A Gallic Shrug and other updates

A long post today because I have been neglecting my blog.

As previously blogged I passed some of my Small Stout to a professional brewer (who shall remain nameless) to get some feedback, when I pressed him on it at the launch of Metalman Pale Ale the reaction was...... a Gallic Shrug. When he was chided for this recently by his sister he said he was trying to be positive about it (I think this is funny its the sort of response I would give). We have mutually decided it was a kit brew so it was never going to be a winner anyway.

My wheat beer received a slightly more positive reaction but still a bit Meh! The next beer that I made was a St Peters India Pale Ale which was a 3kg kit so supposedly better quality than the "kit and kilos" I had made. This is a nice, bitter, but not noticeably hoppy beer although I dry hopped it with 30 grams of East Kent Goldings for 5 days. It think it still needs some conditioning due to the alcohol content although it is about 4 weeks in the bottle now.

I also attended the launch of  Metalman which was a great night and a right tasty ale. At the launch I met MAF a friend from Beoir who gave me some Safbrew T-58 yeast and some gentle prodding to move on to extract brewing, which I did. I used the T-58 to brew a Belgian Dubbel although it is more often used for the golden Belgian ales I thought the peppery taste it imparts would work in a malty dubbel. I made this with dry malt extract and by steeping some Caramunich and Belgian Special B grains for flavour and colour and boiling with Styrian Goldings hops to give a balance to all that malty goodness. This is in secondary for 2 weeks now with 20 grams of crushed coriander seed after 2 weeks in primary. I have had a taste for quality control reasons and I would drink it from the fermenter. It is hard not to tap some every time I pass it.
This has proved to me that the quality difference between extract and kit beers is huge.

But why stop there? The extract/steeping grains brewing was so easy I thought how hard can all-grain brewing be? This was answered for me yesterday when I brewed my first all-grain beer. Tough but enjoyable. It may have been easier if I had shipped the family out for the day as there are so many distractions and I was just feeling my way around.
I have become a fan of American style pale ales, I just love those fresh zingy hops that they use. I had seen some Citra hops in an online brewing supplies store and the name suggests those citrussy flavours I like so I bought some for my pale ale. I wanted something a bit malty too and not as bitter as some of the American IPAs for easy drinking. I decided on an American Pale Ale which is not as bitter as an IPA but has plenty of hop flavour. I read somewhere that Citra can impart a harsh bitterness when used for bittering so got some cascade for bittering which reportedly has a grapefruit-like flavour, in the meanwhile I read that The Beernut had brewed an all-citra pale ale so decided to ask him at the Franciscan Well Easterfest how it turned out.
He thought it was fine and promised to open a bottle early to check but encouraged me to go ahead with the all-citra option anyway.
At the Easterfest there were 2 beers in the ball park for the beer I wanted to make Windjammer and Howling Gale, although neither of them had the hop profile I wanted they had the malty background with lots of - in their case - antipodean hops for that fruity flavour.
Brew day loomed large yesterday, so I re-read my recipe and weighed my grain and hops while Mrs Ciddytourist sewed my grain bags up. The grain bill for this ale is malted Pearl barley - a light fresh tasting type supposedly, Aromatic malt for that malty profile, Carapils malt for head retention and Biscuit malt for a light toasty flavour. 10 grams of Citra hops boiled for 60 mins and another 10 for 15 mins for 33 IBUs bitterness then 20 grams when I took it off the heat for flavour and aroma, there will be another 20-30 grams used to dry hop. The yeast is Nottingham Dry Ale yeast which is a relatively neutral yeast to let the malt and hops shine through. This smells very promising so far and it is hard not to give the airlock a sniff every time I pass.
I am glad I made the step up to all-grain brewing it is challenging and the rewards are huge. I never thought brewing beer could be as much fun as drinking it. Now I suspect that my fairly basic kit will not do me for long - I am already starting to wish I had better equipment mostly on the packaging side, kegs and gas etc.

Although as long as I, my family and friends like the beer I will be happy and one day if I get a better reaction than a gallic shrug from my mentor then it will have been worth it

Not so small stout after all!

Update! A colleague asked me for some beer samples to show students how to test for alcohol levels a while back and I gave her some of my stout and wheat beers.
The stout was tested this week and the results were surprising. The ABV came in at between 4.8 and 5%. The two separate samples tested came in at 4.99% but a Budweiser sample tested on the same Gas Chromatograph came in a bit higher than the expected 4.3% so with a slight percentage adjustment to allow for this my stout is at least the 4.8%.
The only way I can account for this is that I took the Original Gravity reading before the fermentables were fully mixed in to the wort as it read only 1.032 and my final gravity was 1.010 (after 2 weeks) giving an ABV of less than 3%
Anyway the upshot of this is that my beer is way stronger than I thought and I'll have to be more respectful of drinking it. And of course I have learned another brewing lesson.

Cheers!

Small stout

Last year my love of good beer was reawakened when I tried some of the Dungarvan Brewing Company's products and realised that I did not have to wait until I was abroad to taste good beer. My journey through craft beer since has been a steep learning curve, I didn't realise there were so many craft beers produced in Ireland, knowing of only a couple of brew pubs that were a long way from my home.

As a consequence of all this taste-full beer I took up home brewing last year and have done 3 brews now. These have all been kits although the last 2 were slightly tweaked in that instead of the kit and kilo of sugar I used a mixture of brewing sugar and dry malt extract. My next project is a 3 kilo kit IPA (so no extra sugars required) which will be dry-hopped with East Kent Goldings when fermented.
All these beers have been well received although the lager and wheat beers have not inspired me. However I made a stout tweaked with dark dry malt extract and brewing sugar ( a little light in fermentables hence the name "Small Stout") and I have to say it tastes great. It is 3 and a half months in the bottle now and it just gets better as it ages. It had a sharp bitterness that has mellowed out to a smooth roasty bitterness that I find really pleasing. I am chuffed to find that I have made a beer that I really like and have passed a bottle on to a proper brewer to see what he thinks.
Hopefully I have not been deluding myself. I'll keep you posted!