Double brew day

Turns out I have trouble keeping it up. Four months is a long time between drinks, but here we are again.

I've been brewing and drinking, but just not blogging about it. Today is brew day again. Yesterday I swung by Baylands to grab some supplies. I had a vague idea I wanted to try using Munich as a base malt, but no plans beyond that. When  I arrived I noted that they'd taken delivery of El Dorado hops, so I decided a Munich-El Dorado SMaSH was in order. I also thought, since I was doing something completely different, I'd try Mangrove Jack's Belgian Tripel yeast. I have no idea how this'll turn out.

They also had Brooklyn, which is a new New Zealand strain with 17% alpha, so I picked up a pack of those, although I've not decided what to do with them.

The other beer I've decided to try today is a golden ale late hopped with East Kent Goldings. I've only used Goldings to date in Scotch Ales, so I thought it'd be jolly to give them a whirl as flavouring hops. I thought they might go well with a bit of Motueka. Because reasons.

I thumb sucked on the grain bills, then worked up the recipes this morning as I was heating mash water.

Munich El Dorado SMaSH

1 tbsp Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)
1 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer
6kg Gladfield Munich Malt
25g El Dorado (First Wort)
1 tsp Irish Moss
50g El Dorado (Steep)
1 pkg Belgian Tripel (Mangrove Jack's #M31)
50g El Dorado Dry Hop 4.0 Days
Estimated OG 1.068

So, pretty strait forward recipe. 60 minute mash at 69c. 90-minute boil. All the bittering hops go in as first wort, as is my wont and I'm adding all the late hops in a hop stand. I'll cool the wort to 75c, then let the hops sit for 45 minutes using the counter-flow chiller to circulate the wort. I want this to be fairly hop-forward so I'm giving it a reasonable dose of calcium sulphate. This will sit for two weeks at about 20c, before being cold crashed and cleared with gelatin. I'll dry hop once initial fermentation has calmed down. Or when I get round to it. Next weekend seems likely.

Mashing in the Munich

Sparging the Munich

Munich El Dorado SMaSH finished wort

Goldings Golden

1 tsp Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)
1 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer
2.5kg Gladfield Ale Malt
1.5kg Gladfield Vienna Malt
250g Gladfield Gladiator Malt
250g Gladfield Toffee Malt
250g Gladfield Wheat Malt
18g Pacific Gem (First Wort)
1 tsp Irish Moss
15g East Kent Goldings (Flameout)
20g East Kent Goldings (Steep)
10g Motueka (Steep)
1 pkg Safale American
Estimated OG 1.055

In this case I'm after a maltier, or at least less hoppy, beer, so I won't harden the water so much. Once again, 60-minute mash at 69c and a 90-minute boil. Bittering hops added as first wort hops and most of the flavouring hops in a 30-minute steep, though I will add some at flameout. Now that I've put the malts together on Beersmith, it looks as though this will turn out a bit paler than intended. The fermentation schedule will be as above.

Sparging the golden

Golden: finished wort (paler than intended)

Brew day notes

The Munich malt bestows a lovely rich colour all on its own. Pre-sparge gravity was, 1.080, which dropped to 1.060 after the sparge. After the boil and steeping, gravity was 1.068, which I'll take as the OG. So pretty well bang on.

As a steep temperature, 75c works well as that's also the mash out temperature and so doesn't require resetting the control unit.

I ended up using a slightly different set of hops to bitter the Goldings Golden, as I had an open, half used packet of Pacific Jade, which I substituted for some of the Pacific Gem. I also failed to get a pre-sparge gravity on the Goldings Golden, as it ended up finishing its mash at about the same time the Munich SMaSH finished its boil, so I was a bit busy. However, 15 minutes into the boil, when I eventually remembered, the gravity was 1.044. Post boil gravity was 1.051, so something of an undershoot. Had I not been distracted, I'd have added a bit of DME to lift the gravity a touch.

Although I am a big fan of the Grainfather, its efficiency seems to vary quite a bit depending on the grain bill. It seems to have a sweet spot somewhere around 5kg or 5.5kg and efficiency suffers above or below that. The overall efficiency of the Munich SMaSH was 85% versus 80% for the golden. Also, the Grainfather design is sub-optimal for both first wort hopping and whirlpooling. In the case of first wort hopping one has to try to sneak the hops in the side with the grain basket in the way, and with the whirlpool one must work around the lid and the counter-flow chiller. I've not bought the hop spider yet, but again I can't see how that will work well with first wort hops.

Brew Day Drinking

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man in possession of a chance to brew beer must be in want of drinking beer while doing it. Plus you have to make room in the kegs.

I started out with a low-alcohol weizen I made a while back. It's about 3% alcohol and a pleasant enough drop. I made it because most of my beers are closer to 5% or 6% and I needed something less intoxicating for social events and brew days. On reflection, I think it could use more alcohol.

Weizen

I then moved on to the second batch of my Mosaic Vienna SMaSH. I actually kind of resent how good this beer is. It's pretty much the simplest beer I brew and if it's not my favourite it's close. As much as I enjoy it, it makes me feel a bit daft putting as much effort as I do into more complicated recipes. In particular, my efforts to expand on this recipe and make a bigger, fancier IPA have not born fruit. It's not that it's not good, it's just that it's less good than the SMaSH. This beer impertinently highlights the extent to which the malters, hop growers and yeast, umm, breeders are the real MVPs of the beer-making process. But aside from that I like it.

Vienna-Mosaic SMaSH

Maris Otter Golden Ale

My second brew on the Grainfather was an attempt to create a simple, easy drinking golden ale and at the same time learn something about basic malt flavours.  It used nothing but pilsner malt and was late hopped with Motueka. Mainly because that's what we had lying about.

It was perfectly drinkable, but nothing to write home about. But obviously you can write about any old crap in a blog, so here we are.

Nevertheless, there is strong domestic demand for easy drinking, malty, lightly-hopped beer so I have continued to experiment, adding more variety in the malt and changing the hops.  The most recent iterations have been quite successful.  Generally, I still usually prefer hoppier brews, these golden ales have been an enjoyable vehicle for showcasing malt flavour. They've also been favourites among those of my friends who are less enamoured of darker or very hoppy beers than I am.

At Beervana, as mentioned in my last post, Renaissance Brewing had two England vs New Zealand Special Bitters, brewed to identical recipes but one with New Zealand ingredients and the other with English ingredients. As one would expect, the two beers were very similar, but the version brewed with English ingredients (to my mind) had superior maltiness and mouthfeel. According to the chap manning the Renaissance stand, this difference was largely down to the use of Maris Otter as a base malt.

To test this myself, I decided to brew a version of my golden ale to the same recipe as I've used previously, but using Maris Otter instead of Gladfield Ale malt.

Here's the recipe:

Malt
4.5kg Maris Otter
300g Vienna
100g Gladfield Gladiator
10g Gladfield Dark Chocolate
10g Gladfield Roasted

Hops

14g Pacific Jade as a first wort addition

5g Pacifica at 10 minutes
5g Riwaka at 10 minutes
5g Pacifica at flameout
5g Riwaka at flameout

Yeast
1 pkt Mangrove Jack's Burton Union

Other
1 tsp of Irish Moss
1 tsp of calcium sulphate
1 tbs of 5.2 Stabilizer

The calcium sulphate was mixed into the malt before mash in, and the 5.2 Stabilizer just after mash in. The Irish Moss was added with the 10 minute hop addition.

Single infusion mash at 68 degrees Celsius (154F) for 60 minutes. Mash out at 75C (167F), and boil for 90 minutes.

The target original gravity is 1.057, which I hit pretty well bang on on brew day, which was the Saturday before last. 

I ended up brewing this recipe twice that day, as the husband of a colleague of my mother* wanted to try brewing.  He didn't like very hoppy or dark beers and I couldn't be bothered coming up with another recipe. 

Both brews went well. I used my new twirly thing to aerate the wort after cooling, which I've only recently started doing. The yeast appeared to get started quite quickly which was good to see.

Sparging

Boiling

Airlock activity seems to have stopped, so I'll look to add gelatin and cold crash this weekend (assuming that it has actually stopped fermenting).

Incidentally, this was also the first brew I did using the Grainfather upgrade kit, with improved connections and filters.  Quite a big improvement. 

*You might say that he was just somebody that I brews to know.  But probably only if you'd had your sense of humour surgically removed and replaced with a poorly coded dad-joke generator. 

My Brewing Set-up

The odds were against it, but behold: a second post!

Before blogging about my weekend brewing, I thought it would be worth detailing the kit I'm using.  This is what I currently have, after about a year of all-grain brewing:

• A Grainfather and Grainbrother

• a sparge* water heater
• four bucket fermenters
• a refractometer*

• a stir plate and flask
• three corny kegs
• a CO2 bottle
• a working chest freezer
• a non-working chest freezer
• a heat pad
• a temperature controller
• a stirry thing that attaches to a drill for aerating wort*

The Grainfather is an all-in-one all-grain brewing system.  It's essentially a kettle in which sits a removable grain basket.  So you mash in* with the grain basket, lift it out to sparge and then boil.  It has a counterflow cooler for chilling the wort and transferring to the fermenter.  The kettle has a 30 litre (8 gallon) capacity, which allows for the production of 23 litre (6 gallon) batches.

The Grainbrother is the same thing, but without the grain basket, so after the sparge you empty the grain basket, transfer it to the Grainbrother and mash in your second brew.  This makes for a more efficient brew day.  If I'm organised (not an especially common occurrence) I can get three brews done in a day.

The kegs (and CO2) are a relatively new addition.  Until very recently I was bottle conditioning.  This was fine, but one does like to be able to take bottles of beer places without getting sediment all mixed through.

For a brief but glorious period I had two working chest freezers.  This enabled me to do temperature-controlled fermentations and store frozen food.  Good times!  Then one broke. 

The working chest freezer is currently storing kegged beer, which I'll shortly bottle.  That'll then free up the temperature controller, which I'll plug into the heat pad and see if I can use that in combination with the non-working chest freezer for low-temperature fermentation.

I got the stir plate and flask specifically to make a scotch ale, which required a yeast starter. 

*Glossary of terms for any non- or beginning brewers whose poor life choices have led them to this blog:

• Mash: the process of immersing crushed malts (mainly barley) in hot water to convert starches into sugars which can be fermented.
• Sparge: the process of draining hot water through the grain following the mash to extract the last of the sugars.
• Boil: More or less what it sounds like.  The wort is boiled to sterilise it and boil off 'volatiles' that might cause off flavours.  This is also when hops are added.  Hops added early in the boil create bitterness, those added late(r) in the boil add hop aromas.
• Wort: Beer before it was cool.  Or at least before the yeast has consumed the sugar and produced alcohol.
• Refractometer: a tool for gauging the gravity of - which is to say the amount of sugar in - wort, by measuring how the distortion of light as it travels through the wort.