Archive for September, 2007

EPA Brewed

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

That’s extract pale ale. Well, another minimash.

Intended recipe:

EPA

OG 1.065
40 IBU
15 EBC

1kg TF Halcyon ale malt
220g JW caramalt
100g JW wheat malt

1.7kg LME
500g DME
500g sucrose

extract /sugar added at end of boil

20g Simcoe @ 60
30g EKG @ flameout
10g Simcoe @ flameout

Safale S-04

It’s looking like my starting grav might be severely under, in the region of 1.045. I’ll wait till it’s finished fermenting and confirm then.

Bought a second cheap pot today so I can go back to my old jug & sieve partial mashing method. Will employ that on my next brew in a couple day’s time; an aussie rye ale.

Pacific Gem Ale fermenting, Koelsch bottled

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

Koelsch is bottled, 6x longnecks and ~35 330mL stubbies. Ballsed up the bulk priming, thought I had 18L but only had 16ish so ended up priming at around 7.6g/L rather than 7. Not the first time this has happened so it’s a good indication that I really ought to put volume markers on the front of my conditioning cubes.

Also brewed a Pacific Gem ale yesterday, on a “brew in a bag” system. Ended up with 22L at around 1.050 though numbers are rough. Pitched the yeast 24 hours ago into a plastic water jerry and just transferred the wort to the fermenter recently vacated from the koelsch bottling (and before that, the iron brew fermentation). The yeast had definitely fired up, but a combined refrac + hydrometer reading + software calculation told me the wort was only 0.5% ABV into beer. Nonetheless I’m not particularly comfortable with pouring from one vessel to another a full 24 hours after pitching.

The wort itself is very chocolatey and biscuity with some blackberry overtones. Recipe is as follows:

PGA

OG 1.050
40 IBU
35 EBC

84% trad ale
10% wheat malt
4% caramunich II
2% TF choc

Pacific Gem bittering
1.7g/L Pacific Gem @ flameout

Safale S-04

I used 5kg of trad ale rather than 4.2 but kept the rest of the grains at the level for a 5kg batch, bumping my base malt %age up to around 86. Wort was awfully cloudy leading into fermentation so I am going to lose a few more litres than normal to racking.

Iron Brewer 2007

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

West Coast Brewers: Iron Brewer 2007 

I brewed a minimash for this a couple weekends ago, just racked it now. Currently the gravity is 1.023, down from 1.071. Higher than I’d like but about what I’d expect given 3kg of light dry malt extract and no sugar.

It’s tasting fairly sweet and full-bodied, but still nice. I’ll either give it time in secondary at room temp to think about life or bottle it with a low amount of priming sugar and leave it.

16L in secondary.