Anna's Brewdays

[DocAnna]

Planning a batch of Mead to hopefully be ready mid to late summer if I can get it on soon. I find planning mead both exciting and nervous - the ingredients are so expensive that I really don't like to mess up the flavours. I'm aiming for a rich summer mead semi sweet liqueur, in my own mind I'm thinking of a flavour expression of Vivaldi's Summer piece - the heaviness of hot pollen laden summer with rich aroma, colour and heat (yes I can get a bit carried away with this sort of thing).

I'm going to be brave and add vanilla pods this time, it's a flavour I've read much about and is a bit risky as it can get quite intense and I suspect it varies a great deal with the kind of vanilla used. At the moment I'm thinking of hot steeping the grains for the pods to add at the start of fermentation as a strained liquid only, then leave the pods themselves in till first racking. Just to really add to the frisson of risk I'm going to go for rosemary from the garden as well which is really a bit concerning, but again I'll do so as a water based hot liquor extract rather than leave them in the primary as I'm not willing to risk the whole batch with overwhelming rosemary. Orange citrus background, possibly something floral as well. Any ideas for the aroma or tastes that evoke hot summer days?

Anna

 

[DocAnna]

Just tasted the APA which was carbonated in the fermenter, and loose dry hopped. I'm quite pleased with it really... and as it's a Friday and I'm taking a bit of time out from work this evening, what better to do than come up with a quickie new label:

Anna

 

[DocAnna]

Just in case I wasn’t being obvious enough:
The background is Harris tweed, purple a blend of blue and red. The Dove is from lady Gaga’s (gorgeous) dress, the font is Georgia, and 46 is .... well you get the point.

 

[Gerryjo]

Just in case I wasn’t being obvious enough:
The background is Harris tweed, purple a blend of blue and red. The Dove is from lady Gaga’s (gorgeous) dress, the font is Georgia, and 46 is .... well you get the point.

Nothing cryptic about that then....

 

[Buffers brewery]

Just in case I wasn’t being obvious enough:
The background is Harris tweed, purple a blend of blue and red. The Dove is from lady Gaga’s (gorgeous) dress, the font is Georgia, and 46 is .... well you get the point.

 

[chillipickle]

I do love a nice tweed when out on the pheasant

 

[DocAnna]

And tonight’s Sunday roast dancing round the kitchen is being accompanied by Meghan Trainor and a Moonfell gin cocktail ... I don’t drink beer all the time!

 

[An Ankoù]

Fascinated by the gin. I love gin (I bake juniper berries into my bread, but that's another matter). I'd never heard of what appears to be Lakeland Moon, though. Healthily overstrength. I'll try and find some.

 

[DocAnna]

About yesterday and my first NEIPA attempt... well it was an interesting day, and a bit long.

Oh I had planned to be up bright and early, water on to heat nice and early before breakfast and be my super organised self... hmmm didn't quite work out like that. After the weekend requisite daughterly video calls to my Mum and then my Dad, thought I should call my brother for a catch up, oh and before I realised it was midday. Quickly measured out the salts for the water and weighed out the grain, checked the starter which had been chilling overnight to settle.. sheesh still looking v hazy.

Garage was freezing and the ground water 4 deg, so it took ages to heat up to strike temperature, and even though I'd reduced the target volume, getting the grain mix into the mash pipe took ages and I wondered if it would fit. First time making beer with rolled oats and it seems a bit odd but I guess we'll see. I was super chuffed that fairly quickly I had the temperatures top and bottom aligned and could start the mash proper.... it also meant I could retreat to the warmth of the kitchen. My daughter is finding it a bit funny just how involved I am and takes a photo of the kitchen for her friends saying it looks like a science lab!

Ok hops weighed out and first snag... one of them is whole leaf and takes up loads of space but it's ok since the supermarket veg bag can take it (I'd presoaked the bag in Chemsan), little did I know how this was going to come back and bite me. Solving the yeast starter problem... I used my wine thief pipette to suck up the top few millimetres at a time to remove the clearest part, reduced it down by about half and poured off about a quarter for use in future.

Gave the mash an extra 10 minute then lifted the mash pipe out to sparge, this really is at the limits of my strength to lift that full of grain, I think I'm going to have to look at some kind of pully Preboil volumes look about right but it seems strange having no hops to add during the boil. Now the hop stand... never done this before other than approximate and I like being exact and neat... hops all ready... chill with the coil and woaahh way over shot with cooling, back on with the heating and Sabro in, and it smells just delicious - fruity tropical gorgeousness. Chill again and this time didn't overshoot, crikey that coil is chilling the wort fast! Into the snubnose and I'm feeling well pleased with myself.. oh pride before a fall.

Now I'd been really worried about how to attach the magnets and hop bag inside the fermenter and keep the inside sanitised, so I'd put on long nitrile gloves, held them in the sanitiser and thought that would mean any contact inside the fermenter would be fine. Tried to put the hop bag in the snubnose, while balancing the lid upside down on my knees, and half way through I realise it's far too big and is going to dangle in the wort ... ok right err... undo the knots in the bag and add a second magnet-why had I decided it needed about 10 knots to close it, and I have to take the gloves off to untie the bag, and now I've dropped the lid (at this stage if I hadn't been holding the hop bag, the dip pipe and a magnet - I'd have been stamping my little feet and getting really annoyed).

Finally managed to insert a second magnet elsewhere in the bag, secure it and it's fellow magnet on another part of the snubnose, spray the pipe and lid with chemsan, seal it up and ... oh frak... the yeast . Ok undo the lid, add the yeast and lift into the fermenting fridge - set for 21 deg. Bubbling and activity within 30min gosh that's quick! I just hope the sanitation breaches won't be a disaster. At the end of the day including cleaning, took 6.5 hours which is far too long. I was also shattered . I'd promised the OH a nice dinner and planned on cooking pomme Anna (just because) along with some sea bass but it too ages so we ate really quite late.

Overall observations. Annoyed at the poor extract efficiency, OG 1.068 rather than 1.075 and I suspect the mash pH was a lot to do with it - 5.72 which is really a bit off target. I've not fiddled with the acidity of the water till now but I can see an order for phosphoric acid coming on. I'm also not going to use whole leaf hops for a dry hop like this in future. I'm aware that my fridge thermometer for the inkbird is in a bottle of sanitser not attached to the snubnose so it's probably fermenting warmer than intended, however doing so under pressure should compensate I hope. At present running at about 10psi, at dry hop I'll dial up to 15 psi or possibly a bit higher to try to keep the aroma in the FV as much as possible.

Anna

 

[chillipickle]

Sounds a busy day Anna, on my first brew I was 5 points down, but from following the recipe it was to be expected with all the rolled oat, wheat.Even the recipe added 400g of dextrose to hit og of 1060.
I added 300g to get 1060, so not to far off.
Oh sabro citra mosaic........just, ah bisto

 

[Alastair70]

Just stumbled across this awesome thread. Thank you for sharing your ups, downs and everything in between. I’m totally getting one of those upside down conical flasks for yeast washing and I’ll be baking a juniper bread right after :hat:
(Not with the washed yeast I might add, that’ll be kept for beer)

 

[Begbie]

Planning a batch of Mead to hopefully be ready mid to late summer if I can get it on soon. I find planning mead both exciting and nervous - the ingredients are so expensive that I really don't like to mess up the flavours. I'm aiming for a rich summer mead semi sweet liqueur, in my own mind I'm thinking of a flavour expression of Vivaldi's Summer piece - the heaviness of hot pollen laden summer with rich aroma, colour and heat (yes I can get a bit carried away with this sort of thing).

I'm going to be brave and add vanilla pods this time, it's a flavour I've read much about and is a bit risky as it can get quite intense and I suspect it varies a great deal with the kind of vanilla used. At the moment I'm thinking of hot steeping the grains for the pods to add at the start of fermentation as a strained liquid only, then leave the pods themselves in till first racking. Just to really add to the frisson of risk I'm going to go for rosemary from the garden as well which is really a bit concerning, but again I'll do so as a water based hot liquor extract rather than leave them in the primary as I'm not willing to risk the whole batch with overwhelming rosemary. Orange citrus background, possibly something floral as well. Any ideas for the aroma or tastes that evoke hot summer days?

Anna

Hi Anna. I started this crazy hobby of brewing by making meads, thinking that beer would be too difficult! How wrong was I!

I've fallen out of love with mead to be honest. Apart from those that involved red berries or hibiscus, the rest were a bit, meh. I opened a bottle of my JAOM at Christmas, that was over a year in the bottle and it was a severe let down.

To answer your question, what about Elderflower? Not sure how it would pair with rosemary and vanilla though!

 

[DocAnna]

My last write up was far too long... so today's brewing activity in Haiku

A dry scent slumbers
held high by force and iron.
lift, hop fall, awake.

Anna

 

[An Ankoù]

My last write up was far too long... so today's brewing activity in Haiku

A dry scent slumbers
held high by force and iron.
lift, hop fall, awake.

Anna

What an epic that was. I've had days like that, but usually when I'm trying to squeeze two brews in.
Picture #2: lovely toaster although I fear for your hydrometer.

 

[DocAnna]

Thinking next time I do a closed dry hop I'm going to include something to weight them down in the bag, I'm a bit concerned them floating like that isn't helping the extraction.

Anna

 

[Buffers brewery]

Raid the spoon drawer!

 

[Horners]

Raid the spoon drawer!

Our cutlery drawer seriously depleted as keep forgetting to retrieve the irons and end up chucking them away with the soggy hops.

 

[DocAnna]

I've been a bit quiet, and not been on the forum for a couple of weeks, mostly down to not feeling great about my brewing outcomes.

The NEIPA modelled on Salt brewing's Tram hasn't turned out as hoped, it just doesn't have that juicy fruit mouthfeel, though has plenty of aroma. The colour isn't quite what was hoped either. There is a sharp astringency that isn't very pleasant though that to be fair has eased with the latest check on it on Friday. Due to it not having reached what I hoped was target FG (1.02 rather than 1.012) I've let it warm condition for a week and now moved it to the garage to cool, and just hoping that might improve things.

So what went wrong... or rather what can I do better next time?

• The hops were added at day 5 but due to work commitments, it wasn't transferred to the keg until day 14 so that's 9 days contact with the hops.
• The hop bag floated so there wasn't great contact with the hops so I shook the fermenter regularly to ensure contact - not sure if this had any impact.
• When trying to transfer out of the fermenter, the bag kept getting in the way of the float tube. Eventually I had to depressurise, reach inside and pull the hop bag out, which squeezed out a lot of hop rich fluid in struggling to get it out of the lid. Then pressurised again to get the last 5 litres out of the fermenter.
• My tube heater I think struggled to keep the temperature up so I think most of the time it fermented at 19-20 deg, which I think combined with fermenting at 15psi probably suppressed the fruity esters required for some of the NEIPA taste.

This leads to a few questions and appeal for help from the inconceivably vast breadth of knowledge in this forum's collective expertise

• How long should I leave the hops in contact with the beer before transferring to the keg, and after that how long to leave in the keg to finish fermentation before moving to a cold site?
• What temperature and pressure should I be aiming for to achieve the NEIPA characteristics?

I know this post doesn't have my usual bounce... almost a bit clinical (odd that )... and that probably reveals my reaction to not getting things right and not doing well: feel miserable and eat chocolate for a bit, then dissect and examine what went wrong, and make a plan for next time. I rather wish I'd included this experience in my recent professional appraisal, I think it would have demonstrated some good reflective learning skills !

Anna

 

[DocAnna]

Oh and here's the evidential item, less 'Tram' and more reliant robin

 

[Buffers brewery]

Could “we” be being a tad impatient? I make it 3 weeks from brew day? While a have little snifter tasters during the brewing process I don’t have any expectations of my beer until at least 6 weeks from brew day or 4 weeks after transfer from FV, whichever is the longest.
You have a plan to weigh your hop bag next time. I’d investigate your hop bag fixing method to make that a bit slicker and de-risk it. I’ve sown 4 magnets in little pouches on mine so it can be held flat(ish) against the FV.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s still early days for you with your new “kit”. Best plan is......make some more beer and iron out your process “glitches”.