I took delivery of a new sack of Marris Otter from our dear friends at The Malt Miller and so thought "I've got a few hours whilst I'm writing this report up, I'm sure I can get a brew in, and maybe even get the hops right this time.
I decided to revisit the ABC brewing challenge, and this time I even checked the specification out properly. I decided that I wanted to go down the IPA route again, but this time I wanted to go for a really nice ruby red colour to compliment the black IPA that I made last gyle.
This meant that I had to use US-05 again, but there was a problem with that. I'd been given a little bit of WLP 565 saison yeast by Rob at Blackjack beers that needed using whilst it was still in a decent (and fresh) condition. This meant that I decided to up my brewlength and push the limits of what I can actually brew at home at the moment on this kit. I had a fresh sack of base malt that was metaphorically burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought this a good idea.
I initially decided on a 38 litre end of batch volume, which if things had gone as expected, would have been 45 litres into a 50 litre kettle, with evaporation and hops, and 40 litres into the FVs, with a couple more litres lost to dry hopping and trub. It's all good. I didn't take into account the extra hop usage for a larger batch, and the wort soak up rate of the hops, but more of that shortly.
The recipe was pretty simple to keep in with the ABC brewing challenge guidelines, a 6.5% ABV beer with 65 theoretical IBUs, MO base malt, and two cara malts. Obviously, there were hops too.
based on a 75% efficiency from my system, I went for
8800g Marris Otter
500g Carapils
500g CaraRed
Seriously, the new bag looked like this after I'd mashed in.
I mashed in with 25 litres of liquor at 75°C as the grain was at 18ºC on the day. This gave me a lovely mash of 65ºC.
I also prepared the liquor with 6.1g of Gypsum and 3.6g of Calcium Chloride. I decided to be extra careful with my weighing out of the water treatments, so I used 2 different scales. For the sparge, I used 32 litres of liquor at 75ºC and added 8.1g of Gypsum and 4.7g of Calcium Chloride. I took a photo as I was weighing out so you could see how far I am willing to go for a stupid photo.
The mash took an hour, and the sparge probably took about 2. The reason for that is that I recirculated about 10 litres to start with for colour.
Then I set the run off to be really slow, and just buggered off to work on my report. I checked on the progress a few times when making cups of tea, but other than that I just left it to do what it needed to do.
Once the run off had finished and I had collected 46 litres of wort at 1.051, I cleaned out the mash tun, then added the wort. Then I got it up to boil, but for fun I added the bittering hops as first wort hops rather than a 60 minute addition. For no reason than interest to be honest. I ended up using a separate pan on the stove for 4 litres until I was past the hot break point as I didn't feel totally comfortable with so much liquid in the kettle before it settled down.
Action shot of the wort as it's boiling away. I had decided that as I had to add the hops in a very specific order to meet the ABC brewing challenge criteria, and I'd managed to fuck that up last time, I had decided to add all the hops at the 10 minute mark. So, I had 100g each of the following weighed out ready for additions
Columbus, Simcoe, Exp. 366, Cascade. It was very important that they were added in that order, so I weighed them out in reverse into a bucket, thus they would "technically" touch the wort in that order.
Well, I added the 400g of hops at the 10 minute mark.
The smell was amazing, beautiful things were happening, I can tell you that. After the boil I put a lid on and left it to sit for 20 minutes whilst I got the counterflow wort chiller set up for cooling.
I pulled off 20 litres with absolutely no problem, the second lot though, that was a problem as all the hops and the gunk started to slow down the run off. Bit of a bastard really. I sanitised a sieve and started scooping out the hops from the still nearly boiling wort and started to also squeeze them a bit to try and get as much of that beautiful hoppy juice into the wort.
I ended up with 36 litres of lovely red wort into two fermentors, one that was pitched with US-05, and the other with WLP 565. The wort had an OG of 1.062. This is a little higher than wanted or anticipated. Too late to worry about that now.
This 36 litres of wort is also less than anticipated. Some of that can probably be chalked up to the extra pan for some of the boil, that's going to have a larger surface area which means more evaporation (an extra litre or so by my estimations). Another wort soaker uper was the sheer amount of hops. 409g of hops went into the kettle, and a hoppy waste came out that weighed in at 4100g That's quite a bit of wort that was soaked up. Seems I didn't strain and drain all that hoppy goodness out.
This has meant that there has been a slight change in my spreadsheet to deal with larger batches, and a higher hop content, so that I can be on top of the wort losses. What's fun is that I'm planning a new brew kit at the end of May, so I will have to start all this over again then (but the actual brewing should be easier as I will be using 2 vessels rather than just 1).
The reason I didn't post this when I did the brew is that I spent the time I would usually use writing this up, going through the numbers to understand where each and every ml of wort had been lost. I could have overcome the extra evaporation losses by liquoring back, and if this was a commercial venture then I probably would have. As it's not, I can pretty much do what I like, so I'm brewing a beer that has a slightly higher OG than I had aimed for. I end with more knowledge, and potentially tasty beer that will be a tad over the 6.5% ABV aim, I'm fine with that.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to leave a message or contact me on twitter.
Edit - 23/04/14
The smaller batch of this beer that was brewed with the WLP 565 finished before the US05, and as it didn't matter what hops I put into it for dry hopping (as it wasn't part of the ABC brew) I opened up a 100g pack of Huell Melon (a new German hop I was given) and dry hopped with that, chilled to drop the hops and then bottled.
The main bulk of this beer was dry hopped on the 1/04/2014, and I was going to use a mix of all 4 ABC brew hops. In the end, after a little twitter dicking about I prompted for 50g of each of the high AA hops, so 200g in all. I've used high g/l in dry hop before, I've used similar levels to this before, but that's usually in 9+% beers. I bottled the beer on the 9th of April.
I tried both beers today (23/04/14) and my only reaction is HOLY FUCK! I tried the Huell Melon first off, it's a melon-y sweet aroma, mixed with a quite thick and pungent, oily, fruit. It's pretty bitter with a strange spicy sweetness. I guess a big mixture of all the hops.
To compare, I opened the first bottle of the ABC brew, holy fuck it's quite powerful. There's no sweet melon and strawberry to help from the relenting nature of the big hops that are in this brew. It's thick and oily, pungent doesn't even cover it. I'm going to leave it a month before I try it again. I'm hoping this isn't a beer that is palatable, only after the better part of a year. I'll let you know.
Edit - 31/05/14
I tried it again today against a different brewer's Cascade IPA. I can definitely see the Cascade and the Columbus coming through in bucketloads. The 366 and Simcoe seem to be lost. It's still bitter as all hell, crazy bitter, like so much more bitter than the 65 IBU it should be. I've been thinking about this and I think that the problem was the 20 minute stand. I didn't cool it down to 80ºC for the hopstand, I just left it and went to set up the wort chiller. With this in mind, and that it didn't lose much heat, I think it was an extra 20 minutes on the isomerisation temperature range. I've checked this out result wise, and it would give a theoretical IBU of 220, so much more than wanted, and about right for what is in the beer. Basically, Oh fuck!.
I helped devise this ABC brewing challenge, and I fucked up both of my beers for it. The Black IPA is amazing, one of the best I've brewed, but it doesn't follow the rules. this, I was trying to be experimental and clever and try something new, and I've made bitter as fuck beer! It's like biting the peel of a blood orange and just chewing that up. Maybe time will help with this?
Edit 10/07/14 (00:46)
It's amazing what a little time (well, 5 weeks) makes to beer. I tried the farmhouse red today and was astounded. The bitterness has dropped to palatable levels (my palatable levels) and with a hazy red hue, is coming through with lots of beautiful flavours that I need to post about separately. I've just opened the red ale and it's clear and amber, with red fruitiness coming through in masses. The bitterness, and the spicy floralness of the cascade is still there, but somewhat quietened by age I feel. Now it's part of a rich tapestry, rather than taking charge of a simple darning. The aroma is one that has the cascadian floral, and some pine, but now there's fruit. The flavour starts creamy and sweet and then citrus comes through, and red berries, and it's like a fruit salad of sorts, with pine and flowers. I'm astounded at what a difference a little time makes.
This meant that I had to use US-05 again, but there was a problem with that. I'd been given a little bit of WLP 565 saison yeast by Rob at Blackjack beers that needed using whilst it was still in a decent (and fresh) condition. This meant that I decided to up my brewlength and push the limits of what I can actually brew at home at the moment on this kit. I had a fresh sack of base malt that was metaphorically burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought this a good idea.
I initially decided on a 38 litre end of batch volume, which if things had gone as expected, would have been 45 litres into a 50 litre kettle, with evaporation and hops, and 40 litres into the FVs, with a couple more litres lost to dry hopping and trub. It's all good. I didn't take into account the extra hop usage for a larger batch, and the wort soak up rate of the hops, but more of that shortly.
The recipe was pretty simple to keep in with the ABC brewing challenge guidelines, a 6.5% ABV beer with 65 theoretical IBUs, MO base malt, and two cara malts. Obviously, there were hops too.
based on a 75% efficiency from my system, I went for
8800g Marris Otter
500g Carapils
500g CaraRed
Seriously, the new bag looked like this after I'd mashed in.
The mash took an hour, and the sparge probably took about 2. The reason for that is that I recirculated about 10 litres to start with for colour.
Then I set the run off to be really slow, and just buggered off to work on my report. I checked on the progress a few times when making cups of tea, but other than that I just left it to do what it needed to do.
Once the run off had finished and I had collected 46 litres of wort at 1.051, I cleaned out the mash tun, then added the wort. Then I got it up to boil, but for fun I added the bittering hops as first wort hops rather than a 60 minute addition. For no reason than interest to be honest. I ended up using a separate pan on the stove for 4 litres until I was past the hot break point as I didn't feel totally comfortable with so much liquid in the kettle before it settled down.
Action shot of the wort as it's boiling away. I had decided that as I had to add the hops in a very specific order to meet the ABC brewing challenge criteria, and I'd managed to fuck that up last time, I had decided to add all the hops at the 10 minute mark. So, I had 100g each of the following weighed out ready for additions
Columbus, Simcoe, Exp. 366, Cascade. It was very important that they were added in that order, so I weighed them out in reverse into a bucket, thus they would "technically" touch the wort in that order.
Well, I added the 400g of hops at the 10 minute mark.
The smell was amazing, beautiful things were happening, I can tell you that. After the boil I put a lid on and left it to sit for 20 minutes whilst I got the counterflow wort chiller set up for cooling.
I pulled off 20 litres with absolutely no problem, the second lot though, that was a problem as all the hops and the gunk started to slow down the run off. Bit of a bastard really. I sanitised a sieve and started scooping out the hops from the still nearly boiling wort and started to also squeeze them a bit to try and get as much of that beautiful hoppy juice into the wort.
I ended up with 36 litres of lovely red wort into two fermentors, one that was pitched with US-05, and the other with WLP 565. The wort had an OG of 1.062. This is a little higher than wanted or anticipated. Too late to worry about that now.
This 36 litres of wort is also less than anticipated. Some of that can probably be chalked up to the extra pan for some of the boil, that's going to have a larger surface area which means more evaporation (an extra litre or so by my estimations). Another wort soaker uper was the sheer amount of hops. 409g of hops went into the kettle, and a hoppy waste came out that weighed in at 4100g That's quite a bit of wort that was soaked up. Seems I didn't strain and drain all that hoppy goodness out.
This has meant that there has been a slight change in my spreadsheet to deal with larger batches, and a higher hop content, so that I can be on top of the wort losses. What's fun is that I'm planning a new brew kit at the end of May, so I will have to start all this over again then (but the actual brewing should be easier as I will be using 2 vessels rather than just 1).
The reason I didn't post this when I did the brew is that I spent the time I would usually use writing this up, going through the numbers to understand where each and every ml of wort had been lost. I could have overcome the extra evaporation losses by liquoring back, and if this was a commercial venture then I probably would have. As it's not, I can pretty much do what I like, so I'm brewing a beer that has a slightly higher OG than I had aimed for. I end with more knowledge, and potentially tasty beer that will be a tad over the 6.5% ABV aim, I'm fine with that.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, if you have any comments, please don't hesitate to leave a message or contact me on twitter.
Edit - 23/04/14
The smaller batch of this beer that was brewed with the WLP 565 finished before the US05, and as it didn't matter what hops I put into it for dry hopping (as it wasn't part of the ABC brew) I opened up a 100g pack of Huell Melon (a new German hop I was given) and dry hopped with that, chilled to drop the hops and then bottled.
The main bulk of this beer was dry hopped on the 1/04/2014, and I was going to use a mix of all 4 ABC brew hops. In the end, after a little twitter dicking about I prompted for 50g of each of the high AA hops, so 200g in all. I've used high g/l in dry hop before, I've used similar levels to this before, but that's usually in 9+% beers. I bottled the beer on the 9th of April.
I tried both beers today (23/04/14) and my only reaction is HOLY FUCK! I tried the Huell Melon first off, it's a melon-y sweet aroma, mixed with a quite thick and pungent, oily, fruit. It's pretty bitter with a strange spicy sweetness. I guess a big mixture of all the hops.
To compare, I opened the first bottle of the ABC brew, holy fuck it's quite powerful. There's no sweet melon and strawberry to help from the relenting nature of the big hops that are in this brew. It's thick and oily, pungent doesn't even cover it. I'm going to leave it a month before I try it again. I'm hoping this isn't a beer that is palatable, only after the better part of a year. I'll let you know.
Edit - 31/05/14
I tried it again today against a different brewer's Cascade IPA. I can definitely see the Cascade and the Columbus coming through in bucketloads. The 366 and Simcoe seem to be lost. It's still bitter as all hell, crazy bitter, like so much more bitter than the 65 IBU it should be. I've been thinking about this and I think that the problem was the 20 minute stand. I didn't cool it down to 80ºC for the hopstand, I just left it and went to set up the wort chiller. With this in mind, and that it didn't lose much heat, I think it was an extra 20 minutes on the isomerisation temperature range. I've checked this out result wise, and it would give a theoretical IBU of 220, so much more than wanted, and about right for what is in the beer. Basically, Oh fuck!.
I helped devise this ABC brewing challenge, and I fucked up both of my beers for it. The Black IPA is amazing, one of the best I've brewed, but it doesn't follow the rules. this, I was trying to be experimental and clever and try something new, and I've made bitter as fuck beer! It's like biting the peel of a blood orange and just chewing that up. Maybe time will help with this?
Edit 10/07/14 (00:46)
It's amazing what a little time (well, 5 weeks) makes to beer. I tried the farmhouse red today and was astounded. The bitterness has dropped to palatable levels (my palatable levels) and with a hazy red hue, is coming through with lots of beautiful flavours that I need to post about separately. I've just opened the red ale and it's clear and amber, with red fruitiness coming through in masses. The bitterness, and the spicy floralness of the cascade is still there, but somewhat quietened by age I feel. Now it's part of a rich tapestry, rather than taking charge of a simple darning. The aroma is one that has the cascadian floral, and some pine, but now there's fruit. The flavour starts creamy and sweet and then citrus comes through, and red berries, and it's like a fruit salad of sorts, with pine and flowers. I'm astounded at what a difference a little time makes.
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