Hazelwood Brewday

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Competition results
Well the English ales competition is over and feedback has been received. The mild I brewed got a reasonable score for a first attempt at 37. The breakdown was…

Aroma 10/12
Appearance 3/3
Flavour 14/20
Mouthfeel 3/5
Overall 7/10

The only issue appears to be carbonation (too low) so that’s a bit disappointing. Anyway onward and upward.

—————

The two bitters I submitted actually scored 2 points less on flavour giving a total of 35, the issue here being not enough bitterness (when last judged the beer was considered too bitter, or too harsh). Throughout the IBUs have remained unchanged, only the water profile has changed and the timing for the addition of darker malts. There’s something here about perceived bitterness I’m struggling with.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Today I brewed another batch of Czech Pilsner and it’s resting before it goes into the fermenter. Tonight however is homebrew club so it will now have an extended rest until tomorrow morning.

Speaking of homebrew club, one of the beers I’ll be taking tonight is Pathfinder - the experimental ale with lemongrass, geranium leaves, and rose petals. It will be interesting to see who will be brave enough to try it and what they make of it. It doesn’t look like Frankenstein’s monster fortunately!

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

We had another good night at homebrew club last night. Everyone tried Pathfinder and they liked it, I think everyone went back for seconds. It is still clean and bright after two months in the keg so I’m beginning to think there may just be something in mash hopping for preserving the freshness of highly hopped beers. I will try to not drink it (other than to test periodically ) and see how far I can push it.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

HB
Is mash hopping and first wort hopping basically the same thing?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

HB
Is mash hopping and first wort hopping basically the same thing?

No. Mash hopping is adding a small quantity (1g/l) of high alpha-acid hops at the start of the mash and is intended to reduce the copper ions in the wort - these could otherwise survive into the final product, if not consumed by the yeast, and are pro-oxidative.

FWH are hops added to the wort before the wort is heated at the start of the boil. This is intended to develop a smooth bitterness but I’ve not looked into the chemistry of if/how this works so can’t comment further I’m afraid.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I got my Czech Pilsner into the fermenter this morning. Changes to this batch include slight changes in water profile and less malt to bring down the ABV from 5.7% to more like 5%. Numbers were all where I wanted them so far. OG is 1048.

 

[moto748]

No. Mash hopping is adding a small quantity (1g/l) of high alpha-acid hops at the start of the mash and is intended to reduce the copper ions in the wort - these could otherwise survive into the final product, if not consumed by the yeast, and are pro-oxidative.

I actually did that with a recent IPA, but I thought what I was doing was FWH, but actually it's mash-hopping it seems. Shows what I know! But if, as it seems, it's a good thing to do, well that's all good I guess!

 

[moto748]

I'm tempted to have a go at your mild, too. Surely carbonation is a minor issue, can you not up the priming level a tad in future? What yeast did you use for it, please?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I'm tempted to have a go at your mild, too. Surely carbonation is a minor issue, can you not up the priming level a tad in future? What yeast did you use for it, please?

Yes carbonation is easy to fix and the issue was probably just a result of not having enough time to get it competition ready. A few more days carbonating might have solved it.

I used Wyeast 1318. I’ll publish the recipe tomorrow for you.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

I got my Czech Pilsner into the fermenter this morning. Changes to this batch include slight changes in water profile and less malt to bring down the ABV from 5.7% to more like 5%. Numbers were all where I wanted them so far. OG is 1048.

View attachment 53974 View attachment 53975

Interested to hear what changes you‘ve made to your Pilsner water profile. I think you usually use 100% RO with just a touch of Calcium Chloride and Gypsum don’t you?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Interested to hear what changes you‘ve made to your Pilsner water profile. I think you usually use 100% RO with just a touch of Calcium Chloride and Gypsum don’t you?

That’s right but this time there’s even less Chloride, Sulphate, and Calcium. pH still hit 5.10 at 20 minutes. Profile is…

SO4=14, Cl=12, Ca=13

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I'm tempted to have a go at your mild, too. Surely carbonation is a minor issue, can you not up the priming level a tad in future? What yeast did you use for it, please?

As promised, a link to my Mild recipe…

EDIT: I’ve just noticed a misprint. The recipe lists 50g of Challenger for bittering, the measure should be 15g!

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/media/a5ba8970-19d2-48a2-8c20-aba70047de49-jpeg.943/full

 

[moto748]

Thanks, Hazelwood!

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

As my wife is out for the afternoon I thought I’d get a brew on - English Bitter.

The first thing I need is some RO water so I connected my pump to the mains and turned it on. At this point I had connected nothing to the outflow pipe of the pump so I have no idea why I turned on the water but I got my deserved reward - mains pressure water squirted on me from the pump. Great! Now I’m dripping wet!

Nevermind, we all do something stupid sometimes. Plumb in the RO machine and now turn on the water to flush the membrane. A few seconds later I hear an explosive pop and I know what it is right away. I’ve just started fitting rubber caps to the ends of the pipes on my RO machine and forgot to remove the one from the outflow so pressure build until it couldn’t hold on any more! It’s now down the drain but I fortunately have plenty of spares.

I’m hoping this is not an omen for today’s brew but I think I might have another coffee while collecting the RO water…

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

As my wife is out for the afternoon I thought I’d get a brew on - English Bitter.

The first thing I need is some RO water so I connected my pump to the mains and turned it on. At this point I had connected nothing to the outflow pipe of the pump so I have no idea why I turned on the water but I got my deserved reward - mains pressure water squirted on me from the pump. Great! Now I’m dripping wet!

Nevermind, we all do something stupid sometimes. Plumb in the RO machine and now turn on the water to flush the membrane. A few seconds later I hear an explosive pop and I know what it is right away. I’ve just started fitting rubber caps to the ends of the pipes on my RO machine and forgot to remove the one from the outflow so pressure build until it couldn’t hold on any more! It’s now down the drain but I fortunately have plenty of spares.

I’m hoping this is not an omen for today’s brew but I think I might have another coffee while collecting the RO water…

Hopefully it will all turn out well. Ive produced some very decent beers whilst having days like that. Ooh, apart from the one when I turned my Peco boiler on before putting water in and burnt a hole in it

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hopefully it will all turn out well. Ive produced some very decent beers whilst having days like that. Ooh, apart from the one when I turned my Peco boiler on before putting water in and burnt a hole in it

Oh no! That’s a biggie!

Well, I’ve since had another mishap but they are getting smaller: a good dowsing, a lost stopper and now - I weighed out my water treatments and as I lifted them into the boiler I caught my hand on the rim and threw some of the powder on the bar top Not enough to make any difference I think, just enough for a voice in my head to ask “Are you sure about this?”.

 

[moto748]

Hopefully it will all turn out well. Ive produced some very decent beers whilst having days like that. Ooh, apart from the one when I turned my Peco boiler on before putting water in and burnt a hole in it

Ouch! You'd think there'd be some sort of thermal cut-out?

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Ouch! You'd think there'd be some sort of thermal cut-out?

Yes, my Cygnet boiler has. Fortunately I’ve never had to test it as yet!

 

[Nottsbeer]

As promised, a link to my Mild recipe…

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/media/a5ba8970-19d2-48a2-8c20-aba70047de49-jpeg.943/full

Hi, I was curious about your mild recipe, and see that you did a stepped mash over 70 mins? I've read about increasing the temperature over time, however I've not come across adding ingredients at different stages like you have. What is the thinking behind this? I've had a look in my books but can't seem to find an explanation. Thanks.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hi @Nottsbeer The idea is flavour and colour without bitterness. The example I give is coffee - freshly made it’s a beautiful drink but after stewing for an hour it isn’t nice at all. With roasted malts the same must surely apply so the darker the malt the later I add it.

I only have three points regardless; at the start for base malts and anything below about 100EBC, at 40 minutes for darker crystal malts, a few minutes before the end for the darkest roast malts.

I think it does give a better flavour although I’ve really only started doing it recently.