Hot, Quick and Thick

Had an improptu but effective double botting session on Monday night. Old Wuert and Paddlesteamer are now in bottle, and they are looking disturbingly clear. I took some pictures:

The essentials for bottling are there, beer and beer. The small beer is RIS, which is the start of why I went to work on ANZAC day hating everything.

This is why you always look at your bottles before you bottle. PS Hi Roach!

And what happens when your printer shits itself.
I eventually got it working:

These two beers had very similar starting gravities, so the ABV demonstrates the difference between crystal in one and rice in the other.

I’m going to brew a barleywine soon and was considering using it as an opportunity to rid myself of a lot of my old hops, I still have a lot of 2005 harvest sitting in my fridge that I really should be using. While writing the recipe I decided to catalogue what hops I have, this is the full list:

USA Northern Brewer 8% 90g
DE Northern Brewer 9.5% 100g
2005 Chinook flowers 10g
2006 Chinook flowers ~100-200g
2006 Wuerttemberger flowers 5g
EKG 5.6% 20g
EKG 5.2% 80g
Simcoe 13.3% 20g
Simcoe 12% 100g
Fuggles 3.8% 7g
Fuggles plug 15g
Cluster 7.2% 40g
Tettnang 5.3% 120g
Magnum 13.9% 50g
Herbrucker plugs 2.5% 110g
Spalt 4.5% ~300g
Amarillo 8.4% 100g
Amarillo 8.5% 7g
DE Northern Brewer 9.5% 100g
Glacier 5.8% 25g
Pride of Ringwood 10%? 40g
Pacific Gem 14.4% 80g

So, yeah. I have a lot of hops. I’ll be throwing a blend of mostly english and american hops into the barleywine.

The wheat beer lived up expectations and was drunk over easter, if only just. It was a little raw but still fully carbonated, which is fairly good for a beer half a week in the bottle.

Drinking it right now, I wish I had left it longer, with over a week’s maturation it is almost perfect but over half the batch is gone already. I need to save a couple bottles for reculturing so I don’t have to buy another 3068 strain anytime soon.

The CAP is fermenting well, judging by the krauesen. Sitting on around 16°C.

This weekend I am going to bottle the old würt lager and the steam beer, and brew the red indian pale ale and a smoked schwarzbier. I have altered the RIPA recipe slightly, and I’ll post the schwarzbier recipe on brewday.

I picked up my harvested hops from back in the Riverland this weekend.

Chinook:

Wuerttemberger:

Some slight difference there, but the chinook is in its second year and the wuerttemberger is a low yielding variety. I am going to put some of the chinook into my red indian pale ale when I brew it.

The odd white bits have disappeared from the surface of my steam beer since chilling it again, I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

I have also finally pitched yeast into my CAP (OG 1.040), over a week after brewing. There was no gas production in the cube and the wort tasted fine, so I am happy with having the flexibility to do this. I was going to bottle the wuerttemberger tonight, but after racking it I remembered that my bottling valve is nearly rooted, so I’m going to bottle it after I get a new one. Both the wuert lager and the steam are tasting excellent, particularly the wuert. It has taken on a lovely honeyed sweetness plus a subtle noble spiciness. The steam has some similar flavours so I assume it’s the 2112. If so, I really like that yeast and will be using it again in future. It will be good in the CAP too, I think.

A long sober bottling session, and it’s apparent that I need to replace my bottling valve as it fell off four times making me waste a bottle each time. The original intention was to bottle this beer on the weekend and be drinking it on the easter weekend, but I’m not sure it’ll carbonate in time now.

Classic American Pilsner brewed last Friday, thanks again to dropping into Grumpy’s on brewday. I’ve got around 17L at 1.040 (or slightly higher), hopped with Magnum to 26 IBU and Cluster & Tettnanger aroma additions. It’s sitting in a 17L cube waiting for me to bottle the steam beer or the wuerttemberger lager so I can use part of the 2112 yeast cake from either. It’ll probably be the wurt lager, there’s *cough* some funny white bits floating on top of the steam. The beer itself tastes fantastic however.

Things are looking more optimistic for the northern brewer ale and the low gravity american pale. They both have improved a lot with the last week in bottle. The northern brewer one will never be a great beer but it’s got a thick creamy head, has lost the caramel and the thinness that were an issue at first and has turned into a good quaffer. The apa seems to have fallen perfectly into step, carbonation is right, hops are strong but crisp and delicious, and it no longer tastes like a puny thin 3% ABV beer with too many hops. It’s a hard one to put down.

I bottled my alt tonight, only 13 740mL PET bottles. Since the alt had stuck at 1.020 I didn’t want to take the time or risk to bottle to glass, and while there were 17 bottles worth in the fermenter I only had 15 PET bottles left. While I was bottling the tip came off the bottling valve twice, meaning I had to waste a bottle each time to reclaim the tip.

When I had finished bottling I went to clean the fermenter out and noticed a lovely little scum floating on the surface of the dregs. The beer has the same infection I had before xmas last year, I think it was still housed in the fermenter and the extended time I left this beer gave it avenue to grow. I can’t taste it in the beer yet, fortunately.

The really annoying thing is that the sole reason I bottled this batch tonight was to free the fermenter so I could drop my wheat wort into it. I cancelled that plan once I saw the infection, the fermenter is now soaking in napisan solution and the wheat yeast has been pitched into a wort oxygenated by a vigorous stir only. What really irritates me is that if I’d checked the alt fermenter earlier I would have probably pitched the wheat yeast 12 hours ago.

I brewed a wheat beer today:

OG 1.040
FG ~1.010
15 IBU
~4% ABV
9 EBC

50% JW wheat
47% Wey. Pils
3% acidulated malt

Hersbrucker plugs bittering
10g Glacier @ 15

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephaner wheat

25 litres in the fermenter, the biggest brew I’ve done yet. While the bulk of the ferment cools overnight I have drawn off a litre and cooled it to throw the yeast into, I figure it needs waking up after sitting in the fridge for over a week. Other than that I’m not bothering with a proper starter, it’s an activator pack and I want to underpitch slightly to try to bring out more of those yeasty wheat flavours.

The brew went smoothly, runoff was a little slowed but not too bad. The last litre or so of the sparge didn’t want to come out till I cut the grainbed up a little. The tap on my kettle is a piece of shit and will be disposed of very soon, the racking hose wouldn’t sit and seal on it properly despite numerous attempts on my part and hot wort burns to my fingers. Also ran out of gas while heating the sparge water so it got a bit of an extended mash.

No boilovers for what might be the first time. 35L in the kettle was a bugger to lift but still not quite too heavy. The wort is very pale and looks great. I’m really hoping I can push this beer through and have it ready by Easter, I know that’s not entirely out of the question for a wheat.

Old Würt, OG 1.051 FG 1.012
Paddlesteamer OG 1.050 FG 1.014

I had forgotten that 2112 is a poor attenuator, but it doesn’t really matter. Both are tasting fine.

The alt has not only stuck at 1.021, but has also dropped clear. I am just going to bottle to PET, because I suspect it’s not so much stuck as finished. Straight from the primary too, since it’s clear and I can’t be bothered investing any more of my time into this beer.

My saison is tasting excellent. The IPA is fairly good, Southern Brewer is a bit dull and caramelly and the American hop delivery system is a little too out of whack and wasn’t carbonated enough at last tasting.

I’ve joined a BJCP study group with a bunch of like-minded Adelaide brewers, it should be interesting and I look forward to learning a lot more about the beers I’m drinking. A few of us Adelaideans recently caught up with Chris White of White Labs yeast and he answered a few of our questions about yeast and took the time to talk to us about several different things. It was a good evening and very generous of Chris to take the time to talk to us.

Brewing that wheat today, finally.