Brewday: Kimberly, a Brown Porter

Room has been made, a fridge has been picked up and beer has been brewed. Finally! I've been desperate to brew for a couple of months and there are like 15 recipes that need to be brewed this minute.

My Brown Porter, sadly there's only room for one at a time in the fridge

Because we live in a cruel world where I can't brew 15 beers at the same time I chose to brew a Brown Porter. It gave me the chance to use the brown and crystal malts I roasted a while back. I called it Kimberly because that's the name printed on the oven I used to roast the barley. Why name an oven Kimberly? Who knows but now it's been passed on to my beer.

It was such a joy to experience the small pleasures of the brewday again. To open the bags of grain and hops and inhale the roasted goodness. The brown malt has mellowed nicely, the crystal malt smelled like fruit toast, all raisins and sweetness and roasty malt. I've never used Victory malt before and cracking the bag unleashed cookie dough upon my senses. Fuggles is nothing new to me but man it was nice to smell those delicious hops.

I also got to use my stir-plate for the first time. It stirs.

The recipe: Maris otter, brown malt, crystal malt, victory malt and chocolate malt. Fuggles hops. WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale.

It's amazing how much of a relief it is to have the fridge set up. I hadn't realised before how much I was worrying about the fermentation when it was at ambient temperature. It's so easy with the fridge. I can be confident that the yeast is getting it's best possible shot and I'm free me to brew and brew and brew. Now I'm more or less properly set up. With the stir plate and fermentation fridge I can control temperatures and treat the yeast properly so there's no excuse for not producing good beer. My aim now is to brew a stack more and try out styles I haven't tried before as well as trying to master a few.

Up next: ANZAC Day Export Stout redux, a Saison and another American IPA.

Brewday: 100% Brett Brown Ale

It's taken me ages to get there but I've finally managed to get a 100% brett fermented beer underway. Because it's a world I'm unfamiliar with I adapted a recipe from the Ryan Brews blog. It should be malty and give plenty of room for the yeast to shine.

Packet of goodness

This beer was also fun because I used my home made brown malt for the first time. It's had a few weeks to de-gas so it should be spot on now. It definitely added plenty of colour to the wort, in the fermenter it looks like it's going to be red-black. I'm looking forward to seeing how it tastes.

Recipe:
11.5 litre batch
OG: 1.058
IBU: 23

2.5kg Pale malt
250g Brown malt
200g Acidulated malt
125g Crystal 120ebc
20g Carafa Special III

10g Citra hops @ 60 minutes

The yeast is WY5526 Brettanomyces Lambicus. From what I've read it should give a fruity, black cherry aroma and flavour to the beer.

Brett Brown looking good in the fermenter

Home roasting malts

I've wanted to roast my own malts for a while, having read quite a few positive reports on beers brewed with home roasted malts. Plus, there are some malts that aren't readily available in Tassie and roasting myself is a way to get around that problem. For my first foray into roasting malt I based my efforts on a post on Barleypopmaker's Beer Blog.

There are 3 or 4 recipes I want to brew with brown malt in the recipe so I gave the brown a shot first off.

Pale malt before roasting

Starting with pale malt, I spread out 240g on an oven tray and put it in the oven for 50 minutes at 205'C, stirring every 10 minutes to get as even a roast as possible.

Brown malt finished and cooled

It turned out pretty well I reckon. The 240g reduced to 213g after roasting. 11% isn't too bad. If I recall correctly, coffee roasters tend to find a 20% reduction in weight from green to roasted. I'm guessing that green coffee beans have a higher moisture content than pale malt.


The malt tastes good and roasty and is quite evenly roasted. I'm looking forward to putting it to use. The hard part is waiting for a week or two to let it de-gas before using it. I need to plan ahead a bit more or, even better, just roast large enough quantities of a few different malts to have on hand.

Side by side

I've got a mate who's made a coffee roaster with a heat gun and a bread maker and I'm hoping to borrow it soon to roast some malt for a historical Stout recipe. It should give me more control and a more even roast.

Next up: amber, light crystal and some more brown malt.