Revolutions Brewing Co. & Leeds Homebrew - Competition

With the aim of creating yet more interest in West Yorkshire brewing, Revolutions Brewing Co., in collaboration with Leeds Homebrew, have announced a homebrew competition.

The prize is a full 8BBL commercial brew (reserving the right to make any necessary technical tweaks) of the winner in a competition to produce the best 4.5% homebrewed beer of any style - the winner can of course come and participate in the brewday.

It will be released to market in April 2012 as part of our Rewind 33 series under the name REPLICAS (referencing the 1979 Tubeway Army album) - the beer will certainly appear in pubs throughout Yorkshire and further afield, including The CRAFT Beer Co. in London, Mr Foleys in Leeds and The Maltings in York, where the winner can enjoy a pint and bask in the warm glow of craft brew glory! It should also appear at beer festivals such as Rothwell, Doncaster, Leicester and Newark. We will encourage the winner to participate in publicity activities.

Here are the rules, such as they are:

1. The beer should be brewed to a target ABV of 4.5%.

2. It can be any style – (except Milk Stout please – we’re doing one in February!)

3. It must use only European hops – a) to test you all on a level playing field and, b) to avoid any issues of scarcity of US / NZ versions when it comes to the commercial brew.

4. You must divulge your full recipe and method. We reserve the right to “tweak” it for technical and / or commercial reasons.

5. We will set up a judging panel of people outside the group, including ourselves, to determine the winner.

6. Entries must be submitted in bottles by 28th February 2012 – judging will take place on February 29th – the brewday will be in Castleford in early March.

7. Please submit your bottles with your name, contact details and recipe to us at the address below, or alternatively drop them at Mr Foleys or Beer-Ritz marked for our attention.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FIRE UP YOUR BREW KETTLES!

Revolutions Brewing Co, Unit B7, Whitwood Enterprise Park, Speedwwell Road, Whitwood, Castelford, WF10 5PX

Running Order - Thursday 12th January

Some info about this Thursday's meet-up [edit]AT MR FOLEY'S ALE HOUSE IN LEEDS[/edit]. The hour slot from 19.00 to 20.00 is going to be filled by Dominic from Thornbridge Brewery, who will be making a presentation on how to brew barley wine, answering any questions thrown at him, and should time permit, performing some live kitten juggling.

There will also be a special announcement about a collaboration between the Leeds Homebrew group and Revolutions Brewing Co. Please try to be "in da house" by 7pm for this.

The 8 - 9 slot will be for panel tasting of members beers. We will be limiting this to 6 x 10 minute slots, so if we have more than 6 people wanting to present to group, we will draw lots on the night. Please bring enough beer for a dozen or 15 samples - maybe a couple of litres? There is always the option to share and critique after the structured part of the evening is over.

So in summary:

18:30 Arrive and get a beer
19:00 Welcome / Talk / Q&A
20:00 Tasting of members' beers
21:00 Meeting adjourned. Carousing optional.

Broadford Aire Porter

Grist:
Maris Otter Pale Malt - 76.1%
Brown Malt - 8.4%
Crystal Malt - 7.9%
Black Malt - 3.8%
Flaked Oats - 3.8%

Hops:
Galena 10g – 12.0% @90mins
Galena 10g – 12.0% @30mins
First Gold 10g – 7.8% @10mins
First Gold 40g – 7.8% @0mins (steep 20 mins)

Final Volume: 19 Litres

Original Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol Content: 4.2% ABV
Bitterness: 31.4 IBU
Colour: 28.9 SRM
Yeast: Safale US-05
Mash: 90mins @ 66c
Boil: 90mins
Water treatment: In the HLT 1 camden tablet. In the mash 3.4g gypsum.  In the boil 4.4g gypsum, 3.8g epsom salts. 
As with most brew days, there is at least one thing that will go wrong, in this instance it was the last minute realisation that either I made a mistake on my order and ending up with Flaked Barley rather than Flaked Oats. 

Moving on from this minor glitch I used what I turned the HLT on and weighed my malts out.  The mash was the next thing to go slightly wayward, when you have your 4 year old being helpful and when you are trying to help cook the dinner and get the kids to bed, things tend to slip.  I had the HLT to strike temp of 78C and added a kettle of boiling water to the mash tun to pre-heat it.  Time passed. I came to mash in, but forget to re-heat the tun, this meant that I had to mess around to get the mash temp to my target 66C.

Mashing out, HLT temp set to 78C again and a quick temperature check on the tun told me that something had gone wrong.  It was 62C, I usually only lose a degree over 90 mins.  Carried on with the brew, batch sparging.  I usually try to take hydrometer readings throughout the mash, but decided to try to do this by tasting the wort.  This worked in that I got some experience of this method.  I stopped sparging with 3L water left in the HLT.  Got the boil on, 90 minute boil with the additions detailed above.  FOr my 19L brew length I collected 13.6L at around 1.058 (temp corrected).  I decided to liquor back and added 5L boiled/treated liquor. giving me a final volume of 18.6L at OG of 1.044.  Pitched the US-05 yeast when the temp hit 23C Happy with this, but there are some learning points:

• Check your ingredients well before your brewday.
• Always pre-heat mash tun with boiling water.
• When the mash tun is half empty, correct the strike temp? or at least give the tun some external insulation.
• When sparging, use the calculated liquor volume to avoid having to liquor back so much.

You can see the rest of the pics here.

Looking forward to the next Leeds Homebrew meeting 12th January 2012.

Contributor: David Bishop (@broadfordbrewer)