Experimental light beer

After the relatively heavy Weissbier and the screwed up SNPA clone, I wanted to try out a light beer. The goal was a drinkable beer with around 3% ABV. I wanted to go with a standard mash program, not Springmaischverfahren (where you pretty much skip the maltose rest and go straight to 72°C). At first I was going to go for a light Weissbier as I have some of the stripped Gutmann yeast in the fridge. In the end I decided to go for a bottom fermenting lager - a kind of light Schankbier.

Given that something like this can go really wrong really fast, I decided to try out a small mash first. The goal was about 7l of beer. For small, experimental brews I already had bought a 15l pot that can be used on a normal induction/ceramic/gas hob, like in any kitchen. I got a big net curtain at IKEA to try the BIAB ("Brew In A Bag") process. Here, you mash in the net curtain in the pot. When the mash is done, you lift the mash up in the curtain. The wort remains behind. This actually worked quite well. I was able to hit my goal of about 8.5 Brix. I had about 9l of wort. It was pretty cloudy though, as could be expected from BIAB.

Boiling, cooling and adding yeast was the same as any other beer, except that I had to take care not to add too much hops. I was aiming for 23 IBU but then decided to stop around 19 because light beers don't have the malt background to counteract hops - meaning that even 23 IBU would come across as very bitter. The beer was supposed to be something like a Munich Helles, so it didn't have to be too bitter anyway.

Since yesterday it is fermenting at 10°C. I worked out that the Stammwürze was almost exactly 8°P (perfect landing). Currently we are at 6.4°P, so something is happening. I'll leave it ferment away until it stops. It tastes very sweet right now, so hopefully it will dry up as time goes by. I'll have to deal with the cloudiness afterwards too. Some Biersol and gelatine will sort it out no doubt.

Triticum Cervisia Citri

SNPA Clone that probably won't be

Time for another blog post about a brew. Since my last post about the Samba Pale Ale, there was an Oktoberfestbier, a stout brewed from extract and an extremely good five corn stout, brewed from mash. Today (Feb 15th) Sven and I decided that we'd try out the new equipment and brew 50l of a SNPA (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) clone - i.e. a nicely hopped pale ale, with a decent full bodiness and a bernstein colour.

I used a recipe from Maische Malz und Mehr which had some fairly good reviews. I had to change it to suit 50l of wort and I also had to change the hops to suit what I had. I went with Simcoe shortly after boiling, Perle in the middle of the boiling, Citra towards the end, and then a full 100g of Cascade right at flame out.

However, things were not to come as expected. The recipe wanted almost 10kg of malt with 48l of water for the mash. This was no problem for the new Schengler 70l pot, but we suspected even then that we'd have a problem with läutern. We did. The Thermoport cannot hold anywhere near that amount. We ended up collecting the first 40l of wort in the fermentation keg so there would be room in the Thermoport for more of the mash. We eventually did manage to get the job done. Even though we thought we'd have very little room in the 70l pot if we were to use the entire Nachguss in the recipe, we did actually end up using almost a full Silvercrest full. After läutern we ended up with 67l of wort in the Schengler, at about 15 brix - also substantially higher than what the recipe requested. It was becoming obvious even before cooking hops, that we would not be hitting the SNPA recipe. It was more likely going to become an IPA with a much higher Stammwürze and (probably) higher IBU than the 37 of the SNPA.

While adding the hops, we decided to try without using hop sacks. I'm not sure this was such a great idea - I think that the hops diffuse more oil into the wort if they are not in a sack, but the result is a very cloudy wort (more than likely protein). Anyway, after cooking the hops, adding 4l of boiling water (to compensate for what disappeared in steam) and whirlpooling, we piped about 40l of wort into the 60l fermentation keg and the rest (about 18l) into a 30l fermentation keg, meaning we will more than likely have about 58l of beer. After cooling down to about 22°C, we added the yeast (Safale S05). The kegs are downstairs at about 17°C waiting for the yeast to start working.

By way of summary, it wasn't a bad brew day, but a lot of things could have went smoother. The biggest issue was overestimating what can be done with a 38 Thermoport. If we aim for 40l of beer each time instead of 50l (or 58l like what we ended up with), it would probably be significantly easier to process.