Hypothetical Recipe, Maillards Golden LME and Cascade Hops. Will It Work?

[GrowleyMonster]

Into the keg today, with GJJ001. After charging the keg with CO2, I just had to pull a sample. At room temp, head was dense and fine grained, almost creamy, with plenty of cling. Beer had very good clarity, light amber color. Looked like some commercial beers. A hair darker than most IPAs, about the color of Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Taste was as I expected, a touch more bitter and hoppy than I was originally planning. No bread taste, very dry. I will try it again tomorrow, when it is cold. I may go to bottles with this, to free up the keg rather than have two partly full kegs using up all my kegerator room.

The secondary fermenter had only about a 1/8" thick ,very fine and easily disturbed sediment layer in the bottom. This spread out over a much bigger area than the bottom of a corny keg, so it is going to make a big difference. Is the difference from the secondary stage in a new fermenter, or simply from the extra week? I honestly don't know but in time I will find out. And the big question is whether the beer, overall, will taste better or not, from the extra week or the clean secondary vessel.

All in all, my initial impressions are not spectacular, but good, worth the money and effort put into the batch. I know my IPA-addicted neighbors at the marina will like it. I will try another batch with the same recipe some time before the end of the year, but this time I won't go to sleep while overboiling the hops. I am pretty sure I will enjoy it more, with the malt flavor standing out a bit from the hops. The flavor profile is, as you would expect, uncomplicated and unsurprising. Nobody is going to wax poetic over the subtleties and nuances. The taste is just a beer taste. No watermelon blossom notes or hints of elderberry or aged molasses packed in casks made from planks sawn from the true cross, or dwarf siberian tundra oak or 100 year old Perique tobacco or black forest moss or dust of mummified andean babies or unicorn dandruff. Just beer, a little on the hoppy side. But pretty good. I honestly like my Block Party Amber Ale a bit better, but tomorrow's taste test will be more conclusive.

Meanwhile, GJJ002, a week in the fermenter today, is down to a very slow ferment. Still very fuzzy looking with suspended yeast. The kreusen has fallen completely, only a couple patches of fine bubbles on the surface. In another week, I will transfer to a clean fermenter for a week of secondary settling, like I did with GJJ001. The following batch, GJJ003, will be the same 9lb, 5.5gal recipe, hops boiled and hour and LME added late. I will pitch with fresh yeast as I don't want to move GJJ002 yet but I want to brew tomorrow or Saturday. I have to build up a 2 keg surplus for a wedding that will take place before the end of the year, and I am drinking as fast as I am brewing.

More tomorrow after the first cold glass.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

UPDATE:

GJJ001 is now on tap. The Block Party is gone. GJJ002 has been moved to the secondary for a week's settling. While the primary is empty seemed like a good opportunity to brew GJJ003 and ferment it right on top of GJJ002's leavings, so a-brewing we did go.

GJJ003 got off to a bad start by me doing stoopid stuff. WTF was I thinking? I pulled my half jug of LME and a whole jug out of the fridge for 9lb LME at about 4L. Cold, right? Pours like tar, right? I had my 3.5 gallons of water on the fire getting hot. I thought I would just stand the jugs up in the hot water to get it warm and pourable, right? Some of you can already see where this is going, but for those of you who never do stoopid stuff, the jugs have a very very low melting point. Now most of you know that water conducts heat fairly well, and so you can actually boil water in a paper bag. I figured this would work, that the plastic would never get above 212 degrees no matter what. What I didn't realize is that the plastic would get very very soft way before the water reached boiling temperature, then seal itself to the kettle and trap enough heat there to really have an effect on the plastic. I picked up the first jug, half full of LME and purge water on top, poured it into the kettle. Picked up the other jug and started pouring the 6lb of LME in, and noticed the bottom of the jug looked like it had elephantiasis. Sorry, I didn't think to take pics, but I was horrified. What if the plastic melted and stuck to the kettle bottom? What if it released all sorts of methyl-ethyl-hypochlorinated-megabadstuff into the wort?

I shut the flame off and poured the wort into my gumbo pot. The bottom had several patches of stucky stuff. A rinse with cold water and it was hard and crackly. Just wort? Plastic? Was anything bad tasting or deadly or just unhealthy dissolved in the wort? Hmmmm.... my second pourout. I scrubbed the kettle and it came clean very easily. I scrubbed it some more. And some more. Byebye, wort, down the drain with you. Okay, let's go again.

What did I have left in my fridge for LME? Two 6lb jugs of the same gold 4L. I didn't want to do a 4 gallon batch and I didn't want to have a half gallon left over to use who knows when. Then I remembered I had a recipe kit for a pilsner that came with two 3.3lb jugs of light LME. I decided to use one of them, and one of the 6-pounders for 9.3lbs total LME in the 5.5 gallon batch. With a 4 gallon boil of 30 minutes, everything boiled the entire half hour, 1.5oz Cascade and the aforementioned fermentables on the previous batch leavings in the primary, the calculator says this:
OG 1.063 FG 1.012 ABV 6.72% IBU 18.19 SRM 5.02.

Okay, it's a do. Now I still have a 6lb jug of 4L and a 3.3lb jug of 2.5L or maybe 2L for another batch just the same. And plenty of cascade hops in the mug freezer. So if I can not screw up again, if this batch is nice I can do an exact repeat. I will then be out of LME and I can move on to something else, maybe a BIAB batch.

And meanwhile, the final batch of Block Party is gone. I took the first glass from GJJ001 and it was still a bit more bitter than I personally prefer, but tastes like a perfectly acceptable IPA for those who like that sort of thing. Quite drinkable, just a very minor irritation that it is hoppier than I like. I already knew that from previous sampling. I guess I was hoping that the beer gnomes would come in the night and fix it. Anyway it is only a 4 gallon batch so it will get drank pretty quick. I am having a glass now and thinking that some fried apple rings would go good with it. As soon as GF gets home from work I think I will tell her she needs to make some for me.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Yesterday, 15 Nov, I transferred GJJ002 into a corny keg, 23 days from brew to keg. The secondary sediment was heavier than GJJ001, about 1/4" thick. I forgot to test s.g. but who cares.

After 17 days in the keg at around 35 degrees, GJ001 is getting quite tasty. Not particularly bitter or hoppy in the aromatic sense, either. Just a little on the dry side with a bit of an edge to it. Not as bready as I like. There was a strong yeasty component at first tasting, but that has pretty much gone. This has been my daily glass for a few days now and I can almost taste the improvement from day to day, and anticipate the next day's improvement. I think I need to set up a keezer for cold crashing and conditioning prior to transfer into a service keg.

GJJ003 was transferred yesterday from primary into secondary. It is blooping about once in 10 minutes and almost a half inch of sediment is already present on the bottom. That was only 10 days in primary so maybe I should have let it go a bit longer. The trub in the primary was getting massive and holding a pretty significant "angel's share" of the beer, including what I left on top. So my 5-1/2 gallon batch is now down to a hair less than 5-1/4 gallons. If I were reusing the yeast again, I would remove about 90% of it before pouring in new wort. But I am not, because we will be out of town for a few days and I am not brewing again until we get home. I want to get this in the keg on the 25th and in the fridge. I will probably have to make room by pulling the oldest keg out and bottling what is left in it. This time I was VERY careful to fully purge the secondary with CO2 before transfer, and to push the beer with CO2. No air at all got to it. And still, removing it from the trub brought it back into surprisingly active fermentation. It is like the trub inhibits fermentation to a degree, once it has reached a certain point.

GJJ002 tasted pretty decent on first post-carbonation tasting. It won't be on tap until after Thanksgiving. I think it is gonna be a pretty good batch. Might be getting married at the end of the year and so these two 5.5 gal batches will probably be reserved for the wedding. Otherwise it will be PBR or BYOB LOL!

 

[GrowleyMonster]

GJJ003 into the keg today. GJJ001 all gone, GJJ002 on deck. Very nice, basic, easy drinking amber-ish ale, not so different from the Block Party Amber. Considerably better than 001, a lot more body and just the right balance for me. Not too bitter, barely any hops presence. Preliminary sample after force carbing of GJJ003 was similar. And yeah, Tuesday we going out of town until Friday but I brewed GJJ004, anyway. 5.5 gallon batch, 4 gallon boil, 1oz Cascade and 9.15lbs LME all boiled 45 minutes. The LME was all what I had left in the house... 6lbs NB Maillards Golden, 3.15lbs NB Pils. Should be interesting. Fresh yeast, Safale US-05, 1 packet, pitched at 68 degrees.

Basically, the 1oz cascade and 9lb more or less LME in a 5-1/2 gallon batch is working pretty good and I think this will be my #1 or possibly #2 house recipe. I still haven't tried an all grain batch yet. I will visit LHBS for 10 or 12 lb of malt when we get home, and commence brewing my first BIAB batch, again with the Cascade and US-05.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Just a quick update. GJJ004 was moved to the secondary yesterday and I brewed my first BIAB batch yesterday, too. GJJ002 has been a great drinker and gets better every day. I haven't tasted GJJ003 since I kegged it but it is hard to resist pulling a short glass just to make sure it is okay. GJJ004 will be in secondary for a week, maybe two, then into the keg. So is that my last ever all-LME ale? Maybe. Maybe not. The all LME approach is dead simple and very consistent, and it doesn't have to be expensive. The 6 jug special on LME from NB keeps the price pretty reasonable, and I am sure I can probably beat that if I look around. So I might do another series of all LME ales some time. I might even grab another NB Block Party Amber Ale kit some day. GF really likes that one, and it is hard to source the ingredients separately and save any real money over buying the kit. I am also liking that kit as a potential gift idea. And I do have a good feeling about the BIAB batch I brewed yesterday, but wow, all extract sure is convenient. So we will see.