The Allium IPA has had a week of cold storage for the yeast to clear, so today we kegged up the first half of the batch.  This is the IPA hopped with a combination of Summit and Nugget, so the dry hops consisted of half of the remaining Summit in stock (1 ounce) and two ounces of Nugget whole hops.  The gravity was unchanged from last week, at 1.014.  The sample tasted quite dry and bitter, so with some carbonation and the dry hops it should be nice.  We force-carbonated the keg and put it back into the 40 degree fridge to finish the carbonation process.

On Friday night I tapped the firkin of Hophead after an hour or so of venting.  It was reasonably lively, but not excessively so for two weeks worth of conditioning.  The clarity wasn’t great right after tapping, but by Saturday was relatively clear.

We are not brewing for the next few weeks, but the Allium IPA has been in primary for a week so I checked the gravity.  Upon finding it at 1.014, I racked it to secondary for some cold-conditioning to get the London Ale yeast to flocculate out.

Last night I racked the second half of the Harvey’s 1859 Porter clone to a corny keg for conditioning.  The gravity has dropped t0 1.018 so there is still plenty of residual sugar to carbonate it.  It will be served on handpump in a couple of weeks’ time.  The co2 version of the same beer is currently on tap and is quite nice.

There was also some keg washing to be done, as the Samuel Smith Old Brewery bitter clone and the Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild clone both bit the dust this weekend.  That made room in the cooler for the firkin of Hophead, which had been sitting in the cellar conditioning.  Late Saturday night I tapped one of the corny kegs of the Hophead and put it on the engine.  It is very nice, although I prefer the batches fermented with the English Ale yeast as it’s a bit fruitier.  The London is drier and contributes a woody, almost minerally character.

Today we brewed an IPA using a hop combination we’ve never tried before: Summit and Nugget.  These hops are used in Green Flash’s Imperial IPA, and it has a unique flavour, so this recipe is an IPA with additions of Summit and Nugget throughout the boil.   Some say that the flavour of Summit is onion-like, so we dubbed the beer “Allium IPA”, since Allium is the name of the genus to which onions belong.

The malt is Maris Otter, carapils, light crystal and caramunich, wheat malt, and 5 pounds of Vienna added to make up for a shortage of pale malt.  We’re completely out of base malt now, but should be getting in a new order in the next week or two.

Target gravity was 1.068, but the actual original gravity was 1.066.  We were a bit short on volume as well, so we must have had a strong boil.  The total hop bill was close to a pound, so some wort is lost there.  Finally, we used 6 ounces of pellets, which caused some clogging during the runoff, so we stopped it with half a gallon left in the boil kettle because it was so slow and so much pellet material was making it into the fermenters.  Pellets just don’t work with our system, so I will avoid buying more of them and slowly use up what I have left.

After a week of cold-conditioning, last night I racked half of each of the Hophead 4 and 5 batches into a firkin, dry-hopping with 2 ounces of Cascade.  The gravities were low, with batch 4 hitting 1.009 (down from OG of 1.039) and batch 5 hitting 1.011 (down from OG of 1.042).  The fermenters spent the last 3 or 4 days at about 39F, which helped the yeast to clear out.

The other half of the Hophead batches were racked to corny kegs while we brewed the IPA, dry-hopping each with an ounce of Cascade.  Gravities on the two were the same as the other half of the batches.

The two batches of Hophead have had a week in the primaries, so today I checked the gravity of one of the fermenters to monitor progress.  It dropped well, to 1.012, so I decided to chill the fermenters to help the yeast settle out, since the London Ale yeast is a rather poor flocculator.  I moved all four carboys over to the coldest fridge and over the next few days will drop the temperature down to mid to high 30s.  After a week of that we can rack the beer either to a cask or keg (provided that the yeast has dropped out sufficiently) and use the yeast again for the next batch.

Today we brewed a double batch of the ever-drinkable Hophead from Dark Star Brewing.  The supply of cask ale is dwindling, as well as being decidedly malt-focused, so it will be very good to have twenty gallons of a hoppy session bitter on tap as we head towards late spring and summer.

We mashed 33 pounds of Maris Otter (twice the malt of a single batch), which fit fine in the mash tun.  Then it was run off to two half-barrel kegs, one of which was borrowed from our friend John Brush.  We tried to keep the runoff rate to each kettle exactly the same, and although the pre-boil gravities were the same according to the refractometer, after the 90-minute boil the two original gravities were different, at 1.039 and 1.042.  The hopping was kept exactly the same, using 9.5 ounces of Cascade in each kettle.  One kettle was left to steep with the knockout hops while we chilled the first batch, so there may be a difference in hop aroma due to that – it will be a good experiment to see what effect it had.

The night before I kegged a couple of beers, as one keg ran out this week (the Copperhop) and the first keg of Two Hearted Ale was dangerously low.  The Harvey’s 1859 Porter and the second half of the Milk Stout were kegged.  The porter only dropped a point during its spell in secondary, while the milk stout dropped 5 points.   The force-carbonated half of the English IPA was put on in place of the Copperhop, and the Two Hearted was replaced with the porter.

While we brewed we racked the pale ale brewed last weekend, now dubbed Colin’s Pale Ale after Benjy and Jennifer’s son, to corny kegs.  After one week the gravities were already 1.012 and 1.011, so plenty dry for kegging.  Each keg was dry hopped with 2.5 ounces of Amarillo.

The four carboys of Hophead were pitched with the starter of White Labs London Ale yeast that I started on Thursday night and had split into two flasks on Friday night when pitched into more wort.

Today we brewed an American pale ale hopped with Amarillo and Cascade.  The target gravity was 1.058, we reached 1.057 after the normal 90 minute boil.  The malt was Maris Otter, a pound of kiln amber, two pounds of Munich, 1.25 pounds of wheat, and half a pound of carapils.  We had some high-alpha Newport hops to use up, so they provided the bittering, with Amarillo at 30 minutes, Cascade and Amarillo at 15 and 0 minute additions.

The English IPA had eight days in the primary to ferment, and it did well, with one carboy reaching 1.013 and the other 1.014.  Both were liberally dry-hopped with East Kent Goldings, one to condition for serving on handpull, the other will be force-carbonated after aging a little while. We opened the last bag of Maris Otter to brew the pale ale, so we need to order more, as we probably have only enough malt left to brew two more batches.

Amazingly, I don’t believe we have ever brewed an English IPA before, at least not within the past few years.  It is time to correct that omission.  The malt is Maris Otter, light crystal, wheat, biscuit, and flaked maize.  The target gravity was 1.055, we reached 1.057 after boiling for an extra ten minutes.

The hops were considerable, with First Gold and Fuggle for bittering, Fuggle again at 45 minutes for flavour, East Kent Goldings at 30 minutes, Styrian Goldings at 15 minutes, and both East Kent Goldings and Styrians at knockout.  Even though the hops were less than 50% pellets, the sheer quantity clogged the bazooka screen, resulting in a slow runoff to the chiller.  Eventually we collected just under 5 gallons of wort in each fermenter and aerated it heavily.

The brown porter brewed a week ago was racked to a couple of secondaries to finish its fermentation, since the current gravity is 1.020.  We will keep it at primary fermentation temperature for a week or two for it to attenuate more, before casking half and kegging the other half.

Today we brewed a brown porter that should be similar to the 1859 Porter produced by Harvey’s Brewery in Lewes, East Sussex.  The malt bill is rather simple, with dark crystal, chocolate, and brown malt supplementing a base of Maris Otter.  The mash rest was held at 153F for an hour  and the wort run off and boiled for 90 minutes, with four ounces of Bramling Cross for bittering and a couple of ounces of East Kent Goldings added with ten minutes remaining.

The wort was chilled to 70F by running it at about half-speed since the ground water is warming up due to the weather.  The yeast had been stored cold since last week with a thin cover of wort from the dark mild, which was racked off the fermenters into a 3 gallon corny keg.  The first keg of dark mild which had conditioned for a week was tapped, which was nice timing as today is National Mild Day in England, part of CAMRA’s Mild Month in May.

Yesterday was the American Homebrewers Association’s Big Brew Day, where homebrewers around the country should gather to make collective batches of beer.  Unfortunately it was also the day of the Mini Real Ale Festival at Barley’s, and I didn’t have time to do both, so I just went to the beer festival.  It was fun sampling the ales and talking with many of the brewers.

Today I checked the gravity of last week’s dark mild, and since it was 1.011 in both fermenters, I racked them to corny kegs for conditioning.  No dry hops since it is a mild, and I didn’t bother to prime them either.  I kept the kegs at primary fermentation temperature though, so that the yeast will continue to be active enough to condition at that relatively low gravity.  If they drop a couple of points during conditioning the beer will be 3.8% ABV.  The sample I tried was very good, very malty but a nice balance of sweetness and malt character, not overwhelmed by any of the different dark grains in the recipe.

In England, May has been designated Mild Month by CAMRA in honour of the style and to revive interest in it since it has been in great decline for decades.  Today we brewed a dark mild so as to have it on tap during May.  The grist is Maris Otter, dark and light crystal, Special B, brown malt, flaked maize, and pale chocolate.  The hops are the traditional English mild hops Fuggle and East Kent Goldings.

The target gravity was 1.036, but we reached 1.038 after a one hour boil, with the only hop addition at 45 minutes left.  We collected 14 gallons instead of the usual 15 since we boiled it for 30 minutes less, and ended up with the usual volume in the fermenters, about 5.75 gallons in each.

The ground water is still cold enough to get a good chill without any pre-chiller step, and able to run the wort out of the kettle at full speed.  We watered the hops with the cooling water, which are growing well right now.  There were 20 or 30 shoots coming up, each about a foot to a foot and a half tall.  I cut most of them down, leaving a total of 10 or 12 to continue to grow.  Of those, one or two might not grow well, which still leaves us with 4 or 5 bines from each plant.