On June 4th the Mann family decided to hold a booze fest! Between us we came up with 20 gallons of ale, bottles and bottles of wine and cider plus a few other bits here and there. We arranged for a finger buffet and had about 40 people round to have a few drinks!
Preparations under way…
As much seating as we could find…
Getting all the BOOZE lined up!…
Wet towels round the barrels keep them cool as long as you keep them wet. The beer wasn’t cold but it didn’t really get warm either so all good. The weather turned out to be brilliant. My Mum and sister Liz put loads of effort in to the garden which was really impressive. The garden as a whole looked impressive with all the beer / wine / cider lined up. We had booze fact cards around the place too (some not strictly true!)…
It wasn’t long after reading this that Aaron decided to go booze berserk and wildly battle with the grapes…
More and more people started to turn up. It wasn’t long before everyone was well in to the swing of things and the drinks started flowing. I’m pleased to say that my Czech Pilsner was going down a treat and only really lasted for the afternoon. We had a right old mix of people turn up, all ages. Even some little ones.
All eyes on the short one…
Friends and family from all over turned up. I reckon we nearly reached 40 people all in all. There would have been more but some couldn’t make it. 20 gallons of ale seemed to do the trick and we had a bit left over at the end of the night which is a relief. We were’nt entirely sure if we’d have enough. The wines went down well too.
Fun in the sun…
Robin, Nussey and Will all joined us too which was awesome…
And the Hamiltons…
Luke enjoyed the ale…
Aaron was still enjoying the grapes…
Rama managed to cut the cake perfectly using only his shadow master knifehand strike…
Then I found the cake…
Later on as it started to get dark we got the fire lit as always when we have people round. Dad and Billy decided to swap glasses for a while, I think it was definitely a good swap! The fire went on and we started to run out of fuel. By this point i’d had quite a few beers and thought we needed more fuel so I went off in to the woods to pick up any dead branches lying about, I always feel if the fire goes out, it’s a bit of a fail!
All in all it was a massive success and it was really excellent to have so many friends and family there. Shame that some couldn’t make it but hopefully we will do it again another year, I’ve never seen so many people at our place before! Thanks to everyone that turned up!
The two ales I put on were the Czech Pilsner and what I called “Hop Damn”. The Hop Damn is basically the same recipe as the Pale Ale that I posted about previously on here with the addition of some dry hops added to the fermenter a few days in to fermentation which was definitely worth while I reckon. I added 12g Saaz, 40g East Kent Goldings, 20g Ahtanum and 20g Hallertauer. I also used US-05 yeast which didn’t quite get down to the same gravity as the S-04 but it was definitely a cleaner taste and let the hop flavours come through a bit more.
The Czech Pilsner was actually the first partial mash recipe I’ve done which is to use malted barley grains and malt extract to make up the rest. It goes a bit like this…
Boil 6l of water and let it cool to about 70C. I’ve got a colander that fits perfectly in to the stock pot, in to the colander and hot water I put 2kg of Pilsner malt. You could just use a muslin bag. By either adding heat or some cool water I managed to maintain a temp of 68C pretty easily. The mash temp can range from 64-70C, I understand the higher mash temp the more fermentable sugars are created, but you might get less malt flavour. The opposite is true with lower temps so I thought 68C was probably a good compromise. I’m lucky in that I have use of a digital thermometer and probe which makes it easier to maintain. I kept the lid on as much as possible and mashed for 90 minutes. This method is probably pretty crude and inefficient as it stands so I thought a longer mash would at least increase my chances of making it work.
Once the mash was nearly complete I got another 5L of water to the boil and let it cool to 75C. I drained the grain and “rinsed” it in to the brew pot. This is the bit that really makes this method far less efficient than proper all grain brewing where you would normally “sparge” hot water through a grain bed to extract all the sugars, simply rinsing it once won’t extract as much of the sugars. This is why I used 2kg of extra light malt extract to make up the difference. I think the grain certainly added authentic flavour and character to the beer though.
The result looks pretty nasty really! Like I’ve scooped up some bog water! At this stage I was concerned that it would never clear up and I would have no where near enough fermentable content but I carried on anyway, not much choice at this point. I brought it to the boil and started adding the hops. All Saaz in this case for the authentic Czech Pilsner flavour. 80g at 90 minutes. I made up a yeast starter with 2 packets of Saflager S-23, two packets are recommended for lower fermenting temps. Another 40g of Saaz at 20 minutes along with the extra light dry malt extract. One teaspoon of Irish Moss at 15 minutes to help it clear and another 20g of Saaz at 5 minutes.
After the boil is complete, strain in to the fermenter and top up to 23l. As always I keep as much water as I can in the fridge to cool the wort down. I’ve also found running a cold bath and sitting the fermenter in that really helps. Give the wort a good thrash to aerate it and add the yeast.
I actually kept wet towels round the fermenter for this one as proper lager fermentation is supposed to take place at about 11C. After 7 days fermentation I added another 30g of dry Saaz hops and left it then for a further 7 days. Original gravity was 1.045 and final was 1.012 making it 4.1% ABV. It cleared up really well and the bit that I bottled was really good. A bit more sugar for carbonation and it would have been excellent. The only gripe I had was the colour which was a bit dark and almost resembled pee which was a bit off putting!
On the day the barrel went down very quickly and I was really pleased with it’s authentic flavour that I was aiming for. If I do this one again I think I will definitely consider bottling it and keeping it in the fridge for some time to really condition and clear up properly. Genuine “Pilsner Urquell” has a bitterness of around 43IBUs, my recipe is about 33IBUs. I think it could go a tad more, a bit more flavour is likely to come through with that but it’s ok where it is. Alcohol percentage is about right, possibly a tad weak. On the day of brewing I started at 2PM and had it tucked away in the fermenter by 10PM. I can say it was a long day!
As my first kind of bodged together partial mash, I’m very pleased. I may well try a partial mash based on the previous Pale Ale recipe next although I’m keen to experiment with things like honey, coriander seeds and elderflower.
The whole day and the hours spent brewing I felt were a success. I’m definitely up for doing it again, hopefully with some new recipes.
Thanks to everyone that turned up and sank some booze with us!