Brewday 14/01/07 Elderflower mini-mash

[Andy]

Got back from a lovely bike ride and decided to do a DaaB stylee mini-mash.

Elderflower Ale!

For 5 litres:-

1.00 kg Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 95.2 %
0.05 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 4.8 %

6.00 gm Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops 23.4 IBU
5.00 gm Challenger [7.50%] (60 min) Hops 17.2 IBU
2.00 gm Challenger [7.50%] (15 min) Hops 3.4 IBU
20.00 gm Elderflower (dried) (Boil 15.0 min) Misc


Boil underway

[prodigal2]

Andy
Though I have never done a AG brew YET. This sounds very tasty, keep us informed on the end result.

A warm june day and a glass of elderflower ale, Perfect

[Andy]

Great!

It's nice and easy isn't it

50 mins into the boil at the moment.

[Andy]

All done.

5L @ 1043

Didn't bother racking off the cooled wort from the break in the demijohn so there's a healthy amount of crud in there. Hopefully most of that should jet ejected through the blow-off tube

[Andy]

That's the plan! Didn't want to do a full brew length of the elderflower to find out I don't like it so the mini-mash is ideal.

[Andy]

The odd thing was that the hot break was very tame and never threatened to boil over. Compare this with my brew yesterday which required me to do battle with the hot break for about 30 mins

[danielski]

Is this really the place to be talking about 'nobdifference'?

Sorry, IGMC...

[Andy]

This one is now fermenting like a good un with lots of gunk coming through the blow-off pipe!


It's with the other brew in the bath

[Road Runner]

The Americans call Home Brew, "Bath Tub Brew".

I believe this term is due though to their Bathrooms being the coolest place in the house to ferment in, in hotter climates.

[louthepoo]

i'm looking at making one of these this weekend, how did it turn out? i'm making 20 litres so i presume i just times all the quamtities by 4?

[Andy]

Hi loo.

Hold on a bit before brewing! Early samples showed the elderflower flavour to be rather strong, too strong! I've got 6 or so bottles of the beer and I'm letting them mature a bit to see if the elderflower flavour decreases. If it does then great, if not then I'd better get used to the taste of elderflower.

I'll open a bottle soon, watch this space.

[louthepoo]

I bought the ingredients to make it between the last post and this one.

The elderflower is dried - 100g, the HB shop i bought it from Hamstead home brew said to use 15g per gallon. Does this sound right? i could use less in the boil then add some to the keg maybe? what do you think?

also bought Northern hops in pellets, never used pellets before, do i have to do anything to them or just chuck them in? Any tips or warnings about using pellets? I've only used proper (normal) hops before.

thanks,

LTP

[Andy]

Yeah, I used 20g / gallon and it was too much.

[louthepoo]

Cheers Andy, I'll use 10g a gallon then.

Would i need to do anything to the elderflower if i put it in the keg? would you recommend doing this or not?

so how did the beer taste? was it something like what you were after but with a strong elderflower taste or did it ruin the beer?

I'm after a badger type brew for subtlety of elderflower flavour.

[bitter_dave]

also bought Northern hops in pellets, never used pellets before, do i have to do anything to them or just chuck them in? Any tips or warnings about using pellets?

Hop pellets are more condensed than whole hops, which means they have a higher concentration of bitterness, so you need to reduce the amount you use. However there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how much less to use. The one occaision I used them I reduced the quantity by about 10%, which seemed to give about the right results, based on this advice from Mysterio:

Beersmith seems to think the IBUs are increased by a factor of 1.115 when using pellets. I've used Amarillo pellets in an IPA before and I thought this was fairly accurate.