Oh Belgium man! Belgium!

Holy Zarquon singing fish, July is going to be a month of brewing Belgian ales at Cheshire Peaks.

It all started because Andy and I were discussing what to do next, and we decided branching out into some continental beers would be interesting. Our initial thought was a Belgian Pale Ale – a malty, fruity, somewhat spicy, easy-drinking, copper-coloured ale.

The important thing with most beers is getting the yeast right. It’s OK with British ales because we have found some very reliable dried yeasts (mainly Safale S-04). But for a Belgian Pale Ale we need a proper Belgian yeast. Enter Wyeast liquid yeasts. Our recipe calls for Wyeast 3655 Belgian Schelde, but this does not appear to exist anymore. So we decided Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes should be a suitable alternative. I called the Brew Shop in Stockport – they don’t stock it but would see if they could get it.

Yesterday I popped in to see if the yeast had arrived. It hadn’t, so I whipped out my copy of Brewing Classic Styles and looked for an alternative beer to make. After much consideration I settled on a Belgian Dubbel – a deep reddish, moderately strong, malty, complex Belgian ale. The grain bill is much more complex - lager malt, munich malt, Belgian candi sugar, aromatic malt, caramunich and Special B. Phew! But as it happened the Brew Shop had every one. I settled on trying Safbrew T-33 dried yeast.

Sorted. About to leave the shop. Then for some reason Peter looked in a packet which had been recently delivered and was hanging around the shop – it was a bundle of Wyeast Activator packs (not in the fridge, eek!). And lo and behold one was the Belgian Ardennes I had asked him to get.

So I ended up buying the ingredients for BOTH beers. As I said, July is going to be a month of brewing Belgian ales at Cheshire Peaks. Belgium man!

Liberty Lightning

I realised as I was writing the last post about explosions that I haven’t written anything about our Liberty Lightning beer. I must have been busy with other things – there haven’t been any posts for a number of weeks. Sorry to all you readers. (Both of you!)

So, what is Liberty Lightning? Well we wanted to make a really light and easy drinking summer ale with a nice hop flavour along the lines of Hop Back’s Summer Lightning.

So we decided: keep the grain bill simple. And choose one interesting and light hop. What we ended up with was 100% maris otter pale ale malt, and 100% Liberty hops. I’ve heard some people refer to this as SMASH brewing: Single Malt And Single Hop.

Liberty is a US variety, although it’s very low acidity (compared to other US varieties). It seems to have Germanic roots, giving it a clean spiciness with a bit of fruitiness, apparently. We shall see! Apart from the loss of about a pint and a half (see the post about explosions), the rest is currently conditioning nicely.

STOP PRESS: It’s tried to escape again! Stop fermenting, you yeast! I made you; I am your lord and master!

Photo: Hop Back Brewery

Explosion!

Sorry for the sensational headline. Rumours of an explosion at Cheshire Peaks appear to have been exaggerated. But I did avert one this week. Bit of a long story.

I have been trying to work out how to serve our Bohemian Wrenbury – a Bohemian Pilsner (lager). I wanted to be sure that a King Keg (the barrels with the black tops in the photo below) would fit in the fridge. So I took the lager out (currently in a fermenting vessel) and briefly put the King Keg full of Liberty Lightning into the fridge (yes, it fitted fine, in case you were worried). I returned both vessels to their original positions and thought nothing more of it.

The following day I popped into the garage for something, and as I left the words “mmm, nice beer smell” went through my mind (probably in a Homer voice). Huh? I went back in to see beer gradually trickling across the garage floor. The Liberty Lightning was leaking! It was dripping off the bottom of the barrel, into a drip tray, which was now overflowing and the beer was running across the floor. On closer inspection I saw that the point where the black tap joins the barrel was fizzing (see photo).

I immediately opened the top of the barrel to release the pressure, then started the tedious process of mopping up.

I can only guess that in moving the barrel I stirred up the yeast and it started fermenting again. It’s summer, so the (reasonably) warm weather must have helped keep the little yeasties busy.

I just wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t caught it as soon as I did… Never mind the explosion, imagine all that wasted beer!

This was a few days ago, and it still smells rather nice in the garage.

Citra American Pale Ale

Citra hops are a very new variety: only commercially available since 2008. Since becoming widely available, these American hops have become almost “trendy”, if you can have such a thing in the beer world. There are a large number of craft breweries, in the UK, US and elsewhere, that delight in their citrus fruit flavour and aroma. They have been described as: peach, apricot, passion fruit, grapefruit, lime, melon, gooseberry, lychee fruit, pineapple, mango, papaya and other tropical fruit flavours and aromas.

I’ve had some lovely beers made with citra, and I wanted to give them a try. One problem: Andy’s had plenty of beers made with citra too, and he really doesn’t like them. It became a bit of a running joke, and so more as a wind-up than anything else I bought some a month or two back. (In fact the on line retailer actually sent me four packs by mistake, which made it look even more like a wind up!)

However, having bought them Andy relented and agreed that we’d make something with them. We decided to make an American Pale Ale – described as a “clean, fresh, hoppy beer with enough malt backbone to carry the moderate hop character and bitterness”.

I’ve seen some comments on the intertubes warning about using solely citra hops.(Suggestions of “cat’s pee” didn’t sound too appealing). So I decided we’d use 50% citra and 50% liberty – a softer, more Germanic style hop. Citra is also aggressively bitter (15% as opposed to Liberty’s 5%).

We made it last Monday and it has been fermenting frantically since then – nearly done now and ready for racking.

The question now is what on earth to do with the remaining three and a half packs of citra! Actually I gave a pack to my brewing friend Andy Bowers – he was talking about making a brown ale hopped with citra. Sounds bizarre, but hey, you have to try these things!