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)

Ulysses 31

Grist

75% Pale ale malt

10% Munich

8% Wheat malt

6% Caramunich II

1% Amber malt

Hops & Additions

13g US Magnus (16%AA) 60 mins  (21IBU)

30g Aus Galaxy (13.8%AA) 10 mins (15 IBU)

25g Aus Galaxy (13.8%AA) 5 mins (7 IBU)

25g Aus Galaxy (13.8%AA) Flame out

20g Dry hop for 5 days post fermentation

Yeast

200ml thick yeast slurry (WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast)

Water

Adjusted to ‘Pale ale’ as per http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/water/water.html

Method

Mash at 65 degrees for 60 minutes

Boil for 60 minutes with additions as above.

Cool to 20 degrees and pitch yeast

Target Specifications

OG: 1.052

FG: 1.012

ABV: 5.3% ABV

IBU: 43.8 (Tinseth)

SRM: 7.4

Mash efficiency: 80%

Batch Size: 20L

Comments

A straight forward brew day with no real hassle. I haven't used Galaxy before so wanted to showcase it with the 1st brew. Named after one of my favourite cartoons when I was younger.

The yeast kicked off within 8 hours and is now chugging away nicely. I'm hoping for a nice big yeast cake so I can use the 3rd generation for a big new years day RIS brew. Having used the WLP090 on my Black IPA it seems to give a nice rapid ferment with a VERY clean profile, so hopefully the galaxy will shine through, with a nice slightly sweet malt character to back it up.

I had the camera out for the brew session, pictures are posted on JBK HERE

January Meet: Guest Speaker Announced

Ladies and gents, we're pleased to announce that for our second meet on Thursday 12th January, Dominic from Thornbridge Brewery will be joining us. In fact, not only will he be throwing himself on the mercy of the group, and hopefully passing polite but constructive criticism on the brews offered up by the attendees, but he will also be giving a short presentation on how to brew barley wine.

Given Dom's CV, having worked at Thornbridge and Marble, and the fact that he's just achieved a Distinction in his Institute of Brewing and Distilling exam, we're expecting nothing less than a night of penetrating analysis and forensic pedantry - in a good way, of course.

We have four people able to bring beer so far - if you'd like to bring something, or just come along and be dazzled by Dom, please can you let us know on this post.

Until the 12th, then. Have a good Christmas, everyone!

January Meet Up: Call For Dates

This is an advance a call for dates for our January meet. Thursday the 12th would be the preferred date, as we have an interesting guest lined up, with an interesting topic in mind, and this is their preferred date. However, if nobody can make it, then there's not a lot of point!

So, shall we shoot for Thursday 12th January, 2012? Similar format to the first meet - 6 people presenting their beers to the group, with the option of bringing along bottles to try after the more structured bit of the night.

Let's have your thoughts!

Also, if anyone has beers that they'd like to bring along to present to the group, let us know below. We'll use the same format as last time - first come first served, but if the number of beers goes beyond 6, we'll draw lots on the night.

Venue TBC.

Smoked Oatmeal Porter

Grain Bill
% KG MALT OR FERMENTABLE
71% 4.600 American Two-row Pale
8% 0.520 Oats, Flaked
7% 0.450 Chocolate Malt
6% 0.380 Crystal 60L
5% 0.350 Amber Malt
2% 0.100 Smoked Malt
2% 0.100 Carafa III
80 EBC (black)

Hop Schedule
60 mins 50g mystery unlabelled (Chinook?) leaf hops 13%AA (estimated
FO 15g Centennial & Goldings mixed (15 min steep)
50 IBU

Gravities (estimated)
OG 1.080
FG 1.020 (predicted)
7.5%abv (predicted)

Fermented with US-05.

This was a total cock-up of a brew from start to finish.

The recipe was dictated by what I had left over, so while the grain bill looks carefully designed, it's basically what was left in various bags, although the smoked malt was donated by Dean - I didn't want to go overboard with it, as too smoky is worse than not smoky enough (in my book). The hops were definitely high-%AA American, judging by the price sticker - the name label had gone missing, sadly.

The boiler I was using kept cutting out before it got to the boil (sorry Tom), and so I had to split the batch between 3 saucepans on the stove, and divide the hops between them. I had to transfer the hot wort to the fermenter and chill it, rather than chill in the copper, which wasn't really a problem, although my 'hop filter' turned out to be a slotted spoon holding back the hops and hot break. Was too focussed on getting things right to remember to take gravity readings.

A niggly brewday that was very challenging, although quite rewarding given the problems that had to be overcome. I'm interested to see what US-05 will do to such a low-hop, malt-heavy beer.