Something Dark for Christmas.

[Eric]

Time to organise a brew for the coming season of merry and joy. Something dark and possibly warming at about 6%, for 30 litres and bottled.

Having recently topped up my stock it's also chance to use up some older ingredients without spoiling the brew, so please chime in with all and any suggestions that might improve the finished product.

4500g Pale Malt. Minch Malt, first from a new bag and some might be substituted by Vienna or Lager to further balance stock on hand.
250 g Flaked Barley to improve heading properties.
250 g Flaked Oats to give that silky feel.
200 g Brown Malt needs to be used up and should add to the character.
200 g Chocolate Malt, as for Brown but to better effect.
200 g Crystal Malt, getting old to add sweetness.
50 g Roast Barley, home roasted in need of a beer to flavour.

All well mixed and mashed for 2 hours at between 65 and 66C, then gently fly sparged for 90% of potential extract. Hopefully this will fit into a 25 litre Klarstein, else the initial target will be missed, or the main rig will be used.

Wort boiled for 90 minutes with additions of 50 g Brewers Gold for 60 minutes and 100 g Bramling Cross for 30 minutes to get over 40 IBU. Then 100 g of Lactose added for more sweetness with 15 minutes to go then Protafloc with 10 minutes left, then chilled in the kettle before transfer to the FV.

Invert Sugar, homemade from 1 kg of refined cane sugar (B&M) and a couple of tablespoons of Black Treacle will be diluted with sufficient tapwater acidified to pH 4.4 to eliminate all alkalinity and added to the FV to make the final volume.

Comments please.

[Jim]

Sounds good Eric. Should keep you warm!

Any particular yeast in mind?

[Normski]

Yep that sounds like you'll have a tasty brew there Eric.

[guypettigrew]

Great recipe and good to read your technique.

A couple of questions, if I may.

2 hour mash. Is this your preferred time for all mashes or just this one?

90 minute boil, with the hops in 30 minutes after the start of the boil. Same query as above.

If you've found you get better beers this way then I'll alter my planned brewday timings for this Saturday.

Thanks.

Guy

[Eric]

Thanks for the supporting comments. My first all grain brew was Dave Line's Guinness, and it blew my mind. Ever since, more years than I care to count, I've based most stout type recipes around that 70/20/10% for base malt/adjunct/kilned with good reward, but this is a modified use-up and I'm keen for input.

Jim, the yeast will be Vaux, B4 from Brewlab, where Alison previously worked for Vaux. I'm unsure how much warmth it might produce as during its last outing, wort reached 25C before being wrestled back in control, yet higher alcohols seem absent from the resulting beer.

Norm, I bought my Klarstein after reading your review on here, but am thinking to use the main gear, including in pride of place a piece you kindly gave me. I intend to describe the brew in detail when it happens including a picture showing the equipment used.

Guy, a 2 hour mash is my standard for darker beers that include a relatively significant proportion of adjunct and heavily kilned malts. This reduces the proportion of insoluble proteins and starches reaching the kettle and potentially the finished beer. 90 minutes is my norm, but many of my recipes do contain unmalted adjunct. 60 minutes is practical for recipes with high proportion base and crystal malts, but it needs recognition that well modified, low protein British malts do not contain the same level of enzymes as high protein malts grown in some parts of the world, and accordingly require a longer period in the mash tun.
Sometimes I add hops a while after the boil has started, particularly near full volume that might result in a boil over with hop loss, but for other reasons too. A lightly hopped low gravity dark (mild?) as an example might be hopped mid boil, aiming to keep delicate aromas from the bittering charge. However, in this case I'm using up one full old pack of hops and an equally old half pack and hope those timings might just add what I'd like.

[WalesAles]

Eric,

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1064984 ... LPEALw_wcB


You could split the brew and put some of these in for a Christmassy Brew!

WA

[Mashman]

Something Dark for Christmas. Evenings without power or heat will do then .

[Eric]

Interesting Wales, interesting. Certainly, mulled beers can create an extra dimension, but experience suggest more dislike such additions than those who find extra pleasure. This beer may well be mulled by plunging a red hot poker into a glass of poured beer, allowing for individual choice. Thanks for the reminder though, it's a few years now since the poker was in use at Christmas.

Mashman, it seems that will happen to many in Ukraine and other places, just hope that neither war nor Government actions will inflict similar in UK.

[WalesAles]

Eric,
I used to have a wooden poker, it was useless, didn`t last very long!

WA

[Eric]

Eric,
I used to have a wooden poker, it was useless, didn`t last very long!

WA

Might make a good mulled beer though. Give it a try.

[Eric]

Weighed and milled the grains yesterday with a minor modification. The 4500 gm of pale malt was replaced with 4000 gm pale and 750 gm of Vienna malt. Mash water was treated and put on a time switch for this morning and the chosen gear laid out. The Klarstein was used as the HLT.

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Taken during the sparge, liquor is pulsed by the pump on the output of the Klarstein to spray from 12 jets radially over the grainbed. Output from the MT is fed to a Valentine Arm set level with the grainbed and the output keeps pace with the sparge. A sample from the mash afer 1 hour 40 minutes read pH 5.35.

After 24 litres at 1060 were transferred to the FV, the hops were sparged with 3 litres cold liquor and left to settle clear before being drained to provide 2.66 litres at 1030 and added to the FV. Meanwhile a kg of sugar was inverted and allowed to cool somewhat before being added to the FV with 3 litres of treated tapwater, making a total volume of around 30 litres.

(24 X 60) + (2.66X 30) + 360 = 1440 + 80 + 360 = 1880 litre degrees.
1880/30 = 62.7 brewer's degrees.
OG = 1062.7

Yeast Vit was added to the Vaux yeast before pitching. There was a covering after an hour or so after pitching.

[WalesAles]

Looking good, Eric.

How is it so light at 11.30pm up there?
Must be the Northern lights I suppose?

WA

[guypettigrew]

Very good looking set up, Eric.

Excellent overall efficiency! Using Graham's 'Beer Engine' tells me you're at about 90%. Impressive. I reckon I'm doing well if I get around 82%.

Perhaps it would be worth trying a hop sparge. Do you drain your boiler completely before doing the hop sparge, or do you leave some wort in there?

My mash efficiency is usually 95% plus, so there are undoubtedly sugars left in the hops.

Guy

[An Ankoù]

Exactly my thinking.
I've been ferreting around the Gladfield Malts recipe book and was taken by their Extra Stout. It's rated at 5.7% abv- mine FGs are always a bit lower than target so I reckon I'll get 6%, which is perfect for a winter stout. I might even add some lactose to part of the beer before bottling it up. We'll see.
Here's the recipe converted into European malts as Gladfield's malt names are a joy in themselves:
20L OG/FG/abv 1056/1013/5.7% IBUs 40

Pale Malt 3.25 Kg
Flaked Barley 500g
Crisp's Cara Gold 400g
Château Black Wheat Malt 385g
Fawcett's Brown malt 208g
Crisp's Chocolate Malt (850 ebc) 208g
Château Cara Clair 208g
No pH adjustment to water with CRS. CaCl2 3g, CaSO4 2g (That's for my water)
Mash @ 65C
One charge of hops at start of boil Pacific Jade recommended to 40 IBUs
(I'll possible change the hops to use up some open packets)
Boil 60 mins + 10 mins with copper finings
BRY97 recommended. I probably won't use that. Possibly CML Atlantic (which I'm very impressed with) we'll see

Apologies for the malt bill, I spent an age decoding Glafdfield's malt specs and making my own substitution chart- their own is very approximate.

Right, I'm wasting time, lets get the mash on.

[Eric]

Not quite Wales, it gets darker sooner. There have been quite a few visible auroras in recent months, but living in the south of Sunderland the northern sky is always lit at night.

Hi Guy, adding boiled invert separately to the FV means no losses for it. The boiler is drained first and allowed to settle again after the sparge liquor is added. The liquor is treated with acid to near zero alkalinity and added in relation to the weight of whole hops used, I guess it won't work with pellets. Typically, I get half the gravity of the initial draining and brew at higher gravity to allow for the dilution.

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Just as well the lid was left off overnight for open fermentation else with 30 litres in a 50 litre vessel there might have been a mess overnight. The yeast is shown in need of returning to the wort.