Lager Yeast, from Argentina!

Interesting article on the BBC News website today.

Scientists have identified a yeast that led to the discovery of lager. The researchers isolated the new species in the frozen forests of Patagonia in South America.

Read the full article.

Delays, delays.....but something to look forward to

It has been nearly a month since I posted my recipe for Standard Stout II, my lack of an update is not down to posting lethargy, but rather the fact that I have not brewed it. Why I hear you cry, well because in the last month we have decided to move house to a new town, said house has been found and we are moving next week.

The Brewing implications of the new house are significant!

Three things brewers look for in a house:

1. An outside building 
2. Outside access to electricity 
3. Outside access to water 

Check, check and check. The new house has a decent size shed at the back of the garden and also has an outside tap and electrical socket. More than this my new town (Bray, County Wicklow, about 12 miles south of Dublin) has one of the original brew pubs in Ireland, The Porterhouse. It also has one of the best off-licenses for craft beer in Ireland, Holland's. The next couple of weeks are going to be a bit hectic, however I will report back soon on how the shed/brewery set up is going :-)

AG #9 - Furious IPA - First Pour

I have been very patient with my Furious IPA beer that I brewed at the beginning of June. Based on Surly Brewing's Furious (pic below). Two weeks fermenting and a further 4 weeks conditioning in the keg and the results of that patience have been very pleasing.

Pours a murky redish-brown colour with a creamy thick head. 

Hints of yeast off the nose initially and an ever so slight metallic taste can be gotten with the first taste, however as the beer warms up its true character emerges, a sweet malty base is nicely counterpointed by a strong hop aroma and flavour. The malty characteristics are a real success, Belgian Aromatic, Crystal and Roasted Barley blend together really well. The body is perfectly medium bodied, carbonation nice and low, very smooth mouthfeel.

The hop characteristics are strong but wonderfully smooth, no doubt this is down to the first wort hopping, a technique I will certainly be using again in my IPA's and APA's.

Defining characteristic is just how well all of the traits of this beer come together, sweet malty base, smooth hop bittering, nice high level of late hop flavour and aroma all brought together in a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel. Really happy with the way this turned out and will definitely be brewing this again.

Furious IPA:

Recipe
Brew Day
Fermentation & Conditioning

AG #10 - Standard Stout II - Recipe

I have been contemplating my next brew for a few weeks now and I have decided to brew a beer that I made last year, but this year I am adding a little twist. Standard Stout was brewed last June and I was really happy with the results, beaming at the time that it was my best beer to date. For this years version I have decided to keep the grain bill the same, the bittering hop addition the same, the yeast has been changed based on my current inventory, however the significant change is that I have decided to introduce some American hop characteristics into the flavour and aroma. This will be achieved with a single late boil addition of Ahtanum, Simcoe, Columbus and Amarillo (5g each). This should give a light and subtle American hop  flavour and aroma.


Standard Stout II
Author: Mark

Size: 25.2 L
Efficiency: 74.34%
Attenuation: 72.1%
Calories: 142.33 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.043 (1.044 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.012 - 1.024)
Color: 62.15 (59.1 - 78.8)
Alcohol: 4.03% (4.0% - 6.0%)
Bitterness: 20.9 (20.0 - 40.0)

Ingredients:
3000 g Maris Otter
500 g Barley Flaked
500 g Carapils®/Carafoam®
432 g Roasted Barley
260.0 g Chocolate 1060 EBC
38.0 g Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
5.0 g Ahtanum (6.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
5.0 g Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
1.0 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 15 min
250 g DME
1.0 ea Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05

Mash @ 67c

AG #9 - Furious IPA - Fermentation & Conditioning

The brew day for Furious IPA went very well and in this post I just wanted to give you an outline of my fermentation and conditioning schedule. Here is the timeline:

Brew day: 4th June
Primary Fermentation: 4th - 18th June

On the 18th I kegged one corny (19 litres) and 9 x 500 ml bottles.

Keg
Keg Conditioning (room temperature): 18th - 25th June
Keg Conditioning (fridge temperature): 25th - 30th June
Force Carbonation: 1st July - 8th July

Bottle 
Bottles will condition for 2-3 months at room temperature and then get a week of cold conditioning before being ready. With a session beer, bottle conditioning can be done in 2-3 weeks, however with this beer being 6% ABV it will benefit from the extra time in the bottle*.

* to be honest so would the keg, but who is going to be able to leave a keg condition for a couple of months, especially when my keggerator is empty!

So a pretty straightforward fermentation and conditioning process. Keg is typically one week conditioning, one week cold conditioning and one week force carbonating. For bottles a minimum of two weeks conditioning and then the longer you can hold off the better the beer will taste, most bottled beers will probably be at their peak between two and four months old. The above can be used as a rule of thumb but obviously adjust based on your set-up and the beer you are brewing.

Really looking forward to trying this beer next weekend. I'll report back on how it turned out.

AG #9 - Furious IPA - Brew Day

Over the June bank holiday weekend here in Ireland I got the opportunity to brew, the recipe is based on a clone recipe for Furious IPA (by Surly Brewing) that appeared in BYO. The thing I like about brew days is trying something new and on this particular brew day, an additional piece of equipment allowed me to try out two new techniques.

Three Tier Gravity Fed
Set Up

The new piece of equipment was a HLT (hot liquor tank), having a dedicated vessel for heating my strike and sparge water allowed me to brew using a three tier gravity fed system. Basically your three main brewing vessels (HLT, Mash Tun and Kettle) are set up so that you can move the liquid from one vessel to the next during the brewing process using only gravity. In the picture to the right you can see this in action. HLT can be seen with the foil insulation, blue cooler box mash tun in the middle and then my kettle at the bottom.

The great advantage of this set up is that it allows me to try out a new technique which was continuos sparging. This in essence means that once your mash has completed (in my case after 60 minutes), instead of draining off all of the wort and then filling the mash tun again with water (known as batch sparging), you can simply open the tap from the HLT to your mash tun and then the tap from your mash tun to your kettle. As the wort drains into the kettle, new water is replacing it in the mash tun. This technique is great as a time saver and also gives you a really good grain bed in the mash tun to filter your wort through. The one slight downside some people find with this technique is that mash efficiency can drop, mash efficiency calculates how efficient your process is at getting fermentable sugars from the grain into your wort. However I have to say that I did not find this to be the case, I achieved an efficiency of 73%, which is pretty similar to what I get when I batch sparge.

First Wort Hopping

Due to the fact that I now could use my kettle purely for boiling wort (before I had a dedicated HLT it also doubled up to heat my strike and sparge water) I can also try out another new technique, first wort hopping. First wort hopping entails placing hops in the kettle and then starting the flow of wort from the mash tun into the kettle. It is another technique for getting hop flavour into your beers and it is said to give a nice balanced bitter flavour and not the harsh bitterness you sometimes get when too much bittering hops are used.

This beer is a bit of a hop monster, with over 100g of hops used for the 7 gallon batch it has IBU's in the region of about 70 and an ABV a touch over 6%. I transferred this to the keg today and had enough left over to fill about 10 bottles. The clarity of the beer was perfect, which was something I struggled with in my last beer, but I am glad to see that the few tweaks I made to my brewing process seem to have solved this issue. The taste was fantastic, very hoppy with a nice malt base. I am really looking forward to trying this beer, however I am going to be patient. A week conditioning at room temp in the keg will be followed by a week of cold conditioning, I will then force carbonate for a week. Will report back next month with some tasting notes.

Eight Degrees Brewing

I spoke today with Scott from Eight Degrees Brewing, the latest entrant into the Irish craft beer market. Based in North Cork, Eight Degrees is taking a slightly different trajectory than other Irish craft brewers. Their vision is to produce their beers in 330 ml bottles and look to sell them by the six-pack. This is something that would be very common in the American market but something that Irish brewers have not yet tried. Currently most Irish brewers sell their beer in 500ml bottles. Scott hopes that this packaging will differentiate them in the Irish market.

The beer they will be releasing initially will be Howling Gale Ale, and this looks set to be followed by a red ale and a porter. I tried the Howling Gale this afternoon and it was very good. Bittered strongly with Chinook at the start of the boil, it is then finished off with Amarillo and I think Centennial, all of this hoppiness is backed up by a nice sweet malt base. The beer will be bottle conditioned and Scott says that their bottling set up will allow up to 48 bottles a minute and so we should hopefully be seeing six packs of Howling Gale available in your local off-licence very soon. Better still is the price point, the six-packs will be sold for approximately €12, will special pricing reducing it to closer to €10 on occasion!

Howling Gale will also be available on draught and should be reaching pubs in the next week (Bull & Castle, Against the Grain and L Mulligan Grocer, all in Dublin, will be getting kegs shortly).

AG #9 - Furious IPA - Recipe

Next weekend in Ireland is the June bank holiday weekend, with the weatherman assuring us of nice weather to come, it's definitely time for a brew day. This recipe is based on a clone recipe of Furious IPA by Surly Brewing, the recipe appeared in BYO magazine. I have tweaked it a little bit but essentially I am trying to re-create the Surly Brewing beer, a flavourful, hoppy, American IPA.Here's how Surly describe this beer:

A tempest on the tongue, or a moment of pure hop bliss? Brewed with a dazzling blend of American hops and Scottish malt, this crimson-hued ale delivers waves of citrus, pine and caramel-toffee. For those who favor flavor, Furious has the hop-fire your taste buds have been screeching for.

Sounds good....

Furious IPA

14-B American IPA

Author: Mark/Surly Brewing

Size: 23.04 L

Efficiency: 70.0%

Attenuation: 75.0%

Calories: 206.76 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.062 (1.056 - 1.075)

|=============#==================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.015 (1.010 - 1.018)

|==================#=============|

Color: 33.37 (11.82 - 29.55)

|===========================#====|

Alcohol: 6.11% (5.5% - 7.5%)

|============#===================|

Bitterness: 73.8 (40.0 - 70.0)

|==========================#=====|

Ingredients:

6000.0 g Maris Otter

336.0 g Belgian Aromatic

408.0 g Crystal Malt 60°L

68.0 g Roasted Barley

17.0 g Ahtanum (6.0%) - added first wort, boiled 60 min

34.0 g Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min

10.0 g Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 2.0 min

8.0 g Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 2.0 min

8.0 g Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 2.0 min

8.0 g Ahtanum (6.0%) - added during boil, boiled 2.0 min

8.0 g Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min

8.0 g Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min

8.0 g Columbus (15.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min

1.0 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 15.0 min

1.0 ea WYeast 1335 British Ale II

Yeast - Dry or Liquid?

When it comes to making beer, it has been said a million times before, but is worth reiterating; yeast makes beer, not brewers. The importance of this statement is not just to explain the part that yeast plays in turning your sweet wort into alcoholic beer, but rather to emphasize the fact that if you want to make good, or even great beer, then yeast should be one of your focus areas. There are lots of yeast strains to choose from but one of the first decisions to be made is whether to use dry or liquid yeast.


Dry Yeast

Dry yeast is probably where most homebrewers will start. If you begin with kit brewing you would normally get a sachet of dried yeast included with your kit. Once you move onto extract or all-grain brewing you then have the option to continue using dried yeast.

Varieties: There are a limited number of yeast strains available in dry form and that is due to the fact that not all yeast strains can be freeze dried successfully. Popular dry yeasts include US05, US04 and Nottingham.

How to Use it: The optimal way to use dried yeast is to rehydrate it prior to pitching. To do this simply get a plastic bottle and fill with 100ml of boiled water and let it cool to 20-25c. Then pour the sachet of yeast into the bottle, but do not shake. Cover the top with some foil and then let it sit for 10-15 minutes, then you can gently swirl the bottle and allow to sit for another 10-15 minutes. Once you wort has cooled to roughly 20c you can then pour in the contents of the bottle and stir it in.

Pro's: There are a number of advantages of dry yeast. It is relatively cheap compared to other forms of yeast and it is also very easy to use.

Con's: The main downside of dried yeast is the limited variety of yeast strains. Also as with any food stuff that has been dried it certainly loses some of the flavours and freshness that you would get with a liquid yeast.

Summary: An easy to use dependable form of yeast that is particularly good for beginner homebrewers who wants to focus more of their attention on other elements of the brewing process.

Liquid Yeast:

Liquid yeast is the choice for more advanced homebrewers. Due to the wide choice of yeast strains it allows you to brew a beer with the specific strain that is traditionally used.

Varieties: Yeast strains available in liquid form number in the hundreds and style specific strains allow for a much more authentic brew to be made. 

How to Use it: Liquid yeast normally comes in two distinct forms. Either pitchable yeast which can be used straight from the vial or alternatively the yeast may require a starter wort to be made. The simple instructions on creating a starter wort are detailed on the packaging, and although time consuming is very straight forward.

Pro's: The advantages of liquid yeast really lie in two main areas, firstly the variety of strains allows for much greater choice. Secondly, once prepared correctly, it can offer a much healthier yeast as it is much fresher. Another option is to reuse the yeast slurry from a batch of beer and so it can be used through a number of batches.

Pitchable yeast allows you to pitch
directly into a 5 gallon batch.

Con's: The disadvantages of liquid yeast are that it is more expensive that the dried version and also if you use a form that requires a starter wort to be made this can be quite time consuming.

Summary: When choosing which type of yeast to be used I would recommend that beginners use dried yeast. This is due to the fact that when beginning to brew there is quite a lot of processes to get your head around and the added complication of having to prepare a yeast starter is probably something the beginner can do without. For more advanced brewers I would suggest it is a matter of 'horses for courses'. If you are brewing a simple sessionable pale ale you can do no wrong going with the dry yeast strain US05. However if you are brewing a beer that requires more of an input from the yeast to create its flavour and profile I would certainly look at liquid yeast options.

Further Reading:

Homebrewtalk.com Wiki - Yeast
How to Brew, John Palmer - Chapter 6: Yeast (online edition)

Troubleshooting - Homebrew Haze

I have been drinking the results of my most recent homebrew, Lady Liberty Ale, and while the taste profile was exactly what I was looking for, a light sessionable pale ale, the one problem with the beer is that it is quite hazy. While this is an aesthetic thing it is quite annoying and so I set about investigating the different causes of haze to see if I could make sure that I could address any problem in my process that could have led to this. Haze in beer can be one of two types, it can be permanent or temporary.

Lady Liberty Ale; tasty,
but hazy.

Permanent haze in beer is typically caused by two different kinds of process, biological or non-biological. Biological basically means that your beer has been infected. In this instance I do not think that the beer in infected, it has no off-flavours or smells and so I believe that the issue that caused the haze in this case is non-biological. If it was a biological infection the most likely cause would be poor sanitation, as sanitation is something I am very fastidious with when brewing I do not think this is the issue. Permanent non-biological haze is more than likely caused by an excess of starch built up due to an issue in the brewing process. This is a rare occurrence and so the focus of my investigation will be in relation to possible temporary haze, temporary haze can be caused by a number of issues.

Chill haze in beer is caused by proteins bonding with polyphenols and becoming insoluble, this occurs when the beer is cold and so as the beer warms they should dissolve once again. Chill haze in beer needs to be fixed through a process change, it is important to get your wort boiling quickly at the start of your boil to enable a good hot break, similarly it is important to chill your wort quickly post-boil in order to get a good cold break. Achieving these two breaks quickly should reduce the risk of chill haze in your beers. Another thing that will help solve this issue is to use a fining agent, Irish Moss or Whirlfloc can be added to the kettle 10-15 minutes from the end of the boil (personally I use Irish Moss).

Brewers don't make beer, yeast
does and healthy yeast = tasty beer.

The second possible cause of temporary haze could be from the presence of residual yeast in the beer, this is caused when yeast calls do not settle to the bottom of the fermentation vessel once fermentation is complete. You can solve this issue through a little patience, the typical conditioning period of 2 weeks can be extended and more time conditioning should encourage the yeast to settle out. If you are really concerned you can use another fining agent called Isinglass which can be added to the beer after fermentation.

Conclusion:

In my case I believe the haziness is due to two problems; chill haze and residual yeast. To test whether this was purely chill haze I poured a glass from the keg and left it for a few hours to warm up, although there was some improvement in clarity the beer still appeared hazy. Secondly I read back through my notes and noted some issues with the yeast, 1) it was right at the outer edge of its use by date and 2) it did not completely ferment out as I would have expected it to and finished a couple of gravity points too high.

In order to address these issues I will make two changes to my brewing process for future batches. To address the chill haze problem I will make sure to have a good rolling boil throughout the 60 minute boil (at times in the past I have had the tendency to switch off one of my elements and just maintain a weak boil). Secondly to address the issue of residual yeast I have decided to invest in a wort aeration system that will allow my to oxygenate the cooled wort prior to pitching the yeast. This should create a very healthy environment for the yeast to do its work in.

Further Reading/Reference:

Brew Your Own Magazine, Hazy Homebrew by Betsy Parks, May-June 2011, p. 11
The Home Brewers Answer Book, Ashton Lewis, p. 312-314
How To Brew, John Palmer, Appendix C - Beer Clarity, p. 277-281