Tag Archives: yeast

2 Jul 2015
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Experiments, Recipes

Gravity reading, fermenting in the tube

Don’t you hate it when you take a sample of your wort and it starts fermenting before you get a reading? No? Just me? This very odd scenario came about last last week due to a series of events. It all started with an idea to make an oatmeal stout.

Oatmeal Stout 1 steeping

Oatmeal Stout #1 with oats steeping in grain bag

I’ve been thinking about this style for a while. Did a bit of research online and wasn’t impressed with the information on how to make an extract only oatmeal stout. The advice was either: “you have to include (two-row or six-row) malted grain and do a mash” or “you have to steep with specialty grains”. In short, you need to have with grains. The reasons appeared contradictory. Some saying “you need to convert the starch” and others saying “you need to keep the sweet starch flavour”. After plenty more reading I think it comes down to the moth feeling you want from the beer. Mash if you want a smooth oily feeling. Steep if you want thick body feeling.

That’s fine, but doesn’t really answer the question for me. I want to know if it’s possible to skip the grain steeping altogether. Enter my recipe Oatmeal Stout #1.

Start with 500 grams of quick/breakfast oats. Put into a pot and 1.5 litres of water, or more. Put on heat and bring up but not too a boil. I elected for 65°C. Leave for about an hour.

Oatmeal Stout 1 sparging

Oatmeal Stout #1 with oats in grain bag ready for more sparing

I found that there wasn’t enough water and the pot was too small. It ended up overflowing. I transferred the oats into a grain bag. Then bag and liquid into a much bigger pot. Pot had an extra two litres of water added. Interestingly the starch kept settling to the bottom. So it was important to keep stirring if the heat was on. I had to leave it at this point and return the next day. And I left the bag stay in pot and cooled overnight.

Next day was about sparging the oats and washing out as much starch out as possible. Grain bag rested on a sieve and I poured water over semi regularly. This took a fair bit longer than expected, so was left overnight. Next day was finally time for boil. Started at about 11 litres. First 1.5 kilograms of liquid dark malt was added and heat slowly brought up to a boil. From there was straight forward sixty minute boil. Warrior hops at the start. Rest of liquid malt and sugar with ten minutes to go. And Fuggles hops at flame out.

Oatmeal Stout 1 chilling

Oatmeal Stout #1 chilling in ice bath and with ice inside

Sugar addition was to help push up alcohol content. I believe a stout should be strong, and over 6%. Plus the “dryness” from sugar should work well against the thick oat starch feeling.

  • 500 grams oats, soaked for hours in hot & cold water
  • 1.5 kg Briess Traditional Dark Liquid Malt Extract
  • 11 litre boil
  • 10 g Warrior hops @ 60 mins
  • 1.5 kg Briess Traditional Dark Liquid Malt Extract @ 10 mins
  • 500 g raw sugar @ 10 mins
  • 5 g Fuggles hops @ flame out
  • Chilled with ice (bath and direct into wort to bring to 14 litres)
  • Pitched onto Windsor yeast (from previous brew)
Milk Porter 1 FG

Milk Porter #1 Final Gravity

While the wort from the stout was chilling it was time to bottle the Milk Porter #1. That was a big effort. 15 litres were racked off for bulk priming, then into 45 stubbies. The remaining 3 litres were bottled into long necks with a very special twist. Each of the four bottles were primed, one shot of coffee each AND a 2 cm cut from a dried vanilla bean. These four bottles will be conditioned for a minimum of two months. Really excited about these.

Milk Porter 1 bottled

Milk Porter #1 bottled in 45 stubbies and 4 long necks

The final gravity of the Milk Porter #1 came in at 1.030 which was a bit higher than I hoped. After bulk priming this will end up at 4.2% alcohol. Not bad, but a bit short of the high 4’s I was hoping for. That said, the sample I tasted had plenty of promise. While the long neck bottles will be a few months away, the stubbies should be ready by mid/late July.

The wort from the stout took a while to chill. Over an hour even with a big chunk of ice direct into it to cool down. Then finally was ready to pour into the fermenter that had the Milk Porter, and the yeast left behind. A good shake up and done. All that was left was to get a gravity sample. This came out with a bit of froth. I left it for a bit to settle down. Then had to leave before it was clear.

Oatmeal Stout 1 OG

Oatmeal Stout #1 Original Gravity, with krausen

Next morning… krausen! The gravity sample had started fermenting with the yeast that was there. All I can do is estimate the gravity reading. The photo looks like nearly 1.090, but I think that’s partly due to the krausen pushing it up. If I remember correctly from the day before, it was closer to 1.080. The recipe should have hit about 1.081 and I’ll go with that. Moral of the story? If your gravity sample has yeast in it, get a reading ASAP!

Looking forward to trying the stout. It looks plenty dark and should be very think with all the starch in there. Might be a bit too much, but won’t know for quite some time. Not to worry, in a few weeks the Milk Porter should be ready. Yum.

Did I really skip the grain steeping part to make an extract only oatmeal stout? Probably not. As I spent so much time on the oats I think you could say this really is a extract and grain recipe. Even if there were no malt/barley grains. But I’m happy with it.

-Mikey

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30 Jan 2015
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Experiments

So pale, extra pale 2 bottled

Monday was Australia Day and doubled as bottling day for the Extra Pale Ale #2. It was a very quick session and I knocked it over myself in a bit over half an hour.

Extra Pale Ale 2 bottled

Extra Pale Ale 2 freshly bottled and all cloudy

Skipped the bulk priming and put a tablespoon of white sugar to prime each bottle. Should have done it with the Extra Pale Ale #1 as it was much quicker than the bulk priming for small batches. Ended up with twelve bottles and a gravity sample as well.

Extra Pale Ale 2 FG

Extra Pale Ale 2 final gravity reading

Gravity came in at 1.025 which means the beer will sit at about 8.7% alcohol after bottle conditioning. Was a bit surprised the gravity wasn’t lower, much lower. I realised the Malto Dextrin had a bit of effect, plus it was probably a bit much to ask that kit yeast to chomp through so much sugar. That said, I was hoping to get down to the 1.009 calculated, or at least around 1.015. Not to be.

As usual I tasted the gravity sample. First up it was bad. Lots of apple sweet flavour and not nice yeast. After it sat for about 20 or so minutes the taste was a lot better. Still not great, but I could finish drinking the small sample. This one will take a while to condition properly probably a month or more.

Nothing brewing at the moment. Thinking of doing a couple really small batches. Maybe cider with the brewing caps. Maybe finally getting around to those ‘not beers’. Will keep you posted.

-Mikey

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20 Jan 2015
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Experiments, Recipes

New year brew, extra pale two

Hello and happy new year. Apologies for the break between posts, nearly four weeks! Back on board and, more importantly, back to brewing. Sunday the 11th was the first brew for the year and Chas came over to lend a hand. Always a fun day when Chas makes it.

Extra Pale Ale 1 bottled

Extra Pale Ale 1 all bottled and capped

There was some tasting of the Pale Trial Zwei beers and bottling of the Extra Pale Ale #1. Although only four litres, we still bulk primed. In hindsight that might have been a bit over the top for 10 bottles.

Gravity reading came in at 1.010 pretty much smack bang on what I was aiming for. Alcohol calculated at exactly 8% after bottle conditioning. Nice and strong.

The flavour was a bit of a mix. There was some some apple aroma and other fruit. Taste was much the same with a slight round, but clear, yeast flavour. Quite possible there’s some acetaldehyde and the yeast was stressed out by being forced to work so hard. Plus it was kit yeast, and that’s not usually good.

Extra Pale Ale 2 OG

Extra Pale Ale 2 original gravity reading

The brew for the day was straight forward. Almost identical to Extra Pale Ale #1. This time added more sugar and some malto dextrin. The sugar should push up the alcohol towards the 10% region, while the malto dextrin should help it hold together.

  • 4 litre boil
  • 300 grams Pilsen Light DME @ 40 mins
  • 200 grams Malto Dextrin @ 5 mins
  • 500 grams raw sugar @ 5 mins
  • 2 grams Warrior hops @ 30 mins
  • 3 grams Amarillo hops @ flame out
Extra Pale Ale 2 ready to go

Extra Pale Ale 2 in the fermenter in the pot and ready to go

Ice was dumped directly into the pot during the ice bath. That helped cool the brew and topped up for water lost in the boil. In the end it was a bit too much liquid and the fermentation vessel was fuller than I would have liked. And, yes, it did cause a blow out in the air lock.

The wort was dumped straight onto the yeast cake of the last brew. There should be plenty of yeast to eat through the large amounts of sugars there. Gave it a very good shake up, going to need all the oxygen it can get.

The gravity reading came in at 1.087 which is exactly what I calculated. Nice to finally hit a target OG for the first time ever, even if there was to much water.

It’s been nearly two weeks already. Bottling will be soon, maybe end of the long weekend. Should get some idea how it will taste. Hoping that the Malto Dextrin gives it some body to help balance out the large amount of sugar added.

For the next brew? Not sure yet, but likely this year will continue the experimentations and small batches. Temperatures are still pretty hot in Melbourne and it’s hard keeping fermentation vessels cool enough.

-Mikey

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11 Oct 2014
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Home brew reviews

American Brown Ale 1 – Review

This review has been a long time coming. The American Brown Ale 1 was brewed back on 22 June and it’s now October.

American Brown Ale 1

American Brown Ale 1 ready for drinking

First up is the aroma. This has a really nice toast and dark malt smell. There’s even hints of chocolate in there. Not a lot of hops, which is a bit of a surprise given the crystal hops in there. At the end there’s a yeast aroma, which is to be expected from beer brewed with kit yeast.

Taste up front is of light burnt malt. Light because the body is light as well. Not a lot of substance behind this. That is expected given it only has dry malt extract. While the body is light, the flavour is not. The dark malt characteristics comes out more bit by bit. Starting as a nice brown malt, moving into a burnt taste, then darker and more range. There’s a bit of a bite in there too. And that’s one of the few hop characteristics in this. Very slight fruit spice flavours on the edge.

After a while you start to notice the yeast flavours. A bit tart. Strange sort of yeast. Not the best. I’m not too concerned about that as it’s towards the back of the beer and not prominent. The malt seams to drive most of this beer. There is a strange dryness at the end which is slightly off putting. That might be due to the yeast as well.

Matching this beer isn’t too hard. Anything robust would work well. Anything with red meat would work. Even some chips and dip would go fine. Plus at 4.6% you can have a couple without worrying too much.

Happy with this brew. But it’s not really an American Brown. More of an English Brown. Next time I would add more hops, and use a better yeast.

-Mikey

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28 Sep 2014
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Experiments

Yeast adventures, capping it for now

The second round of experiments with yeast are done. Over a couple evenings in the last week I bottled the Pale Trial Zwei.

Pale Trial Zwei - carboy 1-5

Pale Trial Zwei in carboy 1 to 5 (left to right)

From the first impressions it looks like the yeast characteristics from Pale Trial Ein have carried over. There’s a strange tart and dry-sourness, especially from the first carboy. Carboy 2-5 were bottled on a septate day, so I can’t do a five-way comparison.

The good news is that the Galaxy hop flavours have come out well. There hasn’t been the big bitterness that I was getting with the Victoria Secret hops. Nice tropical aroma and flavour at the front. One these condition for a few weeks they should be good for the spring sun.

Pale Trial Zwei - sample 1

Pale Trial Zwei the sample from carboy 1

The one thing I really wasn’t sure about was how healthy the yeast might be. I didn’t know if there would be too much yeast, grown from the last batch. Maybe it wouldn’t be healthy enough, stressed from the last brew. Or maybe it would need more nutrients, which I deliberately didn’t put in. Plus I didn’t keep an eye on the fermentation. That said, it looks like things went smoothly.

Final gravity readings ranged from 1.010 to 1.008 and I’m happy with that. The OG was 1.047 and after bottle conditioning alcohol should be between 5.6% and 5.4%. That’s very respectable for a pale ale. The cause for the range in final gravity may have been due to a few things. Possibly sediments in the sample, possible yeast health, or a number of other things with the yeast.

Pale Trial Zwei - samples 2-5

Pale Trial Zwei samples from carboy 2 to 5

The bottling by myself was a bit of trial and error. The first carboy I used the old hand siphon. That is, two tubes with a pump thing. Have been using it for a while but works as long as you’ve got the flow going and don’t stop-start too much. For the rest (done on another night) I was able to use the Auto Syphon as the other carboys have a bigger opening. Had a bit more trouble with this due to the seal between the top and the tube. After a lot of trial and error I worked out better to pull the end out of each bottle and fill the next without trying to stop the flow. Lost a little, but not as much as stop-start. Something to work on. In an attempt to try and reduce beer loss, I left beer in the Auto Syphon between carboys, so mixing left over from one with the start form the next. Bottles marked, but not expecting anything noticeably different.

Pale Trial Zwei bottled 2-5

Pale Trial Zwei all bottled with bottles from carboy 2 to 5

Looking forward to trying these brews. I’ve had a bottle of each of the Pale Trial Ein bottles. They’ve settled down a fair bit. I didn’t do a side by side comparison, but the differences seam to be there. Will do a proper review in a week or two.

Been a bit slow getting new content up. Few reasons for that. I’m letting my fermentation times run a bit longer, like this one for three and a half weeks. I’m brewing less, next one in a few days. Chas isn’t brewing, he’s got a bit of a stockpile. But might be fixing that this coming weekend. And a few reviews haven’t gone up yet. I’m going to try and get a few of them up over the next couple weeks.

-Mikey

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14 Sep 2014
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Experiments, Recipes

Tiny magic things, yeast adventures

I’ve talked to a fair few home brewers over the last two years. Pretty much all aspects of brewing have been discussed. One thing that comes up every now and then is the use, growth and reuse of yeast. Something I’ve mostly avoided, until now.

Since day one of homebrewing I’ve used dry yeast. And, up to only earlier this year I’ve pitched it into the wort dry. Since then I’ve done some rehydration of yeast. And even a couple basic yeast starters. Nothing serious.

Off the back of the Pseudo Lager I wanted to capture that yeast. It was a basic US-05 yeast that did what it shouldn’t have been able to do. It took a strong pale ale extract brew and brought it down to a low 1.006. That’s around the lowest I’ve ever got a final gravity. But what was exceptional was that it did it over a period of a month. All the while temperatures ranged from as high as 14°C down to 0°C, maybe lower. I remember one professional brewer saying that the beer was probably stuffed. Yeast being “turned on and off” is not a good thing, by all accounts.

So, these magical tiny organisms had not only survived, but produced some pretty good beer. Could I get them to make more?

I looked up how to reuse yeast. And there are a few ways. The simplest is to pour new wort directly onto the yeast cake, once bottling of the last beer is done. This is a crude method as you’ve got all the dead yeast and left over hops as well. That not-good stuff is called trube. I say not-good because I haven’t come across anything yet that says it’s specifically bad for the beer.

The next method is referred to as washing. Again, you need to get the yeast after bottling. But this time you don’t have to, and can’t, use it straight away. You’re suppose to pour in some pre-boiled then chilled to room temperature water into your fermentation vessel. Boiling is important because you want water without oxygen, or as little as possible, and the heat should kill anything bad. Then you want to chill because heat kills yeast. Once at temperature dissolve the whole lot in the water and pour into sanitised vessels. These should have some kind of air seal as you don’t want any more oxygen. Put in fridge and wait for the cloudy stuff to settle. At the end there should be clear-ish water/beer at the top, a thin white layer if yeast, then a thick bottom layer of tan/brown coloured trube.

There’s a bit more to it, as I came to realise when I did that with the yeast from the Pseudo Lager. Long story short, I had to throw it all out.

Pale Trial Zwei - empty carboys

Pale Trial Zwei to fill these empty carboys

And that brings me to the last brew a couple Sundays ago (31 August). The Pale Trial Zwei was almost the exact same as Pale Ale Ein, but with Galaxy hops replacing the Victoria Secret hops.

  • 14 litre boil
  • 1.5kg Golden LME @ 40 mins
  • 15 grams Galaxy hops @ 30 mins
  • 11 grams Galaxy hops @ 15 mins
  • 1.5kg Golden LME @ 5 mins
  • 12 grams Galaxy hops @ 0 mins

Gravity came in at 1.047, less than Pale Trial Ein. That’s somewhat expected a there was more water in this by the end to dilute the malt.

And then pitched the wort onto the yeast cakes of Pale Trail Ein.

So, this experiment is to see if this can work as a successful way to reuse yeast. Plus want to see if yeast characteristics from one brew can carry over to the next. This second part is going to be the most interesting as the five Pale Trial Ein beers are different in colour and flavour.

Bottling will be next weekend. Look forward to letting you know how it turned out.

-Mikey

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27 Jun 2014
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Experiments, Recipes

Long time coming, long time to wait

Since very early on home brewing I’ve wanted to make a good lager. After a bit of looking about, reading up on it and asking a few other brewers I decided to dive in.

The first attempt was as part of basic home brew kit. It was more of a very pale ale rather than a lager. The yeast was from a kit can and then it was fermented with out any temperature control. It turned out a bit rough and didn’t get much better with age.

Since that brew I wasn’t  in a rush to do another lager. Reading up on the process others use, strict temperature control and long term storage, really tuned me off. Then a fellow home brewer, Carnie Brewing, posted on his blog about his attempt and quick turn around. That got me interested again.

Pseudo Lager boil

Pseudo Lager boiling away on the stove

Yeast was the main sticking point. I didn’t want to do a big batch in case I stuffed it. So, I decided to do a trial run with US-05 at a low temperature. Due to using ale yeast, instead of lager yeast, I’ve decided to call this Pseudo Lager. If it turns out well I’ll look at doing a bigger batch with proper lager yeast.

  • Amber Dry Malt – 600 grams (60 mins)
  • Light Dry Malt – 300 grams (10 mins)
  • White Sugar – 1.1 kilograms (10 mins)
  • Victoria’s Secret hops – 5 grams (60 mins)
  • Crystal hops – 10 grams (flame out)
  • US-05 yeast – about 3-4 grams

This was a pretty basic brew. For a quite some time I played around with the idea of splitting out the hop additions into three, but stuck with two as I wanted to highlight the Crystal hops at the end. The 5 litre boil was for 60 minutes so was able to get enough bitterness (IBUs) from the little Victoria Secret hops at the start. All the amber malt went in at the start. The malt selection was based on what was in the house. Originally I thought there was more light malt, but that wasn’t to be. Light malt was added at the end with the sugar, which was there to keep the finish dry and alcohol up.

Pseudo Lager fermenter

Pseudo Lager done and in the fermenter

Before the boil started I re-hydrated the yeast. I added in a little bit of light malt to try and get some yeast starter going. As this was only for about one and a half hours I’m not expecting much.

Cooling went very well. The process I’ve got to dump a lot of ice directly into the wort seams to work well. Got a bit excited and poured the whole wort in without sieving out the hops. Whoops. Then I realised as I was filling up the fermenter that I forgot the Crystal hops! Uh Oh! So, I just dumped the hops into the fermenter and continued filling it up to 16 litres. I suppose it will be something like flame out/dry hopping. Hopefully.

The gravity reading came in at 1.049 which is exactly what the recipe said it would be. Due to all the sugar in there it should ferment out to finish with a gravity of 1.005. That would be about 6% alcohol after bottling. That’s exciting for a lager.

I deliberately left this in the shed with no heating. The temperature out there drops down a fair bit. Down to maybe 10 degrees Celsius, or less, overnight. Then during the day up to a maximum of 18 degrees Celsius. I’ve left this on purpose to help keep the yeast working at a larger-like temperatures. Not sure if this will do anything other than drag out the fermentation.

After two days the beer is bubbling away. It’s very slowly doing that, but it is happening.

-Mikey

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23 Jun 2014
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Experiments, Recipes

Something easy for winter, brown ale

A few days ago I made a mistake with bottling the Super Stout. There’s a chance that it won’t taste good. I want to have something darkish to enjoy over the rest of winter. So it was time to do a back up brew, something a bit basic and small. Enter the idea of doing a brown ale.

I spent a while playing around with a recipe ideas. In the end I decided to go with a really quick 30 minute boil and only two hop additions. Plus to keep the length of time down I wanted to do just four litres. Another factor keeping it simple and quick is to only use malt extract, in this case it was dry malt extract (DME).

American Brown Ale

American Brown Ale in the carboy

With the ingredients I had at home I couldn’t do an English style brown ale. Therefore I went with creating an American Brown Ale. Ingredients listed below.

  • 600 grams of Dark DME
  • 3 grams Warrior hops (30 mins in boil)
  • 2 grams Crystal hops (flame out)
  • 1 teaspoon of kit yeast
  • 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

Some people really don’t like using kit yeast. For me it was easy because (1) I had some at home and (2) it’s a very basic darker beer. The darkness of the malt will help hide some of the less desirable flavours of the yeast, I hope.

This was a three litre boil. First in went 400 grams of the DME. After the hot break went in the Warrior hops. Twenty minutes later the rest of the DME went in. Ten minutes after that flame out. Crystal hops went in. The pot was moved to sink to chill in cold water. About three trays of ice dropped directly into the wort. Only had to replace the water once for chilling. I was happy that it got down to about 22 degrees Celsius quite quickly. Then poured the wort through a sieve into the glass carboy which was then topped up to four litres.

While all that was happening the yeast and nutrient was re-hydrated in some water on the side. Before pitching in the yeast took a hydrometer reading which came in at 1.054. This should come in around 5.8% after bottling. That’s going to be stronger than the Super Stout!

This was a very quick brew and only took about two hours to do. Was done by myself and I like that it was so quick. The wort tasted basic as expected. There’s not a lot of hops in there and plan was to keep bitterness down. Fingers crossed that this one turns out well. Will know in about a month.

Keep an eye out as I’m going to be doing a lager style ale in the next few days.

-Mikey

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29 May 2014
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Home brew kits

Really dark, and still not ready

Super Stout gravity reading

Super Stout gravity reading at 1.031

It’s been three and a half weeks since the brew day for the Super Stout. I deliberately left this to ferment at a lower temperature, 16 degrees Celsius. There were two reasons for that. First, Good Beer Week was on last week and there was no time over the weekends to bottle. Second, wanted a really clean yeast finish to the beer.

Fast forward to now. Went out and took a sample of the beer. Gravity reading came in at 1.031! What? I’m pretty sure that’s no where near where I thought it would finish. Yeah, there’s all sorts of stuff in there like lots of super dark malt and liquorice. But I really thought this would drop more. And I still do.

Rather than wait another 2-3 weeks I’ve set the temperature to rise to 20 degrees Celsius. I’m hoping the yeast will wake up and have another crack at eating some of that remaining sugar. If that doesn’t work, I might need to pitch some more yeast in. Which is something I’m not took keen on.

The sample tastes quite sweet still. And that should mean there’s still more sugars for the yeast to eat up. There’s also a really strong molasses taste which ends with liquorice taste. Now I know what the liquorice does. The sample is also super dark, just as the name suggests.

So, temperature up and give it another week and a half. Hope it’s ready by then. If not… well, we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.

-Mikey

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21 Mar 2014
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Experiments, Recipes

Back with more everything, and the Secret

Enough feeling sorry for myself, time to brew. Back on Saturday 9th we had a brew day at my place. It was a huge fun day, even if the brew we made was only four litres.

I finally managed to get my good mate Ian around for a brew day. Chas made it and my friend Michael was able to join us as well, which made four on the day. More than needed to bottle the cider and the new brew. So, plenty of mucking around was had.

First order of business was bottling the Sneaky Cider. Was another bulk priming job, I don’t think I’ll go back to individual bottle priming. Cider from carboy into the small fermenter with the sugar. Then bottled straight from there. I decided to continue my experiments with soft drink bottles. We filled two 1.25L bottles and the rest filled six stubbies.

Gravity came in at 1.004 which I’m really happy about. Was trying to keep the sweetness low on this. Bulk priming was done with possibly a bit too much sugar, will see. End result should be a cider of 7.8-7.9%. That’s a big kick for such little effort. Nice.

Onto the beer. Due to the mess that is Melbourne weather, I wanted to make sure this brew could be kept cool like the cider. That meant another small batch in the carboy. So, picking up from where I left off it was time for another Australian Pale Ale experiment.

A bit of a side note, I’ve been a little obsessed the last six months or longer with a new Australian hop variety. It’s called Vic Secret (or Victoria Secret, depending on who you ask) and first time I had it in a beer I was blown away. This popped up back in 2012 in a collaboration beer simple called Victoria’s Secret by Beer Here and Northdown (now Edge). A single hop beer. I only had one bottle and really liked it. The beer has just been re-released under the Edge name, with a slight tweak to the recipe. Since then there have been a few other breweries bring out beers with this new hop type. Anyway, I have been trying to get my hands on this stuff so I can make a single hop beer. It’s been very hard to find with a lot of home brew shops not even aware it exists. Then finally a friend found a place that has some. And now I have some.

Australian Pale Ale 4

Australian Pale Ale 4 in the carboy (with ice packs) after 3 days

Australian Pale Ale #4 is a single hop beer. That hop is Vic Secret. The hop is quite high on alpha acid, the bitterness. I was using the same base, light dry malt extract, as I did for the last two Australian Pale Ales. Hop additions were done at 30 mins, 15 mins and 1 min. Nice and simple.

  • 3 litre boil, topped up to 4 litre batch
  • 500 grams Light Dry Malt Extract
  • 3 grams Victoria’s Secret hops @ 30 mins
  • 2 grams Victoria’s Secret hops @ 15 mins
  • 2 grams Victoria’s Secret hops @ 1 mins
  • 1 Teaspoon of re-hydrated US-05 yeast

Michael suggested that the middle hop addition isn’t needed. He’s been doing a fair bit of research into brewing, does a bit of home brewing and has been helping out at some breweries. The idea behind not doing the mid point hop addition is that you’re not really adding any flavour. You can get this from the last hop addition. And you get more bitterness from the first addition. Or that’s the theory. Might give it a go. Expect a post dedicated to this, at some point in the next few months.

Chilling was a quick one. Having these small batches makes it a lot easier. This time there was a lot going on. Two trays of ice and an ice cream container of half frozen water went straight in. The pot sat in it’s bath to chill with ice packs.

Gravity came out at 1.038. Was originally disappointed. There’s a good chance that the sample taken for the reading wasn’t the best. After pouring the wort liquid into the carboy I top it off with water. You’re suppose to shake it before taking a sample so you get something mixed. This wasn’t done. Comparing it to both Australian Pale Ale #2 (1.044) and #3 (1.046), this was low. To put that in a bit if context, the difference of 0.008 in gravity is approximately equal to 1% alcohol. That alcohol helps give the beer a better body. Hope #4 turns out fine.

Like the last few brews the yeast was rehydrated. Somewhere around 1-2 cups of boiled water was put in a glass jug, covered and left to cool. Not sure what it got down to, maybe as low as 25°C. Then a teaspoon of yeast was put in. And to speed things up a teaspoon of the dry malt was also put in. That’s a very small yeast starter. By the time it went into the carboy there was already a bit of a krausen, yeast head.

Yeast in, airlock on, carboy into the big pot of water. Done.

This was a really fun day. Great company, lots of drinks (review of the Iron Curtain Imperial Red Ale within the week), BBQ chicken for lunch, some really dodgy music, and not a tricky brew. Hoping there’s a lot more days like this in the future.

And I’ll be bottling tomorrow. Exciting.

-Mikey

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