RecipeDB - HECS-Free Celebration Ale

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

HECS-Free Celebration Ale

Ale - American Amber Ale
All Grain

Brewer's Notes

Reminds me of being a student, which is what started me on this hobby.

Hallertauer = Smaragd (cheap German hop from Craftbrewer)
Maris Otter = Bairds Perle ($3.50 per kg for 5kg+ Craftbrewer)

Malt & Fermentables

%	KG	Fermentable
	5 kg	Bairds Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
	0.2 kg	Weyermann Caramunich I

Hops

Time	Grams	Variety	Form	AA
	30 g	Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.7AA%, 0mins)
	20 g	Hallertauer, New Zealand (Pellet, 8.5AA%, 60mins)
	20 g	Nelson Sauvin (Pellet, 12.7AA%, 10mins)

Yeast

12 ml

Danstar - Nottingham

23L Batch Size

Brew Details

• Original Gravity 1.054 (calc)
• Final Gravity 1.013 (calc)
• Bitterness 28.4 IBU
• Efficiency 75%
• Alcohol 5.33%
• Colour 13 EBC
• Batch Size 23L

Fermentation

• Primary 7 days
• Secondary 7 days
• Conditioning 2 days

 

[glassgrenade]

Where's the rice?

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Some photos, as always:

and

Lack of head is me taking too long (SWMBO fault) to actually get the picture taken.

Great, cheap ale.

The Bairds Perle (my fave base malt for anything malty) is cheap as chips, as is Smaragd hops. Both available from Craftbrewer.

Aroma is fantastic, lots of grape & gooseberry coming through, but the Nelson flavour is restrained. I find Smaragd to be restraining it, along with the Nottingham yeast.

The Smaragd is somewhat spicy with a restrained fruit flavour and it offers a solid mellow bitterness to offset the pungency of Nelson Sauvin. At 8% it's a very good dual purpose hop and offers very soft bitterness - not harsh at all, in either beer I've put it in.

I brewed this to celebrate, after all these years, getting the HECS monkey off my back, and in a hark back to my poor student days living with my mum and 3 siblings, this is something I could have brewed cost-wise as a student.

Being poor and studying is what lead me to brewing, and 13 years later, I'm still doing it.

Goomba

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Where's the rice?

None this time.

You could bulk it with a kg of bog-standard white rice, but I wanted something a little lower in alcohol after pushing 6% abv last time.

Goomba

 

[Acasta]

Do you need to fix 0.2g @ 10 min?

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Ta acasta, it' reading it from qbrew, and didn't convert the numbers correctly.

Gotta love beer for slowing my mind down.

Goomba

 

[stef]

Got enough pencils there?