Ingredients available:
Malts
8kg Vienna malt
6Kg Pilsner
5Kg Cara-amber 60EBC
5Kg Cara-hell 25EBC
2Kg Munich malt
2Kg Wheat
900g Sauermalz
1Kg Chocolate malt
Hops
100g Fuggles
40g East Kent Goldings 4.95% alpha
50g Target 9.7% - Use quickly, open & old
80g Cascade pellets
~50g Challenger 6.5% alpha (old)
~60g East Kent Goldings 6.3% alpha (old)
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Number XIII - First Taste
Not bad at all! This bottle was put into the fridge (ie. very cold so no fermentation would happen) on Saturday evening, having been bottled on Tuesday night, so it's perhaps no surprise that it's lacking a bit of carbonation even for an ale.
The flavour is good, the bitterness is about right, the hop flavour seems characteristic to the EKG used, but the dry hopped Cascade haven't come through much at all. I wonder what went wrong there. It's also a bit cloudy, not that that bothers me much but having a nice clear beer is just better and previous beers have been much better.
It's a bit less alcoholic than I feared, but that's a good thing - I thought that I'd produced a monster but it tastes around 5% which is still more than I wanted but within the bounds of normal. All in all I hope that some survives for the Brew Club meeting on the 25th.
The flavour is good, the bitterness is about right, the hop flavour seems characteristic to the EKG used, but the dry hopped Cascade haven't come through much at all. I wonder what went wrong there. It's also a bit cloudy, not that that bothers me much but having a nice clear beer is just better and previous beers have been much better.
It's a bit less alcoholic than I feared, but that's a good thing - I thought that I'd produced a monster but it tastes around 5% which is still more than I wanted but within the bounds of normal. All in all I hope that some survives for the Brew Club meeting on the 25th.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Number XIII - Bottling
Worked well enough, I used Chemipro Oxi to sterilise the bottles, I hope it has worked as it was all done a bit quickly and I wasn't quite so careful as I usually am to make sure the bottles are clean. May be a surprise or two in there. It also said on the box that rinsing wasn't necessary but on the outside the bottles were covered in a nasty white residue without rinsing, so the first four bottles were filled unrinsed, the rest were swilled out with cold water.
Bottling sugar was 90g of glucose, boiled for 15 minutes, then cooled and added to barrel. A small amount of this did get spilled, otherwise all went smoothly - now 40 bottles of beer downstairs. Temperature is around 12C. Guess a week of secondary fermentation will be enough before a first test, perhaps at the weekend.
Bottling sugar was 90g of glucose, boiled for 15 minutes, then cooled and added to barrel. A small amount of this did get spilled, otherwise all went smoothly - now 40 bottles of beer downstairs. Temperature is around 12C. Guess a week of secondary fermentation will be enough before a first test, perhaps at the weekend.
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