I've not brewed for a while, other things have taken a leading role in my life (nothing important, I started reading Game of Thrones). I had a free day yesterday, so I decided that I had to brew. I've got quite a few ingredients, so it was imperative that I got a brew on. This was slightly chaotic, and most decisions were made on the fly. It was a bit of fun though. I did have a pump to test as well, so that was fun.
Initially I was going to make a stout or a porter, but lacked the roasted barley, and flaked barley for a big stout, so started to create a recipe for a porter over my morning coffee (I hadn't even started heating water at this point). I then got stuck on post boil hopstand IBU calculation, which is super important for a porter (water still not even in the pot). I read this thread and a few others that I found through google and started to apply this to my spreadsheet to look at the past few brews I've done. I shall add edits to the previous brews soon.
This then led me to want to do a beer with a hopstand, so I could then calculate IBU based upon my new calculations, and then in a month or so, I could compare it. Well, I've got some Vic's Secret pellets that I got from my good friend Dean Regler. 100g of them as the hopstand addition should be sufficient, now to build a recipe around that.
As I had been deciding on a porter, I had lots of black malts and wheats and ryes out, but decided for this that it should be a fairly simple pale ale type malt body, so I went for a fairly obvious mix of Marris Otter (I'm still running on the Crisp's MO at the moment, the next bag will be something different, but I've still got about 23kg left), Carapils, Munich, and I also decided to throw in a little bit of Carafe 3 too. The Carafe 3 was put in at the start of the mash rather than just for colour as I have done in my BIPA, so it should add a little roastiness.
For the hop additions, well the hopstand was decided, and I do like to use Magnum for bittering, and I thought I'd throw a dash of 366 in near the end, for a little flavour. This year the 366 has been coming through quite spicy compared to last years tropical fruit punch, so I thought that might work well against the Vic's Secret, which to my palate is quite redcurrant and basil.
The IBU value for the hopstand was taken as being a 10% utilisation rather than the 30-ish% that it is during the boil, as discussed in the link at the top. I may change this as I do more reading, but when checking previous brews which I'd set the IBU as 0 (as that's what most apps say) they seemed to have far more bitterness than previously calculated.
I mashed in at a ratio of 2.7:1 after a little conversation with Matt from Marble brewery, just to see what happened. So that was 15 litres of water which was mashed in to achieve 69ºC mash temp, wanting more body and residual sweetness to help sweeten and back up the big hopstand addition.
The sparge was 25 litres of untreated water, with the first 5 litres recirculated through the grain bed, then the run off. I collected just shy of the 34 litres I wanted to collect, only getting 33 litres, but at the expected gravity of 1.040. The reason for this is that the collection manifold has a dip tube go into the central T, and this has been knocked at some point and so didn't keep the seal. It let air in, so there was no pressure to take the last bit of wort. I've since soldered that solid so that it shouldn't happen again.
I added the Magnum to the boil, and then made a cup of tea, cleaned out the MT, and did the aforementioned fix to the manifold. After 50 minutes of the boil I dropped in a dash of 366 and also half a protofloc tablet.
At flameout I turned off the elements, and chucked in the 100g of Vic's Secret hop pellets, covered with a lid, and left it for half an hour. I did contemplate dropping the temp to 80ºC, but wanted as much isomerisation as possible to try and get as near to the IBU value as possible.
Following this I attached the cooling setup with a new solar pump, and got it running, it's a thing of beauty.
Dropped the temperatures, and checked the gravity, it read as 1.050 on both refractometer and hydrometer, exactly as wanted if the system was working at 75% efficiency, I'll take that.
Initially I was going to make a stout or a porter, but lacked the roasted barley, and flaked barley for a big stout, so started to create a recipe for a porter over my morning coffee (I hadn't even started heating water at this point). I then got stuck on post boil hopstand IBU calculation, which is super important for a porter (water still not even in the pot). I read this thread and a few others that I found through google and started to apply this to my spreadsheet to look at the past few brews I've done. I shall add edits to the previous brews soon.
This then led me to want to do a beer with a hopstand, so I could then calculate IBU based upon my new calculations, and then in a month or so, I could compare it. Well, I've got some Vic's Secret pellets that I got from my good friend Dean Regler. 100g of them as the hopstand addition should be sufficient, now to build a recipe around that.
As I had been deciding on a porter, I had lots of black malts and wheats and ryes out, but decided for this that it should be a fairly simple pale ale type malt body, so I went for a fairly obvious mix of Marris Otter (I'm still running on the Crisp's MO at the moment, the next bag will be something different, but I've still got about 23kg left), Carapils, Munich, and I also decided to throw in a little bit of Carafe 3 too. The Carafe 3 was put in at the start of the mash rather than just for colour as I have done in my BIPA, so it should add a little roastiness.
For the hop additions, well the hopstand was decided, and I do like to use Magnum for bittering, and I thought I'd throw a dash of 366 in near the end, for a little flavour. This year the 366 has been coming through quite spicy compared to last years tropical fruit punch, so I thought that might work well against the Vic's Secret, which to my palate is quite redcurrant and basil.
The IBU value for the hopstand was taken as being a 10% utilisation rather than the 30-ish% that it is during the boil, as discussed in the link at the top. I may change this as I do more reading, but when checking previous brews which I'd set the IBU as 0 (as that's what most apps say) they seemed to have far more bitterness than previously calculated.
I mashed in at a ratio of 2.7:1 after a little conversation with Matt from Marble brewery, just to see what happened. So that was 15 litres of water which was mashed in to achieve 69ºC mash temp, wanting more body and residual sweetness to help sweeten and back up the big hopstand addition.
I should have done the following water treatment, but as this was all done on the fly, I didn't remember to do so, so everything was done with standard Manchester Water.
I added the Magnum to the boil, and then made a cup of tea, cleaned out the MT, and did the aforementioned fix to the manifold. After 50 minutes of the boil I dropped in a dash of 366 and also half a protofloc tablet.
At flameout I turned off the elements, and chucked in the 100g of Vic's Secret hop pellets, covered with a lid, and left it for half an hour. I did contemplate dropping the temp to 80ºC, but wanted as much isomerisation as possible to try and get as near to the IBU value as possible.
Following this I attached the cooling setup with a new solar pump, and got it running, it's a thing of beauty.
Dropped the temperatures, and checked the gravity, it read as 1.050 on both refractometer and hydrometer, exactly as wanted if the system was working at 75% efficiency, I'll take that.
I then pitched with some WLP 565 saison yeast that I had taken out of the fridge (i'd not made any starters for the other yeasts, so this was the most viable).
Some discussion on beer styles happened on twitter, and my esteemed friend Peter Sidwell helped me establish that I had made a very traditional New World Biere de (black) Garde, or Beire de Garde Noir. Pretty obvious when you think about it. I am known for my very traditional beer style preferences, and thus a Black Guard beer was born. ;-)
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