Brewing with Bates

So my clone of pre 2010 Punk IPA won’t be ready for this Saturday’s club meeting because I brewed it today. So that’s something. However, it should be in fine form for the meeting after that, should any of it survive that long.

The recipe is basically the same as that in Brewdog’s DIY Dog PDF but scaled to a 10l batch and with a couple of (2 minor and 1 major) changes.

1 - I substituted Saaz for the Crystal hops they used, to keep that noble character, and Centennial for the Motueka originally used. This was more because I have no room in the hop freezer for more leftovers than because Centennial is as punchy as Motueka...

2 - Replaced Wyeast American Ale with Saf 05. Pretty sure they’re the same thing though, to all intents and purposes.

Mashed in at 64.5c, which is close enough, and left the mash going while I did boring adult things, before coming back to it for the sparge. I’d been reading about cold water sparges with interest - it’s an opportunity to reduce the fuss, energy usage, and cost of a brew day by avoiding heating an extra 10l of water so I gave it a whirl. Plus the cooler grain bed meant I could clean my mash tun out right away - that’s always a bonus.

All this talk of it knackering your efficiency seem fairly unfounded. Came out of the boil above gravity at 1.062. Liquoured back to 1.056 and we’re off.

Brewing a bit of a stash-buster today (almost on a whim). I haven’t had much chance to brew lately - having moved house, spent the following months building furniture, then ‘doing Christmas’ means I’ve had enough to keep me busy of late.

I only had 1.7kg of Maris Otter in my possession, so that determined two things - the batch size (10l max), and the max ABV unless I was going to start adding sugar etc. I have PLENTY of strong beer in the stash at present as it is, so light, clean, and session strength it is. Something to suit the crisp, bright weather we’ve been having in York these last few days.

I also had a couple of packs of these fancy Hull Melon hops I haven’t gotten around to using yet, so after initially planning a Hull Melon and Sorachi or Nelson pale ale (thinking, fruity and coconutty or melon and grape-y hops would make a fantastic fruit-salad pale-esque beer) I had a sudden change of heart mid brewday.

To make a low ABV pale beer that is both crisp enough to let the hops shine, especially those with very delicate flavour profiles like Hull Melon, whilst retaining enough malt flavour to not be wishy-washy is something a lot of breweries struggle with. I’m still trying to dial in what I think is acceptable, so this time I’m going a slightly different route, omitting the customary 1% crystal altogether and relying on Vienna malt to round out the flavour profile.

[Recipe after the break]

The other day my friend Tom turned to me and was all “HEY HOW COME WE’VE NEVER BREWED A BEER TOGETHER!?”, and it’s true. We haven’t done this before. Not that Tom brews himself, which probably explains why, but there you go. So I told him what ingredients we had in at the moment, and it was settled. We were using lots of Nelson Sauvin in a strong IPA.

So Tom and Holly came over to help and learn and have a few drinks. A fun day was had!

So the Grist is simple enough:

85% Maris Otter

5% Caramalt

2% Crystal malt

8% table sugar in the boil - this is not only bumping up the ABV but also helping keep the body light and clean to show off the hops.

Mashing in for 60 minutes at 67c - not low enough to dry the beer right out but I want some of those malt sugars left behind since the sugar is going to dry it out.

Pre-boil gravity came out at 1.056, so bang on what was anticipated which is nice.

First wort hops were 30 IBU of Columbus, the majority of the hops are destined for flameout and dry hopping.

At flameout we chilled to 75c and added 6g/l of Nelson Sauvin and 2g/l of Citra to the hot wort. We then left the chiller running slowly until we reached 60c and allowed it to stand for an hour.

Finally we chilled down to 18c and pitched the Conan yeast I’d been growing over the past week. I have no idea if there was enough to handle a beer of this size, but if things slow down after an initial burst of activity I have some Saf-05 to hand so that I can finish things off.

OG was 1.078, just below the anticipated 1.08, with 9l of wort collected due to the 1l of hop and protein gunk left in the kettle.

So this week I’ve finally decided to use up all of that pesky Citra I’ve got (first world problems) and brew up my take on the very in-vogue Session IPA style of beer. I know this is essentially a hoppier, dryer, American pale ale, but the commercial versions we get are always fantastic on the nose, then disappointing on the palate. They’re always very much all hops and no trousers, so I thought I’d try to create a similar style of beer only with a touch more body and some malt complexity to back it up.

The Malt Grist was made up as such:

65% Maris Otter, because pale malt.

20% Vienna malt for a nice biscuit character and a touch of colour.

10% Wheat malt for body

4% Caramalt for some sweetness

1% Crystal malt for character.

I mashed in at the high end - 69 Celsius, using decoctions to keep the temp up when it dropped any lower than 68.

I then sparged nice and slowly, allowing my first wort hops - 20IBUs worth of Centennial, some time to soak into the wort.

Then there were no hop additions until flame out, when I chilled down to about 60c (I thought I’d try this temp instead of 80 having read that Myrcene evaporates at 65c, let’s try to maintain more flavour), when I added 2g/l each of Citra and Ahtanum, and 1g/l of centennial.

Finally when the temp had dropped down to 30c I ran the beer through the hop rocket with 3g/l each of Citra and Ahtanum inside for a last flush of aroma in a closed environment.

This meant that by the time it’d all been run through and aerated the wort was at pitching temperature, and I could chuck in the yeast - I’d accidentally run out of Saf-04, which I’d wanted to use for its lower attenuation, so I pitched in some Saf-05.

I’m sad to say that the Berliner has been dumped. Never a good thing, but it had clearly picked up some off flavours during the sour mash and they weren’t diminishing. In fact, the sweetness fermenting off made them more apparent.

So after 48 hours of stinking up the house, the Berliner has been pasteurised and pitched. This is roughly the same as my previous batch without the rye:

 75% pale malt

25% torrified wheat 

 5g of ahtanum added to the wort as it was heated to 80C for 5 mins, and left in as the wort was chilled. 

Saf-05 pitched for cleanliness. 

Update on the new batch of lambic - so far it's sitting around 1.010 and visible fermentation has ceased, so I've topped it out with water to minimize headspace, which brings the gravity down to 1.008. The aroma is fantastic - fresh strawberries and fruity scrumpy, but the flavour is a little disappointing. 

As this, frankly unphotogenic, sight means, I bottled the Grinning Mouths coconut, kaffir lime, chilli oatmeal stout (otherwise known as jumping the craft beer shark). So, what changed since it hit the fermenter? Well, firstly, I left it for a week with 20g/l of lightly toasted coconut chips in a hop bag. This, as you might expect, gave a nice robust coconut and vanilla edge to the beer, which I hope survives conditioning because it’s glorious. 

I also added approximately one fuckload of kaffir lime leaves to the beer for 24 hours. I don’t know how many, check the picture and divide by 7.5l for an exact ratio. Stone put on their blog that they would use two leaves steeped to make a tea, so I tried this, and was unhappy with how it tasted. The quick boil, and following hot steep, extracted some unpleasant tannin bitterness, like over brewed tea. Really not what I was after. After trying a cold extraction I realised that this was the way to go - the vibrant lime character remains intact and no bitterness was imparted. Ace. I decided not to add the leaves as a tea however, because I didn’t want to dilute the beer any further nor that wonderful coconut character. 

The chilli was, however added as a tea - approx half a pint of boiling water with a handful of dried chillis in it. This was left a few hours and was pretty damn spicy. This doesn’t initially seem to be enough however - the beer is not spicy at present, but we’ll see if it comes through more once the beer and adjuncts have mellowed a tad in the bottle. 

OK so hands down this marks my biggest brewing gaff yet. Maybe. I kinda ruined my own efficiency by... forgetting the second batch of sparge water. In my defence we were watching Twin Peaks at the same time so... that kinda takes priority over all my other thought processes.

Anyway down to business - this beer is for yorkbreweryhomebrewclub‘s May challenge - Ruiseart’s ‘Favourite Band/Song/Film/Book/Whatever’ challenge. A tough one, and one that required some thought and consideration - we didn’t want to just brew a rauchbier and say we like Smoke on the Water after all (mainly because it’s so far from our favourite song it’s not even funny).

So after much consideration, Annis and I reached the conclusion that a beer inspired by the Isis track ‘Grinning Mouths’ might be in order, and quite fun. Also it’s an incredible song that closes out what is, pretty much, the closest to a wholly perfect album we've found to date.

You can listen to it here, if you’re curious.

The main things we wanted to express were the considered, layered complexity of the song, it’s rhythmic, rumbling rounded bass lines, it’s crisp, melodic lead guitar parts, and overall sense of substance. It’s a heavy, multi-faceted song that gathers momentum and ends in a blaze of glory. The conclusions we made were, it should be dark and full bodied, with bright aromatics, and a surprising, energetic finish. But we’d just done a black IPA so a fruity BIPA was not an option. Instead we opted for something far more adventurous.

A kaffir lime, toasted coconut, and chilli oatmeal stout.

The lime leaves were intended for a witbier at some point, but we have tonnes of them at the minute, so they need using up. They will hopefully add the brightness, complexity, and delicate layering of the song, tying themselves to the oatmeal’s silky body with their characteristic smoothness. The coconut will bring depth, character, and toasted aromatics, while the chilli will add fruitiness and a subtle zing - the gathering momentum and energy of the song as you drink.

Anyways, enough waffle - the recipe:

Malt is a fun mix:

Maris Otter - 70%, Flaked oatmeal - 15%, Caramalt - 5%, Crystal Malt - 4%, Chocolate Malt - 4%, Black patent malt - 2%. We didn’t want this one too roasty or acidic, smooth and full bodied is the name of the game here.

These were mashed in at 50c to break down the oatmeal’s notoriously gummy protein, we didn’t want a stuck mash. 6 litres of mash were then drawn off and brought to the boil and returned to the mash to reach 69c for the sacch. rest - full bodied, like I said. This stage was only 30 minutes, so all being well the FG should be nice and high.

Somewhere between here and the sparge I forgot one water addition - not sure if it was the mash out or the sparge liquor itself, either way I ended up with far less wort than anticipated, and I didn’t notice until post boil. Eurgh.

Hops were a pitiful 10g of Centennial pellets as FWH then boiled for 60 mins. This should provide around 25 IBUs.

Finally after the boil I ran the beer through a fistful each of toasted coconut, kaffir lime leaves, and dried chillis in the hop rocket. This has added some beautiful aromatics, mainly of the lime leaves, which will probably mostly get scrubbed off during fermentation. I’m planning on adding more of all elements in secondary, and possibly even a lime leaf tea at bottling just to provide a final fresh lime push at the finish line.

So yesterday I brewed a new batch of lambic - the first tastes a bit... rough, but it’s bottled and might round out or develop more pleasing characteristics over time. It’s about 2 years old now, so it’s either do or die time - if it doesn’t stand on its own I might blend it into something else at some point. Anyways, onto this batch. SUPER SIMPLE RECIPE:

Malt Bill was simply 75% Maris Otter, 25% wheat malt. The Hops were some 2 years old Topaz I’ve left open in a drawer near a radiator. So yes, they’re old, dry, cheesy, yet retain a subtle touch of that beautiful berry nose underneath it all. Of course, you won’t taste that because the beer is going to age, and the boil was long.

Last time I did a proper turbid mash, following Cantillon’s process to the letter, but this time I didn’t bother. Why? Well, thinking it through, I didn’t need a protein rest because my wheat was malted, I didn’t want a ferulic acid rest, so it’s just Sacch. rest and that’s it. An hour at 67c to provide a reasonably fermentable wort that will keep enough dextrins for weird yeasts and bacteria to chow on, aiming at an O.G. of 1.055.

I boiled 40g of aged skanky hops for 90 mins, and will liquor back the wort once the initial fermentation is over (last time the carboy let it gush everywhere, so i’m fermenting less beer initially and topping off to minimise oxidation). 

The interesting thing here is the Yeast - my primary fermenter is a culture I gathered from some local crab apples and plums. It’s wild York yeast - the malt extract starter (pictured above) tasted spectacular after only 4 months - like a really fruity, medium dry cider with a touch of funk and some acidity. It only attenuated to 1.012, so I’ve chucked some Orval dregs in too so attenuation can go further... because what is beer without Brett?  So there we have it - real Yorkshire wild beer, and once the initial ferment is done (read, in a month or two) I’ll start adding bugs from Cantillon bottles etc. to help with complexity and attenuation. Should be fun - probably won’t be ready for yorkbreweryhomebrewclub‘s September meeting, but I’ll bring some of batch one and whatever this is like along for educational sampling. And a Gose/Berliner/similar most likely.

It's been too long since my last brew day, I know, but Christmas and my birthday, and submitting my thesis all got in the way. Speaking of my birthday; lakeandtreeandme got me a hop rocket, and I used some treat money I got to finally replace the Burco's shitty tap with a ball valve and hop strainer so I could hook up the entire system with 1/2" silicon tubing. So it's basically mandatory that I make something hoppy now to get that hop rocket into use (though some spiced and fun adjunct beers are now on the menu I suspect...).

Black IPA it is then, but because it's me, I had to add rye to the mash for that nutty complexity. I love a good IPA, but sometimes there's no complexity in the malt bill, and that's something I'm hoping the rye will remedy for me here. This also needs to qualify as my yorkbreweryhomebrewclub IPA challenge brew, so there's no crystal malt, as was stipulated. I even swore at the beer in order to make it a 'Big fucking IPA' but forgot to get a picture. I did, however, get a picture of the moment following the swearing, which shows a lovely puddle of BIPA wort all over my kitchen floor.

The Malt Bill is fairly fun for an IPA: 65% maris otter, 10% each of rye and Munich malt for depth and residual sweetness, then 6% wheat for mouthfeel, 5% cara, and 4% carafa 3 added to the sparge for colour. This is my first time using this approach, but as the picture shows, while the runnings were light and lemony before it went in, they soon turned dark enough. 

The hops were also fairly simple: 5g of Centennial as first wort hops, then 14g of Experimental 366 (or Equinox, as it is now), 9g of Centennial, and 7g of Columbus steeped after flame out. The wort was then run through a hop rocket containing 30g of the hop formerly known as 366, chilled and pitched with Saf04.

I opted for Saf-04 over 05 because... well, it will actually add flavour to the beer. While an IPA is a great time to use clean yeast to showcase hops, I think a BIPA requires a yeast that will work well to meld the roast malt and hops together. Also, because Saf-04 doesn't tend to attenuate as well, I hope to get a little bit of residual sweetness; I want this reasonably full bodied for an IPA, to avoid that pissy, astringent flavour found in the shittiest of BIPAs.

Dry hop is going to be heavy handed. Aiming at 8g/l with a 50/25/25 blend of 366, Centennial, and Columbus going in for 3 days when the fermentation is nearly complete. Then it's rack, bottle, and enjoy.

Yorkie Brown is hopefully a major step in the right direction from the previous batch. Gone is the ahtanum and we're onto straight, unadulterated cascade for that classic American hop flavour. Also rained back some of the speciality malts, mashed hotter, and used an English ale strain - the goal here is to develop some complexity and fruity malt flavour behind the hops, pretty much the only complaint I had about the last batch. This combined with the extra residual sweetness from mashing hotter and shorter should hopefully make this a lovely brown ale for ready consumption.

Ingredients are:

Maris Otter - 83%

Caramalt - 8%

Crystal Malt - 3%

Brown Malt - 2% (tasting this just before I brewed revealed exactly why this needs to be so low - it's MUCH roastier than I thought...)

Chocolate Malt - 2%

Biscuit Malt - 2%

Like I said - the aim here is layers of malt complexity without going too roasty (which I didn't like in my last attempt at the style) whilst adding a bit more residual sweetness to the beer which was lacking from the last version.

The Hops are just 10g of Cascade as First Wort Hops (pictured above) and 30g of flameout Cascade. The dry hop jury is out at the min, I'll see how it tastes post-ferment, but I almost certainly will at about 3g/l.

Mashed at 66c for 45 minutes to pull a relatively unfermentable wort as opposed to last time's 60 minutes at 65c.

Chilled to 22c and pitched a sachet of rehydrated Saf-04 with some yeast nutrient, full krausen achieved in about 8 hours. Doesn't it look like the happiest krausen you ever did see? It's all smiley! Must be a good sign.