The Overseas Dictator

Todays brew day was brought to you by the evil mind of Steve Lamond at Beers I've Known.....

In a recent Session, Steve blogged about his perfect beer. He described a Saison, but, with a sick twist of dark malt and New Zealand hops! Bloody weirdo.

I thought this was interesting. Partly because the beer he described was so far from what I thought a saison to be, and partly because, as I brew more, the more I appreciate the skill of people who do this kind of thing of thing for real; regardless of what you THINK you want the beer to be like, it never really seems to happen that way - whereas the really good brewers appear to get it right more often than not. May be that is harsh on us real amateurs....perhaps what we drink from others is the result of lots of practice, mistakes, and small test brews. I admit that, even with my crap set up and bucket chemistry approach I've not made a really crap beer....oh, hang on, I take that back....but anyway, malt, water, hops and yeast tend to have made something palatable.


I suppose it's a bit like cooking....you only really get to taste the dish from the chef when they've tweaked and tailored it. But my beer has always struck me to be something like my photography....in my head the picture has always looked better than the actual image. In my head, I'm Ansel Adams, but the pictures look more like they were taken by Tony Adams. In my beer, I'm more Yosser Hughes than Sarah Hughes...

So here was an interesting test. Steve knew what he wanted, and I knew I could brew it, but would it really be any good? Steve suggested the name, Overseas Dictator, and I thought the following would be both a record of a collaborative brew (he got the brains, I got the boiler...), and also a description of the process should people be interesting in taking up home brewing.

So, here we go. My technique is known as BIAB or brew in a bag. Here you forego the conventions of grist to liquor ratios and mash in the boiler. This is ok for the small volumes I make (9 litres), but a bigger brew would require some thinking about and dunk sparging. I have dealt with water chemistry tweaks here, so adding brewing salts, I get the water heating up to about 70C.

Once we hit about 70C, I dough in, or add the malt. Mashing usually occurs at temperatures between 64-67C, so that little bit of extra heat accounts of heat loss upon adding the grain. I add the grain into a simple mashing bag.

Here are the malts for this brew, and this is where my first problems lie. A bit of research would suggests pale malt base is usual. Check....there is Maris Otter and Pilsner here, but I saw Vienna, Golden Promise, and a range of other pale malts added to the water. I suppose that all makes sense; Saison was typically a farmhouse brew, and they were not going to get sniffy about the exact malt, although they were largely malted not roasted...far too busy to do this I assume!

However, Steve wanted Carafa and Chocolate Wheat in there. These give colour, but also a nice roasted/chocolate hit. However, since Steve's idea was a bit unconventional, it was difficult to get hold of how much of these malts needed to go in. In the end they came out at about 5% of the malt bill, and this, on reflection was wrong. There is a handful of acid malt in here too, just to get that pH adjusted properly.

And here are the grains, in all their glory, mashing for 90 minutes. The thermal properties of my boiler (and water) are such that I just check on the temperature every 15 minutes and give the water a warm to get back to temperature. It's a bit of a faff, and I could use insulation, but then If I do that I might as well go straight up to full, traditional all- grain brewing.

Once the mash is over, and after a 10 minute mash out, where the temperature is raised just to extract that last bit of goodness, I drain the bag, and start to bring the wort up to a boil, taking a gravity and temperature reading (to correct the calibrated hydrometer)

On boiling, the first hops go in. Again, I was guessing...I used this advice to work out what my bitterness should be, and then just played around with timings and amounts of hops until I got the right IBU figure. Secondly, these hops were new to me. I knew Nelson Sauvin hops, liking them, but I went with Steve's suggestion of the fantastic lemon- lime hit of Motueka for bittering, followed by another addition late on for aroma (along with some Irish Moss to fine, and some yeast nutrient), and a last minute addition of the orange/ floral Pacifica for aroma. These two really did smell different from the bag, so I am hoping I can pick their individual characters out in the final product.

The observant might now be looking at the photo of the hydrometer jar saying "That looks dark for a Saison!", and I would agree. I think I over did the roasted grains, Steve! Anyway, I now tend to cube and leave overnight. So that all done, and I then perform the MOST IMPORTANT bit of a brew day (apart from sanitising stuff), which is clearing up....this is key if you want to be allowed to do it again ;-)

The following day, I took the cooled wart, decanted it into a sterilised fermenter and added the yeast. Regardless of the colour, the hops, the strength etc., it is the yeast that gives these beers their real flavour. I splashed out on a vial White Labs Saison yeast. I got Type I, described as giving earthy, peppery notes, and apparently coming via the legendary Dupont brewery, which makes a notable Saison. The other great thing about these yeast vials is that for my volumes, I pitch straight in. On opening the vial, I have to say that the yeast smelt fantastic. OK, so there is that yeasty hit you always get, but there was something sweet and really pleasant behind it. Certainly has encouraged me to think about brewing a light version now!!

So there you have it....I hope you're satisfied Steve! You made me make a dark, chocolate Saison....I'm not sure I know of one of those. We shall have to wait and see....the unfermented wort is, erm, interesting. It may be that in a week or so you go the way of all dictators, crashing to Earth in tragic delusions of (beer) grandeur....or your tactical beer like genius may take over the World.....

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Late reports

It's been age since I last blogged. There a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, and foremostly, not a great deal has been going on....secondly, and sadly, the dear old moggy, after whom this page is named died in late June. We both miss him dreadfully, and I have been staying away from this site for a bit.

 

My last entry was all about a poorly fermenting porter. Well, it never shifted, after getting down to 3.2%. A bit of a shout out to the really helpful BIAB community convinced me that I had really of exaggerated the speciality roasted grains. No software makes allowance for the fact that such high percentages of roasted stuff (about 40% here....I was told 15% is about right for an Imperial Russian Stout!!) just do not ferment out like a wort stuffed full of pale malts. It sounds as if it is all to do with roasting locking in sugars during the roasting process, making them unfermentable.

Well it's been sitting around in the barrel. Cannot drink lots of it; the strength is fine, the roast is just quite full on...even though summer here has been crap, I still need something a bit more autumnal to get me drinking darker beers. However, the are times when this beer reminds me of old-fashioned Venos cough medicine; a kind of alcoholic black treacle!

 

As you can see, it's got good deep colour, a nice thick porterish head, so looks the part. Certainly headed in the right direction, and I have definitely started to get the battering issues sorted by looking more closely at my water chemistry.

As the season starts to turn then, I'm looking at a new brew, and also looking to adapt my process, but more of that later.

 

And Sockster...thanks, it was a real privilege. I'll keep brewing with your name, and raising a glass to you, old pal. Cheers!

 

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All a ferment!!

This week I have been struggling with stuff yeasty.....or have I? And that's kind of the problem.

A week or so ago I brewed a porter, not a style I had tried by BIAB. All the techniques came out; mash water treatment, based on Wheeler's Calculator, and a preboil of 30 mins with some gypsum to remove most of the carbonate. After cubing for a day, I pitched a vial of White Labs English Ale yeast, and left it to do its stuff.

I also decided to mash at a slightly higher temperature to produce a slightly sweeter, full bodied beer, as I like my dark beers this way! And I think that is where the problems started.

Mashing high tends to also produce non-ferment able sugars, hence the residual sweetness. So, even though I missed my OG by four points, I was confident I was going to get the kind of beer I wanted. Starting slowly at 1.055, the yeast never really started going, and after 5 days the bee looked spent. Taking a gravity reading, I was at 1.030, an attenuation of 45%, not the 63% I was quoted, and a full 10 points out. This site told me that I could correct my attenuation for a high mash....but I was still 6 points shy of target.

And so I hit the dilemma....stuck fermentation, or was I done? Even trickier was the fact that, although now 3.2% rather than the 5% I was aiming for, it tasted great (mocha, anyone?). Further fermentation might just dry it out a bit. Moreover, if it was stuck, a kick of priming sugar may cause the odd nasty explosion.....really not good.

I have tried rousing it, and leaving it in a warmer spot, and three days later nothing. Eventually, those nice people in t'Internetland suggested I try a Fast Ferment Test....this is a great idea! Perhaps I should do this all the time? 200ml of brew, over pitched and kept warm....if the gravity drops again I know the yeast has conked out and I repitch, if it stays the same I can keg with impunity! I started the FFT yesterday, so let's see how it goes.

Update on 16/6: FFT has been sitting in the airing cupboard for two and a half days. Justtaken a gravity reading....1.030. Looks like I'm good to barrel it!

It's all about water - Part Two

As if worrying about what's in it is not enough, the last 24 hours have seen me think about water in general.

Water is one of the major facets of beer's environmental footprint, probably second (maybe even first) to the transportation footprint of the ingredients and the product. Certainly for home brewers it is pretty significant. Ordinarily, this should not be an issue, but, yesterday, the South was placed under a hose-pipe ban. Now using water for 'food' does not come under the ban, but the message to conserve the little was seem to have down here is clear.

Water is used all over the place in brewing. Not only do you start with almost double what you end up drinking, but you are constantly rinsing and cleaning and rinsing again. Moreover, to ensure that the wort does not get infected by bacteria and yeasts from the outside world, you try and cool your wort as quickly as possible. I have done this previously using an immersion chiller - apiece of copper tubing that runs of the tap and discharges down the sink. This typically takes 30 minutes, and I hate to think how much water I use. The immersion chiller can be seen here on the left:

So, this brew, I have used an idea from Australian brewers, whose water shortages are far more severe than ours! They use a method called cold cubing or no-chill cubing. Simply, this a HDPE food grade jerry can (not the ones Francis Maude suggests you fill with petrol!!!), which you fill with wort and then fully seal. I tried to get mine to be brim full, and you 'burp' the container to try and remove as much air as possible. The wort then cools naturally without contact with air and nasties:

I should be able to pitch yeast tomorrow, although some brewers keep their wort like this for months with, allegedly, no deterioration in quality. I leave them to that kind of thing, but, for now, I'm glad I'm saving a bit of water!

It's all about water - Mash pH

Well, it seems ages since I last wrote.............hang on a minute, it IS ages since I last wrote, 12 weeks or so, in fact!

Well, this post is all about trying to create a light, summery beer. I ended up with this, looking for some light bitterness from Hallertau and a bit of floral stuff from Amarillo.

However, I had noticed that yet again my beer was showing the same character that I wanted to get rid of, that other local brewers were not getting e.g. the beers being brewed over at Totton's Vibrant Forest brewery. What I was getting was astringency when ever I used darker grains, and an over bitter taste. I have my concerns at the various bits of programming that predict your IBUs - they never give the same answers. However, I found out this was probably due to using different volumes of 'batch size' in the Tinseth Equation for predicting bitterness. Even so, what I was getting was not what I thought I should be getting, and I needed to get rid of this 'tang' for this beer.

A little scouting around the internet led me to discover this might have something to do with mash pH. Probably best explained here, mash pH is about how the acidity/alkalinity of your water changes in response to the phosphate being dissolved out of malt upon mashing. Apparently, the ideal mash condition is acidic at pH 5.4 or so. One of the things this can lead to is astringency from darker grains when the pH is too high. Secondly, I found out that in the South, dark beers brew better than light because of the hardness and alkalinity of the water. Clearly, then, I had to investigate the chemistry of brewing water a bit more.

I use bottled Sainsbury's Caledonian Spring water, so thought I would get away with the South of England high pH, hard water chemistry. However, by reading the labels, plugging in the typical composition into a free water chemistry calculator, and adding the last recipe's malt bill, I discovered I mashed at pH 6.4, was deficient in Ca and Mg, and had a sulphate:chloride ratio that suggested 'bitterness may be enhanced'. Bang on!And measuring the pH of the water I've been using, it was well above the 6.8 of my pH strips,

So using the spreadsheet above, I did two things. Firstly, I added salts like gypsum, calcium chloride and Epsom's salts to rebalance the cations and anions in solution, and to establish a better mash pH, I added a small amount of acid malt to lower the pH even more than usual. I could have taken the old fashioned route, and added an acid rest in the mash (this is a low temperature mash, where the pH is significantly lowered by liberating phytic acid, and this was the old way- possibly before any chemist understood what was going on!- that was used by German brewers using the incredibly soft waters of Pilsen).

So, what have I found? Well, nothing yet....as I haven't tasted it. I did notice there was not as much crud on the boiler element, as there usually is, although that may not be chemistry, that might just reflect the malt bill. What I DO think is a result of messing about with the water chemistry (apart from getting a pH of 5.2 according to the pH test I ran), was that I have got a few more percent efficiency out of the mash and boil. There is some evidence to suggest that this is also influenced by mash pH, and the result may be that my calculated grain bill was too high (based on previous efficiencies) and I now may have a beer nearer 6% than 5%! If I have also nipped that bitterness thing in the bud, that sounds like a win-win to me!

A Brown Day

A new year, a new brew. Have been thinking of something brown and malty since I finished brewing the Belgian beer....well to be honest, I had misordered malt, and had a big bag of Belgian Aromatic left! Since this is supposed to be used sparingly (authors suggest something in the region of 10% of the total grain bill) I need a few ideas. So, I brew lots of malty beer, a huge batch...which my kit does not allow...or experiment with a beer with a massive hit of AM (unwise, I'm led to believe)

Anyway, you can find the recipe here. I've used Northdown, again for pragmatic reasons. Firstly, they seem to go with darker beers, but, more importantly, I had a load of them left which were best before December 2011...well, what's a month? They came in at 7% AA, but I wonder whether they might be a little old now...oh well, at least I'm not desperate for a hoppy beer!

After my usual mash routine (dough in at 55C, let the temperature rise to 67C, leave for 80 mins, mash out for 10 mins at 70C), the wort has a lovely dark mahogany colour. As I write, I have almost finished the first stage of the boil, and it's almost time for a second addition of Northdown. A small addition at flame out and cooling, should, at least, give me some balance. however, I am looking forward to the the malt speaking for itself in this one.

I also invested in a clean element...actually I bought two ( one to wash, one to wear!). Boiling away beautifully! So the moral is, keep that element clean, and I have bought a load of descaler to prepare for the next brew!

Christmas Crawl - Field Report

With one of the party hors de combat, due to a broken ankle and other complications, it was left to Dr B and myself to seek out pubs and pints this Festivetide. All pubs and pints have been more fully reviewed through RateBeer . The map can be found here

Starting at the Bree Louise, we settled down to a couple of fine pints, and some hearty fare. This is a grand pub; unpretentious, relatively cheap, and in a good central location. A discount with your CAMRA card, too, which is a real bonus. With such a choice on offer we sampled Kent Brewery's Black Gold, Downton's Qhadhop, Saltaire's Elderflower Blonde and Nethergate Old Growler. All were good, well kept, with the Saltaire disappointing most, which surprised me. On reflection, we should/could have stayed here, but the Christmas Crawl is all about discovering, so we pressed on.

The Lord John Russell was but ten minutes away, and a half decent boozer. It didn't have the beery charm of the Bree, but it did its job well. A one room pub opening on to the main street, it sold a variety of beers....we could have even had a Brains Bitter if we were brave. But my recommendation had been for Dark Budvar, a nice roasty but refreshing pint....but rather pricey...damn that import duty! The place seemed friendly enough, and would definitely go back.

A slightly longer walk saw us in the Lamb in a part of the city I had not really walked through before. A dark, warm pub this, with oak and green leatherette the design motif. Quiet, but a good pint of Youngs Winter Warmer was most welcome. The theatre memorabilia made for an interesting conversation piece, and we supped our pints steeling ourselves for the walk into mainstream London.

We eventually found ourselves on High Holborn, but avoided the detour toward the Cittie of Yorke and pubs down at Chancery. Instead, we turned right and found the Princess Louise. I must have walked past this pub in the past, but will not do so again. What a great characterful place this is. Lots of Victorian glass and tile work, interior decor, and a well priced pint of Sam Smiths, which helped Dr B balance his budget (he being the poor sod that had to buy the Budvar earlier!). As you might have expected, this was busy, and, as the day (be it shopping or working) was drawing to the end, folk were hitting the pubs.

Then the most disappointing part of the trip.....a left and dogleg saw us walking down Shaftesbury Avenue to Seven Dials and a little beyond to The Harp. CAMRA pub of the year this year, I was looking forward to visiting. What greeted me was a pub virtually devoid of seats, processing custom at rapid, but efficient, pace. The standing drinker was treated to good beer, my Dark Star Over The Moon was lovely, the keeping bring out the good balance of mild malt and fruity hop. However, my natural inclination against standing in pubs was further exacerbated by Dr B getting involved in 'words' with several members of the clientele who thought obstructing a perfectly pleasant request to allow passage was a bit of fun. My understanding is that The Harp is always this rammed, so I doubt I'll be back.

Frustrated we turned left and a longish walk down The Strand, Aldwych, and onto Fleet Street found us at a favourite hideaway pub, the Crown and Sugar Loaf. This pub seems so unknown that it was shutting as we arrived, at 7pm!!. This forced Us into the second option of the very busy, very touristy Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. This pub is worth visiting if you've never been, just for the history. The Sam Smiths OBB is still cheap and tasty, but the place gets very full.

We were now within striking range of an evening closer in Ye Olde Mitre, another hidden away place, just off Hatton Gardens. This place feels like you are entering a secret world down alleyways of Victorian London. Always pleasantly full, yet rarely squashed for a place to sit, the pub seems to have gone all Fullers on us, although that may be my memory. An OK pint of seafarers, as the guest was off (this place IS tiny, it can probably only accommodate one guest!). The evening drew to a close, with the nasty taste of The Harp in our mouths - albeit not a beer related taste!

Taking the long walk back North to St Pancras to see Dr B off, and then back to Euston to get the tube to Waterloo, I felt my 8 hour, 8 pint, 7 (and a half) pub, 6 mile crawl had been a good one. Certainly a few more venues to add to me map of decent pubs I've tried in town.

The only downside? Well I slept through my stop at Southampton Central, and ended up in Brockenhurst!! Fortunately, I had but 10 mins to wait for the last train back East!