Triple Brewing and How To Go Forth and Multiply

Something we've been doing for quite few years now is triple brewing - not brewing tripel, the Belgian strong blond ale as in Westmalle Tripel or Chimay White - but simply doing three brews consecutively into one fermenting vessel. If one's brewlength (the amount of each brew, i.e., 30 barrels) and FV capacity are the same then there is no need for such extravagant behaviour, however if one has a FV thrice as large as the brewlength, then doing three brews consecutively into said FV will work effectively. The brews can go in three days in a row, which what we do currently with Bigger Bertha (its other name being CT7)  shown below, or straight after each other, without a break, if one is shift brewing around the clock. The first at 8am, the second at 3pm and the third at 10 pm.

Our regular brewlength is 30 bbls (barrels) or in metric speak, 50hl (hectolitres or 100 ltres). We have 4 sizes of FVs - 20, 30, 60 & 120 bbls which means most of our brewing is in 30 bbl aliquots. The two smaller 20 bbl FVs get  brews of 20 bbls and the 30 bbl FVs get the standard 30 bbl brewlengths. But for the two larger FVs (FV8 at 60 bbl and CT7 at 120 bbl, the latter revelling in its status as a dual-purpose vessel - fermenting and conditioning) the dark arts of double and triple brewing must be practised. Those of you with a mathematical bent will be asking yourselves why we don't do quadruple brewing into the largest tank being of four times our standard brewlength of 30 bbls. The answer is we need some freeboard or space above the fermenting wort for the yeast head to rise up. And indeed it does. Especially with the stronger beers. For Blackfriar, our 7% Scotch Ale, for example, we'll brew 3 x 20bbl brews into FV8 and it likes to foam up with serious intent. 

I was reminded of this today by our summer placement student from Heriot-Watt University, Liam, who asked how much yeast we pitch into a double or triple brew. A good question. We pitch 10 litres of yeast slurry to give 18 million cells per ml of wort for the first brew of 30 bbls which is oxygenated for 30 minutes. As the cells take up the nutrients and the oxygen present in the wort, the yeast cells multiply sufficiently to be able to cope with the next brew coming in. This second brew only gets 10 minutes of oxygenation, which allows the now-multiplied yeast to grow even more to be able to ferment the doubled brew in the FV and also, after the third brew is added without any oxygen, to continue the fermentation to completion. A simple tale of yeast going forth into the fermenter and multiplying.

Lia Fail yeast head getting going in style

It's important to get enough yeast cells to ferment out the wort but we don't want too many otherwise the beer will have the wrong flavour, and beer is all about flavour. Having the yeast multiply, generally fourfold during a fermentation, is good for our flavour characteristics, and it's also a lot easier and simple to pitch 15 litres into a brew than 60 litres. 

As far as yeast vessels are concerned, we use simple 25 ltr drums into which yeast is run, merely by opening the valve and letting the yeast slurry flow in gently, from the bottom of the cone of an FV of one of the previous week's fermentations.

The drums are stored in a fridge at 3 degrees C where they sit until needed for brewing over the following 6 days. I wouldn't really want to leave the yeast in the fridge longer than a week as it will begin to lose viability and vitality quite rapidly after then. Pitching involves the yeast being pumped into the FV in-line with the oxygenated wort using our yellow peristaltic pump shown below. 

This pump from the peristaltic experts, Watson-Marlow, works like a hand milking a cow, gently squeezing the milk down a teat into the milk-bucket, by gently squeezing the yeast through a flexible hose (the clear hose coming out of the right-hand side of the pump) into the fast-flowing wort coming from the heat-exchanger and thus into the FV, getting good mixing with the wort in the process. 

Our pitching set above, where wort travels along the green hose and the pale beige yeast slurry is coming in from the left. We find this method of pitching gives consistent results in fermentation and flavour and it certainly beats opening up a fermenter lid and pouring in 15 litres of slurry and helps avoid infections from wild yeasts and bacteria which will do no good for the taste of the beer. And what we're all about is, of course, the taste of the beer! Like in this pint of Thrappledouser...

Slàinte! Ken

Brewer on tour - from Blair Atholl to Athol, Massachusetts.

As you'll have noticed the blogs have been a wee bit thin on the ground recently. Mea culpa, as I've been overseas to the United States of America. Athol in Massachusetts to be precise, helping the town celebrate its 250th anniversary, in my humble capacity as an Atholl Highlander, the Duke of Atholl's personal bodyguard and army, based at Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Perthshire. We were away for two weeks, ten days in Athol staying with host families, then one night in Boston, finishing up with 4 days in Bermuda, opening the first ever Bermuda Highland Games, being billeted in the Royal Bermudan Regiment's Warwick Camp. I'll start off with some high points of our stay in Athol.

The very fine Derek and the late great Will Sellars - who were tasked with looking after Niall and me in Athol. We think we won the jackpot with the host pairings - the best people who could not do enough for us. Will, on the right, passed away unexpectedly a week after our return. A tragic loss to all who knew him, as he was an upstanding gentleman - a Virginian and a Scot of ancient descent - immensely proud of his heritage and very knowledgeable of Scottish and American History. We only knew him for 6 days, but I felt he was like an elder brother. A caring, fun and kind man, ever ready to stand up for those in need. A good storyteller and a fine singer too. We'll all miss him.

The bar in our host's house - being a good 25 minute drive away from the centre of Athol, it was a very pleasant room to spend some relaxation time. The fridge was full of lovely beers - Wachusett and Berkshire Brewing, to name but a few. As one sipped at the fine ales, through the window (seen from the garden in the first picture of this piece above, to the left of the flags) could be seen a bird feeder - not for sparrows or chaffinches, but for hummingbirds. Amazing tiny birds - stunningly irridescent and beautiful - a real treat for us.

One of the Athol hosts, Jerome, in his garage beside his pride and joys - his classic XJS Jaguar and his three barrel self-built brewery. He had a 'kegerator' in the kitchen which contained 4 kegs of his homebrews on tap - excellent beer and very tasty indeed. A good brewer for sure. I suspect there a quite a few microbrewers in this country who could learn a thing or two from Jerome. One of our Atholl Highlanders did very well staying with Jerome and his wife Liz! Four beers on tap in the kitchen - Wow! Super people who certainly know how to put on a cracking party.

'Hey, let's go and visit another brewery...'
'Ok, if you insist...'

And what a brewery it was. Berkshire Brewing Company, in South Deerfield, in Western Massachusetts, has been going 19 years. Founded by homebrewers Chris and Gary, it's a really friendly homely brewery that brews fantastic beer. I felt so much at home there on our tour with my fellow Highlanders Ross and Kevin and their host Don. Here we are, below, in the Dick Schatz taproom inside the brewery. The late Dick Schatz was one of the band of helpers in the Berkshire Brewing Co. (BBC)'s early days, when friends would come down and pitch in unpaid with hand bottling or scrubbing out tanks. He left his huge collection of American Breweriana to BBC and they honoured his memory with this lovely bar.

Out in the fermenting cellars. Like us, they pretty much brew ale, with one or two bottom-fermenting styles. BBC brews about four times as much as we do at Inveralmond, but there is still the same attention to detail and passion for the beer.

Ssshhh... Beer sleeping quietly in the lagering cellars.

The growler cleaning team and a real jolly pair. A growler is the standard term for the brown half-gallon flagon used by most new breweries in the US, seen coming out of the washer.

A sneaky shot from the men's restroom - complete with the super homebrewing magazine, Zymurgy. If you're serious about homebrewing, get a subscription - just google it. It comes from Boulder in Colorado, but it's high quality homebrewing information with good articles and plenty of practical knowledge.

Back in the taproom with a shot of the full beer range on draught. If you get the chance to pop in, do. You'll not be disappointed. Great beer, great people with a great attitude. As the BBC t-shirts say, 'Things are looking up!'

Next brewery - ok, we were there as the Atholl Highlanders doing gigs here there and everywhere, but we did in fact do a show at this next brewery. In Merrimack in New Hampshire (state motto on every number plate - 'Live Free or Die!') is the Anheuser-Busch Budweiser Brewery. The smallest of their 16 breweries in the US, it was still the size of a small city.

Real live brewing heritage, folks, Bud-style. Not our great piper Ross - he's just there to give the brewery behind some scale - but the plastic horse, Big Scott, who was one of the renowned Budweiser Dray Clydesdales. There is a huge stable block here, where they keep one of the Clydesdale teams. The horses seem to be a bigger attraction than the beer, so much was made of them during our tour.

The famous Budweiser USA beechwood chip lagering tanks. There were seemingly  hundreds of them.  The tour took in the major points of brewing Bud, from the malt and rice rail wagons, through the brewhouse with its rice cookers, mash tuns, lauter tuns and hop kettles and on to the fermentation cellars. One of the interesting things about Bud is that these lagering tanks, laid inside up to a foot deep with beechwood chips to allow the yeast to continue to mature the beer for 21 days by remaining in contact with the beer rather than flocculating and settling on to the vessel floor, are krausened, or primed, with a percentage of freshly fermenting beer. A traditional German practice, but not unsurprising, as most of the older US brewing techniques came from Germany. Quite a labour-intensive operation - adding the chips and then taking them out afterwards all by hand to clean and so on. Nice to see it still continued by a Very Large Brewery.  

An Inveralmond T-shirt smuggled inside the sanctum sanctorum of the brewery tasting room. I was expecting the security heavies to hustle me out double-quick!

The famous New England Clambake, put on for us by the Athol 250 Committee, as seen in the musical 'Carousel', although there may be more lobster visible than clam. Truly sensational. A big fire within the stone cicle is started, then plenty of seaweed laid on top, then buckets of fresh clams and lobster, then covered with more seaweed and finally a tarpaulin. This allows the steam from the wet seaweed cook the seafood to perfection. Delicious.

The Blind Pig, Athol. One of the Great Pubs of the World. I cannot recommend the Pig enough - great staff, great customers and great pub grub, topped off with a superb selection of crafty brews on draught. A beer festival in itself. The beer fridge at the end of the bar holds a cornucopia of first-rate New England micros - go visit and enjoy. Summer opening hours 11am - late M-F, closed Sat/Sun.

Friendly folk beside the flowers - always like a bar that has fresh flowers in a vase on the bar. The locals kept buying us beer and we felt this was a wonderful and honourable tradition that we should indulge ourselves in. Thanks everyone! The hospitality was overwhelming and humbling, but we did give as good as we got. One of the pipers Ross, already seen in these notes, got up his pipes and stood up on the bar cranking out a few good tunes for us to sing along to, then he would go into what became known as 'the Death March' - he would step off the bar on to a bar stool in time with the beat and then off into mid-air without looking, expecting us to scrabble madly about placing bar stools under his feet as he marched around the bar on to the hastily-placed bar stools! Incredibly, each time this happened, his foot would land on to a stool just in time. Nerve-wracking for us rushing around with the stools, but hilarious to watch!

The Pig in all her glory - kitted out in fine Scottish style, wearing her own Athol 250th Anniversary Medal (on the purple ribbon) which we were all presented with in the Town Hall at a grand ceremony after a march through the town with colours flying and fixed bayonets. In the soaking rain, I might add, but it didn't detract from the occasion, merely add to the heightened emotions.

Young Niall and I flanking Carol and Deb, who was also looking after us in excellent fashion, from the Athol Town Library, proudly showing us the bold extension plans for the venerable building. Ah yes, Culture - I remember it well...

Get on the bus, get off the bus. Where's the next gig? What are playing? Who are we playing for?

Some  post-gig lite refreshment

To be continued...Slàinte, Ken

Beer is Art - Can Art be Beer?

I've often thought that Brewing is an Art, some say a Black Art, but I would tend to promote the concept of the result of Brewing, that is, Beer, being Art, since the activity of Brewing itself has more than a touch of Alchemy - turning base materials into something precious. Beer undoubtedly is a thing of beauty, deemed valuable and, moreover, gives satisfaction too, and it could be argued that there can be nothing more enticing after a hard day's work than a foaming glass of ale, created by the brewer as artist for his or her patron, the customer.

Whether Art is Beer is a more difficult question to answer, but I have been assisted in this task by the above installation. I took the photo in Prague, at Klub Architekturu, in Bethlehem Place, back in April this year. The tank drilled out with hundreds of holes to give it a giraffe-like look is a former 200hl lagering tank. Beer would mature inside for months before heading off for racking into kegs. Here as an Art Installation it underscores the power and might of the yeast in the maturing beer, creating the bubbles of carbon dioxide at the near freezing temperatures of the lagering cellar over the 2 to 3 months of maturation. The holes cut into the the tank represent the these bubbles. Art as Beer? Well I think so.

I'm off to Prague tomorrow morning to bring back some of this incredible yeast so that we can brew some more of our Sunburst Pilsner and if I'm lucky I might find some more art to share with you.

Na Zdravi,

Ken

From the Gleam of Burnished Copper to the Starbright Sheen of Stainless Steel

Came across some old snaps from my brewing past the other day so I thought I'd share them with you.

AD 1995. A young(ish) Ken standing beside his pride and glory - the 100hl wort kettle and lauter tun of the Redback Brewery in Melbourne. The copper brewhouse was a German 1951 Ziemann beauty and I used to brew the award-winning South German-style wheat beer 'Redback', a Munich Dark Lager and a Bohemian pilsner, basking in the copper gleam! The copper had to be polished with huge tubs of Brasso every year - a two-day labour of love...

AD 2000. Cleaning the original Inveralmond mash tun at the old premises. Ah, the power of the green scratchy pad! But as you are probably well aware, cleanliness is next to Godliness. This is the mash tun that won us the 2001 Champion Beer of Scotland.

AD 2011. Beside Big Bertha with her 100 hl of Blackfriar due for Finland. This is the tank that produced the Blackfriar that won Gold at the SIBA 2011 Strong Bitter Competition in Edinburgh last week.
You could perhaps call this piece from the full head of curly brown locks to the glistening pate of receding hairlines!

Ah memories...

Slainte, Ken

Santa's Swallie grainout is Go!

Here's an action shot of Duncan, our latest addition to the Downriver Barleymen - an anagram for guess what? Answers on a postcard, please.

But to our blog of today...He's graining out or removing the spent grain or draff from the mash tun and he's holding a shovel, yet he's not digging out the mash tun, as we have commissioned a big auger, or Archimedes' Screw, for taking the spent grain directly from the mash tun into the hopper and then down to the bottom of the auger and up through the wall and then dropping into the awaiting trailer, as shown below.

We're thrilled with the auger and how it works and it means that the inside of the brewery is much tidier and cleaner without the big boxes that we used to dig the grain out into and furthermore it gives us more floor space to put more fermenters/conditioning tanks/malt pallets...Hooray!

For the beer enthusiasts out there, the spent grain in the pictures is from this year's first brew of Santa's Swallie.

I think this means that the festive season appproaches, so I'd better get on with the Xmas presents...

Slàinte, Ken

ps Anagram unscrambled - Inveralmond Brewery

Out with the Old - In with the New...

We had a few wee tears welling up in our collective eyes this morning, as our old 10-barrel brewery - mash tun, copper, hot and cold liquor tanks together with 3 FVs plus assorted odds and ends - was loaded on to the lorry above. Destination South to Paul at Northumbrian Real Ale, whom we wish the best of fortune and fun brewing great beer on what was really good kit for us. We did over 2000 brews on it over 12 years before we outgrew it and got to know it all quite well. But nothing stays the same, so we're getting ready inside the brewery to commission our new 120 barrel conditioning tank below (CT7 at the moment) which is being constructed up in Drummuir (in a former distillery, by the way) by the same folk who made the FVs on the lorry above. The dimpling on the sides forms part of the cooling jackets, which will enable us to keep the maturing beer cold, but they'll be hidden by the 50mm of insulation and a thin stainless steel outer skin.

So here's a toast to the old and a welcome to the new!

Slàinte, Ken

Wood Fired Beer!

Here's a wee pic of my first brewery - Leederville, Perth, Western Australia, circa 1991. Wood-fired - no electric or gas, just a firebox for heating.

We've been having a bit of a home-brew discussion in the brewery this week, as 3 of us are regular practitioners of this dark art, so I had a look at home for some relevant snaps.

To those of a technical bent, there will be seen a mash tun, insulated with wood (1'' x 2'' dressed all-round for the carpenter amongst you), hydrometer, sparge liquor tank - with patented slotted spoon sparge distribution system - Redhead matches and pencil (why pink I cannot remember) for brewing notebook. The wort running into the 10 gallon copper cauldron - it's the old clothes washhouse copper in the shed at the bottom of my garden- was for an 120/- Edinburgh Strong Ale. The boil itself should have taken 90 minutes, but my pals and I were having so much fun chopping up the old blocks of jarrah, an Australian really hardwood, to feed the firebox underneath that the boil lasted four hours! Had to keep adding water to keep the gravity down....

The beer was called Flaming Copper Cauldron and had an adequate strength of 7.7% abv. Tasting it was like a leap back into Scotland's brewing heritage - strong, heady, dark, rich, malty and sweet, oh so sweet, but still luscious and lasting...I even won Homebrewer of the Year with it.

Times like these, oh they were the days...but now we have Blackfriar. Huzzah!

Slàinte, Ken

Student Daze

We've had a young brewing student, Liam, from Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, over the last two months learning about brewing at the coal face, far away from the Hallowed Groves of Academe and the Search for Enlightenment.

He has been accompanied by young Czech brewing student Alesh Potesil, below, from Pivovarsky Dum in Prague, for the past three weeks, in learning the ropes in a production brewery specialising in ale, unlike the pilsner beers he knows well.

Chez Inveralmond, the daily quest for wisdom is relatively simple, yet complex: for example - how to get the young beer from fermenter into conditioning tanks and with which hoses and pumps and which bit goes where without having a beer fountain (much more fun and funnier than that of chocolate - if it's someone else's doing) or getting the wrong hoses connected to the wrong tank, thus leading to very grim-faced head brewer and an ashen-faced student.

Therefore the motto here is similar to that of carpenters, measure twice, cut once. In our case, check route of beer twice, then open valve. Liam has been doing a grand job and is discovering that practical brewing, as opposed to higher level microbiology, is very much rooted in common sense and maintaining high standards of physical awareness - e.g., where will that cask roll off the pallet and on to whose foot; how best to bang in cask tap with a mallet without the afore-mentioned beer fountain; holding a heavy beer-filled hose with left hand and connecting hose nut on to valve thread with right hand; listening to the cooling pumps to check all is in order; etc etc.

Alesh, in his turn, has been discovering the joys of infusion mashing with fully-modified malt (without the typical decoctions and multi-temperature mashes with under-modified czech malt) together with our crazy (in his eyes) temperatures for fermenting the wort (18.5 instead of 8 degrees C) and maturation of one week for ale unlike the two months he's used to.

It's vital in the brewery to have an understanding of the science of brewing, but equally it's essential to have an understanding of how beer works, as a beverage, as a social relaxant and convivial accompaniment as well as how the art of making beer enhances our lives and does its small bit in improving the human condition - in addition to getting the process right!

Having the opportunity to take on a student every year is great for us and them as they can learn more practical brewing and management skills in 2 weeks with us than 2 years of textbook study. And we can learn about the latest trends in music, how an ipod works and which nightclubs to avoid...or not!

Slainte, Ken

2,4,6,8 Let's all Coagulate!

What's all this stuff in my pint? Well it's not yeast this time and it's not even beer yet! The pint glass shows the 'cold break', from the rapidly cooled copper wort sample, dropping slowly as the flocs or little lumps of protein gather together or coagulate and fall to the bottom of the glass.

These proteins precipitate from the brilliantly clear hot wort as it is cooled and if we get a clear cold wort with what we call a 'good cold break' at the bottom of the glass like in the picture above, there is much rejoicing in the brewhouse, for it means that we shall have clarity in the beer. Without a good cold break, that is, one which does not settle out well and remains as a murky, cloudy wort, then there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth as this certainly means clarification issues ahead.

What the cold break tells us is that the wort has been boiled vigorously and strongly and for long enough (60 - 90 minutes) so that the ultra-microscopic protein particles are flung together at their iso-electric point, the pH at which the numbers of positive and negative particles are equal, and stick together to form large flocs - the 'hot break', which separates out leaving crystal clear wort in the copper. If the boil is not vigorous the wort will generally remain turbid - a bad word in a brewery!

However the cold break is a lovely sight to a brewer and is more proof that beer is a protein drink!

Slainte, Ken

New for old! Our Laboratory Lives!

As you probably know, we have always been very careful in analysing our beer to improve it and to maintain the consistency of the flavours. The picture above shows our old laboratory techniques in yeast vitality and viability. I'm on the right with the lorgnette and sample flask and young Grima, our trainee brewer, is on the left with Richard, who started his brewing career in the lab of a long-gone Edinburgh brewery, in the middle. We are very fortunate to have our new lab, pictured below, with its state of the art equipment, which now has pride of place in the brewery itself, thus clearing space in the kitchen for the toaster and a new kettle.

Slainte, Ken

Live Brewing Action # 4 - Hubble Bubble and Trubble!

Live Brewing Action (the series) continues with a wee video of the Ossian wort boiling for all its worth in the kettle.

We brewers are called thus for our habit of boiling. We've heard the expression 'putting on a brew' for boiling the kettle for a cup of tea or coffee, but in the brewer's world, putting on a brew means boiling the wort. We boil for several reasons - to sterilise the wort to avoid any off-tasting bacterial infections, to evaporate any excess water to reach the correct initial specific gravity for the beer, to extract the bittering resins and aromatic essential oils from the hops and to ensure clarity in the beer with a vigorous boil by clumping together unwanted protein hazes with hop tannins, which become the trub (hence trubble of the title) or sediment after the boil is finished.

The quality of the vid isn't that great but you can see that there's plenty going on in there.

Slainte! Ken

There's a new kid in town!

Well, it's been a while since I last posted a blog, what with the festive season and the seriously wintry weather we've been having. First I'd like to wish all our readers and drinkers a Happy New Year and toast them with a pint of our new brew fresh out in the pubs from the conditioning tank - Duncan's Inspirational Pale Ale! That is a picture of my first pint of the brew in a pub. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to it...

As you can see it's a scrumptious beer, inspired by the India Pale Ales of yesteryear - hoppy, bitter and golden. At 4.4% it has a good quaffing strength and with a spicy hoppy bouquet from Czech Saaz hops together with gentle floral notes from the noble Goldings, there's plenty to keep hopheads happy. Malty in the mouth and finishing with a goodly drying bitterness, it's tip-top to push the boat out on a journey into the Wonderful World of Beer.

I hope you all enjoy Duncan's IPA, I know I will!
Slàinte, Ken

Planet Yeast

In the words of a very wise man, ''That's no moon, that's a yeast sample under the microscope''... It does look a bit moonish, but the craters aren't craters, they are yeast cells. I took this photo with my ordinary camera, just using the Macro/close up feature, and holding the lens right over one of our microscope eyepieces. To the eye, what one sees is more like the picture below, but the joys of photography gives this interesting view of Planet Yeast. Each cell is between 5 -10 micrometres across (1 micrometre is a thousandth of a millimetre), so teensy-weensy is the correct technical size.

We always have a look at our yeast before we add it to the wort in the fermenting vessel to make sure it's in good condition before it does its fermenting, eating up the wort sugars to create alcohol, CO2 and the flavour.
You can see the cells are mainly in little clumps, or flocs, because at the end of a fermentation when the young beer is nearly ready and we start to cool the tank down to 6 degrees C, the cells tend to clump together or flocculate. This is just a Latin-based word meaning to clump together like sheep in a flock. When they flocculate, the yeast cells sink down to the bottom of the FV, where we can draw off the yeast after 36 hours. We brew ale and we do use an ale yeast, but it is a bottom-cropping, top-fermenting strain. We select some of the yeast from one of the brews each week to brew with the following week, so that we are continually repitching from week to week. This week is the 523rd generation of our current yeast stock.

We are very grateful to our yeast because it does the hard work to create the complex fermentation flavours in our beers and we would have any beer without it!

Thank you, our wee yeastie beasties!

Slainte, Ken

Malt for Beginners

Here is some Pale Ale Malt which is the base for all our ales. Malt is barley that has been germinated (or grown) for a few days to allow enzymes in the grain to turn the hard concrete-like starch into a crumbly soft form easily dissolved into water. Then the malt is dried and cured or kilned in a huge oven. The drying and kilning processes take many forms which give us many different kinds of malt. Pale Ale Malt is the one which is merely dried then very lightly kilned. Pale Ale Malt will account for at least 85% of the grist (or the grain bill) of any of our ales. Other malts can be Caramel, Crystal, Dark Crystal or Chocolate Malts to name but a few of those that we use. Below there's a shot of 4 kinds of malt that we use every week.

From L to R we have Pale Ale, Caramel, Dark Crystal and Chocolate Malt. You can see that the colours are getting darker with each type. Caramel and the Crystal Malts are caramelised, by stewing the wet grain at 65C so that the enzymes in the malt go one stage further by turning the starch into sugars, then the heat is raised and the moisture is allowed to evaporate so that the sugars inside the grain crystallise (hence crystal in the name) and caramelise giving rich luscious toffee flavours. The more the malt is caramelised, the darker the colour. The Chocolate Malt (named for its resemblance, not taste, to the bean!) on the right is very dark and roasted much like a coffee bean, more like espresso coffee and even has the aroma of coffee. In brewing terms all the malts have a colour number - Pale Ale is around 4 - 6, Caramel Malt 25 -35, Crystal 125 -150, Dark Crystal 400 and Chocolate about 1100.

Beer gets its malty characters and colour from the malt types used in the mash tun. As I said before, Pale Ale Malt or Pale Malt as we tend to call it, makes up the majority of a brew, but we'll add some of the darker malts depending on the flavour we want. Ossian, a golden ale, has less than 4% of its grist as the very lightly coloured Caramel Malt, whereas Lia Fail, quite a dark, strong and more robust flavoured brew, has just less than 2% of the Dark Crystal and just over 1% of the Chocolate Malt. The darker the malt, the less is needed to make a substantial difference to the colour and flavour. A normal stout, which you cannot see through in a pint glass, for example, usually has no more than 8% of the highly roasted Chocolate Malt to give it that coffee-like, almost burnt-biscuity character with the rest of the grist being Pale Malt.

If, however, we only use a small proportion, about 2% say, of highly-coloured malt, such as Dark Crystal, we can get a coppery, amber hue with just enough of the luscious caramel richness of that special malt as in Santa's Swallie, which we brewed for export to the USA and Scandinavia last month.

Merry Christmas, when it comes and may it be malty!
Slàinte, Ken

The kettle's coming to the boil...

More Live Brewing Action with a wee film of the Ossian wort last week coming to the boil in the kettle, or copper, as it's sometimes called. The reason the wort is spinning around slowly is from tangential pumping or whirlpooling to mix the wort thoroughly before the boil begins, so that we can get the correct specific gravity for that particular brew before the boil starts. Each beer has its own specific gravity or Original Gravity, in Ossian's case 1.0420 or as we always say, 1042 OG as in 'Ten Forty Two'.

This is what the actual boil looks like - the steam created causes a bit of havoc for most amateur cameras (like mine!) but this gives an idea of the ferocious nature of a boil. We're not looking for a simmer or a gentle boil but a good rolling boil which helps the malt proteins stick to the hop tannins thus creating the Hot Break, or clumps of protein and tannins, which helps to clarify the finished beer.

One thing to remember about brewing is that boiling, or brewing, is at the heart of what it's all about - that's why we are called brewers and not fermenters or barrellers, even though boiling is only part of the operation to make beer.

Anyway time to put the kettle on...

Slàinte, Ken