DIY reward

After yet another day getting frustrated with DIY, I am rewarding myself with a well earned beer session, all home brewed except a bottle of SNPA which I have in my sights. Already tried a Q.C. bottle of Randy Sparrow (brewed back on February 28) in fact that leaves me with only 1 bottle the other 6 bottles from that batch are all promised out (hence the Q.C.) very pleased with it, it's a lovely refresing 'soft' ale, very creamy tasting and a cracking 4.6% session beer. The rest of the batch of course remains in the keg. Red Sky Ale will be next in the glass, it's been kegged since February 27th so it should be right, just about now.

Edit: Red Sky, Hmm an interesting taste, smokey on the nose and a big raisin flavour, the colour is very dark, held to the light it's red, but a very dark red. Both of these pictures are of Red Sky Ale

Drinking From The Tap

We celebrated a friends birthday yesterday with a trip to Church End Brewery North Warwickshire for a few pints from their very popular brewery tap. It's a great place to drink, they always have 8 different beer engines on the go and I think that their beers are superb! You get to enjoy the drinking experience in a well done out, rather plush bar with a large viewing window through to the brewery, the view is dominated by two of their five fermentors, you can see them in this picture. Beers that we tried are Avon Ale, Vicars Ruin and Alter Ale (I think) you can see the tasting notes on the Church End Brewery web site (linked above).

Church End don't do food (except for functions) but you are welcome to take in your meal, picnic take away or whatever, you can also take in your dog but no children are allowed. During the summer you can enjoy their huge garden area (where kids are welcome) and it's ok to take a picnic along, I've even seen people setting BBQ's there during the summer.

I'm really pleased that I have such a great Micro on my door step!

Home Brew Review

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of sampling 2 bottles of homebrew sent to me by fellow all-grain brewers.

First up was JW's Lager sent to me by John This is the first homebrewed lager that I've tried so I made sure that I got the temperature of the beer right earlier in the day. To sum this up in a line: A great session beer to serve up at a BBQ.

I found it to be nicely carbonated and a light golden colour (the pic doesn't do it justice) I thought that it could have done with more hop aroma and flavour but that could be just my preference, it had a very clean/crisp and light taste and a dry finish, ideal I would say at a meat V's hot coals contest and I'm sure that John's going to be very popular this summer if he brews this again!

Following that was an Oatmeal Stout sent to me by Calum, I am not normally a stout drinker but i'd happily see a few of these off.

Carbonation was great, just enough to give the beer some life, it tasted really smooth and really gives your taste buds a treat with a full on roasted malt invasion, (I wonder, does the smoothness come from the roasted oatmeal?) It was nice and sweet with a pleasant finish not at all like the mass produced commercial stouts I normally avoid at the pub, I've also come to expect that a stout will be filling, like having a Sunday lunch after 3 pints but this wasn't like that at all. It would be easy to sit on a cold night in front of the fire and see a few of these down the hatch, i'll be looking for a brew to put away for Christmas, this will be on the shortlist.

Both of these brewers have 2 of my beers to try each, both have a Glasshouse Porter which I bottled back in December, Calum also has a bottle of Largs Thistle and John also has a bottle of Randy Sparrow. I'm looking forward to their feedback, it's the best way to improve your brews in my opinion.

Brewday : West Coast Pale (SNPA clone) 6 March

I haven't been able to post for a while, family life and a bathroom renovation which seems to have been going on forever have seen to that! Still I did manage to brew the SNPA clone back on March 6, which will be called West Coast Pale.

Brewlength 25L
Estimated OG 1.056
Estimated IBU ~40
Estimated SRM ~9
66 Degree Mash - 90 Mins
Boil Time - 60 Mins

Grain
5400gm Pale Malt Maris Otter Grain 91.5%
400gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 7.0%
100gm Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 1.5%

Hops
25gm Pearle [6.90 %] (60 min) Hops 14.5 IBU
20gm Magnum Pellets [13.10 %] (60 min) Hops 24.4 IBU
30gm Cascade [6.80 %] (10 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)
50gm Cascade [6.80 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

Fermented with 1 packet of US-05 yeast.

I've never used US-05 before apparently this should give the finished beer a nice clean/crisp taste, it certainly behaved differently to the S-04 and Nottingham i'm used to using.

I ended up with 25L at 1.052 (so 4 points below the target) but this went down to 1.008 and I think it'd still be going had I not transferred it to the fridge at 2 degrees to make it stop! It should turn out at about 5.9% SNPA is 5.6%.

The picture above is the aroma/steep hops just after being added it's 50g Cascade that went in after the cooling wort had got to 80 degrees, they steeped for 45 minutes whilst cooling before I ran the 20 degree wort into the fermentor. They gave off a wonderful cirus aroma, the fermented wort really does smell very similar to SNPA, I'm looking forward to trying it, I think it'll come out a bit darker though, I might lighten up a bit on the Crystal next time.

With regard to other brews the Largs Thistle 80/- didn't make it to bottle again because of time I had to keg it, it tastes great. I did bottle 8 of them up which will be sent out for tastings by fellow homebrewers.

Big Kenny - Turned out good

This is a pint of Big Kenny that I brewed back on 31st January, it's in perfect condition right now, and it's crystal clear. I think that this is my favourite of the beers that I've made to date, It's certainly going to be a regular in my tap (aka the garage). It'll be next on the to brew list after my SNPA clone which I now have all of the ingredients for, so hopefully that will be brewed tomorrow.

Brewday : Largs Thistle 80/-

Yesterday I managed to achieve 4 things that I've wanted to do for a while

1. Brew a Scottish Heavy, an 80/- (80 Shilling)

2. Do a brew of which all of it will go to bottle

3. Try a 60 minute mash

4. Try a 60 minute boil




The recipe that I used for this one was 'tweaked' from a fellow home brewer (thanks Mysty)

Brew length - 25L
Target OG - 1.046 (based on 75% BHE)
EBU ~30
60 min 69 degree mash
60 min boil

Brewlength - 25L
Target OG - 1.046 (based on 75% BHE)
EBU ~30
60 min 69 degree mash
60 min boil

Grist
4600gm Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 83.33 %
240gm Amber Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 4.88 %
240gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4.88 %
240gm Wheat, Torrified (1.7 SRM) Grain 4.88 %
100gm Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 2.03 %
Hops
50gm Fuggles [5.50 %] (60 min) Hops 25.3 IBU
20gm Fuggles [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops 5.0 IBU
Other
1.00 items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
Yeast - Gervin English Ale

Originally I'd gone for just 4100gm Pale but concerned that I'd drop efficiency with a shorter (60 min) mash I upped it by 500g.

I had a great brewday, by only mashing for 1 hour and boiling for 1 hour I got my brewday down to 5 hours, which will help with the evening brews that I do. I needn't have worried about the efficiency, I got 25L at 1.052 which is a 76.7 brewhouse efficiency, I average 75%. The wort was a nice rich dark colour which I expect to be packed full of character.

This batch has been brewed to be bottled, so in a couple of week's I'll have 40 odd bottles of Largs Thistle 80/- conditioning.

About the name, I wanted to get the word 'Thistle' in there somewhere with the Thistle being the National Emblem of Scotland, when I looked into it I found an interesting story.

It is claimed that the Thistle became Scotland's emblem after the battle of Largs in 1263. Legend has it that during an attempted invasion of Scotland by Norsemen, the Norsemen tried to surprise the sleeping Scottish Clansmen. In order to move more stealthily under the cover of darkness the Norsemen removed their footwear. But as they crept barefoot they came across an area of ground covered in thistles and one of Haakon's men unfortunately stood on one and shrieked out in pain, thus alerting the Clansmen to the advancing Norsemen.

I think that's a great legend, so Largs Thistle 80/- it is!

I got (and 'borrowed') the above from HERE where there is lots more information.

SNPA clone

I had been reading for a while about how nice a beer Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is so, last weekend I went out a bought six 330ml bottles, well it was only fair to give it a good test! I really liked it, I served it quite cold and found it to be wonderfully bitter with a really prominent hop aroma and flavour. After some research on Jims Home Brew Forum. I found that the hops used are Magnum, Pearle and Cascade.

I'm going to have a try at cloning this beer hopefully next week.

This will be the recipe, i'm just waiting for some of the ingredients to turn up.

Brewlength 25L
Estimated OG 1.056
Estimated IBU ~40
Estimated SRM ~9
66 Degree Mash - 90 Mins
Boil Time - 60 Mins

5400gm Pale Malt Maris Otter Grain 91.5%
400gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 7.0%
100gm Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 1.5%
25gm Pearle [6.90 %] (60 min) Hops 14.5 IBU
25gm Magnum [11.00 %] (60 min) Hops 25.6 IBU
30gm Cascade [6.80 %] (10 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)
50gm Cascade [6.80 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

Fermenting at 18 degrees with US-05