Hot, Quick and Thick

Slight hiccup with my hosting, Most of my October posts are gone and my oh so fancy theme has been lost. I’m sure we will all struggle through this little escapade.

Two batches to bottle and one to brew this weekend.

Brewed an extract weizenbock on Friday night. It was originally intended to be a dunkel, but rather than a 1.7kg tin of wheat malt (with a little added DME) I used Weyermann Bavarian Hefeweizen malt extract, 4kg worth.

This was the intended recipe:

Weizenbock

OG 1.071
~7% ABV
20 IBU
45 EBC
21L

4kg Weyermann Bavarian Hefeweizen extract
500g sucrose
150g Weyermann Caramunich III
100g TF choc malt

15g Pacific Gem (13.7%AA) @ 15 minutes only (short boil)

Fermentis WB-06 dried wheat yeast
Ferment temp 18-20

My gravity apparently fell short (1.066), and BeerAlchemy tells me bitterness is going to be around 24 IBU rather than 20.

Post formatting has decided it’s going to have a laugh at my expense. I don’t know what it’s doing, nor why, nor how it looks to you, but I know that it’s doing god-awful things over here. Sorry!

American brown is down to 1.018. Tastewise , it’s all chocolate malt and piny Simcoe. Who knows which will achieve dominance? I’m hoping neither yet both. Right now they’re working in harmony. Colourwise it’s going to be an excellent brown once it clears. I want it to finish at 1.014-6 with the half kilo of sugar, and have just attempted to up the fermentation temperature by filling the laundry sink with warm water. The towel yesterday (or the day before) didn’t do much.Have also made a new and  fantastic discovery. Namely, the extra-fine cylindrical strainer from my teapot fits perfectly in one of my new highball glasses. This means sediment-free samples even from the hairiest of primaries!

Moving interstate and leaving my brewing gear behind has put a dampener on the homebrewing caper. I’m hoping to set up a kitchen brewery in a few months time but till then there’s no action at home and, in tune with the last month, probably little in the way of updates here. Moving left beer behind sans one carton of allsorts. I’ve had to hide that case from myself till I can afford a fridge, in the meantime I’ve been enjoying the offerings of The Sail and Anchor, Clancy’s Fish Pub and Little Creatures. I’d half forgotten how expensive good beer can be when you have to buy it.

Bottled the light roughly one week ago. It was still too cloudy but I was impatient so I threw in 5g of gelatin along with the priming sugar. True to the last time I did this, the beer was clear one day later in bottle (albeit with a thick layer of sediment on the bottom). Belgian pale ale is overdue for bottling, so I may try throwing some gelatin into the cold beer in secondary to see if it helps clearing more than racking warm beer onto gelatin and then cooling does.

Am pushing to get the remaining beers (BdG, sauvin summer ale) bottled before I move, less than two weeks till I have to have everything packed up and done before I go west.

Also throw a handful (measured exactly thus) of Nelson Sauvin into the summer ale fermenter, it just did not have any hop flavour I could notice.

Och Aye ~80, 1.056 – 1.006

3G Ale, 1.044 – 1.004

Biere de Garde – 1.072 – 1.010

Biere de Light – 1.033 – 1.004

By the quarter of original gravity approximation, every one of my last four brews has excelled (excluding the mulberry tripel only because it’s not calculable). That along with a really truly final bottle of bad penny pils reminds me that I was having a short issue with poor attenuation. No idea what I did to fix it but apparently it worked.

Light is auld reekie, sulphur has become prominent in the last couple of days. 1007 was a silly choice but it may clear enough to bottle in time.

Biere de Garde is stunning given the obligatory cloudy and from primary concessions. The malt is so smooth and rounded I can barely notice the yeast character, though it’s definitely there.

Also finally worked out that the IPA needs to be drunk at cellar temp or higher for it to be tasty.

3G Ale and Och Aye ~80 are nearly gone, both have been very nice. With another go I think I could nail the ~80 to my satisfaction. The mulberry tripel is still in secondary, flavourwise it is ready to bottle but it is still not clear. It hasn’t achieved a sufficiently purple colour to justify the Purple People Eater monicker, so I will bottle it soon and dub it Crimson Haze. I checked the alcohol on it by distillation and hydrometry and it weighs in at 10.2%. Currently tastes like a soft yet brutal rose (no thingy over the e when I’m not on a mac, it’s too hard).

I used my (half) day off last weekend to brew the bieres de garde and light partigyle. The brew day was stunningly smooth and I ended up with 21.5L of BdG at 1.072 and 23L of BdL at 1.033. Currently the former is at 1.017 and the latter is finished at 1.004. I am regretting the choice of 1007 for the light, as it is murky as all hell and I don’t have the cold conditioning facilities to help it settle. It is thin (obviously) and still carrying some sulphur & other fermentation byproducts but once it is matured, clear and has the right carbonation level I think it will be a very nice light beer (if a little hoppy).

 The Biere de Garde has had a warm ferment, averaging in the mid to high 20′s. Flavourwise the yeast has held up to these temperatures well and the beer is tasting very promising. The malt is really rounding out the BdG yeast flavour profile, providing a real soft and fruity complexity to it.

 Also opened a couple bottles of my barleywine (Blunt Force Trauma) a couple nights ago. 6 months in the bottle has done it good service, the agressive hop profile has died back, the malt has fallen into balance and it has achieved the right level of carbonation. It’s fortunate that room temperature suits it due to the terrible chill haze, it is still quite bitter but it seems to balance out well with a very strong malt sweetness.

I am brewing again next weekend hopefully, another double brew day with a belgian pale ale and a summer ale featuring nelson sauvin on the cards. It may be the last chance I get to brew at home for a while.

The infected koelsch has carbonated sufficiently to allow a proper tasting and the verdict is definitely not good. The beer itself is fantastic, possibly lacking the sublter dryness, winey and sulphurous qualities that would denote my ideal koelsch but it is a very well balanced light quaffable ale. Aside from, of course, the heady layer of funk draped across it .

I will have a couple goes at drinking it very cold before I give up and turf it. Also, I have noted that flavorwise it is identical to the infection I picked up roughly this time or earlier last year. This definitely leads me to suspect a resident infection, but such an issue is not insurmountable.

My conclusion on the summer blonde is inadequate mixing of the priming sugar, as I am experiencing considerable variation between bottles. I’m still baffled over what happened though, as I racked and primed as I always do. Tastes ok bit still young, I just won’t be giving any bottles away.

I’ve had one bottle of the IPA, it is carbonated, still hazy and tasting stellar. Toffee malt is big but some nice light floral and herbaceous hopping is standing right up to it. I fancy there’s some alcohol in it, but overall this beer really needs a few weeks to find its stride. The TTL yeast has injected some lovely complexity, pending maturation I will be following this recipe up next time I brew an IPA
Pils is improving daily, has come up as an good but not standout euro lager, still full-bodied and is suffering from some chill haze.
Koelsch is infected with an oily white film plus solid white bits identical to the american wheat infection I had in Dec 05. It is not readily detectable in the flavour but the beer is also not fully carbonated yet. Icing on the cake, the koelsch is also exhibiting chill haze. I am considering labelling all my fermenters and secondary vessels so I can log where each beer goes to assist in ethnic cleansing following these unfortunate outbreaks.