New books

I bought two new books on brewing seeing as Amazon have them at 33% off at the moment.

The first is John Palmer’s How to Brew. Excellent book, well worth buying even though the first edition is available online for free. Loads of information. If Daniels’ Designing Great Beers is a textbook then this is an instruction manual.

The second is Graham Wheeler’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale. It’s about half the size and yet was the same price, the main for myself being it is written from a UK perspective. Although it sets itself out as “mainly a recipe book” it does contain an overview of the main elements of homebrewing, but it doesn’t stand up too well against Palmer’s book.

Brew Day – Lonely IPA

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve brewed anything. I think the last batch put me off – spending such a lot of time effort to end up with nothing is a bit of an off-putter. I’ve been drinking cans of beer recently (Thwaites, Yates and Jackson, Greene King IPA) and the quality is passable. The beers themselves are quite thin but taste-wise are perfectly acceptable. I think the trouble with the homebrewing books is that the US is notable for its only recent interest in decent ale, whereas the UK has has good ale for years. Hence any half-decent homebrew will taste far and above the likes of Bud, Coors, and even things like John Smiths and Boddingtons. When you get into the realms of Wychwood and Brakspear, however, homebrew starts to make less sense. Unless I’m doing it wrong. But I digress.

I have a load of stuff left and a spare day so I thought I’d give it another go. I’m trying once again for an IPA as each attempt so far has been not quite there, either too sweet, too bitter, or just not pale.

1.5Kg light 2-row liquid malt extract (Brupaks)
1.5Kg Maris Otter pale malt
500g British caramalt
Kent Goldings: 30g @ 60, 20g @ 20, 10g @ flameout
1tsp Irish Moss
Safale S04

Mash was 1hr30 at 70C

Bit of an accident with the mashing temperatures – I misread the scale initially (70C instead of 60C) so the whole mash took place at 70C. Interesting to see what will happen.

I’d also forgotten just how appealing the smell of hops in boiling wort is.

Beer updates – How did they turn out?

I just realised I’ve barely posted any updates about how the beers I’ve brewed actually turned out.

Of the batches I can remember about now, the best has to be the wheat beer from 11. I’m well impressed with the Munich yeast and it produced a very creditable weissbier. Lots of fruit, subtle hops, light, sweet, perfect summer’s day drink.

The Cascade Pale from 12 is very citrusy – it’s almost like Coronoa and Lime in a bottle. I think this is down to the US ale yeast. I have to admit, I’ve little experience of US ales so it may well be they are all like that – quite hoppy, quite citrusy. It’s not at all bad.

The brown ale from 13 spoiled in the pressure barrel. It’s drinkable but oxidised due to a poor seal. I’m not sure if it’s all pressure barrels or just mine – it is a BeerSphere, though, so I’d have expected it to be fine.

The IPA kit from 14 is fine. It’s a creditable pale ale, though there aren’t enough hops left to call it an IPA. Still, it holds up well to a couple of commercial real ales I’ve sampled recently.

And finally, the brown ale with oats from 15 spoiled during fermentation. The yeast I used took too long to get going and a wild yeast took hold. Annoying. Wasted £25.

Anyhow – so far, so good. In many cases the beer I’m producing rivals commercial bottled beer, and it’s certainly better than the cans by Smiths, Tetleys, Boddingtons, etc.

Brew Day Fifteen – Liquid Oaty Brown

Bit of an experiment. I wanted a lightish ale ready for the summer and I was looking through various recipes trying to find one that I fancied. I read in Papazian’s book about using oats and I thought I’d give it a try – not in a stout, but in a brown ale. I also needed to use my vial of White Labs liquid yeast. I’d been saving this for a special brew but its best-before was just about to expire. Hopefully I can reuse it with the next brew.

Brew Day Fourteen – IPA Kit

A bit of a an experiment – an IPA kit from Muntons.

After reading the instructions I was torn between dumping the lot in as stated, or boiling as Palmer suggests. I went for Palmer and boiled the lot for an hour.

After boiling there wasn’t much hoppiness left. I think this was a mistake, and reading other sites suggests 15 minutes max. Ho hum.

Anyhow, I used Danstar Windsor yeast. We’ll see how it turns out.

Brew Day Thirteen – Lucky Brown?

A busy day today. Not only was I brewing I had the previous two batches to bottle. Why so much, you ask? I should have bottled the wheat beer yesterday but forgot/was too busy/lazy to do it. And I wanted to reuse the yeast cake from the pale ale. Anyhow.

It’s a simple dark brown ale that I’ve done many times already.

Brew Day Twelve – Cascade Pale US Ale

Another attempt at a pale. The last one was quite good after it had been left for a while – I finally realised that the smell isn’t the beer – it’s the carbon dioxide used to get the beer out of the pressure barrel.

Anyhow, this is the second batch of the weekend. I’m trying to build up a stock so I can leave it to condition slightly longer than previously – so far I’ve drunk the batch in about three weeks after bottling which is normally how long it should be left for!

1.5Kg Brupaks Maris Otter light malt extract
1Kg Maris Otter pale malt
500g wheat malt
500g caramalt
40g Cascade (7.4% AA) (60 minutes)
15g Cascade (10 minutes)
5g Cascade (5 minutes)
Safale US05 yeast

Again, double decoction mash makes raising the mash temperature easy, reliable and repeatable. The batch sparging method also seems to work very well – I’ve calculated my efficiency for both the wheat beer and this pale ale batch at 70%, which is a nice consistent result.

Brew Day Eleven – Weizen Weissbier Wheatbeer

I’ve no idea exactly what sort of beer this will turn out like, but it’s a wheat beer. Using plenty of wheat, some Maris Otter and a little caramalt. It might even be a dunkel weizen.

1.5Kg Brupaks wheat extract
1Kg wheat malt
500g Maris Otter pale malt
500g Caramalt
20g Cascade (7.4% AA) (60 minutes)
10g Cascade (10 minutes)
Munich yeast

Double decoction mash. Batch sparge.

Brew Day Ten – Aye Rye

Another batch using the remaining Amarillo hops – another brown ale, but this time no crystal malt. Instead, rye.

I’m paying more attention to the mashing temperatures now and so this mash was 30 minutes at 40C, 20 at 60C and 40 at 70C before raising to 75C before sparging. I think I’ve got the hang of sparging now, keeping the water level a couple of centimetres above the gain bed.

Again, more details to follow. I seem to be really busy at the moment…

Single decoction in addition to multi-rest mash.

Brew Day Nine – Is this the way to Amarillo?

New brew, new hops. 9.1% AA vacuum-packed Amarillo.

Going for a hoppy brown ale with this one. More details to follow.