Brew 4 - Bramble Pie IPA

Brew 4 - Bramble Pie IPA 

Brew day: 30th May 2020
Bottle day: 11th June 2020

Background:
If first knowingly came across Bramling Cross as a hop variety when I tried a can of Bad Co.'s Denver Milk Stoat in 2019. I found the intense flavours quite interesting and it was different to other Milk Stoats I had tried before - dark fruit or berry flavours on top of rich malt and milk.

 

At the time, I was brewing a Chocolate Stoat Extract kit from Wilko's (my last kit brew before turning to BIAB All grain brewing) and was due to bottle in the next week. I decided to purchase a 100g bag of Bramling Cross online and added a small amount (about 10g) to dry hop the remaining 5L of beer in the fermenting vessel. The experimental beer turned out better than the kit (not that surprising really) and I wished I had used the hops with the entire batch. The remaining 90g has been sat in the freezer since and needs using. 


Brewdog to the rescue again. I stumbled across recipe #54 - Bramling X and decided to piece together another order on Get 'Er Brewed, so now await the arrival of this so that another brew day can take place. 

I've taken a step back after the last 2 brews haven't quite lived up to expectation (feedback has been good but I know I can do better). My first step has been to input the recipe into Brewer's Friend and build the recipe as close to the Brewdog version as I can. The recipe can be found here.

  

I've also taken steps to purchase a new syphon tube with a inbuilt hop/sediment filter that sits as a basket at the end of the hose (I might not use the hop bags this time as the hops are in flower form and shouldn't block the filter like the pellets do). 

 

I'm also planning on using some sterilised PET-Plastic 2L bottles filled with ice to chuck into the kettle to aid cooling. I think my cooling process has been a stumbling block to the quality and clarity of the beer so hoping these steps improve the end product. I love the learning curve of brewing and find that each new brew throws up new challenges to innovate around. 

Brew Day
Fairly early start to get a brew in before we headed out at 2pm. The mash hit temperature well - aimed for 65 deg. C today as I'm hoping to hit a decent ABV - the higher the better. Going with a 2 batch, 60 min mash instead of the usual 75 mins to help shave off 30mins over all. I took the Bramling Cross out of the freezer to bring them up to room temperature and noticed how the hops smell of cheesy feet - very pongy but I'm sure the final beer will have a different character!

  

5.2kg of malt in this brew made the malt bill a lot larger than previous brews. Again, I ordered from Get 'Er Brewed and it all arrived within a week (rapid considering the distance it travels). The bulk of the malt (4.8kg) was an Extra Pale with a small amount of Caramalt and Crystal 150 to add a little colour. The malt absorb a lot of the strike water and subsequently, I only had about 8 litres of wort to fill my larger kettle (previously I'd exited with about 10 litres). Another learning point would be to add another litre or 2 of strike water to the mash tun (I might look into this). 


The boil went well, I hit rolling boil fairly quickly and found that I was able to control the bubbling well on gas (not a lot ended up on the hob!). Whilst waiting for the wort to boil I had a final play around with my hop addition times using Brewer's Friend Recipe Builder. I understood that hop additions early on add to the bitterness but it was mainly the flavour I wanted to extract from this understated hop variety. 

Brewdog's version has a IBU of 75. In the end I opted for 15g at 15 mins and then another 30g at 40mins into the 45 min boil. Along with this I also added Irish Moss to aid flocculation - my previous brews had been really cloudy (I don't mind this but I wanted to try for a clear brew). The brew at this point should have around 60 IBU.


The 2 batch method worked well, by the time I had finished one boil the next batch has finished mashing and was ready for the kettle. I managed to syphon the hot wort into a fermentation vessel using my new hop filter leaving behind the trub and spent hops. This left behind a little of the wort but allowed me to get a decent attempt towards a clearer brew. I put the 2L plastic bottle straight from the freezer to cool the first batch whilst I boiled the next. 

It turns out that the frozen plastic bottles worked really well to rapidly cool the wort. I added the 2nd batch, another plastic bottle and a freezer block and place the fermenting vessel outside in the shade. By the time I had cleaned up I noticed that the wort had cooled so rapidly that I had achieved Cold Break. This is the first time I had achieved this and was impressed to see the flocculation taking place. I do wonder if the Irish Moss was responsible for this but it matters not. 


Cold break caught me a little off guard so I reacted quickly to get my Mash Tun sterilised and then used the syphon and filter to separate the wort from the trub, I had some issues remove the bottom of the vessel and time was running out so I ended up dumping about a litre containing the trub. In hindsight, I've realised that you don't need to necessarily separate the wort and trub at this stage so next time I think I might pitch the yeast and remove the trub right at the end before bottling. 

All in all, a successful brew day that started at 9am and was completed by 2pm (it took me about and hour to do the last step so I was ready to pitch the yeast at 1pm). The Original Gravity was 1044 - some way short of target but again something to work on for future brews. Having looked at a few articles and forums, it seems that I have 3 key things to try and get the OG up: 1. Longer Mash (possibly 90mins), 2. Higher start temperature of strike water (the temperature dropped a fair bit in the cooler), 3. Squeeze the bag and get every drop out as I can. I did worry that this increases the input of tannins but the experts seem to think not. 

Update - 2nd June 2020
The brew has progressed well and the head has reduced a lot. I decided to take a quick gravity reading - which has come out at 1004. I'm amazed how quickly the yeast has worked but intend to keep the lid on this one for at least another week and a half yet. 

I need to look into how to reduce the attenuation of the beer to maintain a higher FG - I'm certain it it to do with mash temp and doing it slightly higher to extract a few more sugars that are less fermentable. That said, I also need to work on my initial extraction to maintain ABV - both need to happen in order to maintain a decent brew.  


Bottling Day - 11th June 2020
Ok, I admit, its not 2 weeks but it is the longest I've left a brew before so give me a break. I decided to bottle as I had the time and the gravity had settled out at 1003 for over a week. This left the brew at around 5.4% which is brilliant. 

I decided to bottle using the pressure barrel again (the tap is perfect for controlling the flow into the bottles). The yeast had fallen out of the beer really nicely, leaving a big layer of trub at the bottom of the bin. The smell was interesting and the beer tasted good without carbonation. More like a traditional ale/bitter than and IPA but the carbonation should help bring out the hop aroma and flavour over the coming weeks.

All in all, another successful brew in the bag... and 16 hopefully tasty beers to drink!

 


Update: The beer has cleared incredibly well and is conditioning really well. The beer is nicely bitter and makes a change to the usual IPAs with citrus flavour. I'm comparing this one to Old Speckled Hen - it is very much an English Pale Ale with the use of an Old World Hop. I think the beer could easily be confused for a Best Bitter or something a little more traditional but I'm really impressed with the outcome and will certainly go back to this hop variety in the future. Overall beer rating: 3.5/5


Ingredients
Malts: Crisp Extra Pale Malt, Crisp Cara Malt, Crisp Organic Crystal (145-165 EBC). 
Hops: Bramling Cross
Yeast: Fermentis Safale US-05 Yeast (Dried yeast) 
Batch size Target: 15L 
Batch size Actual: 10L
Number of bottles from batch: 16 bottles
Target OG: 1069
Actual OG: 1044
Target FG: 1017
Gravity on 02/06/2020: 1004
Gravity on 04/06/2020: 1003
Actual FG: 1003
Target ABV: 6.8%
Actual ABV: 5.4%
Brew Efficiency: 27%

Notes: #54 (Bramling X) in DIY Dog Recipe.



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