Absolute Homebrew

June 22 - Three Way Ale

pat — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:48:20 +0000

Sunday June 15 - "Orange" ale

pat — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:16:12 +0000

Hurry Up Bitter kegged

pat — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:07:42 +0000

Amber ale - May 25

pat — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:05:03 +0000

An amber ale for the Faulconbridge shop:

Roast wheat 50 g
CaraAroma 200 g
Melanoidin malt 200 g
Amber malt 500 g
Ale malt 3200 g

I used a 36 litre round esky with false bottom. Mashed in 15 litres of water with a strike temp of about 71 to get a mash temp of 66. Mashed for about 75 minutes then added about 15 or 16 litres of 90 degree water to mash out. Mixed this into the mash and left it to settle - planning on about 15 minutes but it spun out to about 45. Recirculated about 2 litres and then ran off into the kettle. Although this no sparge method does not have very good extract effeciency, it is easy and it gives good flavour. It is also fairly interruption proof.

Ran the wort off and started it boiling once about 10 litres were collected, continued to boil through the run off and boiled for a further 30 or so minutes once all the wort had been collected before adding the first charges of hops. It’s really important to boil all of the wort thoroughly. If you can’t do this then you should reduce your volumes so that you can.

45 minutes Target @ 9% and EK Goldings @ 4.8%, 20 grams each for about 25 IBU
15 minutes 1/2 tab of Whirlfloc
5 minutes 10 grams of EKG for about another IBU

Last week’s Hurry Up Bitter was racked and this amber ale was run straight on to the yeast bed.

Lambic II progress

pat — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:52:41 +0000

June 29 - Brew in a Bag Amber Ale Part II

pat — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:47:43 +0000

Too much carping on my part (although someone has to speak ill of things occasionally) and not enough brew stuff.

The beer was ale malt, amber malt, a bit of melanoidin, some crystal and perhaps some Munich malt. I didn’t write it down and I can’t quite remember it. Accordingly I deserve any stick from customers when I tell them to write things down. The hopping was a combination of Northdown and Fuggles to about 23 IBU, and the Scottish ale yeast again. The beer is on tap at St Marys. It is to the dry side of things.Oxycontin

June 29 - Brew in a Bag Amber Ale Part I

pat — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:54:05 +0000

Beer updates

pat — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:24:09 +0000

Since the double batch of wheat beer I’ve brewed another four beers and given a brewing demonstration.

Pilseners were brewed on Jan 20 for home, Feb 9 for St Marys and Feb 16 for home again. For them I used the Whitelabs Budvar yeast. It’s a nice yeast, but I think I prefer the Danish/Copenhagen lager yeast. The Jan 20 beer is just been started at home. It does need another couple of weeks, but that won’t happen because there will nothing else to drink.

The demonstration beer was a short method all grain beer, it is a pale style English mild - it is about 3% abv. If you are learning to brew all grain beers try to forget about all the high gravity styles. I know they are tempting but the extra grain means they are physically difficult to work with, and the extra time for proper maturation means that you have to wait too long to see how they turn out. Standard and lower gravity beers are much easier to work with and give you a much quicker result.

This short method is to produce a smaller volume of higher gravity wort with a no sparge mash and then dilute it with chilled water in the fermenter. It is not very effecient but it is easy, doesn’t need much equipment and has heaps of flavour. We now have a complete set up for brewing this way.

Now the beer brewed on Jan 27 was a Belgian style sour beer, and it deserves a post of its own.

Again I must apologise for the lack of detail, but the main purpose of this post is to try to bring things up to date.

Rye beer progress

pat — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 04:15:30 +0000

Despite initial concerns about the rye beer being over-hopped it seems to have settled down. Fermentation has been strong. This morning the gravity was about 1022 - a drop of about 20 points since Sunday afternoon. Apologies to Francis Ford Coppola: I do like the taste of hydrometer samples in the morning. Some Wagner please, and cut to the helicopters.
Diet Phentermine Lifeline

Hurry up bitter

pat — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:13:12 +0000