Brewday - 24/06/2020 - Play it again Sam...

... just slightly different.

So the next brew is very similar to the last. In fact, the grist will be identical and I'm swapping hops from the original European hops to a combination of American and New World. Simcoe and Galaxy to be exact. 

So the recipe for this brew looks like this;

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

Mash for 75 mins @ 67c

Hops during a 75 minute boil;

Galaxy 15g @ 50 mins

Galaxy 15g @ 7 mins
Simcoe 15g @ 7 mins

Galaxy 5g @ 2 mins

Simcoe 20g @ 2 mins

The hops have a higher alpha than the last brew so the quantities/timings are reduced but the intention is to hit  an OG of around 1.036 with around 30 units of bitterness again.

Yeast this time will be Lallemand BRY-97

Brewday is pencilled in for Wednesday June 24th. As usual I'll update this post on the day to report if things went to plan. 

EDIT: The day was hot, but drama free. It tool a while to cool the wort, but got it to 20.5c before pitching and put it in the temperature controlled fermenting fridge, where it dropped a bit more and when the yeast krausen started to form it was sitting nicely at 18c.

Brexit Brewday - 31/01/2020

Friday January 31st 2020. The day that the UK leaves the European Union. Am I brewing because of this historic event? TBH I couldn't give too hoots. It just so happens I have a day off and I'm going to brew beer.

It's not a special recipe to mark the day, just a pale ale. Probably the beer I've brewed most, so you could possibly regard this as my 'house ale', although that may suggest it's always on tap and sadly I don't brew regularly enough for that to be the case these days.

It's always turned out well in the past and hopefully this batch will be no different.

The grist for this one (23l) is;

4450g Golden Promise
68g Pale Crystal
68g Wheat Malt
10g Chocolate Malt

Mash for 90 mins @ 68c for a target SG of 1.044

Hops during a 90 minute boil;

Savinjski Goldings 40g @ 75 mins

Aurora 15g @ 75 mins

Progress 11g @ 75 mins

Citra 11g @ 15mins

Citra 11g  steeped at 50c while chillling

Yeast will be Safale US-05

The coloured malts are simply to add a small depth of colour, the wheat is for head retention and the use of Golden Promise rather than Maris Otter is to let the late hops shine.

Porter

As the years pass I'm mellowing in many ways. For longevity someone once said 'Sit loosely in the saddle of life'. Despite never being the most relaxed of people, age has tought me to slow down, not to sweat the small stuff and to drink dark beer.

That last bit might not be entirely true, but I am enjoying the odd darker brew from time to time and with that in mind I decided to brew a Porter toward the end of last year. It's my most recent brew and I have to say it turned out rather well.

To be fair the recipe's not entirely mine - I took it from an old home-brew publication by Marc Ollossen. The edition I have was printed in 1997 and is an ex-library book which cost pence to purchase, although I believe the book may still be about having been republished at some stage. I've only done a small handful of recipes from the book, but I can't remember a bad one so Marc has done his job well.

There's several Porter recipes within its pages and I narrowed the choice down largely based on ingredients I already had in stock. It's based on a commercial recipe but as far as I'm aware the brewery quoted (Marston Moor) is no longer around, unless it was swallowed up by one of the bigger boys.

The grist I came up with for a 23l batch was made up of;

4000g Maris Otter
155 g CaraPils
380g Roasted Barley
120g Dark Crystal
120g Wheat Malt

For an OG of 1.046

Hops were;

Challenger 43g @ 60mins
Savinjski Goldings 20g @ 15mins
plus
Savinjski Goldings 10g steeped at 80c during chillling.

The yeast I used for this one was Muntons Premium Gold. Not the most popular of dried yeasts among the brewers I know, but I find it works very well for beers with a malty profile;  https://www.muntons.com/home_brewing/muntons-premium-yeast/

These days I'm brewing with a 20L Braumeister and the brewday for this one was a bit of a mare. The mash schedule I intended was;

80mins @ 68c
5mins @ 78c

but I suffered a power outage - having left the German piece of kit to do it's thing unattended - this was the first time I hadn't sat like a nursemaid by its side while mashing (I'd nipped back to bed for an extra half-hours kip and a subsequent shower) - I returned to find the power dead due to a faulty extension lead.

I had no idea how long the power had been out, (I can't recall now what the temperature was when I returned to the mash either) so I decided to start the process over, so the upshot was a very long mash.

This may have contributed to a slightly thinner than anticipated body, but at the end of the day it didn't really detract from what was a damn fine pint. The recipe's a keeper.

It's been a while

Five and a half years to be precise. I've not brewed much in the intervening time and I've sold my old 10 gallon brewery pictured on the right.

But all is not lost. The hiatus is over and I'm finally brewing once more. Maybe only 3 or 4 times a year, but I'm enjoying it again and I'll bring you up to speed with details of the new set-up very soon.

I rediscovered this old blog and found it a useful resource to remind me what went well and what didn't. I also find it therapeutic to write (even if no else reads it but me) so here we go again...

Oh and apologies for any images missing on the old posts - there's nothing I can do to recover these.

Brewday - Cream Ale 05/06/2014

It's been a while. A change of work regime has impacted more than expected, but I'm still here and I'm still brewing.

A Cream Ale is on the agenda this week. The local homebrew club has a 'lager' night coming up, but I didn't fancy brewing a lager and thought a Cream Ale might fit the bill just as well.

The weather forecast looks shite, so I'm guessing I'll be in the garage, rather than pulling the brewery out onto the drive and sitting in the sunshine, but hey, ho, I'm looking forward to a day off and what better way to spend it?

I'm not sure if this is an authentic recipe for this American style beer, but I found a couple of recipes on the internet and tweaked them to fit what I had ingredient wise. Either way it should be a pale, lightly-hopped beer, that will be nicely carbonated and served chilled. One that's likely to go down well, should the summer ever threaten to make an appearance.

Cream Ale

Cream Ale

Type: All Grain	Date: 05 Jun 2014
Batch Size (fermenter): 50.00 l	Brewer: Mark
Boil Size: 59.08 l	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 75 min	Equipment: Elite Brewery 10G
End of Boil Volume 54.08 l	Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 50.00 l	Est Mash Efficiency 72.8 %
Fermentation: Lager, Single Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 8000.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 73.1 % 1260.00 g Munich Malt (17.7 EBC) Grain 2 11.5 % 1000.00 g Maize, Flaked (Thomas Fawcett) (3.9 EBC) Grain 3 9.1 % 450.00 g Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) Grain 4 4.1 % 240.00 g Vienna Malt (Weyermann) (5.9 EBC) Grain 5 2.2 % 30.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 11.0 IBUs 20.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 7 6.0 IBUs 10.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 8 1.1 IBUs 10.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 9 1.0 IBUs 15.00 g Cascade [7.50 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 10 0.3 IBUs 15.00 g Cluster [7.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 11 0.2 IBUs 4.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 12 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.048 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.046 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.010 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.9 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 %
Bitterness: 19.5 IBUs	Calories: 427.1 kcal/l
Est Color: 10.3 EBC

Brewday - HGH Pale Ale 12/09/2013

It's time for the annual ritual that is brewing a beer with my homegrown hops. Last year's beer turned out especially good, so I'm planning to do something very similar this time around.

The recipe is essentially the same, although as I'm all out of Carahell malt, I'm going to replace this with Caragold in the same quantity. The Caragold is a lighter malt, but that's probably no bad thing as when I reviewed last year's beer, I did remark that the Carahell had made the beer a shade darker than I had originally anticipated.

I've also altered the hopping slightly. Beersmith predicted IBU's of 42 on last year's schedule and the beer came across significantly more bitter than that estimate. Of course, I had to guess the acid content of the hops and used a conservative 4.5% for the alpha content.

This year I'm assuming 5% alpha and have reduced the hop additions very slightly at various stages, so the recipe now looks like this;

HGH Pale Ale 2013

English IPA

Type: All Grain	Date: 12/09/2013
Batch Size (fermenter): 50.00 l	Brewer: Mark
Boil Size: 61.39 l	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 75 min	Equipment: Elite Brewery
End of Boil Volume 55.12 l	Brewhouse Efficiency: 73.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 50.00 l	Est Mash Efficiency 77.4 %
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 11000.00 g Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 90.2 % 1200.00 g Caragold (9.0 EBC) Grain 2 9.8 % 80.00 g Homegrown Bramling X [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 3 19.4 IBUs 80.00 g Homegrown Bramling X [5.00 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 4 11.7 IBUs 1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 5 - 80.00 g Homegrown Bramling X [5.00 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 6 5.2 IBUs 80.00 g Homegrown Bramling X [5.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min Hop 7 0.8 IBUs 4.0 pkg US West Coast Yeast (Mangrove Jack's #M44) Yeast 8 - 150.00 g Homegrown Bramling X [5.00 %] - Dry Hop 3.0 Days Hop 9 0.0 IBUs
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.056 SG	Measured Original Gravity:
Est Final Gravity: 1.014 SG	Measured Final Gravity:
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.6 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol:
Bitterness: 37.2 IBUs
Est Color: 10.1 EBC

That's nearly 500g of hops in a ten gallon batch and as the yield from my hop plants was 900g (dried), there'll be plenty left for another brew.

Brewday for this one is penciled in for Thursday.