Live in Oslo and need malt?

Then you might be interested to know that there is an initiative to collectively order 2000 kgs of various Thomas Fawcett malts from the UK.

More information here (in Norwegian).

Norwegian Homebrewing Competion 2009

What: The annual festival where homebrewers serve their own beers to the public, which get to vote for their favourite beer of the evening. Homebrewers also compete in five other categories (bottled entries submitted earlier), including strong/specialty beers, light lager, dark, larger, light ale, and dark ale. The winners are announced towards the end of the evening.

When: Saturday March 28th 2009, 19:00-00:00 CET
Where: Studentersamfunnet Bislet, Pilestredet 52, Oslo, Norway.
Cost: 130 NOK (100 NOK if you're a member of Norbrygg)

This year's event is going to be a great one as the best beer from the strong/specialty category will be brewed at Nøgne Ø and will later be available at Vinmonopolet (the government liquor shops). Cred to Nøgne Ø for doing this! Also, the 30 best beers served at the event will be awarded with 12 liter brand new Cornelius kegs. Plus there'll be lots of other prizes. In another words, there is no reason not to participate this year.


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I'll be there serving my beer. This year I'll have the Imperial Kölsch (brew #66), Russian Imperial Stout (brew #67 with Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans and MacAllan 10 yo cask strength single malt whisky) and Raspberry Melomel (brew #70) on. See you there!

Brew #70: Raspberry Melomel

I have been planning to make a mead for a long time, and have had 4 kgs of Argentinian honey lying around for almost a year, and I have now finally done something with it.

It went pretty well, but I made a couple of mistakes along the way. First I miscalculated the final volume. Originally I had aimed for 13 liters of water and honey, but ended up with 18 liters (21 liters after adding the raspberry). I also ended up fermenting the mead a too little cold and the sweet mead yeast crapped out at 1.060 (I suspect because of the pH level), so I had to add some really old Lalvin D-47 from 2005(!). That boosted the fermentation, and it went down to 1.008 just a couple of days later.

The melomel is now in the secondary, but I'll keg it soon. From the samples I've had so far it is promising, and I'm sure I'll try making more meads in the future. I plan to serve it not carbonated.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-06.

Style:
Raspberry Melomel
Type:
21 liters. No heat.
Ingredients:
4200g Argentinian honey
500g Norwegian Raspberry honey
2840g Red Raspberry puree, Oregon
1.5ts Fermaid K (day 0)
1ts Fermaid K (day 2)
1ts Fermaid K (day 5)
Yeast:
2 packs Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead, and 2 packs of Lalvin D-47 after a few days
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
17 C and 22 C

OG: 1.085 FG: 1.006 abv: 9.0% (estimated)

Brew #69: Russian Imperial Stout

This beer is a straightforward Russian Imperial Stout, which I gave a long three hour boil. Because of that I got a reasonably good mash efficency given that I only did two batch sparges. I have bottled a couple of liters, but will put the rest of it in a keg with two Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans infused with MacAllan 10 yo cask strength single malt whisky.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-03.

Style:
Russian Imperial Stout
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
100 EBC (Black)
Bitterness:
49 IBU
Malts:
4500g Golden Promise, Thomas Fawcett
4100g Pale malt, Pearl, Muntons
800g Aromatic malt, Dingemans
500g Roasted Barley
500g Special B
500g Flaked Barley
300g Crystal malt, 150 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
150g Carafa I Special, Weyermann
350g Wheat Malt Extract (for OG correction only)
Mash:
65C, 75 min
62% efficiency
Hops:
50g Magnum pellets, 14% 60 min
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
30g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
2 packs Safale US-05 (rehydrated)
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.092 FG: 1.026 abv: 8.7%

Brew #68: American Pale Ale

I love hoppy beers, and here we have another one. I haven't really dry hopped my beers for a long time now. I did it on two IPAs earlier, but was not happy with the results. This time, I can say after having tasted the result, the result of dry hopping is quite impressive. The beer ended up with a great hop aroma and flavour. I guess I could have left the dry hops on the beer for a longer period, but I'm very happy with the result, and will definitely dry hop many more beers in the future. This is also the first time I've dry hopped with pellets. I've been a little afraid of getting too much hop debris in the beer, but that seems to be no problem as the hop pellets sank to the bottom quickly. The beer is still young, but there is quite a bit of yeast still in suspension in the keg, so I'll leave it in the kegerator a little longer before a draw a final conclusion. The FG is surprisingly high, even though the beer does not taste sweet at all.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-03.

Style:
American Pale Ale
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
23 EBC (Amber)
Bitterness:
39 IBU
Malts:
5700g Pale malt, Pearl, Muntons
400g Melanoidin malt, Weyermann
400g Crystal malt, 150 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
Mash:
67C, 90 min
65% efficiency
Hops:
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 60 min
40g Centennial pellets, 9.1%, 15 min
40g Centennial pellets, 9.1%, 1 min
60g Amarillo pellets, 8.4%, 1 min
56g Columbus pellets, 12.2%, dry hop for 4 days
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 1272 American Ale II (0.9 liter starter on magnetic stirrer)
Boil:
75 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.053 FG: 1.017 abv: 4.7%

A summary

Courtesy of Wordle.

Homebrewing event at Nøgne Ø

Last weekend the kind people at Nøgne Ø, the Norwegian microbrewery, had invited home brewers to an event at their brewery. I went there together with about 40 other home brewers.

The goal of the day was to brew 800 liters of Nøgne Ø Saison. The batch was then to be split 40-ways, so that everybody could take 20 liters home to ferment and alter it at will. The attendes were encouraged to make the most of it. My twist will be to add a can of Oregon Apricot puree and use a Belgian yeast blend (not Saison yeast).


When registering for the event one had to decide which yeast from the White Labs catalog to use. This yeast had arrived just a few days before, so it was very fresh. I chose this yeast:

WLP575 Belgian Style Ale Yeast Blend
A blend of Trappist type yeast (2) and one Belgian ale type yeast. This creates a versatile blend that can be used for Trappist type beer, or a myriad of beers that can be described as 'Belgian type'.
Attenuation: 74-80%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 20-24°C (68-75°F)
Alcohol Tolerance: Medium-High

Nøgne Ø uses WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale Yeast in their own version. Interestingly, quite a few also ordered vials of wild yeast and bacteria. It'll be interesting to try out the end results.

If I remember correctly the recipe contains lager malt and wheat. The hop additions are East Kent Goldings for bittering, Hallertau (Mittelfrüh I presume) for flavour and Saaz for aroma. OG was 1.057 and the FG usually 1.015 (something they thought was a little too high for a Saison). They ferment the beer at 25°C from the start to the finish. Their web site also says 25 IBUs and 6.5% abv.


The agenda looked like this:

10:00 Welcome and a walkthrough of the brewery
11:00 Introduction to brewing
12:00 Transfer wort to sparging vessel
12:30 Sparging
12:30 Lunch and beer
14:00 Introduction to yeast and yeast handling
15:00 Boil wort
16:30 Transfer to whirlpool
17:30 Chilling and transfer to fermentation tanks

After the brewing session quite a few went downtown to have dinner and drink more beer.


On 21st of March there will be another event where everybody meets at the brewery and tastes each others beer.

I enjoyed the event immensely. Meeting other enthusiastic home brewers was a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to the tasting next month. In any case this is a great thing for Nøgne Ø to be doing. I like their attitude and their eagerness of being open about everything. There are no secrets in brewing, quite the attitude of most home brewers. Cheers!

Brew #67: Porter/Crowberry Porter

It has been a while since I made a dark beer, and it has been too long since I made a porter. With its 7.0% abv this is a fairly robust porter.

Knut Albert has been kind enough to mention that crowberries might do well in a porter. I agree. Last year I had a sample of Haandbryggeriet's lingonberry porter, an experimental brew that they had made but did not put into production. It was an excellent beer with an interesting bittering quality that balanced the roasted malts in a nice way. It is sad that they decided not to take it further. The reason was supposedly the high production costs. Crowberries should be quite similar in flavour.

I found 330 ml bottles of crowberry juice at a Helios store here in Oslo. 1 liter juice to 11 liters of porter in the secondary. Interestingly I could not see any visible fermentation activity in the secondary, so I guess there's not much fermentable sugars in the juice. It is anything but sweet, but I think it'll lend a nice balance it the beer. The juice is organic and should not contain any preservatives.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) to mash and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-26 and bottled 2009-02-10.

Style:
Porter
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
76 EBC (Very dark brown)
Bitterness:
35 IBU
Malts:
6000g Pale malt, Castle
850g Aromatic malt, 100 EBC, Castle
800g Münchener malt, Weyermann
300g Crystal malt, Castle
300g Special B, Dingemans
300g Chocolate malt (Special II), Weyermann
100g Coffee malt, Castle
Mash:
66C, 90 min
68% efficiency
Hops:
35g Cascade pellets, 5.8% 90 min (first wort hops)
35g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 60 min
25g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 2450 Denny’s Favorite 50, 1 liter starter
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.073 FG: 1.020 abv: 7.0%

Brew #66: Imperial kölsch

The imperial pilsener beer style is a fairly new phenomenon, so why not make an "imperial kölsch" now that I had a fresh kölsch yeast cake? The recipe is pretty much a scaled up version of the kölsch/Czech pilsener hybrid. The Saaz hops have been replaced with Riwaka (formerly known as D Saaz), a very aromatic Saaz breed from New Zealand. It contains twice the oil content of Czech Saaz. As the hop contains a lot of cohumulone (a harsh bittering oil) I thought it best to use Magnum, a cleaner bittering hop for bittering. As I've never used Riwaka before I look forward to see how it compares to its ancestor. The descriptions I've seen sure sounds like it'll do well in a strong and bold pilsener.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) to boil aiming at 50 ppm carbonates.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-21.

Style:
Strong kölsch
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
11 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
51 IBU
Malts:
8000g Pilsener malt, Castle
500g Wheat malt, Weyermann
200g Melanoidin malt, Weyermann
Mash:
65C, 90 min
69% efficiency
Hops:
35g Magnum pellets, 13.5% 60 min
60g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9% 10 min
100g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9% 1 min
40g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9%, dry hop for 4 days
Yeast:
Wyeast 2575 Kölsch II (batch #65 yeast cake).
Boil:
75 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.072 FG: 1.014 abv: 7.6%

Brew #65: Kölsch/Czech Pilsener hybrid

This is an experiment that I've wanted to do for a long time. The beer is a hybrid between a Kölsch and a Czech Pilsener. It is brewed with Kölsch yeast and a lot of Czech Saaz hops. There is 10% wheat in the recipe, so the fermentables are closer to a Kölsch than a Pilsener. The batch was split in half, and is fermenting with two different Kölsch strains. I look forward to seeing whether there will be any significant differences between the two strains. It will also be interesting to see if one can make a decent pilsener with an ale yeast.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 0.5ts CaSO4 (gypsum) to enhance the hops.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-04 and bottled 2009-01-21.

Style:
Kölsch/Czech Pilsener
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
8 EBC (Pale yellow)
Bitterness:
42 IBU
Malts:
5300g Pilsener malt, Castle
500g Wheat malt, Weyermann
200g Cara-pils, Weyermann
Mash:
67C, 90 min
72% efficiency
Hops:
110g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 60 min
40g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 15 min
30g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 1 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 2565 Kölsch (0.7 liter starter on magnetic stirrer) and 1 pack Wyeast 2575 Kölsch II (1.0 liter starter).
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.052 FG: 1.011 abv: 5.4%