Brew Day - Dunkelrot Kristallreisen

Going along with my Berry Beer I thought something like a Hefeweizen would be a nice spring/summer evening sipper.  In my scouring of the Home Brew Talk Gluten Free forums I stumbled over Igliashon’s Purple Hefereisen.  The uniqueness of the Purple rice is what really intrigued me, so I thought I would adapt it to my ingredients and give it a whirl, and a whirl of a day it was.  The brew day went well for the most part right up until I got distracted while making my dinner and grabbed the handle of a pan that had just came out of a 200°C (400°F) oven.   After that Mrs. Thirsty reminded me again why I love her and not only finished making dinner and played nurse to yours truly but she also finished up the brew day.  What a wonderful woman I tell you.  Well, on with the show.

Dunkelrot Kristallreisen

Batch Size: 10.25L         Type: Extract / Partial Boil         Boil Size: 7.2L           Boil Time: 60min

Calculated OG: 1.048      Measured OG: 1.063      Calculated FG: 1.008       Bitterness: 19.1IBUs

Grain Bill

2.00kg Purple Rice (aka Forbidden Rice) – Steeped for an hour

0.25kg Rice Syrup – Boil for 60min

1.00kg Rice Syrup – Boil for 40min

0.35kg Amber Belgian Candy Sugar – Boil for 5min

 

The Ingredients



Hop Schedule

5.00g Tettnang [5.50 %] – First Wort Hop 15min

5.00g Cascade [7.30 %] – Boil 40,0min

5.00g Tettnang [5.50 %] – Boil 20,0min

5.00g Cascade [7.30 %] – Boil 5,0min

5.00g Tettnang [5.50 %] – at Flameout

Miscellaneous

10.00ml Brewferm Beerzym MULTI – Added to steeping water

5.00 g Irish Moss – Boil 10min

50.00 g Malto-Dextrin – Boil 5min

15.00 g Blood Orange Peel – Boil 5min

6.00 g Cracked Coriander – Boil 5min

8.00 g Yeast Nutrient – Added to yeast while rehydrating

1 pkg SafBrew Specialty Ale (DCL/Fermentis #T-58)

  

The steeping setup, a quick rig



So the purpose here, after making a quaffable brew of course, is to make an attempt at playing with the enzyme that I bought a couple months back when I first started this whole brewing hobby.  To this end I decided to steep the rice hot water (154-165°F) for about an hour with some of the enzyme and see what happens.  In this case, the water turned a beautiful dark purple that is almost black but when I tested a sample with the hydrometer, there was absolutely no sugar converted.

  

Beautiful dark purple



When I go back now and think about this, it’s obvious that there shouldn’t be, because the rice was never brought to a temperature where is would release starch into the water, so the enzyme never had anything to work with.  Not a huge problem but a bit of a disappointment that I missed something so fundamental to brewing.  I’m going to have to take a look at my plans for future brews and make sure I don’t make the same mistake.



Another rigged setup to let the water drip from the rice

So once the rice was steeped I pulled it out and set it on a grate over the kettle so any water might drip in.  During this time I threw in 5g of the Tettnang hops to sit for 15 minutes in the hot water before beginning the boil.  The idea behind First Wort Hopping is to take some of the aroma hops that are generally added late in the boil and add them to the 50-70°C wort that is drained from the bag in this case.  This action will add bitterness to the brew that is more uniform and a hop aroma that is more balanced and complex.  

The target of this beer when I was building it in Beersmith I decided would be a Dunkelweizen.  This is a fruity and spicy wheat beer which dark with a malty richness.  Going with the dark purple rice and the Rice Syrup base I thought this was appropriate.   The caramelized honey should add a bit of a malty backbone and the IBUs as calculated are a little higher than is acceptable for a Dunkelweizen, but it should be tasty.

So the boil went well, and I put the pot outside to cool.  While the wort was cooling, I started prepping dinner.  I put a frying pan in the oven at 200°C (400°F) for a steak and then decided to throw some of the rice into a pan.  The rice was not quite cooked so I cooked a little bacon up, added some red pepper and the rice and a little water to steam it all together.  In the mean time I pulled the pan out of the oven and put in on the stove top.  I put a little salt and pepper on the steak and went to grab the frying pan, to move the handle to the side.  The searing pain reminded me that the frying pan was just in the oven.  I cried out and immediately put my hand under some cold water while Mrs. Thirsty came in to find out the problem.



Sitting in the carboy, working away.



From here on out Mrs. Thirsty finished up my dinner for me, searing the steak on each side for 30 seconds then putting the whole pan back in the oven for 5 minutes.  After dinner, when the wort cooled, Mrs. Thirsty poured it into the carboy and added bottled water to 10L and then she rehydrated the yeast with 250ml of bottled water and 8g of yeast nutrient and added all of it to the carboy.

Release the Krausen!!

  

The next morning when I looked in on the beer, I could tell the yeast was excited.  A thick, purple krausen, had pushed up through the airlock, causing the little red cap to pop off and a little spray of purple to spread around the carboy.  I’m thinking next time I need a blow off tube because this happened 4 more times over the next two days.  Each time I cleaned the airlock out and refilled it, proving I am just a little insane by repeating the same actions hoping for different results.  After a couple days it did slow down and the airlock has stayed clear.  I’m going to plan on carbonating this on the low end of the style range and I’m really looking forward to the first taste.

Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty



Brew Day - Ginger Beer

Another spring beer that I’ve been thinking about for a while is a Ginger Beer.  I’ve had a few ginger beers over the years, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.  They tend to be fairly one note with a sharp ginger bite and leaving your lips tingling for hours from drinking a pint.  Proper ginger beer is brewed using a ginger beer plant.  This is an organism that is a composite of yeast and bacteria.  In this case I’m more brewing a beer with prominent ginger flavour.

Ginger Beer

Batch Size: 10.25L           Type: Extract                    Boil Size: 7L                       Boil Time: 45min

Calculated OG: 1.046      Measured OG: 1.052       Calculated FG: 1.004         Bitterness : 17.3IBUs

Grain Bill

1.00 kg Amber Agave Syrup – Boil 45min

0.46 kg Ripe Bananas – Boil for 45min

0.25 kg Amber Belgian Candy Sugar – Boil for 45min



Getting prepped

 0.25 kg Milk Sugar – Boil for 30min

Hop Schedule

15.00 g Tradition [6.70 %] – Boil for 45min

Miscellaneous

200.0 g Ginger Root, chopped skin on – Boil for 45min

100.0 g Ginger Root, chopped skin on – Boil for 30min

100.0 g Ginger Root, chopped skin on – Boil for 15min

5.00 g Irish Moss – Boil 15min

10.00 g Lemon Grass, chopped – Boil 5min

10.00 g Lemon Zest, chopped – Boil 5min

5 whole Cloves – Boil 5min

5.00 g Nutmeg, fine grated – Boil 5min

2 whole Cinnamon Sticks, broken – Boil 5min

½ pkg SafBrew Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-33)

30 g Light Brown Sugar

100.0 g Ginger Root, chopped skin on, soaked in vodka 2 weeks – In secondary for 7 days



Everything boiling away, it looks like a lovely ginger soup ;)

 My plan here is to layer flavours, one over the other, like a well made meal.  Starting with the hops to provide a base canvas of bitterness, I then plan on three different additions of ginger.  By cooking the ginger for three different lengths of time, it will change the flavour that each provides.  The longer it cooks, the mellower the flavour will be, so in this case I will be adding a bit of sharpness a with each addition.  The final racking over the raw ginger soaked in vodka will provide that final layer of sharp aroma and taste.  The lemon grass, zest, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon should add mild flavours and significant aromatics to the beer.  The milk sugar should only be about 75% fermentable, leaving a little bit of sweetness and body in the beer.  I’ll taste at the first racking and then again at the bottling and if the body is thin I may add a little bit of Malto-Dextrin to improve the mouth feel.  This beer may come out a bit hot, meaning the alcohol taste may wind up being very prominent but as I understand aging will mellow this heat.  At this point I will plan on aging as is, though if this beer comes out well, I may try aging it over lightly toasted oak chips next time, to add a bit of vanilla to the flavour profile.  The banana here is really not adding much flavour, but is more there for the protein and texture it provides to mouth feel and head retention.

The brewing went really well for this beer, making the whole apartment smell wonderful.  Even the garbage pail smells great because of the left over ginger and banana.  When the cooled wort was transferred to the carboy, it was a medium dark brown, a little darker than Vernors.  After some of the sediment drops out it should be a nice, clear golden colour like Canada Dry.  The yeast I’m using here is a SafBrew S-33.  It is supposed to be fairly clean, without many esters and finish somewhat high on the gravity.  Leaving a little sweetness will be great.

Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Brew Day - Berry Beer

So now that we're through the holidays and through January, I figure it’s time to plan a few different batches of beer for spring.  I started with Chilort's Raspberry & Blackberry Beer and modified based on the ingredients that I have available here. The goal here is something light, refreshing and tasty that we’ll have for those days in spring when Mrs. Thirsty and I are sitting on the balcony in the sun. 

Berry Beer

Batch Size: 10.25L             Type: Extract / Partial Boil             Boil Size: 6.7L             Boil Time: 60min

Calculated OG: 1.064      Measured OG: 1.061            Calculated FG: 1.013       Bitterness: 18.1IBUs



Yummy baby Berry Beer in the Carboy



Grain Bill

1.75 kg Rice Syrup - Boil for 60min

0.70 kg Raspberries, Frozen - Boil for 10min

0.30 kg Blackberries, Frozen - Boil for 10min

0.30 kg Caramelized Wildflower Honey - Flameout

0.60 kg Mixed Berries, Frozen – Added to secondary for 7 days

Hop Schedule

10.00 g Tettnang [4,50 %] - Boil 60,0min

10.00 g Tettnang [4,50 %] - Boil 30,0min

10.00 g Tettnang [4,50 %] - Boil 15,0min

0.5 pkg SafBrew Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-33)

So I started with the honey, adding it to a small pot with 1 tablespoon of water and about half a teaspoon of lemon juice. I put this over low heat, constantly stirring until it started simmering. I let it simmer for 10 minutes before removing it from the heat and setting it to the side.



Early in the Fermentation process, notice how light it is



Following the timing identified in the Grain Bill/Hop Schedule, the boil was rather easy. My stove top doesn't seem to be hot enough to maintain a full, hard boil of that much water without a top on the kettle so I generally keep the top about 75% on the kettle and just be cautious of boil over.  Even with that caution, there were two times the wort beat me and it boiled over onto the stovetop, though the smell wasn’t terrible, almost like cotton candy.

When I added the berries, I paused the boil timer and let the kettle come back to a hard boil before I continued.   I’ve read and been told that by adding the berries to the boil, I’ve introduced the naturally occurring Pectin in the berries to my beer.  Pectin is a gelling agent that is used when making jams and jellies, that helps the product set.  Pectin is found in high concentrations in hard fruit (like apples and pears) and citrus fruit but in much lower concentrations in the berries I used.  The problem with pectin is that it is insoluble in alcohol, so as the alcohol content in the beer increases, the more the pectin will appear, making the beer cloudy.  Now, I’m willing to accept a little cloudiness, though if my order for Pectolytic Enzyme shows up before I bottle, I’ll toss some in and see what happens.



A sample of the berries I plan on using in secondary.
Raspberries, Blackberries, Blue Berries & Red Currents



I chilled the whole batch in the snow outside for about 40 minutes, poured it through a strainer into the carboy, topped off with boiled/cooled water and withdrew a hydrometer sample. I set this aside to come to room temp and pitched the yeast. The yeast was rehydrated in about 250ml of warm water, starting when the wort was put out to chill.

When I checked the next morning the airlock was burbling nicely at about 2 bubbles per second and some of the hops had floated up to the top. It’s a really deep pink colour and is definitely not clear but hopefully it’ll settle out over the next couple weeks.  After 2 weeks I plan to rack this on top of some more berries for a weeks before bottling.

Well, here comes the waiting game, damn I wish I was more patient.

Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Bottle Day and Tasting - Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout & Electric Citrus Saison

After the trouble of a double brew day I was looking forward to tasting both of these beers.  My original plan for the Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout was to let it sit over a couple vanilla beans for a week.  Between my work trip at the beginning of December and then travelling home to Canada for the Holidays, I didn’t have time to let it sit for only a week.  So in order to still get the vanilla flavour I planned, I decided to use vanilla sugar for bottling.  The specific sugar that I used had little pieces of vanilla bean in it.  I used 41g of the vanilla sugar, planning on the carbonation being very low.  Bottling was smooth and I was able to get 18 Full 0.5L bottles from the batch, though the beer was a little cloudy, I thought it might still clear in the bottles. Checking the gravity, the beer seems to be a whopping 7.8% alcohol, this could be dangerous.  The beer was also nowhere near as dark as I wanted for this stout, coming out maybe a little darker brown then the Ye Old Confused Brown Ale.

Three weeks later I decided to try my first Stout.  The top popped and when poured the carbonation was great, just enough to tickle the tongue a bit and bring out the aroma.  There was a little bit of a head formed, with big bubbles, but it didn’t last long and left no lacing on the glass.  It was still the dark brown but it hadn’t cleared at all from bottling, if anything it was cloudier with little bits of vanilla bean floating around.  The yeast cake on the bottom was about 3mm thick, though pretty stable.  The smell right off is clearly of hops, with a little hint of chocolate and nothing of vanilla.  The taste is bitter, almost harsh, with a long aftertaste almost of citrus.  There is a slight sweetness to compliment the bitterness and a good mouth-feel, thick but not really creamy.  Overall, this really isn’t a stout but I’m not sure what it could be classified as, maybe a brown American IPA??  About a month down the road, I’ve had a couple more of them, and it seems the harshness has mellowed.  It’s still bitter, with more of the hop flavour and chocolate come through.  Age is bringing out the positive qualities of this beer, maybe this will be a re-brew in the future, and I just need to figure out how to get it to clear.  Aww well, part of the fun is in the trial and error.

Continuing with the double trouble theme, I bottled the Electric Citrus Saison on the same day.  Since this was just a 4 litre trial, I’m not overly concerned.  I decided to continue with the honey additions and bottled with 37g of Acai Blossom Honey, giving the Saison a very high carbonation.  When pouring into the bottling bucket, the beer was crystal clear and very pale yellow.  This resulted in 8 full 0.5L bottles and a final alcohol by volume of 6%.

I popped one of these just after the first Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, and I was sorely disappointed in the carbonation.  It was almost flat, thought the smell was very nice and refreshingly citrus.  The beer was very clear with a really pale yellow.  Citrus and hops warred with each other as the prominent smell, the coriander and cardamom taking a back seat.  The taste was nice, tart and refreshing, though a little cloying without a good carbonation.  About a month later the carbonation is perfect, helping produce a beautiful white head when poured, which fell to about half a centimetre, lasting to about half way through the glass.  The citrus notes are there in the aroma, and in the flavour, though the honey hasn't come out that I can tell.  This will be a nice beer to enjoy in the summer and may require a full batch brew.

Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Bottle Day and Tasting – Ye Old Confused Brown Ale

With this Brown Ale being my first try at home brewing, I was a little like a new father.  Always looking in and checking it, at one point even sitting quietly and listening to the sound of the airlock bubbles popping.  It was oddly relaxing and enjoyable.  A week before I was planning on bottling, I was asked to travel for business for 3 weeks.  I was a little concerned but decided instead of bottling early or transferring to a bright tank, to just leave it alone in the primary fermenting carboy and let it go.  All in, the beer was primary fermenting for 5 weeks.  I put it in the refrigerator in the basement for 24 hours at about 5°C(41°F) in order to “Cold Crash” the beer and encourage the yeast and any other particle floating around in there to fall.  Once I finally made it home I got down to my first beer bottling.  I have never bottled beer before but have bottled wine with my mother (Mama Thirsty we shall call her) back a few years ago.  For a couple years Mama Thirsty and I split on batches of wine at one of the local “Make Your Own” shops.  These shops are fun in that you can have some of the experience of making your own wine without the expense of all the equipment and all the work associated with cleaning, sanitizing and testing.  You get to pour in the yeast and let someone else manage the fermenting and racking activities and then all you need to do is bottle the wine.  As I said we did this for a year or two until Papa Thirsty admitted that he really didn’t like the wine that much and he’d rather buy his favourite brands. 

After that extended tangent, I’ll get back to bottling the Brown Ale.  2 days before we were supposed to fly back to Canada to celebrate Christmas with our family, I decided I had enough free time to bottle.  I added 67g of corn sugar to a small sauce pan with a half litre of water and brought it to a boil.  While waiting for that to cool I pulled a sample of the Brown Ale to get a final gravity reading and found that after 5 weeks the gravity was 1.018.  This means the final beer should be around 7.7% alcohol by volume and may be on the sweet side.  The corn sugar solution was added to the bottling bucket and the Brown Ale was siphoned on top so that it mixed well.  From this 20 half litre bottles were filled and boxed up.

All in all the bottling was really easy.  I fully expected to spill half of the beer on the counter or something to fall into the bucket.  This whole process has been too easy despite the mistake with the boil pot, so I’m fully expecting lightening to strike or something.  This is the very first time I’ve tried to do this, in a country where I’m not really confident with the language, with ingredients that are not usual. 

Showcasing GF Engineer's new label - Christmas gift from one of the best Brother in Law's around!

Tasting

Let’s move forward in time about 3 weeks or so.  We arrived home from out Christmas Holidays with the families and I had about 3 days at home before it was back to England for another work trip.  Saturday before I flew out I put a couple of the Brown Ales in the fridge and decided to give them a try. 

I popped the top and poured one into a glass.  A nice, frothy, white head formed as I poured the beer, about 3cm thick.  It didn’t last very long but left some nice lacing on the side of the glass.  The most surprising thing about the beer is how beautifully clear it looked.  It was a beautiful dark gold in colour and crystal clear.   I don’t think the colour is appropriate for brown ale but I’m more than happy with it.

The smell of the beer is sweet and nutty with a little bit of the hops coming through.  The first taste is sweet.  There isn’t enough hop bitterness to balance the sweetness.  I don’t think the grains come through much, but then I haven’t done a beer with only rice syrup to compare.  There is no hint of alcohol in the taste, which I fully expected.

Overall this beer is quaffable and more than a little dangerous.  If the calculated alcohol content is true, then it’s close to 8% and doesn’t taste like it.  I think this is going into the re-brew pile but with adjustments to the hop schedule to help balance it out.  I’m also going to put a few at the back of the shelf and see how it ages, maybe if I’m lucky the hops with make a reappearance.

This was a good way to start 2013.

Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Brew Day Double Trouble – Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout & Electric Citrus Saison – Part 2

And onto the:

Electric Citrus Saison

So this recipe is based around the GF-Orange Honey Ale – Shock Top Clone that was posted by MapleTreeBrewCo on Home Brew Talk.  I liked the idea of doing something that would be really light and refreshing but I wasn’t sure about the flavours and since I had a free 5L carboy I scaled the recipe down and modified it to the ingredients I have available here. 

When I was putting together this recipe I was looking at the various definitions for Sour Ales and trying to define what category this would fall into.  It doesn’t quite fit the description or a Witbier or a Berliner Weiss so the only thing I could possibly compare it to is a Belgian Saison.  A Saison is historically from Wallonia in the French speaking part of Belgium.  It is a summer style that was originally brewed near the end of the cool season to last through the summer months.  Medium to strong in the alcohol department, but not so strong that it isn’t refreshing.  The taste is usually well hopped and dry with a quenching acidity and strong fruity/spicy overtones.  Overall, this intended to be a refreshing beer that can be enjoyed on a patio in the warmer months.

So putting this together I knew I wanted a citrus flavour to be at the forefront, with the hops to back it up.  I chose Cascade and Summit for hops, looking to capitalize on the grapefruit and citrus aromas.  As additional flavours I added in a little bit of lemon and orange juice, some orange zest, cardamom and coriander.  Also, using the Windsor yeast I was hoping to the esters would round out the citrus flavours.  Finally I finished the whole thing with some Acai Blossom honey, hoping that the delicate flavour won’t be lost.

Onto the brewing!!

Electric Citrus Saison

Grain Bill
0.75kg Brown Rice Syrup – Added 60 min remaining in boil
0.15kg Acai Blossom Honey – Added at Flame out

Hop Schedule
4g Cascade Pellet (7.30 %AA) – Added at 40 minutes remaining in boil
4g Summit Pellet (15.50 %AA) – Added at 20 minutes remaining in boil

Misc Ingredients
25ml Lemon Juice – Added at 30 minutes remaining in boil
25ml Orange Juice – Added at 30 minutes remaining in boil
25g Malto-Dextrin for body – Added at 20 minutes remaining in boil
10g Sweet Orange Peel/Zest – Added at 20 minutes remaining in boil
5g Coriander Seeds, Cracked – Added at 20 minutes remaining in boil
5g Irish Moss for clarifying – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
5g Cardamom Seed Pods – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
3g Yeast Nutrient – Added to yeast slurry
1 pkg Windsor Dry Yeast – Rehydrated and added to cooled wort

Well, I guess I should describe the issues I ran into here:

Number one, I only have the one big stock pot that I have been using, and that was filled with the still cooling Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, so instead I grabbed my large Dutch Oven and figured that would work well enough.  I filled the pot with 6 litres of bottled water and added the Rice Syrup.  Now the water level was only about 5cm from the top, so I was trying to keep an eye on the pot.  I fought the boil over down once, twice but it bested me on the third charge and suddenly the kitchen had a burnt sugar smell.  Well I pulled the pot off the heat, ladled off about a litre of the mixture and put it off to the side.  Then I put the pot back on the heat and reset the timer. 
Problem number two, the recipe above was the final recipe that was used, but this wasn’t the original recipe.  Somehow I got twisted around and added the ingredients in the wrong order and in some cases at completely the wrong times.  The orange peel and cardamom were supposed to be added at 10 minutes remaining and the Summit Hops, coriander and Malto-Dextrin should have been added at 5 minutes to go.  They all made it into the pot, but in a different order then planned.  I’m going to move forward with it but maybe I’ll come back and try the original recipe at some point.

The litre of rice syrup and water that I pulled off the boil pot was used to rehydrate the yeast for both this brew and the Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.  I split the litre in half in two separate plastic bottles.  I let the bottles cool to about 33°C(91.4°F), added the yeast nutrient and shook them well.  Then I added the respective yeasts, shaking lightly to make sure all the yeast was covered.  Both of these bottles sat off to the side for about 45 minutes while the wort cooled to pitching temperature.

The rest of the brew day went well.  I let the wort cool to about 30°C(86°F) and then poured it through a strainer into a small glass carboy.  I added the yeast and then topped the carboy off to 4.5L, pulled off a test sample and popped on the air lock.  I put the carboy with the other fermenting beer at about 21°C(69.8°F) and left it to do its thing.

Enjoy!
Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Brew Day Double Trouble – Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout & Electric Citrus Saison – Part 1

My experience with the Ye Old Confused Brown Ale has made me confident (or maybe cocky) and I decided to brew two different beers in one day. 

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Based on LCasanova’s Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout and Igliashon’s NoNonsense Stout plus various other references I’ve franken-beer-ed together my own Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout recipe.  The goal here is a thick, creamy stout with a nice chocolate aroma and aftertaste.  A side goal is that when the chocolate is thrown into the brew kettle, the whole apartment should start smelling like chocolate, which I think Mrs. Thirsty will appreciate.  This brew took some pre-planning because I had to roast some flaked oats, trying to get a nice dark colour, and then let the roasted grains sit for a time.  So I roasted half a kilogram of flaked oats in the oven starting at 125°C for 20 minutes and increasing the temp by about 12 degrees every 20 minutes stopping at 175°C for 70 minutes, stirring the batch every 5 minutes, and a final 15 minutes at 200°C.  I finished this and let the grains sit in a paper bag for a week, at which point I thought that maybe they aren’t dark enough and decided to toast 100g in a frying pan for 10 minutes very dark.  After another week in the paper bag, I was ready to brew. 



Oats after roasting



The whole purpose of the paper bag is to let any harsh aromas and flavours “waft” away.  As I understand it, using the grains right after roasting can impart some bitter or astringent flavours to the beer and some burnt aromas.  By letting the roasted/toasted grain rest for a time, the compounds that cause such flavours and aromas dissipate into the surrounding air.

So I started with 7L of water, bringing it up to about 70°C(158°F) and putting the oats into a muslin hop bag and steeping it in the water for 30 minutes.  At the end of the time the oats seemed to soak up about a litre of water.  While the oats were steeping, I put the honey into the empty carboy with 2 split, chopped vanilla beans and added about 3 litres of room temperature bottled water.  Here comes the cardio portion of making beer.  Putting a rubber plug into the carboy, I grabbed it and shook it like hell for about 2 minutes.  The purpose of this is to oxygenate the water so that the yeast has enough to grow well.

One the steeping was done, I started the boil.  I added the remaining ingredients as listed and at the end I had 5.5L of wort ready to be cooled.  While the wort was cooling I started the Electric Citrus Saison.  I’ll explain in that post about the problems but basically the pot I was using for the Saison was a little small and I had to ladle out about a litre of the water/rice syrup to prevent boil over.  Since this fluid (SG1.036) was already sweetened I decided to use it to rehydrate the yeast for both batches.  I split it into two separate bottles and added 5g of yeast nutrient to one and 3g to the other.  Then I let these cool to about 35°C(95°F), added the appropriate yeast and let them sit for about 45 minutes while the wort cooled.



Only an engineer would think of this.
Also RIP thermometer that burnt this week!


Once the wort was cooled to about 30°C(86°F) I poured it into the carboy through a strainer to remove whatever sediment I could (Hot Break, Cold Break and hops pieces).  The carboy was filled to about 8.5L at this point.  I added the yeast slurry and enough bottled water to fill up to 10.25L, mixed it up a bit, pulled a sample to test the gravity and capped it with an air lock.  When I tested the sample with the hydrometer, it came out to an Original Gravity of 1.075.  This carboy was set into a room at 21°C(69.8°F) to ferment for the next few weeks.

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Grain Bill
0.40kg Medium Roasted Oat Flakes – Steeped for 30 minutes @ 70°C
0.10kg Dark Toasted Oat Flakes– Steeped for 30 minutes @ 70°C
1.0kg Brown Rice Syrup – Added 60 min remaining in boil
0.20kg Black Strap Molasses – Added at 60 min remaining in boil
0.5kg Brown Rice Syrup – Added 20 min remaining in boil
0.15kg Pine Honey – Added to Carboy

Hop Schedule
5g Magnum Pellet (14.90 %AA) – Added at 60 minutes remaining in boil
5g Magnum Pellet (14.90 %AA) – Added at 30 minutes remaining in boil
6g Tradition Whole Leaf (6.70 %AA) – Added at 15 minutes remaining in boil

Misc Ingredients
5g Irish Moss for clarifying – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
150g Cocoa Powder – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
150g Malto-Dextrin for body – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
5g Yeast Nutrient – Added to yeast slurry as described
2 vanilla beans, split and chopped – Added to primary
1 pkg Nottingham Dry Yeast – Rehydrated and added to cooled wort

During the boil the house did smell great, like chocolate and hops, and overall the process went really well.  The wort came out looking nice and dark brown, though maybe not as dark as I wanted.  I am looking forward to this beer.

Enjoy!
Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty

Brew Day - Ye Old Confused Brown Ale

One of the more popular brews on Home Brew Talk Gluten Free Forum seems to be LCasanova’s American Brown Ale.  After searching all over Europe for Briess Sorghum Extract Syrup, I gave up on trying to replicate the exact brew since there wasn’t a source for Sorghum Extract in Europe and shipping it from the good old USA was going to cost at least $100USD.  Looking at what I had local, I came up with using Brown Rice Syrup.

Brown Rice Syrup is basically made by boiling brown rice or brown rice flour to get as much starch out as possible, then an enzyme is added to convert the starch to sugar and the whole thing is reduced to get it to the right consistency.  Commonly the enzyme comes from sprouted barley, which is a no-no for any GFer, but gluten free versions can be purchased that are made from a fungal enzyme. 

Brown rice syrup is on the left.

Using Beersmith, which is a brewing calculator, I substituted Brown Rice Syrup for Sorghum Syrup and charged ahead.  There are certain values that are tracked and talked about when it comes to brewing, and by trying to maintain these values; I was able to come up with a clone recipe.  The basic values are Original Gravity (OG), Final Gravity (FG) and International Bitterness Units (IBU).  OG and FG are measurements of the amount of sugar in a liquid at defined times in the brewing process.  OG is a measure of the sweetness of the wort (beer before it hits puberty and begins that special time of change that will turn it into an Adult BEvERage) before the yeast is added.  FG is the measurement of the sweetness after the yeast is all tuckered out and there isn’t anything left for them to eat.  By comparing the difference between OG and FG you can find the amount of alcohol in the beer.  IBU is a measure of how bitter the beer is.  For example Bud Light chimes in around 6.4IBUs.

From the boiling pot to carboy.

This worked out great I thought, until brew day and I realized that I carried the wrong 1 somewhere and my brew pot was way too small to boil the full 10L of beer I was planning.  No big deal, I just moved forward with my plan putting only about 6L in the pot.  Everything was running fine, I steeped the grains that I had roasted 2 weeks before, boiled the hops and syrups as I was supposed to and after 90 minutes, set it all to cool outside.  When the wort cooled and I topped it off to the right volume, took a gravity reading (how much sugar is in there).  The OG was almost 20 points higher than it was supposed to be. 

No surprise an Engineer's mind came up with this set up!



Hydrometer

What was I to do, I could add more water and dilute the sugar, but that would also dilute the hops and it would wind up tasting like bland, thin tea.  After some thought I pitched the yeast as is, and by the next morning it was burbling away happily.  After going back into Beersmith and adjusting for my brew pot and the partial boil I realized that some of my assumptions of the syrups are off.  I adjusted the Maple Syrup and Molasses so that the estimated OG matched the reading with the hydrometer.  All that done I found that the bitterness might wind up a little low (with an IBU at about 13) and the beer may finish a little high on the alcohol (8.3% ABV).  Either way, I’m going to let this one ride, chalk it up to experience and I figure, it may need to age a while, but I’ll probably end up with something drinkable (eventually) and better than Redbridge.  Being the kind of person I am, I did a little research into Brown Ales.  In the 1700s Brown Ales were a lot stronger in alcohol than they are today with less of a hop bite.  So based on the history of brown ale and the fact that I used UK hops, this seems to fit right in with the English Brown Ales from the 18^th century.  Therefore, let me please introduce you to:

Ye Old Confused Brown Ale

Here’s the final recipe, I’ll follow up with some tasting notes before the end of the year.
Grain Bill
0.45kg Roasted Buckwheat – Steeped for 30 minutes @ 70°C
0.45kg Roasted Flaked Millet – Steeped for 30 minutes @ 70°C
1.8kg Brown Rice Syrup – Added 60 min remaining in boil
0.25kg Black Strap Molasses – Added at 20 min remaining in boil
0.25kg Maple Syrup, Grade C – Added at 20 min remaining in boil

Hop Schedule
10g Fuggles (4,98% AA) – Added at 60 minutes remaining in boil
15g East Kent Goldings (6.00% AA) – Added at 15 minutes remaining in boil

Misc Ingredients
5g Irish Moss for clarifying – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil
100g Malto-Dextrin for body – Added at 10 minutes remaining in boil

After roasting the grains.

The grains were roasted to a nice brown colour with a little water added to the pan.  This is probably what gave me the most trouble through this whole process.  I didn’t want to burn anything so I went really slowly, with low heat and it took almost 6 hours to reach a colour I deemed good enough, though it might have been because it was 1am and I had to go to work in the morning.  Next time, I’ll use a higher heat to get less time and no water in the flaked millet; it just becomes a sticky paste that is a pain to work with.

Before nearly bursting open.

Another fun little lesson I learned is that the roasted grains soak up water like a sponge.  I think it was mostly the flaked millet, but good Lord the muslin bag nearly popped and I lost almost 2.5L of water from the brew kettle. 



All in all this was a fun experience.  Nothing disastrous happened (yet) so I think I’ll keep the hobby going.  I think I’ll plan on a Chocolate Oatmeal Stout next, Mrs. Thirsty loves chocolate and that should make the house smell like chocolate for a day or three.



Enjoy!

Photos courtesy of Mrs. Thirsty