Red Baron makes way.....for the Red Panda

While Mrs Panda (aka wifey aka Mrs Brann) was away for a friends hen do I thought to get a cheeky brew on.

Few weekends ago I had a bottle of 5am Saint, a very enjoyable Red IPA from Brewdog.

I generally like what Brewdog produce even though some of what is out there is abit too bitter (in a hoppy way) for me.

What it did do for me is wanting re-evaluate  my previous attempt of this style (in the form of Red Baron). The malt bill I generally left along as I was quite happy with this, however I did find it lacking in some hoppy flavour.
This now will now be dry hopped with a combined 85g of hops (30 Belma, 30 galaxy and 25 cascade), actually the whole hop schedule carries this theme using Belma, Galaxy and little bit of cascade to balance out the pure tropical fruits a bit. Its going to be one hazy tropical fruit bomb! 

As for the name change? Well we all have to have a brand don't we? I'm in the process of coming up with new names for some of my beers and new designs for the labels. Essentially Panda's rule!

So Red Baron....now becomes Red Panda and follows in the footsteps of Galactic Panda.

As for the brew day? 

Well it went pretty well, even if I was tired (waking up early to catch the F1) it went well. My Ace Boiler Grain bag finally gave up though, by my next brew day though I should have a Stainless Steel grain basket which should generally help matters of spillages on the kitchen floor and sparging, I did however get 5% more efficiency than my other brews with the boiler.  

Unfortunately some of the sugars scorched the bottom of the boiler so I had a job to clean this off this morning even after a good soak overnight. 

The grain basket should help with this too as it has 2cm feet to sit up from the bottom of the boiler. 

Another thing I did differently was that I used a fan to cool the outside of the boiler while a chiller took care of the rest, so after 15 mins or so hop stand it cooled to about 24c in roughly 30 mins. 

Hydrometer sample actually tastes better than my current brew I'm drinking.  Which I'm quite surprised about. 

I also let gravity take over when I transfered to the fermentor, I watched on a youtube video in the week where someone did this and got a massive load of foam in the fermentor due to the sloshing and spalshing, it saved me alot of work stirring it and it seems to of worked.

It was around 6pm-ish when I pitched the yeast, 8am this morning airlock is nicely active, even with the brew bucket being 1/2 fall (due to me only ding a 16l batch)

Two dry hops one at 7 days then 5 days before bottling. 6.2% expected ABV don't know if to bottle most or keg most. I might try natural carbing the keg this time as I'm not overally happy with how force carbing went in my current brew. 

I can smell the fermentor standing behind me, smells glorious! I'll do an update at the dry hopping point.

Until next time.........Happy Brewing