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

[denimglen]

I hear (euro) pils mate has waaaaaaaaaaaay more flavour than American 2-row. But obviously never done a side by side.

I think most subtleties of the malts are masked in monsters like this anyway.

I think I'm going to go GP for my next sack - I'm thinking that it's medium kiln of 2.5lov (5 EBC) will be a good middle point for the mix of english and american ales I brew.

[Barry]

Go the GP, you won't be disappointed.

[JoKing]

Just about finished the sparge on this as I write. Colour is bang on - sweetness from the pilsner malt is no where what I would have expected: Golden Promise has a much sweeter wort. With that in mind - this is gonna be one dry SOB considering that the bittering addition is phenominal: 85g of 14.2%aa for 90 mins.

I think it'll get there.

[JoKing]

All done and dusted... even started on the clean up.

Finished off with 83% effieiency and 21 Liters of bright bitter 1.079 SG IIPA. It'll be good to get some of that back into the fridge again.

I've decided to call the brew "Ruined Nation"

It might be a regular occurence in my brewery.

[denimglen]

Is that 83% into the fermenter or into the kettle?

How much are you loosing to trub?

My trub losses are taking a massive toll on my efficiency.

[JoKing]

Into the fermenter. You may well be overdosing with kettle finings if your are losing too much to trub. I have been using slightly less carageenan than the minimum dose and getting good results.

29 Liters collected pre boil.
21 Liters in the kettle post boil.
4 Liters of trub (on this brew) where I will recover 1.5 Liters to go back into the fermenter.
1.069 Pre boil
1.079 Post boil.

The wort was fucking bitter too.

[denimglen]

Oh yup, I went with less than normal on the red but was hard to tell with 250-odd grams of hops in there, will have to try it again with a less aggressive batch.

I'm running a thinner mash now too which is easier to dough in and has actually bumped my eff up a couple of points.

[Barry]

"the wort was fucking bitter too"

DUH.

[denimglen]

What did you think of this mate?

Is some Euro pils the way to go in Am Ales? Or stick to some good ol' English malts?

[JoKing]

To be honest... this was one malty son of a bitch! I still have a bit left in the keg as it has been a bit hard to get through. The aroma is all Pine and Grapefruit with heaps of malt sweetness. The palate although having finished at 1.014 is just massive. I think the 8% Caramalt the English yeast and the Pilsner malt made this beer bigger than Ben.

I would definately give it a crack - because technically there is nothing wrong with it at all . If anything, I should have thrown in 10% sugar to help dry it out - but the flavour is great. Not like Ruination, but still great.

[denimglen]

Yeah, just finished my sack of GP and wondering if I should give an even lower kilned malt a shot. Although I'm only just drinking my first beer with GP and two of them are big beers that will be aged I might just get another sack of it to see what it's all about.

I'm actually tempted to give the ADM pale/pils a shot with the amount of US styled beers I brew. It sounds like that 'US 2-Row' is a piece of shit, can't be much worse than the NZ stuff :-P and it means I can spend a bit more on yeast and hops haha.

[vdog]

Smoothest brew day yet, the other night. Everything went according to plan, slightly longer mash than usual and think we've sorted out our sparge technique properly now. Got more volume, at higher pre-boil gravity, than I'd calculated, and despite taming the boil fury a bit still managed to end up with higher than planned final gravity and volume! For some reason the pre and post-boil wort was clearer than we usually get too - long may that continue.

For 79L in the fermenters (OG 1.044):
13kg Maris Otter
1.1kg Cara Pils
30g Nelson Sauvin @ 60min
40g NS @ 20,10,0min
Good old trusty US-05.

Fermenting away happily at 20C at the moment, looking forward to getting a taste.