Sneaky Extra Brewday: Galaxy Wet Hopped IPA

Most of the gang

Yesterday we had the first meeting of our new home brew club, Hobart Brewers. There were 24 people present and several more who couldn't make it but are planning on coming along in the future. That's a pretty good start! We had a fun evening planning, talking about some fun stuff we'll be able to do as a club and enjoying a few beers. It seems like we're all pretty much wanting the same kinds of things out of the club - enthusing with other brewers, learning more about the craft and evaluating beer. I can't wait for the next meeting.

On top of that, at the end of the meeting we had a 20kg bag of fresh picked Galaxy hops to divvy up thanks to Owen Johnston and Hop Products Australia. The smell in the room was incredible and standing around stuffing bags with hops was a fun way to finish things off. We live in a great place to have a home brew club!

Duncan with his head in the bag while John
waits to see if he passes out in the hop fumes

I managed to come away with the leftovers after everyone had their fill and ended up with somewhere around 3kg of fresh hops. Today's task was to brewed a beer to make use of as much of that 3kg as I could.

After the meeting I didn't have enough energy to brew an all grain batch so I went with a simple extract recipe similar to Huw's Magical Mystery IPA. The whole brewday was a bit of a free kick as I had no real plans and a pile of Galaxy to play with. It's the first time in my brewing adventures where not wasting hops meant using as many as possible! If only every day was like this.

Since I had way more hops than I could use I decided to avoid adding them to the boil completely and gain all the bitterness I wanted from a flame out addition. From what I've read wet hops are worth 1/5 of the same weight of dried hops so assuming the alpha acids would be similar to last year's 13.9%, I aimed to add enough at flame out to get into the 60-65 IBU range. I normally calculate a 20-25 minute hop stand as a 10 minute addition so with a 25 minute hop stand I figured 750g of Galaxy (equivalent to 150g of dried) would be worth roughly 60-65 IBU. After the 25 minute stand I chilled for a couple of minutes to get the temperature of the wort down to 80C and added more hops. It was going to be a matching 750g but when I was shovelling the hops into the box I thought 'why stop there?' and brought it up to 1.5kg of hops. I'm not going to be dry hopping this one as the remaining hops will have deteriorated too much by then so I figure over the top is the way to go with the hop stand.

It's hard to stop smiling when you're pouring
1.5kg of hops into a 20L batch of beer

It was a relaxing brew that didn't require much energy or attention beyond inhaling deep breaths of fruity, dank hop goodness and grinning stupidly. It was so much fun to be extravagant and over the top with the hopping. My kitchen smelled heaps like Sierra Nevada's Southern Harvest turned up to 11. If the end product is in that ballpark I'll be very happy.

I don't have any room in my fermentation fridges so this one got packed up in the car and driven to my brother's place where it'll have an entire chest freezer in which to luxuriate. Extra fermentation space, that's what brothers are for.

Hopefully we'll get to sample a bunch of the fresh Galaxy creations in the next club meeting. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else does with their hops!


Galaxy Fresh Hop IPA (20L extract batch)

Jiggling the chiller to get all the hops into
the wort.

OG: 1.065
FG: 1.012
IBU: 60-65 (estimated)
EBC: 17 (estimated)
ABV: 6.9%


Recipe
89.5% Light dried malt extract
5.5% NFH Crackerjack biscuit malt
5% Dextrose

750g Fresh Galaxy hops @ 0 minutes (30 minute steep)
1.5kg fresh Galaxy hops added @ < 80C (50 minute steep)

US-05


Method
Boil:

• 60 minute boil
• 1/2 tab of whirlfloc @ 10 minutes
• 750g Galaxy @ 0 minutes, steeped for 30 minutes




It's not very clear but all those little specks
 are bits of lupulin emerging from the cones

• 1.5kg Galaxy @ < 80C, steeped for 50 minutes

Fermentation:

• Oxygenated for 90 seconds
• Pitched 21g of US-05
• Started fermentation @ 18C

20/03/14 - Brewed

BrewSwede: Brewtas' Swedish spinoff

My youngest brother lives in Sweden and has started brewing this year. He sent a bottle of his Belgian Blond down and it was delicious with it's spicy and clove aroma and flavour. He lives in a tiny apartment with his partner and baby and doesn't have any kind of dedicated brewing area. What he's been able to do with limited resources has been impressive.

Simon, me and Dad with the beer in question

The recipe was a very simple extract brew, a testament to how much the yeast is responsible for producing delicious beer. Here's the recipe:

Ben's Blond Ale (12L batch)
OG: 1.060
FG: 1.010
IBU: 19
ABV: 6.6%
EBC: 10

92% Light DME
8% Table sugar

25g Tettnang @ 60 min

White Labs 570 fermented in a 21-22C apartment

Re-brewday: Accidental Imperial Stout

Of the beers I've brewed so far, Bron's favourite is the Accidental Imperial Stout. I brewed it about 11 1/2 months ago and we're down to about 8 bottles. She's been wanting me to brew it again so that the supply is maintained. Also, it's Winter and there's no better time to be drinking a Stout than in the depths of a Tasmanian Winter.

Really imperial

I've made a few changes that should make it ready to drink sooner and better:

Using the Mr Malty calculator, I've realised that I pitched only about 1/3 of the yeast I should have last time. This year, I've got plenty of yeast ready to go. This should help the fermentation to be quicker and cleaner which should mean that the beer is ready to drink much sooner than the first time when it was more than 6 months before it became a pleasant drink.

ALL the yeast

Temperature control is now in my grasp. Last year it fermented a bit cool which didn't do the poor, under-pitched yeast any favours. This year, sitting at around 20'C, it should be much happier.

I added some more hops and changed the variety from East Kent Golding to Northern Brewer. The main reason was just to give it better balance. The first version is thick and syrupy and doesn't have much bitterness. I'd like the hops to cut through that a bit with this version.

Yeast gone wild!

The recipe is big and ugly, with almost 3/4 of a kilo of roasted barley and chocolate malt together and 640g of crystal malts. On top of that there's 5kg of light dried malt extract. It is the blackness. There's also a bunch of Northern Brewer hops. I've chucked in about 22g of S-04 yeast and it's gone bezerk.

Brewday: American Brown

I did a brew with Mark, a mate who just lives around the corner. We've lived near each other for about 2 years yet somehow hardly ever meet up. Among its many virtues, brewing provides a great opportunity to hang out.

We did a simple American Brown Ale. I went for extract + specialty grains instead of all grain for the sake of saving some time and helping him get familiar with that step in the brewing pathway. Colour came from some Carafa Special III, Chocolate malt and some crystal. I'm still trying to use leftover hops and I thought Citra would be nice with the darker malt flavour. I also added Columbus and Galaxy. 1.052 OG and 32 IBUs.

Simple and good. Hopefully.