42

[adm]

OK, so I've finally got my Citra Pale Ale on the go today, after last week's abortive attempt where my HLT, big and little scales all died ont he same day. That day was 10/10/10, or 42 in binary......so it was The Meaning of Life Day. In honour of that, I'm calling this beer 42.

The SSR controlling my HLT is still stuffed, so it was manual water temp control, and to keep to the theme, I'm going to go retro all day. No pump, no plate chiller, just a good old back to basics brewday.

Grain Bill
3Kg Lager Malt
1Kg Munich Malt
1Kg Wheat Malt
(No real reason for this grain bill other than I want to use up some excess wheat and lager malts, and I think the Munich will be nice and add a bit of body to the Lager malt.

I mashed in at 65C (to boost the body a tad, although it'll probably be unnoticeable) earlier this morning, then went off for a swim. It ended up being a two and a half hour mash. No early pics as my camera battery needed charging.

Sparge was fine, and it's boiling away now with the First Wort Hops in. They smell great. Very similar to Galaxy which is one of my favourite hops so far.

Anyway, the hop schedule is:

10g Citra FWH (Loose Pellets, 13.4% AA)
15g Citra 15 mins
15g Citra 10 mins
15g Citra 5 mins
15g Citra Flame Out

That should be about 38 IBU, so a good introduction to the Citra hops.

Right....time for a bit of lunch while it boils.

[adm]

Righty ho, that's all done and dusted.....and here's some pics.


1lb of Citra hops from Nikobrew in the US. On opening these smell very like Galaxy.


10g for the FWH. Doesn't look like much....


And they look positively lost in the boiler.


First runnings


Coming up to a good boil. I put this recipe together last week and scaled the water for a 90 minute boil, but this morning for some reason I decided to do a 60 minute boil, and forgot to change the water calculations.....

These hops smell lush in the boil. At first they smelled like Galaxy (which is very tropical smelling - passionfruit to my nose), but then the smell changed a bit and I couldn't work out what it was. By the time I got to the 5 minute addition, I realised that it was a very definite Lychee smell. I hope the finished beer has Lychee character as I love them!


Good old immersion chiller doing it's groove thang...


I ended up with 26L into the FV at 1045. Should have been 23L at 1047, but never mind....I'll just have more beer and that shouldn't be too irksome.


All aerated and ready to go into the fermenting chamber at 18C.

I plan to use the yeast cake from this one to make an IIPA in a couple of weeks time, which should be just ready for Christmas.

[WishboneBrewery]

I was kindly sent some Citra to try
I'll watch and see how you think they turn out, I just have to sort out a Mesh hopstopper first.

[Naich]

Looking good there. Do you prefer the pellets then? I made my hopstopper from mesh so I could use either, but I've always used whole hops so far.

[adm]

To tell the truth, I dislike pellets quite a lot - but I use them nonetheless. I just prefer the good old handfuls of fluffy whole hops and the feel they have when brewing. I like my kettle full of leaf matter, and when there's only pellet soup, something feels a bit wrong.

But I could only get Citra pellets.

The other thing I dislike about pellets is the trub. It's all kind of soupy and doesn't hold together or filter properly. I use a hopstopper with 2mm holes, so it works fine with pellets, but doesn't filter well. To get around this, I gave today's wort a good going over with the paint mixer and power drill to try and get a cone of trub in the middle, then left it to settle for 30 mins. But it didn't work (never has - I suspect my hopstopper prevents getting a good whirlpool going) and I ended up leaving a good 2L in the bottom of the kettle as I didn't want to suck too much of the pellet trub through.

[Naich]

Thanks for the info. I might stick with leaves for the moment I guess pellets keep better, so are a more attractive form for sellers of unusual hops. And they sound like interesting hops - quite a high AA, but good aroma and flavour too.

[Spud395]

I'll be following this tread as Lychee's are a big time favourite of mine.
Never used pellets either, if you let that trub into the FV surly it'll settle out, no?

[leedsbrew]

I would love to give citra a go. what was the postage on them adm?

[adm]

I'll be following this tread as Lychee's are a big time favourite of mine.
Never used pellets either, if you let that trub into the FV surly it'll settle out, no?

Yeah, it will.....and when I use my plate chiller I get most of the trub in the FV anyway. It seems to make no difference.

But, with the IC, I might as well make an effort to keep most of it out

[adm]

I would love to give citra a go. what was the postage on them adm?

LB,

Not too much - although my email records don't show it.

Shoot me a PM with your address and I'll bung 100g in the mail to you....

[leedsbrew]

pm sent! cheers matey!

[boingy]

But your brew day was 17/10/10.
So keeping up the binary theme you should really call it NAN.

[adm]

Supping a pint now........mmmmmmmmmmmmmMango! Maybe those lovely Pakistani Honey Mangos, with a hint of Passionfruit thrown in for good luck.

Yum.