Category Archives: Recipes

30 Nov 2013
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Experiments, Recipes

Bulk and Pale, finally there

Whoops, this was meant to go up a couple days ago! Anyway, here it is…

Last Sunday was another brew day at my place. It was a bit of a milestone date as I finally got around to doing bulk priming. Was also able to kick off what I hope is a series of pale ales. Chas made it over and we did a number if tastings through the arvo.

First up was bottling the Baltic Porter #2. As I promised, this was to be my first bulk priming attempt. There was about 15 litres of useable beer. Problem was that I didn’t have another vessel that could hold that much. Ended up using the 9 litre pot that’s normally reserved for the boil. Did two lots of 6 litres and one lot of 3 litres.

Bulk priming set up

First attempt at bulk priming with fermenter, scales, pot and sample in the back.

Used an online calculator to work out how much sugar to add. Sugar was put direct into the pot and beer was released over the top. Then stirred slowly to dissolve the sugar completely. In hindsight it would of been good to dissolve the sugar in some water first. Having just one vessel with one transfer would of been a lot easier. Bottling 15 litres with a syphon wasn’t fun. Most was done into 500 ml bottles which saved a fair bit of time.

The final gravity came in at 1.032 which is a lot higher than expected. After bottle conditioning it should be 5.6% alcohol. That’s a lower than was hoping for. Really wanted this to be above 6%. That said it tasted pretty good when we sampled it. Time will tell.

After bottling was finally done it was on to the brew. Plus there was a few brews up for tasting. The Aussie Wattle Pale Ale, Hoppy Heart IPA 2 and the two apple ciders I made. Chas will be posting about those over the next few days.

I’ve been wanting to build out a range of lighter beers that can be enjoyed on the warmer days coming up. Not everyone in the house likes IPA’s and I’m not ready for doing a proper lager. Pale ale was the only good option. Given the failure of the last attempt I decided to avoid using liquid malt. So, dry malt was used and hops kept tame. As I used up a few things last brew this ended up as a single hop beer. That’s pretty exciting and will be a great benchmark, if it ferments out well.

Before the brew started the yeast and a teaspoon of dry malt extract were thrown into a cup of water for rehydration. Realised after that should have waited before putting in the DME. Hopefully that doesn’t make much if a difference.

Basic brew this one. Only a thirty minute boil.

Australian Pale Ale #2
Boil size 3 litres
500 grams of Light Dry Malt Extract
3 grams Galaxy hops at 30 mins
2 grams Galaxy hops at 15 mins
2 grams Galaxy hops at 1 min /flameout.
1 & 1/2 teaspoons if US 05 yeast.

Australian Pale Ale #2

Australian Pale Ale 2 in the carboy after one week.

As this was a small boil it was a lot easier to lower the temperature. Three trays of ice and some half frozen water went into the wort while sitting in the water bath. In less than 20 mins we were already down to 24°C and ready to pitch yeast. Last bit of water put in to get it up to four litres then given a good shake before gravity reading done. Original Gravity came in at 1.044. Airlock on, and done.

Day was a good one. Had a late start and didn’t think it would be a long one. Turns out the bulk priming and bottling took a fair bit longer than I thought. Looks like I’ll need a proper vessel for the priming when I do it again.

Really happy to finally get around to these two things. Next few brews will also be pale ales. But might need to slow down as we come into Christmas.

-Mikey

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15 Nov 2013
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Experiments, Recipes

New and old, recipe and brewer mix up

Saturday brew day was a long one, nearly 5 hours. I wanted to have another crack at the Baltic Porter. Chas wasn’t available so my mate Kilan came over to give me a hand.

Kilan has done a bit of home brewing over the last few years. Most of his equipment is in storage. He’s still been able to make some cider and brought over a bottle to share. Will talk about that later.

Was fun to have Kilan over for the arvo. We worked on a few things that neither of us had done before. Had a couple near misses and a whole heap of improvisation. By the end of the day we had bottled the Hoppy Heart IPA and brewed what we felt would be a really good beer.

The last time I did the Baltic Porter it was a 10 litre batch. The beer came out nice enough but lacked some body. The beer had a little too much sweetness. There was room to adds more complexity. In short, there was a lot that could be tweaked.

Baltic Porter #2 Mash

Baltic Porter #2
Grains in bag, in pot and mashing

Given the relative ease of the full grain mash at Chas’s last week I thought of trying a mini mash. The recipe was upping to a 17 litre batch and ingredients to match. That meant a lot more grain. Last time the recipe only had Crystal grains, which can’t mass by themselves. With advice from Chas I decided to include some Chocolate malt, which I believe can mash. So all 2kg of the grain went in to mash.

Kilian was a champ and crushed the chocolate malt grain. The only thing I had was a mortar and pestal which meant some grain got crushed. Hope that doesn’t make much difference.

The Crystal grain went into a grain bag and into the pot. The Chocolate grain got thrown into the bag then all was stirred in. Mash was done at 68°C and had 5 litres of water. Wow, that grain soaked it all up and expanded like a balloon! Mash went for a full sixty mins.

While waiting for the mash to finish we bottled the Hoppy Heart IPA. The final gravity came in at 1.019. With the carbonation drops it will be 6.4% alcohol. And before you ask, yes I will move to bulk priming soon.

We opened the apple cider that Kilan brought. That was an interesting drink, and I mean that in all ways. We chilled it right down and was cold most of the time. First up it tasted like alcoholic orange juice, not like apple. Sort of super sweet and slightly tart. The smell was pretty bad, almost like something off. As it warmed up the cider became more like apple and more dry. Much better cold. I think something might have gone wrong with the yeast and / or fermentation. Let’s see euchre same thing happens to my cider.

Back to the brew, and mash was done. Only problem now was how to sparge the grain. And there was a huge amount. Was fortunate that the kettle we have at home has different temperature settings with the lowest being 75°C. So we used that and poured the water over the bag of grains. Each time we tried to press out as much liquid as possible, but we didn’t really have the right set up. After a few kettle’s worth of water at said temperature there was a lot of volume for the boil. I would have liked to do more sparging, but the boil pot just wouldn’t hold it all.

Baltic Porter #2 Grains

Baltic Porter #2
Grains ready for more sparging

So onto the boil. Earlier I realised that I didn’t have the exact amount of hops to do what I wanted. There wasn’t as much Warrior and that was suppose to be the bittering. As a compromise I moved some of the Fuggles from aroma stage to taste. By moving them earlier it should add a bit more bitterness, and hopefully balance. Will have to wait and see.

Once the boil started we re-hydrated the yeast. It’s the first time I’ve done this. It was pretty easy. The only problem is the water that was boiled so early on it cooled down too much. A quick zap in the microwave brought it back up to temperature. The yeast sat in the water while we dissolved the tea spoon of dry malt in half a glass of boiled water. Then waited half an hour before adding that in and gave it a mix.

I held off on adding the dry malt for a bit. Have been getting advice not to add all malt at the start of boils and wanted to try it out. As a result we didn’t get a hot break, it just came to a boil. Bittering hops went in at start, then taste hops at thirty minutes with the first 800 grams of dry malt a five minutes later. Another fifteen minutes later added in the last 400 grams of dry malt. Five mins after that the aroma hops. Then only five more mins before flame out.

Pot was transferred to an ice bath. Some ice cubes went directly into the wort, water previously boiled before frozen. A second bath for the pot. Then into the fermenter. Added a little more sparged grain liquid, that might not have been the best idea as I’m not sure if that could have lead to contamination. Too late now! The liquid malt only went in at this stage, note that it wasn’t part of the boil. Not sure if that will make much difference. Let me know what you think with a comment below.

The wort was still quite hot. That was even after adding about four litres of very cold water. Will need more ice if I’m going to do something this large and this method again. After a couple hours the temperature was down to something close to what I wanted. Yeast was pitched at about 25°C. I forgot to put the yeast nutrient in at the same time. So, went back an hour later and put in four heaped teaspoons and sealed back up.

 

Baltic Porter #2 Yeast

Baltic Porter #2
Re-hydrated Yeast in the jug

60 min mash at 68°C

– 1.5 kg of Crystal 120
– 500 grams of Chocolate Malt 600

Boil wort from mash
60 min
add 8 grams of Warrior hops
30 min
add 14 grams of Fuggels hops
25 min
add 800 grams of light malt extract
10 min
add 400 grams of light malt extract
5 mins
add 5 grams of Fuggels hops

Into ferment:
– wort
– 1.7 kg of Amber liquid malt extract (Black Rock)
– water & ice to bring to 17 litres

Once at 25°C
add 7 grams of yeast, 5g Windsor & 2g kit yeast (previously re-hydrated)
add 4 heaped teaspoons of yeast nutrient

A bit of a strange brew. Some new techniques and processes. Some corrections from previous brews. Some ingredients just thrown together, like hops and yeast. The final gravity came in at 1.071 which is pretty good given the calculated was only 0.002 higher than that. If fermentation can take it down to 1.025 that will mean about 6.5% alcohol before bottling. And this one will be bulk primed.

-Mikey

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5 Nov 2013
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Recipes

Friedlieb Coffee Porter – Second Trial

Back in June, Mikey and I made a coffee porter that I named The Friedlieb. It turned out great, but I was after a little bit more peat smoke in there, and Mikey found some of the sweetness “distracting”.

Coffee!

Coffee!

So we modified the recipe a little bit.  First off, we were doing twelve litres this time around, not the four we originally did; mostly we just multiplied everything by three.  We also added a bit more peated barley, a bit less light liquid malt extract, and, as there were some malted grains in the grain bill, decided to mash the grains rather than just steep them.  Hopefully this achieves the desired affects.

Anyway, before I go into the recipe, as mentioned, this is a coffee porter.  When we made the first batch, we were only using eight shots of coffee, which isn’t too difficult or expensive.  Upping things up to twenty four shots of coffee wouldn’t have been too expensive or difficult, but there’s always a better way!  So, a big thanks to my good friend from Husband Cafe for supplying his wastage.

So the recipe (for 12 litres) was:

  • 1.5 kilograms golden light liquid malt extractFried 4
  • 270 grams dark dry malt extract
  • 270 grams dark crystal
  • 150 grams chocolate malt
  • 180 grams peated malt
  • 150 grams melanoidin malt
  • 180 grams rye malt
  • 9 grams Willamette hops (bittering) – 30 minutes
  • 9 grams Fuggles hops (taste) – 15 minutes
  • 9 grams Fuggles hops (aroma) – 0 minutes
  • 24 shots espresso
  • 3 cups brown sugar
  • Windsor style ale yeast

As mentioned, we decided to mash the grains.  The right mashing temperature can change depending on what you’re after and what grains are being used, but we were winging it a bit and just decided to mash at 65 degrees C; it’s nice and middle of the road.  The mash time was 60 minutes in 5 litres of water.

Unlike the all grain pale ale we did a couple weeks ago, we didn’t have as much trouble keeping the water temperature steady.  This was probably because we were using much more water.

So the grains sat there for an hour while Mikey and I bottle the pale ale.  It tasted great by the way, but we think it will need quite a bit of time in the bottle to calm down.

With the mashing done, we threw in the malt extracts and got everything to a boil.

Once the boil started everything was pretty standard.  The bittering hops went in at the start, fifteen minutes in came the taste hops, and the aroma went in at flame out another fifteen minutes later.  Along with the aroma hops we threw in the espresso and the brown sugar.

A little tip on ingredients: always double check that you have the ingredients.  I assumed I had enough brown sugar but I didn’t!  Thankfully I was able to steal some from my housemate.  Also, let’s see if my housemate actually reads this blog, because she doesn’t know I took it!

Fried 1Getting the wort cold was difficult.  We ended up with about seven litres of liquid: five litre mash, a couple litres for sparging, coffee, etc.  We got it coldish pretty quickly with some ice and cold water, but even in three ten minute water baths it wouldn’t drop below 30 degrees.  I need to start taking a cue from Mikey and preparing lots of ice and cold water.

Anyway, we poured everything into the fermenter, topped it up to 12 litres, and took a quick break on the homebrew couch while we let things cool a little.  The wort was about 27 degrees by the time we topped up the fermenter, but we wanted a few degrees lower.

After that, we pitched the yeast and gave it a good stir to aerate it.  The gravity reading was 1.073, which is quite high, so we wanted to get plenty of oxygen in there.  I’m quite excited about this high gravity.  The mash obviously added quite a bit.  If we’re lucky and get the final gravity down enough, hopefully we’ll end up with quite a strong beer!

I’m really excited about this beer.  It’s going to be about two weeks in the fermenter, and then quite a bit of time in the bottle.  We’ll report in after that.

-Chas

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23 Oct 2013
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Recipes

Let’s do this! Red Dog Pale Ale

Well, another weekend another brew day.

We decided to step it up a notch this weekend and go for an all grain batch.  It was a relatively small notch though.  While the batch was an all grain, it was kept to only four litres and the mashing was done in a bag using the brew in a bag (BIAB) technique.  No malt extract was used though, so it wasn’t a mini-mash.

Anyway, the recipe we used was courtesy of jyo on the Aussie Home Brewer Forums and can be found here.  You’ll note that the original recipe was for a 23 litre batch, however we modified the quantities to only make four litres.

The modified recipe was:

Brewing in a bag!

Brewing in a bag!

  • 782 grams Joe White Traditional Ale Malt
  • 7 grams Crystal
  • 5 grams Weyermann Carapils
  • 7 grams Cascade hops (bittering) – 60 minutes total boil
  • 5 grams Cascade hops (taste) – 15 minutes total boil
  • 5 grams Chinook hops (aroma) – 1 minute total boil
  • DCL US 05 American Ale Yeast
  • 4 grams Cascade hops (dry hopping) – after 2 days

Mashing temperature was called for 65 degrees C.

The recipe called for a 90 minute mash, which is what we did.  The BIAB technique is pretty simple.  First we calculated the strike temperature which was pretty simple and got three litres of water up to this temperature in a pot.

This technique is called brew in a bag because the grains were kept in a bag while submerged in water.  While this was easy, keeping the temperature at exactly 65 degrees was fairly difficult.  The pot seemed to keep heat fairly well, but there were large discrepancies in different areas when we took temperature readings.  If anything we probably should have used more water.

For those more interested in the procedure, Craig from Craigtube does a great demonstration here.

While we waited for the grain to mash, Mikey and went ahead and bottled the Honey Bomb Wheat Beer we made a couple weeks ago.  There was a fair bit of time to kill during the mashing process, so between checking it and adjusting the temperature we bottled and knocked back a couple home brews on the Home Brew Couch.

About to get the hot break

About to get the hot break

With the mash done, it was sparged with another couple of litres of water and we started the boil.  During the sparge we could really tell that the sugar had come out of the grain.  We were left with a great, thick liquid that was a beautiful brown colour.  And it smelled amazing.

From there it was pretty much the same as any other brew.  The hops were added for bittering, taste, and aroma.  Two days later I added some more hops as a dry hopping.

When we were all done, we got a OSG of 1.042.  Unfortunately the recipe stated an OSG 1.053, so we were a bit off…  I attribute this not only to our temperature difficulties with the mash, but also because we ended up topping the carboy up to four and a half litres rather than four; so it was watered down a little more than it should be.

I’m expecting quite a bit from this brew.  I think it should turn out to be a fairly decent American Pale Ale.  The wort tasted great and full of grain, but it should be fairly well combated by the hop additions.  We’ll see how it is in a couple weeks!

– ChasRed Dog1

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29 Jul 2013
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Experiments, Recipes

The Beagle Double IPA – First Trial

For those familiar with the story of the IPA beer style, you’d know it’s characterised by being higher in the hops and alcohol.  This trend started when the British colonised India and were unable to transport their beloved pale ale from England to India without it spoiling.  Fortunately, hops and alcohol act as a natural preservative: so increase these two important beer ingredients, and your beer can go anywhere!

A double IPA, or an Imperial India Pale Ale, is generally even higher in hoppyness and alcohol than a standard IPA.  This should last even the longest sea journeys…

So, in honour of one of the great scientific sea journeys of all time and the boat, the HMS Beagle, today we made The Beagle Double IPA.

And before I go into the recipe, hopefully readers will have noticed the general theme going on in my beer names.  At the risk of starting a flame war with Mikey, at least my names are better than Mikey’s “Australian Pale Ale”.  Take that Mikey.

The trend of naming my beers after famous science figures is thanks to the proprietor of my favourite cafe, Husband.  So I’ll give credit where credit’s due.

Anyway, the recipe!

A friend of mine, Matt, had had some success with a simple mini-mash (edit, this is not actually a mini-mash recipe.  I’ll go into it another time.  i have a bad habbit of just saying “mash” if i use grains.  cheers Stu for keeping me honest) IPA recipe that called for a small grain bill of crystal, some dry malt extract, and two types of hops for bittering and aroma, but no dry hopping…  I need to have a chat to Matt about this as well, because the recipe called for a total of 50 grams of hops for a four litre batch.  Now I like hops as much as the next guy, but this would have just been nuts…  Mikey and I modified the recipe to our taste and sanity levels accordingly:

  • 75 grams crystal
  • 25 grams dark crystal
  • 30 grams rye
  • 1 kilogram golden light dry malt extract
  • 15 grams Citra – bittering hops; 60 minutes total boil
  • 10 grams Willamette – taste hops; 30 minutes total boil
  • 15 grams Amarillo – aroma hops; five mintues total boil
  • 10 grams Citra – dry hops; after two days
  • Safale yeast US05

Steep the grains in 1.5 litres of water in a grain bag for a total of one hour, keeping the temperature between about 70 and 80

It begins!

It begins!

degrees C.  This needs to go in at about thirty minutes into the boil, so start this first.  Personally, I prefer a grain bag but they’re not mandatory, it just makes things a little easier.

While the grain does its thing, boil 2.5 litres of water with the kilogram of malt extract.  We got a huge hot break, but that was mostly Mikey’s fault for purposefully making bubbles when stirring in the malt.  I’m glad we used the big pot.

At the hot break, throw the Citra in for a total of 60 minutes.

After thirty minutes, put in the Willamette and the water from the steeped grain.  Sparge the grain with about 0.5-1 litre of boiling water to make sure you get all the goodness.

Thanks Mikey...

Thanks Mikey…

Finally, with five minutes left in the boil, throw in the Amarillo.

Put the pot in a sink of cold water or use a wort chiller to get it to temperature, throw it all into a 5 litre carboy and top everything up to 4 litres in total.  Pitch the yeast and you’re done!

Don’t forget, after two days, add the second batch of Citra for dry hopping!

Other Brewing Notes:

We got a final gravity of 1.076, which I was pretty happy about.  With any luck, this should give an alcohol content of at least 7.5% ABV.  Because of this (and the general hoppyness), this is starting to get into the Double IPA range, so that’s what we’re calling it.

In regards to the hops, this recipe has three types of hops.

The Citra had a typical bittering hops smell: lots of bitter and spice aromas, with a bit of a tropical feel to it.  I find Citra a little more laid back than other bittering hops, but it’s definitively still there!  When this was first added to the wort, it didn’t do much to combat the malt smells, which were quite milky.

The Willamette was far more laid back than the Citra, a brief description of Willamette can be found in the Friedlieb Porter recipe.  Generally drier in smell.  With the Willamette, the malt smells were finally getting put in their place and the hops were finally starting to come through.  There was going to be a lot of spice in this beer.

20130728_143554Finally, the Amarillo had less bitter than anything else in there.  It’s a typical fruity hop for aroma.  The citrus really pushes through and there are a few earthy smells to it as well.  With the addition of the Amarillo, the malt finally lost the battle and the true IPA scent filled the kitchen.  Everything was much more balanced.

The wort tasted great, albeit, very sweet thanks to the very high gravity.  Of course the hops hadn’t had time to settle, so rather than get multiple notes, all there was was one big blast of bitter and spice – it hit and it hit hard.  I’d like to keep some of that for the final beer, but a little more subtle!  We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, great brew day.  Afterwards we went out for Mexican.  So for those wanting to re-produce this recipe exactly, go out for Mexican afterwards to ensure the same results.

-Chas

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13 Jul 2013
4 Comments
Experiments, Recipes

Gauss’ Law – Hopped Cider

As mentioned, I made some cider this weekend!  Mikey doesn’t believe in cider so I had the aid of my friend who shall be referred to as the Cider Minion.  Although I’ve done brews on my own before, having a second pair of hands is always helpful, and Cider Minion was no exception.

I had originally wanted to do a proper batch of the Apple and Rhubarb Cider I made awhile ago.  The original brew was a bit haphazard so I didn’t do a recipe write up of it.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find any rhubarb, but I did have some left over hops from a porter we made, so I decided to make a hopped cider.

Judging from the Apple and Rhubarb Cider, this stuff was going to be strong; I was aiming for at least 10% alcohol.  I wanted to make this cider stronger than the previous version because I thought a little alcohol burn would add to the taste and feel of the beverage.  So I’ve decided to call this cider Gauss’ Law based on a really bad pun that I’m not going to go into.  Puns are awesome by the way.

Ingredients

  • 7 kg of Golden Delicious Apples
  • 1 cup dextrose
  • 4 grams Fuggles hops (bittering)
  • 2 grams Fuggles hops (aroma)
  • SN9 wine yeast

This was for a (what was supposed to be) a four litre batch.

Bring half a litre of water up to a boil and start steeping the bittering hops for 30 minutes.  At the 25 minute mark, add the aroma hops.

My juicer isn’t the most efficient machine in the world, so a better juicer or an apple press would probably require fewer apples, but I managed to get 3.5 litres of apple juice out of the apples, which is what I was after.  This 3.5 litres needs to be added to a separate pot from the hops and brought to a boil for about 15 minutes.  This will kill any bugs in the juice.

Once the hops are done, strain them into the juice.  Also add the dextrose (this can really be done at any time).

I was surprised this time around.  Previously I’ve gotten a pretty decent hot break out of boiling apple juice.  This wasn’t the case, even though I’ve used Golden Delicious apples before.  Oh well…

Once your juice has boiled for at least 15 minutes, put a lid on the pot and let it sit in a sink full of cold water for at least 20 minutes, changing the water regularly.

Throw all of this into a 5 litre fermenter and pitch the yeast and it’s done!

Unfortunately this process only left me with about 3.5 litres all up, even though I started with half a litre of water for steeping the hops and 3.5 litres of apple juice.  I guess I underestimated how much I would lose to evaporation in the boil, or I under measured things.

The OSG I got was right on 1.070, which wasn’t quite as high as I was hoping for.  The OSG on the Apple and Rhubard Cider (which didn’t have added dextrose) was 1.064, I was probably a little conservative with the dextrose.  The previous cider managed to get a FSG below 1, but I don’t quite expect that with this one because the hops are adding to the specific gravity (although only slightly).  My prediction is an alcohol content of about 9.5% after bottling.  It’s not quite what I wanted.

Anyway, that’s going to take at least two weeks in the carboy, then bottling, then tasting.  We’ll see how it turns out!

-Chas

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