Brew Day: Simple Pale Ale

Over the past few days, I've been writing a few recipes but haven't got to brewing them due to firstly, the lack of time and secondly, lack of grains. Yes, I have nearly exhausted my grains and I am yet to order them.

While I was going through the little grains I had, I noticed that I had some light malt extract. Although brewing with malt extract is easy, I do have a certain reluctance to use malt extract because the 45 minute boil will always caramelize the extract to a deep reddish hue and also because the taste of a beer made with malt extract is very recognizable. Having dissed about malt extract, it is still the easiest to make beer with. The following is an extremely simple extract recipe with an intent to split the beer into two batches.

Simple Pale Ale

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 10 litres
Type: Extract

IBU: 23

SRM: 23

OG: 1.058

Grains and Sugars

1.5 kg light malt extract

Hops

5 grams Columbus @ 45 min.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Boiled 500 grams of malt extract for 45 minutes
Late addition of 1 kg malt extract at flame out

Notes:
- I plan to split this beer into 2 equal batches: one with fresh mango since its the mango season now so that I can have a mango ale and dry hop the other batch with Citra and Cascade for about 3 days.

Brew Day: Jaggery Pale Ale

This was my first all-grain brew day and it went fairly well.

Some freshly shaved jaggery for the ale

My inital recipe didnt include jaggery. It was a fairly simple grain bill of light Munich, some Crystal 20 and some malt extract. I just wanted to get on with things after I sourced all the ingredients for my first all grain batch of beer.

Yes, I've made the move to all grain but will hold on to the malt extract whenever I want to make a quick batch of beer or bump up gravity for a barley wine or a Russian Imperial Stout. I sourced the ingredients from diybrew.in and they crushed the malt too.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, there was no intention to add jaggery at all. That was until I saw jaggery at the supermarket last week and I got thinking and reading about it. There aren't a lot of jaggery based beer recipes out there so I decided to write one. Jaggery can be purchased as clumps and I shaved off 300 grams of a huge clump of jaggery so that it can dissolve easily.

I also included rice in this beer to see if I can get a really light colored beer. I boiled the living daylights out of about 300 grams of Sona Masoori to extract starches and then added the Munich malt which converted its own and the rice starches to sugars.

Jaggery Pale Ale

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: Extract with Grains

IBU: 31

SRM: 8

OG: 1.066

Expected FG: 1.016

Grains and Sugars

1 kg Light Munich malt

300 grams Sona Masoori Rice

300 grams jaggery (add at 15 minutes to the end of boil)

100 grams malt extract (added at the end of the boil)

Hops

6 grams Columbus @ 45 min.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules

Mash at 68°C for 90 minutes

Sparged at 80°C for 15 minutes

Boiled for 45 minutes.

Notes:

- I have plans to split this ale by adding mangoes or mango puree to one half for a mango ale.

- The wort colour is a dark orange right now and I'm hoping it clears up by the time it finishes fermenting.

Brew Tips: Late Addition of Malt Extract

There's quite a bit of argument between brewers on whether malt extract should be added late in the boil process. I've been doing quite a bit of reading on this and I think late addition of malt extract is what should be done to get a lighter color for the beer.

Why do late addition?

- The malt extract is already boiled before they're packaged. So why boil again?

- Because you boiled the malt extract for a full 45-60 minutes, they tend to caramelize and add a dark color to the beer.

- If you want a lighter coloured beer (say dark yellow to orange), late addition is the best way to go.

- A low gravity wort will extract more bitterness out of the hops. So that is your cue if you want more bitterness in your brew.

How late can I add the extract?

- Some say that adding extract at 15 minutes towards the end of the boil is good as it sanitizes the beer.

- Some say at flame out. There's enough heat in the wort to sanitize the beer.

Ideally, its the brewers call as to how late they want to add the extract, but do let me know how your beers taste if you do a late addition.

DIY: Yeast Washing

A few days before I bottled my Hefeweizen, I was reading up about washing yeast. And the timing couldn't have been more perfect.

In fact I washed the yeast from the Hefeweizen and based on what I see, I have a whole load of yeast that can now be reused or shared.

To most new home brewers the concept of 'washing' yeast may be a bit strange, but it is what it is: you are washing the yeast of all impurities and extracting just the good stuff. The good stuff can last you quite a while, which means that you may not have to purchase yeast for some time to come. The only downside to this is that you have only one type of yeast to use in another batch of beer. For example, the yeast I washed from the Hefeweizen can be used in other wheat beers but I cannot say for sure what flavours will be produced if it is used in an IPA or a Pale Ale. This little issue can be avoided if you have different batches of washed yeast.

Some commercial brewers wash their yeast and reuse it, some dont. I know a brewery that reused its yeast for seven generations.

Here's how I went about washing the yeast:

1. Add about 750 ml of boiled and cooled water to the trub in the fermenter.

2. Rinse the water and trub into a glass jar and let it rest for 30 minutes or so.

3. You can see the heavier elements in the trub settle to the bottom of the jar.

4. Decant the hazy liquid on the top into another container.

5. Leave the liquid standing still for another 30 minutes and you'll see more sediments settle to the bottom of the container.

6. Decant again to another container.

7. What you have now is a fair amount of yeast suspended in the liquid with very little of unwanted stuff.

8. Cold crash the yeast solution. This will ensure yeast settle to the bottom of the container and form a yeast cake. I cold crashed for about 36 hours.

9. When you're ready to brew again, decant the clear liquid on the top of the container, bring the yeast to room temperature and make a yeast starter or pitch directly to wort.

The yeast will become less potent as you wash it and reuse it, but that can handled by making a yeast starter and allowing the yeast to propagate before pitching.

This is the trub that is left after bottling. Its a mix of yeast, hop remnants and so on.

I added about 750 ml of boiled and cooled water to the trub in the fermenter. This allows more liquid for the unwanted elements in the trub to fall through. 

Rinse the water and trub into a glass jar and let it rest for 30 minutes or so.

I purposefully used the flash in this shot. After 30 minutes, you can see the heavier elements in the trub settling to the bottom of the container.

Decant the hazy liquid on the top into another container. This is the trub that settled down after 30 minutes of standing still. Dump this and wash the container.

Decant again and you'll see a hazy liquid which contains the suspended yeast. You can keep decanting as many times as you want, but I stopped at 2 since I got almost all of the trub out of it.  After decanting twice, thats the yeast solution I am left with.

This is a time lapse of the yeast solution in the refrigerator: 0 minutes, 2 hours, 4 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours and lastly 36 hours. When you're ready to brew again, decant the clear liquid on the top of the container, bring the yeast to room temperature and make a yeast starter or pitch directly to wort.

Tasting Day: Hefeweizen

Recipe and Brewday here.

The Hefe was bottled five weeks ago and yesterday, I opened one. A nice foamy head (that subsided quickly), mellow and very, very similar in taste to the ones brewed at Toit and Windmills Craftworks in Bangalore.

I wasn't so impressed by the color which was darker than I expected, but next time I'm doing an all grain Hefe. I think the dark color is due to the wheat DME I used which was caramelized during the boil. I think an all grain Hefe would be lighter.

Here are some of the pictures of the Hefeweizen:

I will continue to open the other bottles later and they should mellow and improve as the weeks go by.