Last Monday we brewed another batch of beer. “Not more!” I hear you shouting, “that's two batches in two weeks!”
Well, yes, it is, but there’s method in our alcoholism. Andy has always been strongly of the view that our beers are much better if allowed to mature in the cask for several weeks (at least 3, ideally 4-6) before we start drinking them. The problem is that, well, frankly, we need beer to drink. So casks were getting started and drunk before they reached this level of maturity.
The only practical solution we could come up with was to do an extraordinary general brewday, to give us one extra batch in hand. (Great excuse, don’t you love it??)
So what did we brew? Well I have always liked Badger beers, and one of the best I’ve had is First Gold. This is named after the single hop variety that is used to make it. First Gold is an English hop variety, so if you are a regular reader you will know that means herbal, earthy and fruity flavours. Having said that I have seen tasting notes saying it has “an added extra citrus quality” and “an orangey quality”.
Sounds good! We were not trying to replicate the Badger beer entirely, so we used the “standard” malt bill we use for a hop trial. 91% pale ale malt and 9% biscuit malt. Nice and simple.
It has just finished fermenting and I have added “dry hops” to the fermenter (See All about Hops). At the moment they are all floating on the surface of the beer because they are so incredibly light. But they smell fantastic! I’m trying to think of a way of getting them to sink into the beer without resorting to stirring it (which involves putting a spoon in the beer so could risk infection). Any suggestions?
Ah. My only suggestion also involved putting something in, so probably just as risky as stirring. I was thinking of one of those circular wire meshy things that cooks sometimes use for something cookish, or a wire basket from a deep fat fryer, or a sieve. Anything round and stainless steel that could be sterilised and would hold the hops down.
ReplyDeleteThanks John. I left them overnight and they were still completely dry and floating on the surface. So in the end I sterilised a stainless steel spoon and stirred them in. I'm sure it will be OK, but it just goes to show you the lengths we go to to avoid putting contamination into a beer. ("Hang on" I hear you say, "you just dumped a load of hops in there!". Well true, but hops have natural disinfection properties, which is one of the reasons we put them into beer in the first place).
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