Brew Four - American IPA

Having considered my options I opted to proceed with an American IPA for the fourth brew.  I used the Brewing Classic Styles 'Hoppiness is an IPA' recipe as a guide.

I decided to dial back on the LME as the recipe asked for more than 4kg of it and the outcome would have been a 7% ABV beer which I thought was a bit of overkill.  In doing so, I also saved myself another $15 which may not seem much but by my calculations I had already spent about $60 on this brew (excluding the grain bag, 2/3s of the Briess LME and half the hops since I purchased 60g of each).

I ended up using:

3 kg Blackrock Light LME (2x 1.5 kg cans)

0.5kg Briess Munich LME

0.6kg Pale Crystal

30g Nugget (@ 60 minutes)

30g Centennial (@ 20 minutes)

30g Simcoe (@ 5 minutes)

30g Cascade (@ 0 minutes/flame out)

Boil volume: 9 Litres.

1. Steep Pale Crystal for 30 minutes in hot water (65 deg).

2. Added 0.8kg of LME 

3. Top up with water to 9L.

4. Bring to boil - wait for hot break.

5. Start 60 minute timer 

a)  Add 30g Nugget.

b)  Add Centennial after 40 minutes.

c)  Add Simcoe after 55 minutes

d)  Add Cascade after 60 minutes when you turn off heat.

6. Stir in remaining LME immediately after Simcoe addition.

7. Cool in ice bath to <30 degrees.

8.  Mix into fermenter to make 21L of beer.

9.  Take OG reading: 1050.  Stir and wait.  Repeat.  OG reading again 1050.

10.  Pitch yeast.

Notes:

1. Briess LME only came in a 1.5kg container so the remaining 1kg is stored in the fridge.

2. Pale Crystal used in lieu of  Crystal 15L and 40L as defined in recipe.

Comments:

1.  I can see why people go for a full boil - I don't fully understand the calculations used to ensure your partial boil gravity is the same as the boil gravity but the recipe spreadsheet from the Aussie Home Brewer forum instructed me to add 818g of LME to achieve the same so that's what I did.  If you do a full boil you don't have to worry about the calculations which is appealing.

2. The steeping process was a lot easier than I imagined so it'll give me confidence for the next brew.

3. The whole process (excluding initial prep the night before including sterlising equipment) took 3 hours which is about as efficient as I can make it.

4.  I need a larger sieve which can sit over the top of the fermenter to collect the hops etc when pouring boil into fermenter.

5.  The ice bath dropped the temperature of the boil quite quickly (approx 20 min) and once I poured it into the fermenter which already had approximately 10L of cold water the digital thermometer on the side was reading 24 degrees so I pitched the yeast in straight away.

6.  Contemplating dry hopping the rest of the Cascade hops (another 30g) into the fermenter once the primary has been completed in about a week.  If I'm going to have a hoppy IPA then I might as well go the whole hog.

7.  If I've spent $60 to make this beer, the per litre cost is $2.85.  The per 750ml bottle cost is $2.15.

Brew Four - what to brew next?

I now need to decide what to brew next.  Since I've been reading 'Brewing Classic Styles by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff I'm leaning toward taking one of their recipes and running with it.

If I map out the new few beers I see them in no particular order to be:

1.  American IPA.
2.  Brown Ale
3.  Pale Ale with NZ malts/hops.
4.  Porter or Black IPA.

The other tantalizing prospect is that a friend of mine has his own brew kit which he is brewing 100L batches with and he's invited me to help with a brew at some point.  I've sampled three of the beers he regularly makes and they are up there with some of the craft beers I've had to drink in the last six months.  The opportunity to potentially produce a beer in an all grain set up is exciting.  With this in mind I need to take a couple of recipes and refine them to the point where I would be happy to make them on a larger scale - I don't want to make something undrinkable.

I'm also looking to rope in a co-brewer.  Someone who is happy to pay for half the cost of the ingredients and take half of the beer at the end.  At the moment my brother has said he is keen so we might be kicking things off with the fourth brew this weekend.  I don't think I can sustain brewing 30 bottle batches as I'll end up swimming in beer.... at least until I make something that everyone wants to drink!

Brew Three - Amber Ale Fermentation and Bottling

No, I haven't forgotten about the blog - more that there hasn't been much going on in the last month or so.

As per my previously entry relating to Brew Three - the Amber Ale, the beer went into the fermenter on Saturday 12th May.  I took a gravity reading on Friday 25th May which was 1015ish.  When I took another reading the following week it had dropped slightly to 1014 but I figured it was ready for bottling.  Unfortunately we went away down to the Hawkes Bay for Queens Birthday Weekend so the beer wasn't bottled until Sunday 10th June which means it was in the fermenter for more than four weeks.  I don't know if there is any possible negative impact on the beer itself so only time will tell.

The bottling went smoothly and the bulk priming seems to make the whole process a lot more straight forward.  The only thing I was a little bit concerned about what that at the bottom of the fermenter there was a lot more trub than previous brews so I wasn't sure whether I would get the full 30 bottles worth - as it turned out I needn't have worried as I easily managed to fill the 30.

Now we wait to see what the beer tastes like.

Brew Two - Tasting the IPA.... pfft

Well, I've tasted the IPA after it has been in the bottles for two weeks.  What a disappointment.  This beer makes the rather plain flavoured Munich Lager taste like a Imperial IPA in comparison to the dishwater IPA.  I'm struggling to make out any discernible taste or nose on it.

Here is a comparison of the two beers:

The IPA on the left and the Munich Lager on the right.  The only positives I can take out of this brewing process are:


1.  The bulk priming appears to have worked well as the carbonation, even after only two weeks is excellent.


2.  The clarity of the beer is excellent so the finings worked as they should have.


3.  I'm going to make a 'proper' IPA as my next beer.

Brew Three - Amber Ale

Since the second brew I've been doing a lot of reading about home brewing.  Firstly John Palmer's How to Brew finally arrived from Fishpond so I took a read through it - it's easy to follow and clearly explains the process so I understand why people recommend it so highly.  I've also joined the Aussie Home Brewer forum which has a wealth of information and helpful Aussie (and Kiwi) home brewers who are happy to impart their knowledge about all things to do with brewing.  One very useful tool they have on the forum is a spreadsheet which allows you to input your ingredients which then spits out various readings which align with the style of beer you are trying to recreate (e.g. O.G, FG, IBU and EBC).

Armed with all this new knowledge I've been somewhat paralysed by indecision... what beer to I make next? Do I drop the kits altogether or do I keep going until I manage to produce a decent beer? In the end I drove down to Penrose to the Brewers Coup shop with a couple of ideas in mind but no firm plan.  I ended up asking for advice about an Amber Ale recipe which I had taken from the Coopers website and after a really good conversation about the pros and cons of the various kits available I purchased the following:


Ingredients:

1.  Black Rock NZ Draught Kit 1.5kg
2.  Muntons LME 1.8kg
3.  US-05 Yeast
4.  60g US Centennial Hops
5.  60g US Cascade Hops.

I also picked up a fluid thermometer and some more cleaner/steriliser.

The Brewing process:
1.  Sterilise fermenter, stirring spoon and airlock using the remaining sodium met solution.
2.  Add approximately 400ml of the LME to 10L of water.  Dissolve and then bring to boil.
3.  The maximum amount of time you need to boil the hops for is 60 minutes.  Therefore using this as a guide the minute the water is at a rolling boil you make your first hop addition and then start the countdown for 60 minutes.  I used the following plan:
At 60 minutes: Add 20g Centennial.
At 25 minutes: Add 20g Centennial and 30g Cascade
At 10 minutes: Add 20g Centennial and 30g Cascade

Centennial is a high alpha acid hop therefore it will impart quite a lot of bitterness to the beer.  Adding hops in the middle stage of the boil will impart flavours and at the end, aroma.  The Cascade is a lower alpha acid hop which will impart more flavour and aroma to the brew hence only two additions.
5.  Warm the Black Rock kit in some hot water.
6.  Cool the boil as quickly as you can.  I waited for a few minutes then put the stock pot in the sink and fill it with cold tap water which seemed to be quite effective.
7.  Add the kit to the fermenter with some hot water.  Mix.  Add the remaining LME to the fermenter at the same time.
8.  Add the boiled water to the fermenter.  Mix again and top up with cold water to 23 litres.  Check temp and hope it's not too hot to pitch the yeast.
9.  Pitch yeast.  Seal fermenter.



Notes:
1. There are a lot of references to boiling 10-12 litres of water then cooling it overnight so that you have clean cool water to add to the warm mix in the fermenter.  I didn't have anywhere to store the post boiled water so I purchased a 10L container of water at the Warehouse ($6.50) and fridged it overnight.
2. I'm not sure what I expected but when you add the hop pellets to the boil they disintegrate and form a slurry on the top of the water.  When the timer hit zero and I took the pot off the heat I used a sieve to scoop the hop slurry out into a second pot:

Pouring the kit into the fermenter - nice and oxygenated.

Cooling the hop boil in the sink with cold water.

The Original Gravity reading:

The reading is approximate 1042.

Final note:  Having gone through the brewing process I then decided to plug all the details into the spreadsheet from the forum (as referenced earlier) and it says that the beer would be quite highly bitter and that the OG is too low.  I guess I should have done this before hand but then again sometimes ignorance is bliss.  The fermenter is now in the garage and the temperature is reading 18-20 degrees which is perfect for fermenting.

More information about the brewing process

There is so much information on the internet about home brewing that you almost end up wasting a lot more time than you need to trying to digest as much of it as you can while you weigh up how relevant it is to you.

A few key points I've learned over the last week or so:

1.  Whether the fermenter is sealed correctly and airlock working is basically irrelevant.  Having a 100% sealed unit is close to impossible and while obviously the better the seal the less likely bacteria is to compromise your brew, it's not the end of the world if the airlock doesn't bubble.  Ultimately you can use visual indicators to check whether the beer is fermenting and you can use the hydrometer to check whether it is ready for bottling.

2.  To calculate alcohol by volume you take your original gravity reading which is the hydrometer reading taken prior to pitching your yeast into the fermenter, minus the final gravity (which is when you bottle the beer) and divide it by 7.4 to get ABV.  EDIT - there seems to be a few website which will calculate ABV for you but none of them seem to use the 7.4 method.

3. Dextrose added to the fermenter will simply help produce the alcohol but will no impart any additional flavours to the beer.  So, if you only use a kit and dextrose you'll end up with a pretty bland beer and the accuracy of the process itself will have a bigger impact on its quality - i.e. sterilisation, fermentation and carbonation.

4. Dextrose can be substituted with Brew Enhancers which typically contain Dextrose and Malt Extract (amongst other things).  These bring out more flavours in the beer.

5. The sugar you add to the bottles is used by the remaining yeast to create the carbonation - it is therefore a good idea to try to keep your filled bottles in the same place as where you brewed the beer.... preferably in a room with a consistent temperature and ideally around 20 degrees.  Too cold, and the yeast won't work as efficiently.  Too hot and it'll work too efficiency producing a poor carbonation.  Find the right balance and your beer should pour with a good head and remain fizzy.  After about a week you can move it into a cooler place for longer term storage.


So there are a few points about brewing in general and kit brewing.  I'll add some more thoughts and links later....

Brew One - Tasting.... part 2

Here is a pic of the Munich Lager in all it's glory being consumed 21 days after bottling:

I needed the camera close at hand to manage to get a photo of the poured beer with some head on it as it dissipated very quickly.

Co-taster Barney was on hand to sample the beer again on day 22 and he agreed that the taste had improved immeasurably from the first taste and we even managed to drink our way through three bottles quite comfortably.

In between the tasting at 15 days and this tasting six days later I bought a dozen bottles in from the shed and stored in the understairs cupboard in the hope that slightly warmer temperatures and a quick inversion to mix some of the sediment up would improve the carbonation.  The good news is that it seems to me that I was right and the beer is much improved.

Further to co-taster Barney, I shared another bottle with taster number two Russell on Sunday (day 23).  This was the best of the lot so far with a really good head on pouring, a clean crisp taste and enough flavour to make you go back for more.  Lucky I am enjoying drinking it because I think I have about 18 bottles of it to drink!  We've decided to try to do some blind tasting with a few of the also-ran local beers like Tui to see how it compares. I will report the results when we get around to it.