Monthly Archives: August 2014

Beer Update: Gondwana Pale Ale 1.1

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Today I transferred the Gondwana Pale Ale over to the secondary fermenter, following 9 days of primary fermentation. Some highlights:

  • Gravity is 1.012 at 60 degrees, down from 1.048. This works out to 4.7% abv and apparent attenuation of 74%.
  • I racked the beer onto 2 oz. of Citra hops pellets (14.5% alpha, 3.9% beta), and plan a solid 2 weeks of dry hopping before bottling/kegging.
  • In total, 5 gallons of beer was transferred; there was about 0.25 gallons of trub, and another 0.25 gallons of stuff that was just too murky to bother with.
  • The sample is tasted has a slight whiff of Citra hops, presumably from the late addition during the boil. This is quite nice! As with the first version of this recipe, there is a very slight vegetal/off-malty after-taste. Because I haven’t really had this with my other all-grain recipes, I wonder if it is something inherent to the malts I used (maybe the Vienna malt?). In any case, the aroma was very transient in the last batch, and is much fainter by comparison in this batch, so I am not too worried.
  • I set the fermenting chamber (i.e., temperature controlled freezer) to 64 degrees, up 2 degrees from the primary fermentation. I may raise it again slightly later this week.

Beer Tasting: El Dorado Amber Ale

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I’ve been reasonably good at documenting my brewing process (hence this blog), but haven’t done as much for recording the resulting product. This post is a first attempt at formalizing personal evaluations of my homebrew.

  • I brewed this up on March 31, and bottled it on April 27. Thus, it has had a little over three months to condition. The sample I’m evaluating here was from a mini-keg. The character of the beer has changed somewhat from first sampling; definitely a little more mellow in the aroma (a good thing).
  • Appearance
    • Medium amber color. Clear, with only a minor chill haze.
    • Nice head with good head retention
  • Aroma
    • Modestly malty, with a very minor hops aroma
    • When I sampled this beer a month or two ago, the hops aroma was fairly strong and spicy/herbal. Not at all what I expected, especially for how El Dorado hops was described.
  • Taste
    • A moderately malty flavor, but not overly so. There is a modest bitterness, but not too much so.
    • The finish is smooth with a slight caramel flavor, and nicely hoppy
    • Carbonation is moderate; about right for this style of beer
  • Would I brew this again?
    • Overall, this has turned into a decent beer, but not my very best. Particularly in its earlier days, I didn’t really care for how the dry-hopped El Dorado aroma came through; far more vegetal than I was expecting, and very little if any of the promised citrus/fruity notes. It wasn’t unpleasant, necessarily, just not to my personal taste. I was a little unimpressed by how the El Dorado hops worked for this beer; I might try them for bittering again, but not for dry hopping.
    • All in all, I’m going to test a few other amber ale recipes.
  • Overall rating: 5/10

Gondwana Pale Ale 1.1

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Back in March, at the start of my all-grain brewing, I brewed up Gondwana IPA. The resulting beer turned out unexpectedly tasty, and hooked me on Citra hops (especially for dry-hopping). Because I was still figuring out my techniques at the time, my mash efficiency was a little low (~57%), and the result was closer to a pale ale than a traditional IPA in some respects. Thus, I retooled the original recipe as a pale ale, cutting back some of the malt and utilizing Citra as the only hops for the brew. As before, I want a prominent hops aroma, so this beer will get a nice dry-hopping.

Gondwana Pale Ale (version 1.1)
  • 9 lbs. 2 row malt
  • 1 lb. Vienna malt
  • 0.5 lb. cara-pils malt
  • 0.5 lb. 40° crystal malt
  • 1 oz. Citra hops (bittering, first addition; pellet form; 14.5% alpha, 3.9% beta)
  • 1 oz. Citra hops (bittering, second addition)
  • 1 tsp. Irish moss
  • 1 pkg. Safale American dry yeast (US-05, 11 g)
  • 2 oz. Citra hops (dry hopping)
Steps
  • First, I preheated the mash tun with 9 gallons of water that was as hot as possible from the tap.
  • In my brew pot, I heated 14 quarts of water to 170°. I added the milled grains to the mash tun with 1 tbs. of pH 5.2 stabilizer, and mashed in. The temperature stabilized at 154°. After 30 minutes, the temperature was 153°.
  • After 60 minutes, added 1 gallon of water at 185°, and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. I drained the tun, extracting ~2.9 gallons of wort.
  • Next, I added 3.2 gallons of water at 195°. This raised the mash temperature to ~175°, a little warmer than I wanted. So, I added 1 quart (.25 gallons) of ice cubes. This dropped the temperature down to 168°. I let the mix sit for 10 minutes before draining.
  • I collected a total of 6.7 gallons of wort, with a preboil gravity of 1.043. This works out to a mash efficiency of ~73%.
  • I heated the wort to boiling, aiming for a total of 60 minutes at boil. After 30 minutes, I added the first addition of hops.
  • After 50 minutes, I added the Irish moss.
  • After 58 minutes, I added the second addition of hops.
  • After 60 minutes of boiling, I turned off the heat, removed the hops (they were all bagged), and chilled the wort to ~80°.
  • Once the wort was chilled, I transferred it to the primary fermentation vessel. Along the way, it was oxygenated using my Venturi pump.
  • The yeast was rehydrated in 2 cups of preboiled water at ~90°, and pitched into the wort.
  • Starting gravity was 1.048 at 60 degrees, with ~5.3 gallons of wort. I can probably expect around 5% abv in the end.
  • The beer is fermenting at 64°; after 1 week I will transfer it to the secondary fermenter and dry-hop for 2 weeks, prior to bottling.
Notes
  • Total ingredient cost for this was $27.65. Assuming around a 5 gallon yield in the end, the cost per 12-oz. bottle will be around $0.55.
  • In order to maximize extract efficiency, I have been using a double crush on the mill at my local homebrew shop. Based on a visual inspection of the milled grain, and on conversations with the owner, I decided to try just a single pass through the mill this time. Based on my efficiency, that was an okay decision.
  • In the past, I had been a little frustrated by trying to raise the temperature of the grain bed during the second collection of wort. Thus, I tried adding much hotter water (~195°) than recommended by BeerSmith (168°), and got much better results both in terms of temperature as well as mash efficiency. There was a little fiddling to keep the temperature below 170°, so I might aim for around 185° to 190° next time.