It’s National Homebrew Day, so it was fitting to begin brewing again today.  The recipe was suggested by the American Homebrewers Association, a clone of Chiswick Bitter from Fuller’s, because it was one of beer writer Michael Jackson’s favourites, who died in August 2007.  The recipe was Maris Otter, caramunich, and Special B.  The bittering hops are Target, but I had to substitute Northern Brewer for the aroma hops of Challenger and Northdown, since they are unobtainable due to the hop shortage.

Target gravity was 1.040. and we reached 1.041.  The colour in the primary looked quite dark, although it calculated to be gold in colour, at 7 SRM.  The ground water is starting to be warmer than optimal for chilling the wort, in order to maintain mid 60s we had to throttle the runoff to about half speed.  Fermentation with White Labs English Ale made in a starter on Thursday took off within 4 or 5 hours, keeping it at 66F.

We also racked the Belgian Strong Golden Ale out of the primary, after 3 weeks.  Gravities were 1.006 and 1.007, so the beer really dropped during the last of the 3 weeks.  The beer is being cooled now in an attempt to get it to clear, it is still quite hazy with yeast.

For the first time ever, I brewed a Belgian ale today.  It is supposed to be a Belgian Strong Golden Ale, using German pilsner malt, a bit of Munich, aromatic and wheat, plus just a touch of malted oats.  The brewing process was almost identical to our other ales, with a lowish mash temp. of 149 to 150F.  For some reason, the clarity of the runoff was exceptional during the entire wort collection, which I will attribute to the pound of wheat and the quarter pound of oat malt, with no rice hulls.  Perhaps the gumminess of the wheat and oats enhanced the filter bed of the mash.   Sounds plausible, anyway.

Lots of sugar was added with 10 minutes left in the boil, 5.5 pounds to be exact, which is slightly more than 20% of the fermentables by weight.  Original gravity was 1.069, one point higher than target.  The hops were very restrained, using Pacific Gem for bittering and Hallertau for aroma.  The Hallertau was only 1.5% alpha acid, so the aroma contribution should be minimal.  The chill was right on target, reaching 64F.  We pitched the starters made back on Tuesday of the Wyeast 3864 (Canadian/Belgian yeast) and fermentation began some time overnight.  By Sunday the wort temperature was 66F, which we will increase gradually throughout the fermentation in at attempt to get the beer very dry.

Still no brewing yet, but we did keg up the cider that has been fermenting for a month now.  It dried out pretty well, it was at 1.000 or close to it.  We added three cans of the frozen juice concentrate to sweeten it up and force-carbonated it.  That’s it, cider is ready to go.

The plan is to brew a Belgian ale soon, using Wyeast that Jonathan supplied.  It maybe next weekend, we’ll see.  The cask ale supply is slowly dwindling, we’re down to a corny each of the Bishop’s Farewell and the Palmer’s, plus the Dark Ruby Mild and the Porter.  Once the cask ale supply becomes critical, we’ll start brewing the English ales again.

With a blizzard outside and 20 inches of snow on the ground since yesterday, today we kegged up the clone of Mojo IPA brewed last month.  The final gravity was 1.010, so it’s 7.6% ABV.  We dry hopped each keg with about three ounces of Amarillo each.  The grassiness will take some time to subside, since we didn’t bring the hops to room temperature 24 hours in advance of kegging, which allows the grassy aromas to volatilize into the atmosphere.

We ran out of cider a couple of months ago, so we started a new batch of that, pitching two packets of dried Champagne yeast rehydrated in some warm water into 5 gallons of apple juice.  The lag time was substantial, it wasn’t really fermenting until about 36 hours after pitching.  We’ll give it a month to dry out completely, then sweeten it back up and keg it.

No brewing this weekend, but I did rack the Mojo clone to the secondary, after two weeks in the primary.  Gravities of each fermenter was 1.011, so it is highly attenuated from the original gravity of 1.068 (7.5% ABV).

In order to free up a secondary for the Mojo, I had to keg something else, so I racked one of the secondaries of the Alpha King clone to a corny keg, dry-hopping with 1 ounce each of Centennial, Ahtanum, and Chinook.  Final gravity was 1.015.  I force-carbonated it, and it will be ready when the current keg of Alpha King is gone.

Today I brewed a clone of the Mojo IPA from Boulder Beer Company, with Jonathan’s help.  The recipe calls for pale malt, crystal, and wheat.  We used about 8% crystal malt (25 Lovibond) and 8% wheat, but the colour in the boil kettle looked a bit dark, so we probably used too much crystal or should have used a lighter-coloured crystal.  We’ll see how it turns out though, perhaps the colour will be correct.  Hops were Centennial and Amarillo, and we reached our target gravity of 1.068 (6.8% ABV).  We used the stainless steel mesh in the grant and got good wort clarity into the kettle.  We had some trouble with bubbles at the beginning of the runoff, so more troubleshooting is needed there.  It may be that the hose clamps needed tightening, as after we did that it seemed to go away.

We racked the Alpha King clone to secondary, one fermenter was 1.016 and the other 1.015.  The cask-conditioned Golden Arrow is gone, replaced with Palmer’s Best Bitter.  The Boathouse Pale Ale hopped with the homegrown Cascade is on tap as well.

No brewing this weekend, we needed time to do the demolition work on one of our bathrooms that is being remodeled.  I did have time today to keg up the first half of the Boathouse Pale Ale hopped with homegrown Cascade.  The beer had been in secondary for eight days, and the gravity was unchanged from racking at 1.014.  I dry-hopped it with 1.5 ounces of the homegrown Cascade and force-carbonated it.  It will soon be on tap to replace the previous Boathouse Pale Ale, which was an English pale ale recipe.

The Alpha King clone is still in primary, the gravity on Saturday was 1.016.  We chilled down the fridge to 55F and it will be racked next weekend when we brew the Mojo IPA clone.

The brewing cycle continued with the 16th batch of the Alpha King clone. Our friend Jonathan helped out again, and brought over some very fine stainless steel mesh to aid in clearing up the mash runoff. We didn’t use it in the batch today, but we did test it out by putting it over the false bottom in our hopback, and lautering the final mash runnings though it after collecting the wort we needed in the boil kettle. The screen filters out all but the smallest particles, and did not clog even when we put part of the mash into the hopback. I think it will be added to our system in the form of a grant between the mash tun and boil kettle.

Target gravity is 1.062 and that’s exactly what we achieved, but we did have to extend the boil by 30 minutes and add four ounces of dried malt extract to get there.  The recipe today did not use any of the hops specified in the Alpha King clone, but that is going to become more and more common as the worldwide hop shortage continues. I substituted Pacific Gem for the Magnum, Chinook for the Columbus, and Ahtanum for the Cascade, not because I don’t have any of the proper hops but because I want to clear out the older supplies.

We racked the pale ale brewed last weekend to secondary today. We could not keg the beer if we wanted to, as we’re all out of corny kegs for the moment, but since it’s not a cask beer it should have a period in secondary anyway. The gravities were 1.014 on both fermenters.

We’re switching gears from brewing English low-gravity bitter to higher-strength American pale ales and IPAs.  Today’s recipe is inspired by Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewery in San Francisco.  Maris Otter pale malt is combined with some Belgian and English crystal malts.  Target and actual gravities were the same, at 1.054.  We bittered with Pacific Gem and the flavour and aroma additions were all last year’s harvest of the home-grown Cascade.

The pin of the Landlord clone was racked two weeks ago, so we vented it and it was very lively.  It took 4 hours before it was quiet enough to hard spile and store in the serving tank.  I got quite a heavy shower of beer in the face when I tapped it after 3 hours or so of venting!

The Palmer’s Best Bitter clone was racked to corny kegs after a week in primary.  Gravities were 1.014 and 1.015 and we dry hopped each keg with an ounce of First Gold plugs.

Today we brewed the last English bitter for this yeast culture.  The recipe is another batch of the Palmer’s Best Bitter, since we finished the last batch last weekend and it was so good.  The malt was exactly the same, but we had to change the hops since we’re out of Styrian Goldings and I wanted to use some hops from the 2006 harvest.

It was bitterly cold today, so we had trouble with the water supply hose freezing near the end of the brew session.  Target gravity was 1.042 and we reached 1.043, but had to bump up the brown sugar addition from 14 ounces to 18 ounces in order not to fall short.  We ended up with a 110 minute boil instead of 90 minutes because we were racking the Bishop’s Farewell from the primaries to corny kegs.  We dry-hopped that batch with some Ahtanum hops.

On Friday night I filled a second 3 gallon corny keg I just bought with half of the second half of the Boathouse Porter, then racked the remaining half into the 5 gallon corny keg that contained what is left of the first half of the batch.  The 3 gallon keg will replace the Old Battleaxe barleywine once it is gone.