Brew 11 - No More Lands to Conquer? (Golden Ale)

Brew 11 - No More Lands to Conquer? (Golden Ale)


Brew day: 31/10/2020
Bottle day: 14/11/2020

I'd been chatting to my father in law for months about doing a brew day and had been pestering him to let me know which style of beer he would like to make. He'd tried a few of my previous brews and isn't a huge fan of the citrus hopped varieties so I suggested we make something a little more traditional. I've recently enjoyed a few Golden Ales and find that the style is quite underrated in the current world of dank NEIPAs and full on Stoats. 

I started of with a bit of research. I knew what a Golden Ale tasted like and I enjoy a few quite a bit (Bay's Devon Dumpling springs to mind). The brew should be pale/light with very low SRM. I selected a base Extra Pale Malt and then chucked in a small amount of Light Crystal to raise the colour just above what it should be (I don't like to follow convention too much). 

Next job was to select some hops. I wanted to add a decent bitterness and flavour but avoid the citrus (something a bit new for me as I love citrus hops). East Kent Goldings will provide a nice bitterness and then I've selected Willamette to provide the end of boil flavours and aromas. I think both hop varieties are quite subtle but I'm trying to balance flavour with the preference of my father in law. 

To brew it, I've gone with a Lallemand Nottingham yeast. I was quite impressed with the last Lallemand dry yeast I used. 

We set a brew date (Halloween!) and I get set up ready for this collab beer to be made! First job (after fishing out the kit) is to set up the mash. I'm going for consistency today - no experimentation - but dropping back to the method that work so well with Gardener's Gloves and Off the Cuff IPA. 2 batch brew with a standard 60min mash using the cool box. The strike water hit 70 deg C and in it goes. Before this, I'd added half a Campden Tablet to the water - this didn't have any negative effects on the Evil Pea IPA so going to try it again. 

Mash details: 
Batch 1 - Strike water quantity = 15.7 litres @ 70 deg C for 60 mins. 
Batch 2 - Strike water quantity = 9 litres @ 70 deg C for 60 mins. 

20 mins later - quick mash check and we are holding well at 64 deg C (pretty much where I wanted it). The first batch is PALE - almost white - which makes for an interesting idea for a future brew (maybe a White IPA?). The gravity on this 1st batch is also LOW (1.030 odd). We measure out the 2nd malt bill and come across the key reason... 

All of the darker/crystal malt is at the bottom of the bag so little/none is in that first batch - not to worry, it will all end up in the same FV after all (?!). 2nd batch was much darker and the gravity came out above 1.050. 

Each batch is boil separately and then hops added as follows: 
- 12.5g EKG @ 60mins 
- 5g EKG @ 30mins
- Half tab of Protafloc @ 15mins + 5g Williamette 
- 7.5g of Williamette @ Flame out

We then mixed the 2 batches into the FV and added Ice bottles to cool. The Start OG is a respectable 1.045 and the wort looks much more golden in colour. 

Definitely some lessons to be learnt on the batch side of things here... 








I had a quick taste test a few days for bottling, aside from the yeasty flavours, the bitterness and malt flavours are good and I would say that the ale is beginning to taste like a true Golden Ale. Consequently, I was shopping in LIDL and they were selling some Golden Goose ales that matched the style. Upon tasting that, I was even more confident that we had hit the recipe perfectly.

Bottle day arrives and we smash through it in about an hour, nothing new here really. 60g priming sugar added to 500ml of hot water, added to the pressure barrel before siphoning. 26 bottles out of this batch is a great haul. Alex has decided on a name - "No More Lands to Conquer" - based on the famous Alexander the Great quote. I made a suggestion that we make it "No More Lands to Conquer?" as who knows if this beer will be the best we can make...

Ingredients
Malts: Extra Pale Malt, Light Crystal. 
Hops: EKG and Willamette
Yeast: Lallemand Nottingham Ale
Batch size Target: 15L
Batch size into FV: 14L
Batch size Actual: 13L
Number of bottles from batch: 26 x 500ml bottles. 
Actual OG: 1.045
Actual FG: 1.006
Actual ABV: 5.2%
Brew Efficiency: 40.5%


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