Number XIII - Research & Recipe

As ever Number XIII will be an ale, light golden brown coloured, with distinct hop character - some bitterness but much aroma and flavour.  It would be a bonus if there's a subtle fruity or ester flavour and for this I'll try dry hopping with Cascade pellets.  The alcohol content will be about 4% and there will be about 30 litres of it.

Compared to previous brews the grain bill will be a touch more at 6.5Kg of malt, to ensure it's got the alcohol content I'm after, and the hops are chosen by what I've got - Target & East Kent Goldings for the brew (bittering and aroma) and then for something a bit different I'm going to also dry hop with Cascade at 1g/litre in the fermentation barrel.

The Recipe
Malts:
4Kg Pilsner malt - base 1
2Kg Vienna malt - base 2, colour
500g Malted wheat for head retention
60g Sour malt to lower the pH and aid mashing

Hops
Boil:
50g Target  9.7% alpha, sealed packet from 2007

Aroma & Flavour, 5 minutes before end of boil
39g East Kent Goldings  4.95% alpha last 15 min
21g East Kent Goldings  4.95% alpha last 5 min

Dry
Cascade pellets 5.9% alpha at 1g/litre into brewing barrel before adding yeast.

Adjuncts, just to annoy the Reinheitsgebot fanatics:
15g Irish moss in the boil, last 15 minutes


Method
There will be a three stage mash, 30 minutes at 65C, 72C, 76C  with the Pilsner malt being the dictating factor there.  The schedule was given to me by Jakl in Richelbrau, he's an ex-Augustiner braumeister so he should know what to do.  I'm always cautious with the mashing as the only near disaster I had was caused by that.  This should also give a good malt characteristic to the beer.

To achieve this I'll heat 10l water to 80C and run onto grains.  This may cause the 50C stage to be a bit hotter but that should be OK, and I can control down easier than up.  Then another 2.5l of water at 90C for the subsequent stages.  This will allow for 14l or 15l of wort before sparging, and enough headroom to not overfill the 20l boiler.  The grain/water ratio should be 1Kg / 3litres so I'm a bit short of water.

The Braueule uses steam to heat the mash if necessary and that seems like a good idea.  I wonder if I can think of some way to produce steam that can work like this.

Boil 90 minutes as Pilsner malt can produce DMS and a longer boil is necessary to prevent this, although the comments on that page say they've used Pilsner malt as a base and never noticed anything funny with shorter boils.  Usually I use Pale Ale Malt but nobody had that available this time.

The major equipment change since Number XII is I have insulated my mash tun plastic barrel with 4 layers of 3mm silver coated boiler insulation on all sides and the lid, which I hope will be enough.  Last time I had lots of trouble keeping the mash temperature stable.  To the mash tun I also added a tap, and bought better 1/2 inch screw connectors for the water connections so I'll waste less time drying the kitchen out afterwards and perhaps annoy the Mrs. a bit less.

Then for the hops I've invested in hop bags which should make the filtering after the boil a bit easier - I've always had trouble preventing hops getting in the cooler which as I use a plate cooler is a significant problem if it happens.

Now I'm just off to the shops to see if I can find any way of making steam, and some hygienic sealed boxes for storing malt in while it's in the cellar.