Gyle 37 - Experimental 366 IPA Mk 3

I’ve not brewed for a while, 2 months to be exact. The main reason is that I’ve been finishing off the final exams and dissertation for my BEng in Mechanical Engineering. That was finished as of yesterday, so this morning I got my brew kit out!

It started at about 10:30 this morning when I started a serious clean down of my kit, and a sterilising, and sanitising of my mash tun/kettle and the counterflow wort chiller. 

I made up a batch of a new steriliser/sanitiser that I got from The Malt Miller, and ran it through the MT and the cooler.

Once that was done and flushed through with cold water, I was ready to mash in. I probably shouldn’t have used cold water, as the temperature of the now cold mash tun did effect the mash temperature a little, oh well.

I had decided on a rebrew of an old favourite, the 366 pale that I brewed a couple of times last year, the grain was at 18ºC so I mashed in 15 litres at 72ºC with 5 kg of Marris Otter, 500g of Carapils, and 500g of light Munich. I did this on the fly at about 12:00. I probably should have checked the recipe from last time, as I should have used 6kg of Marris Otter, This will mean the beer has a lower OG than last time, but that’s cool. As I’d been part of a discussion on this, I decided to “mash hop” this beer. Basically I stuck about 25-30g of Experimental 366 hops into the mash tun.

There is talk that this helps with flavours from the hops, without the green vegetal hits, and no bitterness as the temperature of the MT is lower than the isomerisation temperature. I’ll do some research later, for now I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

I left the mash for a little over an hour, whilst I went to cut the lawn, then I came back to start the sparge. I put the holes in the foil and started the run into the MT of the 74ºC liquor. It was at this point that I realised I hadn’t done any water treatment. Bit too late to worry about it now.

I ran off 5 litres to set the grain bed, then I poured that back over the top to recirculate, then I slowed the run off right down, and left the sparge and run off to happen whilst I took care of other household stuff.

I got 35 litres of wort from the MT, which had a pre-boil gravity of 1.043. I cleaned the MT out, and poured the liquor back in, and plugged in the elements, ready to start the boiling process. At this point I decided to first wort hop, rather than at the 60 minute mark. This is meant to give a softer bitterness, more rounded. Either way, it meant I could carry on doing stuff. I put in 20g of Magnum, and then buggered off again, checking every now and then for the boil.

As soon as it started boiling, I set my timer for 40 minutes, and then started weighing out hops. Other than the bittering charge, this is only going to have Experimental 366 (apparently the new name for this is going to be Equinox, though I’m quite partial to the 366 moniker).

The hopping was done as follows;

25g      20 minutes       Experimental 366

25g      15 minutes       Experimental 366

25g      10 minutes       Experimental 366

50g      05 minutes       Experimental 366

50g      00 minutes       Experimental 366

I then pulled the plugs for the elements, and got the counterflow wort chiller set up, I started the run off, it was chilling nicely, but it got stuck. I ended up having to remove the hops with a sieve, pouring out the hot wort into a FV, and clearing the manifold. I think this is a sign that I might need to look at making a different kit. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s a pain in the arse when it does.

Anyway, I got a little over the 25 litres wanted, so I took a few hundred ml of the wort and have made a starter to grow up some more Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. This is because as I didn’t brew for so long, I gave my yeasts away. I didn’t want them to die. The wort had a gravity of 1.054, a little lower than expected, which I realised why when I started putting the details into the spreadsheet afterwards.

I had got some old dried US-05, so I checked the Mr Malty yeast pitching calculator and pitched in 17g of the yeast as directed. I re hydrated the yeast in some water, and left it to warm up and activate, which it had done by the time I pitched it.

I cleaned down, and started mopping the floor at just about half past 5. Not too shabby if I say so myself.

The plan is to dry hop this beer post fermentation with 150g of blitzed Experimental 366 hops, and I’m hoping for a light coloured and bodied beer with a bit of residual sweetness (thus the mash temperature) and a bucketload of juicy big mango and pineapple flavours. Though, this is the new season 366, so it could vary from last year. I shall let you know.

Super quick update, there is krausen formation, and a little airlock activity already, and it's only 11:00pm, so 6 hours after pitching the yeast!