Fourth time around I’m brewing a Red Ale, which the box advertises as “a medium-light bodied ale with a deep red hue.” This is a return to a Brewer’s Best product.
The biggest difference between this and the Cooper’s or Munton’s I have done most recently is that only the malt extract comes in the syrup form; with the other two, the extract was pre-hopped.
With today’s batch I started with a brew pot full of about 10 litres of water, warmed to about 150o Fahrenheit, into which I places the bag of crushed grains. In this case, that included 8oz of Caramel and 1oz of Chocolate. Then I steeped the mix for about 20 minutes while the grains soaked their yummy goodness into the broth.
After letting the grain sac drain out I brought the wort back to a boil and added the Golden Light Liquid Malt Extract. This box came with two plastic jars, 1.5 kg each — about twice the amount for the American Amber I made before.
After once again bringing the brew back to a gentle boil I added the bittering hops, Willamette, in this case. A 1oz (28g) package came with the kit. This must be boiled (again, gently) for 55 minutes, after which the aroma hops are added. This brew really got the chocolate out of the grains. The red spicy flavour was also present in the air, mixing nicely with the malted wort.
I accidentally added the aromatic hops too early, after about 45 minutes. I added some extra hops I have purchased for another brew at about 55 minutes, so I think things might still work out. We’ll see. The extra hops were about 20g of Nugget or some English-style with a strong bite.
Chilling the wort went a bit longer than I’d planned, but did come to settle down after about 20 minutes. Using the new auto-siphon that I bought made a big difference when getting transfer from brew kettle to fermenter going.
The yeast was pretty straight-forward. I took some of the brew after I’d added the rest of the water to the siphoned-off brew and put it in a measuring cup. I poured the yeast into it after heating it a bit in the microwave (only 20 seconds or so) and let it stand for 15 minutes while finishing dinner.
The yeast went in, and the bung went in; now it’s up to chemicals to do their special little chemical-thing that makes tasty beer.