Designing a beer (Pack)

[Jovial Monk]

OK want to put a couple of "Classic" part mash beer packs on the shelf.

One will be the "Classic American Pilsner" a preprohibition beer rescued from oblivion by a good homebrewer in the states--Classic American Cream Ale will follow later when it warms up a tad.

Now also want to design a clean, elegant English Ale, the smallest and palest first of a series of three so customers can pitch a liquid yeast into for best results and repitch the yeast cake from that in to a somewhat bigger & darker beer and then repitch again, probably a Porter.

So, put straw out in the street (only cynic would get that I think ) and turn down the lights and get dreamy and creative:

Hmmmmmmm what do I have, ohhh lots of Maris Otter and just got the NZ Goldings cones, man don't need much more! So, lots Maris Otter lovely malty. OK, let us add 100g or so melanoidin malt, really underscore the juicy malty malty from the ohhh! Cool! Thos Fawcett & Sons MO! This shit is floor malted, man it doesn't get much better than that.

Like a bit of something to soften the beer slightly and make it just very slightly grainy, hmmm so flaked barley, 100-150g. Now 25g Carafa Special grain for nuttiness and to not really darken but deepen the color, I take no joy in beer light colored like maidens piss. 25g + 150g flaked barley + 100g melanoidin so 3.275Kg lovely Maris Otter pale malt all the way from England.

Don't want to oversparge, rich rich the last runnings must be--a note to those with proper little mash tuns, stop sparging with gravity of 1030--rich malty malty not like commercial 'beer' squeezing every last bit out the grains.

Now, will do figures later, but this will be a Mild, OG say 1050, so BU about 30. Using the kiwi goldings cones--cones least processed most flavor! Cones also act as a filter making the wort passing through on way out the kettle brighter ('bright'=brewerspeak for clear) So 60 min, 30 min, 15 min. Hmmmmm Styrian Goldings (actually a Fuggles grown in Slowenia: no native male hops in the former part of Yugoslavia, so these are seedless=more flavor for a given weight and the location and soil really make these Styrian Goldings finer than the Fuggles from Kent. So add 5g St Goldings at 30 & 15 minutes, adding a minor countertheme to the Major theme of the Goldings if I can mangle a musical metaphor.

Nice high mash temp, chewy chewy malt, thick mash, 2.5L/Kg grain v the usual 3L/Kg, hell let them use 2L/Kg if they want.

Dryhop with 15g of the whole goldings in the conditioning vessel. Not too much priming sugar, "flat and warm" as the saying goes tho that is wrong as wrong can be

Now imagine the end result, peasants. A glass of golden beer, thick creamy head that hangs around. Pick up the glass and bring it to your nose and mouth, gently inhale, smell of malt spruce smell of hops, try to see if can pick Fuggle from Goldings. Now sip, roll around in the mouth, hmmmm creamy mouthfeel, deliriously pleasant malty-toffee flavor, prickle of hops upon swallowing, tastes hang about in your mouth after swallowing but not for long because you are heedlessly quaffing this fine beer before slamming the glass down, wiping the foam moustache off your top lip and just wallowing in the total experience. You realise you have grown wood.

That is what beer can be, that is what I want my customers to experience, that is what this Pack will give. All you have to do is spend however many hours it takes to craft this beer to the utmost of your ability. So, what is stopping you?

Prost!


Muwahahahaha oh man!

LOW_IQ copied the above and pasted it in the Sheep Pen, but sort of made it like a a frothy penis instead of a pint. Yup, skippy was right: LOW_IQ IS gay! heheheheheh

[Jovial Monk]

I will answer Celly here rather than wait for the lying faggot to turn guest posting back on.

Celly has a problem, she opens a bottle of homebrew and the beer comes out by itself The beer is clearly 'overconditioned' i.e. too much CO2 has accumulated in the bottle. There are three reasons for this, all to do, in a way, with too much unfermented sugar when the beer was bottled.

1. Too much priming sugar added to the bottles. Half a teaspoon generally is enough for a longneck.

2. Beer had not fermented out when it was bottled and the residual wort sugars plus priming sugars fermented in the bottle, causing the overconditioning.

3. A bottle (or whole batch) got infected with bacteria: if yeast can attenuate a beer to 1010 a bug can take it to 0995, causing huge release of CO2.

You can check for bottle infection by seeing if there is a white ring around the neck of the bottle at the top of the beer.

To prevent 1, just add less sugar to each bottle. Don't know if you are using plastic or glass bottle Celly?

To prevent 2, forget the bloody airlock and go by the hydrometer. If your next batch is the Coopers Aust Bitter plus can of light malt your batch will start at 1044 and finish at 1011.

To prevent three, more cleaning/sanitation.

[Jovial Monk]

Hmmm you know the stupid Listerine ads, with the dick gargling that shit having his cheeks blow out to an exaggerated degree? Well, I formulated a beer recipe that sort of makes your cheeks blow out. No, Sheepy, not those cheeks you disgusting faggot!

The beer is Schneider & Sohn "Aventinus" Weizendoppelbock, that is a malty, dark beer of a fair bit of alcohol (7%) but made mainly from wheat.

We add Munich malt, melanoidin malt, bit of chocolate malt and some dark crystal malt, cararoma plus a bit of Pils malt for the enzymes. Double decoct, lots nice German hops. Big beer, re-aerate the day after pitching the yeast and try keep the temperature under 20C.

Totally awesome, HUGE flavor, never come across a beer with more flavor than this one!

Another beer, this one from when Queen Victoria had only been on the throne for one year, i.e. 1849. A Classic beer!

This is a clone of the William Black Brown Stout, OG 1073, something like this, brewed by Barclay Perkins, but stronger became the famous Russian Imperial Stout. A heroic amount of hops goes into it, you would want to wait the recommended 6 months!

[Ethnic]

I will answer Celly here rather than wait for the lying faggot to turn guest posting back on.

Celly has a problem, she opens a bottle of homebrew and the beer comes out by itself The beer is clearly 'overconditioned' i.e. too much CO2 has accumulated in the bottle. There are three reasons for this, all to do, in a way, with too much unfermented sugar when the beer was bottled.

1. Too much priming sugar added to the bottles. Half a teaspoon generally is enough for a longneck.

2. Beer had not fermented out when it was bottled and the residual wort sugars plus priming sugars fermented in the bottle, causing the overconditioning.

3. A bottle (or whole batch) got infected with bacteria: if yeast can attenuate a beer to 1010 a bug can take it to 0995, causing huge release of CO2.

You can check for bottle infection by seeing if there is a white ring around the neck of the bottle at the top of the beer.

To prevent 1, just add less sugar to each bottle. Don't know if you are using plastic or glass bottle Celly?

To prevent 2, forget the bloody airlock and go by the hydrometer. If your next batch is the Coopers Aust Bitter plus can of light malt your batch will start at 1044 and finish at 1011.

To prevent three, more cleaning/sanitation.

Thank you for responding JM. I was wondering why you hadn't posted at the other PA. Only a small group of bottles were doing this while the majority seem to be doing fine. The bottles that experience this overflow were the ones that my dog knocked over. The untouched ones aren't doing it and these are 90% of the batch, which is good news. It could be the sugar now that you mentioned it. I don't think it was an infection because the bottles were sanitised to death ( I spent a good couple of hours on the bottles and fermenter). I didn't see a white ring so I am taking that as a good sign. The bottles I use are not plastic ones - they're the old glass beer bottles that my dad collected from the 70s and 80s. They used to be used for bottling home made sauce

So for my next brew the following changes - less sugar and dogs not allowed within a 1km radius! The beer still tastes bloody good and I am looking forward to using your suggestions re liquid malt and coopers bitter ale.

[Jovial Monk]

Cool. The ones your brute of a dog knocked over probably are 'gushers' because the mechanical agitation of the bottles falling/rolling, being picked up & stood up again could well have got the yeast to doing some fermentation!

That means you added too much sugar! Try 1 carbonation drop per longneck for a lovely low carbonation, really tiny bubbles, champagne bead etc. Then shake the fucking bottles after priming, filling & capping, and shake again a week later: in the cold of a winter night an ale yeast will likely decide life is too hard and go to sleep on the bottom of fermenter or bottle. If you have a hot water service maybe you could put the bottles in a crate in top of the HWS? Not an on-demand HWS obviously.

Yeah, Sheepshitforbrains tends to ban me when I show him wrong or am funnier than him etc. Not hard whern he relies on Andrew Dolt and Pies Akerman the Cane Toad for his views

BTW it has been suggested to me that you posted that question in the Sheep pen because you knew Sheepy would turn off guest posting and so I would be embarrassed, unable to reply. Firstly, Sheepy embarrasses only himself and that frequently, but, can you shed any light on that suggestion, Celetina?

[Ethnic]

BTW it has been suggested to me that you posted that question in the Sheep pen because you knew Sheepy would turn off guest posting and so I would be embarrassed, unable to reply. Firstly, Sheepy embarrasses only himself and that frequently, but, can you shed any light on that suggestion, Celetina?

Whoever told you that, I shall find them and sticky my size 9 boot up their arsehole. I posted the comment there in a pathetic attempt to keep my ill-fated home brewing thread alive and assumed you would respond as 'Monk' or whatever name you would have used. There was nothing sinister on my part, I just posted in the anticipation of a reply.

[Jovial Monk]

Well, no names no packdrill is my motto. I personally did think that a shaft (of ridicule) of mine hit right on target and that was why I got booted again.

Better keep the brewing thread here.

BTW you know if you ever decide to stop posting in the Sheep Pen the lying faggot will appropriate your nick too? And pose as you and say things like you hit the kids in your class or something? Just a heads up.

[Jovial Monk]

Hmmm while it was cold as a mother-in-law's kiss this morning Winter has clearly had Celetina's size nine boot up its arse and is giving way to spring (packing its luggage anyway) and we can take advantage of that. No longer cold enough for brewing a lager beer outside a fridge still cool enough to brew some big ales and very pale ales.

One such ale is a Belgian Farmhouse Ale, the saison. This initially came from the Waloon (french speaking) part of Belgium and northern France. The farmers would brew the saison in early December for the refreshment of the saisonneurs or seasonal workers hired to bring in the harvest in August. So a rustic, keeping beer. The farmers were pretty bloody opportunistic when brewing this beer liable to add a bag of oatmeal or whatever along with the malt. Possibly molasses, definitely oats, rye and wheat, maybe honey or sugar.

So let us have 2Kg of the pale Pilsner malt as a base, hmmm what do I have, oh I know some puffed wheat, flaked rye, some rolled outs and flaked barley. So started filling a sack, hum de dum dum, rummage in chest freezer AAARGHH NO FLAKED BARLEY! Normally have a 5Kg box of that, goes into the Guinness Pack. Rummage rummage found some spelt. Spelt, ahah!

For the uninitiated, spelt is one of the two ancestors of modern wheat and is a fantastic form of wheat for brewing: more flavor and it has a husk, albeit tiny. Husks help drain and filter wort out the mashtun and is one of the reasons barley is the main ingredient used in brewing. So, puffed wheat and crushed whole spelt grain plus tad of flaked rye (nice spicy-peppery flavor) and rolled oats.

Going to use whole NZ goldings as bittering addition: Belgian hops suck and Kent is just across the narrow part of the Channel. Some Saaz to finish for nice spicy aroma & flavor.

The old Walloon farmers with barrels of beer standing for 8 months in their cellar were concerned as to how well it would keep. They prayed for a lactic wild yeast or bacteria to create lactic acid, dropping the Ph of the beer below 4 and so pretty safe from any other infection. Beer slightly sour-tart with lactic acid is very refreshing.

[Jovial Monk]

Today is the first day of August, next month is September and that means Footy finals!

Footy finals, when hubby gets a few of his yobbo buddies around to watch the footy and they drink beer, belch, fart & tell dirty jokes & the missus & kids escape the house. So, we want an amber fluid that can be consumed in copious quantities. Not a job for a 10% beer, more like a 3.5% beer, a litre a quarter very possible.

3.5% is a small beer and small beers are harder to brew than the big ones where the sheer abundance of malt masks all the brewer's stuff ups! We need to pack this bitch with flavor, complexity and a lot of body--way too easy to end up with watery tasting small beer!

Now I have the "naked" crystal oat malt, will put in nuttiness and smoooooth the beer and put a rock-solid head on it. Tad of melanoidin malt to ensure a malt back bone. I don't like crystal malt but this is a little beer meant to be drunk in a month so stick in caraamber and caramunich--two colors for added complexity. 75g of black malt for color--no maiden's piss colored beers here thankew--and boost nuttiness. Hmm so what else have I got? Ahhhh! Amber and brown malt, nice and toasted.

JW Tr Ale 1900
Amber malt 500
C/Amber 225
Melanoidin 150
Brown malt 150
Naked oats 250
CMunich 250
Cafa Sp III 75

For 3.5Kg grain per pack. 8 different types of grains, complexity city!

Now the other flavor component, hops. Use lots of hops so no or only a little of high alpha early on. 30 min Styrian Goldings, 15 minutes Amarillo. Huge clean citrusy hop flavor and aroma.

Mash at 69C for the max body we can coax from out little beer--when we do the Belgian Ale packs we will be mashing at 64C for utmost crispness.

[Jovial Monk]

Hmmmmm just crushed the grains for this Pack.

Amber and brown malt is Simpsons malt. The brown was the darkest brown malt I have seen! Looked at the Simpsons website, brown 400EBC, the specs say "coffee-ish flavor for stouts and porters. So my little bitter will have a hint of coffee about it. It will be a dark bitter, a dark copper color with lots of malt aroma which will have to compete with the rich Styrian Goldings hop aroma.

So not bad a 3.5% alcohol beer, eh?