Six Month Catch Up

Oh my goodness, has it been six months since I last wrote a beery blog post? Looks like it. Why? Well, no particular reason to be honest. Andy and I have still been making beer but for some reason I’ve just not had the time and/or inclination to blog about it.

So here is a quick post to get me started again. I guess the best thing for me to do is re-cap the last six months of brewing as briefly as possible, then I can take up with more specific articles about what we’re doing now.

Gyle 80 Mosaic SMaSH beer (June)

This was our first true “Single Mash and Single Hop” (SMaSH) brew, used to provide a simple beer to allow us to try some Mosaic hops. The recipe was simply 5kg of Maris Otter malt, mashed at 66C. Mosaic hops were added to the boil at 60 min (15g), 20 min (20g), 10 min (20g) and flame out (20g). The remaining 25g of hops were used to dry hop the beer in the keg. Yeast was Safale S-04, fermented at around 19C (keep it cool to keep it clean!).

Any good? Depends who you ask. If you ask me, the answer is “oh my god yes!” I love American hops, and Mosaic is right there up with the best in my opinion. Forthright, aromatic and deeply flavourful, without being aggressive. However Andy didn’t touch a single pint of this beer. (“Nasty, horrible, pine fresh”).

Gyle 81 Gin Wit (July)

OK, this one was a bit experimental. We both love gin, so we wanted to try some gin botanicals in a beer. We decided to make a wit (lager malt, wheat malt, torrified wheat, munich malt and some porridge oats) and add juniper berries (20g, 10 min), lemon zest (15g, 5 min) and grains of paradise (5g, 2 min).

Any good? No, not especially. I mean it was drinkable, but the botanicals just didn’t “pop” out of the beer. Muddy and confused flavours. Back to the drawing board on that one I think.

Gyle 82 Flyer (September)

Another SMaSH beer, this time with Flyer hops. Same recipe as above.

Any good? Well Flyer is a much less assertive hop than Mosaic. What we ended up making got branded “pub beer” by the drinking committee. It was light in colour and strength, and just a tasty quaffable beer.

Flyer is a brand new British hop (http://www.britishhops.org.uk/flyer/) described as “citrus, stoned fruits, liquorice, treacle-toffee and caramel”. I didn’t get a lot of any of those, but I did get a good standard British hop. Unremarkable you might say. “Pub beer” is what I say.

 

Oh dear, I’ve gone over a page already. I‘ve got a couple more beers to tell you about but I think I’ll leave those to another post.

The Grainfather – in photos

As I mentioned in my previous post, my mate Andy from the newly named Prince Albert Ales has splashed out on a Grainfather brewing system. You can read my initial description of the system in this post (to save me typing it again).

The brew day started with cleaning the system, especially because it was brand new so the recommendation was to run cleaner through it for a reasonable time to remove any factory grime (I’m sure they didn’t use those exact words in the manual).

Recipe and grains were prepared in advance (today it was a German wheat beer):

Once rinsed, the Grainfather was filled with strike water and set at the target temperature to heat up:

Once at temperature in go the grains:

Then on goes a mesh to prevent the top of the grain bed being disturbed by recirculated mash liquor and later sparge water:

Then the mash recirculation pipe is fitted and the pump turned on so the mash liquor at the bottom is pumped up and onto the top of the mash:

Wait an hour and have some lunch…

At the end of the mash, there’s a foam on top of the mash:

Here’s the clever bit – lift the inner cylinder up and lock it in place so the wort can drain out of the grains into the boiler below:

Commence sparging – simply pour the sparge water onto the top mesh above the grain bed:

Once finished, remove the mesh, and indeed the whole grains cylinder:

In go the hops and the boil commences:

At this point I left Andy to it. But at the end of the boil the counterflow wort chiller is used to recirculate the wort until chilled to the required temperature, whereupon it is pumped into the fermenting vessel.

That’s it! In all we were very impressed. There were a couple of learning points:

1. The handle for the inner grain cylinder can easily come away when you are tipping the grain out of the cylinder. As a result Andy managed to drop it as he was tipping into the compost bin. Minimal damage fortunately.
2. Pumping out into the FV took forever because of the hops clogging up the outlet. Looks like a hop bag is essential.

On the brighter side, the OG was 1.060 when the recipe had said 1.050, so it’s clear the system is very efficient. That’ll be the mash recirculation I guess.

Now, I just need to find £600…

Beer Engine maintenance

My beer engine is the best impulse purchase I have ever made. It changes good home-made beer into great home-made beer and allows me to serve beer to my guests that is pretty close to what they’d get in a British (northern) pub. I love it.

Last Wednesday it was giving me a bit of jip though. I did manage to get beer out of it, but is was hugely foamed up, so you only got about half a pint of froth.

This weekend Andy and I took it apart to see if some TLC would sort out the problem.

At this point it may be worth you having a look back at my previous post called Anatomy of a Beer Engine. This shows the insides of my beer engine last time I took it apart. This post is, incidentally, the most popular post on this blog!

So Andy and I took it apart on Friday and cleaned everything and put it back together. At this stage it became apparent that we’d made it worse – there was absolutely no draw at all. Andy’s calm and unflappable nature prevailed… so rather than getting stressed for the whole evening over it we put it back together and sat down and had a beer (bottled of course) to think it over.

Today I had another go at it and it seems to be working OK now. The problem? Well, there is a non-return valve at the bottom of the cylinder which I think had seized up. It’s the fat white cylinder with the input nozzle shown below:

It comes apart like this:

The beer is drawn in through the nozzle, through the valve inside, and out through the hole in the white plastic unit and thence into the bottom of the pump cylinder (the stainless steel bit).

Last time I took the engine apart I didn’t disassemble the non-return valve. Today, in desperation, I took it all apart.

Like everything about this beer engine, it’s elegant in its simplicity.

In the back of the nozzle section (the bit that is unscrewed) is a small movable piece (with the red ring) that is pushed in place by a long spring.

As you pull the beer engine handle it draws the piston up the cylinder, which reduces the pressure in the lower part of the cylinder. This pulls the moveable piece out a bit, allowing beer to be drawn into the engine cylinder. When you stop pulling, the spring pushes the piece back in to prevent beer returning back up the pipe. Dead simple.

As you can see, it was a bit dirty. I think grime on the red seal had caused it to stick in place.

Once it was all taken apart, cleaned with a toothbrush and then put back together the beer engine seems to be back to full working order.

I’ve not actually tried it with beer yet, but it now draws water just fine.

In other news: Remember I posted recently about The Grainfather? Well on seeing my post my mate Andy (the other Andy, not the Cheshire Peaks Andy) went straight out and ordered one. I’ll be very interested to hear how he gets on with it. If I can get some photos it may make an interesting post for the future.

Marks and Spencer Craft Ale Range

We all love something new. In fact you could go so far as to say that our society is obsessed with everything that is different, new and improved. Anyway, it has to be said that the same is true in beer-making as much as anything else in life.

Take hops: England used to have a selection of about a dozen “native” hops (Fuggles, Goldings, Challenger, Target, Northdown, Whitbread Goldings to name but a few). They have subtle earthy and fruity flavours. Maybe just a little bit spicy. Then along came the American varieties with their massive bittering and citrus and piney flavours (Cascade, Columbus, Centennial, Chinook, Citra – I think they all have to start with a C!). We loved them because they were NEW! Still do.

But now England fights back. We are starting to see some new varieties that have been bred in England but have all those “new” flavours drinkers are looking for. But are grown over here.

One of those new varieties is called Jester (maybe because it is taking the mickey out of the American hops varieties?!) This hop has only been available commercially since about 2012 and as yet I have not seen them for sale to homebrewers. But this week I discovered that one of Marks and Spencer’s “Single Hop Variety British Hop” ales is called Jester.

Oh my god it was good. It did not disappoint with its “soft, aromatic flavours of gooseberry and lychee”. This ale is billed as an “IPA”, but it left no noticeable bitter aftertaste. Just the gorgeous flavours of new world hops. In fact my wife, who usually hates beer because of “that beery aftertaste” said this beer was the first one that she felt she could actually sit down and drink to herself (rather than just sipping mine).

Anyway, SEEK IT OUT! We’ve all got an M&S nearby.

And while you’re in there, try some of the others in the range. I have to commend M&S on their whole “Single Hop Variety Hop” range. There are quite a number of them and every one I have had has been either good or excellent. Each is brewed on contract by a different brewer (Jester IPA is made by Adnams in Suffolk).

http://www.marksandspencer.com/l/food-and-wine/wine-shop/beer-cider-and-ale

Non-disclaimer: The author does NOT own any shares in Marks and Spencer. Honestly.

The Grainfather

I walked into my local homebrew shop today and Julie (who shall be called Sue) said “have you seen my Grainfather?”

I’d never heard of this thing. I’d seen some stuff about the PicoBrew Zymatic, which is a box that you pour grain into and beer comes out the other end (after waiting a while and taking $2000 out of your bank account). This is the breadmaker of the homebrew world.

But the Grainfather is a bit different – this is a mash tun, boiler and wort chiller all built into one device. You still have to do the actual brewing, but it’s all done with the one piece of equipment.

How does it work? Well it looks like this:

(Image from http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/)

So it’s a five gallon boiler with a recirculating pump built into the bottom (left hand side on this photo). This allows you to mash with a temperature controlled heater (the black box on the side).

Once the mash is done, the grains are lifted up in a sort of inner basket, which allows the wort to drain below and sparge water to be added.

Once all the wort is collected, the Grainfather becomes a boiler and boils your brew. Finally the pump is used to pump your wort through the counterflow chiller (right hand side of the top photo) and into your fermenter.

Neat!

And the price? £599. But if you were starting out you wouldn’t need to buy a boiler (£150), a mash tun (£75) or a chiller (£75). OK, so the Grainfather is twice that, but it’s still pretty cool.

Rushton Imperial Stout tasting and future brews

It’s been a long time since I posted to this blog. To be honest, we’ve had a glut of beer that was brewed before Christmas and are only just starting to think it’s time to make more.

But the reason for this post is to update you on the Rushton Imperial Stout that we brewed back in 2013.

We’ve held off trying it for well over a year but decided the time had finally come. I have to say we were not disappointed. You can read my initial tasting notes made at the time of bottling by following the link above.

Since then it has carbonated well and softened/mellowed. It is still highly viscous, but the carbonation turns that into a kind of mousse in your mouth. It has deep coffee and roasty flavours, but has also retained a firm bitterness. This is a good job – it cuts through the sweetness to give what I think is a fairly balanced beer.

We were so pleased with it that we have decided to make another batch in the next month or two. For that we are going to need a lot of yeast, so the plan is to make a brew of Scottish 70/- (using Jamil Zainasheff’s recipe from Brewing Classic Styles – you do have a copy don’t you?). This will produce a yeast cake that we can use to ferment both the Imperial Stout brew and also a “second beer” made from the second runnings.

Hopefully that brew will be next week – that’s only our second brew this year.