Follow-up Perle Amber Ale

Well my Perle Amber ale has been kegged and gassed.

I tasted it last night, needs a bit more gas, but initial thoughts
• Little sweet, could have used more bittering hops, but this may improve with more gas
• Nice heavy style - the type I like - beer with caramel type flavours
• Perle hops probably don’t really suit this style, might be better in a lighter pale ale
• Maybe could have left out the Crystal Malt…

All in all my comments above are a bit on the negative side, but that’s because I’m fussy, it really is a nice beer, and I’m going to enjoy it over the winter months (i.e. right now!!)

Related Posts

Perle Amber Ale 3rd June 2007

Loss of a role model

I’ve had the sad situation recently where I’ve had to farewell a person I had a lot of respect for and have known throughout my working life from my original trade as an electrician through to working as a manager to now as an engineer.

But the one thing I never realised until his passing, was what an ideal role model he was…..

He was a very Christian man, but never pushed his beliefs on anyone, he was what I would idealise in a true Christian, and the lack of people like him has pushed me away from Christianity over the years.

But I really knew him best in his role as a teacher in the electrical trade where I first met him many years ago as an apprentice electrician at the age of 16. As an apprentice I only knew him as a very good teacher, little did I know then how much I would have to do with him over the years.

Later as I continued my career and moved into supervisory roles, we worked together on the Industry training advisory board, and on development of training for my electrical employees.

He was always happy and wanting to help, I can not remember a time where he ever became angry or upset, he would always be the one to calm a situation and remind everyone to “let’s not worry about that it will work itself out” or “don’t worry about that I’ll work it out”.

I was also lucky enough to get to know some of his family, who also follow in his footsteps in their open and friendly manner always wanting to help out.

As an attestment to the type of person he was, his funeral was attended by a very large number of people, the church could not fit them all, many had to stand outside where audio equipment was setup for them to hear the service.

I can only hope that I can learn to treat life as he did, always happy and not dwelling on the negatives of life only the positives, nothing was too much trouble no matter how frustrating a problem might be he worked his way through them, he helped so many people of so many walks of life from his own family, to his church, to the community, to the electrical tradespeople he helped, taught, and I hope inspired

I found his death initially very sad, losing such a wonderful man so unexpectedly and far too early, but I realised later, he had, had a wonderful life, always happy in what he was doing, with a wonderful family and many friends and able to help so many people where ever he could.
He even was able to see his family before his unexpected passing as sudden as it was, it just happened that his family happened to all catch-up with him over that weekend

So while it was a very sad time I take some comfort and I hope his family do as well, in that he lived happily doing what he wanted to….

Relocating Blog

Hi,

I’m relocating this blog to my own web site, I will keep both running for a while, but will eventually switch completely to the new site.

The new location can  be found here www.mackaonline.com I’m going to try fill the site with useful information on Brewing, Health, Self development and anything else I’m interested in.

Light Brown Ale recipe

Just thought I’d post another older recipe of mine that I enjoy

This was a throw together brew that turned out quite nice, I’ve found it a nice after work beer, that you can enjoy having a few of with out getting too inebriated.

 Once again I’ve just included the promash recipe print out

 light brown ale

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
——————————-

10-B  Brown Ale, Northern Brown

Min OG:  1.040   Max OG:  1.050
Min IBU:    15   Max IBU:    30
Min Clr:    12   Max Clr:    30  Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics
—————-

Batch Size (L):          35.00    Wort Size (L):     35.00
Total Grain (kg):         6.60
Anticipated OG:          1.043    Plato:             10.75
Anticipated SRM:          10.7
Anticipated IBU:          21.6
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts
—————-

Pre-Boil Wort Size:   41.18    L
Pre-Boil Gravity:      1.037    SG          9.19  Plato

Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name       Potential SRM
—————————————————————————–
 90.9     6.00 kg.  JWM Export Pilsner 1.037      2
  7.6     0.50 kg.  Amber Malt      1.032     35
  1.5     0.10 kg.  Chocolate Malt   1.034    475
Hops

   Amount     Name     Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
—————————————————————————–
 25.00 g.     Pride of Ringwood     Pellet   9.20  21.6  60 min.

Yeast
DCL Yeast S-04 SafAle English Ale

If you try this recipe please leave a comment and let me know how you found it

Related posts

 bavarian lager 9th June ‘07

My Favourite brew so far 

perle amber ale 3rd June ‘07

Coffee

 Well I’m now on about the 3^rd week without any coffee, an experiment I decided to try to see what effect it had on my health and concentration.

The result, well to start with, I did not suffer the reported withdrawal symptoms that I’ve heard of from many people, and I used to drink reasonable amount of coffee, usually 2 for breakfast (instant, 2 spoons of coffee) and at work I have a 4 cup coffee plunger, that was usually gone within the 1^st hour, then top ups for the rest of the day. Just before starting on my no coffee experiment I was tending not to drink it from mid afternoon, so that may have contributed to no withdrawal symptoms, as I was already sending my body into shock by drinking large amounts for ½ the waking day and then stopping.

Probably the most noticeable effects noticed were

no more dehydration effects:

where I might get tension around the head that may lead to a headache if I did not drink more coffee or start drinking some water, and this has had a positive effect on my exercising routines as I no longer need to worry about making sure I hydrate myself before starting an exercise routine, by drinking a large amount of water, which of course created issues of carrying that water in the body while trying to exercise and then needing to get rid of that excess water ½ way through the routine.

and

no more over stimulation:

When I had drank way too much coffee in a short period, often causing a slight unwell feeling and difficulty focussing on more complex tasks, although it was good for just getting mindless things done like paperwork, etc…

I’ve had no trouble with waking up and getting going, in fact I’m waking up earlier and getting out and doing things before I need to start getting ready for work, but this was also a conscious choice unrelated to the removal of coffee.

One thing I have noticed about drinking coffee as a ‘pick-me-up”, I now look back at when I was run down and tired and would have a coffee to ‘perk me up’ and I now realise that this was not helping, the stimulating effects of coffee for me seems to work best when I was already moderately active and alert, and seemed to enhance that state of being, whereas drinking a strong coffee when run down, just gave a short term boost which went nowhere and left me feeling worse than before, this maybe due to that fact my body had adapted to drinking coffee that it no longer had a strong enough effect on me any more to lift me up when feeling tired and run down, it will be interesting to see what happens when I start drinking coffee again, although at this stage I’m not sure when that will be as I’ve become quite attached to drinking green tea at the moment, and trying different varieties of green tea and other herbal teas (I must admit I really have never liked the traditional herbal teas - camomile, etc but the with a better selection available at my local supermarkets I’m starting to enjoy the variety of teas I can try.

An interesting article on coffee by Yvonne Volante can be found here http://www.articlecity.com/articles/food_and_drink/article_1467.shtml

Bavarian Lager? 9th June ‘07

 Well I had a chance to do another brew on Saturday and as I said I would in my post Perle Amber ale 3^rd June I dropped the new brew straight onto the yeast cake from that brew. 

Once again I’ve been pushed for time and my ‘kettle’ is still out of action so I’ve just done an extract brew to save a bit of time.

Ingredients:

• Coopers Bavarian Lager Kit,
• 1 kg light dry malt extract,
• 500grams generic brand honey (not looking for honey flavours, just wanted to lighten the body of the beer),
• 200 grams crystal malt (colour 140 EBC),
• 25 grams Saaz Hops (pellets)

Method:

This brewing session was much the same as my Perle Pale ale, so I’ll not go into too much detail on the brewing of it.

Put Crystal malt (crushed) into 2 litres of water and start heating until it just starts to boil (can even be stopped just before this stage) and strain into the main pot when ready, this can occur at anytime during the preparation of the main wort.

Heat up another 5 litres of water and add the Coopers Bavarian lager kit, Dry malt extract, Put hops into a ‘hop bag’ and the honey and bring to the boil.

I’ve used a “hop bag” this time mainly as the hops were in pellet form, using whole hops I find I don’t really need to use the hop bag as the hop flowers form quite a good filter by themselves and don’t release too many small particles.

Once the wort boils take immediately off the heat cover and place into a larger container of cold water to cool it a little.

While the wort is cooling, transfer the current brew into another ‘barrel’ or other suitable container for secondary fermentation, fill newly emptied fermenter with approximately 15 litres of cold water, squirting it in under pressure to stir up the yeast cake at the bottom of the barrel and also forcing some extra oxygen into the water which helps the yeast get going, add the wort (which will be still quite warm to hot), the temperature hopefully will stabilise around 16-18˚C which is a good starting temperature for a lager. Top up the fermenter to 24-25litres and take a SG reading

Should be around 1.050

As the brew has been put onto an existing yeast cake, fermentation will become visible very quickly, most likely there will be a strong fermentation within 45 minutes, I would strongly recommend that you do not use this method with a very heavy beer and an ale yeast, such as a stout, as the fermentation will be so strong that it is likely the beer with attempt to ‘crawl’ out of the airlock, using this method with lager yeast at low temperatures usually keeps this under control a little (although I have had a lager crawl out of the airlock once before gravity of 1.065)

The next morning I found the fermentor had cooled nicely to 12˚C  so it was time to put into my “fermentation chamber”, actually an old refrigerator, which works really well at this time of year to hold the temperatures stable i.e. The heat losses from the refrigerator=the heat generated by the yeast.

Although I won’t need it for this brew, I have set the refrigerator up with a temperature sensor, so I can turn on the compressor if I need to remove some heat in summer or for lagering, or turn on a small light bulb mounted inside, which can be used for heating. I’ll go into detail on how this is controlled thought a Linux PC I have running in the shed in another post.

This beer should actually have quite a rapid fermentation due to the very large number of starting yeast cells from the previous beer, I suspect it will be finished fermentation in about 5 days rather than the 10 I usually expect for lagers at low temperatures.

Looks like next weekend is a bottling or kegging weekend

My Favourite Brew so far

This is just a quick post with the recipe of my favourite brew so far.

It’s an adaption of a Duvel copy recipe I was sent some time ago, one day I did not have the time to make some candi-sugar for the brew, So I had some honey and decided they were all sugars, I’d try it with Honey instead, the result was a Belgian Golden strong ale style, with very nice Subtle Honey flavours, I recommend this recipe for anyone who likes the stronger Belgian style beers!!

Recipe export from ProMash

Duvel Copy with Honey

A ProMash Recipe Report

BJCP Style and Style Guidelines
——————————-

18-C  Strong Belgian Ale, Belgian Strong Golden Ale

Min OG:  1.065   Max OG:  1.080
Min IBU:    25   Max IBU:    35
Min Clr:     4   Max Clr:     6  Color in SRM, Lovibond

Recipe Specifics
—————-

Batch Size (L):          23.00    Wort Size (L):     23.00
Total Grain (kg):         6.90
Anticipated OG:          1.071    Plato:             17.31
Anticipated SRM:           8.7
Anticipated IBU:          30.9
Brewhouse Efficiency:       75 %
Wort Boil Time:             90    Minutes

Pre-Boil Amounts
—————-

Evaporation Rate:      15.00    Percent Per Hour
Pre-Boil Wort Size:   29.68    L
Pre-Boil Gravity:      1.055    SG          13.59  Plato

Formulas Used
————-

Brewhouse Efficiency and Predicted Gravity based on Method #1, Potential Used.
Final Gravity Calculation Based on Points.
Hard Value of Sucrose applied. Value for recipe: 46.2100 ppppg
Yield Type used in Gravity Prediction: Fine Grind Dry Basis.

Color Formula Used:   Morey
Hop IBU Formula Used: Rager

Additional Utilization Used For Plug Hops:         2 %
Additional Utilization Used For Pellet Hops:      10 %
Grain/Extract/Sugar

   %     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM
—————————————————————————–
  2.9     0.20 kg.  Crystal 105L                  Great Britain  1.033    105
 10.1     0.70 kg.  Clover Honey                  Generic        1.035      0
 87.0     6.00 kg.  Pale Ale Malt (2-row)         Australia      1.037      2

Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon.
Hops

   Amount     Name                              Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time
—————————————————————————–
 70.00 g.     Czech Saaz                        Pellet   3.30  30.9  70 min.
 12.00 g.     Czech Saaz                        Pellet   3.30   0.0  0 min.
Extras

  Amount      Name                           Type      Time
————————————————————————–
  0.50 Unit(s)Irish Moss                     Fining    15 Min.(boil)
Yeast
—–

WYeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale

Mash Schedule
————-

Mash Type: Single Step

Grain kg:     6.20
Water Qts:   12.70 - Before Additional Infusions
Water L:     12.02 - Before Additional Infusions

L Water Per kg Grain: 1.94 - Before Additional Infusions

Saccharification Rest Temp :   0  Time:   0
Mash-out Rest Temp :          68  Time:  90
Sparge Temp :                 80  Time:  20
Total Mash Volume L: 16.16 - Dough-In Infusion Only

All temperature measurements are degrees Celsius.

Perle Amber Ale 3rd June 2007

I finally had a chance to do a brew using my own home grown perle hops.
Last years harvest was lost to an infection in my brewing equipment to the point I threw out my 2 fermenters and purchased three new fermenters, as I lost a couple of brews and could not find the source, so assumed it was from the old fermenters (one was around 12 years old).I did not have time to do an “All Grain” brew so I purchased some malt extract from my local Home Brew store (with new owners - so I thought I’d help out and purchase from them).

Ingredients:

• 1.5kg Black Rock Amber Malt Liquid extract (only because they had no pale extract left)
• 1kg Light Dry Malt extract
• 400ml Glucose syrup (only because it was in the cupboard and I wanted to get rid of it)
• 400grams Crystal malt (80L I think) to add some body to the beer (probably way too much crystal)

The hops were added as approximates only, for 2 reasons
1. I don’t know the alpha-acid content so no point measuring any way
2. My small scales are broken so I had no choice

• 40grams 60mins Perle Whole hop flowers
• 20grams 12 mins Perle Whole hop flowers
• 15grams 1min Perle Whole hop flowers
• Packet of SAFLAGER dry yeast (temp range 11-15˚C - good for winter as the current temps here are a max of 15˚C with lows of 5˚C)

Method:
Heat 2 pots of water
Main pot 15litres water
Grain pot (just a smaller pot) 2.5litres

Added grain immediately to the smaller pot, to extract the malt slowly as the water heated so not too much of the grain tannins get into the brew, and it was easier to do the grain separately rather than trying to strain 20 litres of hot wort later to get the spent grains out.

Add Amber malt to main pot when it was starting to get close to boiling, boiled a kettle and rinsed the amber malt tin out with boiling water into the main pot.
Added dry light malt to main pot (dry malt is great but a little painful to dissolve, I usually don’t worry about it too much as once the wort boils it soon dissolves)

Stir the grain now and then to stop the grain burning at the bottom of the pot

When the main pot begins to boil (takes awhile with only small stove elements - did I mention my normal ‘wort kettle’ is out of action, needs a new tap as I had to steal it to fix one in the house) add 40 grams of hops and allow to boil for ~38 mins.

Ensure you keep stirring the grain pot, once it reaches almost boiling, strain into main pot and rinse grains with hot water to get all of the good stuff out.

This causes the main pot to stop boiling, but it soon came back to the boil

Add 20 grams of hops

Continue the boil for 10-11 mins then add the last of the hops
Turn off the stove

Put lid on the pot and put pot in large container of cold water, leave for 15 mins
Check temperature of the water - it may heat up considerably,
change the water with more cold water if it does get too warm (~25˚C),
leave for around 45 mins, change water again.

Sterilise fermenter with “one-shot” acid based steriliser or your preferred steriliser, and rinse with hot water (not really necessary with one-shot but I like to do it anyway)

Put 5 litres of cold water into fermenter with garden hose at high pressure - to try get a bit more oxygen into the water, as most of the dissolved oxygen in the boiled wort will be gone.

Strain wort into fermenter (stainless pasta sieve works well), then add water to 24litres (once again at high pressure for aeration).
Check temp - 18˚C - perfect!!!
Take SG reading - 1.050

Rehydrate yeast in 100ml luke-warm water (24˚C) for 15 mins add to fermentor

Put lid on with airlock and put into old broken refrigerator to help keep temperatures more constant

Fermentation was a little slow starting - about 24hours before a krausen started forming (froth on top of brew) but for a lager yeast I’ve found this quite normal
So now we’ll see how it goes

———————————————–

I intend to do another brew on the coming weekend, and what I’ll do is rack the current brew to another fermenter to finish it off, and drop the new beer onto the active yeast cake in the 1st fermenter, there will be so much active yeast in the yeast cake the new beer should start fermenting strongly within hours, from experience I will not be putting a heavy wort onto this yeast cake, I’ve had too many ferment so actively that it ‘crawls’ out of the airlock, even at temps as low as 10˚C!!!

Stay tuned for postings of previous sucessful recipes and of course new brews….

Putting your life on hold for a goal

 

Is it a good thing to put parts of your life on hold to achieve a goal?

 

Especially your health (physical, spiritual and mental)

 

Well having done it for the last 7 years while growing a family, studying for my Bachelor of Engineering (4 years full time) while working full time, suffering some serious losses in my life, changing jobs, etc.. the answer is…….

 

YES and NO

 

I think I have actually managed to get some balance to the way I managed these things, but I think I may have left some parts of my life go for too long.

• I had to stop training in Kyokushin Karate as I needed the time to study

• I left my other goals and dreams behind and now I’m trying to play catch-up.

• I now have conflicts where all the work I put into my engineering degree says I should do something with it i.e. “Be an Engineer”, but a lot of the things I now want to do (brew master, writing, increased family time, other income generation) doesn’t fall into line with that stream of thinking – possibly the brew master dream does where I now have the skills to engineer my own brewery, the others go against the normal direction of becoming an Engineer where the usual outcome is to work for an employer (or yourself which is still ‘working ‘ for an employer) and to work hard and long hours, where the other things I want to do go against this.

• I stopped deliberate meditation, whileI may have been meditating when studying or focused intently on some things or when trying to relax when stress was building up, I was not regularly ‘centring’ myself with meditation

In hindsight I should not have dropped the meditation as it may have helped get through some particularly tough times that my wife and I had to go through and the physical exercise would not have hurt either, although I did try to do some exersise when I could, it was no-where at the level it should have been.

 

So was it a good idea or not to put aspects of my life on hold for an extended period?

 

 

I don’t think there is an acceptable answer to that question

on the surface – No, 

but in doing it I achieved something that I never dreamed I would ever do, I became a university graduate, and now I believe I can do what ever I want.

I think at the time I really had no idea what I wanted, to be honest I don’t think I had even considered thinking about what I wanted to do or be I just drifted along with the flow, which is interesting as one gentleman I have a huge amount of respect for always said to me that he thought that I had a fantastic driving ambition and had the ability to go with it, but in reality I was just drifting along in my life, things tended to happen when they needed to, a job would come up when I needed a change, when I needed to learn a lesson from my current job there would be no new jobs there, my peers would change, forcing me to change and develop, but all of this was with-out conscious goals – I just drifted, so putting things on hold and studying hard really put me under pressure and has now made me look at my life and what I’d really like to do with it I’m still not really 100% sure but at least now I’m looking at it

So for me while I was in that drifting along mode (I think it’s sometimes referred to ‘living your life by default’)  I had some dreams but had set no goals, I needed to put them all aside, set my goal and push myself, and struggle a bit to get to where I am today.

 

So where did it get me? 

 

I have a good job that provides well for my family, it does not pull me away from my family as many of my other jobs used too, I am now consciously looking at what I really want to do, I recognise the need for physical activity and meditation, and it’s all helping myself and my family, even though my wife does not see why I am so interested in personal development and how it could help anything (too “new agey”) I can see marked improvements in our relationship on both sides, I feel more positive than I have for around 10 years, I feel more confident in the advice I can give others in various areas and I want to write my experiences so others might read it one day and say ‘hey maybe I should give that a try’.

So should you do it? Only if it suits…. I know that’s not an answer but to be honest there is no answer this is how it happened for me, maybe it would work for you and maybe not.

 

The most important thing is to act, to do something and not just drift along in life or bury yourself in “looking but not doing”

Hello world!

Hi I’m Ian McGregor, and welcome to MACA’s Musings.

 This is my first time blogging so be gentle :-) 

I intend to used this blog to develop my skills in blogging and to develop my writing in general, before I actually register my own domain name and have my own web site and blog.

I’ll most likely be talking about Brewing beer, Personal development, Engineering/Trade skills in Australia, and health here, but might get off track from time to time.

The decision to start this blog came mostly from some of the personal development work I’ve been doing lately, where I realised there is no point just thinking about things I need to get my thoughts ‘out there’, other people hopefully will find useful infomration in what I have to say, or even better offer information that is useful to me.

I look forward to your comments

Cheers

MACA