What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[Edward Siddle]

how did this turn out so far? quite liked the look of the recipe bambule.

[Bambule]

Its looking good, considering bottling today but I'll see. It probably could have used some more hops at the start and its really a little too light to be a porter, maybe more a brown ale. Using that much brown malt has certainly added a lovely biscuity-ness to it. Looking forward to the finished product.

[jt]

Got a day off to garden, yea right !

Just tidied up after this weeks brownish ale.
3.640 aussie pale
.200 caramunich iii
.100 carahel
.060 chocolate
Super alpha to bitter, cascade 15 & 1 min and I may yet dry hop.
OG 1.042 which was down a tad on what I wanted and 27 IBU's all up.

Now, off to weed the vege patch ...

[Edward Siddle]

yeah well i was sposed to brew a brown ale tonite but got diverted by a few works drinks (i took some of my autumn gold - basically my summer ale with a few oats - yum) and drank a few 'pure blondes'. actually not the worst commercial lager i've tasted by a mile.

anyhow. got home 7 after picking up the curries and really didn't fancy milling malt and a five hour process just to get the wort in the bath cooling. for what it is worth, and i have already put the grist together, and will do it soon (yeast starter is more or less ready now):
3.3kg pale ale m.o. malt
440g dark crystal
430g amber
100g choc malt
200g raw sugar
OG 1050
northern brewer hops to 30IBU
after a Graham Wheeler recipe

[jt]

Quite impressed with the weather, got this going along nicely in the garage @ 16C using W1275 Thames Valley Ale. I'd used this some time ago anmd used to love it but became lazy and just used W1968 exclusively. It's got a really thick creamy head of yeast on it at the moment - ok, I'm a peeker :-)

cheers, jt (Head Peeker @ Bad Practice Brewery)

PS - what's the plans for that brown Ed ?

[Edward Siddle]

hi JT
yeah i quite liked 1275 too, though i don't think i got the best out of it. must try it again sometime.
because saturday was a horrible day weatherwise (southerly and rain) and i didn't have anything except home chores to do (cleaning mould off bathroom walls anyone?), i decided to do the brown ale during the day which is kinda rare for me. but i mashed in just before i took my girl to her ballet lesson and it was just about finished when i got back, and could proceed with sparge etc. so it is now sitting happily in the fermenter bubbling away at about 20C in the spare room right now - pitched it on saturday at about 4pm in the end.

hopefully this friday night i'm going to do a quick and dirty best bitter. i can see my stocks of bottles of my most recent bitter dwindling and that's no good!! gotta have a tasty midweek drinker at all times....

maybe - since we didn't catch up at anzac - we could catch up at queens bday weekend. my blonde should be drinkable by then.

btw, nothing wrong with peeking imho, particularly when you know it has gotten going. with a creamy head and heaps of CO2 being blown off, the beer's pretty safe. lots of people (not homebrewers in my experience) use open or open-ish fermenters. later on when it is beer and not wort, it's also safer cos of the alcohol in it.

[Stu McKinlay]

Just milled the malt for this evenings brew:

Yeastie Boys "Pot Kettle Black" American Porter
79% Maris Otter
10% Munich II
4.5% Crystal 55L
3% Pale Chocolate
2% Chocolate
1.5% Black Patent

67c mash. 60min boil to around 1.060 - and a massive US Cascade-fest to about 55ibu (dry hopped with them too). US-05.

It's a very slight tweak on the American "Stout" I brewed last year (that had a mix of black malt and roast barley).

[Barry]

For direct comparison, I just brewed a robust porter.
don't have the percentages, but for a 23l batch (23l into fermenter) it goes like this:
5kg maris otter
600gm munich
300gm crystal
300gm dark crystal
300gm pale chocolate
230gm black patent

60gm NZ willamette 4.9%aau for 60 minutes
30gm NZ willametter 4.9%aau for 0 minutes

S05 rehydrated

OG 1.062

Would've used a mix of cascade and goldings but my hop order didn't turn up in time for the weekend :(
The NZ willamette I used was a package I bought at brewcraft in Albany, and they are the OLD packaging! So clearly not the freshest, I'm a little concerned about that as this should go on to be one of my NHC beers. They smelled OK, just definitely not fresh.

The sample pre-pitching was tasting pretty good, just hitting the right roasty note (not too much, I like porters to tend a little less roasty for drinkability - more like a Galbraiths Grafton Porter than say the Renaissance "roast-fest".

Brew ON!

[Stu McKinlay]

Looks nice Barry. I'm of exactly the same sentiment in the roast department. Hope those hops don't come out all "socky".
I ended up using 11.9% Sauvin at 60, 30g of 5.8% US Cascade at each of 20, 15, 10 and 5min, and then 50g US Cascade at 0min (bear in mind it was a 40L batch). Shooting for a bit of a liquid version of orange flavoured 70% cocoa chocolate. Maybe I should have just added orange essence!

[Stu McKinlay]

This is well gone now... Denimglen and Alastair (from Regional Wines) got the last two 500ml bottles.

It's hard to find the time to brew these days so I'm heading to Invercargill next weekend to brew 1,000L of this (with 100% NZ hops instead of US ones) with my very good beer geek friends Sam "TheGrandMaster" Possenniskie and Steve "Check My Gold Medal Tally" Nally.

Yeastie Boys - look out for it at BrewNZ, and here and there soon after...

ps. there are a couple of lovely looking IPAs at The Malthouse right now. 3/5... maybe 4 ;-)

[denimglen]

Brewing the NZPA recipe I posted in the other thread, finished up a couple of hours ago.

Stu, do you know of any commerical browns/porters available in New Zealand with a lot of hopping like yours? I'd like to give it a try but don't want to brew up a whole batch. Personally I don't think I'd like the two flavours together but would like to try it out.

[Stu McKinlay]

Rarely, at Galbraith's, you might see Sierra Nevada Porter, Sierra Nevada Stout or Anchor Porter. I prefer SN Porter, and it is probably the closest to where I'm headed. Email me your details (stu at soba dot org dot nz) and I'll send you a bottle or two in a month.

Twisted Hop make an awesome hoppy brown ale, and Emerson's latest "Brewer's Reserve" is a hoppy stout.

Hope the NZPA goes well.