AG#15 - American Pale with pics

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Right, as promised, here is AG#15, 14L of American Pale that I'm using to test the yeast I "found" in the bottom of a cask of Wickwar Breweries BOB.

As you'll see from the pictures, I'm a 3-vessel man these days (BIAB worked well for me, but I always ended up getting a shed load on the kitchen floor when lifting the bag out), although all of it is plastic to save me cash - the boiler was around £60, the mashtun was £40 and I use a basic FV to collect the wort in, so the boiler can act as HLT and boiler to save cash.

Firstly, the recipe...

Fermentable Colour Grams Ratio
Pale Malt 5 EBC 3080 grams 95%
Caramalt 30 EBC 65 grams 2%
Wheat Malt 3.5 EBC 32 grams 1%
Crystal Malt 130 EBC 65 grams 2%


Hop Variety Type Alpha Time Grams Ratio
Simcoe Whole 12 % 60 mins 9 grams 16.9%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 20 mins 9 grams 16.9%
Simcoe Whole 12 % 20 mins 5 grams 10.2%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 5 mins 9 grams 16.9%
Simcoe Whole 12 % 5 mins 11 grams 22%
Amarillo Whole 9.5 % 0 mins 4 grams 8.5%
Simcoe Whole 12 % 0 mins 4 grams 8.5%

Final Volume: 14 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.4% ABV
Total Liquor: 21.6 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 65 %
Bitterness: 40 EBU
Colour: 12 EBC

Here's the grain and hop shots...

My new mashtun with stainless false bottom - seems very good value for £40 from The Homebrew Shop.

Mashing in at 67C for a slightly sweeter fuller bodied ale

Tucked away for an hour and a half

Sparging pretty much over. I tend to jug the water in, but pour it onto a big spoon so it doesn't seem to upset the grain bed.

Boiling starting...

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OG comes out at 1.044. I'll take that.

 

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Here's the demijohn with the Wickwar BOB yeast. It all looks good, and tastes fine, so as soon as the wort is cool enough, in it goes...

 

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And thar she goes. Might be a little break material in there somewhere...oh well, all good yeast nutrient :lol:

 

[krazypara3165]

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out :)

 

[Pjam]

Nice. Plenty going on in the recipe. And your yeast looks like a winner........... I do like the photo of the hunch-back in the check shirt :)

 

[fbsf]

Yeah, I wanted the smooth bitterness of simcoe with the piney flavour that you get when it's used as an aroma hop. Bit like a Brewdog-light I suppose.

And Amarillo because, well just because, really. Who doesn't like tropical flavours in their APAs eh? Might have to do an amarillo hop tea in the bottling bucket too... :party:

 

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Ok, 7 days in, what's it doing I hear you ask?

Not a lot.

But that's a good thing as it's already down to 1.009 and seems stable.

I've pulled a sample out, and the yeast has done it's job perfectly - still a little krausen on the top of the beer, but most has sunk to the bottom.

The beer at the moment is already eminently drinkable - the simcoe and amarillo have combined to give quite a bitter beer but with a whopping tropical nose.

I'm not detecting a great deal of esters from the yeast - so I would say it's on a par with S04 really.

But, given that it was given to me in a spring water bottle straight out of the cask and then brought on with 50p of malt extract, I can't really complain! No hint of infection and hopefully as it's now around 4.6%, hopefully should be fine.

So yes - grabbing yeast from a finished cask? Winner!