2.6 KiB
| title | date | Description | Summary | Blog | category | tag | images | Type | draft | DisableComments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Underwhelming | 2021-05-30T12:34:26+01:00 | Notes from brew day #17 | A brief departure from my series of SMaSH IPAs to attempt a fairly straighforward Oatmeal Pale Ale from Siren | [Brewshido] | [Homebrewing Craft Beer grainfather] | [Siren Undercurrent Oatmeal Pale Ale] | [/images/under-whelming/banner.jpg] | [article] | false | false |
I like to break up the slight monotony of a series of the same type of brews with a guest beer brew day, where instead of focussing on a technique or ingredient influence, I can just chill out and make a nice beer. For my 17th brew day, I opted for Siren's Undercurrent Oatmeal Pale Ale as something about the recipe resonated with me and I love oats in a beer. I don't remember ever sampling this beer before and perhaps if I had, I may have opted for something a little more interesting (for my taste), my attempt at Siren's Undercurrent was disappointingly underwhelming.
The brew day was pretty straight-forward with the only real difference to my normal routine being a slightly longer boil which, and I may be mistaken here, lends itself to a slightly sweeter finish.
I wasn't able to get one of the hops (Palisade) so switched it out for Williamette.
I was tired the night before so had decided to clean and sanitise the brewing kit in the morning before the brew, this is always a mistake but sometimes unavoidable and basically always leads to me struggling to get my head in the game. What should have been a very easy brew day turned out to be a series of micro-errors.
- I had issues with recirculation during the mash stage which led to higher than desired temperatures for part of the process.
- Once again the poorly designed additional filter around the grainfather inlet valve was swept to the side and rendered useless, leading to a little more grist getting into the wort.
- The hop spider got blocked and so required intervention post whirlpooling and cooling,
- And there were a disappointing lack of bubbles when transferred into the fermenter. Even after giving the wort a vigourous shake, the bubbles dissipated quickly leading to what I expected to be a fairly lacklustre fermentation.
I did however, hit close to both original and final gravity targets but the resulting beer lacked a little character and as this was before I replaced the o-rings in my cornelius kegs it was ever so slightly oxidated.
That said, every brew adds to my experience and knowledge and this one was no exception.
Onwards.