November 10th, 2007
That’s classic american cream ale, based loosely on the one I brewed in October last year. That one went down incredible well over the silly season and I was hoping to replicate it for the WA xmas case this year.
Recipe:
Kai’s Xmas CACA
OG 1.048
25 IBU
7 EBC
23L
3.5kg Weyermann Pils
1kg Weyermann Vienna
500g flaked rice
500g flaked maize
200g acidulated malt
12g Pacific Jade (13.7%) @ 60
30g Tasmanian Saaz @ flameout
US-05
Flaked maize is rarer than hen’s teeth round here at the moment so I used puffed corn from the supermarket. Not cheap and it takes up a massive amount of volume in the mash tun. It also floats, I put it all in at the bottom and the grain on top, and it was enough to float the entire mash before I stirred it in. Seemed to convert well enough though, it carried a good corn aroma over to the boil.
Brewed this two weekends ago, it has fermented out quite well (approx. 1.008). It is still quite murky and carrying a little sulphur on the nose, so I’ll rack it to secondary soon and probably CC for a fortnight. The corn is quite distinctive but with no carbonation I’m not tasting the Tassie Saaz.
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October 25th, 2007
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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