Peterborough Beerfest time! It’s Krispy Xmas and B’Day in one

Beer.. lots of it. Thank you CAMRA

Well it’s that time of year again – you should be able to tell, as it’s been raining .. a LOT.  Which means it’s time for the annual Peterborough Beer festival.

If you’ve not been before, this is the one thing that Peterborough does really well – something to be properly proud of.  Our beer festival is the 2nd largest in the UK (after the national one), and is held outside (well inside HUGE marques), on the river embankment.

As with previous years, there are many many many ales to try (350+), bottled euro beers, cider, perry, and  English wines (both grape and fruit).

Lots of live music too, in the mega enormous music tent.  Oh and grub, to keep me from keeling over.

It’s the 33rd beer festival… I think I’ve been going since the 12th?  I would have been 17 anyway (oh dear, naughty boy).  Back in those days it was held in the local roller disco and music venue (the Wirina), which is a sorry closed building now.

Anyway – Beerfest starts Tuesday.. I have the week off.  Should be sampling a few ales Tues, Weds… and all day n night Thursday.  Can’t wait!!

Oh and it’s obviously a lot cheaper if you are a paid up CAMRA member – which I am.  Remember your card if you go along!

DETAILS HERE.

Drinking 7 year old beer – someones got to do it

Fullers Vintage Ale 2003, Drank by Krispy 2010

I was given a bottle of beer to try by my step-dad David the other week – and it was a little different to say the least!

It was a bottle of Fullers ‘Vintage Ale’ – still in its slightly mottled box.  Each year Fullers create a ‘best of the best’ ale – using their favourite ingrediants (malts and hops), and make it strong enough to last.  The bottle I had was the 2003 vintage – that’s right, 7 years old!  It was one of 50,000 made back in 2003 – and I wonder how many of that run are still left maturing.   The ale is obviously bottle conditioned (bottled with live yeast), and was bottled at 8.5%  I expect some very slow fermentation carries on – with the yeast trying to digest the more complex left over sugars, doing so with little oxygen.

The card that came with it did state a ‘legal requirement’ best before of 2006, but that could be ignored with an ale of this quality and strength, especially as it had been stored in a cool and dark garage.

Well I did what any beer fan would do – I opened it!   The ale was darker than the ‘golden’ description, and it had the aroma of .. oak and sherry.  There was still a reasonable level of carbonation – enough to give the ‘mouth feel’ you want in an ale, not enough to make it ‘fizzy’.  The flavour is hard to describe (I’m probably not really a supertaster who is good at that sort of thing);  very powerful complex flavour – you knew its % was strong, but the alcohol ‘flavour’ wasn’t too pronounced, probably after 7 years to merge with the other flavours.  I couldn’t pick out much hop, so was left with an oaky malt.

It wasn’t an easy pint to finish – one that you have to take your time with.  Not a beer I’d want to drink every day, but a real experience.

The box, bottle, and insert card, about to be opened!

Oakham Ales new facebook page

Oakham Ales Black Baron - 8.8% - bonkers beer!

I thought I’d post quickly about the fact my favourite brewer (and not just because they run my locals) has a new facebook page, with some smashing images on.

Oakham Ales fanpage can be found at; http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Oakham-Ales/375341174470?ref=nf

They have released the name/strength/pump clip image for their soon to be here ale, ‘Black Baron’ – which is 8.8% in strength!  I did query that, and was told it is part of a new range of ‘bonkers beers’ – sounds good to me!

Not sure I’ll be having more than one tho.

I think you can sample the new ale at their beer festival – coming up this Easter weekend at Charters (the pub in a boat on the river nene).

Another brew: Krispy Golden Hoppy ale…

Well I thought I’d be able to squeeze one more brew in before Xmas.. and bizarrely, I thought I’d try a ‘summer ale’ – as I might as well try and nail a good session ale.. plus I’ve now got two very strong beers bottled and maturing, so I need a lighter session ale to wash em down with.

I’ve not boiled yet – just made up the yeast starter tonight.  My planned ingredients are;

• 1.5kg light malt extract (liquid)
• 1kg (2x 500g) light malt extract (dry)
• 500g wheat extract (dry – that’s a barley/wheat mix)
• 500g Carapils malt (very light grains)
• Wyeast American ale yeast
• Challenger and Cascade hops

I had in mind a hoppy and light gold ale such as Oakham Ales Bishops Farewell.  If anyone from Oakham ever reads this – please feel free to contact me and correct my mistake   (I live local, happy to accept some of your yeast )

I plan to dry hop some of the cascade – I’ve read that it’s a very distinctive and very strong aroma hop.. we shall see!  The recipe below is approx what I’ll try… (click on it to read.  Free web calculator I use found HERE)

krispy blond ale - extra hops

UPDATE 21/11/2009: Well I didn’t make the beer when I thought – as the yeast starter never really took off as I wanted – so I didn’t trust the beer to the yeast which looked possibly dead (I left the start 3 1/2 days.. and no real activty.. plus after 2-3 days you can usually smell the alcohol and yeast, but I had nothing other than malt).

So I ordered some cheaper dry yeast (American style) – and did my boil today, while listening to my local footy team lose yet again on the radio.

All in the fermenter now – I will dry hop (* see latest update about hop tea!) with 25 grams cascade once the main fermentation is through (3 days.. depending on how it goes).  I’ve read that you can add the hops to the fermenter straight away – but I thought I’d wait until there is alcohol in the mix to kill any stray germs – and also I’ve read that the heavy CO2 production etc can lose some of the hop oils and aroma’s if you add during primary fermentation.  So I’ll boil up a muslin bag and add my 25g hops to it, and get it in the fermenter on tues/weds night, and leave it there until I bottle.  What I might do is thread the bag with nylon thread, so I can pull it out just before I bottle, so it doesn’t disturb the yeast sediment (it will float, rather than sink).

The colour looks spot on – a nice golden colour, and the taste wasn’t bad – I can definitely taste a fair bit of hop, but still missing that aroma I’m looking for, so hoping the dry hopping does it.  Also about spot on OG too, about 1052, so I’ll probably get about 4.6-5% with the yeast I’m using.

Update 23/11/2009

The fermentation is going very nicely now 2 days in I have a 2-3 inch krausen formed, and the yeast is the usual very active swirly snowstorm (the best way I can describe it) – see through fermenters are great

I have decided to try a ‘hop tea’ for this beer, and if that works well, go with it every beer where I want strong hop flavour and aroma.  I will take a picture when I do it, but a hop tea is another way to add hop – I guess wet dry hopping (if that makes sense).  So instead of adding the hops to my fermenter (in a muslin bag), I may instead (or as well as…), take my 1-2 ounces of hops, add to recently boiled water, and steep for 10-15 mins.  Then take this tea and add to the fermenter (and the beer obviously!).  I’ll do this once it’s calmed down, as some of the oils and aroma will be driven off by the CO2 being expelled during the yeast’s busy period.

To help keep the hop leaf from the beer, I’m going to use a coffee cafetiere (American’s call them a ‘French Press’) – those glass jars with a fine metal mesh you push down on to strain coffee grounds from the water.  I can use the same idea to strain and squeeze the hops out of the ‘tea’, getting all the goodness and flavour without the bits.  That’s the theory.

Even using the hop tea method, I MIGHT add hops directly too – just to make fully sure

New brew: Belgium strong ale

Another brew for Xmas; “Krispy Belgium Strong Ale” is now in the fermenter, and is still bubbling strongly 3 days later.

I wanted to have a couple of strong (8-9%) ales for Xmas, all bottled in my new green 1 litre bottles – better than 2 litres I had been using, as a) you can control how much you drink easier – without having to leave half opened stuff), and b) less chance of yeast mixing, as you probably only pour twice, rather than 4 or 5 times with a two litre, each time mixing more and more yeast in.

Some of the ingredients in my 'brew box'

Ingredients for this brew were (as my previous 2 beers, no recipe – just my own decisions);

• 2 x 1.5kg of light malt extract
• 1.5kg of belgium candy sugar
• 300g of extra light dried malt
• 250g of Belgium ‘Special B’ malt grains
• 300g of light crystal malt grains
• 50g Brewers gold hops (fairly high acid bittering hops)
• 50g Saaz hops (famous continental ‘lager’ flavour/aroma hops)
• Wyeast Belgium Abbey ale liquid yeast (1214)
• 5g of irish moss (add last 15 mins boil to help clear proteins)

The candy sugar is in there to give the beer the strength, without making it too full bodied – belgium beer is often very strong but not over malty – they use sugar to add alcohol without dominating the beer with malt making it heavy).

Yeast Starter (brewing technique helper)

I have used another liquid yeast, as while they are expensive, they are meant to be very true to type giving better results than dried yeast.  They do recommend making a ‘yeast starter’ though – as the 25 billion yeast cells are not quite enough to really get your fermentation going quickly (for a standard UK 5 gallon batch).  To make a yeast starter, I did the following;

Yeast starter

• Prepare liquid yeast (smack the pack 3 hours before as instructed, to mix yeast with nutrients, and leave in warm (25c) place.
  • If doing this with dried yeast, rehydrate, add yeast to cooled boiled water and leave covered for 30 – 45 mins, stirring only after first 15 mins.
• sanitise a small container – I’m using a £5 glass jar which just about takes 2 litres of liquid.
• get a medium saucepan, and too it;
  • add 150-200g of dried malt extract (better than sugar as closer to what the yeast will be eating in your main brew)
  • add 1.5-2 litres of boiling water (I don’t want to completely fill my container!)
  • Boil for 10 minutes
• Pour the boiling liquid malt into the glass jar
• COOL!  (I carefully put the glass jar in a sink of cold water)
• Once down to between 21-25c;
  • Seal container, and SHAKE!  You want to get a lot of oxygen into it – but be careful not to make a mess!
  • add the yeast (from smack pack or rehydration container)
• Leave in a warm dark place for 2-3 days!
  • for my belgium yeast between 20-24c)

The yeast will ferment the mixture, eating up all the sugars in the malt, and multiplying out in the oxygen rich wort.  This will give you upto 2 litres of yeasty mixture!

For this brew I was using a new thermometer – as I managed to break my previous one!  This time it was a probe and electronic unit one from Lakeland – and it’s really the business.  The probe is on a fairly long wire to the unit, and the unit acts as a timer, and readout, and also you can set max / min temps in it to monitor for, and it will beep when they are reached.

Monitoring temperature with new gizmo

So during the making of the beer, after adding the water and grains to the boiler, I set the upper limit alarm to 65c, and turned the heater to full.  I went off to read, and when the ideal steeping temp is reached, the alarm went off, and I could then set the heater back down to 2-3, to just maintain that 65 temp.  I then set the timer to 20 mins, and left it like that… alarm told me it was time to remove the grains and turn up the heat!

I then added the 2 cans of malt extract (which i had in boiling water for 20 mins to soften up the mixture inside), the 1.5kg of candy sugar (bit by bit as the water kept heating, stiring it in to help it disolve!), and some dried malt extract too which I had left over.

Once the wort was reaching close too boiling, I added 50g of my bittering hop (brewers gold – a popular German lager hop), and boiled for 75 mins.  I then added my wort chiller to sanitise, and 5g (one teaspoon) of Irish moss.  After 5 mins, the first 40g of Saaz hops for flavour, and then 9 mins later 10g more Saaz for a bit of hop aroma.  Heat off 1 min later (for a total 90 min boil), and then cold water turned on to chill the wort down.  I could use my new temp probe to tell me when it had reached 25c – very handy.

So once chilled, my wort is ready.  I quickly took a hydrometer reading – doing it now as there isn’t any foam on the surface – 1080 original gravity – good strong stuff!  I used a new stainless steel funnel (with strainer inside, I think it’s for jam making) to help me transfer the wort from the boiler tap to my clear fermenter – allowing the beer to drop a good distance to help get as much oxygen into it at this stage as possible.  The only problem is it gets so much oxygen, it foams right up – so I have to keep mopping up during the transfer.  Half way through I add in the yeast, just pouring all 1.5 litres of yeast/wort starter in.  Then top up with the last of the wort, some 19-20 litres.  I capped it off with a blow off tube (some tubing which is fed into a container of water – in case the fermentation foams up so much it would blow through a normal airlock causing possible contamination.

All in fermenter, my stout in barrel to the side

Because it’s in a clear fermenter, I can see the yeast getting to work – and within 12 hours it’s really going mad!  84 hours later it’s calming a little, but still bubbling strongly.  I’d expect it to stop the main fermentation soon – 3-4 days later (as my yeast is so strong after using a starter).  I’ll probably bottle after 2 weeks – but if it’s clear sooner than that I’ll change my mind.

Yeast going mad - it's like a snowstorm

New brew – “Krispy Stout”

I’ve been busy and have brewed up another beer – Krispy Stout this time, and it’s in the fermenter bubbling away as we speak.

You can click on the image below to see the recipe – ignore the bitterness figure though – it seems not to be working correctly!  I used both pale chololate malt and roasted barley to get the flavours and colour of a stout – using a bit of spare crystal malt just to add to the layers of flavour.

My Krispy Stout recipe

I used a whyest liquid yeast this time – a ‘proper’ Irish ale yeast to try and get the beer as close to type as possible.  Unusually for me I’ve kept to ‘normal’ beer strength, rather than try and hit the more old school 8-9%’s of some of my IPA style beers.  I also added a couple of large spoons of black treacle, just to add a touch of ‘toffee’ to the mix – the wort pre yeast tasted really nice; big flavours of coffee, chocolate and malt.

I made sure the liquid yeast would do the job by adding it to a wort starter 3 days before I needed it – by boiling up 2 litres of water with 200g of dried pale malt extract for 10 mins, then letting it cool in a steralised glass jar, and adding the liquid yeast.  Cover with a foil ‘lid’, and leave in a warm n dark place.  3 days later the yeast is going mad, like it’s fermenting a beer (which it is in reality, just a small batch).  Then pour that 2 litres of starter into the cooled wort in the fermentor, and stand back

Update 11th October 2009
Well I’ve barrelled the Stout, as I decided because Stout doesn’t need to be to fizzy, or cold, that a barrel would be the better option for it (pressure barrels cannot actually handle the pressure needed for highly carbonated drinks).  So I mixed up about 120 grams of dry light malt extract, and about 30 grams of brewing sugar, with about 2/3rds of a pint of boiling water.  That was added to the freshly steralised barrel, and then the stout siphoned out carefully into it, mixing with the sugars.

One little tip – I put the lid on the barrel (not screwed on!) then use my soda stream CO2 (with brass adaptor) in the lid inlet to fire some CO2 as a blanket over the beer, before screwing the lid on properly.  That way I know I’ve pushed some of the oyxgen out, putting a carbon dioxide ‘cap’ onto the beer to help protect it from oxydising (not good at this point).  Then I’ve used the heat belt (you plug it into the mains, and it warms up to keep the ale warm) to keep the temp up for the first week (not leaving it on all that time, as I’d end up with hot soup) – just now and then when it felt a little cool.  So hopefully the yeast which is left in the beer will eat up the sugars and the gas will stay in the beer to carbonate it.  After a day I used the soda stream gas again in anger, to try and raise the pressure up in the barrel so to help keep the naturally fermented CO2 in the beer.

I did try the beer during the transfer (pop a bit in a clean glass) – it was very flat (more so than I’ve noticed before..) but did taste spot on – probably the best or most authentic flavour I’ve managed so far.  Let’s hope the barrel fermentation works well and I’ve not just ended up with sweet flat stout!  I’ll give it another two weeks before I tap a trial glass…

Brew day in pictures – brewing ‘how to’

Here’s the log of my most recent brew, my first of the autumn, and again it’s kinda my own recipe, for an IPA.  I bought the ingredients based on what I’d been reading, and then used an online calculator to just check my thoughts and timings.  Click on the image below to see what I’m pretty much aiming for – I’m using the traditional high quality fuggles and golding hops – for hopefully a quality ale.  (you can find the calculator here)

my IPA recipe.. strong an hoppy (I hope) - click image to view

So generally this is going to be a STRONG ale – I should think it will reach between 8-9% when done!  But that’s still within the range of a good old style IPA, so I’m not worried.  Plus it’s for Xmas, and brews need to keep you warm

The main ingredients - minus the water!

So going into my brew was the following;

* three 1.5kG tins of finest pale malt extract (so 4.5kg in total.. hence the strength!)
* 250g of pale malt grains (I wanted to add some fresh malt flavour and depth)
* 250g of crystal malt grains (for a bit of darker colouring and flavour)
* 100g of Kent Golding hops
* 100g of Fuggles
* 5g of irish moss (to help take out some of the protein during the boil)
* few g of yeast nutrition (can’t hurt)
* Nottingham dried yeast (yes I know liquid is prob better, but the beer was already costing me lots!)
* 22 litres of charcoal filtered tap water (just be patient with a normal water filter jug!)

The water I took time filtering and adding to a spare fermentation bucket (which I just use to store water etc now).  Once I had about 22 litres (I was only going for a 19 litre final brew size) I added 1/2 a camden tablet and left alone (the Camden tablets are meant to remove all the chlorates I believe).

My brew project plan - know what you're doing when!

I cleaned and soaked my fermenter and bits n bobs in cleaner overnight, and gave my boiler a bit of a clean up and quick sanitize.

I then drew up a bit of a simple project plan – well a timeline starting from ‘grain steeping’, through the 90 min boil, the cooling, and into the fermenter.  It makes sense to list what you’re going to do, and when – so you don’t mess up the brew with something simple missed (like adding hops at the ‘flavour stage’ – something important I messed up last time).

So I’ve got everything I’m going to use sterilized and clean, and all my ingredients to hand – ready to start!

Read the rest of this entry »

Brewing season on the way

Well it’s getting cooler outside (and inside my house) – so ‘brewing season’ is about here.  As yeast needs to be between 23-18 or so (depending on beer and yeast obviously) when fermenting,  I have not way to brew in the hotter summer months really.  Plus there’s a lot more airbound bacteria when it’s warmer, which makes getting a brew done even tougher!

I’ve already bought some supplies.. and I intend to try again at a very strong (to original type) IPA – my last one failed (although it is a nice ale.. just not hoppy at all!).

This time I’ll try and get the flavour hops in at the right time (I went too early last time and they would have lost all the flavour in boiling off).  Plus i’m going to boil for longer overall now – from 60 to 90 mins as per the books I’ve been reading.

I’ll take pics of the kit and ingrediants and as I brew again – I’m going for 4.5k of liquid pale malt, two types of grain (crystal and pale malt), two types of hop (fuggles and goldings for traditions sake), got my irish moss this time (didn’t realise I needed it previously!), and 20+ green litre bottles for bottling later on.  the 2 Litre pop bottles I had used aren’t a good idea, mainly because of how much beer you need to drink in one go, and also the amount of yeast that gets stirred up from pouring multiple times!

More to come!

Beerfest day 3

My last day at this years beerfest – I decided against going again Friday, as my body couldn’t take it (and the Mrs was pleased to see me one night!).

some of the food tents - and the sun is out

A full thurs enjoyment – we got there about 2pm, and stayed until closing at 11pm.  Many, many ales tried – and some old favourites re-visited.  The great news was it was a really good day – the weather was on our side, and the sun was out.  It was the first festival in several years where the ground was rock solid and not all muddy and churned up.

Casks of beer... mmm

I ran into quite a few old friends – which is always a highlight of the festival!  It was also the ‘big night’ for work – so I wasn’t short of friends.  I also managed to spend more time in the music tent, as there’s always something great about live music and a large crowd.

Workmates enjoying the beer n sun

The only disappointment was that Oakham had rotated out their festival special (and my beer of the festival) – to save it for Friday and Saturday night.  I do hope they make it a permament feature of their ale selection!

Pboro Beerfest beerguide - showing my beer of the festival

Hats off to CAMRA and all the volunteers who run the who event – I did get tempted to help out myself this year – but it’s so much fun being a visitor – it’s very hard to see how I’d give that up.  Maybe next year…

Some of my favourites – those remembered anyway – if you see any of these in your local pub, why not give em a try?

Tar Bar’l (Allendale of Allendale) – a nice dry stout – which taste seem to grow in the mouth.
B.G. Sips (Blue Monkey of Ilkeston) – a really intense hoppy bitter – I love my hops. Tasted more like an IPA should, but bitter strength.
S.A. Gold (Brains of Cardiff) – you can get this in bottles in supermarkets – and why not?!
Punk IPA (Brewdog of Fraserburgh) – fantastic IPA – good and strong too (6%) so truer to style than many commercial IPAs.
Armada Ale (Harveys of Lewes) – a great easy drinking bitter.
Norfolk lager (Iceni of Norfolk) – a pleasant surprise this – REAL lager – and pretty damn good.  One for those who think they don’t like beer
Golden drop (Ufford ales) – great golden hoppy beer – anyone would like this.
Hop twister (Salopan of Shrewsbury) – hoppy bitter with a nice citrus flavour.
Hop devil (Rockingham of Blatherwyke) – six hops!? in this – only 3.9%, but plenty of flavour.

More mates enjoying the music ... and beer

Beerfest day 2

Well I’ve lived through Wednesday night at the Pboro beer festival – and a cracker it was.  I was joined by my Aussie mate Lindsay – and we drank our way through a good number of ales – one half pint at a time.

I think beer of the festival for me has been the Oakham Ales festival special – Akhenaten – a 4.9% golden ale, with lots of complex hop and citrus flavours.  It’s like a beefed up Bishops Farewell, which itself is a fantastic ale.

The music stage has had a lighting improvement

Talking of hops – now I thought I loved hops in beer, and there was no such thing as ‘too much hop’.  I’ve since discovered there is!  We took a break from the ale to go for a bottled ‘world beer’ – and rather than try my usual belgium favourites, I thought I’d try an American IPA – and picked the Snake Dog IPA 5.6% (Flying Dog brewery).  Wow it was so heavy on hops it was amazing – but unbalanced really – my mouth this morning still feels a bit numb from the effect of those hops.  A bit much – I think the brewer just needs to find a bit more balance in the beer!

Food wise – we went for the standard issue Charters BBQ – burger with cheese.  Hit the spot.

The festival itself was far quieter last night than the opening night – possibly due to the light drizzle that was falling half of the time – and the dark cloud there’d been all day.

As for tonight – the ‘big one’ as I call Thurs night (because it’s the traditional night that a lot of people from work go) – here’s hoping for a great night.  Well afternoon and night in fact, as it opens at 12… although we’ll probably get there more like 2pm – there’s no rush!   Hopefully the bands are on form, the ale doesn’t warm up too much, and it doesn’t get TOO busy.