Archive for December, 2006

Brew planning

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

Due to work commitments, scheduling brews over the next few months will be difficult. Och Aye 80/~ will be first cab off the ranks as it does not require an involved starter, complex fermentation management or purchasing of new ingredients outside of the yeast (I am pressed for time, won’t be around to monitor fermentation and have no money to buy malt). I am also considering boiling down a few litres of the first runnings just for the hell of it.

If I save the other beers for later then I can just pick up a sack of weyermann pils to split between them and save a little money.

Other than that I am hoping to bottle Onk Valley Pils sometime between the 29th and the 31st. The IPA and the simcoe summer blonde will be given a brief cold-condition if required and hopefully bottled between Jan 1-4.
That leaves racking the koelsch (and probably also fining with lucilite), which will have to share the fermentation fridge with the 80/~. After that I will be away from the brewery for a few weeks at least so any further activity will be on hiatus.

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Beer, Beer, Beer

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006

6 beers, to be exact. Put down a few recipes:

PURPLE PEOPLE EATER

OG 1.075
25 IBU

100% Weyermann Pils

500g mulberries, lightly smooshed, at end of primary

Glacier bittering
0.4g/L Glacier LWH
0.4g/L Spalt LWH
0.4g/L Goldings LWH

3787 Trappist High Gravity

65°C mash
24°C ferment

Parti-gyled, small beer additional 300g carared. Decide yeast, hops and gravity on the day. Probably something hoppy.

PEACH PLAMBIC

OG 1.055
5-10 IBU

60% Weyermann Pils
20% Powell’s Wheat
20% unmalted wheat

1-2kg peaches, peeled, sliced and added at end of primary

50g or so of hops, placed in glass jar in sun for 2 weeks to debitter.

1 sachet S-33
5278 Belgian Lambic Blend

68°C mash
22°C ferment

BERLINER WEISSE

OG 1.030
5 IBU

70% Weyermann Pils
30% Powell’s Wheat

Glacier bittering

lactic acid culture, or lactic acid added to taste. if culture, added while wort is still warm.
1007 German Ale

18°C ferment

OCH AYE 80/~

OG 1.050
25 IBU

96% BB ale malt
2% CaraAroma
1% roast barley
1% peated malt

Northdown bittering

1728 Scottish ale, 500mL starter

65°C mash
18°C ferment

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BEER

OG 1.040
20 IBU

60% Weyermann Pils
25% Powell’s Wheat malt
12% flaked rice
3% carared

Magnum bittering
5 wuerttemberger flowers @ 5

1007 German Ale

66°C mash
16°C ferment

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Busy, Busy, Busy

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Not that busy in the brewery, but busy nonethess. Brewed a week or so ago, miserable efficiency which made my cry into my (lack of) beer. Wort sat in the fridge for almost a week before I pitched the yeast, then it fermented out with gusto. Recipe is roughly as follows:

Simcoe Summer Blonde

OG 1.045
25 IBU

75% BB ale malt
25% Powell’s wheat malt

Simcoe 35g at 12% in stock

Simcoe 12% 20g @ 60, 21 IBU
Simcoe 12% 15g LWH, ~3 IBU

Coopers ale yeast

Had a busy catchup day on Tuesday; racked the Simcoe blonde and the IPA to secondary, bottled the CACA, moved the koelsch primary to the fridge. Sometime before that I bottled the biter.

Koelsch tastes suprisingly nice albeit yeasty. It dropped from 1.050 to 1.007 and does not seem to have suffered from its hot spell. IPA is not terribly pleasing, hard to draw out exactly what I don’t like at this point, will wait till it’s cleared up a bit to get a better impression. CACA was tasting nice at bottling, quite sweet and corny. Simcoe blonde has pumped out some nice fruity flavour, probably a combination of the simcoe and a slightly warmish ferment.

Next two planned brews are a little different, am thinking of doing a mulberry tripel and a peach plambic. The tripel I will partigyle and turn the runnings into whatever I feel like on the day, probably with a carared addition and a bit of hopping up.

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Bloody Hot

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Hot weather caught me with my pants down, both the IPA and the koelsch are at thirty degrees C. Even worse, the bitter that is still in secondary was sitting outside and is now well mulled.

Subject to such abuse, the koelsch has only dropped 5 points to 1.016, the IPA to 1.02ish. I am clinging to the hope that the slow movement even in hot weather might keep them for being entirely unpalatable. It is too hard to tell from warm hydrometer samples.

The hot spell has basically caught me unawares, with onk valley pils and CACA still lagering. The latter I will bottle soon, it is now not making any clarification headway and tastes ready. From here on in the fridge will be reserved for moderate ale temps. Time to do saison and / or a BdG too.

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Kickin’ the koelsch

Friday, December 8th, 2006

My koelsch stalled at 1.030 so I lost my temper and booted the temperature right up to 25. It’s going again now (currently 1.022) complete with fully resurgent krauesen.

The sluggards are clearing up too, Since I moved the koelsch out of the fermentation fridge I kicked the temperature right down on it. Consequently the CACA is a little clearer, and the bitter is also not only clearer but tasting a lot smoother too. I should have bottled it by now but I really just don’t care enough about it. Though, if I get it done within the next couple days I might be able to start knocking it off at Christmas. The CACA I would like to have ready by NYE, but I know that will be pushing it.

IPA is very active, krausen was hammering on the underside of the lid, but that probably had something to do with just over 3L of headspace. Also ran a little warm today, getting up to 25. I hope it makes it through ok, but this yeast really is an unknown quantity. It had only dropped around 10 points before I cooled it down a few, but the damage might definitely be done by now.

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Sampling the cream ale

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

I noticed that the PET bottles of CACA were nice and tight so I chilled one to get a quick preview of what the beer should be like.

Hazy as all get out and over-carbed from the bottle priming, but definitely has a dense rocky head. For a week in the bottle it is excellent, sweet and corny yet dry and refreshing. Corn flavour dominates and I can’t detect the Northern Brewer additions. Faint yet not displeasing tinge of alcohol, not suprising for a beer that went from 1.052 to 1.010.

Of course, I’ll reserve final judgements for when I can drink a properly secondaried and clarified beer.

I also noted that while this was supposed to be a quick turnaround beer, it’s been over a month since I brewed it. I threw some gelatin in the secondary tonight with the vain hop of helping clear it a little. I’d like to have it bottled and conditioned in time for new year’s eve, though I’m sure that will be pushing it.

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IPA Brewed

Monday, December 4th, 2006

IPA

OG 1.062
~62 IBU
~27 L

7.76 96% BB Ale malt
160g 2% UK brown malt
80g 1% CaraAroma

11g Pride of Ringwood 9% @ FWH = 7 IBU
30g Hallertauer Magnum 13.5% @ 60 = 28 IBU
24g Pacific Gem 14% @ 30 = 17.5 IBU
40g Goldings 5% @ 15 (combination of old and new stock) = 7 IBU
30g Glacier 5.2% @ LWH (thrown into cube along with hot wort) = 2 IBU

= 62 IBU

2tsp CaSO4
1469 Wyeast Timothy Taylor Landlord

66°C mash dropped to 63-64
20-22°C ferment

A few changes there from the original recipe, based mainly on stocks I had on hand. Also my 1026 cultures had an aroma to them that I did not like, so they got turfed :(

Attempted fly sparging again, again ran off fairly quickly but this time hit 82% mash efficiency. I might put that down to both the BB Ale malt (first use) and the CaSO4 (also first use). Wort tastes nice, the brown malt is noticeable but hopefully won’t be too prominent after fermentation. There’s a nice lightly brutal bitterness in there and plenty of flavour from the Glacier and Goldings, and the wort is a perfect amber colour.

Will probably drop and pitch tomorrow evening judging by the state of the starter.

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Koelsch brewed, and other miscellany

Friday, December 1st, 2006

Put down a koelsch last Sunday as part of “The Great pKoelsch Experiment”.

Just for the fun of it, I tried fly sparging. It was very ad hoc, with the tube from the HLT resting on top of the mash bed with a layer of perforated aluminium foil in between. It bumped my mash efficiency from 70% to 77%.

Shortcomings:

- The foil tried to float, next time I need more / bigger holes in the boat.
- I ran off fairly quickly, 30 minutes total.
- Sparge temp was a little low.

By working on these I reckon I can increse the efficiency to at least 80-85, more if/when I replace my manifold. I know people commonly say that efficiency is not important, but I like the challenge and I especially like the idea of getting more beer for my grain.

I tried a slightly different approach for the starter for this one, partly because I had split the smack pack tenwise for the group brew. I started out with a 300mL starter with the target of having it krauesen by brew day. After I’d run the koelsch wort into the no-chiller cube, I ran a litre off of that, cooled it rapidly and threw the 300mL starter into that. That was fired up within 24 hours for pitching on Monday afternoon. I like the way this flows so will probably try it more in future, particularly when using split, small or slow cultures.

Monday was also a busy day for other brewery tasks. Racked Onk Valley Pils and CACA to secondary as well as starting up the Koelsch ferment. Pils is in the fridge in a 20L alongside the koelsch & the bitter and sitting at around 12°C. CACA is in a 17L drum sitting in the bathtub (no room in fridge). There were a couple litres surplus of CACA so I filled and bottle primed two 750mL PET bottles. They should be cloudy but fine. I didn’t want to secondary the CACA in a fermenter because that would have required scrubbing one, and they were very dirty. Currently soaking in napisan.

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