The Perfect Bitter ?

Well I did brew on Sunday, turned out to be the coldest day of the year ! After much thought and after bottling some of the Wannabee 36 Bitter on Saturday decided to try another Bitter with some minor modifications to the recipe. The modifications were to increase the crystal malt by 200 grams to 350 grams and to reduce the 2nd hops from 32 grams to 25 grams. I also added three teaspoons of calcium sulphate to the mash. We shall see, its fermenting away merrily as we speak.

But what of the my first attempt at bitter. Well with no real comparison heres what I did
1)Reviewed BJCP Guidelines to find commercial examples and followed up with a quick trip to bottle store. Only example on sale was Boddingtons Pub Ale. Bought 1 can at the same price as a six pack of locally produced beer (homebrewing is not a good way to save money on booze).
2)Tasted Boddingtons
3)Tasted Wannabee 36
4)Decided Wannabeepretty good
5)Consulted various beer experts (my 16 year old son, red wine drinking wife and occasional sherry drinking mother).
6)Preened as a result of their glowing reports.
7)Decided a more impartial opinion was called for, mine.
8)Came to the conclusion that it was a bloody good beer, probably my best so far.

My observations

Carbonation - about the same as the Boddingtons
Aroma - a little more hoppy than the Boddintons but given a little more time to condition will probably end up at about the same level.
Bitterness - Similar level to Boddingtons but a bit harsher, also probably a bit more time to condition will sort out.
Clarity - My son said 9 out of 10, my own feeling would be about 7.5 to 8, again it may clear with age.
Taste - good after a pint but great after 4 !!!

Decided that I like the style, ale yeast is readily available and that I will dedicate my next few brews to trying to perfect it.

I also kegged the stout on Saturday and will report back as soon as it is ready to drink.

This is the Home of The Twinorbsbrewery

Planning another brew this weekend, probably a mild ale again. Well that all the brewing news Ihave for now other than to say that the stout seems to be doing well and the lager is still shit !

For those of you who don't know where Port Elizabeth (or for that matter South Africa is) have a look at the map on the left, Port Elizabeth is right on the bottom of the African continent. For a real close up follow the link you'll see where its all going to happen !! Home of the Twinorbsbrewery.

Daddy's Day

Well tomorrow is Mothers day so I decided to make today Daddy's day and do another brew. A dry irish stout. The day went well with me measuring the ph of every step of the way. One of the things I did for the first time today was add some gypsum to the mash tun to bring the ph down a little (From 5.6 to 5.2). The amazing thing for me was that I was drinking a coke at the time and for interests sake checked the ph of the coke as well 2.71 !!!! No wonder it gets used for removing rust.

The stout recipe to give me a final volume into bottles of 38 litres was

4.5 Kg pale malt

750 grams roasted barley

120 grams chocolate malt

900 grams cane sugar

46 grams southern brewer hops at 10% alpha acid.

Single infusion mashed at 67 deg C.

Yeast SAFALE 04 (cropped from primary of Bitter)

I got good conversion and think that the colour is almost right (it could be a little blacker). The only real problem that I had all day was battling to get the pump for the whirlpool chiller to prime. I will have to have a good look at why it is only that pump which I cannot get to prime, but nothing obvious springs to mind. Tou can see in the pics below the iodine test for conversion which was good and the start of the recirculation where you can clearly see the colour of the wort.

This picture of the wort is of the first running but the colour stayed extremely dark all the way through the sparge to the last runnings.An interesting observation is that when I emptied the mash tun all the roast

barley seemed to have settled in one place. I have no idea why that would be.

The bitter which I kegged last week seems to be coming along nicely. I needed a name for it and seeing that it was supposed to have 36 gravity points and only ended up with 33, gave me the name. "Wannabee 36" or abbreviated "1AB36". Pam our brewing supervisor and insiration for the brewery name can be seen in my proposed label.

Kegging The Bitter

To start, a photo of the pictures on one of the brewery walls.

Well the bitter has been in the primary for a week now and the gravity has been at 1006 for at least 2 days, so today was the day to rack to the fermenter. As is normal whenever I decide to anything in the brewery, it has to be hot. It was 42 deg C in there at lunchtime today (33 deg C outside) and this is supposed to be the early stages of winter ! I didn't get quite as much as I expected into the kegs, probably 35 litres to my expected 38, but the beer looks (and tastes good). The final gravity was 1006 and the ph 4.3 (not sure w
hether the ph is good, bad or in between, but have meter must measure). I managed to collect quite a bit of yeast which I intend using next weekend for a dry irish stout.

The lager which I made a few weeks ago still hasn't cleared and leaves a strange aftertaste in the back of the throat, not sure what it is but it doesn't taste infected or off in any way. I'm going to add some finings later and then forget about it for a couple of months. Not a good first experience with dried lager yeast.

The hops appear to be still growing will despite the fact thats its early winter and they should be dying back by now, mind you with the weather its not suprising they don't know what season it is. You can see on the photo all the new growth. The Great Gardening Experiment continues !

Brewing Sunday Part 2

Brewday started off disasterously as the previous evening when I'd turned on the HLT so that I would have my liquor heated up to strike temp for the mash, I'd actually turned on the power to the pumps so at 11am when I was ready to start I had 70 litres od 16d eg C water. Only the supervisor prevented me from giving up on brewing for the day. Anyway I emptied 30 litres out of the HLT and heated up the rest to 82 deg C. Given the ambient temperature of about 16 deg C and the heat lost in the pipes a better temperature would have been 85 deg C (I had to add an additional 3 litres of 82 deg water to reach my mash temp of 67 deg C. After mashing in I took a ph reading with my newly aquired PH meter. The ph at 5.6 was a bit on the high side, which could also be part of the reason I haven't been getting good mash efficiency. Next time I'll add some gypsum if the PH is to high. After a ninety minute mash conversion appeared good and the sparge was commenced. This time I sparged really slowly for just under an hour. I collected 50 litres into the boiler and also boiled for 90 minutes. From then on everything went well, the cooling, the transferring to the fermenter and even the cleaning. The interesting thing is that I missed my anticipated gravity again, but pleasing for me was that my spreadsheet was the closest at an OG of 1035 vs the actual of 1033 (still within the parameters for an ordinary bitter). I will adjust my mash effeciency on the spreadsheet down a little to cater for this and do the same with my next brew (use all three recipe formulators and see which is the closest. My transfer to the fermenter was a perfect colour and really clear which I was pleased about (see the picture below).

One other brewing tool which I must mention is my ipod. I really enjoy listening to all the brewing podcasts (see links) on my ipod via a radio, but for brewday nothing beats the Brewing Networks Sunday Show, its long enough to just about long enough to get you through a complete brew day !