Weekender
Had a nice relaxing weekend with
noradeirdre and Det. Taz. It was nice not having to go anywhere or do anything. Naturally I responded to this chance to relax and recharge by spending a few hours tuckering myself out brewing.
I won't be able to get my hands on the limited-release Saison yeast that I want to try until next Friday. I had a couple of different options for what to do on Saturday, but in the end I went with Nora's suggestion for an American Pale Ale with Amarillo hops. It's a relatively quick and easy brew, good to get back into the groove and to replenish our supplies of homebrew quickly.
In the end, I used New Zealand Cascades for the bittering hop and a 50/50 mixture of Amarillo and US Cascade for the flavour and aroma hops. That was the last of my US Cascade, but I still have a couple of ounces of Amarillo left. The mash went fairly well - the first runnings came out a little slow for some reason, but the sparge never got stuck. I collected about 5 gallons and hit around 72.5% efficiency. After the boil and absorption by the hops, I was left with about 4 gallons. I was aiming for an original gravity of 1.056 and hit 1.057. The cooling took a little while longer than I would have liked, but the wort chiller is still much easier to work with than a huge tub of iced water.
For the yeast, I used the dried Fermentis US-05. This is a dry version of what is probably the most widely used American ale yeast, which is known as 'Chico', because of its use by Sierra Nevada Brewing in Chico, CA. It's a clean-fermenting yeast that accentuates hop character, which makes it perfect for the hop-forward pale ales that American brewers like. Allegedly, it's the old Ballantyne's yeast, which in turn was supposedly an offshoot of the "Nottingham" strain from England, which is a popular strain in its own right. White Labs (California Ale WLP-001) and Wyeast (US-56 American Ale) both have liquid versions of the "Chico" yeast as well. The thing is that although WLP-001, US-56 and US-05 are all supposed to be the same yeast, they all behave slightly differently. I'm sure that Sierra Nevada's house yeast is different as well. It's hard to keep yeast strains static, and differences in when and where the strain was obtained by the different manufacturers ensures that they will all be closely related, but different. I know that Mercury Brewing up in Ipswich have a house yeast that started as "Chico", but which has since mutated into a monster yeast that ferments clean at temperatures high enough to give most brewers a heart attack. Some people have reported problems with US-05 taking a long time to flocculate and settle, but I can't say that I've had an issue with that.
I've had good luck with US-05 before; the last beer I brewed with it was "Ramblin' Amber", a hoppy American Amber ale that was well received and is now all gone. Dried yeast used to have a pretty bad rep in homebrewing circles, in part because of the stigma of the nasty little packets of mostly dead yeast taped to the top of tins of malt extract, in part because of the limited selection and in part because some manufacturers had difficulty maintaining the purity of the yeast. These days, there is a good selection of high-quality strains. As long as you store them correctly (in the fridge, not on a dusty shelf), they can last up to a year and they're easy to use. I always try to have some around as a back-up and if I'm not concerned about getting a particular yeast character, I'm happy to use dried for a batch. Dried is cheaper, too. Having said that, I'll be going back to liquid for my next brew.
By Sunday morning, the beer was happily bubbling away. I'll be interested to see how this turns out; I'm a little concerned that the basement might be a little too warm at this time of year. The next few batches are going to be Belgians anway, so that shouldn't be a problem going forward.
The rest of the weekend was a blur of lounging, eating, drinking, petting Taz, petting Nora and occasionally complaining about how sore I was (brewing usually leaves me sore for a couple of days). Our neighbours popped over with their baby daughter for a little while on Sunday. Taz was immediately suspicious of the tiny pink animal and retreated to a blanket nest in the bedroom for the duration. Josie the baby had some fun "sorting" our mail, "tidying" the coffee table and "browsing" our CDs. She also liked splashing around in Taz's water bowl.
When they left, I dropped hard into a post-social anxiety spiral until Nora managed to talk me down and got me to take an Atavan. I'm not sure what it was that set me off, I'm usually okay with those particular people. Then we had burgers for dinner, which cheered me right up and put me into a meat coma for the rest of the evening.
Today I have to take Taz back to the vet so they can check that the antibiotics did the trick.
noradeirdre and Det. Taz. It was nice not having to go anywhere or do anything. Naturally I responded to this chance to relax and recharge by spending a few hours tuckering myself out brewing.
I won't be able to get my hands on the limited-release Saison yeast that I want to try until next Friday. I had a couple of different options for what to do on Saturday, but in the end I went with Nora's suggestion for an American Pale Ale with Amarillo hops. It's a relatively quick and easy brew, good to get back into the groove and to replenish our supplies of homebrew quickly.
In the end, I used New Zealand Cascades for the bittering hop and a 50/50 mixture of Amarillo and US Cascade for the flavour and aroma hops. That was the last of my US Cascade, but I still have a couple of ounces of Amarillo left. The mash went fairly well - the first runnings came out a little slow for some reason, but the sparge never got stuck. I collected about 5 gallons and hit around 72.5% efficiency. After the boil and absorption by the hops, I was left with about 4 gallons. I was aiming for an original gravity of 1.056 and hit 1.057. The cooling took a little while longer than I would have liked, but the wort chiller is still much easier to work with than a huge tub of iced water.
For the yeast, I used the dried Fermentis US-05. This is a dry version of what is probably the most widely used American ale yeast, which is known as 'Chico', because of its use by Sierra Nevada Brewing in Chico, CA. It's a clean-fermenting yeast that accentuates hop character, which makes it perfect for the hop-forward pale ales that American brewers like. Allegedly, it's the old Ballantyne's yeast, which in turn was supposedly an offshoot of the "Nottingham" strain from England, which is a popular strain in its own right. White Labs (California Ale WLP-001) and Wyeast (US-56 American Ale) both have liquid versions of the "Chico" yeast as well. The thing is that although WLP-001, US-56 and US-05 are all supposed to be the same yeast, they all behave slightly differently. I'm sure that Sierra Nevada's house yeast is different as well. It's hard to keep yeast strains static, and differences in when and where the strain was obtained by the different manufacturers ensures that they will all be closely related, but different. I know that Mercury Brewing up in Ipswich have a house yeast that started as "Chico", but which has since mutated into a monster yeast that ferments clean at temperatures high enough to give most brewers a heart attack. Some people have reported problems with US-05 taking a long time to flocculate and settle, but I can't say that I've had an issue with that.
I've had good luck with US-05 before; the last beer I brewed with it was "Ramblin' Amber", a hoppy American Amber ale that was well received and is now all gone. Dried yeast used to have a pretty bad rep in homebrewing circles, in part because of the stigma of the nasty little packets of mostly dead yeast taped to the top of tins of malt extract, in part because of the limited selection and in part because some manufacturers had difficulty maintaining the purity of the yeast. These days, there is a good selection of high-quality strains. As long as you store them correctly (in the fridge, not on a dusty shelf), they can last up to a year and they're easy to use. I always try to have some around as a back-up and if I'm not concerned about getting a particular yeast character, I'm happy to use dried for a batch. Dried is cheaper, too. Having said that, I'll be going back to liquid for my next brew.
By Sunday morning, the beer was happily bubbling away. I'll be interested to see how this turns out; I'm a little concerned that the basement might be a little too warm at this time of year. The next few batches are going to be Belgians anway, so that shouldn't be a problem going forward.
The rest of the weekend was a blur of lounging, eating, drinking, petting Taz, petting Nora and occasionally complaining about how sore I was (brewing usually leaves me sore for a couple of days). Our neighbours popped over with their baby daughter for a little while on Sunday. Taz was immediately suspicious of the tiny pink animal and retreated to a blanket nest in the bedroom for the duration. Josie the baby had some fun "sorting" our mail, "tidying" the coffee table and "browsing" our CDs. She also liked splashing around in Taz's water bowl.
When they left, I dropped hard into a post-social anxiety spiral until Nora managed to talk me down and got me to take an Atavan. I'm not sure what it was that set me off, I'm usually okay with those particular people. Then we had burgers for dinner, which cheered me right up and put me into a meat coma for the rest of the evening.
Today I have to take Taz back to the vet so they can check that the antibiotics did the trick.