Orange Cascade Pale Ale

Well, there she is, excuse the cold break on the bottom of the glass, but there is a sneak peak of the Orange Cascade Pale Ale.

I did manage to stuff up by forgetting to put the orange and coriander in at 15mins.....so I ended up making a 5 litre tea of orange peel and coriander, boiled it for 15mins and threw it in the fermenter. At the end of the day, it'll be beer right?

I also threw some Motueka at it, just cause Cascade and Motueka together is an intense flavour combination!

Here's the mash in - excuse the feet. 4.5kg of Maris Otter, 500g Vienna and 500g of Pale Crystal. Simple recipe, easy mash in.

16 litres of water to 76 degrees, dough in and what do ya know, 67 degrees. Off the burner, kept in the sun lid on and let it rest for and hour. Note the really cool mash paddle? Queue an old BBQ fish slice and a hammer to make it straight. Works a treat!

Took a little while to hit the boil, but once she was there it was nice and consistent. Yes, those are pegs. They're holding the hop bag in place. One thing you can't see is the first wort hops I ended up doing. I put the first 27g Cascade into a muslin bag and threw it in the boil kettle before I gathered the wort. That means the hops have been sitting in the cooler wort right through to boil and right through to chilling. I'm interested on how this will go.

Next was the chilling. Went real quick, I assume due to the Manawatu wind picking up. At this point, I clicked that I had forgotten the orange peel and coriander, so I raced inside and made up the tea I mentioned earlier.

Now, the fermenter is inside, cooling down as much as it possibly can inside so I can throw the yeast in. I think I'll cold crash this one as well, after fermentation has ceased, or slowed down, 5 day cold crash with 30g each or Cascade and Motueka.

ManawaBrew Pale Ale

You would have seen in my last blog that I've cracked a bottle and had some notes there......well, here it is. Nice full head, lacing stays with it right through. Aroma is dried apricots, mango, passion fruit and a tiny hint of pine and wait for it, caramel.

Taste is insane. I wasn't sure how well Cascade and Motueka would work together, but they work really well. You get the same sort of tastes as in the aroma, dried apricot, mango, passion fruit and caramel.

I gave out a bottle to Shady, who said it was pretty good and wanted the recipe, gave in the in laws a taste last night, one is an avid wine drinker and she said she liked it, the other is a staunch Steinlager, Guinness and Whiskey drinker and even he liked it.

I think it missing a couple of things, one it the abv is excessive, 7.5% is too high. I think something in the 5.5 to 6% would be ideal. I think it needs more hops, maybe more of a combination of Cascade and Motueka all the way through, who knows, I'll keep playing and once its ready, I'll throw it at some competitions and see how we go. All about experimenting right?

Hops

As I said in the last post, the Mystery German is reaching for the sky, stoked! The Smoothcone is awake and climbing, but the Mystery German is by far the biggest. I'll throw up some photos later on, so check back!

Tomorrow I'll be brewing the rhubarb saison with Steph, so watch this space for some more blogging and pics!!

Cheers!!!

Next brew - American Pale Ale

I've decided on the next beer, brew day to be the 13th October.  I'm going to make an American Pale Ale, loosely based off Epic's Pale Ale, but I'm using different hops.

I while ago I brewed a Fat Yak clone, called it a Chubby Highlander and people went nuts over it. I said at the time I would brew it again, but I haven't, mainly because I haven't brewed extract since I moved into BIAB. I pretty much fell in love with Motueka hops. Such a great hop, flavoursome, and oh such an aroma.

I then moved onto brewing a clone of Epic's Pale Ale for my birthday. My first attempt at all grain brewing and BIAB. Seemed to run alright, so I've stuck with BIAB ever since.

 

I wanted to brew the Pale Ale again, but thought this time I'd throw some Motueka hops at it. I've read that Cascade and Motueka go well together, even had a read of some hop bursting. I figured, I'll stick with what I know for now and see how it goes - basically, get a recipe I like, then start tweaking.

So, here she is:

ManawaBrew Pale Ale V1

American Pale Ale

Recipe Specs
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Batch Size (L): 23.0
Total Grain (kg): 6.200
Total Hops (g): 254.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.059
Final Gravity (FG): 1.015
Alcohol by Volume (ABV):  5.80 %
Colour (SRM): 8.4 

Bitterness (IBU): 34.2   (Tinseth)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 90

 

Grain Bill
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5.000 kg Golden Promise Malt (80.65%)
0.600 kg Caramalt (9.68%)
0.400 kg Crystal 10 (6.45%)
0.200 kg Carapils (3.23%)

 

Hop Bill
----------------
7.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 75 Minutes
14.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 30 Minutes
34.0 g Cascade Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes

42.5 g Cascade Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes
42.5 g Motueka Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes
57.0 g Motueka Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 5 Days Dry Hop
57.0 g Motueka Pellet (7.3% Alpha) @ 7 Days Dry Hop

 

Misc Bill
----------------

Single step Infusion at 64°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 21°C with Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

 

So there's the recipe, guess we'll see how we go in a couple of weeks!

Oh yeah, got the hop plants out into the garden today - bring on the bines!

Wednesday Brewskies



Well, its hump day and I felt like a beer. All I had in the fridge was some left over brewskies from our brew day a couple of weeks ago.

Sitting amongst the beers are a couple of bottle of the JD SMaSH. I thought I would give it another go, see how its changed.

Into a 2012 Beervana glass it went.

Aroma: Its got a slight nose of the Jack Daniels and when I say slight I mean slight. There is more vanilla in the nose, but apart from that its pretty bland.

Look: Its very golden, compared to how it looked when I was bottling it, its done very well, ver clear, very bright. Its got almost a golden hue to it, from the chips and Jack Daniels I'd say. No head to speak of, it disappears quickly, not to worried since it was a single malt beer.

Taste: Well, it has mellowed in the last two weeks in the fridge. The Jack Daniels is not as harsh as it was, in fact its become very drinkable. Its got a beer taste now, before it was like having a shot of Jack. Now, now its a beer. Now it has mellowed just enough. You still get the heat from the Jack, but its hard to explain, you just want MOAR!

I think I'll still cellar some, if not most of it. Its coming into summer and this certainly is no summer beer. I don't think I'd want to smash back one of these after mowing the lawn! Its more of a tuck up next to the fire sort of beers. Very warming.

Still thinking about my next brew. I got some ideas from Beervana, but I dunno. Not sure I want to spend money on experimental beers, but I guess thats all I've really been doing since I started brewing right?

I have put some thought into the American again, such a good beer and truth be told, most of it went at my birthday so I never got to really give a good go. Only real downside is the cost of the hops, they cost $20 per 100g here in NZ and I need at least 300g. I guess I could make a 10L batch though, scale everything down...? Needs more thought and more beer!!

Bubble Tea Mild Ale

Bubble Tea Mild chillin'

Its been just over a week since the Brewhemoth Brew Day and my failed attempt at a porter. Never fear though, I have decided it will now become an American Mild Ale. Its an American because it has more hops than an English version of the same style of beer. In staying with the name of the original, Bubble Tea Porter, I've now named it, Bubble Tea Mild.

Its currently siting at roughly 5.2% abv, which to me is a sessionable beer. The gravity samples I've tasted have been pretty good, hoppy nose, sweet front, hop bitter back and a velvet mouth feel. I guess the lactose and malto-dextrine have done their job.

Plan is to bottle on Saturday since I now have Saturdays back post rugby season, although the ITM Cup is staring this week and the All Blacks are playing Saturday night, maybe Sunday for bottling day. All going well in the bottle, in two weeks time, we'll have a taste.a

Side note - I have also decide the JD SMaSH is going to cellar over the summer and I'll see how it goes in the winter. I'm not sure if I'll keep it in the house or in the garage over summer, I think the house, since it'll be cooler.

Brewhemoth Brew Day

Well, with Dropkick Murphy's pumping we finally got around to the brewhemoth brew day. We ended up just doing three brews, Centennial Blonde, Stone Arrogant Bastard clone and what was supposed to be a Black Pearle Porter isn't anymore....we'll call it a mild ale for now. Pretty happy with the day, we started a little later than planned, but it all worked out in the end. Shady brought over his new toy, an immersion chiller. Worked really well, got the wort to 30 degrees from a rolling boil in about 20mins. My backyard is now officially a swimming pool with the rain we've had over the week and cooling three beers on top. The things we do for beer.

20g of Cascade and 4oz of Lactose for the "Black Pearle Porter"

I thought I had enough chocolate malt, turns out I only half of what was required. So its not as dark as it should be and wont be as roasty as it should be. Due to that fact I ended up using Fuggles for bittering and NZ Cascade for aroma and flavouring. Give it fiveish weeks and we'll see how it turns out.

"Black Pearle Porter" at a rolling boil

Shady and Brian both popped their All Grain cherries with us all doing BIAB. We had two three ring burners as you see above and one 2 ring burner. Since Shady and I were onto it and here first we nabbed the three ring burners and got up to strike temps quickly. Brian came and joined the race soon after. Three mashes in and it was time for a beer.

Stone Arrogant Bastard with a rolling boil

We left it a little lat to get the sparge water on the heat, so all three brews were left mashing in for longer than expected and at lower temps than expected. None of us are all that worried about it, beers, beer and at this stage is just a hobby (yeah right).

We mashed out and got onto the boil. Shady was first to hit a boil and man, once the centennial hit the boil, my backyard smelt like a brewery. Brian was next with his 1.5oz Chinook hit, yet again a massive wave of hops filled the air. Next was me and the fuggles.....not much aroma there...

Centennial Blonde with the IC

Along we went with all the hop and other additions then onto cooling. The immersion chiller worked really well, especially on a coldish day, the water was fairly cold. It hits about 30 and tends to plateau for a little before hitting pitching temps.

Into the fermenters went all three beers, Shady and Brian are usignUS-05 and I'm using US-04. Give us at least 5 weeks and we'll see how the beers taste!

"Black Pearle Porter" cooling

And just as a teaser....the JD SMaSH in the glass....its still VERY dominated by bourbon on the nose and taste. Definitely one to cellar! Next time, I need to find a stronger beer. I just don't think a SMaSH has enough of a malt back bone to compliment the Jack Daniels. I think a Porter wiould be better and perhaps toast the chips as well. Might make that a project beer, 5L at a time.

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14/08 edit

Tested the gravity, down to 1.020 from 1.060 in three days!!! She was sitting at 22 degrees which is on the high end of S-04....Tasting the gravity sample now and wow, lots of hop nose, soft sweet taste with a kick in the back. Even SWMBO liked it....Litte watery mouth feel, hope it fills out. The maltodextrine should give it some mouth feel, little lacking at the moment. Give it 7 more days and see how it goes before I decide when to bottle.