Weekend updates
On Friday afternoon, I took some time to bottle the Summer Bitter that I brewed a couple of weeks ago. The yield was pretty good - a full 3.5 gallons which translated to 16 assorted English bottles (Sam Smiths, Fuller's, Youngs, Etc.), 4 half liter swingtops and 4 12oz bottles. I used StarSan as a sanitizer for the first time. I liked it. It foams like crazy if you're not careful, which is scary, but the foam is just as sanitizing as the liquid and it's useful to have around. It works quicker than Iodophor and doesn't have to be air dried, because it breaks down harmlessly in beer and actually feeds the yeast. The sample tasted pretty good. Now we just need to wait for it to condition and think of a name. The ordinary bitter ended up as the minimalist "Spring Ale". I suppose this could be "Summer Ale" or "London Summer Ale", but I'd prefer something a bit more... viral. I'm never gonna make it on YouTube with a beer called "Summer Ale".
Friday night was dinner and a movie date night with
noradeirdre. We stopped by the Old Spot in Salem and had a nice dinner and a couple of beers. I had Harpoon's Old Rusty's Red Rye Ale which is part of their 100 barrel limited edition series, which they usually have on tap at the Old Spot. It was very nice, but I would have liked it a touch drier. Then I had a pint of Meantime IPA. Meantime are a British brewery out of Greenwich, London (hence the name), who are quite well regarded. I didn't care for it at all - the body was too thick and sweet and the flavour wasn't quite right for me. Other people seem to like it a lot; maybe it's different in the bottle.
As usual, we got sleepy after our beers and skipped the movie. Indiana Jones will have to save the day some other time.
I was nervous about not liking the Meantime IPA, because on Sunday I brewed my own version of an English IPA. When I bottled the Summer Bitter, I harvested some yeast from the bottom of the fermenter to use in the next batch. The mash went very smoothly; I stayed on top of the mash temperature and my water volumes more than last time, so I was able to keep close to my target temperature and ran off the 4 gallons of pre-boil wort I was aiming for. The grist was 75% Maris Otter 2-row, 12.5% White Wheat Malt, and 6.3% each of English Crystal 60 and Special Roast. For hops I used Challenger and Willamette for Bittering at 60 minutes, Kent Goldings at 30 minutes and Bramling Cross at 15 minutes. English IPAs are generally a little maltier and not quite as strong as American IPAs. The hops are up front, but not to the extent of the west-coast IPAs. Also spicy, floral, earthy English hops are used instead of citrusy American hops.
For chilling, I had a new toy to play with. I had snagged another cheap icemaker kit with 15' of 1/4" copper tubing with the idea that I would make a pre-chiller for my immersion chiller sometime in the future. Then I realised that the nylon tubing I used to connect everything together fits snugly over the copper tubing - so it was very easy to cut the "in" tubing in half and put the new copper coil in between. While running the chiller, the pre-chiller was placed in the sink full of cold water and ice. This means that there was a greater temperature differential between the "in" water and the wort, hence faster cooling, especially when the wort gets close to room temperature. I didn't use an ice bath for the kettle, but I still hit pitching temperature in half an hour, without having to lug big tubs of water and dripping wet kettles around.
In the fermenter, I collected about 3 gallons of wort, which was pretty much all I was able to get out of the kettle. I was aiming to have a little more than that left. My assumption on evaporation rate must have been off - also I didn't take into account the water absorbed by the hop pellets. My mash efficiency was around 74%, all of which means that I overshot my target gravity by 8 points and ended up at 1.066. So the beer will be stronger than I was planning. The sample tasted pretty good, though. We'll see how the half pound of special roast works out in the end.
When I checked on the fermenter about 4 hours after pitching, it was already bubbling away in vigorous fermentation. That's the fastest start I've had yet with this yeast, White Labs WLP013 London Ale. This is the third and last beer I'm making with this yeast. I'm hoping they all work out, because harvesting yeast like this really does cut the yeast cost per batch down, which is significant with the smaller batches that I make. Once fermentation dies down, I'll drop in some Willamette for dry hopping.
Next weekend Nora is working, so I'm planning to brew again. The plan is an American Summer Ale with lots of wheat and rye. This is probably the last one I'll be able to get done before our trip to Maine in July. After that, the schedule is pretty open. The warmer weather makes it less pleasant to brew inside, so the pace will slow down unless I get hooked up with a propane burner and move outside. The warmer weather is also ideal for brewing Belgian ales, however. I may investigate the possibility of brewing a batch of American Pale or Amber ale for Nora's parent's summer party in August. I refuse to go the obvious route and brew an Irish ale, or an English Bitter with a confrontational name like "Unionist Ale" or "Firkin o' Famine". I'd need to get my kegging situation going, because bottle-conditioned beer probably wouldn't work in an outdoor party situation.