Saint Wilfred's Ale (Dark Mild)

[Fuggledog]

After a longish wait (5 weeks or so) I finally got back to doing some brewing, in this case an experimental recipe for a dark(ish) mild, 45 litre brewlength. After having the workshop/garage/brewery built I'm still sussing out where to put the bar/workbench etc. so the kit had to fit around ongoing projects. Here is the experimental recipe:

O.G. 1.038
IBU: 22
EBC: 31


61.00 l 'London' Water 1 (with my water profile I chose to just increase the calcium and chlorides a bit)
8.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
5.57 kg Mild Ale Malt (Fawcett) (7.0 EBC) Grain 3 84.0 % - actually not sure the source of the mild malt - bought from 'the-home-brew-shop' = Warminster?
0.46 kg Crystal Malt - 60L (Thomas Fawcett) (130.0 EBC) Grain 4 7.0 %
0.22 kg Brown Malt (Thomas Fawcett) (150.0 EBC) Grain 5 3.3 %
0.22 kg Chocolate Malt (Thomas Fawcett) (1000.8 EBC) Grain 6 3.3 %
0.17 kg Wheat, Torrified (Thomas Fawcett) (3.9 EBC) Grain 7 2.5 %
38.00 g Challenger (2011) [7.70 %] - Boil 75.0 min Hop 8 17.3 IBUs
1 protofloc (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 9 -
30.00 g First Gold (2010)II [8.11 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 10 5.0 IBUs
2 litre starter of Burton Ale (White Labs #WLP023) pitched at 18C.

Here is the setup - as you can see a bit rough and ready. The 60L HLT (also the copper) is on top of the 'big' (525litre) mashtun which is for the real brewery (currently building a base/insulation etc. but that's another story). i put some duct hose through the lid using a plastic fitting as i wanted to experiment running the steam from the boil out a velux window. the mashtun is under the sleeping bag (another 60litre 'fermenter' insulated with a blanket and some of the shiny radiator insulation foil). The STC-1000 was on a timer switch and set to 78C (strike temp), so it turned on at 5.30 in the morning, ready for brewing straight after breakfast. Also tried 'underletting' for the first time. i think i read someone doing it on here and apparently it works really well. Can't believe i've never tried it before! all mashed in within a few minutes and no 'dough balls'!



Here is a pic of the solar pump pushing the strike liqour into the mashtun through a tap and then into the mash through slotted copper pipe. worked brilliantly - thanks to whoever suggested underletting on the forum! I also batch sparged using this method (drained the tun, then 2 batches of around 20litres each). For the 'batch sparge' i just recirculated about 4 litres prior to draining the first runnings, then didn't touch the grainbed or recirculate after that - no problems with stuck or cloudy mash - underletting is rather excellent (so far).



Another change from previous brew sessions was to not setup the 'HERMS'. Apart from the flashing lights and nice clear wort (pre-boil) it has always been a bit of a pain in the rear. I think if i had a more perminent set up it might be a 'nice' feature, but if i'm making lager i do decoctions anyway, so it was nice to not have to set the system up this time around.

Had a slight mishap when it came to the boil - first i didn't push one of the plugs far enough into the back of an element which meant a very slow rise to the boil (i was distracted with making a base for the large MT), then when i had my almost routine 'boil over' i found the plastic of the pipe running through the lid (attached to the ducting) had melted a bit luckily beer doesn't taste of plastic.

apart from that was a nice change to have all the steam directed outside. ideally i would have a dip in the hose to prevent condensation dripping back - but that will be for the next iteration i think.



Running off the wort - really pleased with the colour:



Here is the rought setup with the plate chiller. one thing i really enjoyed about brewing in the garage (apart from having all my kit to hand) is the sloping floor and drain - much easier to clean up afterwards:



Colour again - this is the sort of thing i wanted - a kind of dark 'oak' brown rather than a black mild, although i guess it might look much darker once in a pint glass:



Final gravity shot:



Another change in routine is using an immersion heater (fish tank type) in the fermenter, controlled by the STC-1000. usually i use a product coil plumbed into a water bath (in a picnic cooler) heated by the immersion heater and run off a pump and STC-1000 (to ensure a more even, gentle heat in the fermenter). it seemed like a bit of a waste of time if the immersion heater was properly santised and if it provided a reasonably gentle heat anyway, so i'm pleased to say the wort has sat at 18C (+/- 0.5C) for the last 12 hours in the garage which is reading 0C! the plan is to use immersion heaters with STC-1000's like this in a series of conical fermenters, and the product coil with a cornelius chiller in the summer.

When this is fermented out it will be casked in the two oak pins i got from Theakstons - so will post an update when tapping the beer. Also used the calcultions in the 'Brewing with Wheat' book to sort out how much speise i would need to prime the casks - in this case saved 2 litres of wort for priming.

cheers,

Ben

[Matt12398]

With a chimney that long do you ever get any condensing and running back down?

[Fuggledog]

Good point - to be honest i don't really know. i suspect yes, and a dip in the tube would help to combat that. However the steam escaping from the top of the tube was fairly vigourous - so there was quite a healthy 'flow' of steam from the wort to the outside air. will report back when the beer is ready if there are any obvious off flavours.

[andybiochem]

Impressed with all your push-fittings - I really want to get away from those awful barbed push connectors.

Good looking wort at the end too! Do you know what the difference is between a 'mild ale malt' and normal pale malt? Mild is one of the styles I've not tried yet but really should - I was blown away by a pint of Ruby Mild a few years back.

[Fuggledog]

Thanks for the feedback!

the push fittings are helpful but still a pain to get loose at times. ideally i'd have the kit setup in a perminent arrangement, but i think that's a while away.

i don't have a lot of experience using mild ale malt. However to my understanding it is kilned a bit hotter than pale ale malt, giving a bit more colour, a bit more 'toasty' flavour. it is (apparently) often made with a different variety of barley too (usually lower grade barley with a higher protein content). The higher protein levels arent a problem if the beer is (a) dark and (b) made with a good proportion of sugar or other low-nitrogen ingredients. - basically that's all paraphased from various books and magazine articles, so perhaps take with a pinch of salt. i just wanted to try it in this recipe as i wanted to maximise the toasty, malty flavours and mild ale malt seemed approrpiate for that.

cheers!

ben

PS heard wonderful things about Ruby Mild too - pity i can't get it around my way.

[seymour]

I can't tell you how perfect this beer looks! An absolutely dream dark mild. Well done, man!

[Fuggledog]

Thanks Seymour!

thought I'd post an update now that this cask is tapped. So here's the pin after being vented. The stuff around the keystone is just sprayed starsan but looks a bit gunky here:



and now with a tap and cask breather fitted:



Gravity dispense - could have done with a bit more condition but I think this is in part due to the uncontrolled temp in the garage (around 1C). I did 'chill proof' with polyclar for the first time too. When I first vented the beer it was pushing through a hard spile!:



Here is the temporary set up, through the beer engine without a sparkler (but with swan neck obviously). Not sure how much difference the swan neck makes - certainly pumping the beer into the glass agitates it:



And here is a pint via sparkler - hmm.. must have been going down easier than i realised!



Here's the temp setup again:



The wonder of polyclar - around 0-1C.



So what's it taste like? Well it has a really pleasant soft fruity, ripe-pear like aroma. Flavour is fruit, light coffee, some oak/tannin/vanilla butter scotch. the butter scotch is quite subdued and more to do with the former life of the cask staves (held a spirit of some kind) - i recognise it as being similar to the flavours from the firkin until it had been 'broken in'. Perhaps a bit too much oak but that will reduce with successive batches and isn't unpleasant. needs 15 seconds or so in the microwave (a bit too cold otherwise!). very easy to drink.

cheers,

ben

[BitterTed]

Damn that looks good! Well done!!

[Fuggledog]

well turned out a bit too easy to drink! got through both pins (around 41 litres) in 9 days The second pin was much better than the first in being more 'neutral' - basically no oak character at all (which is what i expect from the first pin after a few gyles have gone through it). It was very easy to get through 10 pints a day without really thinking about it (and i'm not a big drinker really). Would be a great 'house' beer, but i think i'll push the % up to the 3.8% mark next time and hopefully reign in the bulk drinking. Not a massively full on 'tasty' beer though, more a quaffable pint.

[sweatysock]

Hi, very good post. Just two questions please. Did you have to raise your strike temperature for under letting? I usually put water hotter than required in the tun then let it cool to strike temperature. Secondly if I am reading your post correctly you must mash with around 2.5 X grain bill initially then recirc and fully drain. Top up with 17 litres. Leave it for 15mins and drain then repeat. Seems less faffing than mixing the grain and recirc every time. It is almost a batch/fly method.

[Fuggledog]

Hi

sorry for the delay in my reply. i usually heat the strike liqour to around 85C on my system, aiming for around 68C once mashed in with the grist. i didn't change those temperatures for underletting, although i think given the speed with which the grist and liqour mix, i should heat the strike liqour less (i ended up with the mash starting around 69-70C, so a bit too hot and had a high terminal gravity as a result - 1.013). your summary is pretty spot on regarding the mash and batch sparge approach i'm using. i get 85% efficiency and there's no mucking about trying to balance flow rates or spinning copper sparge arms etc. it works for me, but i guess isn't everyones cup of tea so to speak. the underletting was a big suprise though - so much easier and faster than mixing the liqour from the top.