Harvest Ale #1

Fresh hopped Harvest Pale ale:

5oz, on the button.

It feels like ages ago that I got excited about the first hop shoots nuzzling at the surface of the soil. Now they’re drawing the attention of the council’s planning department! So, after nearly 5 months, I can finally reap the rewards of months of doing nothing; it’s basically looked after itself. Well, ok, I did rig up a zig-zag of Poundland plant wire, but that’s about it. The regular watering thing that plants seem to like wasn’t labour intensive this year, thank you Gulf Stream, and although I did manage to throw on some tomato feed once or twice, it was only because I was feeling guilty about having done, frankly, nothing. But now I’ve a brew day to plan. Some sort of pale ale should prove a hearty canvas for the piney Nugget hops I’ll be harvesting from the one bull-bine. Only one bine flowered, so I’ll probably only have quarter of a pound of wet hops at best, but lesson learned for next year: cut back all bull shoots, not just some. Success favours the brave.

They're all perfect.

The pale will be 2lbs maris otter, 1oz crystal & 1oz wheat, and ¼ oz Northdown (bitter) per 5 ounces of fresh hops. Thinking about it, it’s probably too much, as the equivalent is about 5oz aroma hops in a 5-gallon brew (fresh hops weigh between 4 and 6 times more wet than when dried). Though after consulting the forums where it seems that more is more, more might be enough. Besides, it will be easily spread over the last twenty minutes of the boil.


So on Harvest Ale eve, about three weeks later than the microbrewers who were at the Kent harvests, and nearly a week later than some Dublin homebrewers (I’m quite far north, have I said?), I finally set the alarm clock for an interesting brew day. I haven’t dreamt about homebrew yet, but if it’s going to happen, it’ll be tonight.

Harvest Day: 18-09-2012

Hot, hot, hop.

Woke up to a wet and windy day, and thanks to some sort of bizarre cold, absolutely no sense of smell - hardly conducive to a morning of brewing with fresh hops!

The first thing to do was to measure up the hops, so I knew how much of what to make. As it turned out, my estimate was spot on: 5 ounces of fresh hops. So I set half a gallon of water to heat up, and mashed in the malts. I left it, checking occasionally that it was at the upper end of the 60s (temperature, that is). Then, sparge, boil, and in with ¼ ounce of Northdown hops to bitter the pale ale. Once the wort had been boiling for 40 minutes I begun to add small handfuls of fresh hops and became frustrated at how little I could smell! Was it the lack of hop oils? Was it the small quantity of hops being added? Or was it, hopefully, the absence of my olfactory senses for the day?

The whole with went into a glass demijohn at 1045, which wasn’t far off estimate, and then in with some yeast from a couple of weeks ago. It’s not fermenting yet, but with any luck by this evening there should be a krauseny mess all over the living room floor.

There’s very little I can do now, for a couple of weeks, except the usual bottle palaver. However, in a couple of weeks there will be an honest appraisal of the beer, but in the meantime, there’s bound to be an update on the next beers up, namely:

#4, a hoppy golden ale, with a fantastic citrus aroma,

Chocolate and Passionfruit Porter, which may or may not be a stroke of genius,
WHT Tayleur’s dried Rowanberry brown ale, and finally,
CIDER! If I can get hold of some apples!

And maybe, by next September, I’ll have both more hops and a hopback to really force in the aroma, sense of smell or not!

What to do with a spare 8 hours.

A Sunday evening alone, the perfect opportunity for things I’m not allowed to do when Ms Homebrew’s in: listen to jazz, and brew beer. Ms Homebrew doesn’t mind me watching the rugby, even when it’s on at the same time as an Eastenders omnibus, but jazz? She’s no time for it. “It’s messy sounding”. And homebrewing’s just plain messy. I’m wearing slippers now, while I brew. Once upon a time my homebrew outfit included waders.

I’ve been a bit busy with non-homebrew related stuff, so I’ll condense the last two brews into a single paragraph, seeing as nothing particularly exciting happened. 5 gallons of tiger beer made, from Dave Line’s recipe, to which I was largely faithful; and Kindleweisse, a whatever’s-left-in-the-cupboard wheat beer. The first has been lagered in the shed (in the plastic bucket, at about 9 degrees, so not really lagering, I know), the second, Kindleweisse, an American Wheat beer, has been soaking up the heat from the stove, occasionally exciting the cat. It did take a little while to start fermenting, but once I’d put it where the cat usually sits, it sprung to life. Cats do know the warmest spots.

I’m making a batch of Golden Ale. I’m not really sure what makes Golden Ale. Everything else I’ve brewed has either been pretty dyed in the wool as a style, or written about enough for me to reproduce it with some confidence. Even Kindleweisse, which was only made because apparently in some countries you can ferment a wheat beer with a top fermenting (ale) yeast, and was the result of a read through Daniel’s book.

Even on the Internet there’s not much about ‘Golden Ale’. As far as I understand it’s a relatively new term, coined in 1994, which is enough time for the Internet to have an opinion on it. Nevertheless, I did find the following: It’s a golden sort of colour, between 3 and five percent alcohol, little in the way of a malt profile, but plenty from the hops, which should produce a crisp, dry beer, with a feeling of bitterness, and a powerful hop aroma.


To that end, I’ve used 7lbs 8oz pale malt, 4oz each of wheat malt and barley flakes, 1.5oz Fuggles (hops) and 1/3 oz of Styrian Goldings (also hops) to give an IBU of about 30 (which may or may not be typical of the style). I’ve mashed low and long to remove any trace of flavour from the beer, but I’ll put it back with late additions of whatever Styrian Goldings I have left, and plenty of Cascade. I’ve also used some Burton water salt treatment to help with the hoppiness. I was toying with the idea of using acid malt, to lift up the pH, which I gather the Pilsner producing countries do to create a crisp flavour, but I chickened out of that in favour of something that would, if all else failed, make a passable pale ale. I also tried this: put in your copper hops before the wort comes to the boil and the wort won’t kick and spill over the place – it works.

Ah, and now I’ve distracted myself with writing, and I can’t remember if the boil started at ten to ten, or ten past! D’oh.

New Year's Resolutions

This year I’m going to continue to observe my ‘No Carlsberg’ resolution from a few years back (it’s harder than it sounds), and to it I’ll add ‘Spend more time in the kitchen’. That means brewing!

So, did you get a homebrew kit for Christmas, and have found this blog after Googling some home brewed beer related words? Then isn’t Google clever, sending you here. The following is some advice to those new to the hobby, or as is often the case, those returning after years spent having a family.

Brewing your own beer from a tin, box or bag is really easy, and very rewarding.

Your basic kit is:
Your tin kit (plus 1kg / 2lbs of sugar)
A 5 gallon bucket, plus lid
Bottles
A 5ft-ish tube to siphon your beer
Sterilising stuff
Anything else is needlessly fancy: hydrometer, thermometer and so on. People have been brewing without these for thousands of years.

If you’ve been given just a tin your kit won’t be as instant as all that, but as most homebrew starter kits come with everything you need, you can get cracking right away. If you do need anything from the above list, you’ll not go far wrong with your local farmers co-op. Start there. And while you’re in the co-op, get yourself some wood, put up some shelves, as you’ll soon need more space than you know. This ‘hobby’ is addictive.

Now I have no intention of reproducing the instructions given with your can, as I’ve yet to brew from a tin that had insufficient instructions within. However, I’ve some additional info here, which may help understand the instructions.

Firstly, don’t let the instructions scare you. Whilst I too can’t stress enough the importance of cleanliness in brewing, it’s not something you need to stress about. The instructions are likely to give you nightmares about making 5 gallons of malt vinegar. This simply isn’t going to happen. If the bucket is dirty, wash it up. A clean bucket should then be sterilised with any old household sterilising stuff (Milton, VWP, a weak bleach solution), and rinsed until there’s no trace of your cleaner or steriliser. Now it’s ready to use. There’s no need for lab coveralls and industrial steam cleaners. It’s homebrew.

Now go back to the instructions. The next thing it’s probably going to harp on about is how quickly your wort is likely to become infected. Your wort is the watery malt extract stuff you’ve now got 5 gallons of, which hasn’t yet been fermented. If you leave the bucket unattended for a day or two then yes, you might have a sour tasting, very weakly alcoholic, undrinkable beer, but if you pitch (chuck in) your yeast into the wort as directed, you’ll have no problems. Put the lid on, put it somewhere not too warm, not too cold, and leave it for 12 hours. After twelve hours, or a day, or whenever you’ve got time, open the lid a little and take a peek. There should be a lovely, fluffy cloud-like layer going on, with lots of brown bitter-tasting bits sticking to it, and the smell can be anything between a loaf in the oven to rotten eggs. This is normal. Normal. Replace the lid having not sneezed into the bucket or dipped in anything unsavoury, relax, and continue to follow the instructions.

Finally, exercise patience. So it says leave your beer in bottles for 3 weeks? Leave it 6 and you’ll be amazed at what you’ve created. Don’t forget to tell everyone about it now; you’ll never make it through 5 gallons on your own.

Tiger Beer

Readers of this blog who already know a bit about brewing might occasionally think of me “he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing”, and indeed, some of the time you’d be right. However, to get a proper feel of the everyday low-level incompetence, you’d need a look at every aspect of brewing, including simply ordering malts. After spending 5 hours sitting beneath the letterbox, waiting for my delivery of malts, it only occurred to me after I’d opened the parcel that 25^oL isn’t the same as 25EBC*. So instead of 3kg of light crystal malt, which I’d probably use quite a lot of, I’ve got 3kg of CaraPils, which features in, as far as I can see, two recipes. D’oh! Never mind, I’ve got till Christmas before it goes off**!

So, today, I’m brewing 1 gallon of Tiger Beer to a Dave Line recipe. I’m only brewing a gallon because a) the battery on my drill stopped working, and I can’t finish my Zapap Lauter Tun, and b) because the recipe calls for lots of saccharin tablets, which I don’t want to use, and I don’t think are necessary, so if it turns out they are necessary, I’ve only made 1 gallon of a very dry lager.

So, as promised, here’s this post’s photo: My fantastically top of the range (make that on top of the range) Mash Tun. The WD40 on the right was for essential gas-hob maintenance, and hopefully won’t end up in the beer, but you never know.

The recipe features Pilsner Malt (although it asks for Lager malts), Flaked Rice, Hallertauer hops I’ll be fermenting it with Brewferm Lager Yeast, which this morning seems to be floating on top like an Ale yeast…

I’m not one for doling out advice, but here’s one: It’s quite important to double check your sums before you start brewing. This morning I was only bringing up half of the required strike water (the water in which you mash your malted grains) to temperature. After thinking something along the lines of “that doesn’t look like nearly enough water” but not quite thinking “oh well”, did I quickly add in some more. Oh well, disaster averted, what next?

* One of the three colour-codes used to describe the darkness of the malts, and how it will affect beer.
**A very malty Christmas ale?

Tum ti tum...

I seem to be doing a lot of waiting at the moment. I've bottled so much beer, and none of it is ready. I'm also waiting for a parcel of homebrew stuff, namely crushed malts, some new hops and yeast, in order to start making some all grain brews. I don't really need to make any more, but I'm going to anyway.

First up will be a 5 gallon barrel full of Lorna Light Bitter, from Ken Shales' Advanced Home Brewing, which is mainly Pale Malt Barley and Wheat Malt, shortly followed by a Tiger Beer copy from Dave Line's Brewing Beers Like Those You [pay through the nose for], which I'll bottle.

I did my first partial mash the other day, and as far as I can tell it worked OK, but it was with whole malt, which I had to crush myself. This time I've opted for bags of crushed malt, so that I don't have to spend an hour with a hammer before I even start the brewing process.

Also, I've finally bought batteries for my camera, so hopefulyl the remaining posts for the rest of my life will be illustrated in some way. For now, have a picture of my very modern lagering facility.

Lately, I've noticed the hammer has been more involved in my brewing; for crushing things and for capping glass bottles. It seems counter intuitive to hit glass bottles with a hammer, but so far, after a few frustrating first, second and third attempts, I've got the hang of it. But I really do hate bottling. And hitting glass bottles with hammers ought to release frustration, but instead, with every overflowing bottle, every bit of sucked up yeast, every square foot of kitchen covered in puddles of booze just drives me further up the wall! It really will drive me to drink.