Beach Brew

I brewed the summer ale last night in my first ever evening brew. I’m normally get up early and get started early kind of brewer. However, I thought I was working on Saturday so I decided to get a brew in on Thursday night. Besides taking a little longer than I expected because I thought I had a stuck sparge all went well. The stuck sparge turned out not to be one but that is a story for another day. I came sort of close to hitting my numbers on this brew. I had a really good rolling boil but didn’t boil off as much wort as I normally do. So I ended up with a couple of extra litres. My efficiency also took another small jump.

I dropped off my entries for SABSOSA today, this is one of the biggest brewing comps in the state. I will find out in a couple of weeks how they do. I am judging at the comp too, not in styles I have entered though. I’m looking forward to the judging as I have come a fair way in my tasting/judging since last year when I was a bit of a novice. I’m still not an expert but I am getting better.

Whilst up at Grumpy’s I also picked up my Bier Der Barde yeast. I am really looking forward to brewing with it. I am still working on the malt bill for that beer. I need to do some more research. I did read “Farmhouse Ales”. It was an interesting book but didn’t focus on the technical side of things as much as I had hoped it would. I will be brewing the BDG in about three weeks. I want to clear out the fermentation fridge of my Summer and Porter then get the BDG and a Bock on.

I decided to get a mid week brew in this week. I don’t know what to call this beer so I will call it a summer ale. The idea is a nice easy drinking maybe even a little lager like ale. There will be no lagering for this beer though. I want it in the bottle fourteen days after brew day. The basic recipe is:

50% Vienna
22.5% Munich
22.5% Pils
5% Carrapils

bitter to 25ibu with magnum
then some hallertau at 10 minutes for just a touch of flavour

Fermented with US56

Hopefully this will produce a nice clean easy drinking beer. I want to get this one done as I have a Biere De Garde and Bock planned after that and will need the fermenting fridge for some extended lagering.

Checked on the porter I brewed on Sunday today. It has dropped from 1.060 when pitched on Sunday evening to 1.014 this evening. That is just how an ale should attenuate. Get all the business done in 3 days. If I get the opportunity I will rack it iff the trub tomorrow night an allow it to condition for a couple of weeks before bottling.

I really think this must have a lot to do with the yeast nutrient I used and the significant amount of aeration that I did. This fermentation was kept at 19 for the entire duration of the ferment. This is at the bottom of the range for the 1098 yeast. Tasting was a little difficult as it is still very full of yeast and cloudy. It had a nice rich malt flavour but I think it is a little early to tell much.

The Fox Tales » Blog Archive » All “signs” point to Firefox
This is awesome. Excellent guerilla marketing campaigns. It is amazing how much trouble these people have gone to.

Good Math, Bad Math : Innumerate Fundamentalists and π
What can you say to an argument like that. This does prove that arguing on the net is futile though. Seriously how could you make that argument with a straight face?

The porter is in the fermenter and the brew day went pretty well. This was a robustish porter weighing in at a starting gravity of 1.060. The recipe was adapted at the last minute when I realised I didn’t have as much of some malts as I thought I did. Specifically I had to drop the chocolate back a little, 100gm instead of 200gm, but I upped the chocolate wheat and added a little black patent. The base was Joe White Trad Ale and Wey Munich. I also had a touch of carraaroma in the mix too. It tasted ok going into the fermenter but I have trouble picking much up at that stage of the process.

This was mashed at 66-67C for 90minutes. The mash was started at 67 and was just under 66 at the end of the mash. I am hoping to strike a good balance between fermentability and body. I did notice how the weather made a difference to my mash though. When I made my wheat beer it was a cold day and i lost a couple of degrees over the mash. Today it a nice warm day and i only lost 1c over the 90 minutes. The wort coming out of the mash was so clear I did not feel the need to recirc at all. the sparge got almost stuck for a while but a little cut got it moving again.

The one bad part of today’s brew was that it was a bit windy. The wind seemed to be swirling about too. Thus I couldn’t really block it off. So my um that boil was not quite as active as I would normally like. It was still a decent rolling boil but not a really aggressive boil like I normally do. Maybe it is time for a bigger burner?

I bittered with some Magnum that I got a few weeks ago. I also added a little Golding’s for flavour. This was just a small addition as I am hoping the malt flavours come through on this one. Nothing else eventful happened on the brew day really.

I did taste my Schwarz and Pils for the first time today though. Both have come up a treat in my opinion. There is a little what I think is astringency in the Schwarz but other than that it has a lovely malty character and is a pretty clean beer. I don’t know if the pils is actually a pils or not but it is bloody good. The NZ Saaz hops don’t have quite right profile for a real pils in my opinion but they do make a lovely lager. I will see if other people think it is worth entering either of these two in the comps and what class the pils would be best suited to.