Brew 2 - Lockdown IPA
Brew 2 - Lockdown IPA
Brew day: 28th March 2020
Bottling day: 1st April 2020
After the success of Alice Porter, I wanted to brew something a little lighter in both colour and strength. The impending lockdown period due to the Covid-19 outbreak was upon us and I fancied making a beer that was both drinkable and sessionable. Sifting through the DIY Dog back catalogue offered plenty for the imagination but a favourite go to beer really stuck out - Indie Pale Ale.
I really enjoyed this beer and can often pick it up in the local shop. It is a decent and well hopped IPA that I can usually all night. The recipe looked simple enough and the malt bill was small meaning a fairly cheap order - which arrived from Get 'Er Brewed (5 days from order to delivery).
The previous brew day using my new kit was such a success, I decided to scale up the batch and aim for 20 litres of wort - produced in 2 separate batches, then mixed at the end before adding the yeast.
The first task was to get the strike water heated. During the last brew, I found that I lost a fair amount of the wort during the boil so I opted to use my 8 litre stock pot with an additional 4 litre saucepan to provide a top up. This was a trial run to see if I could get a little more out of the batch. Again, my daughter Alice was a keen as ever to get involved in the process. I have fond memories of brewing beer with my own Dad when I was younger and I think this made an impression of my enjoyment of beer to this day.
I split the initial 4 kilos of Malt into two even batches and the first 2 kilos to the brew bag that sat nicely inside the cool box (image above). At this point, the strike water was nicely heating to our target of around 70°c before being poured into the cool box to sit for 75 minutes (extracting the all important sugars from the malt).
Whilst we waited, Alice and I enjoyed some time in the garden before weighing out the hops into plastic cups. The hops had arrived in small, individual vacuum sealed packets. It is really great how Get 'Er Brewed are able to cater from such small hop orders.
Like me, Alice really enjoyed smelling the different hop varieties - I think he might have a future hop-head on our hands! The Simcoe variety is a personal favourite of mine from this batch but they all smell great!
Next job, transfer the wort into the 'kettle' for an hour of boiling and hopping. Again, using a gas hop gave really good control of the rolling boil. Using the 2 pots also gave me the ability to 'top up' the main kettle as liquid boiled away. I took the liberty of adding proportionate amounts of hops to each kettle at the appropriate times - this being Simcoe at the start, Cascade 10 minutes from the end and Simcoe and Mosaic at flame off. Mosaic makes up the majority of the hops added to this beer and should give the beer a great aroma once ready.
I did notice that despite adding only 1.5g of Cascade to the brew, the aroma this tiny amount of hop pellet provided was immense.
The first batch was now ready to cool (image on left). I have put the image next to my first brew Alice Porter (image on right) to show the slight difference in batch size using 2 pots rather than 1. I was really happy with the amount produced and found that I had hit my target gravity of 1044 and set to work producing the second batch following the same methodology.
The second batch added a really decent quantity of wort to the fermenter (image below left) and left me with around 16 litres to play with. This is still a little short of the original target but is an improvement on the first brew. I had a sachet of Fermentis Safale US-05 dried yeast left over from a previous brew order so decided to put this to use (using the whole sachet).
Somewhere along the second batch process, I lost a little consistency and managed to reduced the Original Gravity of the wort. I think this may be due to the use of 2 kettles and transferring some of the wort from the smaller pot to the larger one - it wasn't the end of the world as will be discussed further down. Once mixed and aerated (by shaking in the fermenter with lid on) the whole batch had an Original Gravity of 1040 at 20°c.
I left the fermenter in our upstairs spare bedroom - which seems to have the most stable temperature with a blanket over the top to provide additional insulation. After 4 days, I decided to measure the gravity of the brew and was surprised to find that it had dropped rapidly to 1004 - 4 below target and hence making up for the 4 under target before primary fermentation.
Using the Brewer's Friend ABV calculator gave me an ABV of around 4.7% and a reading that allowed me to begin bottling. I was surprised at how quickly the yeast had worked and perhaps felt that I was rushing things a little. That said, the whole process is an experimentation and I can reflect on the speed of bottling a little later on.
Bottling, a process I quite enjoy was made easier by the stock of ready cleaned and delabelled bottles I had collected over the past few months. I sanitised the bottles and syphon using Campden tablet solution before setting up in the kitchen.
I used around 1 teaspoon of caster sugar in each bottle as a priming sugar (this added a decent amount of carbonation to Alice Porter so I stuck with the same method)
The brew syphoned well for the first 10 litres and I managed to fill around 20 bottles without a problem. Towards the bottom of the fermentation bin I encountered familiar issues with hop and yeast sediments blocking the siphon tube (I am using a sediment trap and filter bag). I think this might need to be my next task to fix before brewing again.
In total, I managed to get 26 bottles (of various sizes) capped using bright green crowns that are (at the time of writing) sat in a warm upstairs room undergoing bottle conditioning. The beer appears to be clearing well but a sediment is forming at the base of each bottle.
I think I might experiment with a fining technique in future brews but will fully reflect once the beer is ready and tasted. I don't want to remove too much yeast from the bottle as this could affect the final product.
Beer tasting will commence once the beer is ready... I might crack one or two early to see how the beer taste changes over time...
Impatient brewer's taste test: 8th April 2020 - 7 days post bottling... the beer has a really nice golden colour and is clearing well. Not a huge amount of hop in the aroma (mainly a malty, beery smell). The taste is bitter but not unpleasant with what I would describe as a decent malt bed. The yeast clearly hasn't finished it's magic yet as the carbonation is low and the hops are yet to be lifted by the carbon dioxide in the beer.
Second taste test (15th April 2020): 2 weeks since bottling and the beer is clearing nicely in the bottle. There is quite a bit of trub and sediment at the base but a careful pour and most of it has stayed in the bottle. At the weekend I was contacted by a brewer in Northern Ireland who kindly gave me some feedback and he reckons I need to be more patient before bottling in future - will take his advice next time! Anyway, the beer tastes good. There is a good malt base and a decent bitterness to the ale which is from the hops. Not much aroma but this beer is very much enjoyable at this stage so hopefully will only get better as the beer matures a little over the next few weeks. I would happily be put on lockdown with this beer as my only reserve.
Brew day: 28th March 2020
Bottling day: 1st April 2020
I really enjoyed this beer and can often pick it up in the local shop. It is a decent and well hopped IPA that I can usually all night. The recipe looked simple enough and the malt bill was small meaning a fairly cheap order - which arrived from Get 'Er Brewed (5 days from order to delivery).
The previous brew day using my new kit was such a success, I decided to scale up the batch and aim for 20 litres of wort - produced in 2 separate batches, then mixed at the end before adding the yeast.
Whilst we waited, Alice and I enjoyed some time in the garden before weighing out the hops into plastic cups. The hops had arrived in small, individual vacuum sealed packets. It is really great how Get 'Er Brewed are able to cater from such small hop orders. Like me, Alice really enjoyed smelling the different hop varieties - I think he might have a future hop-head on our hands! The Simcoe variety is a personal favourite of mine from this batch but they all smell great!
Next job, transfer the wort into the 'kettle' for an hour of boiling and hopping. Again, using a gas hop gave really good control of the rolling boil. Using the 2 pots also gave me the ability to 'top up' the main kettle as liquid boiled away. I took the liberty of adding proportionate amounts of hops to each kettle at the appropriate times - this being Simcoe at the start, Cascade 10 minutes from the end and Simcoe and Mosaic at flame off. Mosaic makes up the majority of the hops added to this beer and should give the beer a great aroma once ready.I did notice that despite adding only 1.5g of Cascade to the brew, the aroma this tiny amount of hop pellet provided was immense.
The first batch was now ready to cool (image on left). I have put the image next to my first brew Alice Porter (image on right) to show the slight difference in batch size using 2 pots rather than 1. I was really happy with the amount produced and found that I had hit my target gravity of 1044 and set to work producing the second batch following the same methodology.
The second batch added a really decent quantity of wort to the fermenter (image below left) and left me with around 16 litres to play with. This is still a little short of the original target but is an improvement on the first brew. I had a sachet of Fermentis Safale US-05 dried yeast left over from a previous brew order so decided to put this to use (using the whole sachet).
Somewhere along the second batch process, I lost a little consistency and managed to reduced the Original Gravity of the wort. I think this may be due to the use of 2 kettles and transferring some of the wort from the smaller pot to the larger one - it wasn't the end of the world as will be discussed further down. Once mixed and aerated (by shaking in the fermenter with lid on) the whole batch had an Original Gravity of 1040 at 20°c. I left the fermenter in our upstairs spare bedroom - which seems to have the most stable temperature with a blanket over the top to provide additional insulation. After 4 days, I decided to measure the gravity of the brew and was surprised to find that it had dropped rapidly to 1004 - 4 below target and hence making up for the 4 under target before primary fermentation.
Using the Brewer's Friend ABV calculator gave me an ABV of around 4.7% and a reading that allowed me to begin bottling. I was surprised at how quickly the yeast had worked and perhaps felt that I was rushing things a little. That said, the whole process is an experimentation and I can reflect on the speed of bottling a little later on.
Bottling, a process I quite enjoy was made easier by the stock of ready cleaned and delabelled bottles I had collected over the past few months. I sanitised the bottles and syphon using Campden tablet solution before setting up in the kitchen.I used around 1 teaspoon of caster sugar in each bottle as a priming sugar (this added a decent amount of carbonation to Alice Porter so I stuck with the same method)
The brew syphoned well for the first 10 litres and I managed to fill around 20 bottles without a problem. Towards the bottom of the fermentation bin I encountered familiar issues with hop and yeast sediments blocking the siphon tube (I am using a sediment trap and filter bag). I think this might need to be my next task to fix before brewing again.
I think I might experiment with a fining technique in future brews but will fully reflect once the beer is ready and tasted. I don't want to remove too much yeast from the bottle as this could affect the final product.
Beer tasting will commence once the beer is ready... I might crack one or two early to see how the beer taste changes over time...
Impatient brewer's taste test: 8th April 2020 - 7 days post bottling... the beer has a really nice golden colour and is clearing well. Not a huge amount of hop in the aroma (mainly a malty, beery smell). The taste is bitter but not unpleasant with what I would describe as a decent malt bed. The yeast clearly hasn't finished it's magic yet as the carbonation is low and the hops are yet to be lifted by the carbon dioxide in the beer.
Second taste test (15th April 2020): 2 weeks since bottling and the beer is clearing nicely in the bottle. There is quite a bit of trub and sediment at the base but a careful pour and most of it has stayed in the bottle. At the weekend I was contacted by a brewer in Northern Ireland who kindly gave me some feedback and he reckons I need to be more patient before bottling in future - will take his advice next time! Anyway, the beer tastes good. There is a good malt base and a decent bitterness to the ale which is from the hops. Not much aroma but this beer is very much enjoyable at this stage so hopefully will only get better as the beer matures a little over the next few weeks. I would happily be put on lockdown with this beer as my only reserve.
Third taste test (6th May 2020): The beer is really well settled now and bottle conditioning has done it massive favours. Carbonation has worked well and the head remains throughout the drink. The beer is easy drinking and has a good balance of malt and hoppy bitterness (not overpowering at all). Very much happy with the outcome of this recipe and will try it again sometime to see if we can perfect it a little more.
Overall this beer got better with age and was a perfect session ale for a hot summer day. Overall beer rating: 4/5 (one to try again!)
Ingredients
Malts: Pale Ale, Wheat Malt, Caramalt, Munich.
Hops: Simcoe, Cascade, Mosaic.
Yeast: Fermentis Safale US-05 Yeast (Dried yeast)
Batch size: (26 bottles - various sizes)
Ingredients
Malts: Pale Ale, Wheat Malt, Caramalt, Munich.
Hops: Simcoe, Cascade, Mosaic.
Yeast: Fermentis Safale US-05 Yeast (Dried yeast)
Batch size: (26 bottles - various sizes)
OG: 1040
FG: 1004
ABV: 4.7%
FG: 1004
ABV: 4.7%
Brew Efficiency = 50%
Notes: #300 in DIY Dog Recipe.
Notes: #300 in DIY Dog Recipe.
Comments
Post a Comment