An Ankoù brewday:

[An Ankoù]

Crikey 115 to 120 litres of beer is a lot to bottle - I thought half that was a bit of a mountain to climb . Five brews in a week sounds like a commercial process, I'm well impressed. .

Thank you, Anna, for those words of encouragement, I fear I'm trying the patience of The Wise One, though, to it's limit. So I'd better get on with something else, like picking the last of the blackberries for blackberry wine.

 

[An Ankoù]

In his book co-written with Roger Protz "Homebrew Classics - India Pale Ale", Clive la Pensée has a right old rant about how much he enjoyed an IPA crafted by one James McCrorrie, A Durden Park member, and how it was by the the best among what appears to be an absolute shedload of IPAs that they necked down that particular lunchtime in May. Later in the book he provides the recipe scaled down from McCrorrie's 12-gallon batch and, I have to say, I'm dubious that the grainbill he recommends will give the required OG per volume. Anyway, I've corrected that and knocked up 12 litres this morning. The recipe's below. I have to say that the malt and overall hop quantity are very similar to the recipe for Lovibond XB (1864), which is becoming one of my favourites, but the hop timings are different and the IPA is dry hopped. Here we go. What is there to lose? A little lightweight for an IPA I thought, but let's get on with it. He calls it Balham IPA.

Balham IPA
12 litres, OG 1055, IBUs- a fair few.
Water treated for IPA (ie, Burtonised) He recommends Murphy's Liquor Treatment. I used the scrapings from the floor of the budgie cage.
MO Pale Ale Malt (I used Hook Head) 3 Kg
Hops: Goldings Early Bird (I used up some open bags of EKGs, Worcester Goldings and a tad of WGV in the first charge to make up the weight)
50g at start of boil (mine go in as FWH)
25g for 30 minutes
(Irish moss (protofloc) last 10 minutes)
22g at flameout
15g dry hops

Mash at 68C for 90 minutes
90 minute boil
Yeast not specified. I've used W1028 London Yeast as I had some ready in the fridge.

There's much more detail given in the book including dry hop in Cornelius kegs for 7 days and roll them twice daily (not going to happen as I'm bottling) and drink as soon as clear. For those who have the book, it's on page 150.
Everything came out as it should. I liquored back from 11 litres to just over 11½ litres to hit 1055 and Bob's your uncle.
I wish I'd had some Early Bird, but I've never seen it for sale. As it happens, I've got three bines of Calais Goldings just about to pop so I'll knock up a later green-hop batch with those when they're ready. They're alleged to be like Early Bird.

Well. It's getting bottled tomorrow. Racked and dry hopped it last thursday and the racking gravity was 1014. A little bit of activity during the following days, but all quiet now. RG is still 1013-1014 and I would have expected a bit of hop creep. The beer tastes quite nice- very rich, in fact due, no doubt, to it's gravity. It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it's carbed up and aged a bit. It's a pleasant enough beer, but I don't see (yet) what Clive was wetting his knickers about.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Well. It's getting bottled tomorrow. Racked and dry hopped it last thursday and the racking gravity was 1014. A little bit of activity during the following days, but all quiet now. RG is still 1013-1014 and I would have expected a bit of hop creep. The beer tastes quite nice- very rich, in fact due, no doubt, to it's gravity. It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it's carbed up and aged a bit. It's a pleasant enough beer, but I don't see (yet) what Clive was wetting his knickers about.

Yummmmmmm

 

[An Ankoù]

I see it's ages since I posted in this thread. Shame on me. that's not to say I haven't brewed anything. I suppose it's only worth posting new and exciting brews, but even then there are plenty of those. I'm particularly excited about so called "pseudo" or "faux" lager. I thought I'd have a go and my expectations weren't high, but the beer lived up to the claims made for it and I'm going to do a few more with different hops. That one was knocked up with Nectaron hops.

Today's brew was inspired by a thread elsewhere about having something dark for Christmas. I'd been ferreting around the Gladfield Malts recipe book and was taken by their Extra Stout. I already had the recipe all written out and ready to go so it was a simple matter of getting off my fat bum and doing it. So I did.

It's rated at 5.7% abv- my FGs are always a bit lower than target so I reckon I'll get 6%, which is perfect for a winter stout. I might even add some lactose to part of the beer before bottling it up. We'll see.

Here's the recipe converted into European malts as Gladfield's malt names are a joy in themselves (see end of post) and recalculated to my standard 20L batch.

20L OG/FG/abv 1056/1013/5.7% IBUs 40

Pale Malt 3.25 Kg
Flaked Barley 500g
Crisp's Cara Gold 400g
Château Black Wheat Malt 385g
Fawcett's Brown malt 208g
Crisp's Chocolate Malt (850 ebc) 208g
Château Cara Clair 208g
No pH adjustment to water with CRS. CaCl2 3g, CaSO4 2g (That's for my water)
Mash @ 65C
One charge of hops at start of boil Pacific Jade recommended to 40 IBUs
(I finished off an open packet of Pac Jade and made up the difference with Green Bullet, also open)
Boil 60 mins + 10 mins with copper finings
BRY97 recommended. I used CML Atlantic (which I'm very impressed with).

All went well. Best brewday for a long time- the wind had dropped and so I could brew outside and full length. Ended up with 19½ litres at target OG. All pitched and now just waiting for the beer.

Apologies for the malt bill, I spent an age decoding Glafdfield's malt specs and making my own substitution chart- their own is very approximate.

Gladfield Extra Stout - NEW!
(15C. Irish Extra Stout)
Batch Size
30L Kettle Full; ~23L (in fermenter)
Targets:
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.013
IBU: ~40
Colour 70 EBC
Efficiency: 74%
Ingredients:
Malts
4.20kg Gladfield Ale Malt (64.5%)
0.65kg Harraway’s Rolled Barley (10.1%)
0.50kg Gladfield Toffee Malt (7.7%)
0.35kg Gladfield Eclipse Wheat (5.4%)
0.27kg Gladfield Brown Malt (4.1%)
0.27kg Gladfield Light Chocolate Malt (4.1%)
0.27kg Gladfield Gladiator Malt (4.1%)
Hops
60min–
32g Pacific Jade 12.7% aa (40 IBU)
Yeast
Lallemand BRY-97 West Coast Ale Yeast (1 Packet)
Est ABV 5.7%

 

[The Baron]

I like a stout but rarely brew them as I can not drink many as I need to be in the mood for them and a keg full will last too long and tie up a keg. It is a staple for some though

 

[Robin54]

I thought I was the only person on here using Pacific Jade - nice hop

 

[Rodcx500z]

i will second cml atlantic

 

[An Ankoù]

Time I posted a brewday. Bit of a panic on: it's getting very warm and the tap water is now 18C- not good for cooling. And I've got some slap-pack yeasts to use up before the summer.
This is a marker as I had difficulty finding my old thread.
More to follow.

 

[An Ankoù]

Time I posted a brewday. Bit of a panic on: it's getting very warm and the tap water is now 18C- not good for cooling. And I've got some slap-pack yeasts to use up before the summer.
This is a marker as I had difficulty finding my old thread.
More to follow.

Here we go:
No disrespect to @MisteBadger and his ancient yeasts from Palestine, but that's nothing to what I found lurking at the back of my fridge last weekend; a slap-pack of Wyeast 1469, West Yorkshire with a manufacturing date of April 2020. Thought I'd better get this one going and I made up a starter culture last Sunday which showed no signs of life until Thursday afternoon. Then lots of fizz on swirling but no head at all. By Saturday it had used the fermentables in the starter medium and this morning is staring to drop out.
So, I'm going to make a small, 10 litre batch just to be sure I've cultured the target yeast and not some alien species. My culturing technique is clean with everything done at 100C until the moment of pitching, but I don't have the facility to autoclave the kit and the medium.
So, as it was a recent thread on hops for TT Landlord that reminded me I even had this yeast, I'm going to do A near SMaSH with Golden Promise and HBC's Styran Goldings which I think are Savijnski. I'll chuck a bit of torrified or flaked wheat in there, but that'll be it. If the yeast is good I'll decide what to do with it later. I'll post the recipe with the beer report.

Also found a big pack of Citra lurking at the bottom of my other fridge. These had been opened a couple of years ago, resealed with sellotape and wrapped tightly in a ziplock bag. This must be when I went through a phase of being completely citra-ed out and off all ghastly American hopped pale ales and IPAs. However, I've got through that and want to make them again. To make a long story longer, my first reaction was to chuck them as I've had bad experiences with open hop packets (Galaxy doesn't keep at all). But I thought I'd have a sniff and, while they're not a pungent as I remember, they definitely smell kosher so I've knocked up a quick 15 litre batch of Morton's Undead APA, leaving out the crystal malt and the Munich malt, neither of which have any place in an APA in my opinion, and pitching onto a CML Five cake. Half expecting to have to chuck this one and I've already ordered some fresh Citra. But we'll see. It's off like the clappers of hell this morning and it smells promising. Report to follow.