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.

Brewday: Pink Pony Bitter

When we lived in Sydney we had a tradition of gathering at my place on Friday afternoons with a bunch of the guys I was studying with. We'd sit around, have a few beers and debrief. It became the highlight of every week. Our terrace house was a pretty ugly shade of pink and for those Fridays it got the name 'The Pink Pony', a play on the White Horse Tavern. We are such nerds. Those Fridays were very special times for me. This beer is called Pink Pony in honour of those Fridays. I imagine spending hours with those guys, drinking it and talking and laughing.

This recipe is a product of my restless internet wandering. I've come across a few bitters brewed more or less traditionally but with New Zealand or American hops. I don't know if that's a trend in the UK or if it's just a few beers but I thought it sounded fun. As I was trying to figure out what to brew next with the ingredients I had on hand, I realised that something in this vein would be a good option.

The starting point for my recipe was Velky Al's Session 42. He's treated me right so far so his recipe seemed like a good launch pad. I decided go with Golden Promise as the base malt, to reduce the Victory a bit and add a few grams of roasted barley for some extra colour. So actually the recipes are reasonably different but they do share Victory malt. There was some Motueka in the freezer that I've been keen to try for a while so that became the unorthodox hop addition. I also added some left over Styrian Goldings @ 60 min to get the bitterness up to where it needed to be. Back in September I bought some WY1469 more because it's one of my favourite strains of yeast than because I had a plan for it. I haven't used it in a bitter yet so I'm interested to see how that turns out. Hopefully it's a good combination of ingredients.

Pink Pony Bitter (22L batch)

Exciting action shot: cleaning my BIAB
sheet 

OG: 1.042 (1.044 measured)
FG: 1.012
IBU: 35
EBC: 16.3
ABV: 4%

Recipe
91.5% Golden Promise
8% Victory malt
0.5% Roasted barley

24g Styrian Goldings @ 60 min
20g Motueka @ 60 min
35g Motueka @ 15 min
35g Motueka @ 0 min

WY1469


Method
Mash

• 10g CaSO4, 2g CaCl2, 2g MgSO4 to increase the calcium and sulfate levels and 2ml lactic acid for pH correction.
• Stepped mash of 64C (45 minutes), 72C (15 minutes) and a mash out at 78C.

Boil

• 60 minute boil with hop additions at 60, 15 and 0 minutes.
• Irish moss @ 15 minutes

Fermentation

• Chilled and gave a 60 second blast of O2.
• Pitched an estimated 190 billion cells of WY1469.
• Began fermentation at 18C and increased to 21C over 4 days.

24/01/14 - Brewed

10/02/14 - Bottled

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.