First BrewZilla Brewday - Golden Ale
Finally got a chance to try out my new equipment. I did try to watch a few YouTube videos in advance but they're so mind numbingly dull I couldn't pay attention. Luckily I’ve used a couple of All-in-one systems at friends before and had a few tips from fellow Homebrew Club users, oh and read the manual too, lol!
I thought I best keep it simple for the first one so went for a Golden Ale with 78.2% Golden Promise, 8.5% Torrified Wheat, 7.6% Dextrin Malt & 5.7% Rolled Oats. Mashed at 66c, sparged at 72c.
First issue was getting the grain into the Malt Pile without spilling it everywhere, I think I might rig up a bit of guttering to help with that in the future, not a major issue though. Next problem was the recirculation pump going to fast and flowing over the edge of the Malt Pipe, this was easily remedied by adjusting the shut off valve to make it slower, thanks to Chris for that solution. After that it was a dream to use, my only other issue being that I accidentally made 30L of beer instead of 20L, lol. I was still going on my losses from the old kit, but at least now I know exactly what volumes to use the next time round.
Anyway, it may have been a simple recipe but I made the most of it by showcasing all this year's homegrown hops. With 5g of Fuggles for 60 minute bittering then 10g Bramling Cross and 20g First Gold for 15 minutes, with the final big charge for the final 5 minutes of 20g Bramling Cross, 25g First Gold and 50g of Fuggles! A little outside of what traditional recipes call for but I've found that later additions give so much more flavour. This is usually used for American hops but I've had great results with English Hops. Really bringing out some unique characteristics you just don't get in commercial English Ales.
So even though I overshot my volumes my efficiency was a lot higher than I predicted at 83%, so the OG came in at 1.033! Which means the Golden Ale is still on style and just 6 points off target and I have 10L extra of it.
I took a bit of a gamble and pitched my Wild Wheat & Barley Cawood Yeast, see what that brings to the table the second time round. Because of the extra volume it did take the wild yeast a while to get going and it’s been pretty slow over the last week, but it is working its way through the sugars.
The next step I decided to do after a week was to look at splitting the batch. Now I was planning a Blackcurrant Stout with this year's harvest but I decided to use them in this beer instead.
I took 1.2kg of homegrown Blackcurrants from the freezer and added 1.5L of water with 500g of dextrose, bringing it up to a simmer for about 10 minutes. Then I filtered out the liquid to add to a secondary fermenter and once it was cooled put about 18L of the Golden Ale on top. That bumped the gravity back up from 1.010 to 1.20.
I’ll leave them both another week I recon, as the Wild Yeast should get down to about 1.003 if it behaves like it did before. I wasn’t 100% sold on the taste of the sample but only time will tell, I shall report back.
