... after a fashion.
I was commissioned by the lovely Lisa to make a strong dark spicy beer for xmas so I brewed up a batch of a dark delight with added spices, orange and dried fruit. As I said at the time I was a little concerned I would end up with 40 pints of something undrinkable but thankfully that hasn't been the case.
However, as is often the case with experiments it hasn't turned out quite how I expected. Despite all the dark malts that it contains when I tasted it I found it had quite a citrussy taste which didn't seem quite right. This lead me to try seeing how it worked as a mulled ale, as a lot of ingredients I had put in are found in mulled wine. After gentle heating (to minimise any loss of alcohol, I don't want it to go to waste) I had another taste and it was almost there but a bit too bitter. As with mulled wine I thought some sugar was called for so added a small amount and that did the trick - it's like mulled wine but beer!
It should keep the chill out when me and the lovely Lisa have some over winter, and a lot will be going to family and friends, so hopefully they won't freeze either. I'll also be keeping a few bottles back to see how it ages. Being strong, dark, fruity and spicy I'm sure it will be a different beer by the time next xmas comes around and the changes will be interesting to see.
Showing posts with label Homebrewing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homebrewing. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Monday, 23 November 2009
Shot for collaborating
Well, I should be for my poor efforts at doing a collaborative brew.
Whilst on young Rob's stag do we discussed the possibility of doing a joint brew. It seems the in thing for brewers do be doing at the moment. It also seems to be taken as an opportunity so show how zany and cutting edge you are, so naturally my thoughts turned to doing something like a black IPA or a pale, hoppy mild. Fortunately I must have sobered up at some point and thought bollocks to that and we decided to do an IPA. After a discussion about the recipe we decided on doing this:
In the mash tun.
Pale malt: 96.5%
Crystal malt: 2.5%
Amber malt: 1%
(Note: all percentages refer to extracts not by weight)
Target OG: 1064
In copper.
Boil for 1 ½ hours with the following additions.
Northdown 90min (for 40 IBU)
Northdown 15min (for 3-5 IBU)
Challenger 3min (for 1-2 IBU) + copper finings
Fuggles 0 min added after wort had cooled for 30 min
Rob had the first go and didn't quite hit target gravity but otherwise seems to have done OK.
I propagated some EdsLab Chiswick yeast last week as it's similar to the one Rob used. Brewing started on Sunday morning and fell at the first hurdle. I rummaged around my grain store and saw I didn't have any crystal malt. "Oh, bugger" I thought. I'd forgotten I'd used up all my crystal malt stocks doing my Christmas beer. I had some British cara malt so I used that instead but felt bad about introducing another variable to the collaboration so soon.
The rest of the brew day went fine until I check the original gravity of the wort. It was way over. I'd aimed to go a bit high so I could liquor back to the gravity Rob had achieved but not this high. I used to be very stable in the extract efficiency I'd get out of my home brew set up but since having a university brewing education, working as a brewer and of course discovering Jims beer kit I've been making some changes. I'm getting higher efficiency now, and making better beer, but the change in efficiency means I misjudged the amount of grain I needed.
When I was diluting the wort down to get to the target gravity I had to bring in a second fermenter to hold all the wort. At this point I realised I may be diluting the sugars to the amount I want but I'm also diluting the hops past the point I want. Once again, I found myself going "Oh, bugger".
I'm disappointed that I didn't do as well as I'd hoped at matching Rob's brew. Simon will be doing his version soon and it will be interesting to see how he gets on. I suppose I can take some consolation in the fact I have gallons of IPA fermenting away, and it will still be interesting to see how it compares to my friends efforts.
Whilst on young Rob's stag do we discussed the possibility of doing a joint brew. It seems the in thing for brewers do be doing at the moment. It also seems to be taken as an opportunity so show how zany and cutting edge you are, so naturally my thoughts turned to doing something like a black IPA or a pale, hoppy mild. Fortunately I must have sobered up at some point and thought bollocks to that and we decided to do an IPA. After a discussion about the recipe we decided on doing this:
In the mash tun.
Pale malt: 96.5%
Crystal malt: 2.5%
Amber malt: 1%
(Note: all percentages refer to extracts not by weight)
Target OG: 1064
In copper.
Boil for 1 ½ hours with the following additions.
Northdown 90min (for 40 IBU)
Northdown 15min (for 3-5 IBU)
Challenger 3min (for 1-2 IBU) + copper finings
Fuggles 0 min added after wort had cooled for 30 min
Rob had the first go and didn't quite hit target gravity but otherwise seems to have done OK.
I propagated some EdsLab Chiswick yeast last week as it's similar to the one Rob used. Brewing started on Sunday morning and fell at the first hurdle. I rummaged around my grain store and saw I didn't have any crystal malt. "Oh, bugger" I thought. I'd forgotten I'd used up all my crystal malt stocks doing my Christmas beer. I had some British cara malt so I used that instead but felt bad about introducing another variable to the collaboration so soon.
The rest of the brew day went fine until I check the original gravity of the wort. It was way over. I'd aimed to go a bit high so I could liquor back to the gravity Rob had achieved but not this high. I used to be very stable in the extract efficiency I'd get out of my home brew set up but since having a university brewing education, working as a brewer and of course discovering Jims beer kit I've been making some changes. I'm getting higher efficiency now, and making better beer, but the change in efficiency means I misjudged the amount of grain I needed.
When I was diluting the wort down to get to the target gravity I had to bring in a second fermenter to hold all the wort. At this point I realised I may be diluting the sugars to the amount I want but I'm also diluting the hops past the point I want. Once again, I found myself going "Oh, bugger".
I'm disappointed that I didn't do as well as I'd hoped at matching Rob's brew. Simon will be doing his version soon and it will be interesting to see how he gets on. I suppose I can take some consolation in the fact I have gallons of IPA fermenting away, and it will still be interesting to see how it compares to my friends efforts.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
This one's a bit different
On Sunday I made my Christmas beer. As you can see from the picture of the inside of the copper I've posted above this one's a bit different. To get that Christmas flavour I've added to a dark beer spices and oranges, and it's going to get dried fruits added when the fermentation has died down a bit.
I'm a bit worried about this one though. Normally when I brew something a bit wierd I only use a small proportion of the wort and use the rest to make something a bit more normal (see e.g. here). With this one I've done a five gallon batch so I've potentially 40 pints of something I don't like. Oh well, fingers crossed ...
Sunday, 16 August 2009
My first cask beer
I had my first cask beer this weekend.
I have of course had other people’s cask beer before, and as I used to work as a brewer I’ve even made other people’s cask beer before. But this was the first time I’ve put beer entirely made by me, to my own recipe, into cask.
My mate Ro wanted me to brew for his house warming party and reckoned he would need a firkin’s worth to keep the thirsty masses satisfied.
I was slightly apprehensive about this, as using a proper cask means there’s more things that can go wrong. My experience of working at a brewery wasn’t a great help as there they had a racking tank so finings were added in bulk and as the beer was cooled before fermentation was completed it wasn’t normally necessary to add priming sugar. I don’t have that degree of control in my home brew set up I asked for advice from a friend at the Cambridge Moonshine brewery, as I know they fine and prime each cask individually there.
His instructions were pretty straight forward so a week ago I filled, primed and fined the cask with beer I had in two plastic pressure barrels I was using as conditioning tanks. I took the cask round to my mates garage, where he had a tilting stillage set up, and left it to settle.
On Friday the moment of truth arrived and it was time to tap the cask. I gave Ro the honour, which was just as well as the beer was a little lively and he ended up wearing about a pint of it.
Unfortunately I seem to have set my phone to take small pictures, so the pictures in this post won't live up to the usual low picture quality on this blog.
Samples were poured from the cask and I was pleased to see the beer had turned out very well. It had good crisp hop flavour from the Styrian goldings, plenty of body from the malts used and lots of condition. In fact it was so good we had to have several samples.
On Saturday the beer wasn’t quite as good, I suspect our lack of a decent cellar (or cellarmanship!) let us down as the beer had lost a lot of condition and was a little bit flat and definitely sweeter. It still seemed to go down very well though, the cask was empty by the end of the night.
The recipe for the beer was:
Pale malt (Maris otter) 7.15 kg
Munich malt 1.2 kg
Wheat malt 0.35 kg
Cara malt 0.15 kg
Choc malt 0.15 kg
Fuggles at start 80g
Styrian Goldings 10min from end 40g
Styrian Goldings steeped when cooling 40g
Styrian Goldings dry in CTs 40g
Yeast: Hop back
O.g. 1.043
ABV 4.3%
Volume 46 l
I have of course had other people’s cask beer before, and as I used to work as a brewer I’ve even made other people’s cask beer before. But this was the first time I’ve put beer entirely made by me, to my own recipe, into cask.
My mate Ro wanted me to brew for his house warming party and reckoned he would need a firkin’s worth to keep the thirsty masses satisfied.
I was slightly apprehensive about this, as using a proper cask means there’s more things that can go wrong. My experience of working at a brewery wasn’t a great help as there they had a racking tank so finings were added in bulk and as the beer was cooled before fermentation was completed it wasn’t normally necessary to add priming sugar. I don’t have that degree of control in my home brew set up I asked for advice from a friend at the Cambridge Moonshine brewery, as I know they fine and prime each cask individually there.
His instructions were pretty straight forward so a week ago I filled, primed and fined the cask with beer I had in two plastic pressure barrels I was using as conditioning tanks. I took the cask round to my mates garage, where he had a tilting stillage set up, and left it to settle.
On Friday the moment of truth arrived and it was time to tap the cask. I gave Ro the honour, which was just as well as the beer was a little lively and he ended up wearing about a pint of it.
Unfortunately I seem to have set my phone to take small pictures, so the pictures in this post won't live up to the usual low picture quality on this blog.
Samples were poured from the cask and I was pleased to see the beer had turned out very well. It had good crisp hop flavour from the Styrian goldings, plenty of body from the malts used and lots of condition. In fact it was so good we had to have several samples.
On Saturday the beer wasn’t quite as good, I suspect our lack of a decent cellar (or cellarmanship!) let us down as the beer had lost a lot of condition and was a little bit flat and definitely sweeter. It still seemed to go down very well though, the cask was empty by the end of the night.
The recipe for the beer was:
Pale malt (Maris otter) 7.15 kg
Munich malt 1.2 kg
Wheat malt 0.35 kg
Cara malt 0.15 kg
Choc malt 0.15 kg
Fuggles at start 80g
Styrian Goldings 10min from end 40g
Styrian Goldings steeped when cooling 40g
Styrian Goldings dry in CTs 40g
Yeast: Hop back
O.g. 1.043
ABV 4.3%
Volume 46 l
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Death to false protafloc!
...as Manowar didn't put it.
One of the things I learnt as a brewer when I went pro was the joys of protafloc. It's a type of copper fining available in tablet form. You add it towards the end of the boil and helps remove protein from the wort that could cause hazes in the finished beer. You chuck in around one table per barrel (18 gallons) and Bob's your uncle - the active ingredient Kappa carrageenan, a sulphated galactose polymer, forms complexes with proteins making a gel with settles out of the beer.
Proper protfloc tablets
When I went back to home brewing I didn't want to go back to using Irish moss, a less refined and even worse, less fizzy, version. I was delighted to see that Brupaks make protafloc available to the home brewer. Well, I was until I opened the container. Instead of the nice tablets, or possibly a powder, there was a load of dried brown granules that look suspiciously like ground up Irish moss. This seemed a real step back to me, like going from using Alka-seltzer to using willow bark. And sure enough, my recent brews have tended towards having a slight haze.
Not what I was expecting
I was pleased therefore to see that Barleybottom sell actual proper proafloc tablets. I chucked one in my latest brew I made on Sunday and I eagerly await the results.
The instructions actually said use one tablet per five gallons but as far as I'm concerned as I was brewing nine gallons I was doing double the dose anyway so I left it at that.
One of the things I learnt as a brewer when I went pro was the joys of protafloc. It's a type of copper fining available in tablet form. You add it towards the end of the boil and helps remove protein from the wort that could cause hazes in the finished beer. You chuck in around one table per barrel (18 gallons) and Bob's your uncle - the active ingredient Kappa carrageenan, a sulphated galactose polymer, forms complexes with proteins making a gel with settles out of the beer.
Proper protfloc tablets
When I went back to home brewing I didn't want to go back to using Irish moss, a less refined and even worse, less fizzy, version. I was delighted to see that Brupaks make protafloc available to the home brewer. Well, I was until I opened the container. Instead of the nice tablets, or possibly a powder, there was a load of dried brown granules that look suspiciously like ground up Irish moss. This seemed a real step back to me, like going from using Alka-seltzer to using willow bark. And sure enough, my recent brews have tended towards having a slight haze.
Not what I was expecting
I was pleased therefore to see that Barleybottom sell actual proper proafloc tablets. I chucked one in my latest brew I made on Sunday and I eagerly await the results.
The instructions actually said use one tablet per five gallons but as far as I'm concerned as I was brewing nine gallons I was doing double the dose anyway so I left it at that.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Desert Island beer #3 - Ringwood XXXX porter
This is the last of my desert island beers with a guaranteed place. A seasonal brew I first came across this when I was young and new to the delights of real ale and this was certainly a delight. Foolishly I was working my way across the hand pumps that night and I only had one pint!
I didn't see it again for many years after that and when I did it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I tried it. Could it really be as good as I remembered? Thankfully, it was, and though I still only see it occasionally it’s never let me down. It’s also available in bottles now, and my own attempt at following a recipe based on it worked out well too. It’s a rich dark beer but without the astringency you get in many stouts so it goes down very nicely, and I hope still will when I'm holding a glass of it whilst lounging under my palm tree.
Monday, 15 June 2009
Being self sufficient in beer
Last week I went totally self sufficient in beer. Every drop I drank was made by my own fair hands and though I say it myself they were pretty damn good.
For my weekday drinking I had on draught my Tribute tribute, a pale hoppy beer with a deliciously rich body from the 15% Munich malt in the grist. I may have been a bit heavy handed with the hops in this one compared to the St Austell beer that inspired it but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
And at the weekend I went on a climbing trip to Langdale so I took a selection of bottles. Arriving at my mountaineering club's hut at about 10pm on Friday I had wanted something strong to help me unwind fast. I started on my American IPA, which has the strength and the bitterness I wanted but is a bit lacking in the aroma I would have liked. More dry hopping next time. Then it was on to my double IPA, which certainly did the job that was intended but is the only real disappointment in my currently selection. There's a slight cheesy taste to it which I'm sure came from old oxidised hops. To get some of the hop varieties I wanted for this brew I had to use mail order and as I'm so used to using vacuum packed hops from my local home brew shop I didn't bother to check them before use. Oh well, I've learned a lesson there.
Then on Saturday after getting down from the crag at seven, I started on a bottle of my Tribute tribute, I don't think it was quite as good as the draught as the carbonation seemed a little low. For adding condition I've recently switched from adding the vague half a teaspoon of sugar to adding a measured about of sugar syrup to bottles and I may have had the dose a little low. Then went on to my porter which really was very good. I don't drink dark beer that often but I could easily drink more of this.
A bottle of my premium bitter followed. I'm still tinkering with the recipe for this and it's perhaps gone a little darker than I want in this version. Also due to playing around with parti-gyling it came out stronger than I'd planned, though that's not entirely a bad thing.
Next I moved on to my Chai beer. I once heard the eminent malting expert and prison visitor Geoff Palmer give a talk where he railed against 'Buckie', the Scottish alkies favourite, because as well as the alcohol it contains caffeine which means you feel less drunk and so drink more. As I was starting to flag by this point the Chai beer containing a shot of caffeine to go with my alcohol was just what I needed.
Suitably revived I had a pause in my drinking until it was time for my night cap stout. Strong and dark and luscious I could easily drink lots of this except I find strong dark beers lack drinkability. Not a problem at this stage of the evening though as I think I'd had quite enough and there was more climbing to be done the next day.
So, all week I'd managed to keep myself supplied with a range of quality beers, 6 out of 7of them as good as anything I could buy. It was fun having enough supplies that I could drink only my own beer, though with the huge range of quality beers and pubs out there I'm not going to stick to only my own stuff for long. And it's maybe not the sort of thing I should be encouraging thought, as I hope to return to professional brewing!
The climbing for the weekend went well to but if you're only here for the beer stop reading at this point.
The weather on Saturday was slightly wet so we set off for a hike to Pavey Ark with the plan of doing some scrambling. We started on Crescent Climb, a route which is on the borderline between scrambling and roped climbing. Perhaps we should have scrambled the first pitch as it was 47m long and we had a 45m rope! It was an easy climb at this stage and some alpine style simultaneous climbing got us both safely to the belay. The next pitch was a traverse which looked a bit more intimidating, particularly as a lamb cartwheeled down the crag to its death across the route of our climb. A sheep landing on your head could well impair your ability to stay on the rock face so we were glad of the safety of a rope. We got across OK without any ovine bombardment and the rest of the climb was straight forward. At this point I hoped to continue to the summit on the excellent (and easy) scramble Jack's Rake.
Unfortunately for me my climbing partner, Bonnie, had enjoyed Crescent Climb so much she wanted to continue up another classic traditional climb Gwynne's Chimney. To me seeing the words 'classic, 'traditional' and 'chimney' all in the same sentence spells bloody awkward. And so it proved to be. This was a grade harder than Crescent Climb so we had definitely moved out of scrambling into roped climbing territory. Unfortunately for me I couldn't move out of my walking boots and into my climbing shoes as I didn't have them with me. I had the first lead and sure enough struggling up a narrow chimney in my walking boots with a ruck sack on my back was a real struggle. Much to my delight we also had only a handful of nuts and a few slings for protection. My relief on reaching the belay was to be short lived though as I was immediately assailed by the stench of ammonia. Looking around I could see the niche I'd moved into was covering in sheep shit, piss and wool. I think a sheep must have been trapped there for a long time. I was too as I had to belay up Bonnie, and then belay her as she climbed the next pitch. The rest of the climb was easy with no sheep related problems.
On Sunday the weather was much better so we went to Raven's Crag, Walthwaite for a quick climb before going home. We chose Walthwaite Gully (VS 4b, 4c for those that know their climbing grades). The top pitch had an excellent looking flake to climb which I'd seen on a previous visit so I'd been keen to do this one for a while. The first, and supposedly easier pitch stumped Bonnie shortly after leaving the ground so she backed off and I had a go. It took a lot of figuring out but eventually I realised the only thing holding me back was my reluctance to leave the security of the ground. You can't really be a climber if you don't want to leave the ground so after briefly considering if it was time for me to give up climbing, a not uncommon occurrence for me mid-climb, I went for it. I managed to lose some skin in the battle upwards but reached the belay ledge soon after. The top, apparently technically harder, pitch went quite easily and the climbing was every bit as good as I'd hoped. It just shows that climbing grades can be quite subjective. But one thing I've always found holds true is that beer tastes better after a hard day's climbing.
For my weekday drinking I had on draught my Tribute tribute, a pale hoppy beer with a deliciously rich body from the 15% Munich malt in the grist. I may have been a bit heavy handed with the hops in this one compared to the St Austell beer that inspired it but I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
And at the weekend I went on a climbing trip to Langdale so I took a selection of bottles. Arriving at my mountaineering club's hut at about 10pm on Friday I had wanted something strong to help me unwind fast. I started on my American IPA, which has the strength and the bitterness I wanted but is a bit lacking in the aroma I would have liked. More dry hopping next time. Then it was on to my double IPA, which certainly did the job that was intended but is the only real disappointment in my currently selection. There's a slight cheesy taste to it which I'm sure came from old oxidised hops. To get some of the hop varieties I wanted for this brew I had to use mail order and as I'm so used to using vacuum packed hops from my local home brew shop I didn't bother to check them before use. Oh well, I've learned a lesson there.
Then on Saturday after getting down from the crag at seven, I started on a bottle of my Tribute tribute, I don't think it was quite as good as the draught as the carbonation seemed a little low. For adding condition I've recently switched from adding the vague half a teaspoon of sugar to adding a measured about of sugar syrup to bottles and I may have had the dose a little low. Then went on to my porter which really was very good. I don't drink dark beer that often but I could easily drink more of this.
A bottle of my premium bitter followed. I'm still tinkering with the recipe for this and it's perhaps gone a little darker than I want in this version. Also due to playing around with parti-gyling it came out stronger than I'd planned, though that's not entirely a bad thing.
Next I moved on to my Chai beer. I once heard the eminent malting expert and prison visitor Geoff Palmer give a talk where he railed against 'Buckie', the Scottish alkies favourite, because as well as the alcohol it contains caffeine which means you feel less drunk and so drink more. As I was starting to flag by this point the Chai beer containing a shot of caffeine to go with my alcohol was just what I needed.
Suitably revived I had a pause in my drinking until it was time for my night cap stout. Strong and dark and luscious I could easily drink lots of this except I find strong dark beers lack drinkability. Not a problem at this stage of the evening though as I think I'd had quite enough and there was more climbing to be done the next day.
So, all week I'd managed to keep myself supplied with a range of quality beers, 6 out of 7of them as good as anything I could buy. It was fun having enough supplies that I could drink only my own beer, though with the huge range of quality beers and pubs out there I'm not going to stick to only my own stuff for long. And it's maybe not the sort of thing I should be encouraging thought, as I hope to return to professional brewing!
The climbing for the weekend went well to but if you're only here for the beer stop reading at this point.
The weather on Saturday was slightly wet so we set off for a hike to Pavey Ark with the plan of doing some scrambling. We started on Crescent Climb, a route which is on the borderline between scrambling and roped climbing. Perhaps we should have scrambled the first pitch as it was 47m long and we had a 45m rope! It was an easy climb at this stage and some alpine style simultaneous climbing got us both safely to the belay. The next pitch was a traverse which looked a bit more intimidating, particularly as a lamb cartwheeled down the crag to its death across the route of our climb. A sheep landing on your head could well impair your ability to stay on the rock face so we were glad of the safety of a rope. We got across OK without any ovine bombardment and the rest of the climb was straight forward. At this point I hoped to continue to the summit on the excellent (and easy) scramble Jack's Rake.
Unfortunately for me my climbing partner, Bonnie, had enjoyed Crescent Climb so much she wanted to continue up another classic traditional climb Gwynne's Chimney. To me seeing the words 'classic, 'traditional' and 'chimney' all in the same sentence spells bloody awkward. And so it proved to be. This was a grade harder than Crescent Climb so we had definitely moved out of scrambling into roped climbing territory. Unfortunately for me I couldn't move out of my walking boots and into my climbing shoes as I didn't have them with me. I had the first lead and sure enough struggling up a narrow chimney in my walking boots with a ruck sack on my back was a real struggle. Much to my delight we also had only a handful of nuts and a few slings for protection. My relief on reaching the belay was to be short lived though as I was immediately assailed by the stench of ammonia. Looking around I could see the niche I'd moved into was covering in sheep shit, piss and wool. I think a sheep must have been trapped there for a long time. I was too as I had to belay up Bonnie, and then belay her as she climbed the next pitch. The rest of the climb was easy with no sheep related problems.
On Sunday the weather was much better so we went to Raven's Crag, Walthwaite for a quick climb before going home. We chose Walthwaite Gully (VS 4b, 4c for those that know their climbing grades). The top pitch had an excellent looking flake to climb which I'd seen on a previous visit so I'd been keen to do this one for a while. The first, and supposedly easier pitch stumped Bonnie shortly after leaving the ground so she backed off and I had a go. It took a lot of figuring out but eventually I realised the only thing holding me back was my reluctance to leave the security of the ground. You can't really be a climber if you don't want to leave the ground so after briefly considering if it was time for me to give up climbing, a not uncommon occurrence for me mid-climb, I went for it. I managed to lose some skin in the battle upwards but reached the belay ledge soon after. The top, apparently technically harder, pitch went quite easily and the climbing was every bit as good as I'd hoped. It just shows that climbing grades can be quite subjective. But one thing I've always found holds true is that beer tastes better after a hard day's climbing.
Friday, 8 May 2009
New Brew
I put another brew on yesterday. The lovely Lisa had requested St Austell Tribute so hopefully it will be similar.
Tribute has a pretty simple recipe and they're quite open with the ingredients they use.
The grist was:
5.6kg Pale malt (Maris otter)
840g Munich malt (or Cornish gold as St Austell call it)
The wort was split into two batches:
The main batch had 75g of Fuggles hops added at the start of the boil and 30g of Styrian goldings added ten minutes from the end. It will also be dry hopped with Styrian goldings at the conditioning stage. Tribute actually has Willamette hops as well but I thought this would do.
The smaller one was a Radical brewing inspired hop free beer for my humulophobic brother. I was trying to flavour this with pine. I added 25g of new green shoots from last year's Christmas tree to the boil for this. I don't think it actually worked though, as I couldn't really detect any pine flavour in the wort. I may have to add a squirt from the toilet duck before bottling to get that pine fresh taste.
For the main batch I got 23 litres at an Og of 1.047,
For the small batch 5 litres at 1.079
The yeast was cultured from Hop Back Summer Lightning
Hops - a good thing to add to beer
Trees - not a good thing to add to beer
Tribute has a pretty simple recipe and they're quite open with the ingredients they use.
The grist was:
5.6kg Pale malt (Maris otter)
840g Munich malt (or Cornish gold as St Austell call it)
The wort was split into two batches:
The main batch had 75g of Fuggles hops added at the start of the boil and 30g of Styrian goldings added ten minutes from the end. It will also be dry hopped with Styrian goldings at the conditioning stage. Tribute actually has Willamette hops as well but I thought this would do.
The smaller one was a Radical brewing inspired hop free beer for my humulophobic brother. I was trying to flavour this with pine. I added 25g of new green shoots from last year's Christmas tree to the boil for this. I don't think it actually worked though, as I couldn't really detect any pine flavour in the wort. I may have to add a squirt from the toilet duck before bottling to get that pine fresh taste.
For the main batch I got 23 litres at an Og of 1.047,
For the small batch 5 litres at 1.079
The yeast was cultured from Hop Back Summer Lightning
Hops - a good thing to add to beer
Trees - not a good thing to add to beer
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
My porter recipe
By popular demand here's the recipe for my porter and stout that I mentioned here.
The malt grist was:
6kg Pale malt (Maris otter)
500g Crystal malt
500g Wheat malt
250g Chocolate malt
A portion of the strong wort was then boiled with 15g of Goldings hops at the start of the boil and 10g added ten minutes from the end to make my stout. I also added 50g of black malt to this towards the end of the boil.
The rest of the wort were used to make the porter and this was hopped with 90g of Goldings at the start of the boil and 29g ten minutes from the end.
The yeast was Safale 04.
I ended up with five litres of the stout at an original gravity 1.090 and 23 litres of porter at 1.048.
I've only recently started parti-gyling my brews to get two different beers and I'm really pleased with the results. I get to make something strong and/or weird at the same time as making a batch of something more drinkable.
The malt grist was:
6kg Pale malt (Maris otter)
500g Crystal malt
500g Wheat malt
250g Chocolate malt
A portion of the strong wort was then boiled with 15g of Goldings hops at the start of the boil and 10g added ten minutes from the end to make my stout. I also added 50g of black malt to this towards the end of the boil.
The rest of the wort were used to make the porter and this was hopped with 90g of Goldings at the start of the boil and 29g ten minutes from the end.
The yeast was Safale 04.
I ended up with five litres of the stout at an original gravity 1.090 and 23 litres of porter at 1.048.
I've only recently started parti-gyling my brews to get two different beers and I'm really pleased with the results. I get to make something strong and/or weird at the same time as making a batch of something more drinkable.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Porter: the style that never died
Last night I was drinking some of my home brewed porter. It was based on the recipe for Ringwood XXXX porter in Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale At Home. Ringwood porter is one of my favourite beers but as I didn't managed to find any in the pub this year I thought I'd have a go at making my own. It's great being able to make your own beer.
Porter is often described as a once popular beer style that died out completely before being revived in recent years by microbreweries. When friends have asked me what porter is I've answered "like stout, but weaker". But even as I was saying this I'd think is this really true? Draught Guinness has an ABV of 4.1% so were historical porters weaker than this? Not at all, for most of the time they were brewed porters would have been stronger, and stout porters stronger still.
So did porters contain different ingredients to stouts? No to that one too.
Another beer blogger has summed up well the difference between porters and stouts: none, except that historically stout was stronger.
So what did happen to porter? Looking at the ABV of draught Guinness it can hardly be called 'stout' compared to the other beers on the bar. So in historical terms Guinness is in fact a porter, and it's Guinness Export Stout at 8% ABV that has a genuine claim to being a stout.
Porter never died it just changed its name to stout. I blame the marketing department.
When I made my home brew based on the Ringwood beer I parti-gyled, taking the first runnings of strong wort off to make a stout and using the rest of my wort to make the porter. The same beer in two strengths, so porter and stout in the old fashioned sense.
The colour of the porter was dark brown but not opaque, with slightly brown creamy head, a malty smell, chocolatey dark grain taste.
I haven't been able to compare it to the Ringwood beer it's based on but my version is a little dryer than I remember the original being.
Porter is often described as a once popular beer style that died out completely before being revived in recent years by microbreweries. When friends have asked me what porter is I've answered "like stout, but weaker". But even as I was saying this I'd think is this really true? Draught Guinness has an ABV of 4.1% so were historical porters weaker than this? Not at all, for most of the time they were brewed porters would have been stronger, and stout porters stronger still.
So did porters contain different ingredients to stouts? No to that one too.
Another beer blogger has summed up well the difference between porters and stouts: none, except that historically stout was stronger.
So what did happen to porter? Looking at the ABV of draught Guinness it can hardly be called 'stout' compared to the other beers on the bar. So in historical terms Guinness is in fact a porter, and it's Guinness Export Stout at 8% ABV that has a genuine claim to being a stout.
Porter never died it just changed its name to stout. I blame the marketing department.
When I made my home brew based on the Ringwood beer I parti-gyled, taking the first runnings of strong wort off to make a stout and using the rest of my wort to make the porter. The same beer in two strengths, so porter and stout in the old fashioned sense.
The colour of the porter was dark brown but not opaque, with slightly brown creamy head, a malty smell, chocolatey dark grain taste.
I haven't been able to compare it to the Ringwood beer it's based on but my version is a little dryer than I remember the original being.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Fullers yeast a bit feeble
As I worked as a microbiologist for many years I do feel slightly embarassed when I have to buy some dried yeast for homebrewing. So I've been trying to sort out for myself some brewing yeasts taken from bottle conditioned beers where I know the primary strain is used for bottling too.
First up was Hop Back from a bottle of Summer Lightning. I've used this before and it grew well on the agar plate. My latest brew was made using this culture, and the fermentation went fine. Tasting notes will be posted when I start drinking it.
Next I cultured the sediment from bottles of Fullers 1845 and Sierra Nevada pale ale. The Fullers yeast has been depressingly feeble though.
You can just about make out two small yeast colonies, as well as a fungal contaminant and a bacterial contaminant at the top.
As I had to incubate the plate for so long some contaminants have started growing. With a bit of experience it's pretty easy to identify what's growing on your agar plate from the shape of the colonies without having to look at anything under the microscope. In this case though, as I had so little growth, I popped into the lab for confirmation.
Fullers yeast at x 1000 magnification
If you don't have a microscope set up with a camera you can take pictures by carefully holding a digital camera above the eye piece. The picture above was done on my mobile phone and you can just about see the yeast cells.
Here the bacterial contaminant - large rods of a Bacillus sp.
As I'm happy that even from the poor growth I have got some brewing yeast I've sub-cultured it on to an agar slope and I'll used it to brew with soon.
Quite why there were so few viable yeast cells in the bottle of 1845 I'm not sure.
Sierra Nevada yeast culture
The Sierra Nevada culture pictured above was actually set up a few days after the Fullers one and shows much better growth. Perhaps the 100 day maturation process that Fullers proudly declare on the bottle means the yeast is more knackered.
First up was Hop Back from a bottle of Summer Lightning. I've used this before and it grew well on the agar plate. My latest brew was made using this culture, and the fermentation went fine. Tasting notes will be posted when I start drinking it.
Next I cultured the sediment from bottles of Fullers 1845 and Sierra Nevada pale ale. The Fullers yeast has been depressingly feeble though.
You can just about make out two small yeast colonies, as well as a fungal contaminant and a bacterial contaminant at the top.
As I had to incubate the plate for so long some contaminants have started growing. With a bit of experience it's pretty easy to identify what's growing on your agar plate from the shape of the colonies without having to look at anything under the microscope. In this case though, as I had so little growth, I popped into the lab for confirmation.
Fullers yeast at x 1000 magnification
If you don't have a microscope set up with a camera you can take pictures by carefully holding a digital camera above the eye piece. The picture above was done on my mobile phone and you can just about see the yeast cells.
Here the bacterial contaminant - large rods of a Bacillus sp.
As I'm happy that even from the poor growth I have got some brewing yeast I've sub-cultured it on to an agar slope and I'll used it to brew with soon.
Quite why there were so few viable yeast cells in the bottle of 1845 I'm not sure.
Sierra Nevada yeast culture
The Sierra Nevada culture pictured above was actually set up a few days after the Fullers one and shows much better growth. Perhaps the 100 day maturation process that Fullers proudly declare on the bottle means the yeast is more knackered.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
CAMRA and homebrewing
Since CAMRA have re-launched 'Beer' as a quarterly magazine they've had a small article each issue on homebrewing. Unfortunately they're badly done by someone who obviously doesn't know much about homebrewing.
The first of the article was for some bizarre reason about how to make some murky brew out of rye bread. Not quite sure what this has to do with real ale but I thought maybe it was meant to be something to get people started easily, with little need to buy kit or ingredients.
Next came the more obvious starting point of how to make beer from kits. Most home brewers start this way, myself included, and it is pretty simple. I though the short length of the article was a bit of a shame though, as there were a lot more useful things that could have been said.
The third article, getting round to full mash all grain brewing, really got on my tits though. The same short amount of words was given to explaining this more complicated process and the author just wasn't up to the job. The method he briefly describes for mashing involves adding an immersion heater to the mash and leaving it overnight.
This is the method that CJJ Berry described in the Amateur Winemakers homebrewing book produced over 40 years ago when homebrewing was legalised in the UK. It's over long, over complicated and leads to poor tasting beer. In CAMRA's own homebrewing guide, first published in 1990, Graham Wheeler writes: "Under no circumstances should you resort to the practice of overnight mashing as advocated by some members of the homebrewing fraternity". The fact is, mixing your grains with hot water and leaving them in an insulated mash tun for 90 minutes will give good conversion of the starch to sugar, with no need for heating and in a lot less time.
The article continued in a similarly clueless fashion. No mention was made of how to separate the wort from the grains, or from the hops for that matter. Vague instructions were given, like "boil for about and hour" and "add a third of a packet of hops", with no mention of size of the packet or the variety of hops. It was not well received at Jim's Beer Kit homebrewing forums but to be fair to the author himself did post there, and I hoped he'd learned something.
Sadly my hope was misplaced. The latest article includes similarly awful brewing instructions. This time he does actually specify the size of hop packet to use in the recipe but otherwise it's just dire. I'd be surprised if anyone actually brews this way, even the bloke who wrote it.
CAMRA have dabbled off and on in having home brewing articles and books over the years. They've just produced a new edition of the excellent Brew Your Own British Real Ale At Home (though as most homebrew will have extraneous CO2 added it won't count as real ale by CAMRA's definition). They've also intermittently had homebrewing articles in their paper. But these latest articles are some of the worst I've seen on homebrewing, and could be made so much better very easily - by getting someone who knows what they talking about to write them for example.
The first of the article was for some bizarre reason about how to make some murky brew out of rye bread. Not quite sure what this has to do with real ale but I thought maybe it was meant to be something to get people started easily, with little need to buy kit or ingredients.
Next came the more obvious starting point of how to make beer from kits. Most home brewers start this way, myself included, and it is pretty simple. I though the short length of the article was a bit of a shame though, as there were a lot more useful things that could have been said.
The third article, getting round to full mash all grain brewing, really got on my tits though. The same short amount of words was given to explaining this more complicated process and the author just wasn't up to the job. The method he briefly describes for mashing involves adding an immersion heater to the mash and leaving it overnight.
This is the method that CJJ Berry described in the Amateur Winemakers homebrewing book produced over 40 years ago when homebrewing was legalised in the UK. It's over long, over complicated and leads to poor tasting beer. In CAMRA's own homebrewing guide, first published in 1990, Graham Wheeler writes: "Under no circumstances should you resort to the practice of overnight mashing as advocated by some members of the homebrewing fraternity". The fact is, mixing your grains with hot water and leaving them in an insulated mash tun for 90 minutes will give good conversion of the starch to sugar, with no need for heating and in a lot less time.
The article continued in a similarly clueless fashion. No mention was made of how to separate the wort from the grains, or from the hops for that matter. Vague instructions were given, like "boil for about and hour" and "add a third of a packet of hops", with no mention of size of the packet or the variety of hops. It was not well received at Jim's Beer Kit homebrewing forums but to be fair to the author himself did post there, and I hoped he'd learned something.
Sadly my hope was misplaced. The latest article includes similarly awful brewing instructions. This time he does actually specify the size of hop packet to use in the recipe but otherwise it's just dire. I'd be surprised if anyone actually brews this way, even the bloke who wrote it.
CAMRA have dabbled off and on in having home brewing articles and books over the years. They've just produced a new edition of the excellent Brew Your Own British Real Ale At Home (though as most homebrew will have extraneous CO2 added it won't count as real ale by CAMRA's definition). They've also intermittently had homebrewing articles in their paper. But these latest articles are some of the worst I've seen on homebrewing, and could be made so much better very easily - by getting someone who knows what they talking about to write them for example.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Beer when you've got a cold
On Thursday night I felt very tired and sluggish when I was training with my Thai boxing club. I got hit a lot more than I usually do too, which I suppose is unsurprising, but it didn't do anything to improve my spirits. When I woke up on Friday morning I was aching all over and had a runny nose. Despite feeling really grotty I did feel a bit happier knowing that I could blame my poor performance on being under the weather. Perhaps I'm not past it after all.
I was left with a very tricky situation for Friday evening though. I eventually resigned myself to the fact I wouldn't be going down the pub but I couldn't bring myself to not drink at anything, it was Friday after all! What's the best thing to drink when you've got a cold though? I was tempted to have some Fullers vintage ale as it's a good warming brew. It's also 8.5% ABV though and would I be able to stop at having just one bottle? I didn't really want to get a hangover. Instead I started on my latest home brew, a best bitter. It was OK but not really assertive enough for my dulled senses. So I moved on to Belhaven Twisted Thistle one of my favourite IPAs (I wish they sold the export version in Britain). This was sadly wasted as I couldn't really get the hop flavour and it just seemed a bit thin. I needed something with a bit more body but the only dark beer I had available was my homebrewed porter which is still conditioning.
So once more I was on the horns of a dilema. As a dedicated beer nerd I really shouldn't drink anything before it's ready. But as a dedicated piss head I really wanted to. Then I remembered I hadn't checked the gravity for a few days so I poured out a generous measuring cylinders worth, recorded the gravity and guzzled it down. It went down very nicely, confirming that dark beers are what you need when you have a cold, I'd also managed to maintain my status as a proper beer nerd and satisfied my piss heads need for beer. Hurrah!
I was left with a very tricky situation for Friday evening though. I eventually resigned myself to the fact I wouldn't be going down the pub but I couldn't bring myself to not drink at anything, it was Friday after all! What's the best thing to drink when you've got a cold though? I was tempted to have some Fullers vintage ale as it's a good warming brew. It's also 8.5% ABV though and would I be able to stop at having just one bottle? I didn't really want to get a hangover. Instead I started on my latest home brew, a best bitter. It was OK but not really assertive enough for my dulled senses. So I moved on to Belhaven Twisted Thistle one of my favourite IPAs (I wish they sold the export version in Britain). This was sadly wasted as I couldn't really get the hop flavour and it just seemed a bit thin. I needed something with a bit more body but the only dark beer I had available was my homebrewed porter which is still conditioning.
So once more I was on the horns of a dilema. As a dedicated beer nerd I really shouldn't drink anything before it's ready. But as a dedicated piss head I really wanted to. Then I remembered I hadn't checked the gravity for a few days so I poured out a generous measuring cylinders worth, recorded the gravity and guzzled it down. It went down very nicely, confirming that dark beers are what you need when you have a cold, I'd also managed to maintain my status as a proper beer nerd and satisfied my piss heads need for beer. Hurrah!
Monday, 16 March 2009
American style IPA night
Can you guess which one is the homebrew?
Having brewed a beer inspired by Goose Island IPA I decided the time had come to compare it to the original. I also had the Dogfish head 60 minute IPA my mum had kindly brought me from Delaware and to make an evening of it I threw in a bottle of Scotlands very own American IPA Brewdog Punk IPA.
First up was my homebrew, my first attempt at an American IPA. The grist was all pale malt and the hops a combination of Styrian goldings, centennial and cascade. I'm normally a terrible reductionist when it comes to homebrewing, only altering one thing at a time so I can see what changes it makes. This means I usually only have one type of hop, using it for bittering and aroma. As I'd gone for three types here I decided to mix them all up at all stages to see if I could pick out the different hop types or if they would merge into a new flavour. As it turned out I could detect the fresh flavour of the Styrians and the grapefruit of the cascade. I'd never used centennial though it's meant to be very similar to cascade so I guess it added to the grapefruit flavour. To be more like the Goose Island IPA which inspired this brew I should probably have added the Styrians early in the boil and focussed on cascade later and for dry hopping.
This became more apparent when I started on the next brew: Goose Island IPA. There was a much stronger grapefuit aroma and flavour than in my homebrewed beer. I've already discussed the hops but there was also more body to this beer than mine. Attenuation is quite hard to control when homebrewing as I can't just cool the fermenting vessel down when I want the fermentation to finish. This meant there were very little residual sugars in my beer making it very easy drinking but lacking in body. I'll probably add a touch of crystal or cara malt next time I make and American IPA as my current one goes down far too easily for the strength it is (6.5% ABV).
Then I got on to Dogfish head 60 minute IPA, a beer I'd been looking forward to for weeks. Sadly this was a real disapointment. I don't know if I'd got a dodgy bottle or it was a bad batch but the smell of the beer reminded me more of corned beef than anything else. I've no idea what causes this in beer but it's not a desirable characteristic. I did drink the rest of the beer but it certainly wasn't the clean tasting hop overdose I was expecting. Oh well, maybe the other bottles will be better.
I didn't get as far as the Punk IPA as I was feeling a bit mellow by now and I'd already had few good sessions that week. It's still sitting in the cupboard though so its time will come soon ...
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Latest homebrew
Stand by main boiler!
I got another brew on yesterday and everything went fairly smoothly. I tried a little experiment this time and split off some of the sweet wort into a jam pan to turn into another brew. The grist was:
Pale malt 5.7kg
Cara malt 300g
Choclate malt 90g
The main batch was hopped with my current favourite Styrian goldings. The recipe is inspired by an old favourite of mine I hardly ever see nowadays: Ind Coope Burton Ale. When I was a lad the pubs round my way were either Friary Meux (Allied Breweries) or Courage. Of the beers on offer Burton Ale was by far the best and it even won Champion Beer of Britain in 1990. It is still produced, in Leeds for now, but I hardly ever see it and when I do it doesn't seem to be what it used to be. I had a previous go at making Burton a few brews back based on a recipe in an old edition of Graham Wheelers Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home. It was pretty close, right down to inducing the Burton bowel the following day, but the Lovely Lisa thought it a bit lacking in body so I've added some cara malt this time to beef it up a bit.
The inspiration for the sub-brew came from the excellent Radical Brewing
by the equally excellently named Randy Mosher. I really enjoyed this book cover to cover and I've got loads of ideas for things to try now. One idea that particularly caught my fancy was making a beer flavoured with Chai tea. The lovely Lisa's sisters got us into drinking Chai recently so the idea of combining beer and chai was very appealing. I couldn't bring myself to spend all day making five gallons of it in case it tastes rubbish so I upped the grains in the grist a bit and diverted five litres of wort to a jam pan. I added to this 80 grams of crystal malt and 30 grams of old goldings I had lying around with five chai tea bags being added at the end of boil. My efforts for the day ended up with 23l of the main brew at and O.g. of 1.045 and 5l of chai beer at 1.050. A packed of dried Safale 04 was used for the yeast, which as a former microbiologist i feel slightly ashamed about. Never mind, I'll culture my own next time, honest.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Beers in the lake district
Me and the lovely Lisa recently spent a week in the lake district, and needless to say sampled a beer or two whilst we were there.
First stop was at the Adventure centre in Newlands valley. Our friends Steve and Di were getting married at Newlands Church and had booked their reception on Saturday at the Adventure centre. As a lot of our friends were also staying there it was also the place to be for drinking on Friday night. Beers had been special bought in from the Keswick brewery. "Thirst Ascent" was the one we drank most of but none of their offering were particularly inspiring. Even with the evil Northern device the sparkler removed the beer was still totally flat. Recent discussions on another blog have got me thinking about how much CO2 cask beer actually does contain. A good pint should definitely have a slight fizz to it, presumably this is at the 1.7 volumes of CO2 end of things. As the beers a the Adventure centre were totally flat I think we can safely say they only contained 1 volume of CO2, if that. I'm even quite suspicious that the beer wasn't really cask conditioned but was in fact bright beer that had been racked into casks but contained no yeast or residual sugar for secondary fermentation.
Mind you, they could have just been crap at looking after beer at the Adventure centre, I suppose cellarmanship is not really a skill they look for in their employees. We did get to have some more Thirst Ascent later on in the week at a Good Beer Guide listed pub and sure enough there was a slight fizz to it and it was a much better pint.
After the excesses of the wedding drinking we had a slightly quieter time Sunday evening back in our holiday home with some beer bought from the excellent range in Booths supermarket. Whenever I'm in the Lake District I always make a point of stocking up at the local Booths and as usual I wasn't disappointed. The beer that stood out for me was Fyne Ales Pipers Gold. A lovely golden beer with a light, refreshing hoppy taste. It's a modest 3.8% in strength, which is weaker than I normally drink when down the pub, let alone at home. I'd happily drink this wherever I saw it though.
On Monday we managed to get down to a pub with its own brewery, the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater. I've been lucky enough to go to this pub once before, but not yet lucky enough to have someone else drive me there! Slowly sipping halves of their excellent Loweswater Pale Ale (3.6%?) made for an enjoyable evening but I'm sure guzzling pints of the stuff would have been even more enjoyable.
For the rest of the week our drinking was mainly at the Royal Oak in Braithwaite, a pub which sells Jennings beers. As, unusually for this pub, not all the beer were on top form I ended up mostly drinking the bitter (3.5%). This is quite a dark brew, but with a good flavour, and once again I found myself enjoying weak beer. Does this mean I'm going soft and will now be drinking only beers under 4%? Probably not as I've just bottled my homebrewed Double IPA which is 9% and I got from Booths a couple of bottles of Lees Harvest Ale at 11.5%!
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Oz Clarke and James May
Drink to Britain' was on telly again last night and I prefered this episode compared to their first effort. As a hardened beer nerd I'd still have loved them to go into more detail but I guess it has to be aimed at the non-nerds out there and it is only on for half an hour. It was interesting to see them at two breweries of vastly different sizes and I was mightily impressed by the gleaming copper brew machine James May got from his car boot. I'm still not sure if a caravan is the best place for homebrewing though!
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Todays Brew
I spent the day homebrewing today. I wanted to make something special for my brother and sister who have both recently had kids. Well, OK, one of the kids is nearly a year old now but I've been plotting this for some time. In the excellent Old British Beers and How to Make Them there is a recipie for a very strong beer that was brewed by Youngers brewery to celelrate the birth of an heir and be drunk on the luck offsprings 21st birthday. Now the chance of booze lasting 21 years in the houses of any of my family is pretty slim but the idea still appealed to me.
To try and avoid the cloying problem many strong ales suffer from I've used only pale malt and used cane sugar to bump up the original gravity to a hefty 1.120. I hope this will ferment out enough to be strong but still drinkable. I pitched a lot more yeast than normal and I'm considering adding a Champagne yeast as well if I don't get the attenuation I'm after.
Here a picture of the sparging:
I think that's enough blogging for today, there's Oz Clarke doing some boozing on the telly soon.
To try and avoid the cloying problem many strong ales suffer from I've used only pale malt and used cane sugar to bump up the original gravity to a hefty 1.120. I hope this will ferment out enough to be strong but still drinkable. I pitched a lot more yeast than normal and I'm considering adding a Champagne yeast as well if I don't get the attenuation I'm after.
Here a picture of the sparging:
I think that's enough blogging for today, there's Oz Clarke doing some boozing on the telly soon.
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