Monday, 5 November 2012

Rhubarb Saison anyone

I've got some malts and hops that I wanna use up, I'm getting itchy feet and I wanna brew! Randomly barbecuing last night I saw my rhubarb plant and thought, rhubarb + beer = nice.

I thought long and hard. I even did some research on rhubarb beer/wine/cider. Most recipes seem to be a wheat based beer. I'm not sold on wheat beers, just no flavour to me. I'm keen to experiment, this being a pure me beer, with some input from Jonanthan and Chris, the former happened to win two Bronze medals in the SOBA NHC 2012 competition - well done Chris!
 
So after some playing, so advice and a 'just going with it' attitude, I've got a recipe down:
 
Bitches Saison
Saison
 
Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 15.0
Total Grain (kg):  3.595
Total Hops (g): 40.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.056
Final Gravity (FG): 1.014
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.50 %
Colour (SRM): 8.8 
Bitterness (IBU): 23.2
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 75
Boil Time (Minutes): 60
 
Grain Bill
----------------
1.039 kg Pale Ale Malt (28.9%)
1.036 kg Maris Otter Malt (28.82%)
0.729 kg Golden Promise Malt (20.28%)
0.428 kg Caramalt (11.91%)
0.289 kg Carahell (8.04%)
0.074 kg Carapils (Dextrine) (2.06%)
 
Hop Bill
----------------
20.0 g Willamette Pellet (4.9% Alpha) @ 45 Minutes (First Wort)
20.0 g Motueka Pellet (6.8% Alpha) @ 5 Minutes (Boil)
 
Misc Bill
----------------
936.0 g Rhubarb @ 5 - 7 Days (Secondary)
 
Single step Infusion at 66°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Safbrew T-58

So, a couple of things. First time using rhubarb and thought why not try my hand at first wort hops. I'm planning to buy the last Christmas brew ingredients this week, so all I need to do is throw in a T-58 yeast and we'll be sweet.
 
As usual watch this space!
 
Cider
Bottled 33 bottles of cider on Sunday, got bored and it'd finished but hydro readings. Now sitting in the warmth of the garage for at least 5 weeks. No tasting notes at bottling, wasn't as good as I was expecting, so time will tell.
 
ManawaBrew Pale Ale
10 days in the bottle and I had to try it. I didn't think it would be carbonated so was a little cautious. Without chilling, I popped the cap and low and behold, I had carbonation! Feeling pretty happy with myself, into a glass it went - in my excitement, no pictures just yet, they'll be coming in the next blog post along with tasting notes! I will tell you that its going to become the house ale!!
 
Hops
Despite the atrocious Manawatu winds, The Mystery German is reaching for the sky and the Smoothcone has started doing the same! It amazes me how fast a plant grows in such a small amount of time, again, sorry for the lack of pics, I'll throw some up next time!

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