A simple light summer ale...

[bellebouche]

Was overcome with the need to brew at about 4pm this afternoon so I scurried around, pulled together a recipe and knocked up a shimmering golden ale.

"Scintillant d'or" was christened at about 7:30 this evening when I was sparging down and got a lovely light golden colour. Full recipe and pics to follow. Big feature in the brew was Cascades and they had an overwhelming papaya/guava nose going into the boil kettle - time will tell.

I shall think back on the wisdom of starting to brew in the late afternoon if the mood ever takes me again. Had to knock up the evening meal in the middle of it all and didn't finish clear up until 11pm.

[bellebouche]

Recipe, Method and Madness...


Grain Bill
3180g French pils from Soufflet
340g Belgian Biscuit from Malterie du Chateau EBC 50
120g Belgian Ambre from Malterie du Chateau EBC 50
250g medium crystal (Home made, uncertain of EBC - guessing 40 EBC?)
350g vienna (Home made, guess EBC of about 6-8?)
380g unmalted barley. (more on the why later!)

Here's that lot milled...



Hop Schedule and Method

8g Northern brewer @ 55 mins
8g Northern brewer @ 35 mins
10g Cascade @ 20 minutes
10g Cascade @ 5 minutes

Hops and my yeast starter getting bubbles.



Was aiming for a strike temp of 64.4, hit 62.9 with a mash volume of 10.5 litres. It was just under so in went another two litres of hot water to get my target. Wrapped it up and left it for an hour. This was a deliberately low mash temp and I was aiming for maximum fermentability and as crisp/clean a flavour profile as possible.

I'd added in the raw barley to bring back a little lighter colour as I was shooting for a golden brown beer. A lot of grain in this bill with no innate conversion capability so I did an iodine test @60 minutes... purple haze. Bah, needed more time.

Left it another 20 minutes and it had all fully converted.

Recirculated the first two litres then started to collect the beginnings of the clear runnings.

Here's a snap of the runnings as I was taking them. Left to right...



after 5 mins 1080 (not as clear as I thought!)
20 mins 1078 (slightly turbid)
35 mins 1052 (lovely and settled)
45 mins 1035 (looks like lager now!)

I took 8 litres in 45 mins as my net average sparge rate using my rugged hybrid fly-sparge technique. Looking at the samples the fourth one was taken after I'd been a bit too vigorous with the sparge and it'd gone a touch cloudy. I continued to fly sparge until I was hitting 1010 on the runnings.

23.5 litres in to the boil. Huge hot break flourish when it came up to the boil and I had it rolling very hard in a 50 litre pot... and it was almost leaping out of top. I'm using a 10kW propane burner and it's a bit too much when it's on full chat. Losses to trub, the boil and the hop additions where brutal so my finished wort was coming out at a mind bending 1050. Damn. Diluted back to 20 litres and about 1044 when I pitched a 700ml starter of Nottingham that had been running on an airstone.

Managed to do home made fish'n'chips and wash it all down with a glass (or two) of my 'Chat Noir' mild, the topic of a previous brewday.



Good brewday (which ran on well into the late evening) and I'll of course report back on progress of the fermentation, bottling and tasting. it's fairly light no mad bittering or outrageous hopping, plenty of readily fermented food for the yeast so I'm guessing 5 days in primary, racked off to secondary for a week to settle, and then two weeks bottle conditioning before it's ready in early July.

[bellebouche]

Fermentation was very slow to kick off, had a 24hr lag before it got underway and whilst it did ramp up and has been active I'd not seen anything like as much activity as I'd expected. Had reasonable size head of yeast which formed a small Krausen that fell overnight. This signalled a dramatic slowdown in CO2 production which more or less ceased this afternoon.

I'd struggled with the Nottingham starter and am wondering about the merits of the particular batch I'd tried. No real signs of any significant flocculation and a somewhat murky looking must right now.

Currently reading 1015 so there's quite some way to move on this yet.

I've roused it which has kicked things off again, increased my already turbid looking beer into positively pasty looking territory. I'll rack off to secondary after the weekend or when it gets to 1010 and I may have to resort to some kind of fining - not my normal Modus Operandi!

Smells awesome though.

[bellebouche]

What a difference 46hrs can make!

After rousing (such as it was) the fermentation kicked itself off again and was going steadily. I've just checked in on it and the beer has dropped to 1010, the yeast is starting to fall and it has some clarity about it.

Has a gingery/parkin like nose and some herbaceous/peppery flavours - all utterly unexpected. Dry, little residual sugar detectable. I've found that tasting beers at this stage pays little dividend in the long term but it's certainly interesting to see what direction they're heading in.

Another 24 hrs and I'll rack to secondary for a few days where I might try a continental/belgian trick and move it somewhere a little warmer. All the alcohol production is done now so not much danger of any fusels - this is all about bringing on some subtlety of flavour.

[WishboneBrewery]

24 hour lag isn't bad really, some Older Whitelabs yeast I've used took about 3 Days!!

Interesting shot with the spargings, what are the tubes you collected in?

[bellebouche]

The lag was a little surprise as I was aiming for (if anything!) an overpitch. I'd had that culture on the run for a few days at that point and had stepped it up a couple of times before rinsing down the spent wort and oxygenating. I dosed a lot of yeast in this - could explain some of the flavour characteristics I'm seeing at this early stage. Happily it's worked out well so far!

As to those little glasses... well, they're perfect little footed test tubes!

In reality they belong to a little set of half a dozen glasses and it's own little ice bucket. I either use them for frozen vodka when doing blinis for appetizers or with desert filled with frozen Limoncello. The Limoncello is homemade and is a superb when tasted at -18 because as the booze and the lemon warms up on it's way down you get an amazing double-hit from it.

and

[simple one]

Looks very interesting. What yeast did you use?

[leedsbrew]

Awesome looking brew there. Out of interest (I love limoncello) what is your recipe for limoncello?

[bellebouche]

Looks very interesting. What yeast did you use?

Danstar Nottingham.

It was a troublesome starter that I'd stepped up a few times before pitching - it was an old packet that I'd had kicking around for ages and it'd been improperly stored. Despite my reservations it did a reasonable job and there was a healthy cake left after I'd racked it off.

[bellebouche]

Awesome looking brew there. Out of interest (I love limoncello) what is your recipe for limoncello?

Very finely peel the rind (not pith) of 9/10 large thick skinned lemons. Put the rind peelings into a 1 litre Kilner type jar. Add a 750ml bottle of vodka. Shake every few days for a month and then leave in the dark for 3/4 months. The stronger the vodka ABV, the less time it takes. The rind bleaches itself almost white when the alcohol is done leaching all the oils out. Then, filter off the yellow liquor and let down 1:1 or 3:2 with a 50% sugar solution. So, for a 750ml bottle I'll add 500ml of the lemony liquor and a syrup made from 1litre of water and 1Kg of refined white sugar. It needs to be fairly thick I think but does get a little more viscous in the freezer. The sweet smooths out the alcohol edge and the lemony 'pow' effect cuts through the lot. A great drink for social occasions.

I've a batch that's come off the rind a few weeks ago - I'll take a snap so you can see the colour.... I think I may even have kept the jar of rinds as I was considering candied fruit with them for the xmas cake... but they have very little lemon left in them of course.

[bellebouche]

... I'll rack to secondary for a few days where I might try a continental/belgian trick and move it somewhere a little warmer. All the alcohol production is done now so not much danger of any fusels - this is all about bringing on some subtlety of flavour.

Took it off a reasonable cake after all a couple of days ago when the Nottingham finally started to behave itself and it fell out en-masse and left me at 1010. I've put it in a warmer secondary where it's sat in the Ferment-o-rator now ticking away at 23.9°c. I'm hoping to drop the gravity a few more points, dry the beer out some more and perhaps give a few phenolic notes. Remember that the mash was low'n'slow so I'm predicting a crisp ale with some subtle flavouring from the biscuit/amber and the cascades aroma hop.

I very nearly dry-hopped it but decided against that... I'd kept the hopping low in the original recipe for a reason... decided to stick to my guns!

[yogester]

Looks very interesting. What yeast did you use?

Danstar Nottingham.

It was a troublesome starter that I'd stepped up a few times before pitching - it was an old packet that I'd had kicking around for ages and it'd been improperly stored. Despite my reservations it did a reasonable job and there was a healthy cake left after I'd racked it off.

FYI, for the future, stepping up dry yeast actually decreases their viability (unless you build a GIANT starter). Other than rehydrating them and checking to see whether it foams up you can't build a starter big enough to replace all the sterols and nutrients they already have in their dried form. You would be better off just pitching the rehydrated yeast.

With all the time and effort one goes to in brewing I always make sure I have enough in date yeast in the fridge. A quid and a bit for a pack and if it goes beyond used by then you have the best yeast nutrient money can buy (thrown in the last 10 mins of your boil a few minutes after the protofloc) - so much better than the Diammonium Phosphate or "yeast crack" that BruPaks or Youngs sell as "yeast nutrient". I even picked up a bunch of packs of BB's out of date Munich recently at 60p/11g pack for that reason!

[bellebouche]

From the same improperly stored old jar of schwag I'd discovered at the back of the cupboard I've an old Safale 04 which was marked as expiring in April 2010. So viability will be well down. I've got a fridge full of good stuff ready to rock but scientific curiosity brings me to experiment!

The youngs yeast nutrient is Diammonium Phosphate and Ammonium Sulphate... I'll try a starter of 500ml 1020 wort, 0.4g of that 'yeast crack' (I like that!) and see if with some aeration I can bring it back to life. If all else fails I'll turn that into yeast food and pitch a fresh pack of dry.

[bellebouche]

Testament to the resilience of the yeast, the power of the ferment-o-rator and the low'n'slow mash...



In just a few days in secondary the beer has dropped another three points and is showing (as best I can tell) 1007ish. It's heading into bone-dry territory and is clearing well. The FV had a head of pressure behind the airlock and signs on top of the wort of a reasonable distribution of fermentation. It's picking up some brightness. I'll give it another test after a further 48 hrs and as soon as I get some consecutively stable gravity readings I'll crash chill and then bottle.

[leedsbrew]

Awesome looking brew there. Out of interest (I love limoncello) what is your recipe for limoncello?

Very finely peel the rind (not pith) of 9/10 large thick skinned lemons. Put the rind peelings into a 1 litre Kilner type jar. Add a 750ml bottle of vodka. Shake every few days for a month and then leave in the dark for 3/4 months. The stronger the vodka ABV, the less time it takes. The rind bleaches itself almost white when the alcohol is done leaching all the oils out. Then, filter off the yellow liquor and let down 1:1 or 3:2 with a 50% sugar solution. So, for a 750ml bottle I'll add 500ml of the lemony liquor and a syrup made from 1litre of water and 1Kg of refined white sugar. It needs to be fairly thick I think but does get a little more viscous in the freezer. The sweet smooths out the alcohol edge and the lemony 'pow' effect cuts through the lot. A great drink for social occasions.

I've a batch that's come off the rind a few weeks ago - I'll take a snap so you can see the colour.... I think I may even have kept the jar of rinds as I was considering candied fruit with them for the xmas cake... but they have very little lemon left in them of course.

Cheers matey. Gonna have to try my hand at that!