Archive for August, 2007

American Brown Ale Consumption, Weizenbock Fermentation

Friday, August 31st, 2007

American Brown has turned out passable, but not stellar. A little bit of a tart edge to it with a full body upfront that falls away rather quickly to a thin finish. The Simcoe is there but not prominent, kind of a whiff of orange, grapefruit and pine that falls away.

Weizenbock is still slowly chugging away, down to low 1.020′s. The sulphur has dropped right off. Still has an unfortunate balance to it that reminds me of a bad alt I brewed with K-97 a couple of years ago. No banana or bubblegum aromas present yet. I’d almost written this batch off but each sample seems to be tasting slightly better than the last. Sachet #2 of this yeast will go towards something gentler & lighter, probably a generic hefeweizen.

Weizenbock Fermentation, American Brown Consumption

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

WB-06 is struggling a little, down from 1.066 to 1.040 after 4 days and pumping out some serious brassica-esque (brassicesque?) sulphur compounds. I’m a little concerned about it, right now it is sitting in a warm water bath to kick it up a few degrees from its current 16-18ish. Stick-on thermometers on new fermenters useless.

Brown ale has achieved carbonation, the bottle I’m drinking now is too tilted towards choc malt and bitterness but is also quite cold. Will sample another one to double-check.

Weizenbock Brewed

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

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.

American Brown Bottled, Koelsch Racked

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

American brown bottled just over a week ago, Friday 10th (11 litres worth). Sampled Friday evening, not yet fully carbonated but tasting promising.

Final specs on it:

ABV 5.26%
OG 1.049
FG 1.009
35.5 IBU
65.7 EBC

Also racked the koelsch to secondary and it is now hibernating in the bottom of my new fridge. Had to take the vegie bin out to fit it in there, but it’s a worthy sacrifice. It too is tasting quite good, US-05 has actually managed to leave some light esters behind though they may fade by the time the beer is clear. It has attenuated the same as the brown, down to 1.009 from 1.048.

Koelsch pitched

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

“Only” a week after brewing. Had to wait till I got off my lazy butt to buy a cube to rack the American brown to secondary (14 litres worth).  Fortunately, there was no hiss of escaping gas upon opening the jerry of wort, and also fortunately the wort did not taste in any way like plastic — I was worried that I had not rinsed out the fresh plastic flavour from the new jerry sufficiently. The wort is, however, a little hazy.

Final result, 23L of Koelsch at 1.048.

Koelsch Brewed

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

Kaiser Koelsch

OG 1.045
25 IBU
6 EBC
86.2% Weyermann pils
6.4% JW wheat malt
4.3% Weyermann Vienna
3.1% acidulated

German Opal bittering
0.6g/L Hallertau @ flameout

A horrible hodgepodge of a grist, I know. For the yeast I’m just going with US-05 because I know even it flocculates better than wyeast’s koelsch strain, and I don’t have any means of cold-conditioning on hand. If it doesn’t turn out enough like a koelsch for me to justify calling it one (and entering it into associated competitions) then I am sure it will still be a nice beer.

The wort is currently sitting in a sealed plastic jerry waiting for me to find room to turn it into beer.