AG#23 - Red Shift (Galaxy single hop)

[Lugsy]

Day off work today, SWMBO's in France so it's brewday! I've got a half kilo of Galaxy hops burning a hole in my freezer so it's time to check them out. I was going to do a pale but I've already got two pales in the cellar so I thought I'd do something a bit more colourful:

Grains:
Maris Otter 3500g
Wheat Malt 500g
Carared 500g
Munich 300g
Chocolate 50g

Mash at 65C with CRS to pale profile and a teaspoon of gypsum

90 minute boil

Hops:
Galaxy 13.8%AA 30g FWH
Galaxy 13.8%AA 25g 15 minutes
Galaxy 13.8%AA 25g 5 minutes
Galaxy 13.8%AA 25g 0 minutes (steep)
Galaxy 13.8%AA 40g (7 day dry hop)

Ferment at 18-20C with US-05

23 litres
OG 1.054
FG 1.012
Colour 35 EBC
Bitterness 50 EBU (Utilisation set to 30% in Beer Engine)

I'm hoping for a good red colour but after reports of Carared being a bit weak on the colouring I've decided to add a bit of chocolate to boost the colour. The mash will be extended to about 3 hours as I have to go out for a hospital appointment but otherwise a nice simple brew. The mash has just gone on so I'd better get my act together and go for my appointment, I'll update later.

[Lugsy]

Boil on now, colour looks good (I think - it's hard to tell with the cloudiness of a BIAB wort!) and there's a really nice malty taste to it so I think that's the Carared as I'm familiar with the rest of the grains. First runnings and first batch sparge have yielded 19.6 litres at 1.059 so the extended mash seems to have worked well on my efficiency, second batch sparge is under way which should give me another 8 or so litres, I should be pretty close to my volume with that.

The Galaxy hops smell great and they're really sticky, had to have a rub at a couple of cones and I can't get the oils off my fingers now - lovely!

So there are three pans on the hob now (two boiling wort and one heating the last of my sparge water), the kitchen is red hot and stinking of wort, there's condensation running down the windows and I've cluttered most of the kitchen up with brewing paraphernalia - thank god SWMBO's away

[Lugsy]

Second sparge is nearly finished boiling now, 9.7 litres at 1.017 (pre-boil). Another great result from the "random efficiency generator" (just under 90% today) gives me a beer that is either too strong or won't fit in the fermenter, in any case the bitterness will be too low for the FG. Bollocks. I really need to get this sorted or I don't stand a chance of getting any kind of reliabilty with my recipe formulation

Oh well, at least I've made beer!

[WishboneBrewery]

I see you are going the route of altering the hop utilisation setting too.
Did the rest of your day go well?

[Lugsy]

I see you are going the route of altering the hop utilisation setting too.
Did the rest of your day go well?

My utilisation is pretty crap, I boil all the hops in less than 19 litres of wort (then top up in the FV with later sparges) so there's no way I can be extracting what I should be getting. When I saw you lowering the utilisation in one of your brews I decided to give it a go, thanks for the idea! Obviously 30% is a wild stab in the dark but it's got to be more realistic than the default 39.75% and since I started formulating recipes with this lower setting and still aiming for the same BU:GU ratio as before I've been getting closer to the bitterness I'm after.

The rest of the day went fine, I ended up losing a fair bit of wort to the hops and collected 23 litres at 1.056 which was much closer to the predicted OG than I feared. I think this will be a bit browner than I wanted but it does have a nice red glow to it so not too far off really. Have you used Galaxy hops? I'm really looking forward to this one, most of it's going in a barrel and I'm hoping it'll be drinkable by Christmas but I'll be putting a couple of bottles away for a couple of months if I can manage to keep off them!

[WishboneBrewery]

Not at home yet but we've just done a Galaxy IPA at work... though I've only had a brief taste of it out of the Conditioning Tank. Could do with finding it on cask somewhere in a couple of weeks time to really tell what its like.

[Lugsy]

What's it called? I'll talk nicely to the landlady at my local and see if she'll get a barrel in for me to try.

[WishboneBrewery]

Galaxy IPA
Hope you manage to get it

[Lugsy]

Just done my first gravity check on this, it's down to 1.010 so pretty much finished. I'll be dry hopping tomorrow and leaving it out in the cold for a week before bottling and barrelling. Colour is hard to determine with all the suspended yeast but it could be quite red, tastes great, really fruity. These are good hops

[Lugsy]

Well, I never thought I'd say this but I might have over-hopped this one

Just had a sample before barrelling this and to be honest it's way over the top, extremely fruity with a powerful white wine taste to it, not in a nasty cidery acetobacter way but more of a young Nelson Sauvin times 2 or 3. I think it's going to go in bottles instead so it's on hold now until Saturday when I can get enough bottles sanitised at leisure instead of staying up tonight until stupid-o-clock-for-a-school-night. Except thinking about it I can't do that because the bottling bucket is currently fermenting AG#26 which was going to secondary in FV#1after I'd emptied this into barrel#3, and I'm reluctant to tie that up for long enough for this to become drinkable. Unless I get another barrel....

Bollocks

[WishboneBrewery]

Over-hopped

[Lugsy]

Over-hopped

Yeah, I know. I'm probably not thinking straight. Maybe I should have another beer...

[Lugsy]

Just barrelled this, it's probably been on the dry hops a little longer than ideal but it's calmed down a lot since a week ago, panic over!

Colour wise it's more amber than red but not too far from what I was after, I'll have to keep looking for the red grain for a while longer. The hops are really nice now, still a little too winey but that's going to drop off in the next couple of weeks from the looks of it, there are strong pineapple notes with other tropical fruits thrown in the mix. I could probably get away with a lot less Galaxy in the next one, maybe mix it with some NZ Cascade next time to cut into the fruitiness with a bit of citrus to balance it out a little.

I'll give it a week in the warm then a week in the shed and I'll see how it is around Christmas but it's looking promising at the moment for the new year

[leedsbrew]

have you tried dark crystal? I once picked up the dark instead of medium for a brew last year and it came out a cracking dark red colour. could be worth playing about with?


ient Amount % MCU When
UK Pale Ale Malt 3.982 kg 80.0 % 4.3 In Mash/Steeped
UK Dark Crystal 0.498 kg 10.0 % 14.0 In Mash/Steeped
UK Vienna Malt 0.249 kg 5.0 % 0.3 In Mash/Steeped
German Caramel Pils 0.249 kg 5.0 % 0.2 In Mash/Steeped

[Lugsy]

Yeah that looks pretty red LB! I think I'll be giving that a go soon, ta

I've got quite high hopes for the melanoidin I used in my American Red Rye, it's getting barrelled on Sunday so I'll update on that thread.