Unlockdown Kveik Pale Ale

[Moe]

Put this brew on Thursday. I use BIAB method in a Peco boiler.

Measured out 27L of tap water into the boiler and added 5g gypsum, 25ml CRS and half a campden tablet. Roughly aiming for “light and hoppy” brewers friend water profile.

Took 40 minutes to heat up to 70 degrees. I added the bag a bit before it reached 70 to let it warm up.

I mashed in slowly and stirred it lots. I think because of this the mash temp was a bit low at 64. I thought about increasing the temp a bit with kettle water but decided against it. There’s a fair bit of crystal in there so hopefully it will be ok.

Aimed for a 60 minute mash, but I had a few other things to do and it ended up being 75 minutes. Mash dropped to 63 degrees over this period.

Lifted the bag out, didn’t let it drain very much at all and dropped it into a FV with an upturned colander in it and then added 5.5l of 70(ish) degree water. I let that sit while the wort came up to the boil.

Once the wort was about 90degrees I lifted the bag out, let it drain and squeezed it fairly well.
Once this liquid was added to the boil it gave me 28L pre boil volume at 1.050.

Boiled and added the hop additions using hop bags at 60 and 15m. I had lots of good advice on the hop additions, but a lot of it was quite different so I tried to keep a lot of the Citra for the end, but still layered a little bit of it into the earlier boil

Added the immersion chiller at 15m to sterilise, along with a protofloc.

I had 24L at this point with a gravity of 1.058, pretty much bang on the recipe estimate.

Chilled to 80 degrees with the IC and added the whirlpool hops. I left this for half an hour and then removed all the hop bags and chilled to 42 degrees.

Poured into FV. There’s 3L dead space in the boiler so I got 21 litres into the fermenter. This is good as it’s a Corny full and maybe a couple of bottles depending on Trub loss in the FV.

Measured the temperature and it was 37 degrees so I pitched a pack of “Bjorn” Hornindal Kveik (from CML).

I didn’t bother with temperature control for fermentation this time as I wanted to see how the Kveik got on without. I insulated the FV and just let it ferment.

The airlock was going crazy Friday morning, and I opened it up this morning to crop some yeast, there’s a really thick head on it and I managed to get a fair bit of yeast. Gravity is down to 1030, so it’s about half way there after 41 hours.

I was surprised as from what I read I thought it would be lower. The yeast specs say it can ferment out in 48 hours, but I’m guessing the lower fermentation temp (it’s at around 32 degrees this morning) means it’s going a bit slower.

Plan to add the dry hops once fermentation is finished.

This was the first brew that I’ve done where I’ve taken care to plan and measure volumes, gravities and temperatures at each step.
Normally I’m a bit more shoddy, but you still get beer.

I planned the recipe using an estimated BHE of 70% and the numbers throughout the brew matched that pretty well, I ended up 1 point lower OG than the recipe estimated, even with the low mash temperature, so I am quite happy.

If this finishes up at the predicted recipe FG of 1.012 should end up at 6%. However I wonder if it will drop a bit lower because of the lower mash?

I didn’t take many pics as I kept forgetting but here’s a couple

 

[cushyno]

Good write up. Do you discard the 3L remaining in the boiler? As it's light enough I just tip the Peco up and empty through a straining bag into the FV.
Some collect the remaining wort in a demijohn or 2l bottle and let the trub settle for a few hours before adding the extra wort to the FV.

 

[Moe]

Good write up. Do you discard the 3L remaining in the boiler? As it's light enough I just tip the Peco up and empty through a straining bag into the FV.
Some collect the remaining wort in a demijohn or 2l bottle and let the trub settle for a few hours before adding the extra wort to the FV.

Thanks.
No I didn’t tip it because it looked really cloudy.
However that’s a great idea with the straining bag, I’ll do that on the next brew. Thanks

 

[Moe]

Just opened up the FV to add the dry hops. Took a gravity reading while I was at it. Hydrometer showing 1.008, giving an ABV nearer 6.5%. It’s gone a little lower than the recipe estimate of 1.012. Maybe due to the cooler mash.

Had a taste of it too. It’s was really nice. A touch thin tasting, but plenty of aroma and taste from the hops and caramel malt. I was tempted to skip the dry hops and keg it immediately. However I avoided the temptation, added the dry hops and will keg at the weekend.

Really looking forward to this brew

 

[Moe]

Kegged this evening. Had a taste again. Quite nice but a bit of an alcoholic bite to it. Fingers crossed this will mellow as it sits in the keg

 

[Moe]

This beer has improved loads for having a fortnight in the keg. A nice malty, almost biscuity flavour but with a decent hop flavour and aftertaste.
Ordered some more ingredients, to male a similar beer, but this time with mosaic, see if that comes out any good

 

[Moe]

Added a better pic of the recipe: