Infection

This is not a marketing blog. We aren’t trying to sell anything. (If we did, we’d have the Duty Man chasing us). So we’ve got no reason to keep all the articles all positive and “we made this lovely beer then we made that lovely beer”. So here goes – the truth is we seem to have a major problem with a recent beer.

Regular readers will remember that we made a series of Belgian style ales. The first was a Belgian Pale Ale, which fermented nicely and tasted very promising when we transferred it into the keg.

We followed Andy’s “six weeks maturation minimum” rule, but when we came to taste it something was badly wrong. The initial signs had been there – frantic secondary fermentation and a leaking keg (a bit like our earlier explosion). When we served it, the beer gushed out under such pressure we ended up with a whole pint of froth.

But it’s the smell and taste that tells us we have an infection – it’s sour. Not vinegar sour. It’s softer than that, which suggests to me that it is lactic acid, rather than acetic acid. But sour nonetheless. Bugger.

We’ve not had a lot of experience of infections, but given the softness of the sour taste, I am guessing it is a lactobacillus infection. Lactobacillus is present on all raw malt, of which there is plenty around the brewery (I mean house).

So disaster. Well, we’re not so sure. A number of people that have tasted it have been intrigued by the “funky” sourness. It’s not unpleasant, just not what we normally expect from our beer. Andy believes it tastes rather like Rodenbach Classic (Red).

So, since we don’t need the keg right now it hasn’t been dumped. We keep sampling the odd half pint, and we haven’t died yet (or indeed had any adverse symptoms). So we’ll just have to see.

(If you LIKE this sort of beer let me know, we have a LOT to spare! :-)

Photo: http://www.thebarleyblog.com/2011/rodenbach-classic/

Norton Priory

Our brew day went well yesterday. We now have 5 gallons of “Chimay-ish” happily fermenting.

Andy persuaded me to make it much stronger than I had anticipated. I’d been aiming for about 7% (OG 1.062), but Andy egged me on to go up to 9% (OG 1.074) on the grounds that we are bottling it (so it can be drunk over a longer period) and that strength is very in-style for Chimay. Ooer.

Then we sat and discussed a name… always tricky. Given that this is based on a monastic ale, we looked for a suitable local name with a similar theme, and came up with Norton Priory.

But we struggled to find a satisfactory name for the Belgian Dubbel. Any suggestions from my extensive readership gratefully received! Incidentally, we tasted the Dubbel last night too. Very, very pleased with it. Deep, complex, smooth, warming and with a distinct figgy note. That’s going to be great around Christmas.

Norton Priory. Photo: Wikipedia.

Last of the Belgians

Tomorrow’s brew day sees the last in our triptych of Belgian ales. We started with a Belgian Pale Ale, then moved to a Belgian Dubbel, and tomorrow we are brewing a Chimay Red-inspired ale. Chimay is a Trappist monastery in the south west of Belgium that has been brewing beers since 1862.

Why three in a row? Well we started with a batch of WYeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes yeast, and it seems such a shame not to use it as much as possible.

So what’s this one going to be like? Well here are some tasting notes I found for Chimay Red:

It pours with a lovely deep red colour and tall, foaming head that is very persistent. The nose is intensely fruity, with notes of dried apricots and fig and a chocolaty background. On the palate it is smooth and silky-textured, with a luxurious mouthfeel. There is plenty of nutty, dry, but concentrated fruit character and a spicy, malty finish with plenty of bit.

I have to confess it is many years since I drank any Chimay (note to self – visit The Bottle Stop soon). But I’m sure it’ll be interesting to make our own. I don’t think it will be exactly like Chimay because you should use specific Chimay yeast.

And what else is in it? Lager malt, crystal malt, a dash of chocolate malt and the key ingredient: two jars of honey.

Like the Belgian Dubbel, this will be heading into bottles, and maturing until the colder months. Om nom nom.

Photo: www.chimay.com

Marmite Beer

We’ve made Marmite Beer! Speaking metaphorically of course!

If you remember, back in June we made a Citra-hopped American Pale Ale. It’s just coming up to being ready to drink, and my first impressions are extremely favourable. Not so Andy’s. He absolutely hates it.

On the aroma I get peach, apricot and melon. Not harsh and citrusy at all (unlike some Citra-based beers).

The flavour has a warm rich malty sweetness coupled with some sweet fruit like melon or mango. You are left with just the right amount of bitterness which is not harsh or resiny.

Of course Andy disagrees, which shows you just how subjective the world of beer tasting is. I’m not saying he’s wrong. But I do know who’s going to be drinking a lot of this barrel!

PS I’m pleased to say the clarity is very acceptable. (Cf previous post).

PPS If you are interested in seeing the recipe for this or any other beers, leave a comment. I tend to leave recipes out because I assume that those people reading this are doing so out of mild interest, rather than any more detailed interest in brewing. If you are a home brewer and would like to see the recipes let me know.

Clarity Problems

This is not a marketing blog. That’s because we don’t have anything to sell (did you hear that, Mr Duty Man??). And it means that this blog is not all about “we made this lovely beer” and “we made that lovely beer”. Sometimes things go wrong. Happy to admit it – that’s how you learn.

The previous blog post is a case in point – we’re currently drinking pretty much flat lager.

So here goes with another. What the hell happened to our ability to make clear beer??

This problem has afflicted the last couple of brews: East Kent Goldings Single Hop and Liberty Lightning.

The funny thing is that the beer seems fairly clear when it is racked out of the fermenter. Then it sits in the keg to mature for 4-6 weeks (a period of time soon to be designated a “Burrows”). When served we end up with the haziest beer you’ve ever seen (see the photo below). It’s a bit embarrassing giving it to friends to be honest.

I can only think of a couple of possible reasons:

1. Dry hopping. Maybe adding dry hops after fermentation has somehow affected the clarity.
2. Yeast activity during conditioning. Maybe the yeast’s secondary fermentation is so vigorous (especially given the warmer days of “summer”) that it’s kicking up a load of yeast into suspension and not settling out.

Certainly the vigorous secondary fermentation of the Liberty Lightning points towards the latter possibility. But I’m really not sure. Here’s hoping the Citra American Pale doesn't suffer the same fate.

Making lager fizzy

It’s funny how sometimes what would on the face of it appear a fairly simple thing turns out to be much much more complicated…

If you are our regular reader, you will remember that way back in April we made a Czech-style lager, named Bohemian Wrenbury. This has been lagering (cold storage) for many weeks, but now summer is here (ho ho!) we want to drink it. But obviously being lager it needs to be fizzy.

As everyone knows, the bubbles in fizzy drinks are carbon dioxide. How do you make beer fizzy? Well there are two ways: first is to provoke a secondary fermentation. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide, so if you keep the beer sealed it will dissolve in the beer. This is how we carbonate our ales. The second way is force carbonation, i.e. seal the beer and use bottled carbon dioxide.

As I said, for our ales we use a secondary fermentation. So why not just do this for the lager? Well, mainly because of the lack of yeast. After many weeks of lagering, I think most of the yeast will have dropped out of the beer. Plus the lager is in the fridge, so any secondary fermentation would take a long time. And finally, it’s a bit uncontrollable. You add sugar to power the secondary fermentation… if it didn’t ferment we’d end up with somewhat sweet lager.

So we decided to try force carbonation. First problem: how do you know what pressure you have in your keg? After much research, I bought a keg pressure gauge on eBay:

After a bit of drilling, tightening and testing it was fitted and seems to work OK.

Next problem – how much pressure do you need? The first thing to say is that the amount of carbonation in beer is measured in “volumes”. That is, carbonation to one “volume” means you have dissolved the same volume of carbon dioxide in your beer as you have beer. Two “volumes” means twice the volume of carbon dioxide has been dissolved as you have beer.

Generally lagers are served at between 2 and 2.5 volumes. So far so good. Now the amount of carbon dioxide you can dissolve depends on the pressure of the gas above the beer and also the temperature. A quick look on Google reveals some handy charts for the pressure (in PSI) required to attain a certain level of carbonation versus temperature. Yes, temperature plays a part: the colder the beer the more gas you can dissolve in it. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s right. For dissolving salt in water, you need it to be warmer to get more to dissolve. Not so for dissolving a gas – for that you can dissolve more gas at lower temperatures, because a higher temperature means more energy in the liquid, which can drive the gas out of solution and into the space above.

All fine, except that you need quite a lot of pressure, even at about 5C, to dissolve 2.5 volumes or carbon dioxide. More pressure, unfortunately, than the King Keg is supposed to tolerate (10-12 PSI max). Bugger. But given that I’d got this far I didn’t see that there was much else I could do but go for it, and see how much carbon dioxide I could get to dissolve. So far it turns out that the answer is “not enough”. When served, the lager comes out at quite a gush (because of the pressure above), but it doesn’t hold any bubbles. Just the very slightest hint of carbonation, like mostly flat mineral water. Arse.

On the plus side, the beer itself tastes and smells wonderful – just like Budvar. And it’s nice and clear.

So what was the “right” solution? To invest in a “cornelius keg”, which can hold much much more pressure. But I don’t think one would fit in my fridge. So this is going to take a lot more thought and experimentation for future lagers.

New boiler

On Tuesday we made the second of our Belgian beers – a Belgian Dubbel. The brewday was enhanced by the arrival of a shiny new boiler for my birthday (thank you Gill!).

“Hang on!!”, I hear you say, “you’ve got a lovely vintage Burco boiler, what do you want to replace that for?”

A couple of reasons really. Firstly, the new boiler is slightly bigger (29 litres versus 22 litres), which means we can boil the whole batch (previously we’ve always boiled a little under the full volume, then topped up with a bit of water at the end). Bigger also means the liquid isn’t anywhere as near to the top. Much safer!

The second reason is speed. We have been able to shave some time off our brewday by using both boilers. The old Burco is now just a Hot Liquor Tank (HLT). Previously it had to do both jobs, which meant that we had to collect the runnings from our mash tun somewhere else until we had completely finished sparging and no longer needed hot water. Then we transferred it all across to the Burco to start boiling it. Of course the wort was cooling down during all this time, so with the new boiler we can start heating the wort much sooner, saving time.

Oh, and I’ve just thought of a third reason. The new boiler has a nice filter at the bottom, which holds back hops and trub (precipitated proteins) as we are running off. I suppose in theory that should mean clearer beer, although there is some debate about that in brewing circles.