Give a man a beer, and he wastes an hour, but teach a man how to brew, and he wastes a lifetime.
Brewday details:
Comments:
I needed ~900g Carapils but didn’t have any, so went for 200g Caramalt and 700g Munich. Won’t be the same, but it won’t be bad!
Water was 188ppm today.
No idea how I ended up with 17 litres into the FV at 1.060. Rubbish efficency and I mis-measured my sparge water??
I saw these Mangrove Jack’s Berliner Style Sour Ale kits on the BrewUK website, and since I’ve had mixed luck with my own attempts at souring, I thought it worth a go.
I made the kit to the instructions, so that was using the 1.8kg pouch, adding 600g DME, making it up to 23 litres, and fermenting with the supplied M20 Bavarian Wheat Beer Yeast packet. When I bought it BrewUK were running a promotion that included a pack of the Mangrove Jack’s LME, but since that was 1.2kg and I only needed 600g, I went with the DME that I had in my stocks.
The fermentation took off very quickly, and was done within the week, so I kegged it into 2 corneys (since it was 23 litres that was a bit more than 1 corney’s worth, and I had two empty at the time, so it seemed easiest). The smaller of the corneys I then bottled with my shiny new Blichmann Beer Gun.
I was really impressed with this kit. The beer is a perfectly clear, pale, gold. Typical wheat beer aromas, bananas and the like, which are also present when tasted. The sourness isn’t mouth-puckering, but it’s more than enough to let you know you’re drinking a sour beer. It’s a really refreshing and tasty beer.
So much so, in fact, I bought another two of them. It’s described as being a “limited edition”, so I grabbed a couple, but I really hope they keep making them.
The M20 yeast did make me expect it, but I was kind of surprised by the overtly wheat beer flavours of this kit, I guess I was expecting something more like the Berliner-Weisse-styled beers I’ve had from the likes of Siren’s Calypso, where I don’t remember any bananas at all! The ones I made myself I also used a neutral yeast (as I was planning to dry-hop and wanted those flavours to come through).
So, for my second time around I’m not using the kit yeast. In fact, I’ve added it straight on top of the yeast cake left from having just kegged the Gamma Ray. I’m making it to 20 litres (i.e. a corney), so after a bit of fiddling with BeerSmith worked out that I wanted 250g DME to get the same OG, which has turned out to be 1.030.
I’m also going to dry hop it when fermentation has finished, though I’m not sure with what. I have some Galaxy, Amarillo, Citra, and Cascades (among plenty of others!), so I’ll decide next week whether to go for a single hop, or a bit of a blend.
A beer I’ve always absolutely loved, and I was excited to see a recipe for it in the Brewdog book Craft Beer For The People. I couldn’t find any Calypso hops, so I substituted Cascade.
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: Gamma Ray
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extra Pale Maris Otter (Crisp) | 3 | 3.999 | 92 |
| Cara (Crisp) | 34 | 0.209 | 5 |
| Caragold (Crisp) | 12 | 0.119 | 3 |
| Total | 4.329 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbus (Tomahawk) | 14 | Leaf | 7 | 60 |
| Amarillo | 9.199999999999999 | Leaf | 8 | 15 |
| Bravo | 15.5 | Leaf | 8 | 15 |
| Columbus (Tomahawk) | 14 | Leaf | 8 | 15 |
| Mosaic (HBC 369) | 12.25 | Leaf | 8 | 15 |
| Citra | 12 | Pellet | 52 | Dry Hop |
| Amarillo | 9.199999999999999 | Pellet | 42 | Dry Hop |
| Calypso | 13 | Pellet | 16 | Dry Hop |
Comments:
Ended up with a little more wort than intended, 24 litres at 1.048.
FG of 1.008 gives us an ABV of 5.2%.
Because of holidays, the beer had 10 days fermenting, then 3 days at 12C dry hopping, then crash cool to 4C-6C for another 10 days. It looks great – a slight haze, but impressively clear. Maybe I should have 10 days cold every time, and be less impatient! Tastes great as well, so I’m looking forward to this being drinkable.
19 litres into corney keg, plus I filled a 1 litre growler and a 0.75l flip-top, to which I added 7×0.25tsp and 5×0.25tsp sugar respectively. Not expecting anything terribly good from these, but it seemed a better bet than just pouring it away!
I didn’t manage to post for my last few brews: there’s been a stout with coffee, cocoa nibs, and vanilla (which was gorgeous!), a pale using Citra and Amarillo, and a couple of standard pale ales. If I don’t write the body of the post while I’m actually brewing it seems I never get around to it.
So, since the boil is on at the moment it seems like an opportune time to post this one…
Recipe is another from the Brewdog book, and the recipe XML itself I got from this useful site that’s got all the recipes from DIY Dog on it (the first edition, at least).
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: 5am-saint
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extra Pale | 2 | 2.56 | 56 |
| Caramalt | 15 | 0.88 | 19 |
| Munich | 6 | 0.63 | 14 |
| Crystal 150 | 150 | 0.38 | 8 |
| Dark Crystal | 80 | 0.13 | 3 |
| Total | 4.58 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cascade | 6.8 | Pellet | 3 | 60 |
| Amarillo | 8.9 | Pellet | 3 | 60 |
| Nelson Sauvin | 12 | Pellet | 3 | 30 |
| Amarillo | 8.9 | Pellet | 13 | 0 |
| Nelson Sauvin | 12 | Pellet | 13 | 0 |
| Cascade | 6.8 | Pellet | 50 | Dry Hop |
| Centennial | 9.5 | Pellet | 50 | Dry Hop |
| Simcoe | 12.8 | Pellet | 25 | Dry Hop |
| Ahtanum | 5.4 | Pellet | 25 | Dry Hop |
| Amarillo | 8.9 | Pellet | 25 | Dry Hop |
| Nelson Sauvin | 12 | Pellet | 13 | Dry Hop |
Comments:
Soft water today, only 159ppm. Used the “Sweet Pale Ale” profile from Jim’s.
A bit light on gravity, and bang on 20 litres into the FV. Gave it a 90 minute boil instead of 60 minute, in a hope that might give a little more clarity to the end product – the last few have been a little more hazy than I’d like. I also plan to fine this one with gelatine.
Once more into the Citra, dear friends…
OG 1.054, FG 1.008, so ABV 6.0%.
Tasted as good as usual when the dry hops went in!
A friend really liked a Jasmine IPA he had when he was in Vietnam (brewed by Pasteur Street), as asked if I could do something similar. I wasn’t sure how to use jasmine, but after a bit of reading around I settled on making something inspired by this recipe from the Homebrew Talk forum.
Grist is pretty close to my normal pale ale grain bill, tweaked to match what I had in stock, and the hops are German as the Pasteur Street description is that they used Hallertauer at the end, but I don’t have any so I went with Perle and Saaz. Steeped with Amarillo, as that’s what the Homebrew Talk recipe went for (and I like them and have plenty in stock!)
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: Jasmine IPA
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pale Ale (Crisp) | 6 | 4.499 | 85 |
| Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.399 | 8 |
| Biscuit (Dingemans) | 44 | 0.299 | 6 |
| Caramalt (Thomas Fawcett) | 30 | 0.099 | 2 |
| Total | 5.299 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magnum | 14 | Leaf | 15 | 60 |
| Amarillo | 11.2 | Pellet | 10 | 15 |
| Perle | 9.6 | Leaf | 10 | 15 |
| Tettnang | 4.5 | Leaf | 10 | 15 |
| Amarillo | 11.2 | Pellet | 10 | Aroma |
Comments:
Smelled marvellous when I added the dried jasmine, so I hope the aroma and flavour last through to the glass.
Um… as I type this I realised that I forgot the 15 minute Amarillo that’s in the recipe. Never mind… (I always seem to forget something!)
Looks like I ended up with 21 litres at 1.054, which matches a BeerSmith efficiency of 70%. A little lower than normal, but I’m happy with mid-5%s as a final beer; makes it a little more sessionable than one north of 6%! Not sure why my efficiency suffered today, I’m normally in the mid-70%s, nothing unusual happened. Maybe I screwed up the measuring of something – wouldn’t be the first time. Doesn’t help that my scales can’t be zeroed all the way down when my measuring bucket is hanging from them: my zero point is 500g.
2017-10-03: Finished fermenting and looking pretty clear; temp dropped to 12C while the other beer in the same fridge dry-hops. Tastes really good, and there’s still definite jasmine aroma and flavour. FG was 1.006, so that’s 6.3% ABV, which is a little strong, but might help it last a little longer (yeh, right!)
Another batch of ELvis Juice, but this time with a slightly different grist. This is not because of any unhappiness with the recipe, but purely because of what grains I had in my stores!
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: Elvis Juice – variant
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extra Pale Maris Otter (Crisp) | 3 | 4.499 | 83 |
| Pilsen (Dingemans) | 3 | 0.599 | 11 |
| Caramalt (Thomas Fawcett) | 30 | 0.199 | 4 |
| Carapils (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.099 | 2 |
| Total | 5.399 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magnum | 14 | Leaf | 3 | 60 |
| Amarillo | 11.2 | Leaf | 13 | 30 |
| Simcoe | 13 | Leaf | 13 | 30 |
| Citra | 12 | Leaf | 25 | Aroma |
| Mosaic | 11.8 | Leaf | 25 | Aroma |
| Amarillo | 11.2 | Leaf | 13 | Aroma |
| Simcoe | 13 | Leaf | 13 | Aroma |
| Amarillo | 11.2 | Pellet | 50 | Dry Hop |
| Citra | 12 | Leaf | 50 | Dry Hop |
| Simcoe | 13 | Pellet | 50 | Dry Hop |
Comments:
I did this last week, and can’t think of anything useful to add..!
A second batch of this one, with more hops throughout. The last batch smelled and tasted wonderful at the end of fermentation, but by the time it had reached the keg after dry-hopping it had tailed-off a bit. The intention is that this batch bumps all the doses of hops up by a bit in the hopes of getting a really flavourful beer!
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: Equanot
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flagon Pale Ale Malt | 6 | 4.199 | 83 |
| Munich Malt | 18 | 0.419 | 8 |
| Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.419 | 8 |
| Total | 5.039 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 15 | First Wort |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | 30 |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | 15 |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | Aroma |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 25 | Dry Hop |
Comments:
In the end I used 15g for bittering (same as recipe), but then 15g at 30 mins, and 20g each at 15 mins and flame-out. When I get to the dry-hops I intend to be very generous! The grist was slightly modified as well, I only had 50g left of the wheat malt after adding the intended amount, so I chucked the rest in. I was also 100g short of Munich, so I added some CaraPils in lieu.
I forgot to blog AG#106, but it was based on the Sim Citra recipe with a dash of crystal for added colour, and hopped with Magnum for bittering, and equal amounts of Ahtanum and Simcoe for flavour and dry-hopping. It’s ok, but nothing special.
This recipe is a historic one from Ron Pattinson’s book. Except I’ve use up six different hop varieties to get the 150g I needed, so it’s actually a mix of Fuggles, Challenger, Perle, Northdown, Galena, and Target. And I didn’t have the suggested yeast, so I’ve used a sachet of Windsor (well, it’s still in the Thames Valley, isn’t it??)
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: 1869 Simonds SB
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maris Otter (Crisp) | 8 | 5.099 | 100 |
| Total | 5.099 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cluster | 8.1 | Leaf | 50 | 60 |
| Goldings, East Kent | 5 | Leaf | 100 | 30 |
Comments:
Water 186ppm, 28ml CRS in 31 litres liquor.
Another variant on the Sim Citra theme, this time with a new hop variety called Equanot, described as “unique mango, grapefruit and pineapple”.
Brewday details:
BeerXml File: Equanot
| Name | Colour | Amount (kg) | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flagon Pale Ale Malt | 6 | 4.199 | 83 |
| Munich Malt | 18 | 0.419 | 8 |
| Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) | 4 | 0.419 | 8 |
| Total | 5.039 | ||
| Name | Alpha | Form | Amount (g) | Time (mins) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 15 | First Wort |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | 30 |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | 15 |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 13 | Aroma |
| Equanot | 15.6 | Pellet | 25 | Dry Hop |
Comments:
Water 180ppm, 27ml CRS in 31 litres liquor.
