Pion Brew golden ale - Brewday 18/9/08

[fivetide]

Hello everyone.

After a lengthy summer brewing hiatus I've cleaned up all my kit and I'm ready to go with an evening brew. First up, I'd love your comments on my proposed recipe. I see it as an evolution from my single hop Sunray golden ale, adding bitterness, a sound combination of copper and aroma hops, plus some extra malt complexity with the small Munich addition. Wheat for head retention largely, and US-05 to ensure dry finish and good drop.

Anyway, see what you think. I'm opting for 90/90 mash and boil for brevity, but please let me know if you think I'm cutting corners, and whether my temperatures and step times look okay. Cheers!:

Pion Brew

MO - 3.5Kg (83.3%)
Munich - 350g (8.3%)
Torrified Wheat - 350g (8.3%)

Mash in 10.5l at 75deg (66deg)
Hold for 90 minutes and drain
Add 10l at 75 (70)
Hold for 10 minutes and drain
Add 15l at 82.5 (75)
Hold for 10 minutes and drain

30g of Northdown (9AA)at 90 minutes
20g of Pioneer (8AA) at 15 minutes
40g of Pioneer (8AA) steep

I'm expecting a 4% brew, very pale, dry, with a citrus aroma.
What do you think?

[Garth]

recipe looks good, I'd be interested to hear how the Pioneer tastes, I'm all for using new types of hops, got some nice ones from Craftbrewer recently.

Have a good evening brew five.

[fivetide]

Cheers Garth.

I'm hoping that Northdown and Pioneer will complement each other like Fuggles and Goldings do, but it's just a theory from reading hop profile information.

Do those timings and temperatures look okay to you, by the way? And the percentages of the lesser malts?

I've shoved some water on to boil anyway. I have a nice shiny thermobox still in its box with no holes drilled in it, while I have to persevere with the coolbox!

[Garth]

tbh I haven't a clue about step mashes, I've never done one, but the grain looks good, the Munich should give it a sweet malty taste and the torrified will give good head retention, but you knew that already

I used some Munich a while back and even before you mash it it's got a good smell to it, sweet caramel to my nose, quite different to pale.

[fivetide]

Right, well I'll go and mash in then

[fivetide]

Excellent, it's all doughed in and sitting under it's sleeping bag at 67 degrees. The Pioneer hops smell great by the way - like very pungent EKG.

[fivetide]

Well the mash all went well, nice and steady. Took lots of runnings, and repeated this with the two-step batches of ten further litres each.

I've now got it all in the boiler, coming up to 95 degrees and hops at the ready

[fivetide]

Nothing to do now until Pioneers start going in at 10:20.

[mysterio]

Looks like a great recipe fivetide. I think I put some Munich malt in most recipes I make, tasty stuff.

[fivetide]

I've never used it before, but I think I read you commending it somewhere as a nice addition.. It's all done now and in the FV, whipped up with some US-05. I hope there were enough aroma hops, probably should have put in more to steep.

I'm glad it went smoothly though- makes me want to brew again very soon.

I took 21 litres of wort from the boiler at 1.045 and added two litres of water to the FV, making 23 litres at 1.040. I'm hoping for under 4% so happy with that.

Airlock in then calling it a night.

[mysterio]

Good work, smooth brew-days are few and far between for me

[Garth]

an excellent sounding brewday there five, good one

[fivetide]

Fermentation hasn't kicked in yet, but there's plenty of break material hanging in the FV - hopefully the yeast will launch later today.

It still takes me around six hours from start to finish, allowing for a 90 minute mash, two stop sparging, plenty of runnings, a 90 minute boil and up to an hour chilling down to fermentation temperature. I can't see it getting much shorter than that, really, without going to 60/60, so starting at around 6pm leaves me pitching yeast at around midnight tired and surrounded by sticky equipment, hosepipes and power leads

Good fun though - going to conjour something up with Bobek as a Styrian replacement next I think, although I'm toying with the idea of creating a hoppy mild, as close to Dark Star's Over The Moon as I can get.

In FV at 1.040, looking for FG of 1.010 only - that'd give me a 4% brew in the keg.

[stevezx7r]

Nice one FT, I know the feeling, end of brew day and loads of unwashed crap everywhere. I just bung it all in the bath and get round to washing it "later".

[fivetide]

Quick update. I never saw a proper raging ferment on this brew at all. Gas bubbled through the airlock steadily but unremarkably for a couple of days. I then skimmed the break, expecting it to take off a bit, but all it did was reform a head and steadily bubble once more. I suspect it's just slowly going about its business, but a massive krausen is always more reassuring. Ho-hum.