Clarence's Cauldron

[Clarence]

Here' my recipe for Carlberg Special Brew inpired by Dave Line's recipe. I think I tried this once before and I didn't get the strength. I'm horrified that the Original Special Brew has been watered down to a table beer and I'm hoping mine will be at the proper 9% abv. Dave Line's extraction is a bit too optimistic for me so I've had to increase the base malt a bit.
Special Brew (15 litres in the fermenter)
OG 1080
Target FG 1010 (around 9% abv)
40 IBUs

Pilsner malt 3.5 Kg
Flaked maize 750 g
Golden syrup 750 g
Acid malt 37 g (nearer 70 as hand slipped. Probably a good thing)
Start of boil Hallertau tradition to 40 ibus (calculated at 20% utilisation)
10 min from end of boil Hallertau Mittelfrueh 12 g
End of boil Hallertau Mittelfrueh 15 g
Pitched with slurry of CML Hell from a previous brew, this morning after an overnight cool.
Meaured OG 1080
Qty collected 14 litres.
Looks and taste good.

Next up: I've got a bag of Pride of RIngwood on their way so I'm going to have a go at one of the Australian Commercial Lagers like Foster's or something of that ilk. Need to look for a recipe, first.

 

[Old Fart At Play]

I'm horrified that the Original Special Brew has been watered down to a table beer and I'm hoping mine will be at the proper 9% abv.

Yes the original brew was totally delicious, the ersatz version now is rubbish.
Cheers

 

[Old Fart At Play]

Oops cocked that up a bit

 

[Clarence]

The Special Brew has chugged along nicely and the gravity has fallen to 1010 so it's already just a bit over 9%. I'll bring it in to warm up a degree or two for a couple of days and see if the gravity falls any further. If not I'll bottle it up next weekend. Too cloudy to get much sense of how it's going to taste, just yet.
As for making Fosters, what a daft idea that was. Nobody sells Pride of Ringwood or anything like it for that matter and Dave Line uses some kind of German hop and loads of sugar. Time to get another brew on, I think. Something a bit more quaffable so I'll have a good rummage through the old chemistry set and see what needs using up. I think a rye lager might be on the cards as I've got some ageing rye malt that should be just about ripe by now. Recipe to follow. Hangover to follow after that.

Here it is: Rye Lager. Last brewed Feb 2019 and I think the rye must have been hanging around since then so it's time I used it up. Note the value of keeping brewing notes and also tasting notes: 10/4/19- Not brilliant, a funny taste at first then a nice long aftertaste. Still cloudy. 23/6/19- This is coming into its own. Thinking of doing it again. 27/7/19- Gorgeous beer. make loads of it- it takes a while to come into its own, though. No further notes so we must have finished it.
Recipe is from the days before we went metric. 5 gallons OG 1050 BU 35
9lb Pilsner malt
2lb Rye malt
1lb Carapils malt
2oz Acid malt
1.12 oz bittering hops Magnum
Late hops additions: ½ oz of Celia at -20 mins, -5 mins and at flameout
Mangrove M84

Might do a couple of mods to the hopping schedule. I've also got some dried elderflowers.

 

[An Ankoù]

What are you thinking of doing with the elderflowers? Puts me mind of something Badger's used to do: golden glory or golden pride or something like that. One was peach flavoured and the other, I think was elderflowers. Both were delicious, but you never wanted more than one! Over here, we have a local beer flavoured with elderberries made by Lancelot. They put all sorts of things in the beer here; if you tasted the beer, you'd see why.
Read a thread elsewhere by a Scot who adds rose hips to all his beers. A very interesting thread so I've ordered some dried ones to give it a try.

 

[Clarence]

Have been off the boil for a while and didn't get the rye lager made. Guess it'll have to be a pseudo lager now. The Special Brew got bottled at 10% abv a good while ago, but I haven't plucked up the courage to try it yet. Time I got something on as I can't live on Special Brew even if it turns out to be decent.

 

[Clarence]

Have been off the boil for a while and didn't get the rye lager made. Guess it'll have to be a pseudo lager now. The Special Brew got bottled at 10% abv a good while ago, but I haven't plucked up the courage to try it yet. Time I got something on as I can't live on Special Brew even if it turns out to be decent.

Time to report on the Special Brew. Bottled 27th March so it's had plenty of time to condition.

Not very impressed to tell the truth. it's nothing like Special Brew. It's a little darker and heavier to the taste. I remember Special Brew as a good solid drink, but with a certain lightness and a floral scent. I also recall that it was better when not too chilled. This beer is edging towards a barley wine and is certainly better when it warms up a little. An abject failure? As a recreation of Special Brew, yes. I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter and there's nothing at wrong with the beer; it's clear and well brewed, but more like one of the super strengths the winos are so fond of like Tennents or Skol. As a beer, it's ok. It'll serve to warm the cockles while sitting around a campfire in the depths of winter. Oh and it turned out at 10½% abv.
So. I'll take Dave Line's recipe as a staring point and see if I can modify it to be more like the legendary beer I was looking for. But we'll need some cooler weather first.

 

[Clarence]

Time for a brew for the summer. There was mention of a beer called Vacant Gesture in another thread. I haven't tried it yet, but I will as it sounds just the thing to keep me away from the cider this summer. Harrison's Brewery publish the recipe for £3 or free with the promo code TIGHTARSE. How did they know that was my middle name? Unfortunately I haven't got any Munton's ingredients in stock so I'll have to sub all the malts. Let's see where that gets us.
Harrison's call for:
Munton's Planet Extra Pale 3.5 ebc 93.3% of grain bill
Munton's Caramalt 10 10 ebc 2.7%
Munton's Dextrin Malt 1.6 SRM (I think this is a mistake) the website says <7 ebc 4%

SInce I've got none of those, I'm going to use:
Looking at other threads relating to Planet Malt, I feel I should steer away from Maris Otter, even the low colour. The best colour match I can find is Castle 2-row Pilsner at 3.5 ebc. I've got some left over from another project.
Castle Pilsner 3.5 ebc 93.3% of grain bill
Crisp's Cara Gold 14 ebc 2.7%
Bestmalz Carapils 4-7 ebc 4%
ion additions according to guidelines in recipe and seem quite flexible within limits.
Mash pH adjusted with Lactic Acid, but I'll use CRS
Mash temperature 66.5C Mash time 60 minutes Sparge Temperature 78C
Bittering hops are Challenger, 60 minute boil to 23.3 IBUs, but they get more IBUs from a 30 minute whirlpool at 80C. I don't want to maintain that for 30 minutes so I'll aim for 25 IBUs from the early hops assuming 25% utilisation (NOT Tinseth)
Protofloc
Hop steep starting at <80C and cooling naturally, Mosaic at 1g per litre
Ferment with US-05
Dry hop for 5 days with Mosaic at 1.5 g per litre
After 2 days add a further dry hop charge of Mosaic at 1.5 g per litre (3 days)
Remove dry hops 3 days before bottling.

OG. 1037
FG 1008
abv 3.8%
IBUs 29.2

I think that's it. Now to get on and do it.

 

[Clarence]

Progress report on the above:
23 litre batch (5 proper gallons) all numbers hot spot on and pitched Monday afternoon with CML Five. Only 23 g of Mosaic in the 80C hopsteep (which was 75C), which is not a great deal by today's standards. Already the room is full of lovely, hoppy aromas. Can't wait to get the dry hops in there in a few days' time. This is going to be a great session beer. Will keep you all posted.

 

[Clarence]

Bottled up the Vacant Gesture clone this morning. First priority will be to find a less stupid name so I can stick the labels on. What did I do different to the above? First, I didn't bother with two charges of dry hops, but chucked the whole 70 grams in (in an oversized bag) after racking into secondary fermenter. Stirred every day for three days and hoicked them out again. Left a further three days to clear a bit before bottling. Secondly, I let the mash time overrun and this, together with hop creep, has led to my overshooting the final gravity, which came out at 1005 instead of 1008. I'm not in the least worried about that.
I saw a video about this beer on another forum and mine is a bit lighter than the beer appears to be in the video so I'll go 50/50 with something like Golden Promise or Pop's and Castle or Hookhead Pilsner next time. Unless I've sourced some Munton's Planet extra Pale by then. Most importantly, the flavour: it's amazing! I can't wait for this one to carb up so I can start pouring it down my throat. End of story on this beer. Any further post will be in the "what are you drinking tonight" thread.