Thursday, October 24, 2013

Extract brew - with extras

A few months ago I brewed a Stone & Wood clone (named 'Clone & Wood') using tinned, pre-hopped malt extract . The beer was easy to make, crisp, clean, very close in flavour to the original and went down all too easily. Since then I've become embroiled in the world of all-grain and although I enjoy the brewing and the beer, it is a time consuming method.

Because of this I thought I'd try another extract brew this week and get something in my fermenter before I go away. I've based this on a 'Summer Ale' recipe but I'm using Danny's extract techniques, as outlined in the link above. The brewing part was done in an hour or so, it cooled overnight with minimal water and then I spent another 20 minutes or so this morning straining & cleaning. Easy.

So the recipe is -

Take 1 can Coopers Cerveza & 1 can Coopers wheat malt and stand in hot water for 5 minutes or so. Open the tins and pour into a largeish pot (at least 8l).
Add 2 litres of boiling water & 1/2 kg raw sugar, stir well and bring to the boil.
Throw in 50g fuggles hops - I wrapped mine in cheesecloth to make a 'hop bag' but I won't do that next time, mainly because if the hops don't circulate in the pot they don't get utilised properly.
Boil for 20 minutes or so.
Throw in 20g dried sweet orange peel, 2 tbsp. crushed coriander seeds, 25g of chopped ginger and 25g East Kent Goldings (I added these in a hop bag at first but they didn't seem to be having much effect so I opened the bag up and mixed them in).
Boil for another 10 minutes or so.
Put a lid on the pan and leave the whole lot in a sink surrounded by cold water overnight.
Tip into the fermenter through a clean sieve and top up to desired volume with filtered water.
Add yeast (although I pitched mine onto the yeast trub from a previous brew), keep cool and ferment.

And that's the brew day. After the initial ferment dies down I'll throw in a hop bag with 50g of Galaxy to dry hop it and give that fresh grapefruit aroma, and then it's business as usual.

My fermenters are now maxed out - 24l of Jaggery IPA ageing in secondaries, 1 demijohn of strawberry cider and 23l of Summer Ale. I think it's going to be a good summer...


 

2 comments:

  1. "Take 1 can Coopers Cerveza & 1 can Coopers wheat malt and stand in hot water for 5 minutes or so". Doesn't that burn your feet?

    ReplyDelete