- Brew Log
Brew #1
An attempt at a Hobgoblin Ale clone
Yes. I should get off my ass and give a little back to the inter-web which has taught me so well. There are a million articles online about home brewing and I encourage you to read them all. If you're new to home brewing, learning from my mistakes might be helpful. If you're experienced, I hope you will find this at least amusing.
I’ve done plenty of extract brews, and about half a year ago I made the jump to all grain. For the purposes of this blog I shall begin my record keeping all over again.
I studied a recipe that can be found at byo.com. (a great site) Knowing full well that I would not be able to get all the ingredients exactly as listed I just decided to strip it down to basics.
- 6 Ounces Crystal malt
- 1 Ounce Chocolate malt
- 0.5 Ounces Black patent malt
- 12 Pounds Pale malt
- 1 Ounce goldings for the bitter
- 1 Ounce goldings for the mid
- 1 Ounce goldings for the finish.
I chose whole hops as they work better for clarification. They actually act a bit like Irish moss during the cold break. I don’t bother “tea bagging” them. I just dump them in.
For yeast I went with Wyeast 1318 “London Ale Yeast III”. The recipe calls for Wyeast 1028, but the home brew shop didn’t have any. The recipe also called for Alfa acid levels a bit above what was available. My goldings were 4.8 Rather than 5 and 7. Whatever, I’m sure it will taste great... In fact the recipe called for a lot of things which I chose to ignore.
For example the target OG is supposed to be 1.059. That could be out the window as I’ve messed with the grains, and I’m not the best at sparging, but 1.050 is perfectly respectable. I always shoot for AT LEAST that when doing an ale. The recipe also calls for maltodextrin. Maybe I’m wrong but I figured just using 12 Pounds. of pale malt would be enough. 12 Pounds is actually a bit much, as by spargeing slowly you can get away with 10 Pounds as the water doesn't find channels and slink through the grain to fast during the run, thereby leaving sugars behind. That’s something I didn’t understand until my homebrew supply guy explained it to me. In this batch I attempted to sparge as slowly as possible, about an hour or so. In the end it’s better to have to much than to little.
Also on the mater of sugar, some English ales are made with rock sugar. When the brewmaster at my old work place, a U-Brew, attempted to duplicate Hobgoblin a couple of years ago he used brown sugar as a substitute. I’ve used brown sugar a few times myself and for THIS brew I decided to stick to basics, and play with adjuncts later. Obviously it’s not going to be perfect the first time. In my opinion it’s better to ADD flavours experimentally, batch by batch, rather than wonder what to take away.
THE MASH
It was supposed to be a simple single infusion.
I heated my strike water to 78° Celsius expecting that my mash tun, and the heat loss from the mash in would drop it down to the 66° Celsius - 68° Celsius range. I used a generous 12.5 Litres of strike water, and after a good string and a bit of waiting I was irritated to find that the grain bed was hovering around 65° Celsius at the top and even lower at the bottom.
So what does that mean? Well it’s a bit of a thinner plastic bucket than the one I've used before. Perhaps it needs a higher strike temperature. OR perhaps I had my eyes crossed when I was reading the thermometer.
To fix this screw up I took about a 10th of the grain out and did a quick decoction. (Just bringing the grain to a rolling boil in a pot and adding it back in, and stirring)
It worked perfectly. 68° Celsius, even 78° Celsius on the top of the grain bed for short time (which also pissed me off a bit). Grain bed temperatures tend to oscillate at first. I just watch it like a hawk until it seams to evens out, then cover it up. That’s what I did this time around and after 40 Minutes I started my recirculation.
THE SPARGE
I just lauterd into my kettle, then started the sparge, but SLOWLY. It took an hour. Sparge water was close to 100° Celsius, and the effect on the grain bed was to keep it around the high 70’s.
THE BOIL
This went splendidly. Got a good hot break, after 15 Minutes of skimming I added the bittering hops and started the clock. 30 Minutes in I added the mid. 45 Minutes in I added the Irish moss. Then at the end I added the finishing hops.
At the end of the boil I faced the inherent flaw in my plan. I haven’t constructed a proper wort chiller for this new setup, but my avarice got the better of me. I did the kitchen sink thing and it took forever. Moreover when It finally came time to wrack into the fermentor the siphon died on me towards the end. I was so grouchy that I just dumped the last of it into the fermenter and pitched the yeast. At least I managed to remember to aerate the wort.
The good news is that the OG came out to 1.051, and that's good enough.
THE FERMENT
Presently the primary has been going well for 4 days. I’ll probably transfer to secondary tomorrow, especially as there is a lot of trub in the fermenter owing to my dumping the last of it in.
The temperature is hovering around 20° Celsius which is OK for that yeast. The troubling thing is that at first I thought the batch was contaminated as there was a rather ugly collection of blobs on the surface on the first day, and the ferment was slow to pick up. Now that it’s coming down from full krausen I’m wondering if I was wrong. It’s possible that it was just buoyant trub speckled with prominences of white bubbles from the first streamers of C02.
A word about contamination...
I’ve seen, smelt, and tasted contamination. Both bacterial and wild yeast. Being able to identify it by sight is a worst case scenario, but I’ve been fooled before. Working at a U-brew gave me little time to study the science of brewing, but it instilled in me a practical sense of what “sanitary” really means, and the paranoia that accompanies that terrifying knowledge.
Remember that if the krausen doesn't surge out of the vent line, and into the air lock, it’s going to be left behind on the surface of the beer. It will form a cap rather like a typical batch of wine. A good sign is that it’s all the same coulor. If it’s a rainbow of greys, blacks, and baby powder, and has a brittle paper like texture in places, it might be bacterial blooms.
When in doubt, don’t dump it out. Some beers normaly look and smell UGLY when fermenting.
If this beer is contaminated, the dreaded taste test tomorrow will probably alert me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was contaminated as with this new set up, there were a lot of frustrating screwups. A word of advice... NEVER brew when you are tired or in a bad mood. Having no wort chiller is almost a guarantee that this will be the case.
Oh well.