a few new blog posts

content/article/80-chillin/index.md

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+---
+title: "80 Chillin"
+date: 2021-02-23T14:32:14Z
+Description: "Notes from brew day #10"
+Summary: "Brew no. 10, second of the year and second attempt at an 80 shilling beer based on Alloa's very own William Bros. beer of the same name"
+Blog: ["Brewshido"]
+category:
+    - "Homebrewing"
+    - "自家製ビール"
+    - "Craft Beer"
+    - "クラフトビール"
+tag:
+    - "brewstore"
+    - "grainfather"
+    - "グレーンファーザー"
+    - "80/-"
+    - "80 shilling"
+    - "Williams Bros"
+images: ["/images/80-chillin/banner.jpg"]
+Type: ["article"]
+draft: false
+DisableComments: false
+---
+TLDR: This brew day was successful, in that at the end of it wort was transferred to my conical fermenter.  As of yet, some weeks later it is not ready for drinking testament to which is that I just suffered a weekend of yeast eating all available mono-saccharides they could find within in my gut.
+
+The grain bill for my tenth foray into homebrewing was taken from [Craft Brew by Euan Ferguson](https://www.beerhawk.co.uk/craft-brew-ferguson-book) and is more or less identical to that of [William Bros](https://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/)'s 80/- recipe included in the book.  [William Bros](https://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/) are a craft brewery from [Alloa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alloa), home of my aunt and also a town with a brewing heritage and one that I, for some reason, associate with 80 shilling.
+
+The hops were Goldings 5.2% (the percentage being an indication of alpha acid volumes) and the yeast was White Labs Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast (WLP028).
+
+What was notable about this recipe were the lack of volumes for water and wort at the various stages and any indicative suggested method to follow.  As such, I *crafted* a brew day plan based on previous brews and hope that it works out.
+
+---
+
+In absolute contrast to the [previous attempt](/article/end-of-the-beginning/) at this beer, this brew day was almost flawless.  After the Grainfather blocked pipe incident that sabotaged my previous brew, I took to the net to find a solution and found that Grainfather themselves had admitted this flaw exists and created a filter basket which sits at the top of the mash tun above the upper filter plate and catches errant grains before they reach the circulation pipe.. at least in theory.  In practice, this only works if you are brewing a beer with sufficient enough a grain bill to allow the upper plate to sit high enough for the walls of the new filter basket to sit higher than the height of the circulation pipe inlet at its lowest setting.. this was not the case in this brew and I had to spend 47 of the 50 minutes holding the basket in place, with my fingers millimetres above the 71°C wort being circulated below.  It seems to me that a far more useful solution to the issue would have been for the basket to be welded to the removable circulation pipe inlet hence ensuring the basket cannot fall below the height of the inlet itself.  As mentioned in the previous blog post, looking into this a bit more to see if I could fashion this solution, instructed me that this needs a brazing specialist and is not really a viable option during lockdown.
+
+![Me holding a filter basket in place during the mash](/images/80-chillin/solution.jpg "Me holding a filter basket in place during the mash")
+
+Aside from this, the brew day was good.  This was the first brew which I've done that mandates a 50 minute mash, previously this has always been at least 60 minutes. The purpose of the shorter mash is presumably to allow for a sweeter wort and resultantly a sweeter beer as the amylase enzymes have less time to breakdown the non-fermentable polysaccharides, so a greater volume of these are transferred to the fermentation vessel and as the yeast cannae eat them, into the beer.  As I am trying to work towards a reasonably sweet brown ale for a future recipe idea, I was happy to give this a go.
+
+The nominal O(riginal)G(ravity) target for this beer (it was a bit of a hybrid but taking the gravity targets from the William Bros recipe) was 1.048 S(tandard)G and I hit 1.043 which is a little further from that target than I would normally hit if following the recipe verbatim, but the focus of these series of beers is the impact of the grain on the colour and flavour of the beer so hitting gravity targets is an added bonus, if it happens.  The F(inal)G of the William Bros beer was 1.012 with an ABV of 4.2%, the FG of my beer after two weeks in the fermenter was 1.018 which would be disappointingly high if I cared, but I don't.. honest.. and results in an ABV of 3.9%.
+
+The current status of the beer has been impacted a little by my kegerator finagling (replacing spar and clasp connections with John Guest connections, replacing gas regulator and trying to eliminate the gas leak that I previously found) and so doesn't seem to have carbonated effectively with the two weeks of conditioning, it's back on the gas feed and I'm giving it another week or two.  I do NOT want to ingest more live yeast from this beer!  On the plus side, the aroma is excellent, it has a treacle-like richness to it that I hope is reflected in the final beer, whenever it decides that it is ready!
+
+I am about to keg my latest beer from my [eleventh brew day](/article/alice-porteresque/) and hope to cold crash it if I can convince my beer fridge to run at close to or below 0°C, I'll condition it first to try and avoid any oxidation, finger's crossed that it works!
+
+![The Grainfather blue LED panel displaying current temperature whilst it heats the strike water](/images/80-chillin/temp.jpg "The Grainfather blue LED panel displaying current temperature whilst it heats the strike water")
+
+![A close up of some small kernel unmilled oats](/images/80-chillin/oats.jpg "A close up of some small kernel unmilled oats")
+
+![A close up of mixed malted barley prior to mash in](/images/80-chillin/grains.jpg "A close up of mixed malted barley prior to mash in")

content/article/alice-porteresque/index.md

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+---
+title: "Alice Porteresque"
+date: 2021-02-23T14:33:02Z
+Description: "Notes from brew day #11"
+Summary: "A tangent from my current series of Scottish ales, a brew day following my birthday and my first attempt at a Brewdog beer, their delicious porter Alice.. Porter"
+Blog: ["Brewshido"]
+category:
+    - "Homebrewing"
+    - "自家製ビール"
+    - "Craft Beer"
+    - "クラフトビール"
+tag:
+    - "brewstore"
+    - "TheMaltMiller"
+    - "grainfather"
+    - "グレーンファーザー"
+    - "Porter"
+    - "Alice Porter"
+    - "Brewdog"
+images: ["/images/alice-porteresque/banner.jpg"]
+Type: ["article"]
+draft: false
+DisableComments: false
+---
+I departed from my current series of Scottish export type ales to make another dark beer for my birthday, or rather the brew day was for my birthday the actual beer is still a few weeks away.  I opted for one of Brewdog's recipes which they have open-sourced for several years, all publicly available for free as in pdf format, or [on their website](https://brewdogrecipes.com/) or for a small fee as a hardback book.  As this is an published and open-sourced recipe and not part of copyrighted recipe book I can actually post the details for a change!  Brewdog has a lot of critics, but I'm not one of them, I enjoy a number of their beers and commend [their efforts towards sustainability](https://blog.brewdog.com/blog/brewdog-tomorrow-a-sustainability-update).  I am not however associated with Brewdog or in any way a Brewdog fanboi, unless James discovers this page and hey! I'd really love to come and see your brewery!
+
+Another departure I made was that I ordered the ingredients of this brew from [The Malt Miller](https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/) rather than [The Brewstore](https://www.brewstore.co.uk/) as the recipe calls for specific grains, yeast and hops that were unfortunately not available from my preferred, more local, supplier. I initially tried to find alternatives for each of the grains but it soon became clear that I was moving further and further from replicating the Brewdog version of the beer that I just had to look elsewhere.  I was very pleased with the delivery and service from The Malt Miller and my only criticism is that I had to order larger quantities of grains than required as they don't offer the smaller increments that The Brewstore does, opting for 50g implements rather than 10g. I also had to buy 100g hops packets even if only 5g of hops were required but hey ho, the excess will not go to waste!
+
+---
+
+On to the Brew day! The full recipe can be found [here](https://brewdogrecipes.com/recipes/ab04) and the ingredients for a 20L brew were as follows:
+Malts:
+*  2.63kg of Extra Pale
+*  0.88kg of Munich
+*  0.38kg of Crystal 150
+*  0.31kg of Special W - which I couldn't find so replaced with Dark Crystal
+*  0.44kg of Carafa Special Type 1
+*  0.38kg of Flaked Oats - Which were unavailable so I used torrified Oats
+*  0.31kg of Torrified Wheat
+
+Hops:
+*  5g of Magnum at the start (Bitter) - only 5 grams of bittering hops.. presumably this recipe was designed at higher volume and this is a scale down, but maybe not *shrug*.
+*  25g of First Gold in the middle (Flavour) - had to somewhat guess here, my understanding is that if the hops were added in the middle (30m) they would be roughly 50% bittering and 50% flavour, so I opted for 25 minutes before the end of the boil.
+*  25g of First Gold at the end (Flavour) - It isn't uncommon to add hops at 0 minutes left but I read that end could mean anywhere from 15 minutes left to 0, so I opted for 5 minutes until end of the boil for this addition.
+*  25g of Sorachi Ace at the end (Flavour) - same as above.
+
+Yeast:
+*  Wyeast 1056 - American Ale - This was the first time that I used Wyeast and it was a smack-pack, where you smack the .. pack.. to burst the liquid yeast sachet, introducing it to a solution which activates and nourishes it before pitching into the fermenter.  Pretty neat!
+
+Not really much to say about the day itself, it went to plan without any drama, it was very enjoyable and followed by popcorn and movie day with my daughter, a good day all round.
+
+Whilst I haven't yet transferred the beer from fermenter to keg and therefore don't have an actual FINAL gravity reading, it has been stable for the past few measurements.. the scores on the board (I do care this time!) are:
+Brewdog Alice Porter Original Gravity: 1.053\
+Jon's Alice Porteresque Original Gravity: 1.053 - booyah!
+
+Brewdog Alice Porter Final Gravity: 1.013\
+Jon's Alice Porteresque Final(ish) Gravity: 1.012 - やった！
+
+Brewdog Alice Porter ABV: 5.2%\
+Jon's Alice Porteresque ABV: 5.3%
+
+I've no idea how close to the original this is going to be once it has finished its journey but {your deity of choice or not} on a bike I am looking forward to tasting it!