"Naughty Amber ... ale" brewing

Sounds dodgy huh?

This time I used orange and agave syrup in strong amber ale!

Actually, it's not my first time to use fruits in brewing. I brewed Belgian wit with Dan using grape fruits I can pick from the garden outside of my flat and also used the same stuff for brewing Saison Dupont clone with Josh. Belgian wit I brewed didn't go well, because of the other spice I added and the beer tasted odd. My friend said to me "weird flavour combination". Saison Dupont clone is still bottle conditioning, but I'm expecting to be pretty good. I added only grape fruits to saison, but nothing else. Saison's 'tart' 'grassy' 'fruity' can get along with 'citrus' 'sour' 'bitter' flavour of grape fruits. 

This time's brew's idea was totally came from nowhere. Well, actually came from the bar. I was thinking about trying some brown sugar or honey for the brew and I was staring at agave nectar that we use for making Margarita. Then, I was thinking about Margarita recipe. Cointreau is used to make Margarita as well as Tequila, lime, salt. Cointreau is an orange liqueur from France. Obviously this proves that agave syrup and orange is a good couple. 

My flavour inspiration from there reached to one idea 'caramel orange'. The beer smelt like just peeled orange and tasted great after the brew. The beer was pretty clear from a good rolling boil. I cleaned my gears more carefully than usual, too. It was very motivated from my trip to Galbraith's ale house. I was getting training on cask beer serving and brewed a batch of beer with the head brewer, Ian Ramsay. It was very motivational and educational. 

Absolutely fantastic experience before getting into industry. I am starting to brew commercially. The beer is called Funk Estate and starting with my favourite Black IPA. This Wednesday, 18th April is the Funk Estate's first brew day. I'm so stoked!

Recipe for Naughty Amber

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU
4.00 kg	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)	Grain	1	53.3 %
2.00 kg	Munich Malt (17.7 EBC)	Grain	2	26.7 %
0.20 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)	Grain	4	2.7 %
1.00 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)	Grain	3	13.3 %
0.20 kg	Oats, Flaked (2.0 EBC)	Grain	5	2.7 %
0.10 kg	Chocolate Malt (689.5 EBC)	Grain	6	1.3 %
50.00 g	Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	10	7.8 IBUs
10.00 g	Pacific Jade [13.00 %] - Boil 90.0 min	Hop	8	13.3 IBUs
10.00 g	Pacific Jade [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	9	12.4 IBUs
30.00 g	Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min	Hop	7	15.8 IBUs
50.00 g	Fuggles [4.50 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days	Hop	13	0.0 IBUs
100.00 g	Orange choped (Boil 15.0 mins)	Spice	11	-
250.00 ml	agave syrup (Boil 0.0 mins)	Flavor	12	-

The original gravity was 1.069. It was a lot lower than expected. From how the grain looked I'm guessing the grain didn't get milled enough. 

January Homebrew Tasting night ~ Russian Imperial Stout

Last Sunday night, I hosted Wellington Hombrew Tasting in the cozy lounge of Hashigo Zake. It's been over 1 year since the first one.
We had about 10 people confirmed on internet, but as the weather was pretty bad we had 6 people came along. However, it was a quiet, but interesting and little bit exciting homebrewed beer tasting.

We tasted, Berliner Weiss 2.8%, Just Ale 4%, NZ Pilsner 6%, 2 NZ IPAs 6% and my Russian Imperial Stout 12%.

Actually, Berliner Weiss was the beer of the night we thought. It was very sessionable beer and had a great tart flavour, which almost reminds me some kind of citrus fruits like lemon, but not too much. It would be a great beer to drink under the sun, Good times!

Just Ale was quite interesting beer, didn't have much character to it, but the following NZ Pilsner was fantastic. The brewer brought Imperial Pilsner in the past. It was 8% fruity Pilsner. It was easy to drink. Surely that guy know how to brew Pilsner!

Both NZ IPA were nice, one of two was actually his first 'Contract Hombrew'. And another was 'Contract Homebrewed' at my place.

We had my Russian Imperial Stout at the end. I mentioned them that it was very young. I just bottled a day before Christmas eve. As I expected it smelled alcoholic and some people didn't enjoy the aroma that much, but what saved me was that they liked the taste. Cool!

They agreed on me bringing the same beer in the next homebrew tasting to see how it will mature. I actually might save it for NHC 2012 in October. Stronger beer lasts long.

Here's the recipe of Russian Imperial Stout I brewed.

8.00 kg	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)	Grain	1	62.5 %
1.00 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)	Grain	2	7.8 %
1.00 kg	Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (236.4 EBC)	Grain	3	7.8 %
0.50 kg	Carafa II (811.6 EBC)	Grain	5	3.9 %
0.50 kg	Black Barley (Stout) (985.0 EBC)	Grain	4	3.9 %
0.10 kg	Peat Smoked Malt (5.5 EBC)	Grain	7	0.8 %
0.20 kg	Smoked Malt (17.7 EBC)	Grain	6	1.6 %
50.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 100.0 min	Hop	9	66.6 IBUs
30.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	12	13.4 IBUs
20.00 g	Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	10	24.7 IBUs
50.00 g	Target [11.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	11	16.4 IBUs
40.00 g	Target [11.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days	Hop	13	0.0 IBUs
1.50 kg	Invert Sugar (0.0 EBC)	Sugar	8	11.7 %'

And this is the learning from the brew day.
It was almost twice the usual amount of grain I use for brewing and I was checking the gravity as I was sparging the mash. It was shocking. Even though I had so much grain, the pre-boil gravity was 1.054. I remembered a guy who's been homebrewing for long time and know us beer-guru in Wellington, Kieran from Regional Wines and Spirits talking about over night mash for his Barley-wine. I soon posted on Facebook bitching about my low gravity from 11.3kg grain and said I should have done the over night mashing. A minutes after Kieran, Joe Wood from Liberty Brewery and Chris Poel, head brewer of Baird Brewery in Japan started commenting on my post!! Seems like I have few friends in high places.
From their over 30 comments I found out the following.
- brew efficiency drops significantly if I use more grain than usual, because more grain in the same shape mash-tun means thicker filter
- adding sugar to boost up the ABV is fine as long as I get enough flavour from the malt

That is why there is 1.5kg sugar included in the recipe above.

I still find that brew day was interesting, exciting and funny me getting worried so much about the low-gravity wort and professional brewers started helping me through. Facebook nailed!

Saison!

So, I finally brewed Saison.

This year's craft beer trend in New Zealand has been Saison. (and also over in U.S.A)

I tried many Saison style beers this year and some of they were good and some of were not.


I had black Saison during Beervana. Oh yeah, it was a great beer festival and I had many great beers. I can't wait for the next one in 2012.

This time I brewed black Saison and black IPA as I said I will do in the past post.

I modified the black IPA recipe a lot. I added more caramel malt.
I also got Wyeast Laboratories. French Saison 3711 for my black Saison.

This is how I syphoned the beer.

This way I get to taste the difference between the different yeasts and get 2 beers out of 1 brew!

1 stone 2 birds.

Black Saison finished its fermentation last night, after 1.5 weeks. It took a lot of time! 

Here's the recipe for 30L batch size.

7.40kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter) 

0.95kg Caramel Crystal Medium (150EBC)

0.40kg Carafa II (800EBC)

0.25kg Roasted Barley (600EBC)

40g Pacific Gem [15.00%] - Boil 90.0 min 

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 20.0 min

30g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Boil 10.0 min

10g Riwaka [5.25%] - Boil 5.0 min

100g NZ Cascade [8.00%] - Dry Hop 7 days.

And syphone into 2 different fermenters at the SAME TIME. 

Beer for chocolate lovers

Chocolate beer has been pretty popular recently.

I tried Renaissance Craftsman Chocolate Oatmeal Stout many times and it is an awesome beer.

It has full-on chocolate flavour and a hint of vanilla and coffee. I know many girls fell in love with the beer. (and guys)

Why can't I attract some of those girls?

So, I brewed chocolate beer with my friend, Dylan.

The base beer I picked was Imperial Porter.

Imagine the rich roasty, coffee, caramel flavour with the chocolate you love. It will be great.

Renaissance Brewery and many other people use the cacao nibs so I followed the trend.

I got the cacao nibs from Madagascar. The shop owner was telling me that Madagascan one would the best quality cacao I can get in Wellington. (The shop imports wine and other food stuff from France and Italy. Nice shop.)

I will add the most of these in the secondary, but to get the flavour in the beer I threw 100gram of cacao nibs in the boil (10 minutes).

I pitched the 3rd generation US-05 yeast and fermenting nicely at the moment.

By the way, this "3rd generation yeast", brewed 200IBU IIPA 9.5%, gone to my friend's brew and came back to mine. It was bit of fun, passing the yeast around. 

Here's the recipe for the brew.

27L Batch

7.50kg Pale Malt (Maris Otter)

1.36kg Munich Malt

1.54kg Crystal Malt (250EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (120EBC)

0.61kg Crystal Malt (60EBC)

0.31kg Chocolate Malt

0.15kg Black Malt

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 

14 g Southern Cross [13.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 

14 g Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 

100g Cacao Nib - Boil 10min

200g Madagascan Cacao Nib - secondary (dry hop....   I mean dry cacao)

Coconut Rough Stout

I've been enjoying adding extra ingredients to my homebrew.

I have used, coffee, strawberry, cacao nib, vanilla, cinnamon and crisps. (!?)

I brewed a stout with one of my favourite Misc ingredient, coconut.

I'm not actually the first one to try coconut in the beer. There are some commercial example out there.
Maui Brewing Coconut Porter from Hawaii is a popular one and 2009 NZ national homebrew competirion (NHC) winning beer was coconut porter, too.

I tried the NHC 09' winning homebrew - brewed commercially at Hallertau in Auckland and fell in love with the beer for couple weeks. (Yes, only few weeks. I like mine better now)

My opinion was that the beer was too sweet and I applied to dry stout for the first time last year. It worked quite well. I modified the recipe and brewed again couple months ago and gave some of them to my friends.

Coconut Rough Stout tasting 1


Coconut Rough Stout tasting 2



The beer was getting some good compliments, but Greig picked up "green apple" in the beer, which is a fault and it is due to the stressed yeast. I remember that I pitched the dry yeast straight into the fermenter without hydrating them nor making the starter. Greig said that using the dry yeast without hydrating them kills the half of the yeast I pitch.

The failure of the brew apart from the one Greig picked is that the beer was 'wet' and 'sweet'. I was supposed to make it dry, but the beer came out as coconut caramel cream beer. Right. It is not what I aimed and it is far way from what I brewed last year. The reason I can think of is that I left the coconut in the fermenter too long.
I was supposed to bottle after a week I threw the toasted coconut in, but I was way too busy with my work and other stuff. (excuse? yes it is.)

Here is the recipe for the beer (20L batch)





 3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter  
 1.00 kg Barley, Flaked 
 0.45 kg Black Barley 
 0.25 kg Oats, Flaked 


 20.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min
 20.00 g Target [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min 


 50.00 g cacao nibs (Boil 10.0 mins) Flavor 7 - 
200.00g dry coconut meat (Boil 10.0min)


200.00g dry coconut meat (dry hop 7 days)


Add oat to the recipe this time to give the some texture, but I think it wasn't a good idea
Probably roasted barley could be added to gain the 'dry' impression when its consumed.
I should have kept the grain recipe more simple.

Recipe modification and going back to least favorite beer

I have been taking off from brewing in July and concentration on drinking my own homebrews.




I had too many beers going on back then ...

It was hard for me to look after all 8 beers at the same time and I think I decreased the quality of the beer I brewed meantime as I couldn't be paying enough attention to each beer.


MASS PRODUCTION = LOWER QUALITY


It's kind of easy theory from economic course at university (ECON 101)




What I did was to tidy up my brewery  to

looks better now....




It's not only tidying up my brewery, I was up to in last few weeks.


I tried my Imperial Black IPA.


The conclusions to improve the IBIPA is:
- Imperial Black IPA isn't dark enough and needs more roasty flavour as well body. So, adding Black Barley or Roasted Barley is necessary.


This is the modified recipe

6.50 kg Pale Malt

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 40L

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 80L

0.20 kg Chocolate Malt

0.50 kg Roasted Barley

40 gram Pacific Gem  90min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  60min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  45min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  30min

30 gram NZ Cascade  10min

30 gram NZ Cascade  5min

50 gram NZ Cascade  1min

Increased the amount of dark malt and also more 1minute hop addition. I'm hoping the chocolate malt will help the roast flavour and the huge hop flavour get along with its sweet toffy malt character.

I also tried American Wheat Ale and Hoppy Wit.

I confess that Hoppy Wit was my least favourite beer I brewed this year so far. However, I tried from the  bottle today with a friend. He told me that his favourite was Hoppy Wit over American Wheat Ale saying that Wheat Ale was hoppy and good beer, but not interesting compare to Hoppy Wit. 

Actually Hoppy Wit was brewed because of accident that my 8 months old Hef yeast didn't start up after I pitched the yeast. Yeah, I was planning to brew Hopfen Weiss. 

As it's been popular to brew the beer with Belgian/French beer yeast, Saison yeast. 

There's Saison Sauvin from 8 Wired Brewing, which is IPA brewed with Saison yeast. The beer has Belgian yeast character and slightly sour.

My friend tasted similar sourness in my Hoppy Wit and suggested me that it may be possible to brew Wit IPA as well as Saison IPA. I agreed with his idea, but I have to change the hops around.

I thought it is very cool to go back to some beers you wouldn't pay attention to or wouldn't like (at least me) and seek out a new possibility. 

I'd say Imperial Black IPA and Hoppy Wit will be my next brews I must do. 

Recipe making for Imperial Black Saison

I posted the recipe for Imperial Black IPA previously and I was thinking what will happen if I brewed the same beer, but with a different yeast.

In the past I have done American Wheat Ale and Hoppy Wit from the same wort.

They turned out like this -

American Wheat Ale: huge hop aroma (Simcoe!), peach, clean bitterness and pine fruits taste and thin body, and the flavour doesn't last long. very easy drinking hoppy wheat ale

Hoppy Wit: smells yeasty and Simcoe hop is not getting along with Belgian Wit yeast character. Tastes soapy. not the best beer it could be. I think I should've done Hoppen Weiss using Hefeweissen yeast.

I learned that there is some case that the yeast and hop don't get along together.

However, I'm thinking to brew another crazy stuff.


Imperial Black Saison by pitching Saison yeast into the Imperial Black IPA wort.


For 20L batch

6.50 kg Pale Malt

1.00 kg Munich Malt

0.25 kg Crystal Malt 30L

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 60L

0.25 kg Black Barley

40 gram Pacific Gem  90min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  60min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  45min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  30min

30 gram NZ Cascade  10min

30 gram NZ Cascade  5min

10 gram NZ Cascade  1min

100 gram NZ Cascade Dry Hop for 7days

And Saison yeast

Well. I didn't create a new recipe.

"JUST PITCH DIFFERENT"

From my experience of drinking Saison, Saison make the beer dry and shows coriander or other spices on nose.

The mistake I have done for brewing Hoppy Wit may be "wrong hop used" "dry hopping"

However, Saison tends to have less yeastyness compare to other Belgian yeasts and I'm guessing it won't be a big problem to dry hop it. 

It could be cool to check this forum from Homebrew.com

Imperial Black IPA

Yeahp. Imperial, it is.

I bottled Imperial Black IPA.

Black IPA has been quite popular and I brewed, but something more. (more of this stuff brewed commercially in America though. i.e Southerntier Iniquity and Unita Dubhe Imperial Black IPA )

It wasn't done yet, but from what I tasted before bottling, the beer will be pretty good.

I can't forget to mention that the idea was from my friend Alec.

He was one of my friend who liked my homebrewed IPA and STARTED to brew the beer himself.

Seems like I'm doing my job to make the taxation department get less money....   inspiring and increasing the homebrewing population. 

Alec made the label for our collaborative brew and here is the front part of it.

(But not for sale as it's illegal.)

And also this is the recipe we brewed

6.50 kg Pale Malt

1.00 kg Munich Malt

0.25 kg Crystal Malt 30L

0.60 kg Crystal Malt 60L

0.25 kg Black Barley

40 gram Pacific Gem  90min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  60min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  45min

10 gram Nelson Sauvin  30min

30 gram NZ Cascade  10min

30 gram NZ Cascade  5min

10 gram NZ Cascade  1min

100 gram NZ Cascade Dry Hop for 7days

Taking the day off to brew

I've been struggling to find the time to get round to brewing as of late so did the logical thing and took a day off work to brew. And what I will be brewing is Tasty McDole's "Janets Brown". Recipe below adjusted to what I had available:


Batch Size (Gal): 6.00 Wort Size (Gal): 6.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 16.00
Anticipated OG: 1.066 Plato: 16.20
Anticipated SRM: 19.3
Anticipated IBU: 63.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar

% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
75.0 12.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2
7.8 1.25 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt 1.033 2
7.8 1.25 lbs. Crystal 40L America 1.034 40
6.3 1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt America 1.038 2
3.1 0.50 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.029 350

Hops

Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 oz. Northern Brewer Pellet 6.50 19.0 Mash H
1.25 oz. Northern Brewer Pellet 6.50 30.8 60 min.
1.00 oz. Northern Brewer Pellet 6.50 6.6 15 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade Pellet 6.00 6.8 10 min.
1.50 oz. Cascade Pellet 6.00 0.0 0 min.
2.00 oz. Centennial Pellet 9.00 0.0 Dry Hop

Yeast
-----
Fermentis US-05

Mash Schedule
-------------
Mashed in at 154*F or 68*C if you will.

As I am a BIAB brewer I've made some slight adjustments i.e took into account no sparging.

This is my first attempt on the electric water urn brew kettle my friends and I chipped in to buy and brew day is off to a bad start. With a beer this big you need a lot of grains and alot of water. This is probably one of the biggest problems with BIAB brewing. Let me explain.
The electric kettle I use is 40L and I want 23L in the fermenter. For this happen I need calculate how much water I need. So....
If i want 23L I need to add 23L to the kettle
The malt bill for is about 7.5kg. I assume for every kg of grain, I lose 1L of water + 7.5L
On the this kettle I can assume 2L lost to evaporation per hour. This is a 90min boil. +3L
So to start I need 23L + 7.5L + 3L which gives me 33.5L of water needed. Plenty of room in a 40L kettle for that.
Except i haven't eally taken into account the displacement of the 7.5kg og grains. Now 40L isn't quite big enough and I got a bit of an overflow.

Balls.

Still, rather be doing this than working.

Vanilla scotchale

Last night, I tasted the Scotch ale I brewed for my friend's birthday.

The beer had the final gravity of 1.020, and the original gravity was 1.070, which was 0.003 lower than the target gravity.

2 weeks after I pitched the yeast I put 2 pods of vanilla beans, and 1 cinnamon stick in the carboy. (yeah, actual vanilla beans and cinnamon stick)

The beer had a good colour, not very carbonated, big, but subtle vanilla aroma and tiny hint of cinnamon.

It was tasting good, but the body was kind of thin even though it finished at 1.020 (maybe I should have aimed higher for FG(Final Gravity) or just added more grain?) or the sweetness in the beer ganged up with vanilla and made me think it had thinner body in the beer. 

However, the peat flavour in this beer was definitely making the other think it was an interesting beer.

Here is the recipe for "Cole's Vanilla Scotch Ale"

5.50 kg Pale Malt

1.00 kg Wheat Malt

0.23 kg Crystal Malt 40L

0.23 kg Crystal Malt 60L

0.23 kg Crystal Malt 80L

0.23 kg Munich Malt

0.10 kg Chocolate Malt

0.10 kg Peat Smoked Malt

0.10 kg Mild Smoked Malt

0.10 kg Roasted Barley

30gram Fuggles hop 60min

30gram Fuggles hop 30min

30gram East Kent Goldings hop 10min

Extra ingredients:

2 Vanilla Pods

1 Cinnamon Stick

and Happy Birthday Cole!

Clarity

Left : hoppy wit

Right : hoppy wheat ale

I brewed hoppy wit and hoppy wheat ale last month using, 10kg grain 50% wheat malt 50% pilsner malt. I halved the batch into two and brewed twice that day.

After each brew I syphoned into 2 different fermenters to have exactly the same wort in them from 2 separate brews. As I pitched different yeast (saf-dry wit and us-05) they started fermenting, but what made me surprised was that, the each colour of the wort I could see from outside of the fermenting bucket were different. 

Usually colour difference of the beers are from how much/what kind of roasted malt you put into your brew and never heard that the yeast affect the colour.

Guess it was because the bucket wasn't clear container, I thought it was the colour difference I had in my mind. Each beer started from the same wort, hence the colour of the beers are the same and the difference in these beer was the clarity level. 

The hoppy wit in the fermenter looked darker in the fermenter as it didn't let the light go through as much as the another hoppy wheat ale, because ale yeast make the beer clearer than wit or hef yeast.

by the way this is the recipe for these wheat beer.

Amt	Name
2.5 kg	Pilsner Malt
2.5 kg	Wheat Malt
10.00 g	Centennial [10.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
15.00 g	Simcoe [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days
20.00 g	Motueka [7.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
15.00 g	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 45.0 min
10.00 g	Motueka [7.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min
10.00 g	Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 10.0 min
10.00 g	Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min
10.00 g	Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 1.0 min