Warm beer in the morning

The weather's turned hot this last week. We had the hottest day in three years on Wednesday, with temperatures hitting 37 degrees. The typical Queensland humidity means that there's no escape, and with no air conditioning our lounge was 33 degrees at 9pm. I rode into work and although the front of my arms were cooled from the airflow passing over them, there was warm pockets of stationary air behind each arm that I could feel my knees pushing into with every pedal stroke. Odd.

The hot weather also makes brewing tricky as most beer yeasts will start to produce off-flavours above about 25 degrees. But as regular readers will know there is a strain of Belgian yeast that can work up to 35 degrees. Luckier still, that yeast is used in the brewing of Saison, a traditional farmhouse ale that is crisp, dry, hoppy, spicy and fruity. The perfect summer beer (and soon to become the 'new IPA' - you read it here first!).

This morning I was up bright and early to beat the heat and get my latest brew on. The grains were mashing by 7.30am and by midday the brew was finished and the kitchen floor mopped (an essential part of the brewing process, not for this brew but so that I'm allowed to make the next one). My ingredients are controlled in part by the stock of my Local HomeBrew Shop (LHBS) and so this time around I had to use dried wheat malt extract instead of cracked wheat grain, so my recipe was

1kg pilsner malt
1kg traditional malt
1kg dried  wheat extract
1.5kg dried pale malt extract (added with 20 mins to go)

I tried to keep the hop load low this time around so
20g of Northern Brewer for the full 80 minute boil
25g of hallertau at 20 mins to go
30g of hallertau with 5 minute to go

Also 15g of kaffir lime leaves at flameout, because I could.

This gave 24l of 1050 OG wort, which is a little stronger than what I was after so hopefully the maltiness won't override the other flavours. I should invest in some beer softweare to advise on strengths & bitterness when I'm putting recipes together, but then again I still haven't degassed the aircon in the Landy either.

The yeast was Wyeast 3724, from American yeast manufacturer Wyeast. It was developed over many years in Belgium, taken over to the US and cultured in a lab and then shipped out to Australia.

This is a refrigerated liquid yeast which is stored in a 'snap pack'- an inner pouch of yeast surrounded by  liquid yeast nutrient. When it's time to brew you take it out of the fridge and break the inner packet by slapping it a few times - the yeast then comes out of it's cold-induced hibernation, feeds and reproduces so in a few hours your pack goes from this

to this

(The same thing has happened to me over the last few years).

You can listen to the yeast bubbling away in the packet as it swells. I like to imagine that it's the clamour of amorous yeast conversations - 'Hey cutie - what's a cute single celled organism like you doing in a packet like this'. It's not weird as long as I don't join in myself.