Brewing Adventures - Part II

Recent illness and the subsequent doses of codeine have inhibited me from doing anything truly productive, so now is as good a time as any to write some more about the wonderful world of homebrewing.
Yes that's right folks, it's BREWING ADVENTURES PART II. Don't soil yourselves.

As promised I would add some information on The Stoat. Well, our black beauty won us a gold medal at the recent SOBA Homebrewers Championship! Stoked. Out of over 150 beers entered, only 11 were awarded a gold medal.

Bottles of The Stoat

The winner of the Hallertau Brew Prize (where your winning recipe is brewed on a commercial scale) was a 'Robust coconut porter' awarded 46 points (out of 50), brewed by Andrew Cherry. Martin Bridges was hot on his tail with his Oatmeal Stout being awarded 46/50 as well, but he just missed out on the prize.
Our oatmeal stout was awarded a 44/50 (averaged from 3 judges' scores), so we were pretty damn close ourselves!

Apologies for the crappy photo and the unsuitable glass....

Enough with the gloating. Some tasting notes:
The Stoat pours black and viscous with a brown head that dissipates slowly. With good enough light, you can see some subtle ruby edges. Aromas are immediately recognised as coffee and cocoa, with some bready yeast and alcohol. Discrete Fuggles come through, as well as some dark fruity esters like raisins and cherries. Flavours are of strong, roasted and burnt malt manifesting coffee and dark chocolate. The hops are still discrete but make themselves known (along with esters) through dates, raisins, plums and the like. Body is full and a bit sugary. Definitely an ale to savor - not for quaffing!
Any other brews? Sure:

Dunedin Pale Ale (~6.2%abv)
This recipe was created by Piet and myself, out of a desire for simplicity. Sometimes the beers with the smallest grain bill are the most enjoyable and the easiest to drink.
We're very fond of UK Maris Otter pale ale malt, so we chose that as our base with a small proportion of crystal malts. We hopped with Pacific Jade, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin to get about 27 IBUs.
Everything went rather normal on the brew day. As soon as we steeped the grain we were overwhelmed by an unbelievably fruity aroma from the malt... Awesome. We tasted during the sparge, and both of us compared our young wort to tropical fruit juice and honey.

Sugary wort before the boil

We had modified our cooling system by adding another copper coil, hoping it would cool the wort twice as fast. Needless to say, this was an epic failure - mostly due to the messy labyrinth of tubes through which the wort had to travel.

Our crappy cooling system

Also, to separate our (still hot) wort from the trub, we tried using the plastic autosiphon (to minimise oxidation). We thought the plastic was durable enough to handle the heat, but we couldn't have been more wrong. A lesson learned.
We eventually got it down to 25 degrees, pitched a sachet of US-05 yeast and then put it to bed.
About a week later, fermentation was seemingly finished and so we bottled.
Only another week after that we drank the first few bottles - Delicious! It was simple, fruity, sweet, hoppy and quite alcoholic. After a few delicious drinks, we decided to leave it a bit longer to mature.
Unfortunately, a couple weeks later our golden pale ale had developed some nasty sulfur gas... Damn. We weren't entirely sure why - perhaps because we left it to bottle condition in the cold? Perhaps because we bottled too soon?
I tend to think it was the latter, because after a few days in our "bottle incubator" (chilly bin with and aquarium heater submerged in water), the bottles of Dunedin Pale Ale were well overcarbonated - indicating an incomplete fermentation of the sugars. Once the sulfur was gone, we were left with a hell of a lot of foam!
More lessons learned.

The Dunedin Pale Ale

But overall, the beer was lovely - one of the fruitiest beers I've tasted, with apricot, pineapple, apple, and passionfruit. I've never tasted Emerson's Maris Gold, but after a bit of research on ratebeer.com, I figured we had come pretty close to that.

Black IPA (~6.5%abv)
This was my recipe, admittedly inspired by Yeastie Boys' famous 'Pot Kettle Black'. Their American style porter was so delicious I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and make something similar!
For this brew I used 4 malts - Pale 2 row, chocolate, black patent and crystal; and 3 different hops (in relatively large amounts) - fuggles, cascade and Nelson sauvin. Fermented with trusty old US-05.
The brew day went swimmingly, and we even had friends from Wellington - Dave and Denise - to lend a hand and observe. This brew was our first to use Piet's new copper immersion chiller - 15m of wide copper tubing that we immerse in the boiled wort, then run cold water through to achieve an effective cold break. It worked wonderfully - 100 degrees C to 20 in under 10 minutes!

The copper immersion chiller (without hoses, bends, etc)

We finished up everything fine, and put it to bed on the heat pad.
A few weeks after bottling, we decided to try some. I can't help thinking that the yeast we used was a bit tired, as the bottles we opened weren't carbonated very well at all (too much CO2 in the DPA now not enough in the IPA!).
But all worked out fine - we put some bottles in the incubator, and with a bit of warmth and time they carbonated beautifully.

A nice photo, but not very representative

The Black IPA pours (you guessed it) black, with a nice fluffy tan head. Aromas of citrusy cascade and earthy fuggles, mingle with a toasted malt base and a nice bready yeast. The flavours are zesty from the hops, yet slightly smoky from the malts with hints of coffee and chocolate. Quite a creamy mouthfeel (reminiscent of a rich ice cream) with a mildly bitter aftertaste.

I'll be back with more beer stuff eventually.