Chinook Pale Ale

[clibit]

I like that idea of cold crashing in the fv. Does it hurt the yeast for bottling?

No not at all. I keep the bottles at room temperature after bottling so that the yeast is active.

 

[TheRedDarren]

So you can cold crash then bottle without having to pitch more yeast?

 

[clibit]

So you can cold crash then bottle without having to pitch more yeast?

Yes, cold crashing doesnt remove all the yeast. There are billions of yeast cells in there, the only way to get rid of them all is to kill them, with heat or chemicals.

 

[BeerCat]

Just put a mash on for an evening small batch brew. Bloody work phone calls throughout milling and mashing in, messed with my mash temperature, which I've now just about sorted. I'm making a hoppy, bitter pale ale with Chinook and some English hops. I added the first hop addition to the kettle straight after the mash and before I added the sparge water.

Batch Size (L): 8.0
Original Gravity (OG): 1.049
Final Gravity (FG): 1.012
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.81 %
Colour (SRM): 8.1 (EBC): 16.0
Bitterness (IBU): 50
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

1.400 kg Maris Otter Malt (84.95%)
0.114 kg Caramalt (6.92%)
0.100 kg Wheat Malt (6.07%)
0.034 kg Crystal Extra Dark (2.06%)

15.0 g Chinook Pellet (12% Alpha) @ FWH
15.0 g Northdown Leaf (7% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes
10.0 g Chinook Pellet (12% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes 80C steep
10.0 g East Kent Golding Pellet (5% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes 80C steep

3.0 g Irish Moss @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
3.0 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) @ 0 Minutes (Mash)
2.5 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) @ 0 Minutes (Boil)
3.0 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) @ 0 Minutes (Boil)

Mash at 66°C for 60 Minutes.
Ferment at 20°C with Muntons Ale yeast

I had a tasty Chinook APA down the pub tonight, was most pleasant. Have some Chinook APA conditioning as well which i got with the hop taster packs from MyCul.
Is this correct your adding 6g gypsum for an 8l brew? Been adding 1g per 10l and think i will measure the ppm this adds at the weekend and you've reminded me i still need to get some epsom salts.
Also what L is extra dark crystal, 140? Cheers:drink:

 

[clibit]

Was it the Butcombe Chinook APA brewed for the Wetherspoons Festival? If so, my Chinook pale ale is a lot more bitter than that.

Yes I added a lot of gypsum! Half in the mash and half in the boil. But 1g is not enough for 10L.

Extra Dark Crystal is around 130 -150L.

 

[BeerCat]

Yes it was the Butcombe from the Fest. I could handle a lot more bitterness though, its really growing on me. Will try more Gypsum, thanks for the advice.

 

[clibit]

Just cracked the first of these after a week, small bottle to check progress. Already pretty well carbonated and drinkable. I'm a bit confused cos it tastes pretty dry, and I used a yeast that only took it down to 1015 and it meant to have mild fruity esters. It's nice, really good mouth feel, nice colour, strongly bitter but not as bitter as I expected, but a bit dry and lacks an alluring aroma, at this stage anyway. It tastes very English - the EKG and Northdown are the dominant flavours, I think, on top of the Chinook bitterness. But it's pretty spicy, so the Chinook will have contributed a fair bit of that. It's a bit too cold atm so gonna leave the last bit to warm up.

Edit: Much better warmer, the flavours really coming through, it's a a quality, spicy, golden, English style IPA kinda thing. Gutted I've finished it, want another one! Going to really enjoy these bottles. :thumb:

The cheap standard Muntons yeast has done a pretty good job - 99p for 6g, bargain. It's clear, no yeast in the glass and I poured the whole bottle, and no off flavours from the yeast. A good cheap and convenient yeast option IMO.

 

[clibit]

Finished this batch off last night, it was a great batch of beer, will be doing something very similar again. A mate brought some bottles of beer round one night and we drank one of these after a bottle of Goose Island, and both felt they were pretty similar. Mate preferred mine in fact. Not identical, but not far apart.

What I found was that during the course of drinking this batch it was changing all the time. Will brew again, possibly drop the late Chinook next time, and use First Gold and Northdown late, and maybe another hop. Keep the malts, yeast and Chinook bittering as a base to try different late hops.

A big shout out for this yeast too. I'm amazed at how good it is. For an English yeast with flavour it is really good. For me, way better than S04. It's fast, clears well, and is good for bottling. It produces really nice eatery flavours. I can't understand why it is overlooked and denigrated so much. It's the basic Muntons yeast, yellow packet, 99p ish for 6g, usually.

 

[rodabod]

What is the Munton's strain? Nottingham?

 

[clibit]

It's nothing like Nottingham, but I don't know what it is. I don't think the answer is out there. I've never seen any reference to it.

 

[CreweBrewer]

I'm experimenting to see if mixing it with the English hops works. Northdown is quite fruity. I think Marble Lagonda IPA uses Chinook and English hops, mainly guesswork cos there's no info available, but I did read once somewhere that it uses Chinook. I love that beer on cask.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OEP6fR8C934/UAwC4F9L7CI/AAAAAAAAEWU/-oI9uTb-Lcs/s1600/lagonda.jpg

Ask the brewers at Cloudwater. They're ex-Marble guys ;-)

 

[clibit]

Thanks Dave. I don't know anything about Cloudwater. My beer ended up more like Goose Island IPA than Lagonda.

 

[CreweBrewer]

Sounds good to me, I like Goose Island. Cloudwater do some great beers. They're based not far from Piccadilly.

 

[clibit]

Sounds good to me, I like Goose Island. Cloudwater do some great beers. They're based not far from Piccadilly.

I know of them - there's a number of breweries around there. Marble has spawned a number of brewers who have branched out to other places. I can recommend this Chinook brew, it just works really well, and I will be making more pales using the same malts and yeast, just varying the hop choices to vary the flavour. I'm into the US/UK hop blending, it seems to give you the best of both worlds. The yeast has really taken me by surprise, having avoided it all this time.

 

[CreweBrewer]

Sounds good mate. I've just had a delivery of grain and my wife needs some space in the freezer for Christmas stuff, so I might just try a few combinations to whittle my hop stash down a bit. I've had some great results with single hop brews; Mosaic being the best.

 

[clibit]

I recently made a brew with Mosaic with a friend, and it tasted fantastic going into the bottles. It's going to be used again asap!

 

[GHW]

My only experience of chinook is from old hoppy hen. Can't say I liked it much, it was way down the dank and earthy end of the scale compared to most c hops citrus/floral/fruity. Is that beer typical of chinook? I was tempted to give it a go before I tried the hoppy hen.

 

[CreweBrewer]

My only experience of chinook is from old hoppy hen. Can't say I liked it much, it was way down the dank and earthy end of the scale compared to most c hops citrus/floral/fruity. Is that beer typical of chinook? I was tempted to give it a go before I tried the hoppy hen.

I use Chinook as the bittering hop in my (predominantly) Citra pale. I find the bittering characteristics much smoother than Citra. I think the dank flavour would work better with something like a double IPA or similar strength beer.

Dave

 

[clibit]

This beer is fruity. Not dank and earthy. In any beer one ingredient interplays with the other ingredients and produces something unique to that beer. Here, the esters from the yeast, the sweetness from unfermented sugars, the crystal malts, and the two English hops, have a big influence on how the Chinook affects things, I believe.

 

[clibit]

However! There's no need to use Chinook if you don't feel comfortable with it (but Old Hoppy Hen alone is not enough to form an opinion of Chinook IMO). Use a bittering hop that you like. Maybe use Centennial, or Simcoe. My aim with this beer was to find a good malt mixture, try the yeast, and mix US and UK hops. My advice would be to use the malts mix and the yeast, and use a mix of US and UK hops you like. I will be doing this brew with different UK/US hop blends myself, keeping the malts and yeast the same.