North West Welly Ales

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 11, 2011 at 10:27am

OK, the first

pale was crap - but the brew suffered from bad practice and shabby technique
From the airlock liquid ending up in the fermenter, a sponge ending up in there too and a day at 27C it was not a good look start to finish
I could try and bullshit my way through it with fancy descriptors but at the end of the day it's not good.

The second pale however is much better.
Hopped up to account my perception of the yeast and it's attenuation, it's tasting more like the American Ale version, possibly a bit more guts to it
But given that, it attenuated a bit better than the published stats, went 1034 to 1008 so 76%
Kegged and bottled the other night and the hydro sample was good. I had the fermenter dregs, a pint and it was a bit cloying by the end.
Could be a pint or two of the Super Alpha Darkie left to finish and then it's on deck

So, onto this week and I realised that I'm due to do a brown to balance things up.
Standard dark brown grist with adjustment for specialties on hand
ADM Pale    84.5%
Dark Caramalt    3.0%
Dark Crystal    6.0%
Pale Chocolate    3.0%
Chocolate    2.0%
Black        1.5%

I was going to leave the hops the same as the '05 version I did, but I'm going to bump it up a little to take into account the dark crystal being used in place of medium crystal previously (lesson learnt)

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 17, 2011 at 9:10am

OK, my current run of 1469 is almost at an end.
I'll give it a run in the mild in a while so what's the best yeast saving option for me.
I have the option of peeling the nice layer of yeast off the top of the fermenter and also saving the slurry

Now I can cope fine with Mr malty telling me what to do with slurry, but how do I calculate what I need to fire up top cropped yeast ?

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Permalink Reply by JoKing on March 17, 2011 at 10:05am

Just the same mate. There's still plenty of beer and air in the top crop. Get as much as you can.

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 17, 2011 at 10:26am

Yea ?

I thought that the paste off the top was a better or purer quality of yeast as it didn't have the trub that the slurry had

If that was the case I wondered how the Mr malty slurry calculation would work

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Permalink Reply by JoKing on March 17, 2011 at 10:40am

Just slide the "non yeast material" slider up so that there is less trub in the calculation. You'd be suprised to learn that there is still a wee bit of trub in the top crop. Not much though.

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 17, 2011 at 12:11pm

Now why didn't I think of that .... apart from I try not to mess with things too much :-)

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Permalink Reply by Matthew on March 17, 2011 at 8:25pm

Accidently froze my bottom dwelling 1469 - the fridge has one very cold corner and the bottle got pushed into it. Frozen yeasties... The top dwellers are fine.

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 17, 2011 at 9:16pm

Just went through the starsan imersion treatment and then scooped 300 ml off the top of the brown.

It's settled back to 200ml with a shake and I've topped it off with the cooled boiled.

Still got 200ml from a fortnight ago and the one in the fermenter to go - looks like I'll have to start using this stuff for ginger beer and baking bread !

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 21, 2011 at 9:29am

OK, planning the W1469 Porter and I've had this sitting on the back-burner for some years

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1811

FULLERS LONDON PORTER According to Real Ale Almanac
25 litre batch OG 1053 ABV 5% 140 units of colour 33 EBU
OPTIC PALE MALT 4300 gms - 76%
CRYSTAL MALT 568 gms - 10%
BROWN MALT 683 gms - 12%
CHOCOLATE MALT 115 gms - 2%

HOPS 90 minute boil

FUGGLES 86 gms

Add 10 gms Fuggles last 15 minutes

Use Wyeast 1968 London ESB yeast

Not that I particularly want a clone of the beer, have any Optic pale or Fuggles, but I thought at least it would clear out my brown malt in one hit

I probably want to up the IBU a bit for my taste, I like the balance a bit further up the scale away from the malt.

Any other suggestions, comments (maybe that 12% of Brown is niggling me)

cheers, jt

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Permalink Reply by JoKing on March 21, 2011 at 9:42am

A couple my man.

 

1: Gladfield Malt is Optic Barley. It is a very true representation of the UK variety, only that the kiln is slightly lighter.

 

2: Dont forget that Brown Malt, and Chocolate malt are both dry acrid / bitter malts - especially at 14% of the grist. The need for bittering from the hops is a lot lower when one considers the bittering effect from these malts.

 

3: Please send me some samples.

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Permalink Reply by jt on March 21, 2011 at 12:05pm

Hey thanks for the thoughts

I'd never found the Brown to be too acrid, but that was way back at 5% ... my memory of the Fullers Porter must be a bit vague .. that happens sometimes

Hop advice, no Fuggles as I said, so it's Cascade, Sauvin, Super Alpha, Goldings or Motueka

I'm leaning to a bittering with Sauvin or Cascade - I told you I wasn't after a clone - and maybe a whack of Motueka at the end, though I may need a big hit to get anything through that malt ?

The thought's inspired by another long time itch from here, the Weyermann porter http://www.weyermann.de/eng/hr.asp?go=detailrz&idrz=21&umen...

A sample ?
Good job I'm not running a business, my deliveries are slack, but yea I owe you a delivery

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Permalink Reply by Matthew on March 21, 2011 at 12:44pm

You can reacquaint yourself with it at Bruhaus, they have it on tap. Nice drop

 

 

 

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