Absolute Homebrew

This is the companion beer to the half grain half extract beer of March 11. The grain bill is upped to 3.75 kg and the tin of malt extract omitted. Generally end up with about 20 or 21 litres with an OG of about 1033 or so. It’s not a very effecient way to brew, but the pay-off is loads of flavour and an easy way to brew. This particular one is a bit of a house standard.

Grain bill:
2.5 kg Joe White Pilsener malt
1.0 kg JW Vienna malt
.25 kg Weyermann Carapils

I quite like Vienna malt - probably due to do a few Vienna lagers. Here I’m using it to boost the malt profile and deepen the colour. If you can’t get Vienna malt then a similar quantity of ale malt would do.

Mashed at 66 degrees in about 18 litres of water, remember this is a no sparge mash. A thin mash like this converts quite quickly. Recirculated a couple of litres to clear up the wort and the wort boiling - and to create some extra space through evaporation.

Hopping was
45 minutes - 20 grams of 11% Amarillo and 16 grams 4% Tettnanger
3 minutes - 20 grams of 4% Tettnanger
for about 26 or so IBU.

Again these were scrap hops I had leftover. The aim with this beer is to have a nice hop character without too much bitterness, it makes for a nice quaffing beer - especially when it’s only about 3.8%ABV. For this beer in the past I’ve used Saaz on Perle, Saaz on Cascade, Hallertau on Northern Brewer. Although each combination gives a slightly different result, they are all pretty much variations on the same theme and seem to work equally well. Don’t go overboard with Amarillo and Cascade.

The yeast was recylced US-56. The aim is to have this on tap at Faulconbridge by next Sunday, the 31st because the wheat beer is finished and the black seems a bit low.

This was a slight rerun of the March 4 beer. The grain bill was:

Maris Otter 3.85 kg
Crystal Wheat 0.15 kg

This is a more typical recipe for me - nice and simple. The Maris Otter is a beautiful malt, if you are using good ingredients let the ingredients speak for themselves. If you have a piece of Scotch or eye fillet you’re not going turn it into a curry, but that is pretty much what you find with a lot beer recipes.

For many beer styles there are standard formulations, say for Brit style ales 95% ale malt and 5% crystal with maybe a pinch of either chocolate or roast is very common. Despite what some people maintain there are no “killer” recipes for this or that beer - especially when there is some riduculous number of different malts specified in vary small amounts. For one thing technique is far more important, and for another the variation between brewing setups is just too great, especially with some scale amateur set ups. Differences in heat source and degree of concentration, kettle geometry, mash tun properties etc etc will probably account for more than 50 grams this way or that of some obscure malt.

And then there is fermentation. I just can’t emphasise enough the importance of fermentation. The difference between a well and a poorly fermented beer is huge. A couple of years back I split a concentrate wort and fermented each half with a sachet of Y497 lager yeast. Into one half I simply sprinkled the yeast and left it. For the other half I rehydrated the yeast and aerated the wort. There was a huge difference in fermentation and in the finished beers. I gave customers a glass of each beer for a compare and contrast session with quite interesting results. Nobody worked out what the difference was, and a couple got slightly upset feeling that I had tricked them. In their view same ingredients meant same beers, but the beers were far from the same.

A common question for many new grain brewers is the degree of crush. Maris Otter has a smaller corn than say Joe White Ale, this is a before and after photo and another in the bucket. The mill I use at Faulconbridge is a Barley Crusher with the gap set at 33 thousandths of an inch, the factory setting is 39. I should check that setting.

If anything the crush is a little coarse, but the Barley Crusher is not instantly adjustable.

Anyway the grain was mashed for 90 minutes at 66 degrees in about 13 litres with 6 grams of calcium sulphate added to the mash water.

I sparged with about another 18 litres - generally I do not run the mash tun dry.

It’s really important to get a strong vigorous boil because it helps with the hot break and hence final clarity of the finished beer. The action of a vigorous boil knocks the protein debris together into flakes large enough to be easily separated from the boiled wort.

This is hotbreak from early in the boil - it’s still moving in the glass. These flakes will become larger over the course of the boil.

This beer was hopped with 60 grams of East Kent Goldings at 45 minutes and another at 3 minutes out for a total of about 32 IBU. This is pretty much my standard hopping regime for most beers, I find it gives good flavour and aroma. For most beers I want good hop character without too much bitterness. Emerson’s 1812 IPA from New Zealand is a good example of that, as is Zywiec the Polish pilsener if it is fresh.

The yeast was the Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley again but in a much greater amount this time. I have not used this yeast before, a couple of customers quite like it. It is a true top-cropper, but as the beer is in Faulconbridge and I’m usually at St Marys I don’t really have the opportunity to harvest it from the top, a shame because it gives nice clean yeast. This will be another beer for home.

I have yet to put it on the website proper, but will be doing a demonstration on Sunday April 14 starting at 10 am. Most likely it will be a short mash method, like the partial mash but with more grain and no extract. It gives a very good mid-strength beer.

The beers brewed on the 4th and 11th of March have both been kegged. The one brewed on the fourth is being drunk at home. It’s not one of my best because I was lazy with the yeast and fermentation - I really should have made a starter.

The half grain, half extract beer brewed on the 11th is now on tap at the St Marys shop, so if you want to come and have a taste please do so - but mention something about this blog so that I don’t redirect you to the local pub.

A very common question about kegged beer is how long will it keep. The more carefully the keg is filled with the minimum of oxygen contact the better the beer will keep. So this is how I fill a keg:

Don’t you like my little 5 litre pink bucket? The butcher next door lusts after it and regularly threatens to steal it.

Anyway, I clean the keg, sanitise it with Iodophor solution, empty it and let it drip off, purge it with carbon dioxide and then fill it through the beer out post and diptube with the lid on and the pressure relief valve open. This way you get a very gentle fill with minimum air contact.

This brew was a half extract, half grain brew for the shop at St Marys. It’s a sort of pilsener inspired ale kind of beer. I brew it often enough in several variations.

The grain bill was:
250 g Carapils
250 g Munich
2500 g pilsener

Mashed at 66 degrees C in about 18 litres of water.

This is a really easy and forgiving way to brew. Heat the water to about 70 degrees, transfer to the mash tun and allow the tun to heat and the temperature to stabilise at 68 degrees and then mash in. With such a thin mash it’s easy to get and even temperture distribution and the mash converts really quickly - 45 minutes is plenty of time.

After the mash has converted recirculate a few litres to clear up any draff in the sweet wort and then gently run into the stock pot - 15 litres, $20 Pronto brand

Once there’s a few litres in the pot then turn the heat on. There’s a bit of finessing with this. If you haven’t done so, read the section on partial mashing from the information pages because this is what I’m doing. From the mash I can probably expect about 15 litres of wort, so to maximise my returns I want the wort boiling fairly early so that evaporation will create enough space to squash in the maximum amount of wort from the mash.

Total boil time was 75 minutes with an addition of hops at 45 minutes. Always good to boil a wort for 30 minutes before adding any hops - you want to see some hot break forming. The hops were 8 grams of 9% Northern Brewer, 18 grams of NZ Hallertau at 5.5%, and 14 grams of 4% Tettnang for about 22 IBU, plus a final addition of 22 grams of Tettnang at 3 minutes. The hops were leftovers. A quarter tab of Whirlfloc is added 15 minutes out.

Things get a bit squashy.

At the end of the boil the pot is placed in a water bath in the sink, the water is changed once. This gets the temperature down to about 35 degrees. The wort is stirred a couple of times to help cooling and to get everything to clump together.

To finish the wort is poured into the fermenter along with a 1.5 kg tin of pale liquid malt extract and about 10 litres of chilled water. It’s really important to chill the water the day before you brew so that it is properly cold. I usually chill 4 x 3 litre plastic bottles.

The yeast for this brew is Californian ale, in this case a rehydrated sachet.

I ended up with about 21 litres in the fermenter and a gravity of 1045.

Brewing with this method usually spans about 3 hours. I think it is a good way to brew either as a method itself, or as a step to all grain brewing. If you are doing a boil of any kind malt extract brewing is a waste of time really. For all that effort you don’t really end up with anything much better than an all malt can beer and some infusing grain, plus it doesn’t teach you anything. You can also push this method around by upping the grain to 3.7 kg and dropping the tin of malt extract to do a mid-strength all grain beer. It’s not a very effecient way to brew, but you get heaps of taste. Nobody picks them as mid-strength beers because of the taste - have a black ale on at Faulconbridge brewed this way.

The only drawback to this method of brewing is that you get a bit more than a litre or so of kettle wastage which proportionally is a bit high especially with a concentrated wort. And if you not too sure what hot break looks like then here is some from the kettle waste:

And if you not too sure what hot break looks like then here is some from the kettle waste:

Actually the hot break doesn’t taste too bad, something like a slightly bitter cross between textured vegetable protein and “cotton” tofu.

cheers,
Pat

You’ll have to bear with me as I’m still getting organised with the new site etc. So somewhat late after the brew of Sunday before last, here are some photos of my gear.

This is my now old and battered masht tun. It’s a 20 litre plastic bucket clad with strips of polystyrene, some bubble wrap wrapped around the top of the bucket and clad with an old hop bag. It holds the temperature fairly well, dropping only a degree or two over 90 minutes.

I use a 10 inch Phils Phalse Bottom, although if you look closely at the rim of the bucket on the right you can see a bulldog clip. The photo was taken about three weeks ago when I brewed a wheat beer. For wheat beers I use a grain bag and the false bottom. A bit like wearing both a belt and braces, but it make for an easy run off with a high proportion of wheat. Brewed one Sunday and was drinking it the following.

That one was 60% wheat, 40% pilsener malts, about 20 IBU worth of Hallertau and the Wyeast 3068 Weihstephan wheat. It’s been on at the Faulconbridge shop and is just about finished.

So this is the set-up in sparge and boil mode:

The bench is a recent addition to the set-up. The burner has 3 rings, and the kettle has a total capacity of 42 litres, got it from ESB some years ago. Generally turn the burner on once there’s about 5 litres in the kettle. The hose running from the mash tun has a stop-cock attached to the end so I can control the flow from the bottom and minimise splashing and hence aeration. The idea of adding sodium met to the mash and kettle to minimise hot wort aeration puts me right off.

Lastly here are things set up for cooling:

The counter flow cooler is a Chilzilla, the internal pipe is the so-called convoluted copper. It works well. There is a short length of hose from the exit of the cooler, a stop-cock and then another short length of hose. This second length of hose is 6 mm ID beer/gas line, I’ve bored a hole in to act as a venturi to suck air in as the wort passes through to help aerate the wort. At this stage the yeast is already pitched.

With this arrangement I tend to take a few short-cuts, but it is the last day of a 6 day week and I’m still serving customers.

Now, I ended up with about 20 litres in the fermenter and about another 1.5 litres between kettle and other wastage. The gravity was 1046.

Two things: Firstly I am not a fan of high gravity beers. I like drinking the stuff and high gravity beers are OK occasionally but they are self-limiting. Remember I’m a homebrew shop proprietor: I have one tap on the ffridge at home, the beer tends to get brewed, fermented and drunk quickly. I can’t really see the point of having an 8% ABV beer on tap.

Secondly, extract effeciency is sometimes a big thing with some brewers. Don’t worry about it too much. It’s what’s in the glass that counts. It’s the old quantity vs quality issue. High extract effeciency does not make for a better beer, quite the opposite.

I work my “effeciency” out by multiplying litres by gravity and dividing by kg, same as the points per pound per gallon method popular in the US. So (21.5 x 46)/4 = 247. Generally I work around a figure of about 250.

It’s worth calculating your effeciency with this method for a number of brews to see how consistent your brewing is. If you consistently get, say, 220 (which means you are getting 5 litres of 1044 wort from a 1 kg of grain) then this is much better than getting higher but very variable numbers. Why is it better? Because your technique is consistent. It’s not, as some people think, a contest to get the highest effeciency.

This method is perhaps more useful than the professional method of comparing the amount of extract you get against that of a laboratory mash. If you get a fairly consistent number, say 230, then you can work out how much grain to use to get a volume at a gravity.

Well, the first brew to be blogged was also the first Brit. style ale of the season. I brewed it yesterday, Sunday.

The grain bill was:
Maris Otter 3.7 kg
torrefied wheat 150 grm
medium crystal 150 grm
roast malt 15 gm

Mashed in about 14 litres, with 5 grms calcium sulphate, at 66 degrees for 90 minutes.
Sparged with another 16 litres to collect about 25 litres.

Now you have to remember that as well as brewing I am also serving customers in the shop, so things don’t always go to plan. In this case it was the hops. I missed my usual 45 minute addition, so 60 grams of 5.7% EK Goldings went in at 30 minutes for about 28 IBU, another 20 grms went in at 3 minutes for a further 1 IBU.

The yeast was Wyeast 1275, the Thames Valley.

Today, Monday, I checked as I went past the shop and it was fermenting away happily.

This is a beer for home. Next Sunday I plan brewing a half grain/half extract beer for the St Marys shop.

Over the next couple of days I’ll post some photos of my gear with discussion about techniques etc. In lots of ways brewing is very much like cooking.