First go at a complicated-ish beer, and it's turned out quite well. I'm really quite pleased.
Ingredients for a 5 gallon brew:
Fermentable:
Maris Otter pale malt - 1kg
High colour crystal malt - 500g
Chocolate malt - a slack handful
Light spraymalt - 2kg
Hops:
Challenger (1 hour) - 100g
East Kent Goldings (15 minutes) - 75g approx
Styrian goldings (4 minutes, leave in wort as it cools) - 30g approx
Yeast:
Safale S04
Other:
Irish moss - good teaspoon
Yeast nutrient - good teaspoon
Campden tablet (added to the FV before yeast to soak up any excess chlorine from sanitiser and tap water)
IG - 1046
FG - 1012
My method:
(Since I only have a 2 gallon brew pot I split all the ingredients in two, mashed and boiled twice and topped up with cold water.)
Mashing:
Add all grains to fine mesh straining bag, place in brew pot full of water at approx 65C. Mash for an hour at this temperature and sparge.
The boil:
Add spraymalt to wort, and top up with water. Boil Challenger, EKG and Styrians for 60, 15 and 4 minutes respectively.
At the end of the boil, remove Challenger and EKG hop bags.
As I do not have a wort chiller I added my wort to the fermenting vessel with yeast nutrient and campden tablet and left it to cool at ambient temperature. I left the small bag of styrians in the wort.
When the wort chills to 20-21 degrees (will probably take all night), remove styrian bag, aerate vigorously for at least 5 minutes and pitch S04 yeast.
Ferment at 18-20 degrees, avoid higher temperatures as S04 does tend to get a bit funky.
After the fermentation slows right down (3-4 days) I added a few leftover EKG hops to the FV. (Whether this had any affect is debatable)
Has been in bottles for just over a week. Tasting great so far.
Very malty, nice and bitter with good hoppy aromas and flavours. Holds a head well, definitely looks and feels like a "proper" beer.
Cheers.
Alex
Ingredients for a 5 gallon brew:
Fermentable:
Maris Otter pale malt - 1kg
High colour crystal malt - 500g
Chocolate malt - a slack handful
Light spraymalt - 2kg
Hops:
Challenger (1 hour) - 100g
East Kent Goldings (15 minutes) - 75g approx
Styrian goldings (4 minutes, leave in wort as it cools) - 30g approx
Yeast:
Safale S04
Other:
Irish moss - good teaspoon
Yeast nutrient - good teaspoon
Campden tablet (added to the FV before yeast to soak up any excess chlorine from sanitiser and tap water)
IG - 1046
FG - 1012
My method:
(Since I only have a 2 gallon brew pot I split all the ingredients in two, mashed and boiled twice and topped up with cold water.)
Mashing:
Add all grains to fine mesh straining bag, place in brew pot full of water at approx 65C. Mash for an hour at this temperature and sparge.
The boil:
Add spraymalt to wort, and top up with water. Boil Challenger, EKG and Styrians for 60, 15 and 4 minutes respectively.
At the end of the boil, remove Challenger and EKG hop bags.
As I do not have a wort chiller I added my wort to the fermenting vessel with yeast nutrient and campden tablet and left it to cool at ambient temperature. I left the small bag of styrians in the wort.
When the wort chills to 20-21 degrees (will probably take all night), remove styrian bag, aerate vigorously for at least 5 minutes and pitch S04 yeast.
Ferment at 18-20 degrees, avoid higher temperatures as S04 does tend to get a bit funky.
After the fermentation slows right down (3-4 days) I added a few leftover EKG hops to the FV. (Whether this had any affect is debatable)
Has been in bottles for just over a week. Tasting great so far.
Very malty, nice and bitter with good hoppy aromas and flavours. Holds a head well, definitely looks and feels like a "proper" beer.
Cheers.
Alex
