Double Brewday: Saison and Export Stout

Some more brewing today. Thanks to merging my brewing equipment with my brother's, we can easily do two batches at once when fermentation space permits. It's a bit late to get getting going but I'm hoping to get a few different beers ready for a brewing competition. There's no brewing club in Tasmania so I'll be entering the ACT one. Of course I'd like to do well but getting good written feedback will be useful either way.

I'm looking forward to the Saison because I've stepped up a starter from the dregs of a bottle of Saison Dupont. The fermentation will kick off at 22C and I'll step it up to the mid 30s over the course of the week. Can't wait to see what comes of this one.

The Stout is more or less the same recipe as I've brewed twice before. I've gone for flaked barley this time instead of rye and I used Aramis hops instead of the Northern Brewer and Fuggles I've used in the past. I've upped the gravity a little. It's a recipe I know fairly well and I'd like to continue to work on it with different varieties of yeast.

The Tripel I brewed last week has been tasting delicious out of the fermenter. I've added sugar in two stages and it should be ready to bottle in a day or two.

A quiet drink, a great view and a sour I brewed last year

Saison (23L batch)
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.008
ABV: 6.4%
IBU: 27
Colour: 9 EBC

97.5% Belgian Pilsner
2.5% Caramunich II

25g Aramis @ 90 min
25g Saaz @ 20 min


Export Stout (19L batch)
OG: 1.068
FG: 1.013
ABV: 7.3%
IBU: 55
Colour: 83 EBC

83% Maris Otter
8% Flaked Barley
5% Roast Barley
2% Chocolate Malt
2% Black Malt

66g Aramis @ 90 min
15g US-05

Quick tasting notes: Playoffs IPA 2.0, Export Stout 2.0 & Camp de Brains Saison

After another lull there's now heaps of stuff happening in my brewing world and I've got a bit of a backlog of posts to catch up on. First, the trip to Bruny Island. It was awesome as always. Relaxing, fun times catching up with mates and plenty of food and drink. The beers went down well and it was nice to be able to execute my plan and take 3 decent if not perfect beers to share.

Quick tasting notes:

The Playoffs IPA 2.0 was a bit disappointing. Not bitter enough and much darker than it should have been thanks to a shortage of light crystal malt at my local home brew shop. I also way overdid the flavour hops and they completely obscured the rye and other malt flavours. It wasn't awful to drink but it was a long way from what I wanted.

The Road Trip Export Stout was another re-brew. This time the changes I made really benefitted the beer. It was much more dry than the first one but still had heaps of body thanks to the flaked rye I used. Big and bold.

Camp de Brains Saison probably the crowd favourite. It turned out really nicely I think. It had a pleasant, soft malt flavour from the pils, wheat and rye malts to go with a smooth bitterness. A sweet malt aroma merged with something like strawberry and a little hop aroma. I'd like to try it again fermented at a higher temperature to give it a little more yeast character.

The beer was nice, the view didn't hurt either

Export Stout 2.0

I like Stouts but they certainly aren't my favourite style. Somehow though I seem to end up brewing them more often than anything else. This one is a second attempt at the ANZAC Day Export Stout that I was pretty pleased with and comes with the added pleasure of being intended for a gathering with some friends I studied with.

Last time around the mash temperatures were a bit high, the efficiency was a bit lower than I expected and the yeast didn't attenuate as well as it should have due to cold temperatures. Together they made the beer lower alcohol that I intended (5.9% abv instead of 7%) and left it a bit sweeter and thicker bodied than I wanted. That said, it was freaking delicious so I was keen to give it another go with some tweaks.

This time I lowered the mash temps which should take care of the residual sweetness and help attenuation. There's rolled rye in the grist which should take care of the body. I also have a proper fermentation chamber and that should give the yeast a hand too. In addition to all this, I finally got the 40l urn I bought back in March up and running so I enlarged the recipe to brew a 20l batch. I was hoping that the size of the urn would help me get better efficiency and reach the 1.070 OG I was shooting for. It didn't work though, I only ended up with 1.062 so I'm going to have to do some more work to get efficiency up.

The Spaceship complete with camping mat insulation

The recipe is nearly the same as last time, just scaled up and with Northern Brewer used solely as the bittering hop. If the tweaks turn out well, this is going to be perfect for some good times catching up with mates I haven't seen for a while. That along with an IPA and a Saison if I have the time should make for a nice selection.

Brewday: ANZAC Day Export Stout

I've been itching to brew with Huw and Jason, my regular co-conspirators and today was the day. We also roped in Benny who we've been wanting to have along for a while.

We brewed an Export Stout, pinched but with minor changes from The Mad Fermentationist who in turn pinched it from Oregon's Pelican Pub and Brewery.

For my version of the recipe, I changed the hops to Fuggles and a small amount of Northern Brewer since I'm still trying to use up some leftovers. I also read somewhere about an old school technique for brewing Stouts: adding a portion of the black malt directly to the boil. I've given that a go and we'll see how it turns out.

We did some brewing. It was pretty relaxed and everything worked out well with no problems. Jason showed us his skills with the weber, cooking pork belly and a pork roast. That stuff was amazing.

We also drank the last remaining bottle (a growler) of one of our past efforts, a Nelson Sauvin Pale Ale. It was past its best but still fun to share. I also brought out some of my Berliner Weisse, Galaxy Pale and Imperial Stout.

Loving using glad wrap as a lid which lets me stickybeak the whole process

Laughs, brewing and good beers. It was even better after such a long time stuck in bed. I'm totally trashed now and will probably be paying for it for a couple of days but it's totally worth it. I was going to take some photos but I was having too much fun and forgot.