NZ IPA and black IPA

Tasting night tonight: I tasted the two experiemental brews as posted a wee while ago.

So I'll startwith the main brew, which is the NZ IPA, I've named the brew Two Face IPa, as I've run the experiments etc.

Two Fale Pale IPA:

Appearance: Pours a Golden copper colour, with white/off white head, it's a tad Hazy, which I think is chill Haze coupled with the wheat I used in the brew.

Aroma: this is the fun part, The Aroma is definitely there., this hop steeping thing has some power behind it in regards to the aroma. nice hoppy spicyness from the motueka and lingering end with the cascade.

Flavour: this is where the beer falls a bit flat, mind the pun. The aroma from the steep is there, but its lacking in flavour contribution from this addition. Although I'll elaborate more shortly. good Malt backbone, and good head retention.

Overall: Good solid brew, hardly a winner in most books. shame its not clearer and hoppier as I'd hoped.

Now the black

Two Face Black IPA:

Appearance: Crystal Clear dark brown, with ruby high lights, good head retention.

Aroma: againthe hop aroma is there, and funnily enough there a slight coffee aroma, (at this point, I should point out that the Dark Malt addition, I actually forgot to boil the wort from the cold steep). 

Flavour:  this again is where it gets a bit more fun. yeast is the difference between these two brews, along with the hops flavour. This is a very good beer, malty backbone, with a caramel hit, followed by a stronger hoppier flavour to follow. good bitterness.

Overall: good solid beer, not quite a mdeal winner as such, but definitely better than the pale version.

New Post time, so I can figure out what I'm saying.

Belgian IPA

hi everyone, got this brewed up on the weekend, and ran short on volume, because of the high amount of hops, definitely got through some of my stock.

initial fermentation started after 6 hours or so, and went strongly until this morning, thats about 36 hours, now its stopped bubbling, as I've had some fermentation issues recently, I am quite paranoid and concerned about finishing too early, it went gangbusters, so I'm really hoping it's done something and will slowly continue to do so, I'm not touching it until 1 week and I'll then check it, if its ok I'll be dryhopping, If not, then I'm not sure I'm tempted to chuck 3711 at it, I'm pretty sure that'll  chew through it, but I don't want to eat all of it, if its within cooey I'm not touching it, and I'll just up the dryhop I guess.

this is my last brew before surgery, and if it doesn't finish, the break won't come too soon, with my Plan B Clone not finishing either, and a ninfection happening as it didnt finish then when I chucked more yeast at it, the yeast didn't take, it oxidised and from there an infection happened, I think some bugs got in, as I transferred it to another bucket. namely a larger one, which didn't help inthe slightest.

Fingers crossed for this one, I almost feel like I should have just chucked US-05 at it, get myself another IPA, but americanised.

surgery is happening on 21 May and it'll be around 3 weeks in a sling, before moving begins and rehab starts, then I think I'll be able to makje some small brews.

Belgian IPA

Well, I changed my mind again.... So Many Recipes such little time.
I wanted to brew my Belgian Red Ale, but I wanted something Hoppy again, so I decided to combine the 2. and I've had this recipe on the "to do list" for quite sometime. And as I'll be going for surgery soon, and have plenty of hops etc. I thought , why not.
Now I don't have access to Honey Malt, which is a shame, as it sounds damn tasty. So I've subbed it with Some Melanoidin, and the left over Cara-Belge I have left (which isn't much).

The other sub I need to do is Simcoe, as I dont have any and can't be bothered buying 50 grams to only use half of that anyways. so I'm using Amarillo, which I have plenty of anyway. The recipe will be posted new Week, but its on homebrewtalk.com anyways.

I'm mashing low at 65 deg C, and doing Partial Mash.

Separate note, I have an issue again with my Backup Plan, theres some white specs appearing, which mean I may have another infection developing, but it still tastes ok. So, I'll scoop this stuff off tonight, and Dryhop it with Nelson. and bottle over the weekend, I'm not overly fussed with this beer now, so I'll use 24 330ml bottles and the rest of the beer can be chucked. I'll be using Carb drops to bottle cos its super easy, and there little clean up to do as well.
I'm thinking its less of a cleanliness thing and more of a I'll rack and add some random yeast to try to get more out of it, its a 1.018, which gives me about 2.3-2.4% abv, might be good for all the pain pills I'll have after surgery. lol.

and Lastly, I'll be posting some photos of the Hard work I've been doing building a brewery... i.e putting power in etc.
I really hope my Belgian IPA comes out well, after the recent disasters I've had. fingers Crossed.
Yeast Cake (Provided it works will be used for the BigBelgian Beer I've been planning to condition while I can't lift things). Will be good to see if I can do it...

Poor Yeast Viability

SO, it seems I have a poor yeast Viability issue, the 1214 I am using for my Backup Plan, is not running, it started bubbling about 6 hours after pitching, then 8 hours late that was it, so i left it and left it, hoping it was still doing something, it stopped at 1.020, yet another stuck fermentation on a small 12 litre batch!
I figured out that the viability may not be quite so good on the yeast and I guess that my own fault, as there wasn't a whole lotta activity, during the starter time.

So, I re-pitched a Dry Yeast packet of T-58, and it seems to be doing something, which confirms the yeast were a bit pooped, it'll be interesting to see what it tastes like at the end, I'm fermenting on the upper scale of this T-58 yeast.

Basically, its not going to taste anything like the commercial version of Plan B, but here's hoping it has a slight taste or something close-ish.

Next up, anotherchange of plans: I'll be making a belgian Red Ale, I've been working on a recipe for it, sessionable at around 5.5-5.7 % abv. With a new packet of 1214, I'm hoping this will work and I'll finally get my yeast cake for the KWAK Clone recipe I've got on the cards, Hopefully before Surgery. I'm still waiting for ACC anyways, So, I kinda figure I can get another brew or two in. In particular If I can get the KWAK clone down and maybe I'll get a helping hand from a local brewer to do some heavy lifting. once its racked over to another vessel.

What do you do on a rainy day??

Me? I brew....
i just mashed in on my Plan B Clone, I've appropriately named it Backup Plan, which is exactly what it is... a bakc up plan for not being able to put power in my garage, because of the rain, too wet to do it, so I've set my grage up to mash and boil, i measured everything in prepaation, in case of such an occasion...
here it is

Secondly this is the update on the electricity... nothing, we wired up my temp controller for the fridge, and I had everything ready to go, but good old new zealand really turned on the weather.

Rugby tonight, just me and the old man by the sounds. I'll be interested to see how this recipe comes out, I'm not sparging this beer, so efficiency may be an issue, but the est efficiency at 70% is 1.038, which is dead on, fingers crossed i hit it or at least get 1-2 point near., mashed at 70.5degrees for 60 -70 mins, tempted to mash longer maybe 15 mins then remove grains and mash out, then re-add and dunk the grains to remove additional sugar.

Electricity

As Jeremy Clarkson would say..... POWER!!!!!!!
That's the operative word at my place, I'm finally getting mains power to the garage :)
Wish me luck, there will be a series of pictures as time progresses, the mains are being run tomorrow, and then as time goes, lights, plugs etc.
I'll be powering it up to get a fermentation fridge running, and later in life, as money and time permits a 3 vessel single tier brewery... get some more consistent brews, better efficiency, etc.

On a separate noite, my NZ IPA is almost ready to bottle, It's being cold crashed in the morning until the sunday when i get a chance to bottle, the same with the dark version, fingers crossed this turns out.
photos to come...
Oh and theres a brew planned in theory... I dont really have time, but the ingredients are there and if we finish the power earlyish, I'll crack on, with a PLAN B Clone.
this beer is from yeastie boys, and as such Stu the master brewer was kind enough to e mail through a recipe, which I have adjusted the smallest bit. with and extra 50g of pale malt, and 5 grams of carabelge.
this will make little to no difference. hops are weighed, and so on and so forth.

Exciting times for me.

NZ IPA and 2 Technique experiments...

As I drink Douglas's Belgian amber, The last Beer in our CHCH Case swap. This morning I took the time i had and made a partial mash with NZ Hops, Pacific Gem, Motueka and Cascade NZ. I beat efficiency, I find that using the brewshop.co.nz Light DME helps with this. Heres a Picture of the colour I got at Transfer...
Pretty good colour, I added 1 teaspoon of Calcium Sulphate to help bring out some of that hop flavour. I used Pacific Gem for bittering,which may be a bit old? I opened the freezer and found that the Pacific Gem was open, so I took 25grams at 60 mins. along with 30g of NZ Cascade and Motueka at 10 minutes and 0 mins. I got hold of WLP090 to try and fix my Porter, but if you look at my previous post i didn't get to use it..
I made a starter for the brew on thursday night, gives plenty of time for the yeast to grow.
Now onto my experiments:
Number One:
Cold steeping - Because I had my infection, I needed to get a dark/black beer for the local CHCH Brew Competition in may. So I thought I'd give this a go. 50grams of Carafa II in 250mls of Room temperature Water. this was put in on Friday morning, mashed for 24hours approximately, then sparged with 200-250ml of 76 degree water, through a sieve. This came out a really inky Black colour, so i split off 4 litres of the finished wort, into a small Demi-John, nice and dark. when I checked the OG there was no difference though, I can't say I'm disappointed, I was just looking for that dark Colour for a Black IPA. It certainly has worked. so far so Good. Heres a Picture.

Experiment Two:
Hot Steeping Hops in 80 Degree Water, for a certain period of time.
I've read a bit about a couple of breweries who use a piece of brewing equipment called a hop percolator, so i thought I'd try  a bastardised version of it, to see if I could gain  any additional Aroma/flavour/bitterness out of the flameout hops. The process I used is to Heat 1 litre on water to boiling point for sanitation, then I let it move down to 80 degrees C and added 25g of Motueka and 25g CascadeNZ, and ad these to the hot water and let it sit for the brewing period, in this case, I probably pre-empted the situation and transferred off the  hops using a sieve and hop bag. i then added the water to the cooled wort in tbhe fermenter, time will tell if this was worth it.
I'm hoping it'll work. and it certainly saves wort/ trub losses.

OG 1.060
Est FG 1.012-4
I'll keep you posted on the results of this.
See you again soon.