Did someone say dill?

As I drink my last pint of Brann's Breakfast Stout, which coincidentally has a small late addition of Sorachi Ace hops in it too, I've got around to writing up about my latest brew day, a Cream Ale that is hopped only with Sorachi Ace hops.

As a christmas present from my lovely wife I was given Camra's Essential Home Brewing  Which doesn't just contain useful information for beginners but its proven to be very useful to someone who has been brewing for a few years but has soaked up alot of previous information.  It also has 30 recipes from UK craft breweries. Some very popular ones too. Like verdant.

Even though my Cream Ale shared the same recipe as in the book, I adjusted the grain bill slightly to hopefully achieve a slightly more session strength pint.

As I carried out the instructions from the book, mashing at a lower temperature to leave more fermentable sugars in the wort to achieve a drier, more crisp finish to the beer once fermented. My beer actually was slightly above the recipe (Anspach & Hobday The Cream Ale)
estimated ABV. at 5.5% with, according to my Tilt hydrometer chart, the apparent attenuation (the % malt sugar that has been converted by the yeast) is 87.5%. So little old US-05 did a pretty good job!

The brew day last week went well apart from mashing on the thick side, so I didn't fully achieve my target volumes and have a lesser amount and slightly stronger brew than intended.

On further reading during fermentation I found I should really have mashed with something in the region of 12l for the amount of grain (3.8kg) rather than 9l. This made the initial sparge longer as the grain was too compacted on the mash tun filter.

I now know that using my buffalo boiler on full power my brew kettle (SS Brewtech brew kettle) will roughly lose 4-5L of wort per hour.

These last two points 'should' be the turning point in using my new setup, which I only have used for 4 brews.

Tasting the hydro sample for the Starting Gravity I got a straight up Dill, like someone came behind me and emptied the pot of dill from the Spice Rack into the wort.  I knew that Sorachi Ace hops do impart dill but I was pretty surprised.  It wasn't unpleasant by any means, however it caught me off guard, overall the beer tasted crisp even from the initial sample.

5 days have since past, the main part of fermentation now complete, I pulled another hydro sample, one to make sure my Tilt Hydrometer was reading correctly, two to get a taste test.

The taste is still crisp and dry, something you would expect from this style of beer or a lager, then I don't get a herby taste but get citrus, the taste of what lemon rind smells like, followed by a mellow orange then very faint herby/woody note.

I may have created a stronger brew, but its already very quaffable or even gluggable!

In a few days time (probably Sunday/Monday) I'll start a cold crash of the fermentor for a few days before I transfer to the keg, ready for when we (my wife & I) have friends over soon.

My next brew is another from the book (Eight Arch, Corbel), using their tip, I've added Carafa 3 to the malt bill to make it black IPA in style. This brew day will be in a few weeks once the fermenter is free.

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