Green Bullet casked and a "Nice" bitter in the FV

What with looking after two children under 3 I don't have a lot of time to brew these days so, in order to finalise my recipes for my new venture, I'm now brewing at night.  Last night I racked the last Green Bullet beer (which tastes pretty good) and brewed a fairly standard bitter. 

This recipe was along the lines of what I've been drinking at home for the last few years; pale malt and caragold to an OG of 1.040 with Challenger to bitter and EKG for flavour and aroma.  As I was brewing immediately after racking the previous beer I saved about 400ml of yeast from the FV and pitched this onto the new batch.

The yeast was pitched at 10pm last night and this morning it's well into fermentation.

The new face of an old recipe

It's been a long time (several months) since my last post so I apologise for that.  A lot has happened in that time; I've been made redundant, become a house-husband and am currently investigating the feasibility of starting a small-scale commercial brewery.

Part of my feasibility study is coming up with recipes that I think would sell.  That means casting aside some of the stronger beers that I enjoy making and focusing on lower gravity, "Normal" beers.  There are a number of parameters that I have considered in coming up with the first recipe; duty payable, drinking trends, cost of ingredients and, perhaps surprisingly, CAMRA's preferences.

One beer that's drawn much praise over the last couple of years has been my Green Bullet Gold.  This beer is about 4% alcohol by volume, light in colour with citrus aroma and flavour.  So far, so good.  Where this particular recipe falls down is that I designed it with a relatively small proportion of flaked maize.  This helps to dilute the protein in the beer which in turn helps to produce an exceptionally clear product.  So, why am I removing it from the recipe?  Put simply, CAMRA.

Now, I believe CAMRA have done much for the real ale industry, however, while they don't condemn the use of adjuncts in beer the following statement, taken from their web page does seem to cause people to shun beers made with ANY adjunct.  The CAMRA site statres, "Excessive use of fermentables that are not malt is one cause of dull beer".  So I'm taking maize out of the recipe.  

Additionally, I'm swapping caragold out for standard crystal malt, I'm using Nottingham yeast rather than my trusty stock of the Fullers strain and I've further reduced the bitterness down to about 30 IBU.


I brewed this beer on Wednesday last week and it's currently sitting at 5C while the yeast count drops sufficiently for casking (below 2 Mcells per ml).  I'm expecting to rack the beer to cask on Thursday  from where it will be bottled at the weekend.


As for the other recipes being commercialised, watch this space.

Update on Wednesday's Brews

Just a brief update on the beers I brewed earlier this week.

The Green Bullet Gold was initially fermenting a little on the low side at about 18°C due to the fact that I didn't have a spare heater to hand when I pitched the yeast.  I managed to find one on Friday morning, though, so that raised the temperature a couple of degrees to my preferred 20°C.  That said, the gravity was down to 1.016 by then anyway (now 1.013).

The Imperial Stout chucked yeast all over the place in a typically lively fermentation.  Gravity is now down to 1.039 and the airlock I fitted today is bubbling every second or so.  I tend to fit an airlock once the krausen has started to wain just to protect the beer from flies.  However, I always leave the fermenting beer open to the air initially when I use WLP002 or WLP005 as they need the air to "do their thang!"

The plan currently (keeping in mind that all plans are subject to change as my patience or curiosity gets the better of me) is to leave the stout in the FV for a full 10-14 days before casking for a week then bottling.  The Green Bullet Gold will be casked in the next day or two with a couple of bottles for beer club being put to one side.

Taste-wise, the Green Bullet Gold has a wonderfully malty flavour with the citrussy hops balancing it out nicely.  It should be better still once it's attenuated just a little more.  The stout, on the other hand, is a massive hit of coffee and choclate with an intensely bitter aftertaste.  There's still some sweetness but the gravity still has a few points to go and, let's face it, it's going to have to be matured for some time too (insert witicism here reagarding my track record for maturing beer!).

Apologies for the distinct lack of pictures but I have been too busy doing beer to take pictures.   I'll try to remember next time....

Green Bullet Gold Yeast Count

As promised, I did a yeast count on the Green Bullet Gold.  For this I used a plastic container to hold my sample, a pipette, a hemacytometer and a microscope.  I just take a small sample of the beer, a few ml, from the sample tap on the FV.  I then draw a load of it into the pipette and squeeze it back into the sample a few times.  This helps to break up any clumps of yeast and also degasses it.

The hemacytometer is a thick glass slide that has two chambers each holding 1/10000 of a ml.  These chambers have an accurately grid etched into them which effectively allows you to count the cells in a known volume of beer. I take the coverslip and plonk it onto the hemacytometer so that it covers both of the chambers.  Then I draw a small quantity of the sample into the pipette before squeezing until a droplet is hanging off the end of the tube.  This droplet is then offered up to the edge of the cover slip where it is drawn ito the chamber.  I repeat this on the other chamber.  Take a look here to read more about how to do it.

Actively fermenting beer has about 60,000,000 cells per ml but as the fermentation subsides this reduces and the yeast drops to the bottom of the FV.  At racking you're looking for there to be about 1,000,000 cells per ml.  At this point there's enough yeast to ferment any priming sugar to carry out the secondary fermentation without causing excessive bottoms.  This means the cask will settle quicker and bottles will just have a film of yeast in the bottom rather than a thick sludge.

So, in my Green Bullet Gold I have 890,000 cells per ml which is typical of WLP002 or Fullers yeast.  It drops like a stone.  Based on this I'll set the FV temperature controller to start cooling in the morning and will rack to cask on Wednesday evening.

Back to brewing after a small break

Well, I haven't posted on here for some time as I have another addition to the brewing staff (see the photo to the right).  So, as I'm sure you can imagine, finding time/permission to brew can be a little tough right now.

Anyway, while I haven't yet brewed a commemorative beer I have been back in the brewery.  So, what's happened since my last post?  Well, I've fixed the heat exchanger (cleaned up all the old glue and remade it with "Marine JB Weld") and I've brewed another Green Bullet Gold, as it got such praise from the North Hants Brewers back in February.  This time, though,  I didn't have any flaked maize so I used flaked rice instead.  This will probably make very little difference; maybe a slightly less sweet beer but we'll see.

The brewday planning went a little wrong as I had planned to get the yeast starter ready for Sunday a couple of weeks back week but instead made the decision to brew a day early with only 2 litres of starter rather than stepping it up to 4 litres as I usually do.  As a result the beer took about 36 hours to get going properley.  It also slowed down quite a lot by the end of the week and has now been static at 1.011 for the last 2 or 3 days.  So, it's done (and it tastes great).

As usual, the WLP002 has dropped like a stone.  I'll do a yeast count later this evening if I get the chance.  So long as it's down to below 5 million cells per ml of beer I'll chill the lot down to 5°C for a couple of days before casking it.  I'm on call this week and I can't drink so there's no real rush to get this into a drinkable state.  Next week things will be different and I'll be taking every shortcut I can no doubt!

edit: I've just noticed that this blog is being followed by the Triple fff brewery who supplied the hops (they were surplus to requirements) free of charge.  Thanks, they're still making great beer despite their age!