Brewday 15/02/2019 - Lager and Kolsch

One Brew - Two Beers

I've been wanting to brew a lager for ages but it's difficult without temperature controlled fermentation - lager yeasts generally ferment at 10-12°C, compared to ale yeasts which are quite happy at room temperature. However, I thought if I could utilise the twin benefits of cold weather and a draughty Edwardian house I may have a chance of success. After a bit of checking with a thermometer I discovered that the cupboard under the stairs (unheated, north facing, non cavity external wall and a bit draughty) was only around 12°C and the ambient temperature of my mains water was just over 8°C. This meant I could easily chill the wort down to 14°C with my immersion chiller and keep the temperature low during fermentation. I planned to use Saflager W-34/70 lager yeast which has a recommended required fermentation temperature of 12-15°C. Originally I only intended to brew a small batch (12lt) which I would ferment in three demijohns. However I also had one pack of Kolsch yeast and plenty of suitable malt and hops so decided to brew around 30lt of beer, 12lt fermented with the lager yeast and 18lt with the kolsch.

Recipe (BIAB) + sparge

Since this recipe would result in a boil size of approximately 35lt (which almost fills my pan) I took a slightly different approach to this brew. Firstly I heated my initial mash water in two pans, 20lt in my usual brew kettle plus an extra 10lt in another stock pot. Secondly, as I was using almost 6kg of grain I reverted to my original large brew bag. This was basically to allow easier handling of the water for the mash and the grain bag pre-boil. Once the water had reached the strike temperature of 72°C I placed the large pan on the kitchen floor in its insulated jacket, put in the grain bag and added the additional 10lt of water from the second stock pot. Then I carefully added the grain, stirring well to avoid any doughballs. Once the mash was complete I lifted up the grain bag, let it drain into a fermenting bucket and sparged the grain bed with 8.5lt of 76°C water. While this was happening the pan was heating on the hob. Once all the water had drained through the grain bed and rinsed out all the sugars I transferred the contents of the fermenting bucket into the pan which gave me a pre-boil volume of about 35lt.

• Mash water (72°C) 30lt 
• Sparge water (76°C) 8.5lt
• Vienna Malt 3kg
• Lager Malt 2kg
• Munich Malt 0.5kg
• Wheat Malt 190g
• Carapils 250g
• Perle 4.4% 50g 60mins
• Pacifica 5.36% 15g 30 mins
• Pacifica 5.36% 10g 15 mins
• Crossmyloof Kolsch yeast 1 pack
• Saflager W-34/70 1 pack

Once the boil had finished I was left with 29lt of wort. After chilling to 14°C I transferred 12lt into three demijohns and pitched the lager yeast, the remaining 17lt went into a normal 25lt fermenter with the kolsch yeast and an extra 2lt of water to bring the original gravity down as better than expected efficiency (86%!) meant I was going to get two beers with abv's in excess of 6%.

Results:

Kolsch!

Firstly the Kolsch which I fermented in my kitchen for 10 days at around 16°C. I pitched at 14°C but the temperature soon rose to 16-17°C so I used a wet towel to keep it cool.

• OG: 1.049
• FG: 1.008
• ABV: 5.3%
• IBU: 26

Very clean and crisp. A little bit floral with just a hint of apple flavour. A bit more malty compared to my previous efforts, maybe due to the Vienna and Munich malts, more like a lager really but very nice.

Next the lager which was fermented for 10 days at ­12-14°C and then another four days at room temperature finishing at 18°C. 

Lager!

• OG: 1.055
• FG: 1.008
• ABV: 6.1%
• IBU: 27

This was my first attempt at a proper lager and I am very pleased with the end result. It's clean, crisp and crystal clear (despite no finings as usual). Compared to the Kolsch there are no floral or fruity flavours, the lager yeast is very neutral which lets the malt and hops provide all the flavour. I fully intend to make a lager again, perhaps a dunkel or doppelbock next time.

   

Brewday 01/02/2019 - Rye Caramber!

Think of a name. Then brew the beer

I'd been meaning to brew another Rye beer for a bit so I checked through my ingredients to put together a recipe. I still had some amber malt which I used for the first time in the bitter I made in October, and which I thought added a distinct malty flavour to the beer, so I planned to combine this with some rye and crystal rye. This led me to come up with the name Rye Caramber (thank you Bart Simpson). Now all I had to do was brew the beer. As per usual I mashed in and went out to work, returning about four hours later. I also repeated my hop extract experiment with the Centennial hops, 20g in a cafetiere/French press with 750ml water at 70°C left to steep for 20 mins and added to the fermenter for the last three days of fermentation.

Recipe (BIAB)

• Mash for 240 mins at 65°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 28.2lt
• Maris Otter 3.865kg
• Wheat Malt 250g
• Amber malt 300g
• Crystal Malt 45L 135g
• Rye Malt 500g
• Crystal Rye 250g
• Northdown 7% 20g (60 mins)
• Northdown 7% 20g (15 mins)
• Cascade (6.1%) 50g whirlpool 20 mins at 70°C
• Cascade (6.1%) 50g dry hop for 3 days
• Centennial (7%) 20g "hop extract" for 3 days
• Fermentis Safale US05 11g pack pitched at 17°C
• Recipe in Brewer's Friend

Results

OG: 1.058

FG: 1.010

ABV: 6.34%

IBU: 40

Wow! This is excellent. A big hoppy aroma, a nice spicy flavour from the rye but with a bit of sweetness and although it's quite bitter the high abv balances it well. I am very pleased with this. I love the flavour of rye, with the hop aroma and the alcohol this works really well.

Brewday - 14/01/2019 American Porter

You Want it Darker*

I haven't brewed porter or stout for a while, which is odd since mostly I tend to drink the darker stuff, so when I got a chance to brew I thought I'd have a go at an American Porter. I'm not sure what exactly defines an American Porter but I guess it's got to be a dark beer with lots of American hops. I tried making my own hop extract for this beer. To do this I boiled some water, let it cool to 75°C and then added 750ml to a cafetiere (or French press) with 20g of Pacifica hops. I let it steep for 20 minutes and then pushed down the plunger and added this "hop extract" to the fermenter. I did this at the same time as dry hopping with 50g of Cascade. 

Recipe (BIAB):

• Mash for 60 mins at 67°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 29lt
• Maris Otter 3.85kg
• Rolled Oats 480g
• Crystal 45L 125g
• Chocolate Malt 235g
• Black malt 115g 
• Northdown 7% (leaf) 30g (60 mins)
• First Gold (homegrown leaf) 15g (15 mins)
• Cascade 6.5% (pellets) 50g whirlpool 75°C for 30 mins
• Cascade 6.5% (pellets) 50g dry hop for 3 days 
• Pacifica 5.8% (leaf) 20g "hop extract" for 3 days
• Gervin GV12 English Ale Yeast 11g pack
• Recipe in Brewer's Friend

Results

OG 1.046
FG 1.010
ABV 4.7%
IBU 48
Efficiency was disappointingly low at only 65%, originally I was anticipating over 5% abv. Apart from that I'm very happy with this beer, there's definitely a good hoppy aroma and it's very smooth and easy to drink.

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. 

Brewday 08/12/2017 Another Porter

Brown Stuff

I had one last opportunity to brew in 2017 so chose to make a porter. I had some dark malts in stock and I could use some more homegrown hops and free up some space in the freezer. 

Recipe (BIAB):

• Mash for 90 mins at 66°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 28lt
• Pale Malt 3.5kg
• Munich Light 0.5kg
• Crystal 60L 200g
• Chocolate Malt 240g
• Black malt 60g 
• Rolled Oats 250g
• Northdown 7% 15g (60 mins)
• Northdown 7% 25g (15 mins)
• First Gold (homegrown) 25g whirlpool 75°C for 30 mins
• Cascade 4.2% 25g whirlpool 75°C for 30 mins
• First Gold (homegrown) 63g dry hop for 3 days 
• Gervin GV12 English Ale Yeast 11g pack
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

The whirlpool addition is a bit of a misnomer, I just chilled the wort to 75°C, added the hops, gave it a stir and left it for 30 minutes before finishing chilling. This should get more aroma from the hops as opposed to adding at flameout when the wort is still at boiling point.

Results 18/12/2017

I bottled this after 10 days in the fermenter.

OG 1.049 (efficiency 70%)

FG 1.009

ABV 5.17%

I'll give it a couple of weeks conditioning and try some in 2018, hopefully it will be good, the sample I tried from the gravity reading was very tasty!

Update 31/01/2018

Yep, still tasty!

Brewday 17/11/17 Kolsch

Impromptu Brewday

Due to a work cancellation I found I had the opportunity (and more importantly, the ingredients) to brew some beer. I had plenty of German malts so I decided to make another Kolsch.

Recipe BIAB:

• Mash water vol 28lt
• 3kg Pilsner Malt
• 1kg Vienna Malt
• 250g Wheat Malt
• 150g Carapils Malt
• 25g Perle 4.4% (60 min)
• 25g Perle 4.4% (15 min)
• 5g Irish moss (15 min)
• 1 pk Safale K97 German Ale Yeast
• Mash for 90 mins at 68ºC
• Boil for 1 hour
• 21.5lt into the fermenter

Results:

After recent poor efficiency scores I did a bit of research to see how I could improve things. One suggestion I came across was to mill the grains much finer than normal but since I buy all my grain pre-crushed that wasn't an option. Another common idea was mashing with a smaller quantity of water and then sparging. There are various options; cold water sparge, warm water sparge, dunk sparging, trickle sparging, all of which seem to have worked for other homebrewers. However the most straightforward suggestion was simply to extend the mash time to 90 minutes, which I did and it worked! I got a higher OG than anticipated due to the higher efficiency score, I was only expecting 1.045 at 70% efficiency.

Efficiency 75%
OG 1.048

FG 1.011
IBU 23

ABV 4.82% (expected)

So it's now fermenting away, I'll leave it for about 10 days before bottling. 

Update 28/11/2017

The K97 yeast has an ideal fermentation range of 15-20ºC, I pitched at 18ºC which was as low as I could reasonably get with my immersion chiller and 12ºC ambient water temperature. After 24 hours I noticed the temperature of the fermenter had risen to 20ºC, meaning I needed to chill it somehow. Short of emptying the fridge which wouldn't have been too popular I had to resort to a  more basic method. By wrapping the fermenter in a wet towel and standing it in a pan of cold water the temperature came down to 18ºC within 24 hours and stayed at 17ºC for the duration of the fermentation period. Luckily for me my fermenting buckets fit neatly inside my pan.

Hi-tech cooling system

Update 31/01/2018

After several weeks conditioning in a temperature controlled area (under the stairs - temperature 10-12ºC in January) I tried this beer and have to say am well pleased with the result. It's crisp and clean but with that distinctive Kolsch-y flavour. I think the attention I paid to temperature for fermentation and conditioning has paid off.

Unfiltered and unfined!

Brewday 01/11/17 Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone

Using up free hops

A local microbrewery kindly offered my homebrew club some surplus hops, obviously we took advantage of this and found ourselves in possession of a substantial amount (by homebrewing standards) of Northdown and Cascade. After splitting them between us we had to decide what to do with them so it was proposed that we all attempt to brew a clone version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and bring it along to taste at the December meeting. 

There are plenty of recipes online and most of them share a few common traits; A simple malt bill of pale and crystal, and lots of cascade hops.

Recipe:

• 4.5kg Maris Otter
• 0.3kg Crystal Malt 45L
• 24g Northdown 7% (60 min)
• 23g Northdown 7% (25 min)
• 21g Cascade 4.2% (10 min)
• 50g Cascade 4.2%(0 min)
• 130g Cascade (dry hop 6 days)
• 1 pk Safale US05 Ale Yeast
• Mash for 1 hour at 68ºC
• Boil for 1 hour
• 18lt into the fermenter

I've gone a bit over the top with the dry hopping but these hops were pretty old and had a very low alpha acid content.

Results:

Once again the efficiency was disappointing, down at 64%. 

OG 1.054

FG 1.013
IBU 44

ABV 5.4%

I bottled this on the 13th November so it will have over 4 weeks to condition. I hope it turns out well, it certainly tasted good during bottling.

Update 22/12/17

I've been drinking this over the last couple of weeks and it's quite a pleasant drink. Compared to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale I find it more bitter and not quite as hoppy but at least it's the right colour!  

Brewday 25/09/17 - Red Rye Ale

It's rye time I did this...

I always enjoy any beer that features rye but I've never brewed with it myself until now. This beer also includes some of my homegrown First Gold hops so it's a double first - I hope it turns out well.

Recipe:

• 3.15kg Irish Ale Malt
• 0.5kg Red X Malt
• 0.5kg Rye Malt
• 0.5kg Munich Malt
• 100g Chocolate Malt
• 25g Northdown (60 min)
• 25g First Gold (15 min)
• 44g First Gold (0 min)
• 50g Cascade (dry hop 4 days)
• 36g Mosiac (dry hop 4 days)
• 1 pk Safale S04 Ale Yeast

OG =1.045 (efficiency 68% - still not very good)

Anyway it's in the fermenter, I plan to bottle it later this week.

Update 06/10/17

I bottled the beer today, FG was 1.010 (exactly as predicted) giving an ABV of 4.57%. A quick taste suggests this beer will be a very pleasant drink once it has finished conditioning.

Brewday 18/09/2017 - Black Coffee Stout

Black Coffee in Beer

With the nights drawing in it was time to brew a dark beer, and in a radical move I decided to add an extra ingredient to the usual line-up of water, malt, hops and yeast. This beer also contained coffee, and just to make it extra crafty I used cold brewed coffee. As this was a bit of an experiment for me I only brewed a small batch of nine litres split into two demijohns.

Recipe (BIAB):

• Mash for 1 hr at 67°C
• Boil for 60 mins
• Mash water volume 13.6lt
• Pale Malt 1.35kg
• Crystal 15L 160g
• Chocolate Malt 110g
• Black malt 50g 
• Rolled Oats 180g
• Northdown 25g (60 mins)
• Northdown 25g (0 mins)
• Gervin GV12 English Ale Yeast 11g pack
• 100ml cold brewed coffee (added to one demijohn)
• Recipe in Brewers Friend

Naturally things didn't go totally as planned, firstly my efficiency was way down at 61% (usually I get around 75%) which meant I was going to end up with an ABV of 3.95%, a lot lower than what I wanted. I also managed to miscalculate the hop additions, this was a scaled down recipe but I didn't reduce the hops at the same rate as the malts resulting in a higher IBU rating than originally expected. Obviously I couldn't do much about the hops but I decided to increase the ABV by adding some brewing sugar (dextrose) to the fermenters. I made a solution with 80g of dextrose and 200ml of boiling water, allowed it to cool and then split it between the two demijohns. I have never done this before but it seemed to work. I made the addition after two days fermentation and there was certainly some increased airlock activity and a final gravity reading of 1.010 would indicate a theoretical ABV of 4.42% which is a bit of an improvement. The downside of adding sugar is it tends to make the beer taste thinner and less full-bodied but hopefully I've got the balance right by just adding a small amount. 

I made the cold brewed coffee by mixing 50g of coarse ground coffee with 350ml of water in a sterilised mason jar and leaving it in the fridge for 24 hours. I then filtered it several times to remove all the grounds and added 100ml to one of the demijohns after four days of fermentation. I left this for another week and then bottled both beers. Each demijohn contained 4.25 litres so I primed each with 20g of brewing sugar. Now I have 12 x 330ml of each stout conditioning, one with coffee and one without. It will be interesting to see how they compare and whether the coffee actually improves the beer. 

Homegrown Hops

Grow It Yourself

Hops are expensive, for homebrewers 100g of dried hops can cost anything up to £6+ a pack. This makes brewing super hoppy American style pale ales quite an expensive process. So in my never-ending quest to spend less money I bought and planted two hop plants (Prima Donna or First Gold variety) early last year. After 3-4 weeks of nothing happening there was a sudden burst of activity, several shoots appeared from the ground and rapidly scaled the fence. The blurb which came with the plants warned me to expect very little in the first year, which was fortunate as very little was precisely what I got. It is not until the third year that the plant will reach its full potential so I was not expecting much extra this year. Once again in early March several shoots appeared and grew rapidly up and along my fence, however this year I picked over 1.6kg of fresh hops which I dried in a food dehyrator down to a dry weight of 350g.

The hop fence

There's something quite satisfying about growing your own hops for brewing although given that the hop plants cost £18 I'm still out of pocket as 350g of First Gold only costs about £14. Next year I should get a bigger harvest and I can also split the hop rhizomes to get more plants, so over time I should save a bit of money. I also found hops growing wild near me last year so in early March I dug up some rhizomes and planted cuttings in my garden. I don't know the variety but they do smell great, were free and for a first year's crop I've done pretty well, far better than last year's bought plants. These hops aren't quite ready to pick yet but when they are I'll brew a green hop beer.

Wild Hops

Last year I dried my meagre harvest on the window sill, but this took too long and the end result was poor. This year I have used a food dehydrator which has given great results. I dried 500g of fresh hops down to 110g in 10-12 hours, with the dehydrator at the lowest heat setting of 35°C. Higher temperatures than this risk burning off the much sought-after but volatile hop oils.

Food Dehydrator

My total harvest was just over 2kg (1.65kg First Gold and 400g of the wild variety) which I dried down to 450g and froze for future brewdays.
In conclusion I have to say that growing hops is very straightforward, they require very little special care and hopefully I'll get to brew some great beer.

Strong Bitter Tasting

Extra Strong, Extra Special

It's a glorious hot summer's day in sunny Manchester so the perfect opportunity to drink a chilled glass of Extra Strong/Special Bitter (ESB).

Hazy!

This is the beer I brewed on 9th June (recipe here) and took to Manchester Beer Week Homebrew Expo after only two weeks conditioning. Ideally I should have left it for a few more weeks so after more than four weeks in bottles I think it's time for another taste.

Disappointingly it's still a bit hazy but that aside I am very pleased with this. At 5.1% abv it has a bit of a boozy kick but is still very drinkable, which is a slight worry as it's not exactly a session ale. It's not hoppy, but neither is it too bitter at 35 IBU's. The malt flavours are more prevalent but it's not too sweet, overall a very pleasant, traditional style ESB.

Clear!

Quick update, after another four weeks the beer is now crystal clear! Once again standard homebrewing rules apply; if it's not right at first just leave it for a while, it won't get any worse and might just improve.