Brewday - Ordinary Ale - 03/05/2020

Nothing in this world is ordinary at the moment. My next brew, however, is an ordinary ale.

To be honest I wouldn't usually brew so frequently these days, but it passes the time nicely during lockdown. And as the last brew is going to sit a while before being consumed, I thought I'd jump straight back in and brew a low-gravity, easy-drinker, that I'll be able to get on tap real quick.

The recipe is based on a brew I first enjoyed after moving to my current town of residence. The missus and I had been on a 7 mile hike through the countryside on the outskirts of town and the weather was glorious. Conveniently the walk started and ended at a pub and after exerting myself in the afternoon warmth, I was in need of a pint of something nice and refreshing.

Being new to the area, I didn't know at the time that the beer I had chosen to enjoy was brewed locally, a few miles down the road. The beer was Archers Village - 3.6%

Many years have passed since that first taste and sadly the brewery is no more. Come to think of it, neither is that pub we ended up at. Sadly, that's closed too.

A recipe for this beer appears in one of the newer editions of Graham Wheeler's book 'Brew Your Own British Real Ale'. Described by the author as 'a dry, well-balanced beer with a full body for its gravity. Malty and fruity on the nose, then a fresh, hoppy favour with balancing malt and a hoppy, fruity finish'.

The recipe in the book calls for just pale and crystal malt, but in my version I've also included some Cara-Pils to boost the body and help with head retention. I'm also using a slightly different combination of bittering hops (Wheeler suggests Progress and WGV) but I'm using what I have in stock which is Progress and Aurora.

The full breakdown of the malt and hops I'm using is shown below. The brew is pencilled in for Sunday May 3rd when I'll update this post with how the brewday panned out.

3350g Maris Otter
300g Cara-Pils
180g Dark Crystal

Mash for 75 mins @ 67c

Hops during a 75 minute boil;

Progress 26g @ 60 mins

Aurora 16g @ 60 mins
Styrian Goldings 20g @10 mins
Styrian Goldings 20g @ 2 mins

OG should be 1.036 with around 30 units of bitterness. 

Yeast will be whatever I have available, which is likely to be dried Muntons Premium Gold.

As for the old Archers brewery, I happen to have one of their promotional bar runners from back in the day, with some quite scary looking west-country folk on. Cheers!

EDIT:

The day went fine, although I overshot the gravity despite the volumes being spot-on. SG is 1.040 instead of 1.036, so not quite the beer I was aiming for, but I decided not to liquor back and just go with it.

During the boil I did notice a dark twig-like object caught on the immersion chiller at one point. It looked darker than a bine, but thought no more about it until I had transferred the beer into the fermenter and then went back to deal with the clean-up. There, sitting on top of the trub was this fella. The same thing, but not a piece of hop bine. A caterpillar. Jeez.

On the plus side he was intact and hadn't ruptured. His insides only came out when I squeezed him after retrieval. Not sure how I feel about this brew now, but I doubt any damage has been done. Here's hoping and at least the wort is crystal clear above the cold break. 

Homebrew review - Brexit Beer

This beer was brewed at the end of January this year; brewday post here.

I bottled half the brew and put the other half in a 9L keg. First impressions are inviting. It looks good - pours clear with a nice amount of carbonation (this was a bottled conditioned example).

The head didn't dissipate too quickly and continued to lace the glass all through to the end. But looks aren't everything.

The hops are slightly underwhelming - I was expecting more from the late addition of Citra and being a beer I've done many times before, this was slightly lacking in hop flavour compared to earlier versions. Maybe the hops for this particular harvest weren't as pungent as previously.

Also, despite this bottle being okay, other bottles I've sampled have a definite phenolic character. It isn't present in the kegged version, so I'm guessing there may have been some cleaning residue on some of the bottles.

And although the keg beer doesn't have the pehnolic characteristics of some of the bottles, there is a hint of oxidation, so that beer is far from being perfect too.

Overall not a bad brew, but nowhere as clean as I would like. I'll have to review the bottle cleaning process and also the keg transfer, as that's the most likely cause of the oxidisation I guess. Hopefully the next brew will be better in that respect.

Brewday - Brave New World - 14/04/2020

Whoever and wherever you are, I hope you remain healthy and are surviving the virus that continues to devastate the planet.

This brew is the one I mentioned in my previous post, something along the lines of the old Brakspear Triple. For those unfamiliar with the original brew, this is not to be confused with a Belgian Tripel, but a strong traditional English ale.

The 20l Braumeister I now use will struggle to cope with the grain bill required for a starting gravity of around 1.063 / 1.064 unless I reduce the final volume, but I've decided to go for it, with 10% of the grain bill being Golden Syrup to help me achieve the gravity required. So the grist for this one (23l) is;

4800g Maris Otter
500g Dark Crystal
400g Malted Oats
150g Black Malt
650g Golden Syrup

Mash for 90 mins @ 68c for a target SG of 1.064

Hops during a 90 minute boil;

Target 22g (14%) @ 80 mins
Target 15g (14%) @ 20 mins

Target 30g (14%) @ 10 mins
Target 35g (14%) @ 1 min

Yeast will be Mangrove Jacks, New World Strong Ale Yeast

The yeast also gave me the inspiration for naming this brew. In view of what's going on around us at the moment, reference to 'New World', reminded me of the song 'Brave New World' from Jeff Wayne's musical interpretation of the War Of The Worlds. Ironically that story ends when a virus becomes the downfall of the alien invaders.

Hopefully I'll still be around to taste this brew once it's done. I'll probably age it in the keg for a bit, but I'll review it on here as soon as it's ready.

Take care all.

EDIT: The brewday was shifted to Tuesday as I took a chunk out of my finger in the garden the week before and wanted time for it to heal a bit, before dealing with lots of heat and cleaning. The wort was an incredible colour.

The day went smoothly and I adjusted the hop schedule from my original plan to lower the IBUs a bit and the revised details are shown in the main post above.

I drew off some boiling wort into a pan, to dissolve the golden syrup on the stove and thus avoid having sticky goo burning on the elements.



The starting gravity was bang on as predicted and the yeast is making good headway when I checked the fermenter this morning. My hydrometer reads slightly strong (2 pts) so although this looks like 1.066 it's actually 1.064.