Marble Red Ale

One of the best beers I've ever brewed was my version of Jamil Zainasheff's Evil Twin (blog post here). There's something magical about so much malt and hop character coming together. I was toying with the idea of re-brewing it, but just for fun I decided instead to try my first recipe from the recent book "For the love of hops" by Stan Hieronymus.

The recipe is for "Marble Red Ale". I should mention that I have never tried a Marble brewery beer, nor heard of them outside of this book, but the recipe would seem to add up to a pretty awesome beer, so I had to try it out.

If you look through my older posts you will see that I have a few different possible brewing configurations, from pretty simple pot on a heat source BIAB  with no chilling, right up to recirculating automated step mashing, sparging and full chilling. Generally the higher the OG, the more complex my setup, so for this 1.065 monster I sparged and chilled. I also upped my volume a little to 24L to account for extra losses to hop material.

For yeast, I cultured up a large stirred starter of WYeast PACMAN, which I kept from a smack pack from late last year. Pacman is now my favourite yeast for American ales. I feel that it gives a really nice mouthfeel that I don't get from other american ale yeasts. Also it really is a beast and gets through high OG worts very quickly.

Here's the recipe:

Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 75.0     5.14 kg.  Pale Ale Malt (2-row)         Australia      1.037      2
 10.0     0.69 kg.  Vienna Malt                   Germany        1.036      4
 10.0     0.69 kg.  Crystal 77L                   UK             1.035     75
  5.0     0.34 kg.  Crystal 120L                  UK             1.033    120

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 20.27 g.     Columbus                          Pellet  15.00  38.7  60 min.
 11.73 g.     Citra                             Pellet  11.50   3.4  10 min.
 11.73 g.     Simcoe                            Pellet  13.00   3.9  10 min.
 23.47 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.75   3.4  10 min.
 48.00 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.75   0.0  0 min.
 90.67 g.     Cascade                           Pellet   5.75   0.0  Dry Hop
 13.87 g.     Simcoe                            Pellet  13.00   0.0  Dry Hop
 13.87 g.     Citra                             Pellet  11.50   0.0  Dry Hop


Yeast
-----

Pacman

Síofra Red Ale

organised chaos

In a radical departure to my usual beer interests, this weekend I brewed a version of Jamil Zainasheff's Evil Twin. This is the beer he wrote about several years ago in the American Homebrewer's Association "Zymurgy" magazine, reprinted here on his own website. It introduces the concept of hop bursting - forgoing an early hop addition in favour of pushing all hop additions to the last 20 minutes. I've been intrigued by this ever since I first read about it, but I held off trying it out until I got to try a Heretic Evil Twin last week. A local distributor is now cold shipping several American beers to Australia, Evil twin being one. The hop character is incredibly complex, and is beautifully balanced by a heavy malt backbone. I've read here that Heretic is using a different malt bill and hop bill for their Evil Twin compared to the version on Jamil's website, though the principle remains the same.

I'll be trying to get close to the Heretic Evil Twin. If I could criticize anything about Jamil's recipes, it's that his malt bills seem far too busy to me, with the Zymurgy Evil Twin being a good example. The Heretic Evil Twin malt bill he describes in the link above is much more to my liking, with a simple pale ale background providing a platform for a huge amount of good quality medium crystal malt. A little roasted barley is added for colour. Jamil suggest a half sack of RB in a 30bbl batch, which seems to come out at about 80g for a 22.5 litre batch. Actually this ends up being quite dark according to ProMash, so I'll scale it back to around 40g.

I am a little worried to be using 12% crystal, but I guess with that level of hopping you need to go a little crazy. The hopping itself consists of very generous amounts of citra and columbus. I got about 250g of citra in a mucked up hop order about a year back, and they have been carefully stored since then awaiting a suitable brew, so I'm glad to be able to use a hundred or so grams at long last. I also got some columbus in that order, but I decided that they are past their best so I bought an 80g packet from my LHBS - you will notice that I use all 80g in this brew. A small charge is added at 20mins, then a big one at 10 and at flameout. Jamil says that Heretic Evil Twin is dry hopped, and I'm planning to dry hop mine too. I'll wait until fermentation is complete and then I'll do a taste test to determine the actual amounts, but the recipe below has what I'm expecting to use.

I mentioned a huge old keg I got a while back from Ebay, well recently I swapped it for a regular 50L keg. I decided that I'm unlikely to want to do double batches for a while yet, and the 50L keg is a bit more realistic in size for my operation.

For this brew I moved away from 'brew in a bag' and actually mashed into about 17L of liqour, and fly sparged another 17 or so to get to my pre-boil volume. The mash itself was multi-step, 65C for 40 minutes, 72C for 20, and finally a mash out at 78 for 10 minutes before sparging with 78 degree water. I collected about 27 litres and boiled down to 23.5 (allowing a little extra wort to account for extra loss to hop debris). I'll write more on the system in another month or two when I get it dialed in right, this brew was a bit of an experiment.

I pitched the yeast from a big stirred starter of Pacman - recovered from the Beamish clone I recently did. It's at 17C in the fermenting fridge, and fermentation is extremely vigorous. This morning it was bursting out the top and the hop aroma was pretty incredible, which can only be a good sign for the finished product.

Here's the recipe:

Siofra Red Ale

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
----------------

Batch Size (L):          23.50    Wort Size (L):     23.50
Total Grain (kg):         6.43
Anticipated OG:          1.063    Plato:             15.39
Anticipated EBC:          33.6
Anticipated IBU:          28.5
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                   Origin   Potential EBC
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 87.6     5.63 kg.  Pale Ale Malt (2-row)  Australia  1.037     5
 11.8     0.76 kg.  Crystal 77L                   UK  1.035   148
  0.6     0.04 kg.  Roasted Barley (Simpson's)    UK  1.029  1350

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
---------------------------------------------------------------
  9.00 g.     Citra                 Pellet  13.40   5.1  20 min.
  8.00 g.     Columbus              Pellet  15.20   5.4  20 min.
 25.00 g.     Citra                 Pellet  13.40   8.5  10 min.
 24.00 g.     Columbus              Pellet  15.20   9.6  10 min.
 28.00 g.     Citra                 Pellet  13.40   0.0  0 min.
 25.00 g.     Columbus              Pellet  15.20   0.0  0 min.
 28.00 g.     Citra                 Pellet  13.40   0.0  Dry Hop
 23.00 g.     Columbus              Pellet  15.20   0.0  Dry Hop


Yeast
-----

WYeast 1764 Rogue PacMan (VSS)


Water Profile
-------------

Profile:           Pale Ale
Profile known for:

Calcium(Ca):          71.0 ppm
Magnesium(Mg):        10.0 ppm
Sodium(Na):           13.0 ppm
Sulfate(SO4):        116.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl):         79.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3):    30.0 ppm

pH: 7.30


Mash Schedule
-------------

Saccharification Rest Temp :  65  Time:  40
Mash-out Rest Temp :          72  Time:  20
Sparge Temp :                 78  Time:  10

All temperature measurements are degrees Celsius.

Beamish clone reflections

First let's recap what was different about this compared to the last Beamish clone I tried:

1. I used Simpsons Maris Otter as the base malt instead of Crisp Ale malt
2. I used Pacman yeast instead of US-05
3. I added a level teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate to the water treatment
4. I served it on my new handpump

And the reasons:

1. My LHBS didn't have Crisp Ale, and I use Simpsons Maris Otter for most ales, so thought I would stick with it.
2. I had wanted to use Pacman the first time round, but couldn't get my hands on it.
3. I did notice a slightly unpleasant acidity at low temperatures with the previous version, and some reading up on water treatment told me that carbonates can help to cover this up when using lots of dark malts/roasted barley.
4. I didn't have a handpump the first time round.

I've been lucky with this recipe, it was given to me by Will from perfectpint.blogspot.com, and he had obviously put a bit of time and effort into it's creation. The first version was excellent, but had a little room for improvement. This version is an improvement on it. I think that each of the four changes I made had a detectable impact on the final product.

The Maris Otter gave it's usual biscuity background. I thought this might get lost among the chocolate and roasty notes, but it's definitely there. The Pacman yeast has contributed an amazing mouthfeel to the beer, and is probably the single biggest improvement. There's a slight but restrained fruity note too, which is probably coming from the yeast.

I couldn't detect any unpleasant acidic flavours, and my mash ph was spot on, so I have to conclude that it was worth adding the sodium bicarbonate - certainly it did no harm.

Finally the handpump adds a bit of magic as well as increased body and mouthfeel to the beer. I didn't 'cask condition' this as such. I just carbonated it to about 1.5vols of CO2, and then pulled it through the line, giving a small amount of CO2 whenever it was needed. The results were really satisfying.

What I have ended up with is a relatively low alcohol session beer, with loads of flavour from the chocolate malt and roasted barley, a pleasant and assertive bitterness, and incredible body and mouthfeel. It's not a dead on clone, but rather a reimagining of Beamish as a sort of premium stout - the stout equivalent of a Best Bitter perhaps.

Needless to say, I'll be brewing this again, and soon. 

Ah, Beamish!

I've got a significant birthday coming up soon, and it's tax back time in Australia, so I've gotten myself an early birthday present.

It's a beauty, an Angram CO, 1/2 pint jacketed beer engine. Something needs to be done about the Scrumpy jack clip, but otherwise it's in perfect working order and ready for action.

The first beer I'll be dispensing through this is a Beamish clone. I've brewed this before but there are some subtle changes this time round. First off I'm using Maris Otter as the base malt. I don't think Beamish is brewed using anything as fancy, so mine will be a sort of upmarket version. Also this time I'm using 'Pacman' yeast (Wyeast 1764). I wanted to use this last time but couldn't get my hands on it, so I'm looking forward to trying it out. The fermentation plan for this is: half pack of Pacman yeast in a 500ml starter (just to wake it up), followed by a 1.5L starter, then pitch to the main batch. I'll ferment at 17C, which is what a lot of homebrewers on homebrewtalk.com use for Pacman. I'm hoping to turn this around pretty quick, but that will depend on how it's tasting. Here's the recipe:

3.5kg Simpsons Ale - Maris Otter
0.25kg Simpsons Roast Barley
0.13kg Simpsons Chocolate
0.35kg Joe White/Maltcraft Malted Wheat


47g East Kent Goldings at 50mins

No chilled (poured into a water container and sealed, allowed to cool slowly)

In addition to my usual water treatment, I added a level teaspoon of baking soda to up the carbonate content a little (remember I'm on very soft water here). I did notice a certain harshness to the last batch of this I did, so I think this may help to soften it a bit.

I read a recent post on aussiehomebrewer.com where somebody reported better attenuation when using yeast nutrient. This would seem to be due to increased yeast health. I picked some up at the home brew shop and used it on this batch. The dose is a half teaspoon dissolved in hot water 10 minutes from the end of the boil. Apparently the Pacman is quite the attenuator, so I have to be careful not to over attenuate this one. I'll be keeping an eye on the mash temp (66C).

I found this beauty on youtube, "sound man Brendan!"

Next up is mounting the hand pump, should be fun!