Absolute Homebrew

Three in three weeks. You should know I like brewing in runs, I learn more. It’s also very nice to be able to brew every week and not need to drink it all. The two things that really improved my brewing were taking proper care with fermentation, and brewing the same pale lager for about a year. Now, I’m not suggesting you should do the same. but brewing an extended run of pale and delicate beers with minor variations really tightens up your brewing technique, and gives you a much better feeling for ingredients.

So this one was,
3500 g JW pilsener malt
450 g flaked barley
200 g Carapils
100 g acid malt

The flaked barley of course is very pale, it gives a slightly sweet graininess. Carapils will give a slightly sweet light caramelly flavour. Acid malt acidifies both the mash and finished beer. A wine without sufficient acidity can taste flabby or lacking in structure - the flavours don’t integrate properly. It can be the same with beer. For pale beers like this some acid malt helps integrate the flavours, it stops the beer from tasting flabby.

You get the same effect in British style ales brewed with soft water. Unless the water is hardened with calcium sulphate or other mineral salts, the beer will taste flabby.

Mashed in 20 litres of water, strike temp was 70 deg for a mash temp of 66 deg.
After nearly two hours (purely unintentionally) mashed out by adding 8 litres of boiling water.

Recirculated and then ran out into the kettle to boil for 75 minutes
Hopping was:
45 minutes - 32 grams of 7.2% Perle for 20 IBU, and 20 grams 2.1% Hallertau for 3.5 IBU
3 minutes - 10 grams 2.1% Hallertau for less than 0.5 IBU

OG was 1040, and the yeast was the same Wyeast Kolsch yeast.

Brewed this on Sunday August 12. This one is destined for home. The previous one of August 5 was also for home but has been conscripted to do duty at Faulconbridge.

The grain bill was:
150 g acid malt
200 g Carapils
450 g wheat
3,400 g Weyermann Bohemian pilsner malt

This was mashed in 20 litres of water with a strike temperature of 69 deg C to give a mash temp of 65 deg. Mashed for about 60 mins then added 8 litres of boiling water to mash out. Raising the temperature like this terminates the mash and fixes the character of the wort. It also allows the wort to be run out more readily.

Boiled for 30 minutes before adding hops which were at 45 minutes - 30 g of 7.2% Perle for about 19 IBU, 30 minutes - 20 g of 2.1% Hallertau for about 3 IBU, and another 10 g of Hallertau at 3 minutes for a total of about 22 - 23 IBU.

OG was 1040 and the yeast was the same Wyeast Kolsch yeast.

Failure for me, but success for assorted magpies, currawongs and possums. They were able to get at the wort and devour it before any yeast got a chance. Maybe I could ask Phil Ruddock to get control orders put on these terrorists. I will persevere, and put out some more wort, but this time with Guantanamo like defences.

I enjoy sour beers like Rodenbach and Orval. I also enjoy the sour oaky flavours of Framboise and Kriek. Framboise and Kriek are made from a sour wheat beer base that is then fermented with raspberries and cherries respectively and then aged in oak for a couple of years. A lot of people are disappointed with them because they expect something sweet. If you have avoided them because you thought they were sweet then go and try them.

For quite a while now I’ve been meaning to have a go at some kind of sour beer. So, I saved the last runnings from the mash on Sunday. I boiled them with some extra dried wheat malt extract and have them in a glass bowl covered with cheesecloth sitting under a grapefruit tree in the back garden. I’ve caught yeast from the same spot for sour dough baking.

I’ll see what I can catch. And then brew a wort to suit. I am thinking of a “dirty” mash, that is a decoction mash where you raise the temperature by boiling the liquid rather than the grain which means that you denature many of the enzymes and end up with a lot of unconverted starch.

Utterly shocking - all this time and no posts. The only excuse I can offer is tax time, plus we became a company. (I won’t say anything about the Tour.) Although I’ve been very slack about posting I’ve still kept brewing. So better to brew and not post, rather than post and not brew. I just need to remember what I’ve brewed over the last four weeks.

If you want to make smart-arse comments about early onset Alzheimer’s feel free, but you will have it all wrong because in this case it would have to be a toss up between either Korsakoff’s psychosis, or Werneke’s syndrome.

Anyway, flippant medical show-offery is not going to help recall those lost weekends. I’ll try working backwards:

August 5 Cologne style ale
This was 100 g acid malt, 150 g Carapils, 600 g wheat malt, 3.4 kg Joe White Pilsner malt all mashed at 65 degrees and hopped to about 23 IBU with Perle and scrap Hallertau and Saaz. Yeast was an old pouch of Wyeast Kolsch. For home.
July 29 Pale lager
Simialr wort but fermented with the end of the W 34/70 - For St Marys
July 22 Black lager
This is getting to be a bit of a standard: pilsner and Munich malt with roast and crystal wheat - same as the earlier black lagers. For home.
July 15 Black lager
The same again, but I brewed this wort for a friend (sometimes known as Dirty Uncle Hamish).
July 8 Country lager
A couple of months ago a customer a couple of bottles of a beer called Alten Munster. Its an amber lager, moderately hopped, malty and leaning to a slight dryness. It’s not the best beer in the world by a long shot, but its characterful and flavoursome with a quality that I can only describe as “rustic” - which may mean that there’s a bit of oxidation. It does taste fairly well lagered.

I thought I would have a stab at something similar with:
Cara-Aroma 175 grams
Amber malt 500 grams - for the rustic touch, there’s a slight smokiness to amber malt
Munich malt 1.8 kg
Pilsner malt 1.8 kg
Mashed at 66 deg and hopped to about 25 IBU with Hallertau, fermented with W-34/70.
It did not come out the same as the Alten Munster of course, but was quite drinkable and certainly a good start to play with. If I were to brew it again I would swap the Munich for Vienna, up the Cara-Aroma to 200 and try either the Whitelabs Sth German Lager or Bock yeast. It of course is long gone.