Thoughts for the next brew...

My last brew has been bottled and kegged so while I wait for that condition, it's time to muse over what to brew next.

I've got in mind a small beer I'd like to do at some stage, but as the last brew wouldn't be too dissimilar, I'll put that one on the back-burner for now and go with something a bit more robust.

I might go with a homage to Brakspear Triple. It's been discontinued but used to be a nice drop. In the book '300 beers to try before you die' by Roger Protz, Roger describes it thus; 'Triple is one of the best new beers to appear in Britain in many years - it's a glass of the Old Stunning, as Charles Dickens was want to say.'

The recipe did change over the years, with the label on the last few bottles that I acquired stating the hops were Northdown and Cascade. My preference was for the earlier version which was hopped solely with Target.

Descriptions of the two different versions can be found here;

https://www.ratebeer.com/Ratings/Beer/Beer-Ratings.asp?BeerID=173826

https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/brakspear-triple-72/46132/

With a starting gravity of around 1.065 it will push my 20l Braumeister to the limit but I'll see what I can come up with. Time to get to work putting a recipe together...
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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.

Homebrew Review - Homegrown Hop 2013

I brewed this beer in mid-September with my new harvest of Bramling Cross hops.

Last year's incarnation was good, but unfortunately, the 2013 brew hasn't turned out quite so well, even allowing for the fact that I'm particularly hard on my beers.

Homegrown Hop 2013 

I was out of carahell malt when I came to brew, so substituted that with caragold this time around. It produced a paler beer, probably the colour I was looking for initially, but at the expense of some body. I definitely preferred the rounder flavour the German malt provided last year.

I also increased my estimate of the alpha. This was a good move as last year's beer was possibly a shade too bitter and this year's is nicely balanced. The disappointment comes with the flavour and aroma.

Hop aroma is earthy, spicy, but definitely muted. Not the assertive, fruitiness, I was expecting.

The flavour is not too bad and was better received by my local homebrew group than it was by me. To be fair, it is nicely balanced, has more fruit to it than you get on the nose, but overall the beer is a shade thin. I think reverting to last year's recipe with the carahell malt would help in this respect.

It's nicely clear and has a bright white head which dissipates about half way through. But although it looks the part, because of the lack of body and aroma, the beer is ultimately underwhelming.

Only I know what I was setting out to achieve, which is why I'm probably a harsher critic than most and I think the problem lies with my hop picking. Worried about them 'going over' I harvested a couple of weeks earlier this year and while the hops looked great, they probably lacked some of that 'paperiness' that you need to ensure the Lupulin is at its peak.

Having said all of that, the beer is perfectly palatable and I'll have no qualms about sharing this among friends. I've bottled the whole batch, rather than splitting half into a keg, as I get more requests for handouts of this brew, than any other.

I'll keep trying, though. I'll revert to the carahell malt and pick the hops a shade later and hopefully this time next year I'll be singing its praises.

Edit: If you're a hop geek, there's an article and some great pictures from this year's British hop harvest HERE

Yankee Doodle

What a week for our friends in the States.

I believe that Monday was the first time since Prohibition that all states in America can legally homebrew. And Independence Day follows on Thursday.

A day later, I shall be heading to London in pursuit of American craft beer.

The venue: The White Horse on Parsons Green.

The event: American Beer Festival 2013 - "The Big Weekend for Small Beer"

The beers: Beer List

EDIT:

If there's anything on the beer list that American readers feels shouldn't be missed, please comment before Friday.