BabaniaBrew1
From Southyeasters
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Babania Blonde evolution
The lead-up
After lots of comments and some serious tasting thinking and deliberation this is it. This weekend will see the 3rd attempt at the Blonde Ale. V1.0 was a hit with the casual beer drinkers. Somewhat malty, not bitter and really clear. I detected slight sourness in the foam which was also confirmed by Andre when he tasted. I didn't have a ph meter and guess that I guessed wrong when lowering the PH. I got a meter since and sorted out the issue.
On the 2nd attempt the whole brew worked like a well oiled machine. See BabaniaBrew3. The beer was really nice but a bit bitter for my "casual beer drinker" audience and they have asked me to get it closer to the original. So here goes, the anticipated changes are:
- 1kg extra malt
- Reduce Hops from 40g to 35g
- Start cooling immediately after the boil (I let it rest for 10min on the last brew)
I pledged 18l of this brew for the summer beer festival so it better be good! Will keep the information going for those interested.
Brew Day - 21 Feb 2009
This whole thing started a bit awkward. I couldn’t get my malt yesterday and knew I had to drive to Boston in the morning before I could start. I normally get everything ready the night before the brew and forgot that this sometimes keep me up till late so all of this had to start this morning.
At 6:30 I boiled water for coffee and rolled out the hose to wash and fill the hot liquor tank. That worked fine and I had the liquor heating up pretty soon. I hate running out of hot liquor and fill the tank quite full.
My mission on this brew was not to have the whole brewery flooded as usual. Well that’s a good joke. I think everything that can leak did and by the time I had everything tightened and sorted out it was 9:00am (no coffee yet but managed to boil the coffee water twice in the time)
Well I finally got back with the malt (a story on it’s own) around 11:30 and started to mash at noon. We got surprise visitors and enjoyed some stout through the brew and although everyting went to plan it felt like I was always just in time.
There wasn’t much time for pictures but here are a few we managed to take:
Stephan always helps
Wort into fermenter - Photo by Stephan van Heerden
That smile will make this a brilliant beer!
Rehydrated new dried yeast for this brew
Pitching temperature
OG
FG
Alcohol by Volume = 5.4%
After the big lead-up it worked. The beer was voted 2nd most popular at the Summer beer festival and we had only positive comments!!!
Brewing Oatmeal Stout
Saturday 7 Feb 2009
Prepared last night and got up at 5:30 to brew. (It's hot over here and no-one wants to boil when it's 35deg in the shade)
Started the mash with 8.5kg pale malt & 800g black malt at 65deg. Added 1kg of oats after 20 min ald left for 40min.
Starting to sparge the black stuff here.
This mash sucked up water like crazy. Had to resort ot some unconventional moves to get my required 52l of wort into the kettle.
Squeezing thee last drops of wort from the mashtun.
Boiled for 60min with bittering hops in from the start
Black wort in a rolling boil.
Cooled to below 55deg in 12min but took forever to get to 30.
Pumped to fermenter at 30deg and cooled further to 22deg and pitched US05 slurry from the first brew. It's 37deg in the garage and keeping the wort below 20deg is proving to be a challenge.
Willa helping to get good aeration.
Youngsters observing.
My old friend, Cape Town artist, Brahm van Zyl popped in to experience the brew.
Fermentation
The original gravity. As the arms get shorter I actually find it easier reading the digital pic than the hydrometer.
With temperatures in Philadelphia reaching 40 outside yesterday and 26 in the garage (brew house) today 8 Feb my ice making can't stay ahead and the cooling pump runs almost continuously. Plan B worked quite well. A wet towel around the fermenter reduces the ambient temperature under the towel by 6degrees and the pump has gone quiet. Big sigh of relief ....
Desperate times calls for desperate measures
9 Feb 2009 loaded the cooler with 8 Frozen 2L milk bottles around 6:30 this morning and arrived home with the wort fermenting at 19C at 19:15 this evening. Have enough ice to repeat the excersise tomorrow.
15 Feb 2009 The rest of the fermentation was without incedent and with cooler temperatures the system coped really well. Used five frozen 2 litre bottles in the cooling liquid every 24 hours and it stayed below 4deg. Kept the wort between 19 and 21 the whole week.
Racked the beer into 2 Corne Kegs this morning and have it in the fridge for 7 days of secondary fermentation at 4deg.
17 Feb 2009 Coouldnt wait. Carbonated one keg and tasted the stout. WOW! My personal favourite to date.
"As good as it gets" for me anyway.
Repeating the Blonde - 20 December 2008
The first brew turned out so pupular that I was talked out of the planned oatmeal stout and brewed another Blonde Ale.
I hope to achieve 2 things here:
1. Repeatability
2. Reducing the alcohol content.(Brew 1 was around 6% and just too drinkable for anyone's good)
Brewday went well with all steps happening according to plan. The 2 small changes to the recipe was to reduce the grain from 10 to 9kg and increase the Hops from 35g to 40g. I hope to get below 5% Alcohol and slightly more bitterness. This time I recirculated the wort after the boil to form a whirlpool while cooling with the immersion chiller. This worked well, the temperature dropped from boil to 55 deg C in under 10 minutes.
The wort went into the fermenter at 29degC and the yeast (retained from the 1st brew) was pitched at 22degC. The brew is now happily fermenting and will be ready just after Christmas.
Progress - 29 December 2008
Harvested some yeast slurry and kegged the Blonde today. All the yeast (Safale-05) did not settle in the cone as before and saw quite a few lumps of yeast going to the kegs. May have to filter this brew. The OG was 1.047 and FG 1.012 and it fermented for 8 days so it should be fermented out. Tastes fine uncarbonated and can't wait to taste the final version.
Progress 1 Feb 2009
After quite a while we got the CO2 refilled and carbonated and tried the 2nd Blonde. Apart from one mug of sludge coming out of the keg at the start it's quite clear and tastes great.
I'ts a little on the bitter side for the non beer drinkers (Willa) and I'll go back to the 35g of hops on the next batch.
We'll brew another batch for the summer festival and bottle whatever remains of the batch (now that the word's out that there's free beer on tap again) over the weekend.
The Second Brew - American Amber Ale
Recipe: American Amber Ale
Brew Size: 40L
Hot Liquor Required: 70L @ 80°
Mash
9kg pale Malt
1kg crystal 60 Malt
Single Infusion - 60min @ 69° - 10min @ 76°
Boil
90 minutes
Hops
40g Southern Promise – 30min
28g Cascade 5 min
Yeast
Safale 05 harvested from Brew1
Ferment @ 18°
Brew Day 29 November 2009
Francois weighing the grain & checking the grain temperature.
Eric "The Brewer" messing with equipment & The command centre
Sparge water into the mashtun & check out that wort colour into the kettle.
Francois checking the wort level in the kettle.
Rouchelle watching the boil & hops.
Stephan getting maximum aeration as he transfers wort to the fermenter.
The yeast slurry from Brew1 with some fresh wort added.
Brew 2 happily fermenting away.
It tuned out very nice, somewhat bitter and will be submitted to expert scruitiny early in the new year.
The First Babania Brew Ever
Babania Blonde Ale!!!
Andre - my recipe consultant - advised that a Blonde Ale is just the right beer to test your bewery and promised that if I followed the instructions it will work.
He created a recipe and I started procuring ingredients. Well, easier said than done. After serious calling around, help from members on the southyeasters list and calling around like crazy I got Malt crushed and ready from Chris at Boston Breweries, Hops from SAB in George and Yeast and some other small items from Leon Treurnicht ant Brewmaster (shipped overnight to not miss another weekend brewing opportunity).
With all this taking some time and effort the brewery still getting finishing touches I must have pumped hundreds if not thousands of litres of water between the vessels by brew day.
With all that practice I still managed to miss an open valve and pumped a couple of litres from the mash tun to the Hot Liquor tank. Apart from that it went smooth and by 2pm I had a fermenter with 40l of wort sealed and waiting for fermentation to start.
By the evening it was bubbling away and I couldn't stop going to the garage to smell that fermentation going on.
The next Thursday I started draining off yeast and on Saturday the beer went into 2 corne kegs and Into the fridge.
I left on a business trip and only really tasted this brew on returning 9 days later.
It tastes real good to me and everyone who's tried it thus far.
Will be submitting it to quality control with my 2 friends who started all of this shortly and get the verdict!
Getting inspiration at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco while Brew 1 conditions in the fridge.
Links
Babania Homepage
Babania's Brewing in Charlotte, North Carolina
The second brewery we built
profile on Ratebeer.com
