Saturday, January 22, 2011
More notes on the beers.
1) Stout
I have named this stout after a recent very horrific health scare. I don't think I've ever felt more threatened in my life before. In a way, it's been life-changing.
Anyway, it went into the bottles after 8 days of fermentation. ABV was calculated to be 8%, and it tasted great even without aging. I tried out the Tap-A-Draft system with forced carbonation, but the darned thing just ate its way through 3 CO2 cartridges and 1 nitrogen cartridge. About the beer - taste-wise it was really nice and full-bodied (Yx became a stout fan for the first time ever), though I felt it was a wee bit too fruity. Perhaps it's got something to do with fermenting at 28C. The one thing disappointing was the head retention. Head was good, but lasted 10 mins tops. I have 2 more 6L bottles that are conditioing (in dad's wine cooler, lol) and I'll experiment with adding some maltodextrin / gum arabic to help with this.
2) IPA
Yes, first attempt. Starting gravity was a tad lower than expected, so I'm expecting a very light beer out of this one. 3.5 to 4% ABV, more like a shandy than anything else. =( Maybe the next time I'll brew to 20L instead of 23L. Here's the bill for future reference:
2L yeast starter (Safale US-05 yeast) with 300g dried malt extract
1 can Cooper's IPA kit
500g dried malt extract
350g dextrose
14g Cascade hops added in last 15 mins of boiling
14g Cascade hops added in last 5 mins of boiling
14g Kent Goldings hops added in last 5 mins of boiling
Topped up to 23L, out of which 6L were clean ice
Starting gravity: 1.032 =(
Another note: 6L of ice was a bit too much, starting wort temperature was 14C! I'll do it with 4L of clean ice next time instead. Fermentation was well underway within the hour, temp maintained at 26-28C using an ice bath and wet towels. Darned our tropical weather.
This is intended to be a rather hoppy beer, so in 4 days' time I'll be adding 14g Cascade and 14g Kent Goldings into the fermenter to dry-hop. Let's see how this turns out!
Thinking of doing up a hefeweizen next.
Wenky
11:13 AM
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