Joes Belgian Ale

[pantsmachine]

First brew of the new year is going to be Joes Belgian ale coz i'm Joe and the yeast is Belgian. 1 hour boil and the bill is as follows. Got to bottle my apple&pear cider first to clear the FV and then on we go. Wonder if i could pitch directly onto the remains of the pears and save the belgian yeast? I won't , just a thought.

2.00 kg Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 44.44 %
1.00 kg Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
1.00 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
0.50 kg Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 11.11 %
0.75 oz First Gold [7.50 %] (60 min) Hops 20.0 IBU
0.75 oz Pearle [8.00 %] (30 min) Hops 16.4 IBU
1 Pkgs Abbey Ale (White Labs #WLP530)

[pantsmachine]

Just finished bottling and kegging the apple/pear cider. Basically it was as simple as buying 16 ltrs of apple juice from Tesco and 2 kgs of pears. Decored the pears left the skins on, gave them a quick boil and fired them into the fv. Apple juice on top along with a jar of honey and a packet of Youngs cider yeast. SG of 1.050 and a FG this morning of 1.002! ABV of 6.25%(unexpected) and yes i can taste the pears in the sample. I was only messing around passing the time on this one while i waited for my IRS to finish, what a bonus! Off to finish tidying up and then cracking on with the Belgian.

One thing to note, if anyone fancies trying this one out. All the pear pulp which still contains sugars will float to the top of the FV. I found this as every couple of days i would give the FV a good swirl to get the pear sugars going. I did this 4 times and each time the next morning i would have a floating pear pulp layer on the top of the fv. I did it for a final 5th time, next morning the pear was all on the bottom layer and within 3 hours there were no bubbles at the airlock. Thought i'd mention it as a good visual indicator with no risk to contamination through drawing samples.

[pantsmachine]

Finally got my act together and made the beer, i set up the yeast on a sugar solution starter a couple of days ago so thought today was the day. Thing i learned today, don't throw out your hop strainer with the last set of spent hops and not realise till you are pouring todays wort into the kettle(frantic pipe making and drilling ensued! Recirculating the first runnings back through the grain does make for a clearer wort, i kind of paid lip service to this in the past and as most of my recent beers have been very dark i only gave it about 4 ltrs and then into the kettle. Today it took 8ltrs before the runnings were clear, the pics are below see if you can see the difference, i could! The three runnings shots are in sequential order(shit better go get another bottle of cider, TOOOO big a word)! As was the case with my IRS i am still not happy with the speed of reaction with the WL liquid yeasts, this one seems slow as hell or dead as well, none the less i'll give it a couple of days in the FV to see if it gets going. 2 days from now in the fv will be a total of 4 days since it was introduced to a sugar solution, fingers crossed. Anyway, as is my regular pattern i changed the recipe a bit so in the end i went for the following recipe

2.00 kg Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 44.44 %
1.00 kg Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
1.00 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
0.50 kg Crystal malt Grain 11.11 %
0.75 oz First Gold [7.50 %] (60 min) Hops 20.0 IBU
0.75 oz Pearle [8.00 %] (30 min) Hops 16.4 IBU
0.50 oz Pearle at flameout
1 Pkgs Abbey Ale (White Labs #WLP530)
90min mash
60min boil
30 min chill to settle
SG 1.048 07/01/09
FG 1.009 11/01/09

The other thing i did differently was to increase the settle time at the end of the boil, by that i mean i gave the wort a full 1/2 hour with the cooler running, brought the temp down to god knows but very cold and well below blood temp for sure. Not sure if it will make for a clearer beer faster or not but we'll see. Anyway enough of my old pish and on with the show.







Xmas present from SWMBO, the scales not the hops.

My lethargic yeast


Very strange to see a white head after all the dark beer i have brewed

SG 1.048


Due to my obsession with this site i am now thinking that my wee ghetto brewery has served me well in nailing(ish) my technique. I am now finding my head to be full of S/S conical fermenters and strange new shed plans. personally i blame all of you or at least that will be my excuse before Winter rolls around again and the visa bills roll in.......

[SiHoltye]

Yeah, I blame THEM too. Great pics, makes me want to brew I made a 6% Chimay yeast Belgian Pale Ale last year, and your post makes me think of going there again, yummy.

[pantsmachine]

That's what THEY are there for. I have got the FV sitting on a heat plate and its sitting nice at 19 degrees and good activity. I can smell the pearle hops and a sweet smell which i have not smelt before, i assume this is off the yeast, i like it! Being an out the closet airlock sniffer it amazes me at the changing odours through a fermentation process. Already planning the next beer to go on top of this slurry since its working well and i like the smell. I ordered a widget world system for my 2 king kegs today. Can't be bothered messing around with the wee 8g bulbs any more. One more step towards the realm of shiny!

Siholtye, how did the Chimay work out? I have a recipe for Duvel which i planned on trying since the yeast will have stretched its legs on a weakish brew. The recipe calls for pears in secondary, reckon thats got to be worth a go as i used pears and honey in my cider which i HAD to sample last night and its great, still a bit cloudy(well very TBH) but what a taste, nice and crisp and the pears were there alright.

[adm]

Nice looking brewday - and great pics!

Is that a 10G carboy you use there?

[pantsmachine]

Sadly no. Its about 6 gallon. My MIL used to be a lab assistant in the 60's and somehow it ended up in their house! You are about to become the glass FV master are you not? My MIL has now retired and does work in a charity shop. Apparently there is a glass FV type thing came in and its waiting for me. When i asked how big i was told 'oh about this big' with many varying hand movements, so its between a gallon and a mile! Let us know how you get on with those bad boys they look great.

Edit the top glass line on the FV is around 5 gallon, i guess 6G with yeast spewing out the top but i've not bothered going that far.

Double edit, that's a very small trub layer for me which i put down to the 1/2 hour on the chiller, my chiller normally gets down to transfer temps in around 10/14 minutes so the extra cooling seems to have helped it settle.

[adm]

You are about to become the glass FV master are you not?

6pm tomorrow.....

[SiHoltye]

...Siholtye, how did the Chimay work out?...

Chimaybe

After a tricky brew evening I'm pleased to have 30 or so nip bottles left under my stairs 9 months on. It was the blue bottle around 9.5% I aimed for.

[pantsmachine]

Looks like you had an eventful time on that brew. My experience of Belgian beers apart from standard off license mass prod commercial brews has been rather limited. Luckinly i paid off a vessel in Spain last month and found a bar with a Duvel sign outside. Myself and my mate went in for a couple of hours and basically drank our way aroung Belguim, huge selection of beers. Some really nice beers apart from Pirat at 12%, that was too far for me. Anyway we went for a real pint after that......

[pantsmachine]

Amazing the difference 18 hours makes, last FV shot showed a thin layer on top, this morning it was this. I take it all back about WL yeasts, this ones a cracker.

[pantsmachine]

The Belgian golden ale fermented down to 1.009 which gives me a nice 4.9% Belgian type ale. I was so impresseed with the smell and activity of this yeast i decided to make another batch of a lighter type ale and fire it straight onto the yeast cake. At the same time i decided to see just how much wort of a decent strength that my system could produce in the one go.Turns out i can produce just over 5 1/2 gallon of decent wort(SG of 1.048 this time). Anyway, the recipe is below, a change in colour and a change in hops but other than that pretty much the same deal.

2.00 kg Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 44.44 %
1.00 kg Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
1.00 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 22.22 %
0.50 kg Torrified wheat 11.11 %
1 oz northdown (60 min)
0.5 oz northdown (10 min)
0.5 oz northdown (5 min)
1 Pkgs Abbey Ale (White Labs #WLP530)

SG 1.048 11/01/09
FG 1.018 18/01/09

On with the photos.

Today i had an apprentice again, its been a while but he really enjoyed it.

Cutting straight to the empty FV, this was around 16.30hrs yesterday. Doesn';t look as if theres much of any value in there. I was very careful with sterilisation of tube, pipe my hands etc during the siphon into a KK of the last batch.

New batch of above recipe in for 17.00 hrs.

this is the first time i have put fresh wort onto a yeast cake so imagine my surprise when it started firing at the airlock within 15 minutes. Didn't think much else till i came in this morning(08.00) and it was overflowtastic! The picture does not do justice to the amount of yeast on the towel the FV is sitting on.

A mad dash to the garage with the FV, quick clean up and thought the lower temp in the garage would slow it down. It did... a bit, but this evening i took this artistic shot, note the strange yeast sculpture.


This yeast is ace and once this ones fermented out i plan to boil and cool a litre of cold water and then swill out the fv into a 2 ltr sterilised robinsons juice bottle and keep the whole lot in the fridge till next time, is this an accepted pratice?

[adm]

'kin 'ell....

I have discovered to my cost that when you pitch onto an existing yeast cake, you should fit a blow off hose rather than an airlock to the FV as the yeast tends to get a bit excited.

[scottish69]

Do you cover the glass fermenter up when fermenting?

Cant this spoil the beer due to the light?

Also how do you bottle from the fermenter? Syphon?

[pantsmachine]

Blow off hose for next time. Would a sterilised hose into a sealed sterilised bottle be a legit way of yeast harvesting then? There is a load has come over the top and it feels like a waste.

I do indeed cover the fv with a big beach towel and sit the fv on another folded beach towel with a warming plate between the towel and the fv. No1 reason is the light strike phenom, better to be safe than sorry, No2 is to retain heat if i have to use a warm up plate and No3 is to catch the escaping yeast before it hits SWMBO carpet and my testicles become earrings!

Last nights temps up here slowed the yeast right down so this morning i cleaned out the airlock and brought the fv back inside. I'll monitor today and see how it goes, hopefully the new wort excitement is over!

P.S yes i siphon with a flexible tube ran in through a 15mm copper pipe with holes drilled in the side of it and i set the tube at a specific hole depending on the trub level. Gives really good control of where you are drawing off from and you don't disturb the trub layer at all.