Nelson Sorachi Ale

Once in a while I make small batches of beer to try out different yeasts, hops or hop combinations. This time I wanted to explore the combination of two newer hop varieties, Nelson Sauvin and Sorachi Ace. In my experience Nelson Sauvin has some tropical fruit flavours to it, while I haven't tried Sorachi Ace on its own yet. It is suppose to have a distinct citrus flavour, mostly lemon. I made a very simple wort with malt extract and a little crystal malt and just boiled it for 15 minutes to retain a lot of hop character.

4 liter
OG 1040

500 g Extra light DME
100 g Cara Hell

4 g Nelson Sauvin and 4 g Sorachi Ace for 15 min
6 g Nelson Sauvin and 6 g Sorachi Ace for 5 min

Unfortunately I discovered that I only had S-33 dried yeast in the apartment, so that was what I pitched (1/3 package).

OG after 5 days 1012

Brown Eyes

American Brown Ale racked onto elderberries and raspberries

It has been a while since I brewed a brown ale. I don't exactly know why, since it is a fantastic style of beer. Malty, hoppy and chocolaty. It is also a very good style for new homebrewers since it tends to hide off-flavours better than beers with a simpler grain bill. Because I had a lot of american hops in the freezer I decided to brew an American brown ale. Hopefully the american hops will give the beer a citrus finish, which I think will go very well with the dark flavours of the Carafa I and Special B malts.

The grain bill was a bit improvised since I had some grains I needed to use before they were too old. Seeing as I still haven't got a grain mill, I rely on the homebrewshop to crush the grains for me, which unfortunately decrease the shell life. Therefore I had some belgian abbey malt, which were thrown in with some pilsner malt and specialty grains. To add to the body I used carapils and flaked barley, which were roasted on a frying pan for about 10 minutes. They smelled really great!

To 24 Liters:

2.85 kg Abbey malt

2 kg Pilsner malt

400 g Carapils

200 g Flaked barley

100 g Carafa I

75 g Special B

I mashed for one hour at 65 degrees as BIAB (brew in a bag), took out the bag and brought the wort to a boil. The hop schedule was:

60 min: 10g Perle (10%) and 20 g Willamette (6,3%)

15 min: 20g Cascade (7%) and 20 g Willamette (6,3%)

5 min: 20g Cascade (7%) and 20 g Willamette (6,3%)

which should result in an IBU of 35.

I used the no-chill method. Partly to save water, but also because my wort chiller is at my friends house and it would be too much trouble to use an ice bath. I took a gravity reading and discovered that my OG was 1042, and extremely lower than the expected 1060. I expect it to be the old grains, because I have normally gotten good results from BIAB. Not surprisingly the wort tasted very bitter, so I decided to boil 1 kg of dry malt extract for 15 minutes and add it to the fermenter before pitching a starter of 1007 German Ale yeast. The OG was now close to the expected.

After fermenting for two weeks at around 15 degrees the OG was 1010. I decided to experiment with a portion of the beer. I had some frozen fruits from my parents garden from last summer, which I thought would compliment a dark beer like this, so I racked 4 liters onto 250 g of elderberries and another 4 liters onto 450 g of raspberries. I suspect the elderberries will impart some tannins and the raspberries will most likely thin out the beer and probably sour it up a bit. I am looking forward to the final results.

UPDATE:
After one week I racked the beer of the fruits, added 5 grams of sugar per liter and bottled. The raspberry version smelled and tasted a lot of raspberries, while the elderberry version was quite subtle. It is going to be interesting to taste them again in a couple of weeks time.