Frankenbrewday - Wild Northern Brown Ale
So I had a bit of spare time this weekend and it was a bit cold to be getting outside so despite the fact that I have my Welsh Ale and Stingo fermenting I thought I’d just throw together all the little bits of grain I had left, stick it into Brewers Friend and see what style it suggested. I knew I wouldn’t have enough for a 20L batch but as I only had a 10L bucket free this was fine.
What I did end up with was 21.2% Flaked Barley, 20.3% Munich, 14.4% Vienna, 11.5% Wheat, 9% Torrified Wheat, 6.4% Carapils, 6.2% Flaked Oats, 3.4% Pale Chocolate, 2.7% Extra Special, 2.4% Acid Malt, 2% Amber and finally I did have more but just added 0.4% Black Malt so that the colour would match the style I’d chosen from Brewers Friends suggestions, which was Northern Brown Ale. Lot of German malts in there for a Northern Brown but seen as I was going to use my homegrown English hops I thought I’d go with it.
My hop schedule was 5g of Fuggles for bittering, then 15g of First Gold for 15 minutes and finally another 10g for 5 minutes. I really wanted the First Gold to come through as it’s really the first time I’ve used my own homegrown First Gold in a beer where it should be noticeable. I struggled a bit with calculations for 10L as I’m used to using my system for 20L but using an 18L kettle then liquoring back. So I could have done with a larger mash volume but compensated by doing a bigger sparge. I stuck a few squirts of golden syrup in for good measure knowing my efficiency probably wouldn’t be great. As soon as payday finally rolls around I’m committed to upgrading my Kettle to 35L so I don’t have to liquor back anymore but I will need to work on new calculations with the proper sized kit for my next brew as this experiment with 10L taught me.
Anyway OG wasn’t far off target at 1.038 and the only yeast I had to hand was the Wild Yeast from a Bilberry off Sutton Bank which I used on another experimental Spiced Porter just before Christmas. I’d taken a bit of the trub and stuck it in a jam jar in the fridge so was a bit nervous about just dumping it in. But once the beer was cooled I did just that and within less than 24 hours there was a good krausen going and I could uncross my fingers.
I just looked back at my previous blog entries to see I’ve not really written any updates on the Wild Spiced Porter other than mentioning it as the Small Beer I created off the back of my Azacca IPA grain. Well that fermented out to 1.003 with this yeast, because it was a small batch I put it away for proper aging, I will post notes once I try it again but initial tasting was promising.
So even though the OG of this Wild Norther Brown Frankenbrew was quite low if it attenuates as much as the Porter then I’ll still have a 4.6% beer. It seems to be doing okay without temperature control as well, my main brew fridge still has my Welsh Ale in, which I plan to bottle sometime this week. Last reading on that was 1.014.
I’m thinking there might be a lot more splitting of batches and experimentation with wild yeasts again this year, I’ll certainly be saving some of the Damson yeast from my Stingo as that can attenuate 100%. I need to get out searching for new yeast sources this spring. 3 experiments down with 3 different wild yeast and they’ve all been fantastic. If you haven’t tried it I urge you to as you can get totally unique flavours into your brews!
andulkaphoto
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titsay
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