Eat, Drink, Run, Live

A while back I read about a stout from the US that was a big brew finished with chocolate and coffee.

The coffee lover’s consummate beer. Brewed with an abundance of flaked oats, bitter and imported chocolates, and Sumatra and Kona coffee, this stout has an intense fresh roasted java nose topped with a frothy, cinnamon-colored head that goes forever

I’m a fiend for coffee in beer and of course could not resist having a go at the recipe for Founders Breakfast Stout that was printed in BYO. I brewed this back in September last year and while I had a few problems with the brew it soon became a favourite and ultimately a group of drunken campers made short work of the 19 litre Corny on a cool evening on the Goulbourn river. I knew that I was going to have to re-brew this stout so that’s how I spent this weekend.

I did make some changes to the recipe using a little more coffee in the boil and some extra chocolate nibs. I also used some Lactose to try and get a little sweetness and a touch of that cream character. I didn’t have any Willamette so I subbed in some Fuggles as a finishing hop. OG has come out at 1074 so assuming the yeast does its job this should be a fairly potent brew.

I’m still having all sorts of utilisation problems. I’d specced the recipe at 65% but according to Beersmith I’ve only gotten 58% so my gravity is (again) lower than I expected. I really don’t know what my problem is here but I’d like to get it up a bit higher than it currently is; the last 5 brews my utilisation has been 58%, 59%, 62%, 59% and 65%; I suspect it’s a process problem but it’s time to do some research.

I’ll include the original Founders clone recipe and also the rebrew recipe.

Original Founders clone attempt

Founders Rebrew with a twist

A while back the Brewing Network did a clone of the Epic Pale Ale from Epic Brewing in New Zealand on the “Can You Brew it?” show. I remember Jamil quite literally raving about Epic’s brews when I got to have a beer and a chat with him in Melbourne last year, and from memory the beer that was produced for the show got great reviews on the show and was dubbed cloned (I think Tasty brewed it). While I’ve had a good natured dig at my NZ neighbours in the past I have to admit that the Bro’s are producing some outstanding craft beer, and easily in my top 5 is the Epic Pale. On top of this I have a specific fondness for the highly hopped APA style and Epic takes ‘highly hopped’ to a new level. I really needed no more incentive to go and try the recipe.

Again though, I’ve found that the road to great brewing is paved with misdirection (apologies to Saint Bernard) and my first hurdle was the grain bill. Once again I find that I don’t have the same range of raw product that the American market has access too. The original recipe called for Golden Promise, Fawcetts Pale Crystal, Bairds Caramalt and some Carapils. In this case I couldn’t get the Caramalt so I’ve subbed in CaraHell in it’s place, really just shooting to get the colour right.

My hop schedule was thrown out of whack when I realised that my Cascade was only 5% instead of 7.5% as I had in the recipe, but I didn’t work this out until late in the boil. I addressed this by adding an extra 10 minutes to the boil and an extra 10g Cascade to the 20 minute addition; which was originally a 10 minute addition. Given that I knew I was going to add a shed-load of hops into the fermenter I didn’t think I was going to have a flavour issue but I did need to get the IBU’s back up to a respectable level. The hopping schedule isnt quite clear from this recipe. There is a standard 0 minute addition at flameout, I then let the wort sit for 10 minutes and then whirlpooled with the subsequent addition. After fermentation there is one ‘dry hopping’ at fermentation temps and another at cold temps, each of 5 days.

I made a starter for the yeast and pitched at 18C and let it rise to 21C where it sat through fermentation. Somehow I’ managed to screw up my numbers, the pre-boil came in at 1036 (versus an expected 1038). The OG came in at 1048 (versus an expected 1052). This is likely a combination of errors, firstly that I sparged with to much water (it was a big boil at 42 litres when I should have had 40), secondly the grain substitution may have had an impact and finally, I think my refractometer is giving me screwy readings so it will need a check and recalibration on the next brew day.

Despite my screw-ups the beer looks OK, it’s settled out nicely and smells fantastic. I’ll keg it mid next week but hopefully it comes out OK. Given the difficulties I had, I’m not shooting for ‘cloned’ on this beer, merely ‘tasty’ and will settle for ‘drinkable’.

My first brew of the Hobgoblin recipe did amazingly well. I brewed it back in August and it picked up a 1st place in the VicBrew state comps and then placed third in the AABC national competition. To say I was chuffed was slightly understating things, I was over the moon. That said, in a side by side tasting with the original Hobgoblin there were a couple of things that stood out as key differences. The first was that my brew was slightly sweeter, the original sharper perhaps a little more acidic. From the judging sheets I also received some great feedback with the most notable comments being that
- slightly under hopped for style
- missing the ‘British Ale’ characteristics

So, based on the competition results I know that the base beer recipe is strong and is a great starting point for additional improvements. My first decision then was to work out whether to chase the clone and move the beer closer to my perception of the original Hobgoblin or to address some of the judges feedback and try and improve the recipe in preparation for the competitions during the year. I decided on the latter with a nod to the former.

The first change was in water treatment. My local water is very soft versus traditional British water profiles (well at least based on the information that I can find). The harder water should work on two problems, firstly it will counteract the sweetness that I’m getting in the original. The second is that the harder water should enhance the hop profile. The next change was the yeast. I wanted to try and address the comments regarding ‘British style’ so I opted to swap out the original dry Nottingham yeast and use a liquid yeast instead, opting for Wyeast (1335) British Ale II. The Nottingham yeast does have a sharper edge to it as well which may work better for a Hobgoblin clone but is a little further away from style than I need for judging. In this rebrew I was able to get a better quality Styrian Goldings; the original brew the hop was at 2.3%, while this brew it was 5.00%. This meant that I was able to fall back to pretty much the original hopping schedule. The last key difference is that I have implemented a stricter temperature control process since the original brew so I knew that fermentation should be cleaner, delivering a better result (in theory).

Brew day was a complete shambles, I was running to a strict time limit as I had to hit the road to meet the family about 300 Kms away at a place where we were camping for the night. As usual when you are pressured and time restricted you tend to make all sorts of silly mistakes and that combined with everything just taking longer resulted in a comedy of errors. Long story short, I ended up shoving the wort into a fridge to cool with the plan to inoculate it when I got home. 24 hours later I pitched and left the beer to ferment at about 18C. The fermentation ran for about a week (longer than I expected) and I let it run up to 21-22C in the last 2 days. I racked off and let the beer sit at ambient temps for a few days and unfortunately got some hot weather. Finally the beer was chilled to about 5C over 3-4 days then kegged.

Early tasting wasn’t promising but as the brew has aged this beer has really come good and is drinking very well indeed. It pours dark copper with a thin lasting head; probably lighter in colour than the first brew, not sure why but I suspect ingredient variation from G&G. Nice lifted hop aroma with underlying caramel and malt, definitely more hops than in the first version. Really clean, medium body, light bitterness with a lingering bite.

I’m very pleased with how this beer has turned out, it’s a really easy drinking session beer. I think it’s moved well away from the Hobgoblin standard but this is only to be expected given the changes I have made.  The water treatment has fixed my perceived sweetness issue and probably contributes to the improved hop perception as well. If I was being critical I’d want to get a little better attenuation out of the beer and perhaps try to get a little more body into the beer; difficult since these things can be mutually exclusive and I’m not experienced enough yet to work through the problem. I’m looking forward to feedback on this one to work out what if any changes I need to make.

My last post was the recipe that I used for my first Mild, “Born to be Mild”. The original recipe was from the NHC website by Dan George. As noted I had to make changes for local ingredients and ended up using a Wyeast British Ale II yeast. I finally put this beer on tap last week and it has come up nicely.

The BJCP says

Overall Impression: A light-flavored, malt-accented beer that is readily suited to drinking in quantity. Refreshing, yet flavorful. Some versions may seem like lower gravity brown porters.

The Mild pours a deep copper and has dropped very clear, a combination of a yeast with good flocculation, pre-carbonation cold conditioning and some gelatine finings in the keg. A couple of millimetres of creamy head fades very quickly to a thin lace. Really light body, crisp and clean. Malt forward with a medium bitterness but well balanced. No real hop character. Interestingly as you drink more of this beer this initial impression of thinness does fade away and the beer is exceptionally easy to drink. The beer started at 1.036 and finished at 1.011.

On first taste this beer is markedly thin and really just a bit to light. On the re-brew I will be trying to give this a bit more body; I think I’ll go for some more unfermentables in the mash, there is already 2% Flaked Wheat, and I really only added that for head retention but I might try the rebrew with some flaked barley up to 4% in place of the wheat or just add a little on top of the wheat. I like the yeast and the English character that it provides so I don’t think I’ll mess with it. Finally for mine, the beer needs some more hop character and might try some flameout hops.

On the whole I’m pleased with how the beer came out, it’s better than I thought a low-alcohol beer would be but it can definitely be better. Given that body is my biggest issue with this beer its probably got more to do with my mash and fermentation practices than any failing of the recipe itself, but if I can resolve the body problem then this would be a very good session beer.

I’ve been wanting to brew a Mild for a while now and finally got around to it today. I’ve used a recipe from the NHC website as a base and made some adjustments for preference and ingredient availability. The original recipe called for a Pale Chocolate Malt which I cant seem to get hold of so I’ve used a Joe White Chocolate Malt and reduced the amount to get the colour to a reasonable range; if I’d used the originally prescribed amount the beer would have been to dark. My EK Goldings was a little light so I’ve increased the 60 minute addition and instead of leaving 5g of EKG in the packed (a 40g pack) I decided to do a 20g 15 minute addition as opposed to the original 15g. Finally I wanted to add a little flaked wheat as I get better head retention when I include it in my recipes. For yeast I re-pitched some of the Wyeast 1335 British Ale II from my last batch.

Sparged the mash twice, 12 litres at 75C and 15 litres at 75C. OG at 1036 against an expected 1037 so pretty close.

I’ve been looking forward to brewing a low alcohol session beer for some time and I’m looking forward to seeing how this beer comes out. Hopefully I’ve built enough body into this beer that it holds up.