American Bitter

This recipe is an English Bitter-like malt bill with American Hops and Yeast.  I have been wanting to try a beer using some homemade brewers caramel (aka Invert Syrup) for quite some time.  This is an ingredient traditionally used by British Brewers.  I found a nice article documenting the process of making it, along with a traditional recipe using it, on the homebrewersassociation.org web page.  I'm going to give it a shot.

I had previously made a Candi Syrup in an Amber Ale which used a similar process.

For hops, I'll be using some homegrown Cascades from a friend of mine.  I have 4 oz that I'll use for a late additions.  I'll use some store bought Cascades with a known AA% to bitter the beer to ~30 IBU.

I'll be fermenting the beer using US-05 which is the Chico strain.  I'll use this yeast cake on a second, larger, beer a week or two later.

I ran out of acid malt and forgot to pick up more.  I'm going to acidify the mash with Citric Acid.  Decided on 1/8 a tsp which should be below the taste threshold - not sure it will help much with mash pH.

I purchased a new stainless steal fermenter which I'll be trying out for the first time with this batch (SS Brewtech's 7 gal Brew Bucket).  It is really a nicely made piece of equipment.  I'm really excited about the swiveling spigot on it which will eliminate the need to auto-siphon.  I plan to relegate my plastic brew buckets to sour beers going forward.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct
• 4 lb and 12 oz Munich
• 3lb 5 oz Maris Otter
• 1 lb Flaked Corn
• 1 lb Dark #3 Invert Syrup
• Hops:
• 0.5 oz Cascade (Pellet, 8.3% AA) at 60 min
• 0.5 oz Cascade (Pellet, 8.3% AA) at 30 min
• 1 oz Cascade (Pellet, 8.3% AA) at 5 min
• 2 oz Cascade (Whole Hop) at 0 min
• 2 oz Cascade (Whole Hop) Dry hop for 7 days
• Yeast:
• US-05 "Chico" Ale Yeast
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1/8 tsp Citric Acid
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.5 gal - Target 6.5 gal (6 gal in the fermenter assuming loss to hops)
• Mash:
• 155 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 60 min
• Fermentation Temp:
• 66 F
• Primary Duration:
• 1 week
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 weeks

Results:

• OG:
• 1.045 (Target 1.044)
• Efficiency:
• 67% (Target 72%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.008)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 73% (Target 81%)
• ABV:
• 4.33% (Target 4.73%)

Brewing Notes:

• 1/20/18 - Made 1 lb of #3 Invert Sugar
• Mixed 1 lb of Demerara Sugar, 1 cup of water, and 1/8 tsp of Citric Acid

• Heated on Medium low
• Took a couple hours to raise the temperature to 310 F at which point the sugar was very dark (almost black) and smelling very nice

• Let it sit out to cool - went solid at room temperature
• 1/21/18 - Brewday - 11:15 AM to 3:45 PM- including setup and cleanup
• Heated 10 gal of spring water to 190 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl, Gypsum, and Citric acid to this
• Measured out 1 lb of flaked corn
• Added 4 gal of strike water to the Mash Tun - temp settled to 172 F
• Added my grain (first the barley and then the corn).  Stirred well to eliminate doughballs

• Temperature settled to 156 F after 10 min
• Mashed for 60 min.  The temp was down to 155 F by the end of the mash
• Fly sparged (after vaurlaufing) with 190 F water until I had collected 8 gal of wort.  I drained the mash tun slowly into my grant and then pumped out of the grant and up into the boil kettle.

• Started heating the kettle part way through the sparge
• Added the 60 min hops after the hot break cleared
• Liquefied the candi sugar again by adding hot wort to it.  I had to do this multiple times to get all of it out.  Poured this back into the kettle as I went

• Added the 30 min hops
• Rehydrated my dry yeast with a couple cups of 100 F spring water
• Added irish moss with about 15 min left to go in the boil
• Added 5 min hops
• Added the Wort chiller with a few min left in the boil
• Bagged up my whole leaf hops and added them to the kettle at flame out

• Slowly chilled the wort down to 70 F (took about 15 min)
• Drained this into the fermenter.  Let it fall a couple feet to aerate.  Added the yeast during this transfer
• Moved the fermenter to my chest freezer setup with a reptile heating pad.  Set this to ferment at 66 F.  I am using a blow off tube for this batch.
• 1/22/18 - The beer was bubbling fairly vigorously by the afternoon
• 1/28/18 - Transferred this to a bucket fermenter to finish out in order to free the fermenter and yeast cake for my next beer.  The spigot and rotating arm worked nicely but it did leave a pint or so in the cone.  I poured that off into the bucket fermenter.

• 2/3/18 - Added 2 oz of Whole cone hops to the beer in hop sacks weighed down with stainless steel nuts.  They're floating on the surface initially.  The hops smell very nice.

• 2/10/18 - Bottled with 4.5 oz of priming sugar (used Demerara Sugar).  Measured the FG of the beer at 1.012.  Collected 5 gal of beer which netted me 48 12 oz bottles.  The beer has a nice smooth malt profile along with some piney hop and mild bitterness in the finish.  I'll give it a week to carb up before opening the first one.
• 3/5/18 - I found that the bottles had formed pellicle after a couple weeks in the bottle - looks like I have picked up some sort of infection in these.  No idea at what point that happened.  The beer I pitched onto this yeast cake in primary had no signs of infection after a month so I don't think that was the source.  I've been drinking a few of these a week and haven't noticed any flavor impacts or over-carbing so far.  Will do a tasting soon.
• 4/14/18 - Tasting Notes - This is a really pleasant, flavorful, low alcohol beer.  I find the malt character to be nicely complex and very enjoyable.  Fresh, the beer was somewhat similar to a session IPA with some pretty pronounced floral hops.  Now that those have faded it is very much like an English Bitter - I've enjoyed all phases of it's evolution.

Lessons Learned:

1. This method of making candi sugar was pretty darn easy.  I kept the temperature at medium low the whole time and the boil was very subdued.  I was able to just creep up to the 310 F target temperature without any scorching.  The syrup tastes very nice as well.  I don't think I'll be buying it again after seeing how easy it was to make.
2. Working with the whole cone hops was very nice for the late additions.  The bags do a great job of containing them and keeping them out of the fermenter.  They smelled really great as well - I think I could pick Cascade hops out of lineup pretty well at this point - really enjoy them.  I am seriously considering trying to grow my own again.
3. I found that my dry hop bags never fully submurged after 7 days.  I didn't weigh them down enough.  I thought that as they absorbed beer they would sink on their own.  I believe the hop aroma suffered because of this.  I should have weighed them down properly at the start just to be sure.

Ice Cider - Tasting Notes

Last year I embarked on what turned out to be a 6 month processes of making my own Ice Cider.  This is a cider that is 4x concentrated (up to 40 brix which is 40% sugar content) via freezing and then fermented to the low teens ABV (wine strength) which, due to the high starting sugar content, results in a very sweet finished product.  My Ice Cider slowly fermented down to 23 brix from 40 which resulted in a 14.5% ABV cider.

I bottled it back in July 2017 and have been sampling one every month or so.  I'm happy to say that they've all remained perfectly still so far - looks like I dodged the infection bullet.

I only ended up with 20 bottles for all my labors and I'm going through them fairly quickly.  I decided I better get in some tasting notes while I've still got them.

It is truly an extreme beverage and quite interesting to sample (in small quantities).

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Intense apple cider aroma dominates.  Also get a bit of alcohol and what I think is yeast ester which provides a slightly different bit of fruitiness (wine-like maybe)
• Appearance:
• Dark gold and very clear.  It is perfectly still.
• Flavor:
• Very sweet with a concentrated apple flavor.  Alcohol flavor is mostly hidden.  There is a somewhat sharp flavor in the finish which may be a mix of alcohol and tannin
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and sticky sweet.  It has a slight astringency that comes through in finish that cuts through the sweetness.
• Overall:
• This is really an amazingly intense beverage.  It tastes exactly like you would expect a 4x concentrated cider would taste like - intense apple and incredible sweetness.  What is nice is that it doesn't taste how a 14.5% ABV beverage might be expected to.  I really like how the bit of sharpness in the finish sort of counters the sweetness - it makes taking the next sip much more enjoyable than I think it would be if it were purely sweet.  Even so, this is a beverage to sip in small quantities.  I've found that 4 oz at a time is more than enough.  I've been taking a week or so to get through a bottle - keeps well in the fridge fortunately