Sunday 19 March 2017

Three day brewday

I love brewing, but it can take a long time. Fitting it around busy family life and a full time job is a huge challenge. After work and one the kids are in bed an all grain brew is a hopeless and foolhardy affair bound to finish in a rush way after midnight. Even on a weekend there's often not time. 

In order to get the brew day done and balance it around everything else - I often resort to splitting the brew day over two or three days. This helps manage the time, and it seem to have little impact on the finished beer itself. The only perceptible impact I have noticed is that the beers tend to finish very dry. I put this down to leaving the wort overnight to cool - where i suppose the enzymes in the wort are continuing to eat away at the sugars and starches and convert these to fermentable sugars. 

Here's what this looks like in practice: 



Day 1 

Water prep and mash - in this case it was a BIAB mash and at the end of the mash, after lautering, I ran the wort into a bucket (in fact this is the bucket i'll use again later for the fermentation later.) At the end of the mash i leave the bag on top of a colander inside the mash tun, cover this and let it drain out overnight. 


 Day 2

Take a pre-boil gravity reading. Measure out hops and yeast nutrient. Start the kettle, and set alarms to warn me when the hops need to go in. Post boil empty into the fermenting bucket and check the temperature until it drops to whirlpool temp (77C in this case). Chuck in the whirlpool hops in a sanitised bag and pop a lid on. I leave this to cool overnight (between October and March this is very effective at bringing the temperature down). 

Day 3 

Take another gravity reading to get the OG reading. Check the temperature is low enough to pitch the yeast (below 20C is my rule of thumb) - pitch the yeast and add an airlock. Then clear up. All done!

Sunday 12 March 2017

Competition success - Belgian Tripel

My beer, bit flat in this pic
Competition finals are always a bit of a challenge - there are so many interesting beers so it's tempting to try too many and end up with a sore head the next day. They are doubly a challenge on Monday, and it's probably impossible to be abstenious when your beer wins a prize. Work the next day was a bit of a struggle

This week I had more success - my Belgian Tripel placed third in the Tripels flight (15 beers in total) at the London Amateur Brewers "Fast like a Monk" competition and scored 41&38 from the judges, really pleased with these scores! 
Comp entries

I'm really pleased with this beer for a few reasons: 

There were a few things I could have improved to get a better score: 
  • It should have been stronger - at 7% I rather undercooked it for the style, at the limits of acceptability. I should have added a bit more sugar. 
  • It should have been better carbonated - I always take a safety first approach to carbonation in glass. 
  • It should have been hoppier - but again using my own hops was a bit of a gamble, there wasn't any data on their strength to help get the beer right. In future, as i like em hoppy, I'll over do the hops with my own and cross my fingers.....

My beers with the orange caps on the winners tasting table
 So after collecting my prize, I sampled some of the other winning beers. The overall winner, a dopplebok was amazing. Deep malty but smooth and warm. The other Tripels were worthy for their top places, and I really enjoyed the Trappist Singels - the winner had the fruity esters of a strong Belgian golden ale but hoppier and at a much more session-able strength. 


So a really enjoyable competition - but reckon results and awards nights on a Friday in future please (urgh!) 


Getting my rosette with the other flight winners!