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....

Double brew day

I'm sitting down with a pint or two having spent the best part of the day brewing two batches of beer today.  Not only did I brew two beers today but I also used a whole sack of malt while I did it.

First was my old favourite, Green Bullet Gold.  The recipe is in an old post so I won't bother repeating it.  The mash went well.  I preheated the heat exchanger which helped to hit the initial mash temperature.

While this beer was mashing and sparging I crushed the malt for the Imperial Russian Stout.  Oh my God, am I glad I didn't have to do this by hand.  In total there was a few grammes short of 24kg of malt including pale, brown, roast barley and amber plus 800g of #2 sugar. 

All turned out OK in the end and I pitched 3.5 litres of actively fermenting WLP002 (Fullers) yeast in each of them.

So, now I wait........and drink.......

People's Stout

Finding time to do all the things I need to do around the brewery is difficult with two boys under 2 (actually William is now 2 but that doesn't make it any easier) but tonight I managed to get a beer racked and another into the FV.

Last year CAMRA started a campaign to get reduced tax on low gravity beers; the figure of 2.8% ABV was suggested.  I don't know the ins and outs of the campaign and, to be frank, I don't really care.  What I do know though is that the North Hants Brewers saw this as challenge to brew the best beer possible under 2.8%.

We agreed back in December that this would be a good theme for a meeting and July is the chosen month.  No table full of beer strong enough to floor an elephant this month.  Just 2.8% beers of any style you can dream up.

So, with the meeting only 12 days away, I figured it was time to get brewing.  The easy way out would have been to brew a simple bitter but mashed at a higher than normal temperature.  Not me.  I wanted more of a challenge, so I'm brewing a stout with an OG of 1.028!

I know, the style police will be there telling me that a stout should be a certain gravity...blah....blah....blah....  but I don't care.  It's a bit of fun!

So, what's the recipe tonight?

For 55 (actually ended up with 60) litres

5.75kg Pale malt
0.5kg Crystal Malt
0.5kg Roasted Barley
0.25kg Carafa Special III (for colour mainly)

Mashed at 68°C

100g Fuggles (First wort hops)

WLP002 from a slant, grown to 3.5 litres.

The big question is, "Why make up the colour with carafa special malt when I'm using such a small proportion of roasted barley? Why not just use more roasted barley?".  Well this is simple.  I have 12 days to brew, ferment, mature and condition a beer.  There's no time for the beer to mellow and I don't want it too roasty.

So, what did it taste like going into the FV?  A bit bland to be honest but if I can get it fermented cleanly and conditioned in the bottle or cask it should make an "Interesting" beer.

I'll post some kind of review, if anyone's interested, in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully I'll be preaching the virtues of low gravity beers.  We'll see!

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!

An eventful brew day

I brewed with a couple of friends yesterday.  Just a fairly standard bitter; pale malt and caragold with a good dollop of EKG's.

Why was it "Eventful"?  Well, no sooner had I started the recirculation and the bloody heat exchanger sprang a leak.  When I say it "sprang a leak" I mean it failed catastrophically!

Previously when I've had a leaky heat exchanger it's just dripped slowly allowing me to finish brewing and fix it later.  This time the whole of the based dropped away depositing 2.5+ litres of hot water on the floor.

I was broadcasting the events via a webcam at the time and this photo shows the point when the heat exchanger gave way.  It's difficult to see the exchanger itself, but you can see the steam that poured out.  I may look like I'm dancing around like a drama queen but I am, in fact, reaching up to cut the power from the control panel.

Luckily I have recently tidied up the wiring, placing all the connections in a waterproof box except for the connections to the pump. These are out side the box but I've used waterproof connectors for them.  It was also fortunate that the mash temperature was spot on 66°C at the time although it did drop a little over the next hour.

It was interesting to note that the run off was considerably murkier than I normally get when I recirculate throughout the mash.  I don't yet know if this will affect the clarity of the finished beer but I suspect it won't.

Also, I finally gave up on the Schwarzbier.  Unfortunately it just wasn't right.  While the S23 did it's thing and attenuated the beer down to 1.010 it was just too late.  The time it sat in the fermenter doing nothing, the yeast having given up the ghost after munching its way through about 5 points worth of sugar, was just too long and an infection got in.  So, down the drain it went!

Update on the Schwarzbier and another brew underway...

Been a while and in that time I've sunk a few beers and have been to the Sussex Beer Festival.  I thought it was about time I gave a bit of an update on the black lager but also give you a heads-up on my latest beer.

So the black lager has been interesting.  I grew a starter of WLP830 and then chilled it, drained off the spent wort and pitched the slurry.  Big mistake.  I probably tipped away the best part of the yeast.

After 3 days the gravity was down from 1.054 to 1.045 or so.  It then stuck here for the next 3 weeks.  In fairness, I wouldn't have left it that long if I hadn't been busy with other things.  Anyway, once I got a spare moment I hydrated 4 packs of out of date S-23 (I don't like this yeast as a rule) because it was in the fridge, pitched it and within 12 hours it was going mental.

So, as it stands, the beer is still chugging away and is currently at about 1.020.  It actually tastes surprisingly good considering the wort sat in the fermenter for 3 weeks with not activity.  I'm going to leave it alone for a few more weeks and see what happens.

Leasson learned.  Pitch the yeast when it's at high krausen.  Don't bugger about racking off the spent wort!

Anyway, I've got a couple of non-brewers coming over on the 27th to see a brew day and I obviously want to make a good impression so I've brewed another beer for cask dispense.

The beer's called Joel's Jaw Jammer (I know but naming beers is not my forte!) and the recipe's as follows....

Brew length 55l
Pale Malt 7.75kg
Flaked Maize 0.5kg
Crystal Malt 0.5kg
Black Malt 0.25kg

Green Bullet 13.5% AA - 25g @ 90 minutes
EKG 4.2% AA -10g @90 minutes
EKG 4.2% AA - 32g @30 minutes
EKG 4.2% AA - 32g @15 minutes

Whirlfloc 1 tablet @ 10 minutes

WLP 002 4l starter from slant stepped up to 100ml then 4000ml pitched at high krausen

This is now 48 hours in and is fermenting away like a good 'un.

I'm going to leave it for another 3 or 4 days then cask it, prime it, fine it, shake it, leave it for a couple of days, stillage it, broach it and, finally, I'm going to drink it!

Cheers!