Competition Time!

Today I dropped off my entries for the National Homebrew Competition! I'm really excited about this, especially so because I'm going along to JUDGE too!

I'm going to put it out there right now, that I don't expect to win! Obvious I know, but that seems to be the first question you get when you say you're entering a competition. What I'm really looking forward to is some good feedback on my beer, from people who know what they're talking about, tasting the beer blind. It'll be really interesting to find out where my beers stack up against other peoples' and maybe get some hints about how to improve. And if I can pick up a medal along the way, then I'm not going to complain!

Labels and entry forms ready to go!

I'm hoping to score quite highly with a couple of my entries, but I've also got a couple that are over-carbonated and will probably gush everywhere when the judges open them - always a good first impression! I've also entered my Legendary Wit, which has only been in the bottle for a week, so who knows whether it'll be carbonated by next weekend!


As I mentioned, I'm also going along to judge! Obviously I won't be doing any of the categories I'm entering. It's going to be a really fun day getting to try so many different home brews, though scoring a lot of beers in one day is going to be tough. I can see the last beers taking longer than the first! I've not done competition judging before, so I'll be paired with an experienced judge on the day. They'll have casting vote if our scores end up far apart, but I'm hoping I can do a good job. We've done several structured tastings to BJCP guidelines at brewclub, so I know the process. And on Thursday we had a refresher and prep session.

Wish me luck!

Legendary Wit

05/08/2013
O.G. 1.046

Water Treatment
Lactic acid: 7ml to Mash water (17l)
CaCl: 4g to Mash, 4g to Sparge.
Epsom salts: 4g to Mash, 4g to Sparge.

Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 2.36 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (3.9 EBC) Grain 1 48.6 % 2.00 kg Wheat, Flaked (3.2 EBC) Grain 2 41.2 % 0.49 kg Oats, Flaked (2.0 EBC) Grain 3 10.1 % 200.00 g Oat Husks (Mash 0.0 mins) Other 4 - 10.00 g Tettnang [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 6.5 IBUs 20.00 g Saaz (2012) [3.10 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 6 2.7 IBUs 15.00 g Saaz [4.15 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 7 1.6 IBUs 40.00 g Orange zest (Boil 5.0 mins) Herb 8 - 4.00 g Chammomile (Boil 5.0 mins) Herb 9 - 10.00 g Coriander Seed (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 10 - 10.00 g Saaz (2012) [3.10 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 11 0.0   IBUs 1.0 pkg Belgian Wit Ale (White Labs #WLP400) Yeast 12 -

Mash
This was the first go at a non-standard mash for me. Previously, all my beers have been the product of a single infusion mash, occasionally cold steeping dark grains when I feel adventurous! This time, however, I went all out crazy for the complicated mash!
The simple bit first, most of the Pilsner and Munich malts went into the mash tun as usual with around 7 litres of water. The water was heated to result in a mash rest at 50C. I put the lid on and left it there to do what it does while I dealt with the next few steps.
Most of the Wheat and Oats were put into two 5 litre pots on the hob - it would've been all of the wheat and oats but my pots aren't big enough! Some Pilsner malt was mixed in too, to add some diastatic power. Unmalted wheat and oats have no enzymes, so won't convert on their own. I then added water to each of these mini-mashes at a rate of (behold the inconvenience of imperial - metric conversions) 9.222L water : 2.56kg grain!
With my mini-mashes perilously close to the tops of the pots I followed (as best I could) this schedule:
50C for 15 mins
65C for 15 mins
Boil for 15 mins
I'd love to say this went off without a hitch, but one pot heated up much quicker than the other, and unfortunately I was measuring the temperature in the other on at the time! So one mini mash overshot the first rest quite a bit and then had to drop back down to 50C, but hey ho!


After following this schedule and miraculously avoiding any boil overs, the mini-mashes were dumped into the main mash. This magically brought the main mash temp up to approximately 70C (plus or minus a couple of degrees) where it was left to complete the mash for 30mins.
Just to add a bit more variety amd margin for error in the brewday, I also decided to batch sparge this one! This was surprisingly easy I thought, though I have zero experience. I think it was a bit quicker, which was great as the uber-complex mash had extended the brew day somewhat (not to mention the hangover I had), But it did mean I had to stand by the mash tun. I has a hose coming from the HLT which I ran liquor through slowly and sprinkled over the grain bed. Maybe not textbook techniques, and certainly no automation involved, but I'm winging it here! Did I say I had a hangover?!
The rest of the day was fairly run of the mill and much more like a standard brew day. The 40g of Orange zest that I added was the weight of zest from six navel oranges. The coriander seeds I weighed out into a plastic bag and then whacked with the back of a spoon to 'crush' them. And the chammomile was the equivalent of the contents of two tea bags.
The 'curse' of our surprisingly good summer here in Bristol meant that cooling the brew post-boil was a pain in the arse! I got it down to around 37ish and then just ran it off into a sanitised fermenting bin and sealed it up. I sat it in a cold water bath and left it to cool down overnight. With the heat of the cold water coming out of the tap that was running through the immersion chiller, I reckon I could've dropped the temperature to 20C. But the quantity of water that would've used, and for the amount of time it would take, it just wasn't worth it.

This is actually from 20/08/13, but you get the idea.

After pitching the yeast there was a little lag for it to get going, but then it formed a big fluffy krausen in the fermenter and seems to be going about its business quite happily. I have no real means of cooling the ferment so it's just been left to rise with the weather. But I think an average temp of 23 is realistic.
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20/08/13 (day 15)
S.G. 1012

Close, but not quite there yet...

I had thought the ferment would be done by now, but apparently not. Having used this yeast before I'm sure that the gravity will drop further than this. I haven't been taking regular readings, so I don't know what the profile of the ferment has been. That might be interesting to do in future, to see whether it slows or stalls a bit. But I gues this carries a risk of infection when brewing on such a small scale.
Anyway, I can't bottle it yet so I'm leaving it for another week while I go to a festival! Hopefully it'll be done by the time I get back.
As a side note, I think the average temperatures have dropped and it looks like it's fermenting more in the range of 18-21C, which may explain the slower ferment but is also more in the range I wanted.
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31/08/13
F.G. 1.005

A surprisingly low final gravity, probably 4-5 points lower than I was expecting. The beer tastes great though! Good body despite the low gravity, and a nice dry finish. The fruit and spices have mellowed in the brew and combined really well. There is a great aroma of bananas too, which I am really pleased about. This is probably from the drop in temperature allowing a cooler ferment.

Will bottle today with 100g of sugar.
Quite prematurely I have already entered this into the National Homebrew Competition! Luckily I think it's turned out quite well, so it'll be great to get some proper feedback on it. Now I just need it to bottle condition beautifully over the next two weeks before judging. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute!
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Experimenting with coffee

Doesn't time fly! Recently brewing has taken a bit of a back seat to other goings on. The recent Lions rugby tour has taken up a good part of my weekends lately and taken it away from brewing time. All the matches are on Sky, which means I have to watch them down the pub! At 11am! so that's knocked out a lot of my usefulness at weekends. What a tour though, and what a result! My time has been well spent!

I have managed to fit in a couple of brews though, and one of them was a coffee oatmeal stout, or breakfast stout if you prefer (I think I do). Pulling inspiration, and most of the recipe, from the pages of the mad fermentationist (again), I brewed up an oatmeal stout that I then dosed with coffee. I decided to follow the idea of adding ground coffee, rather than brewed coffee this time. As the flavour of the coffee was going to be key here I took a pre-pub trip to Two-Day Roast, an independent coffee roaster in Bristol. Luckily the shop was quite quiet at that time, so I explained what I was doing and we talked through what coffee might go well. The lady there (whose name I forgot to get) wasn't entirely convinced by the idea of a coffee beer - "Why don't you just make beer that tastes like beer". But she really knows her coffee and gave me some great help. I came away with a lighter, sweeter Kenyan bean as well as a darker, more robust Indonesian bean - deciding to split the batch in half an try one coffee in each.

Coffee beans from Two Day Roast.

Having bought beans, I then had to buy a grinder too!

So here's what I made:

Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 3.92 kg Maris Otter Low Colour Pale Malt (2.5 EBC) Grain 1 60.1 % 1.18 kg Oats, Flaked (Toasted) (2.0 EBC) Grain 2 18.0 % 0.52 kg Black Barley (Stout) (985.0 EBC) Grain 3 8.0 % 0.30 kg Chocolate Malt (886.5 EBC) Grain 4 4.6 % 0.26 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC) Grain 5 4.0 % 0.19 kg Crystal 145 EBC (5.9 EBC) Grain 6 3.0 % 0.15 kg Chocolate Malt (Pale) (525.0 EBC) Grain 7 2.3 % 50.00 g Tettnang [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 30.6 IBUs 24.00 g EKG 2011 [5.40 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 9 2.6 IBUs 6.00 g Goldings, East Kent [6.40 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 0.9 IBUs 1.0 pkg Irish Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP004) Yeast 11 - 45.00 g Coffee beans (Secondary 24.0 hours) Flavor 12 -

26/05/2013
All dark grains steeped in cold water overnight. Ratio of 454g to 1.9L => 1900/454= 4.185ml/g
970g * 4.185 = 4,059ml. Will be added to boil with 15mins to go, to sterilise it.
Water Treatment
Mash: 7ml Lactic acid, 1g Epsom salts, 1g Gypsum
Sparge: 1g Epsom salts, 1g Gypsum.
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27/05/2013
O.G. 1.058
Brew day went smoothly, the only issue was with the second runnings, post boil, which were quite cloudy. I expect this was due to the oats in the mash. Could be some issue with turbidity as a result, but I doubt that's very important in a stout.
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09/06/2013 (day 13)
S.G. 1.013

Fermentation has pretty stopped now, I think this is the F.G. From experience with this yeast, I don't think the S.G. will drop any further.
Split the batch in two and added 26g of very coarse ground coffee to each. The coffee was put into nylon bags so that it can be easily removed. Planning to remove the coffee after 24 hours, but I'll taste it at that point too.

One batch received a sweeter, lighter coffee from Kenya, the other had a darker, stronger coffee from Indonesia.
The stout itself didn't taste that sweet on it's own, so I'm expecting the Kenyan coffee to produce a better finished product. But the initial bitterness of the stout could well mellow over time to suit the Indonesian bean better.
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I did taste it after 24 hours and I reckon that was about the right amount of time. There was a good coffee flavour without overpowering the malts. The thing that is slightly strange though, is that the coffee tastes quite 'green'. As it hasn't been brewed, the flavour of the coffee is a lot drier and has more punch. It takes you by surprise when you first drink it as you expect the regular coffee flavour, and this is quite different. Once you get used to it and stop expecting a cup of coffee it's pretty good.

I'm not sure which I prefer best yet, more testing is required. But I will also let this age a bit longer to allow the flavours to mellow and combine a bit more. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this and it's good to try something out of the ordinary. This is the first time I've flavoured my beers with anything really, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops.

Favourite pubs of Bristol, part one.

Last night I decided to take the long way home from work and visit a couple of pubs en-route. I drank some of the best beers I've had in ages (that weren't homebrew, of course!) and it inspired me to put some of my favourite Bristol pubs up here. Now, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but when I was deciding which places to go to for good beer on the way home, these were the places I chose.

First off is The Three Tuns in Hotwells. It's an Arbor Ales pub, so it's always got a good selection of Arbor brews, but it also sources some of the best craft brews from all over Britain. Last night I started, perhaps in a foolhardy fashion, with a half of the Double Citra IPA from The Kernel brewery. A truly stunning beer! I followed it up with another great beer from the Moor Beer Company, and a chat with Henry behind the bar. Turns out he's a homebrewer too - always a good sign!

The Hillgrove in Kingsdown is another favourite of mine. It's owned by the Dawkins brewery, so expect a few of their beers on tap. Thankfully, their beers have got much better since they took on a new head brewer, and they've started experimenting with a few more styles too. I had their ruby mild the other day and it was delicious. They also stock local bottled beers as well as having a few guest ales on pump. All the beers are listed on chalkboards with tasting notes too, so picking your poison is a little less pot-luck! The Hillgrove also has a lovely little courtyard garden out the back.

The Hare on the Hill (or on twitter here) has been a favourite pub for a while but, as a Bath Ales pub, they were only allowed to stock Bath Ales beers. As a result I found myself going there less often. I find their beers less to my taste now, though I used to like them a lot. Whether that's down to their beers getting worse or not is a much discussed topic in Bristol (my opinion is that Gem is not a patch on what it used to be). Nowadays, however, the landlord has been given a bit more freedom to stock some good guest beers too, so it was my absolute pleasure to order a Magic Rock High Wire the other day. A lovely pint it was too! It's clear that the landlord here knows his beer, as evidenced by the Kernel Table Beer in the fridge. So it was no surprise to find out he's a homebrewer too!

So, that's the first three pubs in my favourites list. It's great how the staff at these places are embracing twitter and facebook to get the punters involved, and to provide a up to date list of what beers they've got on. A pub should be proud of it's beers! To be continued...

Photos lifted from google images, will be replaced with my own when I remember to take some!

Saison time again

Summer has finally arrived in Bristol! Or is this just a late spring heatwave? It seems like so long since the sun came out I can't remember what season this weather is most representative of. But whatever the case, yesterday was hot so I brewed OUTSIDE! That's right, alfresco brewing has come to Bristol. Though it was only halfway through the brew day that I decided to move outside, so rather than being a relaxing day in the garden, there was a significant amount of scrabbling around for extension leads and general flapping about to get ready in time!

Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 2.64 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 1 58.3 % 0.88 kg Maris Otter Low Colour Pale Malt (2.5 EBC) Grain 2 19.4 % 0.76 kg Wheat, Flaked (3.2 EBC) Grain 3 16.7 % 0.25 kg Corn, Flaked (2.6 EBC) Grain 4 5.6 % 67.00 g Hallertauer (2012) [2.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 24.4 IBUs 1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 6 - 25.00 g Saaz [4.15 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 7 3.6 IBUs 33.00 g Saaz [4.15 %] - Boil 2.0 min Hop 8 3.0 IBUs 46.00 g Saaz (2012) [3.10 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 min Hop 9 0.0 IBUs 8.00 g Saaz [4.15 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 min Hop 10 0.0 IBUs 1.0 pkg French Saison (Wyeast Labs #3711) [50.28 ml] Yeast 11 -

So, it's another saison using the 3711 yeast but this one has no sugar addition. The two recipes I've made so far both had sugar additions, and I'm not sure whether I like this. There's a slightly sharp, cidery taste in the beer that I think might come from the sugar. I've heard from another source that the 3711 doesn't perform too well with sugar additions, so I looked around for a recipe without one. Happily I found this recipe on the mad fermentationist's blog here. It's his Lomaland saison recipe and so I have high hopes! Plus, the flaked corn is not something I've used before, so following this recipe I should be able to put together a recipe of my own that I'm happy with.

Alfresco boiling!

Brew day went smoothly but boiling outside may have resulted in greater boil off, as the final volume was down one litre on expected to 22L. Actually, this may also be down to the amount of hop material in the boiler. I used a total 179g of hops, so this probably absorbed quite a bit of wort. Minor panic with hops again as I didn't have the correct alfa acid percentages in beersmith. Had to re-jig the amounts to take account of this, but worked it all out in time.

The only other problem was that one of the extension leads I was using tripped out. I hadn't unwound it fully and I think it overheated or something. Switched to the other element for the rest of the boil, but don't think the extension lead has recovered. Might be time to get a new one!

Post boil, the wort went into the fermenter with O.G. 1.046, which is only one point above expected.

And if you're interested in such things as water treatment:
Lactic Acid: 9ml to mash to bring pH down to 5.46.
Gypsum: 4g to mash water, 4g to sparge water.
Epsom salts: 2g to mash water, 2g to sparge water.
Water left out overnight for chlorine to evaporate. Campden tablet added to drive off any chloramine.