I'm back

I'm finally back in Melbourne from an extended trip back home to Ireland. I'm happy to report that the craft beer scene in Ireland has finally awoken. Existing microbrewers are expanding and new ones emerging, and most off-license premises seem to have a selection of some sort.

I'm planning to brew this Saturday, my first of 2013. It will be something in the 4.5% abv region, as I want to turn it around in the minimum possible time (I find about 4 weeks is the best you can do). It will be something English, probably with either the Wyeast West Yorkshire strain or the Fullers strain. I'll leave the final decision until Friday.

Baritone Bitter V2

Hot on the heels of the Landlord I made over the weekend, I diving straight into a hopefully improved version of my recent baritone bitter. This was a beer inspired by cask bass, with a heavy dose of Northern Brewer hops. Besides being far too bitter, I felt that there were a few other areas ripe for tweaking.

First, I'll say what's not changing. The water treatment, a 'burtonizing', and the yeast, WY1028 will stay the same. These were two of the more successful elements of my first version. The malt bill is only slightly modified, going to 6% simpsons medium crystal, up 1% from the last version.

In the hopping schedule I'm dropping the early hopping back to 10g of Northern Brewer, from 15g previously. This beer is no-chilled, and the flameout additions are 20g of Northern Brewer and 20g Williamette. I'm calculating the flameout additions as a 20min addition because of the no-chill, and altogether this brings my total IBUs to 26ish, from 34ish in the previous version. In fact I think I somehow ended up nearer to 40ish in the previous version. The williamette should also help to flavour the hop palate a bit. This was quite pleasant but a little monotone last time round.


Recipe:

Bass

A ProMash Recipe Report

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

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         4.21
Anticipated OG:          1.044    Plato:             10.95
Anticipated SRM:          13.2
Anticipated IBU:          25.9
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin   Potential SRM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 93.0     3.91 kg.  Pale Malt (Maris Otter)       UK        1.038      3
  5.9     0.25 kg.  Crystal 80L                   USA       1.033     80
  1.1     0.05 kg.  Roasted Barley (Simpson's)    UK        1.029    685

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                         Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 10.00 g.     Northern Brewer              Pellet   9.00  13.2  60 min.
 20.00 g.     Northern Brewer              Pellet   9.00   8.9  20 min.
 20.00 g.     Willamette                   Whole    4.30   3.8  20 min.


Yeast
-----

WY1028 London 

Water Treatment

---------------

0.75tsp CaCl2  2.5tsp CaSO4  1tsp MgSO4 

Landlord (Again!)

Back to my favourite beer, Landlord. Since I got the hand pump a few months back I've been looking forward to pouring the first pale golden pint of styrian infused perfection. I held off brewing this again because I was waiting for a pound of styrian goldings to arrive from the US. Now they're here, and there's no excuse, a big starter of WY1469 has been on the stirplate, and we're ready to go.

The malt bill is exactly the same as last time round, but I've upped the late hops, quite a bit in the case of the styrians. Water treatement is more or less the same, but with an extra quarter teaspoon of gypsum. I also added 1.5ml of Lactic Acid to the mash to bring the Ph to where I wanted it (around 5.5).

Recipe:

Landlord

A ProMash Recipe Report

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

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         4.36
Anticipated OG:          1.045    Plato:             11.14
Anticipated SRM:           5.3
Anticipated IBU:          31.3
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin   Potential SRM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 96.4     4.20 kg.  Pale Malt (Golden Promise)    UK        1.037      2
  3.6     0.16 kg.  Crystal 60L                   UK        1.035     60

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                         Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 42.00 g.     Willamette                   Pellet   4.30  26.4  60 min.
 25.00 g.     Goldings - E.K.              Pellet   5.00   4.9  15 min.
 50.00 g.     Styrian Goldings              Pellet   5.25   0.0  0 min.


Yeast
-----

WY1469 Yorkshire

Rebel Rising V2

A few months back I made a pleasant red ale loosely based on the Franciscan Well's Rebel Red, a staple of my beer drinking diet when I lived in Cork. I felt there were a few aspects of my version that could be improved upon, so on Saturday I went about doing just that.

The grain bill for this beer changed a little to reflect what I perceived as  a flaw in the last version - too much rummy raisiny flavour from the heavy dose of dark crystal. I dropped the total crystal bill by a small amount, and subbed half of that total for Simpsons Light Crystal. Another change was a lighter dose of early hops and a heavier dose of late hops. Since the beer is no chilled, even the late hops have a significant effect on bitterness, so pushing more of the hops to later on should give more hop character without changing the bitterness level.

I also changed the yeast, though I didn't really have a very good reason to do that, the yeast character in the previous version was actually a highlight. However I had a vial of White Labs Bedford Ale yeast platinum that I was really keen to use, so I decided to try it out on this beer. All but 15ml of the vial was pitched to a 1L starter and pitched at high krausen to the main batch.

Rebel Red V2

A ProMash Recipe Report

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

Batch Size (L):          22.50    Wort Size (L):     22.50
Total Grain (kg):         4.06
Anticipated OG:          1.045    Plato:             11.11
Anticipated SRM:          15.5
Anticipated IBU:          27.3
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts
----------------

Evaporation Rate:      15.00    Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size:   26.47    L
Pre-Boil Gravity:      1.038    SG          9.50  Plato


Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                     Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 82.8     3.36 kg.  Pale Malt (Maris Otter)  UK     1.038      3
  3.4     0.14 kg.  Crystal 120L             UK     1.033    120
  3.4     0.14 kg.  Crystal 40L              USA    1.034     40
  1.7     0.07 kg.  Roasted Barley (Simpson's)UK    1.029    685
  8.6     0.35 kg.  Cane Sugar              Generic 1.046      0

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.


Hops

   Amount     Name                 Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 15.00 g.     East Kent Goldings   Pellet   4.30   9.4  60 min.
 15.00 g.     Willamette           Pellet   4.00   8.8  60 min.
 20.00 g.     East Kent Goldings   Pellet   4.30   4.2  20 min.
 20.00 g.     Willamette           Pellet   5.00   4.9  20 min.


Yeast
-----

White Labs WLP006 Bedford British Ale


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

Note that the hop times were actually 45mins and 0mins, and the batch was no-chilled. Also the 0.35kg Cane sugar was actually homemade Invert No.2. Water treatment was 1tsp CaCl2, 1tsp CaSO4, 0.5tsp MgSO4 into very soft Melbourne water.

Baritone Bitter tasting

A few weeks back I wrote about the Bass inspired beer I brewed using all Northern Brewer hops. I've decided to call it Baritone Bitter, as it's not a clone at all really, just has a few things in common with cask Bass.

Apart from a few Sierra Nevada clones where I used it as a sub for Perle in a mid boil addition, I hadn't really experimented much with Northern Brewer. The results are quite surprising. There's a total absence of fruity hop aromas/flavours, some floral, but a huge amount of that earthy almost root vegetable aroma - it reminds me of a beetroot chocolate cake I made a while back. This is a really interesting beer, with flaws, but certainly something to build on for the future.

The flaws - it's too bitter. I no-chilled this batch, and usually when I no-chill the late hops are relatively low in AA%. My Northern Brewer were 9%, and I think the late hops have had a huge contribution to the bitterness. I think I'm up at or over 40IBUs, and this could stand to drop by about 10 or so. In saying that, now that it's fully matured in the keg, the malty notes are coming through more and are masking the bitterness well. Obviously the bitterness is dropping back a little with time too. Early on the bitterness was overpowering. For such a poorly balanced beer, it managed an 87 in a recent comp (where it was still a week or two away from proper condition), so I'm quite happy with it. The water treatment has had a huge effect. It's hard to put it in words, but the hop character is transformed into a huge multi-layered effect, and brings me right back to pints of Marston's Pedigree I've had before. The yeast is spot on, with definite 'English' character that is dry and minerally without being at all harsh.

This is another recipe to build on and improve. I will probably scale back the bitterness about 5-10IBUs next time, and bump up the crystal slightly, to 6 or 7%. I will also add another late hop, probably East Kent Goldings, or maybe Styrians. While the hop character is really interesting, it could be a little broader, and a bigger floral dimension would really add to the character of the beer.

Overall a very worthwhile experiment!

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.