Vic 2017 Xmas in July Case Swap

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I'm especially looking at you, Mofox! ;)

Whaaaht... Nah-uh, I'm gonna jump out of the way so fast you'll get whiplash trying to follow me.

Jonny mentioned the OG of the stout was 1.076, I think the Mongrel was similar? FWIW I went Mongrel -> (Stout + a house pale), but I diluted the mongrel down from 16L to 19L.
 
So the Saturday night brew. My OG read 1.074. FG I got 1.018. Pressure fermented with M42. No kegs free yet I'm chilling it down until I get to to transfer. Its down to 13c now and tastes very dark chocolatey.
Dont yu love it when its good at this stage you know its gonna be so much better in the long run. :cool:
 
I have the mongrel in the conical ATM but this latest drop in temp has stopped it cold 1036. The heat pad has been going non stop for three days the chamber is at 14.5 and falling, shed temp is at 7c @1800, going to steal a 2400w fan heater back from my son the next town over and probably grab some 05 to get her home.
 
I clocked the stout in at 1077/78 down to 1018 with 1768 ESB, bottled and is the first beer in years to get the loving warmth of my bedroom in winter to carb up.

MJ what yeast is the mongrel on?
 
Spun up your house strain for what I considered a double batch, took off well but the cold snap has me stuffed. It's in a 60L (working volume) conical so little chance of just rousing. I'll do a yeast/trub dump this arv, raise the temp with said heater and pitch an 05 starter come morning. Ferment chamber @11c this morning, tomorrow is supposed to be colder. My plan was to bottle this batch, second batch I was going to dilute and add simple sugars (for 1055) and pitch WLP059(Melbourne).

Come on Summer!

ED: From what Mofox was saying I may need to dry hop the hell out of it!!
 
So the Saturday night brew. My OG read 1.074. FG I got 1.018. Pressure fermented with M42. No kegs free yet I'm chilling it down until I get to to transfer. Its down to 13c now and tastes very dark chocolatey.
Dont yu love it when its good at this stage you know its gonna be so much better in the long run. :cool:


Here it is. Full blown Liquid Dark Chocolate. Like the darkest most pungent of Dark Chocolate in a glass. Its so chocolate flavor forward I cant give any other description really it practically masks over any alcohol flavor too. Yummo! Dangerously Moorishly delicious.
The flavor and aroma that I called hayish that was there in the mash and all the way through the process seems to have diminished although a tad of that aroma is left. (must be a grain that I'm not familiar with)
This glass is from a mini keg holding the excess left after filling two cornies.
One Cornie as is.
One Cornie with 60g of Whisky soaked French Oak blocks.
I'll bring samples of both to the xmas swap. :cool:
Vic Swap Stout0.JPG
 
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Finally got to pitch the Mongrel Brew onto the WLP-022 yeast cake i've got going (this'll be the 4th batch onto it - it's a beast & seems to be hitting ~78% attenuation! (Cam, wtf!?!)).

For the record, i also got OG=1.076.

So i also finally got around to throwing together some sort of guesstimate for the recipe into a spreadsheet.
I basically just decided to summarise the various malts into mainly Ale malt (83.5%), plus some Munich (10%), Med Xtal (5%), & Choc (1.5%) (all adding up to hit 1.076).
The hops i estimated to be ~1/20th of the amounts reported (not sure what the cubed volume ended up being, but i'm guessing it was ~20x20Ls (Fwiw, mine had ~18-19L in it, so i'm hoping that helps cover a fudge factor in the estimate if i'm a little under)). So that basically came out to, per 21L, 40g EKG @60mins, then 20g Cascade + 5g each of Simcoe, Galaxy, & Hallertauer all @30mins (estimating for whirlpool time plus a little cube time).
These specs come out to be roughly OG=1.076, FG=1.017, IBU=42, EBC=39, alc%=8.0 (all for 75% attenuation).

FWIW, this actually is bang on for the specs of an English Old Ale, whereas it massively overshoots the strength of an American Brown (though diluted, it'll also be bang on for a US Brown).
I point that out simply to suggest 2 ways we could look at this beer. I can see why MJ's suggesting an American Brown, as it fits in the general flavour components, especially the use of the US hops.
A minor point is that the amount represented in each cube is actually pretty small, so i'll be keen to see how the final flavour ends up - whether the fruity/citrus hops are prominently detectable or if they're very subtle. If it's subtle then the Old Ale option might be worth considering.
TBH, I was intending to dry hop the bejesus out of this with Simcoe & Citra to go down the US Brown/IPA path. However, realising it fits some aspects of an Old Ale i'll also consider either leaving as is or using some EKG dry hopped.

2c

View attachment 108018
EDIT: can't seem to open image on laptop, but should work on phone
 
Lol. Having done all those fancy calculations, on tasting an hydro sample, i'd say it's definitely a little more bitter than 42 IBUs. more like 50 or 60 at least, at a guess. Maybe it's just a few polyphenols etc the beasties can get rid of during the fermentation, then it'll settle down. Maybe i can do an IPA after all ;)

Also, over the last hour the yeast seems to have knocked off ~6 points already, while at 16°C. Crazy! :confused:
Cam, wtf yeast have you given me?!
 
Stu, I'm fluent in English & can hold my own in a French conversation. I also have a smattering of German, Gaelic, Arabic, Hebrew, Bahasa, Latin & Pidgin.

I can order a beer in several different languages.... :)

I'm thankful for folks like you who can do the numbers, 'cos my eyes just glaze-over when it comes to figures.:doofus:
 
I got down to 1018 and threw 30g (1G/L) of each simcoe, fortnight, and mossaic. I'll rack tomorrow (day 3 of dry hop) to secondary and throw a second round of the same. My other thought was I may need to gel this as there were no finings at all and I forgot to strain into the fermenter so lots of flower bits everywhere.

So do I gel before second dry hop?
 
FWIW, this actually is bang on for the specs of an English Old Ale, whereas it massively overshoots the strength of an American Brown (though diluted, it'll also be bang on for a US Brown).
Is this a case of helping the data fit the results??? ;) Stu, really :)
 
Too tired to go searching but I'm sure when I originally mentioned the word STYLE Martin fell off his chair and responded "Forget Style!"

But hey throw enough base and every spec malt known to man in a tun and I'm sure we can pin the result to a BJCP clasification with the right yeast and a little tweak!
 
Is this a case of helping the data fit the results??? ;) Stu, really :)

No, honest!
I chucked in the malt just to hit 1.076, then went off the amounts of hops reported, THEN wondered wtf fits roughly those specs. Lo and behold, ye Olde Ale-e!
It was just when I tasted the hydro sample it seemed like maybe my guesstimate was a little loose.

Yes, MOC was very adamant about fornicating styles. (As opposed to fornicating with style [emoji6]).
I'm happy to go with the thumb and make **** up, but I also like to balance with a little comparison to a style [emoji41]
 

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