What are you brewing for Christmas?

oblivious

So far I have strong dark Belgian/old ale in the secondary and a Belgian golden ale in the primary that I brewed a last night. I also intend to do an imperial porter and maybe a wit. What are all of you up to?

Adeptus Titanicus

Will be attempting a Bishops Finger clone, if the stuff arrives on time

guildofevil

I have a bitter to do this week, but once I have it in secondary, I will be doing a strawberry wheat. The week after that, I'll do a double, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Both should be available for the Festive season.

I would ideally have liked to have laid the double down earlier in the year and have it mature for some months, but it took me a long time to get my Cornelius kegs up and running.

The planned bitter and the IPA I have in secondary, along with the triple and cider I currently have on tap, should keep me going in the mean time.

Adeptus Titanicus wrote:

Will be attempting a Bishops Finger clone, if the stuff arrives on time

A worthy goal indeed! Any chance of getting a peek at the recipe you intend to use?

I am particularly interested in your yeast choice.

oblivious

guildofevil wrote:

I will be doing a strawberry wheat.

Are you going to use a strawberry extract or add strawberries to the secondary?

Hendrixcat

I brewed an ESB over the weekend with some amber and aromatic malts along with heaps of Challenger, Target and Goldings. Should be good for cold winter months. Might try a double bock next week as another winter warmer.

guildofevil

oblivious wrote:

Are you going to use a strawberry extract or add strawberries to the secondary?

I bought a bunch of strawberries when they where cheap, during the summer. I then stalked and rinsed them in sani, before bagging and freezing them.

I'll thaw them and mash them up in a muslin cloth, inside a plastic bucket, then rack the beer on top of them, after primary.

I hope it turns out well. I have never used Strawberries before.

Adeptus Titanicus

guildofevil wrote:

A worthy goal indeed! Any chance of getting a peek at the recipe you intend to use?

I am particularly interested in your yeast choice.

This is going to be a bit long-winded, so apologies

We started off with a recipe we found at http://www.fermentationfrenzy.com/recipe.html#apr2002 which looked good and said it was based on a recipe from the Clone Brews book.

Converted to metric it looks like this (based on a US 5 Gal brew, c. 19 litres):

Amount Item
2.83 kg Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)
0.34 kg Wheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC)
0.29 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)
0.11 kg Amber Malt (43.3 EBC)
28.35 gm Brewer's Gold [8.00%] (60 min)
14.17 gm Challenger [7.00%] (15 min)
14.17 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (15 min)
14.17 gm Fuggles [4.50%] (1 min)
14.17 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (1 min)
1 Pkgs Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)


We got our hands on the Clone Brews book only yesterday, and it gave the following for a Bishops Finger clone:

Amount Item
2.80 kg Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)
0.06 kg Glucose Syrup (0.0 EBC)
0.34 kg Wheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC)
0.28 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC)
0.11 kg Amber Malt (43.3 EBC)
28.00 gm Target [8.50%] (60 min)
14.00 gm Challenger [7.00%] (15 min)
14.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (15 min)
14.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (1 min)
14.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40%] (1 min)
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
1 Pkgs Thames Valley Ale (Wyeast Labs #1275)

(for full mash sub in 3.7kg 2-row pale malt for the DME)


So, a bit different from the modified version we originally looked at.

Having said that, I had a bottle of the real deal last night, and on the side it says they use only EK Goldings. I imagine the cloners used a higher AA hop as the main bittering hop to get the levels up.

Anyhoo, the recipe we're going to try is a small variation of the variation of the clone brew recipe, scaled up to 20 litres, and getting a little more of the EK Goldings in

Amount Item
3.00 kg Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)
0.36 kg Wheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC)
0.30 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC)
0.12 kg Amber Malt (43.3 EBC)
20.00 gm Brewer's Gold [8.00%] (60 min)
20.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (60 min)
15.00 gm Challenger [7.00%] (15 min)
15.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (15 min)
15.00 gm Fuggles [4.50%] (1 min)
15.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (1 min)

Yeast-wise, we're trying to decide between a Wyeast London Ale III or a London ESB as that's what we have

beardybrewer

I have a Brewferm Christmas ale and its still aging. Its big, round, with a dry hoppy finish. Not at all what I expected in a holiday brew but a nice tipple just the same.

kenmc

newkie wrote:

I have a Brewferm Christmas ale and its still aging. Its big, round, with a dry hoppy finish. Not at all what I expected in a holiday brew but a nice tipple just the same.

Sweet - I made this last year - got a batch of 13 bottles I think - very small yield. Anyway, made it in August, was lovely by Christmas, but will be even better this year when I get back from a round the world trip - I left about 6 bottles maturing in the shed. If my brother didn't get his hands on them that is.
Enjoy!
K

oconn

i was thinking of getting soem of those brewferm...abidj ( abbey ) stuff...is there any particular knacks to getting a good brew from them ? what extra fermentables do you need ?

beardybrewer

oconn wrote:

i was thinking of getting soem of those brewferm...abidj ( abbey ) stuff...is there any particular knacks to getting a good brew from them ? what extra fermentables do you need ?

I'll tell ya, one of the best brews I ever made was their Triple.

From the log:
Brewferm Triple Kit 1.5kG
Munton Light Spray Malt 500g
Brewferm yeast
14g Mt Hood 3.4% finishing hops
100g white Belgian candy sugar

Boiled spray malt 30 minutes then added kit to minimize impact on flavors. Noticed hot break and left on for maybe 30 minutes more in total. Added hops for concern of boiling them out of the kit plus wanted to try adding them.
Primed yeast which got a reasonable start but not given much time.
Used candy sugar for priming

Yeilded 9l, 80% attenuation, 7.65ABV, €.89/pint -> Take that Chimay Blue!

For the Abbey I used dark DME and skipped the hops and candy sugar, although I think that was a ncie touch. I have their Old Bruin and another Abbey (2 kits/each.... may as well do a double batch as they are small).

Check out http://www.brouwland.com/ which has them all. If anyone ever wanted to split an order I'd be interested.

bigears

Hi Newkie,

I'm curious what you get charged for postage from Brouwland - does it compare favourably to ordering from the UK?

guildofevil

You don't need to use a kit to make a tripple, provided you have a large pot and a hop bag or muslin screen.

Off the top of my head, this should result in a nice tripple:

2 X 1.6Kg cans of Light Malt Extract.
1Kg of raw cane sugar.
300g of crushed crystal malt.
30g of Northern Brewer.
50g of Halertauer or Saaz, or Styrian Goldings.
1tsp ground coriander
1tsp Irish moss.


Steep the grain in 10-15 litres of water at about 70C for 30 minutes.

Remove the grain, add the raw cane sugar and bring to the boil.

Add 30g of Northern brewer and Boil for 60 minutes.

20 Minutes from the end of the boil, add 30g of Halertauer.

7 minutes from the end of the boil add 20g of Halertauer, 1tsp ground coriander, 1tsp Irish moss.

Add the malt extract at the end of the boil.

Chill to pitching temperature and pitch yeast.

You can actually use an ale yeast for this. I use Gervin English Ale yeast to make my tripples because it is a fairly neutral ale yeast with high alcohol tolerance (I have personally used it to ferment to 11.5% ABV) . I know it sounds strange not using a Belgian yeast to make a tripple, but consider that Duvel, the poster boy of the Belgian Tripple, uses a yeast which was originally sourced in Scotland.

You also don't need to use Belgian Candi sugar. First of all, the granulated stuff that you get as Candi Sugar is not the same stuff used by commercial breweries. When a Belgian brewer refers to candi sugar, it is a molasses like substance he is referring to.

I have read "Brew like a Monk" and "Farmhouse Ales" http://www.brewlikeamonk.com/ and it seems that different Belgian breweries use different sugars. From my reading of it, most of them use raw cane sugar.

oblivious

The Scottish yeast actually had 10-20 yeast strains in it, three were purified for Duvel, and one of them was high temp yeast to allow for summer brewing / phenol and ester profile.


I definitely agree with the use of cane sugar, just my 2 cents is that Belgians are predominately yeast driven beer, Trappist/ Belgian triples are nothing more that 80% pale malt and 20% sugar. I would have though natural yeast would not the ester/phenols associated with the beer, how did yours turn out?

Safale T-58 is a dry yeast that is supposed to have a good Belgian profile, have a stronge golden Belgian ale in the primary with it.

Adeptus Titanicus

bigears wrote:

I'm curious what you get charged for postage from Brouwland - does it compare favourably to ordering from the UK?

It's about €52, but you can get up to 30kg into the package, as long a you don't order anything bulky like a fermenting bin or 30 swingtop bottles (I speak from experience ).

If you order bulk loads up to 30kg it compares pretty well with the UK as I've found the raw materials are a good bit cheaper than the UK. The postage is the real killer, but if you buy lots you can make the postage even out so it still works out (a little) cheaper. Great range of stuff though!

oblivious

Their Malt kits look very good, 18 euro for their Weizen Doppelbock, that a very good price. Is there any where they give the weight of the products?

guildofevil

Oblivious: The reason I mentioned the Scottish origin of the Duvel yeast, was to make the point that a suitable yeast need not necessarily be Belgian. I'm not saying all yeast are the same, I wouldn't, for instance, use Danstar Windsor and expect to get anything like a tripple, but Gervin English Ale yeast has done the job for me in the past.

I've used cutured Duvel, Westmalle and Chimay yeasts, to make doubles and tripples with quite a bit of success. When making a double I would use the Westmalle yeast out of choice. When making a tripple I use Gervin English Ale yeast, as that has given me great success.

newkie: Have you looked at http://www.beersmugglers.com ? They don't have anything like the selection you get at Brouwland, but you should save a fortune on the shipping.

oblivious

Thanks for that guildofevil, I must keep some Gervin English Ale yeast in stock