This recipe was supposed to be my contribution to the brew day component of the recent Western Sydney Brewers meet (read about it here). Due to unfortunate circumstances I wasn’t able to brew it on the day. I did however, crush the grains fresh (using a mill that was brought to the brew day – thanks Steve!) in anticipation for brewing it on Sunday (6th December) – which I did. It was a fantastic feeling to finally have a smooth and easy brew day after the last few crazy tries I have had!
I felt like brewing something quite simple but refreshing that I could drink over summer and this recipe for a Nelson Sauvin Summer Ale was recommended to me by another member of the AHB forums. What I liked about it was that it uses a simple malt bill, a single hop type and the use of whole leaf hops, which I have never used before.
I had to make one small change to my equipment in preparation for using flowers. This was to add a ball of stainless steel wool to the end of my pickup tube. I could just see trying to empty the kettle at the end of the boil only to have bits of hop flowers plugging up the pickup tube – no matter how well I whirlpool! In the end it worked a treat and below is a picture of the empty kettle showing the steel wool – beautiful!
The recipe is as follows:
4.5kgs Maris Otter Pale Malt
0.5kgs Torrefied Wheat Malt
15g Nelson Sauvin (Flowers) @ 80mins
20g Nelson Sauvin (Flowers) and 1 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 15mins
20g Nelson Sauvin (Flowers) @ Flameout
30g Nelson Sauvin (Flowers) – Dry Hop in Secondary
Safale US – 05 – Starter of 1L
Mashed in @ 65°C - held for 60mins. Batch sparged and obtained a pre-boil volume of 36L (had to add about 4L of water to get it up there). SG pre-boil was 1.032…spot on!
90min boil which I kept vigorous for the entire time! But this time my calculations for boiloff were spot on with 23L going into the cube and about 2L to spare in the trub of the pot.
Update 13th December: Dumped the cube into a fermenter and pitched a starter of US-05. Checked the OG and it was only 1.042….a good 10 points under my target. I am thinking this was due to the few liters of water I put into the pot pre-boil to get the volume up. Doesn’t bother me though – I think the lower alcohol in this one will be benificial. From now on though, I am going to avoid watering down at any part of the process.
Last weekend, the Western Sydney Brewers (WSB) met for our first ever case swap and brew day. As we are only a small club the swap wasn’t enormous but it gave us a chance to give some beers to fellow brewers and get some constructive feedback. We also had a couple of all grain beers being brewed over the course of the day which was a great oppurtunity for everyone to see how the process works and how other brewers go through the paces.
My personal thanks to Paddo for hosting the event and to DaveMKII for providing the carniverous delights.
Below is a video I made from snippets of footage over the day. If you are interested in the WSB (you don’t even have to be exclusively from Western Sydney by the way!) then head over to our google group here and give us a shout. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to get to know some like-minded brewers.
Well…it was bound to happen someday and today was that day.
After having just finished my final run-off into the brew pot, I gave my wort a good stir – it was looking mighty fine! A nice clear, golden liquid of nearly 35L was merrily on its way to a boil. I decided this was a great time to take a sample for a pre-boil gravity reading. As the sample went into the test tube, I was really pleased with the clarity of the wort at this early stage. My batch sparging and recirculation technique is really coming along.
After the fun and frivolities of my first all grain effort, I have decided that this weekend I want to have another crack at the original recipe that I used for the first all grain, but this time with a bit more knowledge and a few well ironed out kinks. Given that the first attempt didn’t get me the result that I was intending, I really wanted another shot to prove to myself that I can learn from my brewing mistakes.
Many weeks of reading and researching about different techniques came to fruition last weekend with my first all-grain batch of beer being brewed. It was a lot of fun and went surprisingly well – but not without my fair share of newbie all-grain issues….mainly due to being overly cautious with Beersmith; read on to find out!
Over the last few weeks, I have been doing a lot of reading and browsing of other brewers setups in preparation for beginning the journey to brewing my beer from scratch; otherwise known as All-Grain Brewing.
Bit by bit, I have been collecting the required (and some not really required equipment to being brewing all-grain. I have found this the best way to get into this aspect of brewing as it didn’t feel like a huge chunk of funds were being taken from my back pocket in one-go, and I was able to fit out my brewery with some little bits and pieces that would be considered ‘not really necessary’ to brewing all-grain beer (things like stainless steel fittings).
Lately I have been wondering how I can try out different styles without making (and possibly stuffing up) a whole batch of beer – now, the Basic Brewing Video podcast has given me the answer; small 4L test batches.
I went out and purchased a couple of 5L demijohns to be used as ‘mini-carboys’. I then got a grain bag and a really small 6 can esky to use as a mashtun. I now have the ability to produce a small quantity of all-grain beer for the use as a test batch of beer.
For my first test batch, I decided to try and use up the rest of a supply of Saaz that I had in the freezer, to get a good idea of the flavour profile of Saaz. My ingredient list consisted of the following:
1kg Joe White Pilsener Malt
10g Saaz @ 45mins
10g Saaz @ 15mins
10g Saaz @ 5mins
10g Saaz @ Flame-out
Saflager W-34/70
Mashed at 65°C for 45mins. Boil volume of 5.5L. 60 minute boil.
Ended up with 4.5L in the fermenter……well, that has a story in itself….
Due to the largish amount of hops in such a small volume of wort, I had a large problem with an extremely excessive amount of trub getting into the demijohn. I attempted to strain alot of the hop material out as I poured but couldn’t strain any of the proteins so I ended up with a pillow of gunk in the bottom…..that and there was a very, VERY green hue to the whole wort….ahem.
Oh well. This is the idea anyway. A way to try different things without risking stuffing up a whole batch of beer. Will let it ferment for about a week then cold crash and bottle.
It was a whole lot of fun and I highly recommend it.
Update – 4 November
Bottled this into 330ml bottles and primed with dextrose. Man, what an experience this was! My suggestion is that you have a buddy help you with this part as trying to fill the bottles whislt holding the syphon hose off the bottom of the demijohn was not easy. Ended up with alot of the floor! Beer looks clear in the bottle though, will give it a week or so to carb up then see how it turned out.
Update – 8 November
Cracked open a 330ml bottle of this today to taste the experiment.
Opened with a decent hiss for only a week of priming. Pours a decent head…on top of a nice, pale green liquid! Smells fruity and hoppy. Flavour is quite balanced for the amount of hops that went in. Saaz flavour comes through quite strong but is very refreshing. The combination of yeast and higher fermentation temp has produced expected fruitiness but doesn’t overpower – would expect it to mellow with a few more weeks in the bottle. Overall, an interesting result for such a weird first test. Looking forward to trying this test out in the future with many more combinations of ingredients!
I recently picked up a copy of The Complete Guide to Beer and Brewing by Laurie Strachan with mixed ideas about what I would think of it. After reading it, I was pleasantly surprised with how useful a book like this will become for me in the future.
As the NSW 2009 christmas case swap draws near, I have decided to submit something nice and simple whilst still trying to do something a little more advanced than the last brew. Thus, I found a recipe on a fellow Western Sydney Brewer’s blog that looked really interesting and I thought I would give it a go.
The only problem was that this was an all-grain recipe and I am planning on getting a few more brews under my belt before heading there. So, my task was to convert this recipe to an extract one using specialty grains. After looking around I found some information on the Beersmith blog here.
So, I came up with the following recipe:
3kgs Liquid Malt Extract – Pale/Light
0.35kg – Pale Crystal Malt (Steeped)
5g Nelson Sauvin, 10g Cascade @ 45mins
1/2 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 15mins
10g Nelson Sauvin, 15g Cascade @ 10mins
15g Nelson Sauvin, 15g Cascade @ Flame-out
20g Cascade – Dry hopped in secondary
Wyeast #1272 – All American Ale
Steep Crystal malt in 2L water – 66°C for 20mins. Add 1 can of malt extract pre-boil and 2nd at flameout.
Boil volume is 15L. Final batch size will be 25L (usually 21 but I want to have a few leftovers for myself after I distibute for the case swap. No starter made on account of the Wyeast activator pack being used.
O.G. = 1.042 F.G = 1.010 A.B.V = 4.7%
Fermented for 10 days @ 18°C, in secondary for 16 days @ 18°C.
Am very keen to see how this one goes – 1st time dry hopping.
Update – 4 November:
Due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to bottle this one for a while after adding to secondary. I fear that this long in the secondary with the dry-hops may have lost some of the really nice cascade aroma I was after. Bottled into 750ml bottles and primed with dextrose. Will leave to carb and condition in brew fridge @ 18°C for a couple of weeks. Got 30 bottles in the end so I still have some to try myself before I swap the rest.
Welcome to the Perfect Pitch Brewing Blog – a place for me to put all my brewing and beer related thoughts and discoveries, to share with anyone who wants to read them!
I plan to post the details of each brew I complete and related information that I have learnt from each brewing session. Recipes, pictures, tutorials etc all about this hobby that has me completely hooked…..
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