Sunday 25 January 2015

Matilda, The Seductress

The Temptation of the Idler
Albrecht Dürer, 1498
This is the penultimate post (minus the inevitable tasting notes) of my Brewing Vintage Beers Series. Today's beer is  a Belgian Enkel, also known as a Patersbier. This is a style of beer that I wish was much more common - it has all the flavour and complexity of a double or triple, but comes in at less than 5% ABV and thus is quite sessionable. It solves all of the problems of dubbel and tripels; you can imbibe in pint after pint of an Enkel without finding yourself hugging the floor as the room spins around you.

This beer is obviously not a high-gravity beer, so why is it part of the vintage-beer series? The answer is that this isn't just any old beer - it is also a massive stater for one hell of a big beer I'll be brewing (and posting about) in two weeks time, and its also been scaled up to provide a few extra litres of wort to test-ferment a dozen wild yeasts I've isolated over the past year. This is truly a beer with many faces!

To make this beer a good "starter" for producing yeast I am taking the rather unusual route of adding yeast nutrient to what is a beer that wouldn't normally require it - but keep in mind, our goal isn't simply a good beer, but its also healthy yeast at the end of the ferment. Yeast nutrient plus a strong oxygenation will fulfill that goal.

Some may be wondering about the odd name for this beer. I don't want to give too much away, but it is related to one of my favourite novels and also to the name of the strong/vintage beer this beer's yeast cake will be re-pitched into.

Recipe & brew-day notes below the fold...

Recipe & Notes

Matilda, The Corruptor
Belgian Specialty Ale
Type: All Grain Date: 25 Jan 2015
Boil Size: 39.88 lBoil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Volume 35.88 lBrewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %


Ingredients
Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
3.64 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 75.0 %
0.36 kg Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 2 7.5 %
0.19 kg Carafa I (337.0 SRM) Grain 3 3.9 %
0.66 kg Turbinado (10.0 SRM) Sugar 4 13.6 %
29.00 g Northern Brewer [6.10 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 15.3 IBUs
21.82 g Hallertauer [4.80 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 4.5 IBUs
1.5 pkg Trappist High Gravity (Wyeast Labs #3787) [124.21 ml] Yeast 7 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.036 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.046 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.005 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.1 %
Bitterness: 19.8 IBUs Est Color: 17.0 SRM

Mash Profile
Mash Name: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge Total Grain Weight: 4.85 kg
Sparge Water: 33.15 l Grain Temperature: 21.0 C
Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C Tun Temperature: 19.0 C
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE Mash PH: 5.20
Mash Steps
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Mash In Add 11.17 l of water at 74.7 C 66.7 C 60 min
Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (13.09l, 20.07l) of 75.6 C water
Mash Notes: Simple single infusion mash for use with most modern well modified grains (about 95% of the time).
Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Bottle Volumes of CO2: 2.3
Pressure/Weight: 185.28 g Carbonation Used: Bottle with 185.28 g Corn Sugar
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 21.1 C Age for: 30.00 days
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage Storage Temperature: 18.3 C
Notes
-Hit mash-in temp dead-on
-Added first sparge at 85C to raise temp to mash-out
-Used mix of light brown sugar and white sugar to mimic turbinado
-Overshot gravity by quite a bit (1.040 pre-boil gravity!)
Created with BeerSmith

Previous posts in this series

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.