Rukula
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- Jul 26, 2011
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When i heard that my favorite Norwegian brewery were realesing a limited edition beer kit based on their brilliant "god jul", i just had to get one. I think 200 kits was made in their first run, but another 200 will be made in early January.
It's a 4L all grain kit, with grains and hops from their brewery, not some mysterious random ingredients.
The name is of course in Norwegian, and means "Nøgne à - Merry Christmas"
I brewed this one week ago, but i thought i would share some pictures with you guys...
So! Off we go!
This is what i got in the kit. To me this seemed like a "normal" amount of grains. I totally forgot that this beer is about 8ABV, and that higher ABV tends to mean more grains... This will come back to screw me later :lol:
My setup is... Minimalistic, to say the least, but it works. The method i use here is somewhat of a BIAB and Mesh Strainer hybrid, so the bag is really just to move the grains around more easily, without spilling wort everywhere. This is a 12 L pot, but don't worry; i will be upgrading to a 36L brewpot with a tap early next year!
The smell from the mashing stage was amazing. Coffee, chocolate, caramels, vanilla and everything else i really enjoy in my pint was present. This recipe called for a 60 minute mash in the pot, but with the mashing out stage, it was about a 90 minute mash in total.
This is where the grain amount kicked me in the ass.. The grain bag was about twice the size of what I'm used to working with, so it was bigger than my strainer, but i managed to get trough the sparging anyway. The only problem is: I use the grains as a filter, where i pour the wort trough the grains once or twice, to get the bigger particles out. This was impossible to do with this size, even tho i tried to split the amount in the bag. So this is a really-really-really unfiltered beer.
And this is the wort i ended up with. The color is not even close to the color i was expecting, but i will get back to that later...
This boiled for 60 minutes, with 4 hop additions. I will re-visit the thread to post what kind of hops were used in the beer. Cannot remember...
This was the first time i used my brand new wort chiller, and i love it! I just used an ice bath before, but the chiller did the job way faster. Not cheap, but really worth the money (just a tip for the very few of you that don't have a chiller yet)
I got everything into my 5L glass carboy, and as you can see, i got allot of what i believe is called cold break. Most of this is from the lack of filtering in my sparging step. This wont be a problem when i get my new pot with the tap. I have encountered this problem before tho, where i forgot to filter it, and it was looking about the same as this. It probably altered the taste, but it was still good, and i didn't notice any off- flavors.
As i mentioned earlier in my post, this is not the color i expected. The original "god jul" is black as a stout, while this looks like a dark brown ale. I don't know if i messed it up, but then again i haven't seen pictures of this kit made before. Maybe the kit isn't a direct copy of the real deal. Its darker now than on the picture, and the cold break thingies has settled with the sediments on the bottom. I will post some pictures, comparing it with the original beer from their brewery, so i will do the final judging now, maybe something magical will happen when i bottle age it...
I got a youtube video of it fermenting nicely, if someone is interested: http://youtu.be/_fo_9ECb0kE
And i want to know how i can build the video player into my forum post.. If anybody knows..?
I'm doing some bottling in not too long, and i will update you on that as well!
Cheers :
It's a 4L all grain kit, with grains and hops from their brewery, not some mysterious random ingredients.
The name is of course in Norwegian, and means "Nøgne à - Merry Christmas"
I brewed this one week ago, but i thought i would share some pictures with you guys...
So! Off we go!
This is what i got in the kit. To me this seemed like a "normal" amount of grains. I totally forgot that this beer is about 8ABV, and that higher ABV tends to mean more grains... This will come back to screw me later :lol:
My setup is... Minimalistic, to say the least, but it works. The method i use here is somewhat of a BIAB and Mesh Strainer hybrid, so the bag is really just to move the grains around more easily, without spilling wort everywhere. This is a 12 L pot, but don't worry; i will be upgrading to a 36L brewpot with a tap early next year!
The smell from the mashing stage was amazing. Coffee, chocolate, caramels, vanilla and everything else i really enjoy in my pint was present. This recipe called for a 60 minute mash in the pot, but with the mashing out stage, it was about a 90 minute mash in total.
This is where the grain amount kicked me in the ass.. The grain bag was about twice the size of what I'm used to working with, so it was bigger than my strainer, but i managed to get trough the sparging anyway. The only problem is: I use the grains as a filter, where i pour the wort trough the grains once or twice, to get the bigger particles out. This was impossible to do with this size, even tho i tried to split the amount in the bag. So this is a really-really-really unfiltered beer.
And this is the wort i ended up with. The color is not even close to the color i was expecting, but i will get back to that later...
This boiled for 60 minutes, with 4 hop additions. I will re-visit the thread to post what kind of hops were used in the beer. Cannot remember...
This was the first time i used my brand new wort chiller, and i love it! I just used an ice bath before, but the chiller did the job way faster. Not cheap, but really worth the money (just a tip for the very few of you that don't have a chiller yet)
I got everything into my 5L glass carboy, and as you can see, i got allot of what i believe is called cold break. Most of this is from the lack of filtering in my sparging step. This wont be a problem when i get my new pot with the tap. I have encountered this problem before tho, where i forgot to filter it, and it was looking about the same as this. It probably altered the taste, but it was still good, and i didn't notice any off- flavors.
As i mentioned earlier in my post, this is not the color i expected. The original "god jul" is black as a stout, while this looks like a dark brown ale. I don't know if i messed it up, but then again i haven't seen pictures of this kit made before. Maybe the kit isn't a direct copy of the real deal. Its darker now than on the picture, and the cold break thingies has settled with the sediments on the bottom. I will post some pictures, comparing it with the original beer from their brewery, so i will do the final judging now, maybe something magical will happen when i bottle age it...
I got a youtube video of it fermenting nicely, if someone is interested: http://youtu.be/_fo_9ECb0kE
And i want to know how i can build the video player into my forum post.. If anybody knows..?
I'm doing some bottling in not too long, and i will update you on that as well!
Cheers :
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