Brewday: Celebration Ale with Juniper

My mate Dan and his wife Miranda are having their 4th baby in a couple of months so Dan and I got together to brew a beer to commemorate the event. It's fun to work on brewing something with Dan, he's the one who gave me my first taste of craft beer - a Little Creatures Pale Ale - and introduced me to lots of fun beer experiences. We ended up brewing a strong English ale with Juniper, not the kind of beer that's right in my wheelhouse but it's fun to try something new even if there is some risk of disaster.

Mikkeller's Hoppy (Happy) Lovin' IPA was where we began when we started talking about a recipe - more for the inspiration of using pine needles in the brew than to recreate it. We wanted something a bit different and special. In my mind something called a celebration ale needs to have a decent level of alcohol without veering into the high alcohol range. 7-8.5% ABV is about right for me. It should also be rich and malty. I guess something in the bock family or strong ale is where I would normally go for this kind of thing. Anyway, I decided to push it in the direction of a strong English ale, malty but with enough bitter heft to carry it. We could have used pine needles but to make it a bit more Dan and Miranda I decided that juniper would be a fun way to work in that sharp, piney flavour. Juniper is something that pregnant women need to avoid and also one of the flavourings of gin, another thing Miranda had to give up once she got pregnant.

So with that stuff in mind, I drew up my recipe. Maris Otter, with some light crystal and biscuit malt for the grist, East Kent Goldings for the hopping and WY1469 as the yeast. We got some dried juniper berries and added 20g of partly crushed berries to the urn at flameout. I originally was planning on 30g but on the day we decided to play it safe and add more into the fermenter if necessary.

The brewing itself was pretty straight forward and relatively easy for me since I had Dan and Will around all day and Luke and Huw for parts of the time. We ended up losing a few litres thanks to the tap getting clogged with bits of juniper but I'm not too fussed about volume.

No. 4 Celebration Ale (20L batch)
OG: 1.076 (1.074 measured)
FG: 1.020
IBU: 48
EBC: 17.3
ABV: 7.2%


Recipe
94% Maris Otter
3% Light crystal
3% Dingeman biscuit

2.75g/L East Kent Golding @ 60 min (32 IBU)
1.9g/L East Kent Golding @ 30 min (15 IBU)

1g/L juniper berries @ flame out (10 minute steep)

WY1469


Method
Mash:

• Stepped mash: 65C (45 minutes), 72C (15 minutes) and a 78C mash out
• 2g CaSO4, 10g CaCl2, 3g MgSO4 to raise the calcium as always and to raise the malt enhancing chloride level
• 4ml lactic acid for pH correction

Boil:

• 60 minute boil
• 55g East Kent Goldings @ 60 minutes
• 38g East Kent Goldings @ 30 minutes
• 1/2 tab whirlfloc @ 10 minutes
• 20g juniper @ 0 minutes

Fermentation:

• Oxygenated for 90 seconds
• Pitched a 1.7L starter of WY1469 with an estimated 350 billion cells of yeast
• Began fermentation @ 17C

12/04/14 - Brewed with Dan, Will, Luke & Huw

16/04/14 - Tasted a sample, malty with a sharp pine from the juniper which melds with the bitterness. Very promising.