What I'd like to do is follow the original recipe sometime in the near future, then buy a real Newcastle Ale, put a blindfold on and try to guess which is the real Newcastle, which is the homebrewed clone and which is the the English Nut Brown. I plan on inviting a few friends. Should be a fun afternoon!
I wanted to make a Newcastle Beer clone (one of my favorite beers), so I got a recipe off the net and went to The Original Home Brew Outlet to purchase the ingredients. Instead, I bought the English Nut Brown Ale kit (CK009). Ingredients:
- pale malt extract
- kettle sugar kicker
- .5 lb carapils malt (dextrine)
- .25 lb victory malt (toasted)
- .25 crystal malt
- 2oz chocolate malt
- 1.5 oz Fuggles (Kent Golding) boiling hops
- .5 oz Fuggles (Kent Golding) finishing hops
- 2 tsp Gelatin
- 2 tsp Irish Moss
- .75 cups priming sugar
Everything was santized overnight with a solution of 4 gallons water to 2.5 oz of bleach.
Boil 3 gallons of water in kitchen pots. Boiled for 15 minutes and put aside. This will eventually be used for:
- rinsing the spent specialty grains (2 cups)
- hydrating the yeast (1/2 cup)
- putting into the carboy and diluting the wort (the rest)
Boil 2 gallons of water in wort kettle - boiled then cooled to 155 F. I was careful to not let termometer to touch the bottom of the pot, which would give a high reading.
Steeped the flavor grains inside the steeping bag, kind of like a tea bag. Dunked it up and down and pushed it with a spoon to squeeze liquid out for about 5 mintues. Then I just let the steeping bag sit in the wort for 25 mintutes at 155 F. Used 2 cups of the boiled water to rinse the spent flavor grains and squeezed them against the side of the kettle to get all the starches out.
Brought the wort back to a good boil with the lid 1/2 on.
Removed the kettle from the heat. Added the malt extract, brown sugar and malto-dextrine kicker.
Brought the wort back to a boil and let it boil vigorously for 5 minutes.
Added the boiling hops. Let boil for 45 minutes.
Added Irish Moss and Finish hops. Let boil for 10 minutes. Removed from heat. Put the wort kettle in sink filled with water and a bag of ice. We waited a long time till it cooled down to 82 F.
We put the preboiled water into the carboy. Then we poured the wort through a strainer into the carboy.
Specific gravity reading: 1.053.
We hydrated the yeast using 1/2 cup of preboiled water. We waited 15 minutes then pitched the yeast into the carboy.
I shook the carboy for 2 minutes, put the lock on and put the carboy in the closet.
picture 1, picture 2, picture 3
I noticed that almost no bubbles are being produced. The top foam has vanished and the SG is 1.012 which is the target ending SG. In other words fermentation stopped after only 3 days. The question is whether to proceed with the brewing or to just wait the full 10-14 days. I sent email to the Homebrew Outlet and JJ said that he's seen fermentation finish in 4 days. He advised to just move on.
Sanitized a new carboy since there's ALOT of sediment in this one. Maybe I should use full hops or hop oil instead of hops pellets? That should reduce sediment considerably!. I sanitized equipment and a pot, added the gelatin to 3 cups of water, gently heated and stired it.
Then I transfered the beer to a new carboy and poured the gelatin mixture in. I put the cork and lock back on and put the stuff back into the closet for 2 or 3 days. Any more than that and carbonation may not take place. Then it's bottling time!
SG after gelatin added is 1.016
We pitched in the priming sugar and bottled. A little late, but it's only beer. The bottle wand I bought was _very_ helpful. The John at Original Homebrew Outlet said it would make the bottliing process much nicer. Boy, was that an understatement! He also mentioned that he sanitizes his bottles by immersing them in a weak iodine solution in a huge ice chest. I borrowed some ice chests, and that too is a great idea. Made the process much nicer.Lastly, I bought carboy handles. This has made life just as convenient as the bottle wand. How the hell did I brew beer without carboy handles, bottle wands and ice chests? Sheesh!
SG before priming sugar was 1.014, and after 1.016.
The beer should be ready in 7-10 days. Alcohol content should be about 3.9%, but I'm not sure I believe that.