Double Brewday: Ordinary Bitter & American Amber Ales

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This past Saturday, I brewed two batches in a single day, back to back. While this did make for a very long day, I was able to gain some overlap without any additional equipment.

The way I did it, was that as I was running off the second runnings of the first batch, I was heating the strike water for the second batch. This gave me the ability to mash my second batch while boiling my first. Not a huge gain, but I imagine that I gained at least an hour.

These batches were fun, experimental batches. The first was a substatial change to my bitter recipe, a regular in my keezer. The two major changes were that I used Ringwood yeast instead of London Ale III, hoping to really boost the malt profile of a very low-gravity beer. I also replaced a pound of base malt with Victory, in hopes of getting a profile somewhat closer to Maris Otter.

Recipe Overview

Volume At Pitching: 5.25 US gals
Expected OG: 1.039 SG
Expected ABV: 3.6 %

Fermentables
UK Pale Ale Malt 5lb 0oz (71.1 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Victory Malt 1lb 0oz (14.2 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Dark Crystal 8.00 oz (7.1 %) In Mash/Steeped
German Wheat Malt 4.00 oz (3.6 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Medium Crystal 4.00 oz (3.6 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Chocolate Malt 0.50 oz (0.4 %) In Mash/Steeped

Hops
US Willamette (4.5 % alpha) 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used First Wort Hopped
UK Golding (4.9 % alpha) 0.50 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 25 Min From End
UK Golding (4.9 % alpha) 0.28 oz Loose Pellet Hops used At turn off

Other Ingredients

Yeast: Wyeast 1187-Ringwood Ale

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Schedule Name:Single Step Infusion (66C/151F)
Step: Rest at 151 degF for 60 mins

The second recipe was a repeat, albeit with further modifications, of a low-gravity version of Gordon, an Oskar Blues beer. It’s now called G’Knight Imperial Red due to a lawsuit over the name Gordon, ridiculous, but so it is. It’s a bit big, but one of my favorite big hoppy beers, so I enjoy trying to make a 5% version. It’s mostly about the Amarillo hops in the finish, so the basic beer recipe isn’t that critical.

Recipe Overview

Final Batch Volume: 5.02 US gals
Expected Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.042 SG
Expected OG: 1.045 SG
Expected FG: 1.011 SG
Expected ABV: 4.5 %
Expected ABW: 3.6 %
Expected IBU (using Daniels): 33.7
Expected Color: 12.0 SRM
Apparent Attenuation: 74.9 %
Mash Efficiency: 78.0 %
Boil Duration: 60.0 mins
Fermentation Temperature: 64 degF

Fermentables
UK Pale Ale Malt 7lb 0oz (71.7 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Victory Malt 2lb 0oz (20.5 %) In Mash/Steeped
Breiss Crystal 20 12.00 oz (7.7 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Chocolate Malt 0.20 oz (0.1 %) In Mash/Steeped

Hops
US Centennial (9.0 % alpha) 0.50 oz Loose Pellet Hops used First Wort Hopped
US Columbus(Tomahawk) (13.0 % alpha) 2.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 5 Min From End
US Amarillo (8.0 % alpha) 2.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used Dry-Hopped

Other Ingredients

Yeast: Wyeast 1056-American Ale

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Schedule Name:Single Step Infusion (69C-156F)
Step: Rest at 150 degF for 75 mins

Flanders Red Update

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Back in September, I brewed my first sour beer, that is a beer with an intentional bacterial infection. That beer was a Flanders Red style beer, and after just a couple months of aging, it smelled amazing. I’ve still yet to pull a sample out, but I’m pretty excited.

Flanders Red at six monthsI told myself initially that I just had to wait until New Year’s to keg it, then it became the end of January. Now, here it is, nearly April, and it’s still in the primary fermenter. Interestingly, in just the past month or two, it’s taken a significant turn visually. Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River has said that you shouldn’t look at a sour beer while it’s fermenting, but isn’t that curiosity part of what brought homebrewers to the hobby in the first place?

At any rate, the photo’s not awesome because there’s a lot of condensation on the inside of the carboy, but that white discoloration isn’t yeast krausen, that’s pellicle of some sort.

I’ve now told myself that as soon as the Old Ale keg is empty, I can keg this. We might yet see summer before it’s kegged. I’ll post an update about the tasting of this batch whenever that happens.

Table Saison

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OK, so, I’ve learned some lessons now after doing two saisons. First, Saison yeasts are highly attenuative. If you build a recipe like you would for an American yeast, or even worse, an English yeast, and then use a Saison yeast, you’re in for a shocker when it comes to ABV. Second, due to the really high level of attenuation, you need to watch your bitterness ratio. Bittering like an IPA is unnecessary, there’s no need for it. Keep the hops in the back end, and go easy on the bitterness.

Now that I’ve solidly learned (read: violated) those guidelines, my intention was to formulate a Saison as a table beer. Something between 3-4% alcohol, easy to drink, but lots of flavor from the Saison yeast and from the hops. The Saison strain that I’ve been using comes from East Coast Yeast, and has a brettanomyces strain as well. This is now the 4th generation, so it’s hard to say what the culture balance is, but it still tasted great on the last batch.

I also wanted to go for more of a rustic grain character on this batch, so I used unmalted wheat and munich malt, in addition to 2-row barley, malted wheat, and a small addition of C20.

For the hop bill, I opted to try a hop-bursting technique, which consisted of only a 20 minute, 5 minute and flameout addition. Despite the low utilization rate on these hops, they were all high-alpha hops (Nugget and Columbus), so I was able to achieve a respectably high bittering ratio with no more than an ounce at each addition.

My plans were all well and good, but I achieved an unexpected level of efficiency on this batch (87%), for which I was able to cut out a planned sugar addition, but I still overshot my gravity by 10 points. So, if it attenuates as planned, I’ll be looking at about a 5% saison. Not too bad, but I’m going to have to take my very high level of efficiency into account when formulating the next batch. My efficiency seems to increase with lower grain bill volumes.

Style: 16C-Belgian And French Ale-Saison

Recipe Overview

Wort Volume Before Boil: 7.75 US gals
Wort Volume After Boil: 6.00 US gals
Volume Transferred: 5.50 US gals
Water Added: 0.00 US gals
Volume At Pitching: 5.50 US gals
Final Batch Volume: 5.02 US gals
Expected Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.027 SG
Expected OG: 1.035 SG
Expected FG: 1.008 SG
Expected ABV: 3.6 %
Expected ABW: 2.9 %
Expected IBU (using Daniels): 32.7
Expected Color: 4.7 SRM
Apparent Attenuation: 77.9 %
Mash Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Duration: 90.0 mins
Fermentation Temperature: 77 degF

Fermentables
UK Pale Ale Malt 4lb 0oz (51.7 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Soft White Winter Wheat 1lb 4oz (15.9 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Wheat Malt 1lb 0oz (12.9 %) In Mash/Steeped
German Munich Malt 1lb 0oz (12.9 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Caramel 20L Malt 8.00 oz (6.5 %) In Mash/Steeped

Hops
US Nugget (13.0 % alpha) 0.75 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 20 Min From End
US Nugget (13.0 % alpha) 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 5 Min From End
US Columbus(Tomahawk) (15.5 % alpha) 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used At turn off

Other Ingredients

Yeast: ECY03 Farmhouse Brett

Mash Type: Full Mash
Step: Rest at 148 degF for 90 mins