Vintage 2009 ale brewing

Last Saturday I home brewed what I consider to be the most important brew of the year, my annual Vintage ale. Last years vintage (Panda & Frog home brewery 2008 reserve) was designed as an English style barley wine, coming out at a whopping 1.112 original gravity and abv of 12%. It was matured for 4 months before bottling and I consider it one of my finest brews of all time. This year I have gone for a considerably lower 1.087 OG and aim for around 80% attenuation bringing it to around 9%abv using a yeast strain I have only read about but read good things. The strain in question is White labs own California ale strain, and this was chosen to suit the style being brewed, which is and American style barley wine, mid bronze in color from the use of Marris otter pale malt, Munich, Vienna, Cara and cara vienne malts with 75IBU’s coming from decent quantities of Chinook and Centennial hops.

Another interesting thing about these vintage ales, are that for them I only take the first runnings from the mash and thus only brew 10 liters at a time and bottle into tiny 330ml bottles. This time the run off from the copper was tediously slow with the large amount of hop and trub material in such a small volume. I shall let all know how this one goes.



On a different note, a big congratulations to my Local the John Bull in Alnwick for winning the CAMRA North Northumberland pub of the year last weekend. And this weekend I shall be assisting host a BBQ for a few of my mates and family try my new Autumn Leaves beer as from the previous post. It also appears that by a very close victory, you the readers have voted Hopback Summer Lightning as the beer for the summer, a solid choice.

I am incredibly proud to present!! Exclusively!!!

Note: the pump clip is actually brown and yellow, but my pc seems to think its blue.

Last week I executed my very first brew at Daleside brewery under the supervision of brew master Craig Witty. Moreover, not only was this to be an exclusive Daleside seasonal release, this was a brew designed almost entirely by myself. Autumn Leaves, at 3.4% abv is a deep chestnut brown session ale of subtle malty balance with some nutty texture, woody fruits and some dryness. Word has it this offering will be available in London in the near future via disclosed pub groups. Any fans of session bitters or mild ales this is highly recommended.

The brew day kicked off pretty early at 6.30am as usual, which on any other day I would be jumping with excitement however this was the day after my GBBF adventure and the lack of sleep kept me calm as cows. It was also interesting, as my first experience working in the brew house to watch everyone else carry out my daily duties whilsty I look after my baby upstairs.

Hops, lovely hops

Many differences were noticed between home brewing and using Dalesides kit, more twiddling around with valves to control temperatures, more cleaning, more pipe work to play around with and less use of plastic spoons /paddles. But at the end of the day I felt it went pretty well, and the product was (an artist strives for perfection but never admittedly gets there) rewarding, with fellow staff having mixed opinions but overall finding it pleasant. Not bad for my first little contribution to the brewing world. If anyone finds it, North or South, I would love to know what you thought.

Transfer into fermenter

The next day!

I didnt brew it, it was our friends the yeast

Not hitting target gravity

Some home brewers maybe familiar with the deflated feeling. The one you get from (after six hours of brewing) finding your 1.060 strong ale has actually came out at 1.052. It doesn’t often happen, usually im within about 2 or 3 degrees off target gravity, but this time it was a bit more serious. As as other things the 34 bitterness units I aimed for may have been raised slightly changing the balance of this beer, but its always a good idea to asses where things may have went wrong.

How to hit gravity:

The core principle is to match up the percentage used of each grist component (malt or adjunct) with the extract in litre degrees obtained from each component. From these, and the known volume you’re brewing, you can work out quantitatively how much of each malt you will need to theoretically hit target gravity (given a theoretical 100% efficient extraction).

At this point you need to know the efficiency of your brewing system witch is derived from the difference in what extract you should get from the malts your putting (as just described) in comparison to the extract you actually get in the fermentation vessel. Additionally what you can do is get a gravity reading of wort from the copper (once its full) termed the copper up gravity. Under the same logic you can use this to get a gauge of the efficiency of your mash separation method (whether mash tun, lauter tun or mash filter), and what the gravity of the wort will be in the fermentation vessel. I have often contemplated using this method, but find it takes a little long to bring the temperature of the wort sample down when I have only minutes to return it to the just starting to boil copper.

Mashing in

That’s the basics, some other things to consider are the various factors that effect extracts, including:

Length of the copper boil; boiling longer drives off vapors condensing the worts sugar content. Very simple. In fact some strong ales such as Bass No1 barley wine rely of extreme boil lengths to maximize start gravities.


Malt quality; for example over or under modified malts can give poor extracts that can be harder to ferment due to insufficient wort nitrogen, watch out for them!

The mash separation system used and how the grain is prepared; For example the use of a mash filter over a mash tun gets a higher extract into the copper using a more finely ground grist. Mash tuns require coarsely ground malt that allows the malts husk material to act as a natural filter bed during run off, using a finer grist increases extract but the mash tun user risks losing the natural filtration from the in tact husk material. Secondly the grain is also sensitive to sparging temperature, the hotter the sparge the higher the extract. I tend to sparge around 76-77­­­oC, much higher and you can risk extracting unwanted bitter tannins from the grain.

Mash and wort acidification; Increases extract and run off rates, reduces color formation during the boil but does lower hop alpha-acid isomerization meaning you get less bitterness from the hops used (but that’s a different subject). Mash and wort pH can be tinkered with via various water treatments, the use of acid malts (often used in pilsner and pale lager formulations) and decoction mashing.


A final and very valuable factor is volume; Stopping the run off from the mash tun early leaves you with lesser volume of wort at a higher gravity than if the total volume was collected. Some brewers do this on purpose to then liquor back a controlled volume and hit target gravity, a method called high gravity brewing.


However taking these factors into consideration I have no clear explanation for the reading. The only logical one is that the base malt used was from a stray bag of marris otter at work that was delivered by accident and no malt spec was available for it, so I had to guess at the extract alittle.

A splendid day out at the GBBF

There’s something about British beer that arguably demands some representation. Even if some people think its represented largely by old fat bearded blokes with notebooks. Then there’s the large number of bloggers who take great joy is slagging off CAMRA at any opportunity for undefined goals, contradictory ideals eth. But there is no doubt that the Great British Beer festival wouldn’t be the Great British Beer festival without CAMRA.

And Tuesday August 4th this was where I enjoyed one of my most memorable days for Daleside brewery, representing the brewery, sampling beers (well, it would be rude not to), and having a good chat with the folks from other breweries/collecting successive head brewers and brewery owners autographs. The first of these (surprisingly) was from a New Zealander chap called Kelly Ryan from Thornbridge brewery, my first encounter with (as some call) a new wave radical brewer. As enthusiastic as he was and as much as I wanted to talk about beer, I was in direct competition with the head brewer of the mighty Dark Star brewery, who I also obtained an autograph from. Then as the day went one Dalesides number one Dray, Dave (who I attended the even with) picked out brewer after brewer, autograph after autograph. Everads, Cains, Kelburn, Loddon and the mighty Acorn brewery from Barnsley, as well as splendid chap called Simon Theakson from (you guessed it) Theakstons.

However the main focus of our interests for the evening was the beer on offer, which covered beer from corner of the UK as well as international beers. We also came across an old friend of mine, Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde Mild, one of my all time favorite mild ales, but the beer of the night this time went to Shrelenkeria Rauchbier Urbock. The bock version of the original smoked beer, that certainly has a lot more rich malt substance balancing the smoked malts than other versions of it. Coming in possibly a close second was Hop Devil Ale, by US craft brewer Victory, a hoppy but well balanced amber bronze ale displaying characteristic Chinook hop notes. But after all that excitement it was time to head home, too early for Mellissa Cole’s walk sadly. We are also sorry to have missed Woolpacker Dave, The beer nut and a few autographs such as Nick Stafford, but you can’t do it all and as I said to Dave I think we made good progress. All in a days work.

Ahh home. Geordie beer down south seemed alittle odd at first.

Although from York, Dave enjoyed celebrating his Welsh roots at the Welsh bar.

Bottling Strawberry beer

Today I decided that after 5 weeks of maturation, to bottle my stawberry. The tastings concluded that the strawberries had indeed taken effect (I also noted the peachy pink like colour of the cloudy liquid). The taste was slightly familiar, like commercial examples yet alittle heavier on the alcohols and bitterness. There was also an underpinning acidity to it that seemed to run into the finish, not overpowering but definatly influential.

I also had a try of the single bottle I bottled straight from the FV at the end of the fermentation. In other words the strawberry beer without the strawberries, which (as the fermentation finished early at final gravity 1.016) fobbed quite violently on opening. The beer itself was not suprisingly full of yeast but had almost wheat beer like quailities of chewy bubblegum like notes, probably derived from the 11.3% torrified wheat and 14% wheat malt used in the grist.

At the end of it all only around 3 out of the 4 gallons brewed could be bottled due to the mass of strawberried soaking up significant amounts of beer, and me and Helen agreed it was not a bad yet not impressive strawberry beer. I will see how this one develops in the bottle, but untill then will be more exited about my first visit to the GBBF on tuesday. Hopefully I will be obtaining as many head brewer autographs as possible and bumping into some well known bloggers and beer writers such as Melissa Cole, Dave, Beer Nut, Sausage (not sure if hes going) maybe Ed and others. See you all there.