A Nice Roasty Porter.

Well on the weekend, we probably drank a few too many of Sons of Liberty, and man what a great beer. Here are some notes on it:

AROMA: Roasted Malts, chocolatey roast aroma, slight hint of sweetness, this could be the fruity american hops trying to break through, perfect balance.
APPEARANCE: Crystal clear, opaque black colour, with ruby highlights. this really cleared up nicely with a short cold crash and an even shorter secondary, it seems I've worked out a pretty good process for clearing the beers up a bit.
FLAVOUR: Rich Malt, probably a tad sweet the additional 2 gravity points I wanted would of made this a real winner. even 1 point would of made it better. rich and malty, with a dry roasty finish, very "Robust". Good balance of bitterness to the beer., not hoppy just a hint of something, either the sweetness of the hops trying to do something/mixing together.
MOUTHFEEL: Thick, very thick, and rich, perfect carbonation at around 2.2 volumes. Head is sticky and a nice lacing down the glass. indicates to me a good creamy feel.

OVERALL: A good solid Porter, definitely on the list for re-brewing. Possibly with Challenger to see if I can establish the unidentified flavour coming through. Rich, thick and malty, with the perfect bitterness to style. Advice from the brew guys in Christchurch was to increase gravity by a couple of point, to assist with attenuation, and drop the temp down to 67 for mash temp. the other advice was to use an english hop, see what the differences are, and they felt the Amarillo hops were a bit wasted here.
NHC Beer Number 1, worthy of mention.

Big weekend coming up too.
I'm bottling the Knights of Freedom. This is a final gravity which happens to be 1.012
I'm also doing my first double brew day. Epic weekend coming up.

Smells like Freedom.....Kinda.

Onto my last brew before the NHC2013.
An American Pale Ale, based off the Electric Pale Ale, at www.electricbrewery.com.
This is the last of my Amarillo hops, which is a shame, Its a shame about the lack of availability of this hop.

anyways, ont othe recipe, It's listed here: Knights of Freedom Pale Ale. A Hopbursted Pale Ale, with all the hops going in from 20mins onwards. Wiuth a good Citra Dryhop... i didn't have enough Citra hops, and had exactly 16g of Amarillo, which makes it a 40g single dryhop.

Secondly, I have bottled both my Empire of gold Blonde Ale, after a 10day Lagering period. Then I also bottled BATHED IN BLOOD Red ale. And boy is it tasty, It's gonna be a good beer, and when tasted in a few weeks, I'll get a good idea of whether its gonna be something that may actually get a medal...

And of course Lastly, I poured a bottle of The sons of Librty Porter. nise tasty brew, probably needs another week or so. Its maybe a tad sweet, which is due to the uinder attenuation at 1.019/20. but still very tasty, and waaaaay to easy to drink.

I'm running a small beer tasting for my friends on the Night of NHC, so will post full tasting notes of each individual beer at that time.
Oh and By the way, I'm listing the tasting beers on Untappd, so in future, should anyone receive a bottle from me. Please rate it on untappd.
Catch you next time, when i embark on my first double brewday, to make a two NZ Session Bitters.

Bathed in Blood a Red IPA

Saturday was an interesting day, I transferred the Empire of gold over to secondary for lagering.
I also brewed up an american amber. It's slightly out of style guidelines for bitterness and OG, based on the recipe, although the eventuating day didn't bring about the numbers i was looking for.

Here is my red IPA Recipe. Dubbed Bathed in Blood.
Brew day itself went ok, and i hit an extra litre again, and a slightly lower OG because of it.
The numbers I hit are as follows:
OG1.061
22 Litres into Fermenter.
Mash temp 67 degrees, Choc malt added with 15 mins to go.
609 min Mash time.
strike temp: 74deg c
I added 2g Chloride and 7g Sulfate to the mash.
Fermenting at 18.5 degrees for 48 hours ramped to 19 degrees this morning.

FG of the Empire of gold has turn out to be around 1.011 and currently lagering in my second fridge. It will sit in there at low temperatures until I bottle the Red IPA. they will then be bottled at the same time.
Then it'll be onto my last NHC recipe... An American Pale Ale. I'm not entirely sure of a name yet I'm still working on that.

This is my Empire..... of Gold

Hi Everyone, another beer brewed, another fermentation under way... Despite a couple of small issues.

Firstly, the Beer:  this beer dates back to one of my first  Extract batches, which had not real fermentation control, and as such the temperature got a taqd warm, causing some flavour issues to start with. The resulting beer at 4-6months, was actually rather tasty. A nice malty blonde ale, no real hop kick to speak of. i was initially disappointed with the beer, but in retrospect, it turned out to be a good beer. a nice entry into craft beer.

Here is the original recipe from the first time I did it: Ska Tru Blonde Ale

followed closely by the new updated recipe, Empire of Gold

As you can see theres a couple of changes to the recipe, mainly to keep it within style and a nice light summery type beer.

The only real issue to speak of was the yeast starter, I used WYeast 2565, Kolsch (another change to the recipe) The pack I had was actually considerably older than I had anticipated, meanin a slightly longer lag time on the beer beginning fermentation. I'm hoping it won't crap out early. But other than that it went relatively smooth, Hit gravity, and 1 litre under volume, which I'm ok with, Given I pitched the starter direct into the brew.

There aren't that many commercial examples out there, because everyone like big bold flavours. this will be a nice light, simple true to style beer. Beer number 2 into NHC2013.

Lastly  Beer#1 into NHC, my Sons of Liberty Porter, Finished a tad higher than I expected, but its tasting mighty fine, and Theres a good Hop aroma on it, taste wise dark roasty, and smooth. finished at what turned out to be 1.019, which is acceptable. 

New Beers...Some Tasting Notes and a Good Weekend All Around!

Hi everyone.

the weekend just been was a pretty good one, We spent most of the weekend drinking and tasting beers.....

I could have asked for worse  :)

Heres a list of beers I tried and tasted over the weekend: List from best to Worst

1. Behemoth - Celia Wade Brown Ale (Best of the weekend)

2. Green flash West coast IPA

3. Kakariki - Goldilocks Blonde ale

4. Green Flash - Hop Head Red

5. Epic - Comet

The Celia Wade Brown Ale had to be the pick of the weekend, for me. Here is a review of the beer

Appearance: Dark Brown, Nice and clear with a good off white head., lacing round the glass to the end.

Aroma: smells of  roasted malts and minor ash, with a good chocolatey hit.

Flavour: Dark and roasty, superb, poured at room temperature. off the hand pull. nice and sticky, qwuite creamy.

Overall: Superb beer, shame its not more common around Christchurch, would be interested to see how it tastes off the tap./bottle.

Worst; well not so much worst but most disappointing, Epic's New Comet. As a Hop Head I was bitterly disappointed...'so to speak' good aroma and flavour, but it tastes.... just. like,. the rest of them. Zythos and Mosaic I mean. I'm a bit over the whole Epic craft beer thing I guess, there are so many new breweries doing so many exciting things out there, and it just seems like another Pale Ale, and not alot of thoughts been put into it.

A Beer of note while a the twisted Hop, is the Kakariki Blonde Ale. Nice for entrants into the craft beer scene, I reckon it has some Honey malt in it, even though its not generally available in New Zealand. big honey taste, very sweet. no real hop aroma to speak of.

And speaking of Blonde Ale; I've got a Re-brew of one of the original recipes from my early days, transferred to all grain, from extract. and some little tweaks. Watch this space for the recipe on Brewtoad.

Wish me luck.

The American Revolution - Porter Style

Howdy everyone.
Sunday was a brew day for me, and it was a good one, couldn't have gone any better.
I hit all my numbers; Pre boil O.G, Mash temps and Even got an additional 1 litre out of it for my troubles.
Had a great time doing it too, Got up bright and early at 6:30am and was finished by 11:30-12, 20 hours after pitching the Mangrove Jacks M.44 West Coat yeast its beginning to bubble and has a small ring of krausen forming.

The brew is a Porter, Loosely based on Jamil's Robust Porter. With some minor changes.
As per my last Post, it has been dubbed The Sons of Liberty Porter. As its a mix of an English style beer, with american Hops and yeast. Th hop schedule, is more to the English style of schedule. I'm hoping for a good solid porter, with a little hop kick from the Beautiful Amarillo Hops used.

Now for a small Plug for my brew mate Paul Finney, who has just opened a Home brew-shop. Sourcing Local ingredients from Gladfields, along with Liquid yeast and Imported and Local Hops.
Its in Bishopdale Mall, and is called Finney's Homebrew Emporium.

Secondly, Bottled the Zombie King IPA with Alan yesterday afternoon. This is an amazing beer already, and although its pretty hazy, it's going to taste damn awesome. The aroma was like Fresh Fruit, which for some would be too much. But not for me the big hop head I am.

Now, I have concerns about my BIAB techniques:
#1 is Beer Clarity - The Zombie King is pretty cloudy, This is Hop Haze, but it almost seemed like there was something else too it, a protein of some sort floating around...
Could be chill Haze, from a poor cold break? For those who read this: Is this something that happens when Inputting Flame-out hops and leaving for 10-20 mins to lock in that aroma?
I reckon its something also to do with the BIAB technique. As there is no Grain Bed to filter and Vorlauf the Wort accordingly. Something to think about.

and #2 is Trub - The Porter has a pretty solid amount of Trub even though I whirl-pooled (sort of) and let things settle out as well. This is a BIAB issue I'm pretty sure, I also used a Sieve to get rid of some of this stuff. which should eliminate some of this. this is based on the visual I had this morning when I checked it. It may settle out, so watch this space to see what happens.
I may have to secondary this one, as its my first beer for NHC2013.
Leave comments below regarding the possible solutions using the BIAB techniques on clarity and Trub in the fermenter, would be very interesting to see what others do.
:-)

Welcome Back to Brewing!!

After a Much needed Holiday I was actually able to brew a beer.
It felt pretty damn good to brew. with the help my a mate. Al was really helpful, and has a bit of an interest in brewing himself. We are splittingthe beer in half after bottling.
Heres the recipe on brew toad: Its a variation on the Three Floyd IPA available on Homebrewtalk.com.
ZOMBIE KING IPA

I hit 1.064 on Post Boil, which is 1 Point away from where I was hoping to be. and Hit Volume perfectly, after saving some wort from the 3 odd litres of trub after putting in the fridge for a few hours. It something Jo from Liberty has done in the past as well.

Fingers crossed it turns out, due to the issues (probably my own fault) with the S-04. It was going like a machine gun, and I've been away with work for a couple of days and ramped up to 21 now. hoping for 1.016 FG.I'll ramp to 22 in another couple of days to make sure its finished, and dry hop on Monday night... After an FG check of course. :)

With the NHC only 2-3 months away, its time to ramp up the brewing again, got 4 planned for the NHC 2013, a Porter, Blonde ale, American Amber and American Pale ale.
1st is the Porter Dubbed "Sons of Liberty". The reason I've called it is this:
The Sons of Liberty were and organisation of American Patriots, who originated i nthe Pre-Independence North American British Colonies. they were formed to Protect the rights of Colonists and take the streets against the abuses of the British Government. Where as the English Porter brewed in the 18th Century. It is a well hopped Dark beer.
So I kinda figured that the two would be good together... American Porter is the Style, using a British Porter recipe, and American hops and yeast, not heavily late hopped, more of an english hop schedule.
I'm excited.