Beetlejuice 23/05/09

[adm]

Today's brew was a bit of a strange one......I wanted to make a wheaty, but well hopped and red in colour brew. I didn't get the colour right, but the rest of it went well enough..... I'm not sure how it will turn out, but it'll probably end up more like a Dunkel Weiss with Belgian yeast than anything else....

Here's the recipe:

Beetlejuice

Grains:
2.5Kg Wheat Malt
2.5Kg Lager Malt
250g Crystal Wheat Malt
250g Belgian Aromatic Malt
50g Carafa Special III

Hops:
50g EKG FWH 4.6% AA, 24 IBU
50g Saaz 15 mins 2.8% AA 7 IBU
50g Saaz 80C steep

23 litre brew length, target 1048

Yeast: 1 litre thick slurry of Wyeast 3944 from the Wit i brewed a few weeks ago. It's been sitting under a litre of beer in a bucket in the fridge and needed using.

So here's the pr0n:


Here's the grain


Mash pH about right


Temperature pretty good too.


Hmm......looks like my hop fridge is getting pretty full....I'd better try and use some of these puppies up over the next few weeks!


First wort hops. 50g of nice fresh EK Goldings - Cheers Des!


And here's two lots of 50g Saaz - Cheers Arkady! (I've got about 1400g of Saaz in now, so another big lager and some Saazed up summer Belgian style ales will be on the cards in the near future)


First runnings......taste great


Grain bed after sparging. The second batch of the sparge was really slow due to the wheat. I should have added some oat husks, but didn't have any.


Mmmmmm.......


All done and ready to run off


Plate chiller working well


Here's the yeast.....I poured the beer off it and then added a litre of cooled wort about 45 minutes into the boil. Looks like it's started up already.


Pitched, aerated and ready to put to bed. I think I'll ferment this fairly high - maybe around 22 rising to 25 over a few days to get a lot of the yeast character.


I ended up with 24 and a bit litres


At 1048. Spot on.....

That all went pretty well. It didn't come out red, but what the hell. Maybe I'll get some CaraRed in the future and see if that does the trick. I don't really know why I want to brew a red beer anyway....

Beer Alchemy says 90% efficiency. That's the last three or four brews that have been way up there....I must be doing something right

Anyway, that's all in bed and the barbecue is on now. Rib Eye steaks, sausages and a few pints of Bad Dog Bitter coming up!

[yashicamat]

Looks excellent, Alasdair!

I think a touch of roasted barley will give a red hue but I don't know if you want that characteristic roasted taste there though.

[WishboneBrewery]

Shame about the red...
Looks good though

[adm]

That's the thing Rob - I definitely didn't want the roastiness......

I thought the Carafa might have given me the colour, but apparently not.

Ah well - it'll still be beer. Whether it's good or not is yet to be determined, but the wort certainly tasted nice. I could definitely taste and smell the extra maltiness from the Aromatic malt. I've never tried that before, or the crystal wheat.

Now I'm up to my limit - all my FVs and Cornies are full.....although there can't be much more than a pint left in the Celtic Stout. If I get that drunk tonight, I can keg my Manic Mongrel tomorrow and maybe get something else on over the rest of the long weekend.

Or I could just mooch around in the garden, cook and drink...

[DarloDave]

looks great adm, nice hop collection, a nice wit is hard to beat!

[WishboneBrewery]

Hey... How is this one going? I notice in your sig that you are "Drinking"

[adm]

It came out pretty good. Almost exactly like a Dunkel Weiss in fact -but with a bit more "tang" if you know what I mean.....

At first, there was a very dry bitter taste, which I think was from suspended trub (from pitching onto the old yeast cake without washing it), but since that settled out, it's been very nice and refreshing.

[WishboneBrewery]

Jolly good

[StrangeBrew]

Have you had any success with the 'red' since this one adm? Been thinking of this myself recently. Will 5 to 10% of Carared do the job on it's own?

[adm]

Have you had any success with the 'red' since this one adm? Been thinking of this myself recently. Will 5 to 10% of Carared do the job on it's own?

Can't tell you I'm afraid......I haven't got around to giving it a go yet - and I haven't even ordered in the CaraRed.....