Special Best or Premium Bitter

So, I've decided the Bubble Tea Porter is now in fact a Special Bitter. I say this due to having a play around in BrewMate and having a look at the different styles this beer could potentially go into. I thought I'd pop one while I was playing, just to see if it was finally carbonated...and finally it was.

 

So, some tasting notes, now that it has some fizz!

 

Aroma - its very sweet. Initial hit of Cascade hops dies off quickly to a malty and a slight hop sweetness as well, not sure since there really wasn't that much thrown at it. Its not an overly bad sweetness, its actually pretty pleasant. It's definitely one of the sweeter smelling beers, couple of factors there, yeast, lactose and maltodrextrine. 

Look - Its a lot darker than the software states. Its very deep brown with some really nice red hues. Very dark. I guess it is almost a porter, perhaps a brown porter? Might have been the way we ended up having to make this beer, two separate bags, one for the base grain and one for the speciality grains that's given it such a dark colour.

 

Taste - hard one to explain. I've never tasted anything like it before. The initial taste is bitter, Cascade bitter, then the milk sugar kicks in. Think like you've just had a glass of milk - that's the taste. Its really odd and I think not really suited for what I ended up making, more roasted malts needed I feel, or mmmmm maybe more hops!

 

Manged to find another 30 litre pot, so that's the three I've been wanting, mash tun, hot liquor tun and the boil kettle. Slowly but surely building up the brewery. Ordered some hops from Liberty Brewing, they're on holiday, so gotta wait a couple of weeks for them to arrive. Next week will come the malt order, then its onto brewing!

 

For anyone out there that is following that happens to be in Palmerston North and wants to meet like minded brewing folk, jump on Facebook and check out the Palmy Home Brew Crew.

Stop.....Hop Time

After some pretty unpleasant weather in the Manawatu, i.e. rain, I was getting a little worried about the hops I planted last week. The Mystery German had a couple of shoot when I planted it and the Smoothcone was still dormant.

 

I went out today on a pretty decent spring day and mowed the lawn, did some gardening and check the hops like a caring father - we have a shoot on the Mystery German!!! Stoked! Smoothcone is still dormant from the looks, hopefully the warm spring days will wake her up. I didn't get any photos since it hard to see, but once its out and shooting for the sun I'll throw up a picture.

 

I'm on the third bottle of JD SMaSH for the day, popped one this afternoon over some discussions of PC parts and distilling. I think this beer needs to be served warm. I know that sounds odd and most people will be disgusted reading that, but when its cold, or chilled, the flavour from the Jack Daniels just does not come through, the vanilla, the oak, the char....but when its warms, it like drinking a warm whiskey. I guess, if you're into it, you're into it. Personally, I'm more than into it! There is also a slight pepper/spice after taste. I"m not sure if its the Styrian Golding's coming through, or if its the Jack Daniels, either way, its pleasant.

 

I'm surprised as the colour, its picked up so much colouring from the Jack Daniels and the Jack Daniels Oak Barrel chips I used. Remember this is a single malt beer, I didn't use any malt for colouring, I used 8kg of a base malt and when I bottled it, there was nowhere near that depth of colour.

 

I'm surprised that for a single malt beer, it's actually got a decent head, as you can see and it stays there, it doesn't dissipate when drinking the beer, yay for Maris Otter malt!

 

So the question now is, would I brew it again? Answer is yes!

 

 

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
----------------
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
----------------
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!

Hops, hops and more hops

HOPS! I ventured out today and brought a couple of plants from the Fragrant Garden in Feilding. As you can see I managed to get a Smoothcone and a German vareity that most people on RealBeerNZ call Mystery German.

Pretty stoked I've got the plants. Plan is to clean up the back section, move some planter boxes we currently have and chuck em in the ground. I plan to hook some guide rope to  the fence you can see in the background (on the right) then up to a couple of silver birch trees so they've got something to climb up.

Time will tell I guess. Ian at the Fragrant Gardens they grow real quick once they get going. Lets see if horticulture when I was in college actually did any good!

Got hops growing yourself, have any tips for me?

Bubble Tea......?

Need another name, bubble tea it is not!

 

After mowing the lawns and fluffing around the house, I figured I deserved a taste. Cleverly I put a bottle in the fridge before I started doing anything this moring!

 

On a nice warm Manawatu day, watching Canterbury vs North Harbour in the ITM Cup, I popped a bottle. Sorry - no pics this time, I'll make sure I've got one for next time.

 

No carbonation. I'm not to worried for a couple of reasons:

1. You'll remember that I had some issues with bottling. This bottle was the bottle i was bottling when it happened, the bottle was pretty much full to the brim, so there wasn't any headroom for anything - silly me should have tipped some out.

2. Its only been a week since I bottled. Simillarly with the JD SMaSH it eventually took 3 weeks to carbonate. So I'll leave this one - again another reason to bottle with 500ml bottles, not really wasting that much beer.

 

Onto the beast itself....

Taste - very malty, the chocolate malt comes into its own now and its pretty good, decent roast there. Hops are not there really, might've needed more? Yeah, more, definately needs more HOPS! There is a slight hop after taste, similar actually to the I.R.A I brewed for my birthday. Not a bad taste.

 

Aroma - all but nothing there, there is a malt nose, not sure if it the buscuit or the chocolate malt thats doing it, but its surprinsingly pleasent. I'll lleave the rest of the notes for when it's carbonated, something tells me it might be different.

 

Look - Dark brown with a red hue. Obviously no lacing or head to speak of since its not carbonated.

 

Finally manged to get some Star San as well. Pretty stoked. I'll be honest, I was being lazy in not getting any, but after seeing the stuff in action on the Brewhemoth Brew Day I thought, bugger it, I'm getting some! Pretty cheap and should last me a long time!

 

Keep an eye out for more tasting notes!

Bubble Tea?

Time to bottle the Bubble Tea Mild. First, a final "gravity" test. Still at 1.020 and well, it'd be rude not to have a taste right?

Still tasting good! Still has that initial sweet hit then a slight roast from the chocolate malt (which is a new flavour) and the final taste bud sensation, HOPS!

 

So there it is, in all her glory, brown, not fizzy yet and for now, rather tasty. Not the yeast still in suspension (white specks).

 

I got the kistchen ready for bottleing, gave it a nice clean and hunted through my bottles to get as many 500ml bottles as I could. I'm liking the smaller bottles, more so for tasting. I grabbed some bombers (650ml) bottles that I had from Stoke and the usualt 750ml suspects from those other breweries.

 

I did have a slight mishap when I was bottling though, didn't waste much and I have one 500ml bottle that might not be so good...

I was filling a 500ml bottle, and the end of the bottling wand come off in the bottle! So I had beer splasing all over the floor and then end of my wand in a bottle. I managed to turn the tap off on the fermenter and after about 10mins of mucking arojund, go the end out of the bottle. Resantitised and carried on. Am I worried? not really. Should I be? Probably...

Had a chat with Brian about some upcoming brews. He's keen to do a vanilla porter and I think I'll have a go at a black IPA. Have you brewed or tried either a Vanilla Porter, or a Black IPA? Leave us a comment below.

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.