English-ish IPA

After a bit of a break from brewing I realized that while I had some interesting and enjoyable beers on tap (a hoppy saison, a smoked helles, and a few sours) I didn't have anything crushable. With COVID-19 still affecting both my accessibility and desirability to visit bars and breweries I was missing having English style ales that I would often enjoy from Bay Area producers like Freewheel and Barebottle. Combining those factors with a desire to use up ingredients on hand before buying new ones, I set out to make an English-ish ale, and used the Georges and Co. Pale Ale from 1889 (which I had previously made as part of a parti-gyle with a Strong Ale) as the basis. The resulting recipe uses some distinctly non-English ingredients (Cali yeast, Viking Xtra Pale 2-Row, and Dark Munich) but hopefully somewhat approximates an English historic pale ale/modern IPA and produces a drinkable, if fairly bitter, beer with a defining English hop character.

7-31-20

Brew day. Collected 8 gallons of water and added K-Meta along with a gram each of CaCl, Gypsum, CaCO3, and NaCl. Following a 1 hour mash a short batch sparge was done with most of the remaining water. The last 1 gallon of runnings were collected separately and boiled for nearly an hour to a moderately thick and significantly darker caramel that was then added back to the rest of the batch. The half pound of Fuggle hops were split between half at the 60 minute mark (following a prior 30 minutes of boiling) and the remaining 4 ounces split evenly and added at 30 and 0 minutes.

After chilling to 75F and racking to a 6 gallon plastic carboy it ended up a little below target gravity at 1.060 (still trying to dial in the mill settings) and below target volume with only about 4.5 gallons (probably due to caramelizing the last runnings). I boiled 4 ounces of Sugar in the Raw turbinado in 1.5 quarts of water, cooled and added to the carboy to bring it closer to the goal volume, without diluting the gravity too much further. Yeast was pitched directly rather than following the recommended rehydration instructions. I plan to keep this at room temperature around upper 60s/low 70s.

8-1-20

Vigorous signs of fermentation less than 12 hours after pitching. Some of the strongest airlock bubbling I've ever seen. Sitting at room temperature in the upper 60s it's on the upper end of the temperature range for the yeast but not too hot, this one just seems to be a ripper.

8-5-20

Fermentation activity slowed down, appears to be almost done fermenting already. Added 1 oz EKG. Plan to sample in a few days and keg if ready. Might add additional keg hops and will probably naturally carbonate in the keg for a more authentic English experience.

8-7-20

Fermentation appears complete but taste is a little overly bitter and mineraly. Added 8 ounces of turbinado and 2 ounces of honey boiled in 2 quarts of water. Plan is to give this a day or two to ferment before kegging and allowing to naturally condition. Vigorous fermentation showing again less than an hour after adding the sugars.

8-9-20

About 36 hours after adding the sugar water. Tasting much better and already back down to 1.006. Flavor is tea like with solid but not extreme bitterness and some light caramel and sugar sweetness. Transferred to keg and placed in keezer set to 45F. No CO2 connected, if it doesn’t seem to be naturally carbonating in a day or two I’ll hook it up but wanted to try making this a “real ale”, at least to begin with. My biggest fear about not adding CO2 is that it does not continue to ferment and gets oxidized, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I decided not to add any EKG to the keg since I’m happy with the flavor at this point but if I end up needing to connect CO2 in a few days I might add some then, especially if there are any signs of oxidation that I might be able to cover up with hops.

8-11-20

Doesn’t seem to have been much more fermentation after kegging so I’m very gently pushing this one out with just a few PSI of CO2. Very similar to my previous batch with a little more bitterness. Easy drinking with moderate earthy, herbal, and tea like hop flavors blending with light caramel and bready malts. A touch drier and more minerally than I would have liked, using an English yeast and English malts probably would have given less attenuation and more body but it’s completely fine as is.

8-25-20

This one has been on tap for a few weeks. I ended up adding a little bit (~5psi) of CO2 to make it pourable, it seems like the second sugar addition was too fermented out by the time it was kegged to condition naturally. It’s been tasting pretty good and I find myself grabbing a pint or two a few times a week.

Tasting notes:

Appearance- gold with poor clarity, though it’s no hazy IPA. I had intended to use Irish moss but forgot, which combined with the early kegging and no keg finings didn’t give clarity much of a chance. Small white head fades quickly, between the low carbonation and high sugar levels in the beer I’m not too surprised. I plan to use some torrified wheat in future English ales to partially help with that.

Smell- light sweet and bread malt, meadow-like herbal, earthy and floral notes and a small touch of citrus. Pretty low aroma given the low carbonation.

Taste/Mouthfeel- strong tea like character with a blend of herbal, earth, and fruity flavors. Bitterness is moderate but nicely balancing. Some honey and cookie like sweetness with a little bit of oatmeal cookie flavor. Finish is bitter and tea like, but creamy and not astringent.

Overall- another enjoyable, if otherwise unremarkable, English style homebrew. The flavors really balance well with the malt, hops, and yeast giving synergistic flavors and finding a nice balance between sweet and bitter. I was a little worried about using so much hops (8 ounces in the boil) but the end result was really nice and I think a bigger dry hop may have even added more. A really middle of the road beer that is surprisingly strong at over 6% ABV. Easy drinking but with enough going on to bring me back for more, and just enough bitterness to keep it from being too crushable.

Munich Melon Hülles Lager

Nelson Version

I took a bit of a break from brewing (and even more of a break from blogging) but got back to it in January with a hoppy lager that is partially inspired by a line from Scott Janish's great book The New IPA. Specifically there's a note that Hüll Melon (sometimes written Huell Melon) is high in the 2MIB (2-methylbutyl isobutyrate) thiol which gives an apricot-like character, and can be enhanced even more with a lager fermentation. Some of these ideas are explored in this blog post by Scott. A fruity, (especialy apricot-y and melon-y) Munich Helles might not be classic but the subtle malt sweetness and graininess should lend balance and space for the hops to shine, without this coming out as a hazy IPA (or IPL). Searching around the internet it seems that a Helles with Hüll Melon has been done before by several breweries, including one of my favorite East Bay brewers, Original Pattern, with their Hella Hüll Helles Lager. I'll have to track down a can to compare with my version.



1/20/2020 Brew Day
Made a vitality starter of 8 oz DME, 1g Fermaid-k, 1800 mL water, 2 moderately old packs of Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager and a blend of lager yeast saved from my SMaSH Pils.

After several recent batches came out with a strange, harsh character I decided to not treat the water for this batch at all. While I'm not sure water chemicals are the cause of my recent issues I've narrowed it down to a few possible factors and this seemed like the easiest one to test. If this batch experiences the same issues I'll try adjusting my mill settings and do a full inspection of my equipment and review of my processes to see if there's another possible culprit. I'm including extra notes on this batch here to be able to pinpoint the cause of the issue if it happens as well too

Measured and milled 7.25 pounds Weyermann Pilsner malt and 9 oz Briess Goldpils Vienna. I planned to use Carahell but forgot I was out, should come out a little crisper and maltier with the Vienna but with a similar color.

Hit 152 on the direct infusion (a few degrees cooler than expected but close enough). Added half an ounce of hops to the first wort and began heating while batch sparging. Hit a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.039, about what was expected for the target 1.047 OG. Boiled for 1 hour then rapidly cooled with immersion chiller (added 45 minutes into boil) to 160. Added the 1.5 ounces of whirlpool hops then continued chilling for about 15 minutes to 68F (room temp). Ran off to plastic carboy through silicon tubing and moved carboy to chest freezer set to 50F. Pitched yeast a few hours later.

1/24/2020
Fermentation still going moderately with a medium sized krausen. Plan to move out of chest freezer to ~65F room temp for a few days once fermentation begins to drop. Smell from fermentation is strong with sulfur stink, hopefully that's being pushed out and won't carry to the final beer.

1/25/2020
Left in chest freezer but adjusted temperature up to 65F. Will likely take a few days to warm that high.

1/31/2020
No noticeable diacetyl on tasting and gravity down to 1.014. Set chest freezer to 32F for quick lagering.

2/6/2020
Split between 2 separate 2.5 gallon kegs, one plain one with an ounce of Nelson Sauvin hops.

2/19/2020

Plain Version

This one has been on tap for a couple of weeks and is a pretty enjoyable helles at this point. While there was a decent amount of fruitiness from the hops in the non-dry hopped version originally that has largely faded into a bready malt forward easy drinking lager. The dry hopped version was terrific early on, then seemed to experience some hop creep and had diacetyl, it was removed from the chest freezer for a few days and seemed to clear up but the hop character mostly faded as well.

3/28/20
Nelson half kicked, it was a really nice easy drinker with just enough fruity hop character to keep it interesting. The un-dryhopped version is much more straight forward, it's extremely easy to drink but is arguably too clean and many craft beer lovers would probably find it boring.

Historic English Ales (1889 Pale Ale and 1896 Strong Ale)

Almost a year ago I kicked off a series of historic English beers that I've been planning for quite a while. The first beer I brewed was the 1867 Georges & Co. Brown Stout that just never turned out how I had hoped. While I'm allowing that beer to continue to age (now with brettanomyces and lactobacillus) I decided it was time to kick off round two of the experiment with a parti-gyle attempt at both the 1889 Pale Ale and 1896 Strong Ale from the same Bristol brewery.

I didn't have the full recipe for either beer as the information I have came from the Home Brewer's Recipe Database which doesn't include the time/size of additions or specifics like IBUs. I used a combination of what I did have, other historic recipes of the styles from the time period and BJCP style guidelines to come up with recipes that seemed fairly authentic but also appealing to my palate. The historic recipes I used as reference came mainly from Ron Pattinson's Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog, including an Eldridge Pope XXXX from just a year later than the George's recipe. The BJCP style guidelines I used were English IPA for the Pale Ale and a combination of British Strong Ale, Old Ale, and English Barleywine for the Strong Ale.

One of the main changes I made from the last batch was changing the base malt from the floor-malted Maris Otter that seemed to cause issues in several beers I made (including a Belgian Dubbel and the aforementioned Stout) to using Simpson's Golden Promise, a malt that I haven't used very often but is generally highly regarded and fits the bill of a English Pale malt. The malt is extremely important in a beer this simple: one grain, one strain of yeast, one hop variety (plus a small dry-hop addition of EKG to the pale ale) and water, so each ingredient will have to shine through.

While I've done a number of parti-gyle batches in the past this will be one of the biggest batches I've ever made with both beers expected to weigh in over 1.060 (1.064 and 1.088) and I'm using 16 pounds of grain in what is planned to be just 6 gallons total of beer. I'm also planning to boil the Strong Ale for 2+ hours to get a little more caramelization, color, gravity, and bitterness.

The fuggles are quite old now (they were a year old when I bought them more than a year ago) but hopefully that just adds to the authentically historic qualities of the beer and doesn't hurt it too much. Using aged fuggles could even lead to beneficial and interesting fruity qualities according to Scott Janish's book.

6/10/18
Brewday: Unfortunately today turned out to be the hottest day in San Francisco since I moved here: over 95F outside and even hotter in my apartment before I started heating water; definitely was not the best day to schedule a multi-hour boil brew day.

The pale ale went off without a hitch and hit just under the expected gravity (1.064) at 1.062. This was partly due to collecting too much of the second runnings. An extra quarter gallon or so of leftover wort from this half was added to the strong ale. Cooled to about 75F (probably as good as I can do in this heat) and aerated then pitched with a 1L starter of West Yorkshire Ale yeast and moved to the chest freezer set to 65F.

The strong ale had a lot more issues, with the burner it was on cutting out for some reason and the batch refusing to boil off at the anticipated rate after getting it going again. Coupled with the addition of the extra wort from the Pale Ale it ended up being boiled for a little over 2.5 hours, and being on the burner for close to 4 hours total, adding about 2 hours to the brew day beyond the time needed for the pale ale and what I usually anticipate. Hopefully all of that extra time added some sweetness and complexity in addition to bumping up the gravity to 1.088 and seemingly adding some color. The wort received the remaining .25L of the West Yorkshire Ale yeast and a pack of dry English yeast and was also set in the 65F chest freezer.

6/17/18
The pale ale blew its bung and both beers overflowed into the chest freezer while I was away for the weekend. Both seem fine and are showing continued moderate signs of fermentation so I didn’t take a sample. I did add 1 oz of EKG hops to the Pale Ale, higher than the originally planned 1/2 oz but at an earlier point.

6/19/19
Pale ale down to 1.010, taste is subtle with some herbal, tea, and lemon rounding out moderate grainy maltiness. The strong ale is down to 1.025 (almost all the way to the predicted FG of 1.023). Taste is similar with more pronounced maltiness and a little more sweetness but not as sweet or malty as most modern Old Ales or Barleywines. Goal is to keg both beers early next week, though the strong ale might get some extended aging in the keg.

6/24/19
Kegged both halves and set in keezer at 35F and 12 PSI. Pale Ale is toastier/maltier than I would like and probably needed more hops for both flavor and bitterness but hoping some carbonation will cut through the malt some. The Strong Ale is a bit boozy and a little sweet but not unenjoyable, hopefully some cold aging will allow it to condition.

8/10/19
These beers have been on tap for a while and have been pretty enjoyable. They both were well received at the SFHG meeting I brought them to, especially the strong ale which people encouraged me to enter in a competition.

10/4/19
These both kicked a few weeks ago. I forgot to get a picture of the pale ale, it was just such an easy sessionable drinker that it kicked pretty quick. Pictures are all of the Strong Ale which lasted quite a bit longer due to me turning to it less and usually going with much smaller pours when I did have it. Both were pretty nice beers but I would increase the hops quite a bit if I did it again and would probably add some specialty malts (if not going for strict historic authenticity) to give more toast/biscuit notes and some caramel sweetness that both halves could have used to be more similar to modern English beers.