MMN = Mosaic-Motueka-Necteron

Brewed 28th Oct

strike water: 20L @ 76°
mash start: 69.5°
end mash: 67°
sparge water: 12L
Vol in kettle: 27L
No koppafloc! Better for hazy?
Gravity after mash: 13.3 Brix = 1.054
25min hops stand (94° to 75°)
chilled to 18°
24L in fermentor
OG: 15.2 Brix = 1.062
Yeast rehydrated @ 28°

Signs of fermentation starting next day, pressure starting to build.

By day 2 pressure had built to over 20 psi, dropped it to 15. Temp had risen to 22°, dropped it to 19.5°.

1 Nov (day 4) – dry hopped
(Krausen had mostly dropped)

brew notes and recipe »

Brewed 30th Sept (close enough to full moon!)

strike water: 20L @ 76°
mash start: 70°
mid mash: 69°
sparge water: 13.6L
25min hops stand (90° to 75°)
chilled to 17.5°
28L in fermentor
OG: 1.058

Boiled with gas running out! Took ages to get up to boil/hot break. But made it albeit more of a simmer than a boil.

Visual signs of fermentation next evening.

4 Oct: Dry hopped while fermentation still apparently active

brew notes and recipe »

Dan from LOB gave me  an unwanted Hazy grain bill, already milled. Then LOB were giving away fresh Nectaron hops so I got about 2.5kg of them and threw down this beer, brewed with kveik yeast.

Brewed 18th Mar

Strike temp: 77°
Mash: start 72°, mid: 70.5°, end 68°
OG: 12.2 Brix (before hops rinse)
Hops stand: 40 mins as temp drops to 72°
Chilled to 25° & transferred to Fermzilla
Rinsed hops with 2L water, bringing down OG to 11 Brix (1.044)
Sprinkled dry Kveik yeast and fermentation was going strong in a matter of hours

FG: 1.017
ABV: 3.54%

brew notes and recipe »

Based on the LOB adaptation of the ‘Nick Danger’ porter recipe (original by Denny Conn) which I previously brewed at Marchfest in 2019. This turned out to be a really nice porter when I made it before so I thought it was time to do it again. My main deviations from the LOB version are hops, yeast and mash temperature. I used a smaller amount (50g) of a higher alpha hops, Waimea, instead of  the low alpha Tettnang hops for the first 2 additions. For yeast I chose Voss Kveik because it’s ideal for Marchfest brewing as it’s not possible to get the pitching temp down to ideal pitching temps for the usual ale yeasts by water cooling alone. I went with a very high mash temp, ~74°, as that worked out great in my previous low alcohol brew as a strategy for reducing alcohol.

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

This is an attempt to brew a low ABV beer that tastes like a proper beer rather than a watered down version of a beer. My previous low ABV batch was a decent effort but a bit on the watery side despite being almost 4% ABV. Having tasted an Eddyline EddyLite which at only 2.5% tastes like a full proper beer, it inspired me to take another crack at low ABV brewing. My approach this time is to go with a fairly small grain bill and mash very high and ferment with a low attenuating yeast (Windsor), hopefully ending up with a low abv beer but with enough body left behind to make it taste and feel like a full bodied beer.

In researching low alcohol brewing, I cam across Lallemand’s article  ‘Best Practices Low Alcohol Brewing‘. They recommend a mashing temperature between 82-86°C, but that is for targeting under 1% ABV and I don’t need to go so low (2.5-3.5% would be around what I’m hoping for). I would be inclined to suspect tannin extraction would be an issue when mashing that high. I played it safer and went with a less extreme mash temp of 75° which is still 5 or 6°  higher than I’ve ever mashed before.

I also went with no sparge and a shorter 20 min boil. I could have got away with a short mash too but I was multi-tasking (cooking dinner) so it ended up been a longer mash.

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

Attempt at a lighter (by ABV) beer. Kept it in and served it from the Fermzilla. By some weird magic it didn’t require any CO2 for serving (after the original charge up to 15psi)! It held enough pressure to pour until the last drop. How did it maintain pressure? As it was a low gravity brew, I wouldn’t have expected any additional fermentation action generating more CO2. And it didn’t change in taste so no signs of any infection which could generate CO2. So this appears to have been a magical beer!

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

I had a can of ‘Leprechaun’s Belle’ by Deep Creek and really liked it. Although it aims to be an ‘Irish Red’, I’d say it was much better than a typical Irish Red, more of a ‘craft beer’ take on the style. It’s a lot darker and more roasty so I reckon that it has more than the typical amount of roast barley. For my Irish Red recipe I went with a generous (for the style) amount of roast barley and a bit more than the typical amount of hops.

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

I thought the malty base of my previous beer, Hops Harvest 2022, was so good that I kept the grain bill exactly the same and paired it up with a trio of hops pellets –  Motueka, Southern Cross and Taiheke.

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

strike water: 22L @ 73.5°
mash start: 66°
mid mash: 65.5°
sparge water: 10L
30 L in fermentor (to the brim!)
OG: 1.084
No boil – left in fridge to cool

Fermented for 2 weeks (still had solid airlock activity in 2nd week)
FG: 0.999
ABV:  11.35%
Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

Last minute thrown together recipe, hence the name.

20 Feb 2022 – Brew day
Mashed higher than planned due to low battery in thermometer causing it to stick on 74° when measuring strike water temp, but was a few degrees higher. Ended up mashing at around 71° – too high???? Gravity after mash 1.052 – pretty spot on, so conversion seems ok.

Added some of the post-boil hops after flameout and then dropped temp to 90° and added remainder and let stand for 20mins.

Chilled to 21.5° then transferred to fermenter and left in fridge overnight to reach 11° before pitching rehydrated yeast.

Continue reading

brew notes and recipe »

brew notes and recipe »

Based on my recent beer Zythos Session APA but with a few tweaks:

• NZ hops blend (The Bruce) instead of US hops blend (Zythos)
• 0.5kg more malt – 1kg of Vienna instead of 0.7kg and 0.2kg of Sour Grapes malt
• German Vienna and Munich malt instead of NZ
• Medium crystal instead of light crystal malt
• Chill instead of no-chill
• US-05 instead of Mangrove Jacks Empire Ale yeast
• Fermented under pressure

Again I’m aiming for a lowish alcohol beer that tastes like full on APA, so mashed high at around 69°C (70-68°).

Here’s a blurb about “The Bruce”, an NZ hops blend created by Freestyle Hops:

The Bruce is a vibrant, aromatic and concentrated blend of Freestyle Hops created in honor of Bruce Eggers. To make The Bruce they’ve used early Nelson Sauvin, early Motueka, late Pacifica and mid Pacific Jade (that’s the picking times). The aroma has fresh gooseberry, citrus peel, ripe tropical fruit and orange blossom. When brewed, the complex aromatics remain true to rubbing.

Pressure ferment – I’ve now got a spunding valve so will attempt a pressure ferment.

brew notes and recipe »

Brewed this with Kveik yeast hotter than intended – got up to about 35°C! I had mistakenly left the temp probe OUTSIDE the frementation fridge and my hairdryer heat source was cranking up the temp for awhile before I noticed on first day of fermentation. I thought I had messed it up, but no, it turned out great! Kveik thrives at those high temperatures. With the combination of a warm Kveik ferment and half a kilo of oats in this, it naturally turned out quite hazy even though I wasn’t particularly planning to brew a hazy. But turned to be a very nice hoppy beer.

I re-introduced my immersion chiller for this one (instead of the usual no-chill) since it has a lot of hops – worked out well and found it wasn’t really any extra work.

brew notes and recipe »

Recipe kit from League of Brewers. Turned out very nice!

brew notes and recipe »

My plan here was to brew an APA/IPA with a lower ABV (around 4%) but tasting like a full-bodied tasty pale ale. I found a recipe on Brewer’s Coop that looked in line with what I had in mind so I went with it for the malt bill and used 200g of Zythos American hops blend and picked Mangrove Jack’s M15 – Empire Ale yeast for it’s lower attenuation. Being a recipe for a lower ABV beer, the grain bill is on the small side but features more flavoursome malts – Maris Otter, German Vienna and Munich malts, light crystal. Also included is half a kilo of flaked oats to add body and texture. I mashed high to help keep the finishing gravity on the higher side and leave more body with less alcohol production.

3/4 of the hops went in after flame-out. Because I’m doing a pressure ferment in the Fermzilla, I decided not to do any dry hops addition, Instead I did a ‘cube addition’, So the post flame=out hops were divided into 3 addition – right after flame-out, whirlpool addition after 10 mins hops rest followed by another 10 mins hops rest and finally the ‘cube addition’.

brew notes and recipe »

Brewed at Marchfest, based on an IPA I had at Cameron’s place. His used Nectaron hops which was not available at LOB so I used Amarillo which was on the original recipe that he sent me.

brew notes and recipe »

I cobbled this recipe together while picking out some ingredients from the League Of Brewers website in a bit of a rush so that I could pick up the ingredients before they closed on Saturday. I hadn’t brewed in about 3 months and both my kegs had run dry and I even finished my last bottles of pale ale the night previous so I needed to get some beer brewed quick. I was going for a middle of the road American Pale Ale – decently hoppy but not a big beer. I went with about 5kg of malt and mashed high to help keep finishing gravity a bit higher and alcohol a bit lower.

For hops I went with 100g of Zythos American hops blend and 100g of Loral Cryo Hops – Lupulin N2 pellets! Cryo Hops contain concentrated Lupulin and are close to double the potency of regular hops pellets, so they should have a big impact on the beer. As a result of the concentration, these Lorals packed a massive alpha value of 23.2%. I used half of them them at flame-out and in the cube and reserved the other half for dry hopping. Most of the Zythos went into the boil, flame-out and cube with just a tiny amount left for dry-hopping. I had intended to reserve more for dry-hopping but the bloody scales I was using must have been a bit error prone!

Loral Aroma Profile:
The aroma profile of Loral™ has been described as a “super noble hop” with its wonderful floral and herbal notes followed by a backdrop of citrus and earthy character. A touch of sweet fruity aroma rounds out this well-balanced hop. In beer, the floral notes are accentuated yet complemented nicely by fruity and citrus with just a hint of herbal. Don’t expect an in-your-face fruity character with Loral™ as seen with some recent U.S. variety releases – this hop is approachable and balanced. Great for distinctive IPAs and pale ales but perfect for sessionable and lager-style beers.

Zythos hops:
Created by Hopunion LLC, Zythos® is a proprietary hop blend created specifically with IPA’s in mind. It features notes and aromas of tangerine, grapefruit, pine and even pineapple. Its high alpha acid content means it can be useful for bittering but is largely intended to shine as an aroma hop.

Fermentation Notes:
Started off at 18C and allowed to go to around 19C. On day 3 the temp probe which was taped to fermenter came off and was sitting outside the fridge. As a result the fridge kept cranking all day long and beer was was cooled down to zero or below but I caught it before it actually froze and let it slowly warm back up to fermentation temps and fermentation carried on. I’m not expecting any ill effects other than about a 2 day delay in the fermentation process. Dry hopped on day 6.

brew notes and recipe »

Grain bill based in LOB Red Rooster/Little Red Rooster

brew notes and recipe »