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!