'Tis the season...

Needing an extra empty pop bottle is a weak excuse for drinking homebrew before lunch. In the end I didn’t actually need the extra bottle, but the lengths I’d go to to secure one are as yet unplumbed.

The reason I needed another bottle is I’ve finally gotten around to bottling some cider. It’s been under fermentation lock for about as long as I can remember. Now it’s split between three 1 litre bottles, primed and awaiting spring. I’ve only a few more bottles of the Mmmild to give away, and then that’s the homebrewing done for another year (though there are still bags of empties and a keg needs washing!). If Santa gets me some ‘AAA’ batteries for Christmas I’ll be making some more booze in January (thermometer and beard-trimming-machine both take ‘triple A’s, so no mashing or shaving has been done for some time).

I’ll be looking forward to making some more lagers while the weather’s cold, which will be the perfect refreshing drink for our guaranteed hot Irish summer, and while I’m home over the festive season I hope to make a homebrew demo video. This will be a short, introductory video aimed at people who got their first homebrew kit for Christmas, and want to get cracking right away!

So, to end 2011, I’m happy to look back on a progressive year of brewing, from a tin in March, extract in May, and making the leap into almost completely all grain by July! The beers have been getting better and better, I’m making less and less mess, and I’m getting a whole batch of all-grain done in less that 12 hours! And that’s all true except for the less mess bit.

So, I hope you’ll check back for the video in January, but until then, Merry Christmas, and a happy new year. And remember: Homebrew isn’t just for Christmas, it’s a way of life.

Brew 20: Looking like a Mmmild winter, 5 gal of Dark Mild, 3.5 – 4%

I’m making more beer, because I don’t think the 5 gallons of Hobgoblin is quite enough. Another 5 of mild ought to see me through to New Year. The mild, as it happens, purely by coincidence, is just a low alcohol version of the hobgoblin recipe. Honestly, the recipe is all from my head. I had 4.5lbs of light DME left over in a bag, going solid, and I thought a mild would mature in time for Christmas, y’know, so I could give the odd bottle out, if I can bear to let go. It was only afterwards, looking over the recipe, that I realised it was close in proportions, just about 2/3s of the gravity. Just as well the Hobgoblin tastes great, then.
Uh, yes… I did open up a bottle after barely two weeks.

So, to conclude the post, here is my mild recipe, called ‘Mmmild’, even though there’s no way of knowing if it’ll taste that good for a number of weeks. I’m really just assuming that it’ll be great because it’s made of beer.
4.5lbs Light DME
12oz crystal 55L
2.3oz. chocolate malt
1oz maltodextrine/carapils
All the above, plus a pinch of salt, prepared in the usual extract/grain way.
Then, 0.3oz Magnum, 0.85oz Fuggles, and 0.4 Styrian Goldings all at 60 mins.
Followed by Irish moss and some more hops for flavour and aroma. Fermented with Safale US-04 (English Ale)

I’ll rack it into a secondary, so that if I do manage to part with some bottles as some sort of gift, there won’t be a ridiculous amount of yeast at the bottom. I know it’s harmless, you know it’s harmless, but it does look odd. Fortunately, if some yeast does end up in the glass, the chocolate malt will have darkened the beer sufficiently to cover any of that cloudiness up. There could even be a bit of chill haze, if that’s the way it turns out. So long as it tastes nice, eh? Seeing as the Hobgoblin clone I’m currently drinking tastes so fantastic, I imagine a ‘lite’ version will go down equally well.

By the way, it tastes like Rum and Dandelion and Burdock, and I love it! But what if nobody else does? Maybe I shouldn’t give any away after all.

Brew #19: Brew Hobgoblin Clone, 5 gal, 5.8%abv

Which brings the total number of gallons of beer (not including ginger beer or cider), to a gut-busting, liver-loving 60 gallons, or about 480 pints! No officer, I’m not still over the limit…

The latest is a Hobgoblin clone to Orfy’s recipe, and is conditioning in a plastic barrel downstairs, with bluetack plugging a CO₂ leak, and a “drink on” date set for December. Although it’s a partial mash, with half malt, half extract, I did mash 6+lbs of malt, which is tricky enough, given my sparging capacity is 2 gallons, which I only found out after putting in two and a half gallons of mash.

It’s very clear to me that I’ve still a lot to learn, but as I’m sitting by the fire, contemplating my next brew, I’m very happy with how far I’ve come in the last two years, especially given that drinking isn’t necessarily conducive to learning much. Bags of crushed malt are now taking preference over tins of ready-mix, and I’m now considering (optimistically) malting my own home grown grains.

The next brew will probably be something from ‘Home Brewed Beers and Stouts’ by C.J.J. Berry, as I’ve some dried malt extract needs using up, and I’ve filled the shed, undersink cupboards and two shelves in the porch with empty bottles, it seems only right to fill them up with something, before Mrs Homebrew loses the rag and… recycles them! I want something quick and easy, so it’ll be something like a mild, I imagine, so I can get drinking it pretty soon. Also, they make great gifts to the over 18s, and the primary gifting season is nearly upon us.

Whilst making/drinking all this homebrew, I’m still working out how much CO₂ is produced from one 5 gallon batch of fermenting booze, as well as trifles like how to measure mash temperatures now the expensive thermometer’s broke, how to pour a pint of beer as opposed to a pint of head from the pressure barrel, and why the beer tastes so different from bottle to bottle! I suppose the only way to work these things out is to keep doing it all again, until I’ve perfected everything. After all, it’s not about the destination, but instead about the journey. Though I won’t be undertaking any journeys until the last of the 480 pints wears off.

Pride before fall (or by winter, at the very latest)

Tuesday night I set my alarm for 6 am. It was dark, quiet, and way before I’d usually get up unless there was some sort of emergency. In a way, there was. The homebrew supply is worryingly low (I’m drinking white wine as I write this, and if it weren’t for Mrs Homebrew’s birthday last week we wouldn’t have any of that)! As a result, I was forced up way before dawn in order to get a small all-grain brew going before the day’s choir commitments got in the way. Oh, and I borrowed a thermometer for the mash that very much needed to be back in someone else’s fridge by half 8, so six was as late as I could leave it.

I’m making a gallon to try a new recipe, and I’ve only enough stuff for one anyway. It is a trial of Dave Line’s Fuller’s London Pride, from his book ‘Brew Beers Like those you buy’. The beer bottle says ‘Target, Challenger and Northdown’ are the hops used, whereas the book opts for Fuggles and EKG. Naturally, I’ve gone for Fuggles and Styrian Goldings, as that’s all that was in the freezer.

My morning was spent mashing 1lb 6.5 oz of pale malt and 1.6 oz crystal, followed by a 90 min boil with the hops. The mash and sparge went well, though I’m still struggling to juggle jugs of hot water and the perforated chopped tomato tin I use to spray the grain bed gently. I’ll show you what I mean in a picture one day... actually, for that I’ll need a fourth hand.

Then an interesting weather phenomenon occurred halfway through the boil; a small Cumulo Nimbus formed at the kitchen ceiling. It was a beautiful sight, and at a certain angle a rainbow shone through from the striplight on the roof. I opened to doors and windows to let some of the steam out. Apparently condensation on the walls annoys Mrs Homebrew even more than burnt caramel on the stove, which ranks pretty high.

So, having set the alarm for 6, and by four in the afternoon the beer is frothing away very merrily, which isn’t bad at all. And neither is the state of the kitchen. The walls need a go over with a hair dryer, and I’ve a bag of wet grain I need to get rid of. I’m very happy to report that what went into the bucket will probably end up a lot like an English bitter, and we’ll see how much closer it gets in about 3 to four weeks!

St. Arthur, Patron Saint of Guinness

I’ll be celebrating St. Arthur’s day (22nd Sep, if the campaign has passed you by) by drinking some stout I’ve brewed myself. I’m only making a gallon because I’m not really a stout kinda guy, and every last one of my mates will be mooching promotional pints of the ‘real thing’ in town. Nevertheless, it’s important to observe Irish tradition by brewing this, a uniquely Irish beer, a beer that’s been around for nearly as long as marketing, which is the third oldest profession. Whilst doing a little research, I found this article in the library, and I faithfully reproduce part of it here:

First brewed by pagan settlers to Ireland c. 3000BC, the forerunner to Guinness was a beer made with burnt bread, mashed by the enzymes found in saliva, and made bitter with Dandelion and Yarrow. Years of brewing and celebrating followed, with little sign of change in the recipe. Then, at around the same time as the Romans were befriending Western Europe, St. Arthur (then known simply as Arthur the Sot, causing leading academics to wonder if this is the origin of the abbreviation St. for saint, as a mistranslation) began brewing stout more like the stuff we know it to be today. To begin with he pioneered a primitive malting process, bringing out the natural sugars found in the barley, instead of the much cruder way of grinding the bread into flour, baking with it, forgetting about it overnight until it burns, then mashing with saliva. This new brew was considered far superior to the older beers, however in order to get the dark colour drinkers were used to, St. Arthur still included portions of burnt bread. An early recipe, found carved into the an Cuin nEas stone, locally known as ‘Beer Stone’, located in county Meath, describes how St. Arthur used 8 parts malted barley to one part burnt bread, in order to make the beer he is famed for. Also found on the same stone is an early numerical system, believed to be a tally used to advertise and sell the beer. The contemporary currency was small rocks with holes in, and academics calculate that the price of a pint of St. Arthur’s beer was half a round stone with a hole in, and the modern equivalent is 4-euro 85c, a price now only charged in Dublin and hotels. Truly, St. Arthur’s contemporaries valued this beer highly!

In the 18th and 19th century many styles of beer were invented or developed by brewers, thanks to updated malting, kilning and brewing techniques, and the discoveries of Louis Pasteur. However, current versions of St. Arthur’s legendary brew have made only little steps towards modernity. Not much has changed from the original recipe carved into a stone nearly 1,800 years ago, and developments in yeast strains allowing brewers to use pure yeast strains in their beers have not been entirely taken on board by brewers at the Guinness factory; there are still vats in the St. James’ Gate brewery where the wild yeast strain Brettanomyces is actively encouraged in order to maintain the taste that would have been familiar to drinkers four thousand years ago.

The article then goes into detail about palaeontological evidence of early Guinness drinkers and some interesting facts about the mysterious death of St. Arthur, and the amazing feat of surviving on his beer alone for 40 days and nights, but it’s the above section that interested me most.

So, I’ve brewed to the basic Guinness principle, 80% pale malt, 10% flaked barley and 10 % roast, unmalted barley. However, to make it a little different, I’m using 5% roast and 5% chocolate malt instead of just 10% roast, mainly because I’ve got some lying around. It’s been boiled for ages in order to try and get the length at 1 gallon, with an O.G. of 1048. Seeing as brewday was the 1st of September, I’m not expecting a very dry stout by the 22nd, but hopefully it will be ready to try and, god willing, will be a suitable tribute to St. Arthur, patron saint of Guinness.

Calculating IBU & Copper Hop needs!

It’s not something I lose sleep over, seeing as my scales aren’t pinpoint accurate anyway, but I’ve noticed in my homebrew reading that there isn’t a suitable calculation for getting IBUs or ounce weights for British gallons. Papazian has a nice one for American homebrewers using grams, and even goes as far as to suggest an equivalent for British measures, but in spite of the use of ounces, which weigh the same in the US and the UK, the equation still figures in US gallons, which, as I’ve already said somewhere, is a bit of a wussy gallon. So, here is an adapted equation I’ve been working on for a couple of hours.

Firstly, you can either use the original Papazian sum, which is: and then correct it for UK gallons by dividing the answer by 19 (the number of litres in 5 US gallons - 5 gallons being a typical batch size) and multiplying that by 22.5 (the number of litres in 5 UK gallons), or by multiplying the answer by 1.1842. Those will give you an answer in ounces, and they shouldn’t be miles out.

Or you could use my own simpler contribution to Imperial homebrewing, by using the “Evans UK factor”, or the EKs Factor!

The Eks Factor

The Eks Factor is a simple number that you can use within the above equation that will give you an answer for your common or garden UK gallon brew. So instead of 1.34, use the number 1.587, and thus the equation becomes:
So, for a 5 UK gallon brew, with an IBU of 50, hop utilisation of 30%, an Alpha Acid content of 6% and the Eks Factor, 1.587, the sum goes as follows:
To get an accurate answer you do need to use the factor to 3 decimal places, but then, if like me your scales don’t go much lower than an ounce, I’d recommend, in Papazian’s own words, “don’t worry, have a homebrew”.

I’ve looked through about half of the books on homebrewing available, and the older UK books tend to only use AAU and HBUs in the calculations, which is too general for me. The American books, for example Papazian’s The Complete Joy... doesn’t account for the larger UK gallon, and the exquisitely detailed Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels has something that’s far too complicated for me to get a straight answer out of – my head just can’t get round it! Brew Classic European Beers At Home has an equation in grams that can be converted into ounces if needed, by dividing the gram answer by 28.35 (the number of grams in an ounce), although that answer will be about 0.002 oz out!

Anyway, to sum up, for a very easy equation for anyone brewing in macho-gallons, use the following: I’m no mathematician, and given that I’m not even sure my hop utilisation IS 30%, it really is just splitting hairs. In order to accurately assess your hop needs or IBUs, colour of your beer etc. read Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beers. But if you’re merely staggering drunkenly towards your perfect pint, my Eks Factor will suit you nicely! Good luck, and happy nit-picking.

Cider #2011

This year I’ve harassed two people for cider apples, and apart from the absence of wassailing and being chased down the street by an angry man, it’s as typical an old fashioned cider as one can hope to get, and still have a good chance of success. This year the cider contains ONLY apple juice, with one Sodium Metabisulphate tablet (Campden Tablet), and Young’s Cider yeast.

This year the process was simplified too. Rinse the apples a bit, remove anything you wouldn’t feed to a pig, and then mince the rest in a good fruit juicer, stalks and all. The apples are red looking (see photo) and the juice that came out looked fantastic, like a Tequilla Sunrise, but unfortunately the colour hasn’t hung around to be in the actual cider. The stuff that will ferment (O.G. 1046, by the way, which is two washing-up bowls full making one gallon) is a typical yellow-green apple juice colour.

So, with campden tablet in place, I added the juice directly on top, so that it doesn’t get chance to go brown, and I’ll wait 24 hours before pitching the yeast. I think that is so that the tablets have time to react with the oxygen in the apple juice, and not mess up the sweet-toothed yeast.

Once it’s fermented I’ll put it into a demijohn, rack at regular intervals to keep the cider clear and nice tasting, and I’ll try and get it drunk around New Year. 2010’s cider was very dry after leaving it 7 months before drinking, so I’d like something a little sweeter this time, but we’ll see.

This time the whole cider making process took only about two hours, most of which was spent picking bits of apple off the floor, ceiling and out of my hair. Don’t worry I didn’t juice those bits. I do have standards.