional English best bitter and very easy to drink at just 4% abv. All in all lovely stuff!

Checking the Barley Wine

Barley Wine Time

So it's high time I tried the Barley Wine I brewed in April. First impressions are it's quite boozy, second impressions are it's very boozy. It is dark, rich and smooth and I hope it will mellow even more over time. I'm pleased with this, if I manage to save some for Winter it'd make a great Christmas drink, that's a big if though...

Brewday 28/05/18 Motueka Pale

Pale and Hoppy

I always try to keep a good range of ingredients in stock so I can brew at short notice. I also tend to have recipes created in advance which (although usually subject to last minute tweaks) gives me the ability to brew some beer when the opportunity arises. This was case at here when despite it being half term the rest of the family were out all day and I only had a couple of hours of work to do. I had the ingredients to make a nice hoppy pale ale so I got the mash on early, nipped out to work, and was back after 2½ hours to finish the brew.

I recently bought some Motueka hops and yeast from Crossmyloof Brew Supplies who I believe are a contract brewer who also repack hops and yeast to sell to homebrewers at very competitive prices. I had never dealt with them before so I was interested to see how the ingredients performed, especially the yeast which was their US Pale Ale Yeast.

Recipe BIAB

• Mash for 150 mins at 67°C

• Boil for 60 minutes

• Mash water volume 29.3lt

• 2.7kg Maris Otter
• 0.5kg Munich Malt

• 200g Flaked Maize

• 200g Wheat Malt

• 100g Crystal Malt 45L

• 100g Carapils

• 15g Northdown 60 mins

• 12g First Gold 15 mins

• 50g Motueka whirlpool 20 mins

• 33g Perle dry hop 4 days

• 1 pack Crossmyloof US Pale Ale Yeast
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results

I pitched the yeast at 20°C which was about as low as I could get it during the UK's current never-ending warm spell. I also put the fermenter in a pan of cold water wrapped in a damp towel to try and keep the temperature down during fermentation which was fairly successful, the temperature stayed at around 21°C. Fermentation was very quick, the gravity reading was down to 1.010 after 3 days. I bottled the beer after one week.

OG: 1.040

FG: 1.008

ABV: 4.15%

The beer was pretty cloudy when I bottled it and the yeast was not as flocculent as others I've used, the yeast cake after fermentation was not as compact as usual. In fact bottling took far longer than usual with blobs of yeast blocking the bottling wand. I think the warm weather has affected the fermentation. However it seems to be clearing up in the bottles so hopefully it will end up as good hoppy pale ale.

Brewday 27/04/18 Barley Wine

Half the beer - twice the alcohol

I decided to attempt a barley wine for the first time, loosely based on this Ron Pattison recipe from 1956 for Tennants No.1 Barley Wine. With an alcohol level of 10% abv, and it being a new style for me, I decided to only brew about 10lt as this was not going to be a session beer.

Recipe BIAB

• Mash for 120 mins at 65°C
• Boil for 105 minutes
• Mash water volume 18.1lt
• 3kg Maris Otter
• 265g Flaked Maize
• 90g Chocolate Malt
• 90g Crystal Malt 45L
• 500g Muscavado Sugar
• 25g Northdown 105 mins
• 12g First Gold 60 mins
• 12g First Gold 15 mins
• 12g Perle dry hop 5 days
• 1 pack GV12 Gervin English Ale yeast
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results

OG 1.082

FG 1.010

ABV 9.4%

Although I brewed about 11 litres I finished with just 20 x 330ml bottles. Given the bit of residue left in the bottling bucket and the trub left at the bottom of the demijohns I reckon I started bottling with about 8 litres, the rest escaped during an extremely active fermentation. 

The great escape

On reflection I think if I brew something similar again I'll split it over three demijohns.
 

Tasting the IPA

Testing Time

Time to try the IPA I brewed on March 2nd. First impressions are it's not too hoppy and it doesn't taste too strong despite being 6% abv. In fact it's a little bit too easy to drink. There's a bit of sweetness (maybe from the maize?) and I think I could have made it more bitter. Overall it's quite pleasant and very drinkable, perhaps more like a strong bitter rather than an IPA.

It's also cleared up a lot in the last couple of weeks. When I tried it two weeks ago and it was still a bit too hazy. This was the first time I've used Nottingham yeast and I am really impressed with it, the beer is clean tasting with no overwhelming estery flavours and it's perfect for bottle conditioning with the sediment sticking hard to the bottom of the bottle.

Competition Time

And the Winner is....

...Me! I entered three of my beers into the annual Stockport Beer Festival Bar Nouveau homebrew competition, where the winning beer in each of the five categories is brewed at a local brewery and launched at Stockport Beer & Cider Festival. I entered my Kolsch in the speciality category, Another Porter into Stout/Porter and Red Rye Ale into the Bitter category, all three beers made it through to the finals and my Red Rye Ale won the bitter category. Of the three I thought the bitter was the weakest entry which shows what I know. This means I receive the fantastic prize of getting to brew my beer at a local micro (this usually means digging out the mash tun but never mind). The only problem I have is thinking of a suitable name for my beer. 

Brewday 02/03/2018 IPA

Heritage Homebrew

For my next beer I decided to brew an old style English IPA. Not to a genuine heritage recipe but I took inspiration from my copy of The Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer by Ron Pattison (whose blog "Shut up about Barclay Perkins" is great source of historical beery information) The 19th Century IPA recipes featured in the book aren't especially strong - around 5-6% abv - but are extremely bitter with IBU ratings in excess of 150 and hopping rates of up to 18g per litre. I didn't want to go for such a high level of bitterness so I used most hops as late addition and for dry hopping, with (high for me!) an overall hopping rate of 10g per litre. The IBU's are around 52 so still quite bitter. This brew was the first time I tried adjusting the water profile. One of my fellow local homebrewers gave me a water adjustment spreadsheet with our local water profile data from a recent report. After some messing about in Excel I ended up adding 6g of calcium chloride and 6g of Epsom salts to the mash, whether this will make any significant difference remains to be seen.

Recipe (BIAB)

• Mash for 90 mins at 66°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 28.5lt
• Maris Otter 4.8kg
• Wheat Malt 150g
• Crystal Malt 45L 250g
• Flaked Maize 250g
• Northdown 7% 25g (60 mins)
• Northdown 7% 25g (30 mins)
• First Gold (homegrown) 25g whirlpool 75°C for 30 mins
• Cluster 7% 25g whirlpool 75°C for 30 mins
• First Gold (homegrown) 25g dry hop for 4 days
• Cluster 7% dry hop for 4 days 
• Nottingham Ale Yeast 11g pack pitched at 18°C
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Results 12/03/2018

I bottled this after 10 days fermentation

OG 1.057

FG 1.012

ABV 6%

Now I have to give it a few weeks to condition before I can taste it.

Testing Times

Kolsch and Porter

I've not been able to drink much of my most recent brews until recently as I have been going out drinking (and paying for) other beers. However, things are more or less back to normal now so I can revert to being an antisocial solitary drinker once again. My two most recent brews were a Porter and a Kolsch and both have benefited from a longer conditioning period than I usually allow.  

The Kolsch (strictly speaking I can't call it "Kolsch" as it's not brewed in Cologne, maybe Kolsch-style or Kolsch-ish) was brewed on the 17th of November, fermented for 10 days at 17°C, bottled conditioned for two weeks at room temperature and then stored for 6 weeks at 10-12°C. The end result is an extremely crisp, clean tasting beer which is also very pale and clear.

The taste is very slightly sweet, slightly spicy or herbal with a hint of malty breadiness. It's 4.8% abv so a bit more than session strength but not too strong. Overall I found it really clean and refreshing and probably more suited to summer drinking, which I'll try to do if I manage to save some until then.

The Porter was brewed on the 8th of December and fermented for 10 days (the yeast was pitched at 18°C and the fermenter temperature never rose above 19°C). One bottled I left it at room temperature for another 6 weeks. The beer is smooth and full bodied, not too bitter and has none of the astringent burnt flavours which I have found in past dark beers, which I guess is due to the very small amount of black malt in the recipe.

Despite the relatively small quantity of dark malts the beer is still very dark and at 5.1% abv it's not weak but remains very drinkable. It has a smooth consistency which I believe is derived from the oats. It's not overly hoppy but neither do the malts overwhelm flavour-wise, the sweetness of the crystal counters the bitterness of the black and chocolate malts so overall I think this is a easy drinking and well balanced porter.