Spraymalt and steeping brew day – maybe a British Ale?

23/02/2015: This brewing day was first published on the 28/12/2015 but it is now updated with the tasting notes you will find at the end.

On Christmas day I had a chance to brew (we don’t do Christmas, so it made sense) and so I dug into my brewery box (sitting on the top shelf) to see what I have to play with. In the box I found enough to try something new: steeping (some Crushed Crystal Malt in the freezer) and than using Spraymalt (that I ordered a couple of weeks ago) and Windsor yeast to try and make an English style pale ale (maybe even an IPA, depends on the results!). I haven’t had that many options in terms of hops: Target hops (12.17%), Fuggles (3.48%) and a tea bag of Cascade pallets (7.62%), and so I went.

Steeping: 30 minutes of 500g Crystal Crushed Malt with 4.5 litres of Brita water. Started at 66°c, no boil time, just steeping (like tea), finishing at 60°c.

Yeast mix: 11g Dastar Windsor (British Style Ale) with 12g dextrose in 500ml at 31°c.

Wort: Water from steeping  with 1kg spraymalt light (Balliihoo).

Hops: 0 min – 10g Target hops (12.17%)

30 min – 10g Fuggles hops (3.48%)

45 min – 10g Fuggles hops (3.48%)

60 min – 10g Fuggles hops (3.48%), 5g Target hops (12.17%), 50g dextrose.

Into ice bath and down to 27°c in 18 minutes (make sure it is less then 30 minutes). Filtered and mixed in with 6.5 litres of chilled Brita water (20°c) and the yeast mix.

OG = 1041. The colour ended up being a beautiful honey colour and I’m hoping for around 25 IBUs and 4.5% ABV.

The plan is to add 20g of Cascade hops tea bag after a week for dry hopping.

Does anyone have idea what beer that might be? seems like a British Pale Ale to me, but is that true?

Update 1: 20g of Cascade hops (7.6%) were added for dry hopping after one week of fermentation.

Update 2: After a week of dry hopping the beer was bottled. FG=1008, ABV=4.4% at botteling. Made a total of 19 bottles and 53g of dextrose were added for priming to achieve 1.9 CO2. Not filtered.

Tasting notes – probably is a British Ale

I first done the tasting notes on this beer more then  month ago, but hadn’t had a chance to properly write it. Lately I drank it again and I must say it is much better now – it needed an extra month in the fridge to round it up and make it more subtly in yeast flavours (it had a strong banana taste at first) and fuller in the mouth.

First I want to say that this time I gave the beer a good stir prior to bottling but had not moved it to a different container as I usually do, that means the beer went into the bottles a little cloudy. At the beginning it needed very careful pour, but now, after so long (a couple of months) in the bottle standing up, all the residue is at the bottom and the beer is beautifully clear.

The beer has a light in colour and in foam of a head that stays awhile (20-30 minutes). Carbonation is very nice and stays active but a little aggressive if the beer is very cold, should probably be served cool (10°c).

The aroma is sweet with a light maltiness note and banana undertone, reminds me Belgium beers a little. flavour is great – bitter at the beginning, moves to sweeter tones and then ends with a nice bitter tone. Very full bodied with a solid taste.

I’m very happy with this beer and how it came out. The use of spraymalt proved great and I even bought more spraymalt to play with it more. The steeping really “kicks up” this beer giving it that body I was looking to add to my beers. Next time I will try to add a little more gravity to this beer as it feel to light sometimes and can use some more alcohol kick to balance some of the sweetness.

Would you like to try and make this beer? You should! If anything is not clear let me know in the comments and if you made it, let me know how it went!