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So on Saturday I got a little ambitious. I brewed two homebrew batches in one afternoon/evening. The first was a rhubarb beer experiment... I had to create a simple beer to make a rhubarb/something blend beer from. This is what I came up with, a simple wheat beer, expressed here in non-volume specific rates:
Mash at 50 C for 20 minutes, raise to 68 C for 50 minutes. 3.0 L/kg grain dough-in water. Mashout high at 79-80 C. Target OG=13.2 Plato.
55.6% 2-row pale malt
41.4% Malted wheat
2.6% Carared malt
0.38% Black malt (to add a red hue)
Hopped with 8.125 AAU/L Cascade hops for bittering, all of boil (60 min)
Plus 4.063 AAU/L Cascade hops for aroma, last 2 minutes of boil.
Yeast: Some clean ale yeast, like London or American ale. Ferment 18-20 C.
The brew when pretty except for a little higher than expected boil-off rate. I had to top up with a little boiled water to bring the pre-ferment gravity down to a reasonable level.
When the fermentation is done the batch will be split and racked into 2 carboys with different rhubarb mixtures. Some ideas that have been tossed around are rhubarb-saskatoon berry, rhubarb-raspberry, and rhubarb-strawberry.
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Next was the third installment of my "Super Amber Brown Ale" series. I think this third try should work out quite well, the mash and boil smelt AMAZING. The malt bill is more complex than I would usually do:
Mash at 66 C for 60 minutes. Dough in with 3.0 L/kg grain. Mashout at 77 C. Targer OG 15.6 Plato.
64.8% 2-row pale malt
18.5% Dark munich malt, 10L
9.25% C120 malt (Crystal ~120L)
3.70% Cararoma malt (adds malty aroma, similar to crystal malt)
2.96% UK Chocolate malt
0.37% Roast barley
0.37% Black Patent malt
Boiled for 1.5 hrs. Hopped with:
First Gold @ 9.57 AAU/L boiled for 75 min.
First Gold @ 5.98 AAU/L boiled for 10 min.
Pretty much any British Ale style yeast should do.
This batch was ok, although after my mash I left a valve open by accident and lost about half a L of pure extract. As such, my final gravity was 1 Plato short of what I wanted, although my volume was fine. I guess I could have had higher gravity with less volume but... meh. I'm looking for the flavour in this beer for the most part.
Cheers
NOTE: AAU/L = Alpha Acid Units of hops per L of final wort volume after boil. To get the weight of hops in g, calculate (AAU/L * L of final wort) / (AA% of hops)
For you non-beer types, lambic is a style of beer fermented by non-beer yeast or bacteria... spoilage bacteria in most beer styles. Its sour, but if done right, it can be quite tasty. In any case, I've never made a lambic before, and I think its the thing to do. Gotta do it sometime.
I figure I'll take a wort at a gravity of 1.040 and throw some crushed grain in at 30 C and keep it warm. Let it sit for...... well until I feel like dealing with it, and see how it comes out. At the least I can use it to spike other beers with sourness (like a fruit beer that is too sweet).
On a side note, for some reason I was watching TV this evening, and I'm watching this show called "Men in Trees".... while its interesting, I'm finding it quite formulaic... seems like 3 of the same love stories that have been told before, nothing new. I'll watch to the end of this show, but its not like I;m going to tune in week to week (like The Office...).
Cheers
Yeah, I've been too lazy to update lately. Lazy and a little busy too. Bah. And I'm not going to do a real update now either. I did, however, brew a belgian strong dark on sunday. Although I'm thinking the only thing thats making it a belgian style of beer is the fact that is uses belgian yeast and caramel syrup. It uses "english" style everything -- english hops, english malts... different yeast and it would have been a barley wine.
The brew went ok, except for a few oddities that I will explain... ... eventually.
Although from what I understand, of the people that read my blog only two or three actually know what the hell I'm talking about when I write about brew days.
Meh, for now.
Cheers
For anybody (in Edmonton) who is interested, I believe I will be brewing a hopefully nice Belgian Strong Dark beer. Here is the basic recipe...
Ingredients:
8.0 kg Pale 2-row
1.6 kg German Dark Munich
0.4 kg Crystal Malt 90°L
1 kg Victory® Malt
0.41 kg Homemade Dark Caramel Syrup (boil 20 min)
1.2 kg Corn Sugar (boil 15 min)
1 tsp Wyeast Nutrient - added during boil, boiled 20 min
2 L WYeast 3864 Canadian/Belgian Style Yeast, from starter
30 g Target (8%) - added during boil, boiled 75 min
25 g First Gold (9.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
Boil Duration: 1.25 hrs
Final Volume: 40 L
Original Gravity: 1.078
Terminal Gravity: 1.010
Color: 16.3 SRM
Alcohol: 8.5%
Bitterness: ~20 IBU
Oh, and I forgot to update the 1 of you who cares that the belgian we brewed actually finished with a final gravity of 2 P (~1.010), which is an awesome rate of attenuation down from 20.3 P (go yeast!), making it a 10.1% beer (a little high since I was aiming for 9!)
Last Saturday I had a chance to sit down with 7 certified beer judges to taste and analyze several styles of Belgian beer, which are known to be the hardest to judge. Needless to say, it was a very informative learning session (ie, we ended up drunk).
Long story short, we compared tripels with golden strong ales as the main course, since many judges have trouble distinguishing between the styles. We seemed to find that the golden strong ales were generally lighter in colour, plus seemed to have a slightly sweeter champagne character in the beers we tried (Duvel & Chimay White Cap) compared to the tripels (Trappist Rocefort 8, Tripel Karmeliet, and... uh... crap, something else).
I'd intended to write more about this this week, however something else has popped up that has taken a bunch of my time lately... its beer related, but I'll have to post it later.
And to add more beer to the list, later in the week a friend and I compared the Rochfort 8 & 10 to the St. Bernardus Abt 12. It was quite a flight of heavy beers, indeed, but yet quite interesting to taste them all side by side. Compared to the 10 and the Abt 12, the 8 tasted almost light and even wattery... when its certainly not! My favorite was the Abt 12, while my friend stuck with the Rochfort 10
Anyway, going to brew a tripel this saturday morning methinks. Not tooo sure of the recipe yet, but I am trying to get rid of some specialty malts (cara wheat and victory malt might make an interesting tripel!), and I made a starter for Wyeast's Belgian/Canadian yeast today... it should be an acceptable yeast choice (... as it is my only choice).
K, I'll blog better soon... maybe even post something interesting... wouldn't that be a hoot.
Cheers
Just an update on the SKOB brewed this past weekend (for the very very few of you that actually care)...
The OG was 20.3 P (1.084). After ~32 hrs of fermenting it had dropped to 10.9 (1.044)!! Thats crazy! It was fermenting at ~26 C, which would explain that. I wanted it to ferment quite warm, to get some crazy yeast character out of it.
After 66 hrs of fermenting (today) the gravity had dropped to 5.5 P (1.022), with a temp at a more respectable ~20 C. It seems to still be fermenting, so thats a good sign. I figure with such a fermentable wort it should ferment right down to 3.6 P or so (1.014), which would yeild a 9.3% beer. I'll be happy though if it ferments to 4 P, really.
This week I'll rack it off into a couple of carboys and let it sit at ~15 C for 1.5-2 months before giving it a test.
Last night my friend Graeme and I brewed our "Some Kind of Belgian" (SKOB). My last post had the planned recipe, but this is the actual recipe for what ended up being a 35 L batch (instead of 40 as planned... bah):
9.0 kg 2-row pale malt
1.5 kg dextrose
290 g Belgian amber candi sugar rocks
70 ml homemade Belgian amberish caramel syrup
64 g EK Goldings (75 min boil, 5.5% AA)
23 g Czech Saaz (25 min boil, 3.6% AA)
21 g German Spalt Select (25 min boil, 4.8% AA)
(IBU should be ~30)
~1 tbsp yeast nutrient
Wyeast 3864 (Belgian/Canadian) yeast 1L starter generated from XL smack pack.
Process: Mashed in at 3.0 L/kg with a mash temp of 65 C for one hour. No mashout (see notes in pictures below). Boiled for 75 minutes, added candi sugar and syrup at 30 minutes left in the boil. Added dextrose in last 15 min of boil (which actually stopped the boil for a few minutes). Added yeast nutrient at 15 min boil too (was worried that I had too much sugar for fermentables)
OG = 20.3, expecting the beer to be ~9% alc/vol.
Anyway, on to some photos:
I made the Belgian caramel syrup at home before hand. Its actually quite easy, the directions can be found at the bottom of this page. The first batch I made was too burnt and I'm sure it would have ruined the beer. My second try resulted in a perfect golden caramel syrup, I just didn't make enough... I only got 70 ml instead of 100 ml. I didn't want much since at most I wanted the caramel to be a very subtle flavour in the finished beer.
We started around 19:45 at night... perhaps an odd way to spend a Saturday night. Here I am heating up the strikewater to 71 C.
Graeme adding the milled 2-row to the strikewater. I love it when calculations work out perfectly, we hit exactly 65 C for our mash temp.
Too keep the mash from cooling off over the course of the hour, we covered the tun in sweaters and labcoats.
Ingredients waiting for their moment to shine... the Belgian candi sugar, my yeast starter, and the caramel syrup. I made the starter two days previous with a 1.060 wort made from DME and some dextrose, which was kept in a room at about 23 C after pitching the XL smack pack.
At the end of the mash we started running the wort into the boil kettle. We didn't do a mashout, as I figured that with the enzymes active for a longer time we might get maximum conversion. However, it seemed that the mash got a little stuck because of this (too cold) and in the end our extract wasn't very good (ending up with a 9.5% smaller batch that predicted). So I think next time I do such a beer I just let the mash rest for another 15-20 min and then mashout to a solid 78-79 C.
Waiting for the boil to start. I don't think the propane burners have enough BTU power to get the boil going as much as I want it to for 40 L of boiling wort. When I do smaller batches (20 L or so) the boil is great, though.
The night before I completed the first phase of my super-fermenter conversion of a 58.8 L keg. I used a grinder to cut the large hole you see in the top, creating an open fermenter. Here you see the product, filled with and iodine acid sanitizer.
After the boil, cooling, and a short whirlpool, we started running off the wort into the fermenter. We let it dribble through the air, which will aerate it pretty well on the way down (but also has a higher chance of picking up some contamination, however I was confident that with my strong yeast starter the yeast would instantly take over the wort). The other tube you see going into the fermenter has an aeration stone pumping in filtered air, just to make sure the wort is well aerated.
Pitching the yeast.
The fermenter being almost full at this point here, you can see how much foam is being formed which suggests that it is well aerated.
And finally, the fermenter full, covered, and put away in a nice warm furnace/hot water tank room. The room seems to hover between 20-23 C. I figure once the yeast get going and create their own heat they should be able to give themselves a nice high fermentation temp of 25, maybe even higher.
Most of the flavour in this beer should come from the yeast character. The Belgian/Canadian strain is (apparently) used by Unibroue. Its character is described by Wyeast as "Mild phenolics, which increase with elevated fermentation temperatures. Low ester profile with a dry, slightly tart finish. Complex and well-balanced, alcohol tolerant". At higher fermentation temps (24-29C), the yeast should produce banana, clove, light phenolic, and fruity flavour profiles (S. Hieronymus, "Brew Like a Monk", 2005, pg 178).
I'm a bit worried that the beer will be much darker than "golden". It seemed that the wort was quite amberish without any sugar additions. I think its darker than I'm used to as it is a high gravity beer... the final runnings of the sparge were still at 7 plato, where with a normal batch of beer might be 1.5 plato... much more dilute. I was going for a nice golden-light-amber colour, but I don't really care I suppose (it is "Some Kind of Belgian" afterall...).
So it looks like I'm brewing up some Belgian beer this Saturday. The recipe is very simple, designed to be highly fermentable.
For 40 L batch after kettle boil:
9 kg Pale 2-row, mashed at 65 C for 1 hour.
No mashout (should increase fermentables even more still), sparge with 75 C water.
The gravity at knockout will be 20.0 Plato (1.069). The wort from the grain will be boiled for 60 minutes, at which point 300 g of Belgian amber candi sugar crystals will be added, as well as much dextrose to bump the gravity to 20 P. On my system, I'll need about 44.9 L of preboil wort at a gravity of 14.9 P.
Hops:
350 AAU of EK Goldings at 75 min boil (70 g for my Goldings)
180 AAU of Saaz at 25 min boil (50 g for my Saaz)
Yeast:
All I have access to is Wyeast's 3864 Canadian/Belgian yeast, which is apparently the Unibroue yeast. I plan to make a starter on Thursday or Friday from the smack pack to get a nice healthy pitching of yeast.
Fermentation:
Should ferment pretty warm, hopefully 24-26 C.
The predicted colour is slightly darker than the limits for the style, but not by much, and I don't care either.
Cheers!
Back when I was in Fort St. John, I picked up a 58.8 L keg to use for homebrewing. I've decided to turn this keg into a super fermenter, not unlike this product featured here. Here are the features I plan to build into such a device:
- First, I want an internal thermometer, either digital reading to one decimal place in celcius, or a dial that is fairly tight in range, say from 0 to 30 C (thats probably hard to find though).
- Sightglass
- Spigot with angled inlet spear that rotates, so that I can rack off above the sediment.
- Cut off the lid, this will make it easier to clean and harvest yeast if needed. Of course, I'll need a replacement lid-type-thing to keep out shit. Doing this would make it an open type fermenter, so I wouldn't need an airlock.
-Eventually, tubing wrapped around the fermenter that can pump water (or glycol) inside to maintain temperature. It would be nice to be able to be able to hook it up to a temperature control that would kick in the motor if the temp gets too hot (or too cold).
I just need to figure out how to attach everything in a leak-free and removable (for cleaning) way. And how to attach the thermometer as well. I'm sure this info will be easy to find though.
Any other suggestions?
Cheers!
Right across the street from my condo here in Edmonton is a nice cozy coffee shop called The Sugarbowl, which I like to sit in for hours at at time drinking coffee or a beer whilst reading a book. Its quite a cozy place, that plays good music and has the kind of people in it that I seem to agree with. Its also rather laid back, and you can't expect fast service... not a place to go unless you have an hour or so to kill.
So today I go in and sit down at a table somewhere in the middle of the shop, certainly not hidden at all. Since I'm used to the laid back service I just start reading my "Brew Like a Monk" book (as I want to brew a Belgian strong dark ale soon). Eventually I realize that its been about 15 minutes and my server hasn't come to talk to me yet. Ok, maybe she didn't see me come in and it looked like I had been there for awhile or something (even though I was wearing a bright red hoodie, which should have been noticeable). So I wait another 10 or so min and even catch my server's eye a few times. She served two tables right behind me without stopping for me. This is starting to get silly.
So I went and grabbed my own menu and proceeded to read it (which she saw while serving the tables beside me) and put it down indicating I knew what I want. She still never stopped by after passing by me 2 more times. So I laughed to myself and decided to make this an experiment... how much longer would it take for her to acknowledge my existence? Well, after 30 more minutes (a little longer than an hour in total waiting) I decided to give up and go home. She saw me pack up and leave, but I certainly didn't say anything. Why? I donno... I was kindof laughing to myself as I left.
Anyway, I'll still go back there since its very close, very cozy, has good coffee, and some cute waitresses...
