Kit O' Beer #7 - Attack of the Clones - LCBA #1

[Glass]

Attack of the Clones - Little Creatures Bright Ale (LCBA) #1

KoB #7 is underway. I was not sure if I should start a new naming convention because we are not really doing a kit and kilo this time around. We've jumped into the shallow end of the big kids pool with this one. This is based on unhopped malt with some hop additions.

We are trying to clone one of my favorite beers right now, the Little Creatures Bright Ale. This is a nice light ale with some mild hopiness to it. Very pricey beer. Costs about $50 for 16 x 12oz bottles. I think that comes in at about $10/liter/quart. If buying at the pub expect to pay twice that.

The recipe:
2 x 1.5kg Coopers Light Malt liquid extract (unhopped)
0.3 kg Dextrose. I am using Coopers dextrose
1 pkt Brew essentials yeast 15gms
40 gms /1.3 Oz Cascade hops in 3 additions
40 gms /1.3 Oz B-SAAZ hops in 3 additions (also known as Motueka)

1 x brand new big arsed pot - 19L. Got it for a good price of $19. SS but thin.

O.G 1.044

The method:
Open a cold beer. Then bring 14L of water + 1.5kg of Coopers Light Malt liquid extract to the boil. I started with 13L. Then I pre-boiled 2 lites and used 1 of them to rinse the can into the pot. I used the 2nd liter at the end of the boil. We are going for a 45 minute boil.

Hop additions:
12gms B-SAAZ at 45 minutes
12gms Cascade at 45 minutes
10gms B-SAAZ at 15 minutes
10gms Cascade at 15 minutes
18gms B-SAAZ at 0 minutes
18gms Cascade at 0 minutes

I used to 2 hop socks for the additions. I added the next addition to the same sock. At least I think I did. I may have got them crossed up at some point. So it's possible we had a mix of hops in each sock.

On flame out add 2nd can of extract and the 300gms/10oz of dextrose and stir well.

Chill as quickly as you can. Anyone say Wort Chiller? I'll be looking for one of these soon. If we do more like this.

We went to the trough with frozen bottles in water. This took out probably 60% of the heat. I was tempted to buy a bag of ice for this step. Made do with out it. I was dealing with much more heated liquor than previous. We are usually only dealing with 4 -5 litres of hot liquid. This time we ended up with about 17litres.

I added a 2litre block of ice to the fermenter and then I strained the wort into the fermenter. Topped up with about 5L or so of cold water. This got us down to about 28C. I then used the swamp cooler method to get us down to 20C for pitching. This step took about 5 hours. I fell asleep again. Pitched pretty late. About 1am.

Things to watch for next time:
I might start the brewing a bit earlier in the day. I tinker about for a couple hours assembling things. So starting to get the boil going at 3pm you're looking at sometime after 6pm before you have the fermenter full. I did this in summer because it's going into the cooler time of the day. Now it's not so important.

I didn't quite get all of the 2nd extract can mixed in properly. Was worried about the hop socks floating around in there. There was some extract visible on the bottom when we drained the pot. Not much. Just a detail.

14 litres plus is pushing the weight the stove top can handle IMO. By the time were were done there was 20kgs+ on the stove. It's a bench top unit and I think it was at the limit. I'd hate to have all of this come crashing down. May need to go the gas burner route. The pot took a long time to get going with a boil on the stove. More than 30 minutes.

Hop socks are good. Amazing how much the hop pellets expand when wet. Stuff still gets out and it needed filtering. I had to cut up a 3rd hop sock to fit over a sieve. Was a pricey option as the sock was $10 and a bit small. I nearly bought a cheesecloth type one at the LHBS but didn't. Would have been perfect. Managed to filter a ton more stuff out. Definitely don't want that in the beer.

So thats the first brew with hop additions. It was nice to actually smell some hops. I recognize both of these from beers I've drunk. As I bought 100gm pkts of hops I have enough to do another brew. I've got a few days off so I will do another one this week. Been wondering about doing this one again or doing a canadian blonde kit the same way.