Category Archives: Homebrew

Homebrew: Wedding APA – American Pale Ale

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Today I brewed the fourth and penultimate batch of beer for my wedding in August (see previous posts for the Wedding Pils, Wedding Blond, and Wedding Hybrid): an American Pale Ale loaded with Cascade and Centennial. I’ve brewed variations of this recipe several times before (one, two and three), so I know exactly what to expect. The resulting beer should have a hop-dominated aroma, with tones of grapefruit, pine resin and floral perfume, while the taste should feature a lightly bready maltiness together with a citrusy and floral hoppiness that ends in moderate bitterness and semi-dry finish. All in all, it should be a really easy to drink, yet still flavorful beer. The beers have been crowd favorites in the past, so am predicting that this keg will be the first to run out during the wedding.

The malt bill is simple, consisting of Maris Otter, Munich and CaraPils.  These should, together with the relatively high mash temperature (67C) and low-attenuating yeast (WLP002), yield a solid backbone to the beer despite the low ABV%. I aimed for an original gravity just below 1.050, in order to get a beer with around 5% ABV. For the hops, I chose to bitter with Herkules (since I still have some left from a 100g bag), and at flameout I added a large dose of Cascade and Centennial. The bitterness levels should be around 40 IBU, depending on how much the whirlpool hops contribute. I pitched a 1.5L starter of WLP002 after I had cooled the wort down to around 20C. I placed the fermenter in my fermentation fridge and set the fermentation temperature to 18C. I like using ‘English Ale’ yeast in my APAs and IPAs, since I think the esters they contribute go well with fruity hops. The high flocculation is also a bonus. Hopefully this one turns out as tasty as my previous brews of this recipe.

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wedding_apa.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Homebrew: Wedding Hybrid – American Pale ‘Lager’

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Today it was time to brew the third batch of beer for my wedding in August (see my previous posts for the Wedding Pils and Wedding Blond): an American Pale Ale-like beer, fermented with one of my newly created A62×C902 lager yeast hybrids. I’m not really sure what to expect from the beer, but I’m hoping for a really fruity aroma and flavour. Apart from the large amount of experimental fermentations we’ve done with the yeast hybrids at work, we have also fermented a bigger batch of ‘typical’ lager wort with one of the hybrids, which we then kegged and taste-tested. That beer at least had a really fruity flavour, with plenty of ethyl esters and isoamyl acetate. That wort was relatively lightly hopped, so it will be really interesting to see how the yeast aromas go along with a more heavily hopped beer. I’m hoping for bold flavours, yet still an easy-to-drink beer.

The recipe might seem a bit complicated, as it features six different malts and five hop varieties. This is because I’m using up some opened malt and hop bags. I’m hoping that the ingredients come together nicely, and that the flavours aren’t too muddled in the final beer. The malt bill consists mainly of some Pilsner and Maris Otter malt as base, with a hefty portion of Munich malt to lend some more breadiness. The rest of the malt bill consists of some CaraPils, oat flakes and Crystal 6oL, in order to give the beer some increased mouthfeel and a hint of caramel. I aimed for an original gravity of around 1.050, in order to get a beer with around 5% ABV. For the hops, I chose to bitter with some leftover Styrian Goldings and Simcoe, and at flameout I added a mixture of Amarillo, Citra, Saphir and Simcoe. I aimed to keep the bitterness levels quite low and instead concentrate on a massive hop flavor and aroma. I pitched a 2.5L starter of one of my lager yeast hybrids after I had cooled the wort down to around 17C. I kegged the Pilsner yesterday (it was tasting awesome by the way!), so my fermentation fridge was free again. I set the fermentation temperature to 15C, and 6 hours after pitching there was already slight activity in the airlock. Fingers crossed that this turns into an awesome beer!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wedding_hybrid.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Homebrew: Wedding Blond – Belgian Blond

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I just came back from the 35th EBC Congress in Porto, where there were some really interesting presentations and posters. I’m currently writing up a post with a summary of the topics that are relevant to homebrewers, and I should hopefully have it ready during next week! Today I also brewed the second batch of beer for my wedding in August (see my previous post for the Wedding Pils): a Belgian Blond based on a recipe I brewed almost three years ago. The beer I brewed then was light, hoppy and featured some nice esters and phenolics from the yeast in the aroma. Should be perfect for a warm summer day, perhaps together with the seafood on the menu.

The recipe is quite simple, featuring a malt bill of mainly Pilsner malt, with just hints of flaked oats and cane sugar, to contribute some more mouthfeel and dry out the beer. I aimed for an original gravity of around 1.050, in order to get a beer with around 5.5% ABV. For the hops, I again used Herkules for bittering, but instead added some Styrian Goldings and Saphir towards the end of the boil. I pitched a 1L starter of WLP530 (Abbey Ale) after I had cooled the wort down to around 20C. My fermentation fridge is still occupied by the Pilsner, so chose to ferment this at room temperature. This should help bring out some yeast tones in the aroma as well. I placed the fermenter in a slightly colder room (~ 18C), but I imagine the wort temperature will rise to about 23C during active fermentation. I checked the fermenter 5 hours after pitching and there was already rapid bubbling in the airlock meaning that the yeast was already chewing through the sugars. Another smooth brewday!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wedding_blond.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Homebrew: Wedding Pils – German Pilsner

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I’m getting married in August, and of course I’ve planned to brew a range of beers for the wedding. I already have a big Imperial Stout ready, and it will probably be served together with dessert. It has been keg-aging for over a year, and it was tasting really nice a couple of weeks ago when I had a small sample. Yesterday I brewed the first batch of the ‘lighter’ beers: a German Pilsner. I’m also planning to make a Belgian Blond, American Pale Ale, American IPA, and a beer brewed with one of my recently developed hybrid lager yeasts.

I haven’t brewed for a while, since we are still renovating our brewing space, but everything went surprisingly smoothly: I was done in 5 hours and managed to hit all the numbers. I aimed for a hoppy and crisp Pilsner, in the style of Firestone Walker’s amazing Pivo Pils. The malt bill consisted of Pilsner malt and a hint of Cara-pils, and the original gravity was 1.048. For hops, I used Herkules at 90 minutes and Spalter at 30 minutes and flame-out (total IBU around 40-45). I will be dry-hopping with a slight amount of Saphir after the fermentation has slowed down. I’m fermenting with Fermentis’ W34/70, since I didn’t feel like making a huge yeast starter. I’ve had good success with it in the past, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m starting at 10C, but will be raising the fermentation temperature to 12C after a couple of days of fermentation. Hopefully everything goes well, and the wedding guests will be able to enjoy a clean, dry and crisp pilsner on a warm and beautiful August day!

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/wedding_pils.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Small update

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Sorry again for the inactivity. Not much interesting has happened on the homebrew front. We’ve made slight progress with our homebrewery renovation, as we’ve put up some 160mm ventilation pipes and installed an inline exhaust fan in order to transfer the steam generated from the boil outside. The fan seems really powerful, which is a good sign, but we still need to test it by boiling some water in our boil kettle. We will most likely need to adjust the vent hood, so that it is closer to the top of the kettle. We’ve also started drawing cables for the electrics, and pipes for the water will be next. After that we have some thorough cleaning to do and painting the walls. We hope to be able to brew our first batch in the new homebrewery in May. Can’t wait!

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At work I have lots of interesting new results as well, which I hopefully will be able to post about later during the year. I’m also looking into generating some new S. cerevisiae × S. cerevisiae intraspecific hybrids for homebrew use. A combination of WLP001 and WLP002 sounds good doesn’t it? Or a hybrid of Conan and WLP644 for a really fruity IPA? Anyways, the possibilities are endless (in theory at least).

Brewing at J’s homebrewery

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On Sunday I had the chance to brew beer together with my colleague J at his homebrewery. He has some really cool ‘homemade’ equipment, which allows him to brew up to approximately 140-liter batches of beer. He has been brewing mostly Sahti (which you will notice from the equipment as well), but on Sunday we decided to brew an easy-to-drink Pale Ale hopped with Cascade. We aimed for an ABV around 5% and an IBU of around 35, in order to appeal to as large of an audience as possible (J is planning to serve it at a friend’s party). The malt bill consisted of mainly pale ale malt, together with a small amount of munich malt (to give some strength to the malt backbone) and crystal 10 (to lend some body and a slight hint of caramel). The hop schedule should give the beer plenty of grapefruit and floral tones in the aroma and flavour. We are fermenting with J’s ‘house’ (or shall we say favourite) yeast strain, WLP007, to lend a dry and clear beer, with slight hints of fruity esters. The batch size was 100 liters, so approximately 2.5-5 times bigger than my usual batches. The brewday went really well and we hit most of targets. Hopefully the beer will taste good as well! Thanks J for the opportunity to come and brew with you! Below you will find some pictures I took during the day.

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/jj_pale_ale.xml metric=true cache=-1]

We began the brewday by crushing the malt, which J had pre-weighed prior to my arrival. He uses a mill that looks quite similar to my Monster Mill MM-2. Crushing 20 kg of malt took about 10 minutes with a cordless drill.
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While we were crushing, the mashing water was being pre-heated in the 200-liter brewing kettle. J has modified a 200-liter tiltable kettle (normally used in professional kitchens) with a PID controller, which allows him to precisely control the mash temperature. The kettle is powered by a steam jacket, which allows for rapid and even heating along the whole surface of the kettle (no problems with scorching here). He has mounted a motor-powered mash paddle in the middle of the lid (which was continuously mixing the mash), together with a long thermowell containing the temperature sensor. A really cool set-up! Hopefully will be able to have something similar at some point.

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Below is the lautering vessel, which is of the kuurna-type, i.e. one that is traditional used for making sahti. When making Sahti, the vessel can be filled with juniper twigs to help with lautering and to lend some flavour. We instead used sheets of perforated stainless steel to act as a false bottom and uphold the malt bed.

3_lauter_vessel

After the 90-minute mash, we transferred the whole content of the kettle into the lautering vessel. We used smaller buckets for the transfer, which took a couple of minutes. The engineer in me would probably want a more automated and less laborious solution, but J was happy with this set-up. When the kettle was empty, it was quickly rinsed with water, after which the sparge water was heated. In the meanwhile we were circulating the wort in order to clear it up. No fear of hot-side oxidation here, with plenty of splashing. I would again probably take an easier way out, with a valve in the end and a pump to recirculate the wort.

4_lautering

Here is a picture of the control panel as we are heating the sparge water up to the target temperature of 75C. It took maybe 10 minutes to heat the 70 liters of sparge water the remaining 30 degrees up to 75C.

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Here is a picture of the exhaust system. He uses the same exhaust fan for leading away welding fumes, so it serves several purposes. It was very effective in removing the steam produced during the boil (which you will see a couple of pictures down).

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We collected the pre-boil wort in the kettle. We ended up with around 120 liters of wort, with a pre-boil gravity of around 1.042 (so slightly higher efficiency than expected).

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After the boil had started, we opened up the hole in the lid, added in the bittering hops, and put on the exhaust fan. As you can see, the fumes are collected nicely into the ventilation tubes.

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Here are 150 g of Cascade pellets which are to be added with 15 minutes left in the boil. The remaining 250 g of flame-out hops are still waiting in the black bag.

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Below is 175 ml of WLP007 yeast slurry which is to be pitched into the wort after cooling. Slightly on the low side for this big of a batch, but luckily the beer is quite low-gravity.

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Here we are cooling through a plate chiller. No pump is used to transfer the wort, only gravity (the kettle is tilted so the valve is lowered below the liquid). Emptying of the kettle took about 15-20 minutes. Before cooling we whirlpooled the hot wort for around 15 minutes, to collect any solid matter at the bottom. The whirlpool was initiated with the same motor-driven mash peddle which stirred the mash.

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Here is a picture of the whirlpool cake. Quite a lot of hop debris and trub!

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We ended up with around 100 liters of 1.048 wort. This will hopefully become a really refreshing and sessionable Pale Ale for warm spring days!

15_fermenters

Thanks again J!

Tasting Impressions: Sim/arillo IPA

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The ‘single malt’ IPA, hopped with Simcoe and Amarillo, that we brewed slightly over a month ago, has now been in the keg for around three weeks. This means it’s time to write up some tasting notes of the beer, while its still at its prime. Quite a lot of trub ended up in the fermenter as we transferred from the boil kettle, and it seems to have had a positive effect on the clarity of the beer. It was crystal-clear when transferred to the keg, despite using US-05 and no cold crash, and only had the slightest chill haze when served. It looks cloudier in the picture below, because of condensation on the outside of the glass. Anyways, to the tasting notes!

simarillo

The beer pours with a golden color with slight hints of orange. It is surprisingly dark for a malt bill of only Maris Otter. As mentioned, there is a slight amount of chill haze, that disappears as the beer warms up in the glass. A white, oily foam head is formed during the pour, and it collapses slowly leaving drapes of lacing along the glass. A really nice, and very typical, appearance for an IPA.

The beer is really exploding with hop aroma, and it just jumps to your face out of the glass as you close in. There are tones of citrus (specifically grapefruit), pineapple, pine resin and floral perfume. A really nice and fresh hop aroma, that is really hard to find from commercial beers (at least here in Finland, when the time from bottling to serving can be several months). Not much other hops in the aroma, which is the way I like it for IPAs.

The flavor is mostly hop-dominated as well, with very little presence of any malt or yeast tones. The flavor begins with hints of biscuits and malts, but these are instantaneously overtaken by a resiny hoppiness. While the aroma was very fruity, the flavor draws more towards the resiny, piney, earthy and grassy part of the spectrum. There are slight tones of grapefruit in the background as well, but these are more subtle than what could be found in the aroma. The flavor finishes dry and with a hefty bitterness that suits the style. The mouthfeel is dry and light, and the carbonation level is medium-low, which I think suits the beer well. A typical West Coast IPA, with a flavor that is solely focused on the hops and that finishes dry and bitter. Even though the aroma was amazingly fruity, I wish the beer had slightly more of those tones in the flavor as well. Otherwise a really nice homebrew!

Homebrew: Tasting comparison of sour ales

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It is finally time to post some tasting impressions of the ‘plain’ and ‘berry’ version of the sour ale I brewed about 1.5 years ago. I’ve had a couple of bottles of both during the winter, and they are interesting beers. I’m not a big fan of sour ale, but I actually like the plain version. The berry version has otherwise been quite nice as well, but it has had a strange aftertaste that really takes away from the drinkability. We’ll see if it is still present in the beer today. I added berries to the majority of the batch (~12 liters), and only bottled six 33cl bottles of the pre-berry version. This was a mistake I’ve now realized, as I’m already down to my last bottle of the plain version. So, note to self: if I ever brew something similar in the future, bottle half the batch before adding any flavorings. All in all it was an interesting experiment, that I hope to repeat at some point. Right now though my priorities are on getting our new homebrewery up and running, so that we can start brewing again. Anyways, let’s see how the sours taste.

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Sour Ale
The beer pours crystal-clear (quite a difference to the extremely cloudy wort resulting from the turbid mash) and with a deep golden-amber color (reminds me of apple juice). The aroma is quite tart, with (what I guess is) lactic acid lending the sour tones. There are some fruity tones present as well, which again bring my thoughts to apple juice and cider. A slight funkiness in the aroma as well, but overall it is very ‘clean’ for a (pseudo-)lambic. The flavour is also tart, but by no means as sour as many commercial examples of the style. This one clocked in at a pH of 3.7, which is relatively high for a sour ale. This suits me fine though, as I really don’t like the mouth-drying sourness of some lambics. Tones of apple, grains and slight citrus are present in the flavour. The finish is surprisingly sweet (the FG was 1.010), but it goes well with the mild sourness. This reminded me a lot of a tart apple cider, and I’m actually positively surprised over how this one turned out. A real shame this was my last bottle. How does the Berry version compare then?

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Berry Sour
The beer pours clear and with a pretty red color and a pink foam head. While the plain version had a very clean aroma, this one is much more funky. The aroma is more aggressively sour and funky, with a slight cellary/musty twang to it. Behind this, there are very evident tones of raspberry as well. The blueberries are more hidden, even thought I added three times as much compared to the raspberries. The berries are nice, but I think I prefer the clean cider-like tones of the original. The flavour is slightly more sour than the original, perhaps as a result of the added fermentables and the acids in the berries. Raspberry is dominating the flavour, but there are some tones of apple, blueberries and cherry in the background. The aftertaste is drier than the original, and it is unfortunately plagued by a slightly sharp and musty aftertaste. Not really sure what has caused it, maybe mold or the berries themselves? Would be interesting to hear opinions from somehow who actually loves sour beer. Anyways, not a bad beer, but I would find it more enjoyable if it was a little less sour and funky, and the berry flavors were cleaner.

If I were to brew another sour, I would also be more careful with introducing oxygen. The beer had a thick pellicle the whole one-year fermentation (sign of oxygen), and I think especially the berry version might have some tones of acetic acid.

Homebrew: Sim/arillo IPA

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It has been way too long since my last brewday, so it felt really nice to brew once again last Sunday. Activity on the blog has also been low the previous months, I apologize for that. I bottled the berry version of the Sour Ale in December, so should soon be able to post some tasting notes on both versions of the beer. The base beer is actually quite nice, and am sad to say that I’m already down to my last bottle. During the spring, I will also be posting some (hopefully interesting) posts on the research I’ve been doing for my PhD thesis. I’m at least very excited about my results 🙂

Anyways, back to the beer and the brewday. My friend Marcus joined the brewday, and we decided to brew a simple IPA with whatever hops we had in the freezer. Since I’ve never brewed a beer with only base malt (I even added some speciality malts to the Pilsner I brewed 2 years ago), we decided to go with a malt bill of 100% Maris Otter (also some leftovers). For hopping, I had originally planned a combination of Citra and Simcoe, but on the brewday that changed to Amarillo and Simcoe. Apparently I had remember incorrectly, as I wasn’t able to find any Citra in the freezer. Amarillo and Simcoe should be a good combination though. We went with a 50 IBU bittering addition, and then added relatively big amounts of hops towards the end of the boil. I guess the IBUs will be in the 70-85 range. The brewday went extremely smoothly, and we hit all our numbers correctly (OG of 1.064). We even managed to squeeze out an extra liter of wort. We chilled to around 20C, pitched a packet of US-05 that I had in the fridge (Exp. 02/2015), and placed the fermenter in an ambient temperature of 17C. 5 hours after pitching there was already activity in the airlock, and today fermentation was progressing nicely. The fermentation aromas are smelling great, and the wort tasted really promising, so expectations are going up. We will still dry hop with both Amarillo and Simcoe (50g each), which should give the beer aroma some really nice citrus, resin and pineapple notes.

[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/simarillo.xml metric=true cache=-1]

Hops Growing Update

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A couple of weeks ago, my first-year hop plants finally started producing cones, and today they were looking like this:

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cones_2_2014

We were hit by some really cold weather (temperature dropped to 0C the previous night), so the cones might not develop properly. If they do develop, I will be brewing a fresh hopped ale at some point in the middle/end of October.