The Amber Ale finally get's brewed!

Sunday was another brew day for me and I finally got round to brewing the American Amber Ale recipe from John Palmer's "How to brew".

This was supposed to be brew #2, but the porter took precedence over that. Then I was going to brew it on my last brew day, only to find I hadn't ordered the crystal malt I needed! So at long last I got round to brewing it and it turned out to be one of my most successful brew days to date! Now, I must state the caveat that I don't know how the beer will finally turn out, but in terms of how the day went, I class it a success.

In previous days I've been guilty of not preparing enough and not checking my recipe beforehand. Not this time! My recipe was double checked and ordered in plenty of time, my starter was made in time, and there were no unwelcome surprises on the day. I even remembered to hold back six litres of liquor from the mash, so I could use it to make temperature adjustments.

I finished only one point off my target gravity at 1.053 after the boil, so I was pretty pleased with the day.

Two things I learned:

1 - When I use a slow lauter, as I have been the past couple of brews, my system has an efficiency of roughly 75%. By 'slow' I mean 30-40 minutes, then batch sparge, then 30-40 mins to run that off too (As a side note I think I can afford to do this quicker, but I'll experiment with this in future). This is really useful to finally get a handle on, as future recipe design can now be a lot more accurate. When I first started brewing I assumed that I wouldn't be very efficient and I think that led to my first brews finishing high; being stronger versions of the beers they were supposed to be (Robust Porter, I'm looking at you). I assumed that my own skill as a brewer would translate to system efficiency, and while this is true to an extent, the system also has an inherent efficiency. I think my research/decisions on what equipment to buy, and whether to buy a false bottom, paid off here and resulted in a system which will be pretty efficient. I'm guessing that the false bottom helps quite a bit in drawing wort evenly from throughout the mash.

2 - In future I will be skimming my boil. My first couple of brews clogged up the hop filter when it came to draining out of the boiler, so a couple of brews ago I decided to skim the foam off the top of the wort when the boil hit. To my surprise, when I did this the hope filter stayed clear and the boiler drained like the proverbial racehorse! However, at brew-club I asked a couple of people about skimming and the consensus was that it was a bad idea; the proteins help with head retention and clarity of the beer, the real problem was my hop filter. So yesterday I experimented and only partly skimmed the boil, result? Hop filter gummed up again and an extra 30-40 minutes was wasted at the end of the day. So next time I will be skimming. There's quite a good discussion of skimming on this excellent blog: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/09/do-you-skim-off-foam-as-your-wort-comes.html I have to say I agree with him completely. I've not noticed my skimmed beer being less clear, so I'm inclined to believe that the anti-skimming is all based on rumour that has acquired the status of fact through repetition!

I say I learned these things today because this was the first brew day that I've been happy with. I can treat this as a control that I'll aim to repeat in future. I might make mistakes, or even find improvements to my methods, but I'll be able to measure their impact against days like yesterday.

Another brew day, another minor disaster!

Well, clearly I've learnt nothing from my last brew day. I was saying something about preparation, right? So with that in mind I got up this morning all ready to brew an American Amber Ale (the one from How To Brew). This was supposed to be brew batch #2 and I've had the hops and flaked wheat ready since I started all grain brewing, but other recipes have got in the way and I haven't got round to actually making it. The recipe uses some hops I haven't had a go with yet, so I thought it a good one to have a crack at, to broaden my experience. Plus it sounds delicious! So I made some coffee and toast and got the boiler on.

Breakfast of 'champions'

I got the water treated with CRS and went to weigh out the grain, and that's when I hit the first problem - I didn't have the crystal malt I needed! Balls! Having paid attention to the hops and everything else, I assumed I'd got the grain. Never assume!

So a quick change of plan and I switched recipe to an English IPA and got the boiler back on again. Luckily I'd planned to do two brews this weekend, so I had a second recipe ready to go - with all the ingredients too! I got the mash temperature pretty quickly this time. Thinking ahead now, I keep back five litres in the hot liquor tank then add the grain. That way I've always got water spare to do temperature adjustments with.

So with the mash up and running I headed down to the local homebrew shop to get the crystal malt for the amber recipe. I shouldn't have bothered. I needed crystal 60 and crystal 120, all the shop had was "crystal malt"! No indication of colour at all. Great. So just one brew this weekend then!

I did manage to pack in a few other jobs while brewing this time though. I made this rather natty jacket for my boiler. Ok, so it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it really made a difference. It's a foil backed camping mat, but the time to reach the boil was noticeably quicker and the boil was stronger too.

Heath Robinson would be proud!

I also transferred my American IPA #2 to a secondary fermenter and dry hopped it, while lautering today's brew. And most importantly of all, got finished at bang on 5pm to watch the rugby! Great work boys, all is not lost yet... Let's see how Ireland can do against England today now.

And here it is this morning, in garish water bath with blow-off  fitted just in case.

I'll be quite interested to see how this turns out, not least because it's the first time I've used dry yeast. It's S-04 which a lot of people seem to swear by. It's certainly cheaper than liquid yeast, so we'll see. Ideally I'd like to start harvesting my yeast and keeping cultures, but there's plenty of reading to be done before I attempt that. Probably...

An Unwelcome visitor!

It seems like I've encountered my first real brewing disaster - an infection in my Tripel. This is really disappointing because initial signs were good for this. I felt like I'd done my research right for the recipe, and the brew-day went reasonably well. Even the initial tastings were promising, but as it has continued to ferment out it has developed a nasty, dry, powdery astringency. The body has also started to disappear since first tasting. I think this is due to an infection from Lacto bascillus or something similar. I've read that they can give these off flavours and thin out beers once infected. I'll take a sample along to BCB on Thursday for a second opinion on the cause, but I can see this batch going down the drain.

When I first found this off taste in the beer, I thought it was going to be something process related, but I couldn't think what I'd done that would cause astringency. My mash temperature was low and there were no dark grains involved. I then thought it could be oxidation from the longer lauter I used. My first beers hadn't had this problem, and the lauter time was the only process change I had made. But i think that it is down to an infection now.

I'll clearly have to tighten up my sanitising routine for the next brews. I'm usually pretty careful but, now I think back, I did use my brewing paddle to clear trub from the hop-screen as I was running the wort from the boiler and I can't remember sanitising it first! That might be the culprit. Otherwise I have another american IPA fermenting at the moment which might be in danger of the same issue. Finger crossed it's ok though as I don't want to have to ditch another batch - this is supposed to be saving me money!

Time will tell...

This is doubly annoying as I've just swapped 100g of Cascade hops for a box of belgian beer bottles! I heard that a tripel should be quite highly carbonated and standard beer bottles might turn into bottle bombs! So I got hold of some small belgian bottles, which have thicker glass and are able to hold more pressure.

40-odd bottles all de-labled and washed out, sprayed with sanitiser, and draining  on the dishwasher drawers.

Yes, this is what I do with my evenings!

I guess I'll have to wait a bit in order to use them now, but at least they'll be all clean for when I need them!