Brewing Britain - Andy Hamilton

Congratulations to author and forager Andy Hamilton, of Booze for Free fame, on the release of his latest book, Brewing Britain. 


Available in all good book stores, and Amazon.

Brewing Britain takes you on a trip through brewing history, buying and growing almost all of the ingredients, malting barley, and drying hops, and plenty more besides.

But most of this is preamble to the main point of the book: brewing beers of the styles commonly found in Britain. Milds and Bitters, IPAs, Stouts, Porters, Saisons (!?) and the odd lager. These come with style notes, common ingredients, commercial examples with tasting notes and a series of tried and tested recipes for making your own classic example.

To finish, Brewing Britain indexes a whole flight of beer festivals, all year round, for you to impart your hard won knowledge/try out your new skills.

Oh, and I've got a beer in it!!

The book would suit anyone with an interest in beer: from kit and all-grain brewer to Beer Sommelier and Real Ale Twat*. And it is coming up to Christmas…

*Viz. That is, Viz, not viz.



Tiger Beer clone, all grain.

And a bit about mash pH lower down.

Most visits to this blog come from people searching for tiger beer clones. I’ve referenced it a couple of times, including one previous attempt at the beer, which worked really well. It was mooched from the Dave Line ‘Brew beers like those you buy’ book, with a change here or there (not necessarily because I know what I’m doing, or anything). The first attempt worked quite well, the second was infected, and for Ms Homebrew, the third attempt will be ready in the new year.

This is a 'lite' lager beer, of the kind found in Asia and thereabouts.

3kg Lager Malt (Pilsner malt)

500g flaked rice
300g Carapils or similar
200g Acid malt
Recommended, 200-500g of rice husks or oat husks, as the mash Will be slow to run off.

Mashed in for a rest around 55^oc for 30 mins, followed by the main rest at 66^oc for one hour, in 10 litres of soft water.

Boil:

Hallertaur Helsbrucker (2.8%): 25g, 11 IBU
Dana (Super Styrian)    (10.8%): 7g, 11 IBU

Flavour, Hall. Hersb., 10g @ 15 mins with a dose of Irish Moss
Aroma, Tettnang (German), 10g @ 0 mins.

Cool and strain.

This should yield 20 - 22 litres at 1038, which can be fermented with Brewferm Lager yeast, though this time I'm using a sachet of Saflager 34/70 sprinkled into the wort. If you can ferment it at the proper temperatures, do so, otherwise do as you can. Warm is NOT your friend here, though.

A diacetyl rest (14^oc about 3/4 of the way through fermentation) is advisable.

Tasting notes to follow.

Rice & Carapils:

It may seem counterintuitive to use rice flakes to lower the beer's body, and carapils to boost it, but what I'm trying to achieve is a beer with very little malt flavour, but some body. Using rice alone will reduce taste and body, but I can add some body back in with carapils (dextrin malts, etc), and as carapils is also tasteless in the beer, it won't affect the malt flavour balance. In addition, I will use relatively high carbonation to give the impression of body.

Mash pH:

Most lagers benefit from a little acid malt to help with mash ph, and in spite of having soft water piped into the house I do have to use it in all my brews to help the ph level. I’m quite happy to do this alongside Burton liquor treatments in my Bitters.

An alternative is to use an acid rest into your mash schedule. It’s at about 35oc (up to 40oc), and should last about 3 hours (or overnight). The acid rest allows the lactobacillus bacteria that are all over your barley malt to flourish for a short period of time, which tends to acidify the liquor. The bacteria don’t make it into the finished beer, though.

Acid malt, though, has already been through this step. Every 1% added to the grist decreases the mash pH (that is, acidifies) by 0.1; so if your tap water is fairly soft, like ours at pH 6.5, to get it at the perfect pH for efficient enzymatic activity which is below 5.5 I’ve added it at 7.5% of the grist (not recommended over 10%).

Acid malt is otherwise the same as your pale malt, so decrease the amount of pale malt used appropriately, which will keep your grist ratios in check. Weyermanns' acid malt is from two row barley, so will not add haze, like you might expect from 6row barley.

Tasting Notes:
The beer is ready, having been lagered at cellar temperature. Hardly lagering at all! After about 3 weeks in the bottle it's nearly perfectly carbonated. 

Aroma: Moderate Ethyl Hexanoate (apple-y), some floral hops, and a moderate grainy aroma.
Appearance: Straw, ever so slight haze, long lasting rocky white head, with a nice beading carbonation.
Flavour: Typically low for a light beer, can taste a little grainy, and a little apple-y. 
Mouthfeel: Nearly a very light body, with a brisk carbonation (though missing the carbonic bite), and some residual sweetness. Very light bitterness.
Overall Impressions: Some tiny modifications to the recipe and I need to pay more attention to ester production (temperature and pitching rates). Otherwise very good.

There is a little residual sweetness, it's medium-light bodied, with a medium high carbonation.

I continued to drink this beer over the course of another month, and the flavour improved dramatically in that time. The yeast cleared up the aetaldehyde (in both this and a Munich Helles I reused it in) and left a delicious and refreshing beer. This beer certainly needed the time to improve and all of a sudden I've gone and run out!

This beer won a silver medal at the National Homebrew Competition 2014, run by www.nationalhomebrewclub.com

Dana (Super Styrian) hop

There's not much about this hop online, I presume because it's relatively new.

So, exclusively, my take.

Dana, a super Styrian, high alpha hop from Slovenia. 10.9% alpha acids.
Bred from Hallertau and Magnum in the Slovenia hop research centre.

Fantastic bitterness, very gentle but prominent all the same. As a late and dry hop it imparts a minty/herbal character. Not unpleasant, but not what you'd expect from the lemony aroma when the pack is opened. Similarly, the cat-like aroma that the oxidised hops exhibit doesn't carry over into the finished beer.

I made a Dana / Vienna SMaSH, with Brewferm lager yeast, and I was very impressed with the bitterness, and although the mintiness wasn't exactly what I was expecting, neither was it unpleasant. I'll be brewing an English style bitter with it soon enough, but with Goldings of some sort for the late hops.

To conclude: if you like minty/herbal, go for it. Very gentle bitterness.
Beers to try: Arbor Single Hop Dana, Acorn Dana IPA and Itchen Valley Dana

Home-brewed Tiger Beer – All Grain:

And a bit about mash pH.

Most visits to this blog come from people searching for tiger beer clones. I’ve referenced it a couple of times, including one previous attempt at the beer, which worked really well. It was mooched from the Dave Line ‘Brew beers like those you buy’ book, with a change here or there (not necessarily because I know what I’m doing, or anything). The first attempt worked quite well, I’m pleased to say: a little light for my palate, but it was for Ms Homebrew really, and it suited her nicely.

So for the second January in a row, I’m bottling a batch, which started life as follows:

3kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter, not lager malt)

700g flaked rice
300g Acid malt

Mashed at about 67oc for a ludicrously long time, in 10.8 litres of water.
Take a chill pill here, as the sparged goods are prone to sticking. You could add rice hulls here though, to make it easier.

Hops:

Hallertaur Helsbrucker (4.1%): Boil 40g, 15min 15g, 2min 15g

From that I got 22litres at 1038, which was fermented with Brewferm Lager yeast with a starter in our cold house while we were away over Christmas, and it’s very likely to have reached lagering temperatures.

Mash pH:

Most lagers benefit from a little acid malt to help with mash ph, and in spite of having soft water piped into the house I do have to use it in all my brews to help the ph level, and I’m quite happy to do this even alongside Burton water treatments in my pale ales. Alternatively, if you’re a prepared kind of person, stick an acid rest into your mash schedule. It’s at about 35oc (up to 40oc), and should last between 3 hours to overnight. The acid rest allows the lactobacillus bacteria that are all over your pale malt to flourish for a short period of time, which tends to acidify the liquor. The bacteria don’t make it into the finished beer, though.

Acid malt has already been through this step and then redried for you to use. Adding this to the grist decreases the mash pH (that is, acidifies) by 0.1 for every 1% of the grist. So if your tap water is fairly soft, like ours, at pH 6.5, to get it below 5.5 I’ve added it at 7.5% of the grist (not recommended over 10% apparently). It was VERY acidic! My litmus papers from thehomebrewcompany.ie only go down to 5.2, and I don’t think I’m using them right anyway. Acid malt is otherwise the same as your pale malt, so decrease the amount of pale malt used appropriately, which will keep your grist ratios in check.

I don’t think I’ll be entering this into the National Homebrew Club competition, even though it is probably going to be amazing; all I need for this beer is a thumb’s up from the missus.

Hobgoblin Plus

Note: this beer won Silver Medal in the Milds, Bitters and Ales category in the National Homebrew Club competition on 2nd March 2013.

This morning I’ve put on the biggest mash ever! I have a very limited mash and sparge capacity, and the 24l coolbox is something I’m looking into getting, as it can keep 20-odd litres of mash hot for hours, if necessary. For now I’m still working with 10l mayonnaise tubs with holes drilled through. Not particularly efficient, it’s got to be said; so all my recipes are currently worked up to account for only 60% efficiency. Which mean mashing a lot of grain. I mashed 6 kg, which needed nearly 20l of water. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see it won’t all fit in at once.

Then, by misreading the recipe (it is morning, after all) I added more amber malt than I’d called for. If you’re familiar with the Hobgoblin clone recipe that’s going around (I’m sort of following Orfy’s), then you’ll see that any amber malt is too much. But it was going out of date, and I hadn’t got a chance to use it properly (the only recipe I tried it in was undrinkable because of the obscene amount of DMS present). It’s going to be an interesting beer. It’s also going to be about 6% and barrelled (in an old youngs white thing) for the rest of the winter months, and for a final experiment, I’m going to add gelatine finings to it, to see if I can get it clear a little quicker. It’ll also make it technically illegal for vegetarians to drink, which is such a pity…

Apart from all that it’s a standard all-grain, all-hassle brew.

I’ve found a friendly neighbourhood farmer who’s willing to take the grain off my hands. Though they specialise in organic, and because I don’t use organic ingredients they have to give it to the cat, or something, but it means I don’t have it hanging around unnecessarily. Hops, though. What to do with them?

The beer finally landed in at 6.1%, and after a week it had plenty of condition and was MUCH clearer that it would have been had I not fined it. I’ll definitely use gelatine again for the keg, as it was cheap and easy to use, at one sachet per 4.5 gallons. Also, the 300g or so of amber malt, which did taste very obnoxious after one week, did mellow out nicely in the second.

Next time I’ll use more hops for aroma (still not sure what I’m doing wrong there), and until I get a bigger mash tun, I’ll be reverting to half extract and half mash, as it’s a lot more manageable.

Finally though, to some positives:

1: Don’t be afraid to substitute a half pound of acid malt for a half pound of pale malt (or add an acid rest to your mash schedule), as it vastly improves efficiency if your mash ph as so far been a bit high (that’s alkaliny).

2: Gelatine finings are dead easy to use (better for a homebrewer than the fish finings, as it’s so easy to store and prepare).

3: If you have a cheapo Young’s white beer/cider barrel, put a short length of tube over/in the tap, as it makes dispensing a breeze. Today’s hangover was entirely due to enjoying pouring the beer so much that I repeated the experience ad nausem, so to speak.

 

Pictures to follow, once Blogger behaves itself.

Next up – Dave Line’s Tiger Beer 1038!