A Flurry of Activity

Even writing the title to this blog entry has got my mind racing about whether trying to make a Mc Flurry beer would be a good idea or not! I'm not quite sure what has happened to me over the last few weeks in fact. Maybe I'm finally coming out of my long period of winter hibernation?

Whatever it is, it's spurred me into thinking and doing homebrew (alot!).

In fact, running out of beer the other weekend might have been partially to blame for this brewing explosion. Now I'm back to a point where I have some established regulars either conditioning or fermenting away and so my mind turns to the more experimental brews - after all that's where the old favourites started off. However experimenting has it's risks and a fair proportion of the experiments will be dropped as bad ideas and never brewed again- the odd one or too are that bad that they are a struggle to finish off.

Recently, and apart from the usual bitters and pale ales, I have brewed lager style beers but using mostly ale type ingredients and yeasts. At this time of year I can't ferment a proper lager yeast and I'm only brewing it to keep the beer guests happy. (Note to self: invest in fermentation temperature control - it's the future!).

Anyway, this morning I was hankering after a good strong black coffee to kick start the day and found that we didn't have any in the house - that's none at all - no filter, no instant, no cafetiere... nothing. Actually we do have a bag of coffee beans that I picked up by mistake thinking it was ground but having no grinder makes getting a decent cup of coffee out of it a bit difficult (I've already been spoken to about blunting the blade on the food processor and the pestle and morter just doesn't cut the mustard).

Obviously this lack of coffee was playing on my mind and so the thought of doing a Coffee Stout crept into my concience. That seed of a thought has grown all morning until I felt impelled to take this further.

So..... I decided on a base recipe for the stout. Something that already has hints of coffee in the malt profile.. This will be brewed as is but a few days before the end of fermentation I will add around 250g of ground roast coffee into a pint of cold filtered water. After stirring this up it will be kept in the fridge for 24 hrs or so before filtering and adding to the secondary fermentor ready for bottling. This cold infusion is supposed to reduce the harsh bitterness of hot coffee but allows the coffee essense to be carried across into the final beer. Well that's the plan!

To de-risk the whole thing I've designed the base recipe by "borrowing" elements from existing recipes for FSOS and my Dark Dog Porter (already based on Gadds Dogbolter recipe).

At the moment the draft version of the recipe goes something like this.

Pale (MO) Malt - 75%
Malted Oats -        4%
Torrefied Wheat -  5%
Chocolate Malt -   5%
Roast Barley -       2%
Amber Malt           5%
Carafa III Sp.        4%

Aiming for an OG of around the 1.044 mark and will mash at about 68oC using a sweet stout water profile.

I will bitter fairly low for a stout at around 35 IBUs using target and goldings with very few late hops.

I'll be sure to post an update when I brew and have tasted the results. In the meantime..... it must be about time to start planning a fruit cake Christmas ale.

Happy Days!

Top Tips #1

A brewing friend is making his first steps into the murky world of water chemistry and treatment. This got me thinking about what I do and information I've picked up in the last year or so of brewing.

So here are some of my tips to help with this dark side of homebrew.

1] Don't worry too much about the detail. Seriously don't! Unless you have a perverse interest in the complicated chemistry then just learn the basics. There are plenty of resources and calculators on the interweb to help out.

2] Don't try to eradicate the alkalinity completely. You want some residual alkalinity remaining. The amount will depend largely on beer style - or more accurately the malt / colour profile. Darker malts have higher acidity and will remive some of the buffering effect of the alkalinity. Lager < 20, bitter 30-50, Stout / porter 100+ as a guide.

3] Don't worry if it's not spot on straight away. Although based in science there are many factors that affect the end result. These might be recipe or even equipment related. The important thing is to keep tweaking and measuring. You won't be far off.

4] Treat the brewing liquer in bulk and then run with it. Once it's mashing it's too late to make any changes. By all means take the ph measurement at the start of the mash but trying to correct something now will be hard to do and likely to get things worse. Record everything and then tweak next time.

5] Only treat the mash with calcium additions and for alkalinity. Other additions are best added to the boil only as they are detrimental to the processes in the mash.

6] The flavour profile can be changed by tweaking the sulphate / chloride ratio using Gypsum (calcium sulphate) and Calcium Chloride. More sulphate will accentuate hop flavour and bitterness, more chloride will accentuate the malt.

7] Don't be afraid to use common salt in darker beers. Don't over do it - only very small amounts are ever required but as in cooking it can enhance the flavours of the beer being produced.

Ordinary Bitter

Over the last year I've been working on my own house recipes that I can enjoy over and over. I've got a Best Bitter (Nobbut The Best), a Porter (Dark Dog Porter), an IPA (ConDem Nation IPA), a dark old ale (Farwelter'd Ale) but no session bitter.

That is until now! I wanted to go for something in the region of 3.8% that is bitter but still retains some body and malt presence. I wanted it to be a medium dark bitter and I also wanted to use some ingredients up.

This is what I came up with.

It's a similar grain bill to my Best Bitter but I've added some Pale Chocolate malt to add another dimension. I originally got the Pale Chocolate malt for the Black Sheep Riggwelter clone and am quite impressed with the flavour it brings to the party.

I'll reserve final judgement on the recipe once it's ready to drink but I'm hoping that I won't have to tweak it too much next time and I can add this to my regular beers.

This brew day I decided to really get to know the ingredients I'm using. To do this they need to be handled, tasted and smelt. Tasting the malts and smelling the aroma from the hops. It really helps to get an idea of what the ingredients add and when to (or not to) use them.

This will be pitched with a Wyeast 1028 London Ale yeast made up to a 1L starter for 24 hours. It will ferment at 20oC for 5-7 days. I'm planning on kegging half and bottling half so it might make it into a secondary fermentation vessel for a few days before bottling.

I'm looking forward to tasting it in 4-6 weeks time!

Gas Lamp Lounge Pub

Something amazing happened to Louth at the beginning of December 2010. Bucking the general trend, a new pub was opened in the town which makes it the first in about 40 years. What's more is that the pub is actually the brewery tap for the local micro - Fulstow Brewery.

Fulstow Brewery is the first brewery situated in the Lincolnshire town for over 130 years. Brewing operations are based in the top floor of a two story building just off the Louth Canal on Thames Street. The building used to be the home to the Louth Gas Lamp Company which dates back to 1826. It has taken 3 years of planning and hard work to get the Gas Lamp Lounge up and running in the ground floor of the brewery building - and what a transformation! From the real wood flooring, the extensive bar, open fire and real gas lamp lighting.

This week I decided that I had left a visit to this new pub far too long and ventured down at opening time. I was genuinely surprised at how busy the place was even early on a Monday evening and the business looks to be thriving. And visitor can expect a warm welcome from the staff behind the bar and will be offered samples of the locally brewed ales to help decide what to spend money on.

The pricing regime is simple and is basically £2.40 per pint no matter what tap the beers flowing from or what the ABV is.
The choice is a good one, ranging from up to 7 regular ales with at least 1 one off 'special' on tap each week (to date that's about 230 different beers in 6 years!).

All of the range sampled tasted great but I settled to start with a pint of the Northway IPA. This was a classic type of dry IPA, pale in colour, quite bitter and dry with a hint of citrus to finish. Clean and crisp in the mouth this is a nice refreshing drink and I could have quite happily had a few more. The ABV was slightly lower than expected for an IPA at 4.2% but it was very good all the same.

Next up I tried the Fulstow Common - apparently the most popular beer on tap. This again packed a punch in terms of bitterness. It was a darker copper coloured session bitter at 3.8% but the bitterness and slight dryness was balanced nicely with a hit of malt flavour. The hoppiness was evident in the beer which was hopped with Northdown and Saaz.

The emphasis on the Gas Lamp Lounge is most definitely on fine real ales and they let the beer do the talking. They are proud to offer friendly service and great beers which can be enjoyed in good company and with good conversation, thanks in part to the fact that there are no other distractions like loud music and machines. Maybe it's this old fashioned pub atmosphere that is making the place so very popular. May it continue to enjoy success for many years!

Christmas Brew

A few months ago I was lucky enough to try a bottle of Chockwork Orange from the Brentwood Brewing Company.

This is a fairly strong old style dark ale with added oranges. It has some nice roasted malt flavours and this along with the bitterness helps to create a chocolate flavour which is enhanced by a fantastically fresh aroma and taste of fresh oranges.

I was impressed with the beer and decided to do my own take on it by trying to add the orangey-ness to my existing Dark Dog Porter recipe to make a Chocolate Orange Porter.

At the time of trying the Chockwork Orange the brewers mentioned that whole oranges were added to the boil. Armed with this knowledge I set about attempting to brew a passable Chocolate Orange Porter style brew.

The recipe was as follows:

Fermentables
Pale Malt (5EBC) 86.3%
Crystal Malt (130EBC) 4.4%
Wheat Malt (3.5EBC) 2.8%
Chocolate Malt (1050EBC) 2.8%
Malted Oats (3.5 EBC) 2%
Roasted Barley (1350EBC) 1.7%

Hop Schedule
Golding (5.2%AA) 90mins 52g
Golding (5.2%AA)  5mins 10g
Fuggle (3.8%AA) 0mins 10g

Other
Bitter Dried Orange Peel @5mins 20g
4 x Sweet Oranges (quartered) @ 3 mins

Yeast
Safale S-04

Info
Brew Length: 19L
OG 1.056
FG 1.014
Bitterness: 35 EBU
Colour: 114 EBC

This was 10 days in the primary fermenter and a sample was promising but lacked any orangey aroma so I made up an orange infusion by grating the rind of 2 oranges into a cafetiere with 100ml or so of boiling water and left to cool. This was then added to a second FV which the beer was then racked into.

I'm planning on kegging / bottling this one today and hopefully this will turn out as an interesting Christmas drink.

Riggwelter Revisited

A while ago I blogged about a recipe for Black Sheep Riggwelter. It didn't turn out so well so I thought I should try again. I went back to the Black Sheep interview and found that I had made a few errors when jotting down the information last time which meant my recipe was slightly out.

I came up with the following revised recipe....

RIGGWELTER (v.2)
19L Brew length
Fermentables:
Pale Malt (Marris Otter)      82% (3940g)
Torrefied Wheat   9% (430g)
Crystal Malt - Standard 5% (240g)
Pale Chocolate Malt - 550EBC    4% (190g)

Hops
Challenger  - 7.6%AA     90 Mins (22g)
Progress - 5% AA  90 Mins (22g)
Golding - 5.7%AA 5Mins (18g)

OG: 1.056
Bitterness: 35 IBU
Colour: 63 EBC

I mashed using water profiled for a bitter (for my water adding 2tsp Gypsum, 3/4 tsp Calcium Chloride to mash and 1/4 tsp Magnesium Sulphate and 1/8 tsp of salt to the boil).

The mash and boil were 90 mins a piece and I batch sparged.

I pitched Nottingham yeast (even though it didn't seem to be right when I rehydrated it). Indeed the yeast was a bit of a dud - it took nearly 48hrs to get started and then it needed a bit of encouragement to keep going to the expected FG.

The fermentation finished but took just over 2 weeks so this may have effected the end result slightly and I didn't have high hopes for this one. The aroma is rather strange and the tastes from the trial jar were not that promising.

It's now about a week into conditioning so still early days but I decided to buy a bottle of the real thing and do a back to back comparison with my recipe. The results are really rather good and I think the recipe is pretty accurate.

The colour is pretty much spot on - obviously the shop bought example is very clear and bright whereas mine has some haze still.

Other than that they taste very similar. Mine is much fresher and still needs some time to condition to balance the flavours a bit but you still get the fruitiness that you get from Riggwelter with a strong sweet raisin hit in the mouth with an almost treacle malt flavour giving way to a rounded bitterness with some lingering roast flavours.

I've made clone recipes in the past and although they have been "in the style of" the beer they were intended to mimic they have never come as close to the real thing as this one has. In fact I'd say mine is better than the shop bought but then I find that most shop bought ales are not a patch on the real thing - often containing metallic flavours that mask the hops and malt that should be there.

This is a very satisfying winter warmer ale (and not a session beer) that I'll definitely be brewing again in the future. Next time I will probably dry hop it and think about using a Yorkshire Ale yeast too.

Those Yeastie Beasties

In the last few weeks I have been brewing a Red Ale for a small brewing competition. My chosen recipe style was an Irish Red Ale and with this in mind I had ordered a Wyeast Irish Ale yeast. Now normally with liquid yeasts I would take time to grow the yeast on and split it so I get a bit more value for money. Unfortunately this time I was a little unprepared and ended up pitching directly from the Activator bag - a double shame because I'll be making a Four Shades of Stout next and really wanted to use Irish Ale yeast for that one too.

So, when it was time to rack off my Red Ale into a secondary fermenter for finishing and dry hopping, I decided I'd give reclaiming and washing the yeast from the trub.

To do this I first sterilised a couple of 500ml PET bottles and a jug. I then boiled and cooled a few 100mls of water to add to the yeast cake to get it into solution. The boiling of the water helps to drive off the oxygen which might be used by the yeast for aerobic action and also sterilises the water ready for use.

Once the water cooled to below around 24oC I poured it into the fermenter and swished it around a bit. I then jugged about 300mls of the liquid into one of the PET bottles, popped the lid on and left in the fridge for about 60 mins to allow the heavier trub to settle out whilst the yeast remained in suspension in the liquid.

At this stage it was just a case of gently pouring the top half of the liquid containing the yeast into the second bottle where it can be capped and put back into the fridge until it's settled out properly. Once settled you should see a nice white / creamy yeast deposit at the bottom. If it still looks contaminated by trub then you can repeat the process of rinsing the yeast and pouring off the debris.

What I ended up with looked like this.

Once collected this will keep in the fridge for a while. To use it, take it out of the fridge a few days before it's needed to gradually stabilise the temperature and so there is enough time to make a yeast starter.
 
I'm planning on using this one at the weekend so here is how I went about making a starter with it.

First of all, clean and sterilise everything that is being used really well. I'm bottling and kegging as well which is why there is more equipment.

I heat about 300ml of water up to around 50oC to allow me to dissolve 40gms of Light Dried Malt Extract into it.

This extract liquid is zapped in the microwave for about 60secs (until it's boiling). This will sterilise the extract liquid.   

The boiled liquid is cooled in a pan of icy water to get back down to around 22oC.

In the meantime I am preparing the yeast for use. First of all I pour off the excess liquid into a glass. This gives me a chance to smell it and to taste it to make sure there are no signs of an infection.

This one is ok and ready to go. One last job I wanted to do is to bodge a bottle cap so I can use my airlock with it.

And job done - I used a few drill bits and a file to make a hole in the cap so I could fit the rubber grommet in for the airlock to go into. This will come in very useful for the future. Previously I have just used a normal cap loosely fitted so any gases can be released.

I then pour the extract liquid into the yeast bottle and shake well. This gets the yeast off the bottom and into suspension as well as getting some air into it to help the yeast to grow.

Finally I pour the yeast liquid into the new sterilised bottle and cap it with my new airlock cap. This then goes to a warm place for 24-48 hours before being ready for pitching.

There are other methods for reusing, washing and splitting yeasts out there and this is just the way I've done it. I'm looking forward to a decent brew day and pitching a viable and healthy yeast - hopefully ;)

UPDATE: The yeast starter was probably made up a little early and next time I'd probably only make it about 24 hrs before. However, I pitched the yeast starter in my Four Shades Of Stout and there was a good yeast crust within 12 hours of pitching.