Playing with yeast – Amber ale (extract)
Over the weekend I took part in my friend James’ extract amber ale brew. This was a pretty standard extract brew with a few exceptions: brewing a larger than normal batch (about 7 gallons when it’s all said and done) and splitting it into two different carboys for fermentation. The fun part comes during the yeast pitching and fermentation. James decided use two identical (maybe not truly identical, but for our purposes close enough) batches and ferment them with separate yeasts. The batches are currently bubbling away at a steady 68º and should be ready to bottle shortly!
Recipe
For this batch James took a standard Brewer’s Best™ kit and added some malts and hops to bring it to 7 gallons of approximately the same original gravity. The following list contains the total ingredients when all was said and done.
Steeping Grains
1 lb Caramel 80L (160º for 25 minutes)
Malts
3.5 lbs Amber DME
3.3 lbs Amber LME
1 lb Amber Belgian candy sugar syrup (this is a new product that he wanted to try out)
Hops
1 oz. Fuggle (pellets, 60 min)
1.25 oz BC Golden (pellets, 60 min)
0.5 oz Willamette (pellets, 5 min)
Yeasts
Wyeast 1056 American Ale
Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale
Technical stuff
OG – 1.051
FG - TBD
IBU - 27
SRM - 17
ABV - TBD
Brewing
As I said before, this was a standard brew. The only real differences coming right at the end when we split the batches. If you would like some additional information please check out our posts on how to home brew. In the recipe section of this post I put in the details if you would like to try this brew, and below I am just going to cover the “abnormalities.”
The brew pot that James uses only hold about 7 gal. if you fill it to the brim. Therefore, we weren’t able to get a full boil with the batch, and had to do about 5.5 gal. in the pot and add water after the fact to fill the carboys to the 3.5 gal. target mark. This is a typical practice for home brewers who brew on their stove with a 20 quart pot, but worth mentioning since it will change some calculations, such as IBUs.
Splitting a batch of beer between multiple fermentation vessels isn’t a new thing to us, but through experience and some research, we found that the procedure of splitting can drastically change the outcome of each batch. To ensure an even split (and minimize the amount of work) we just picked up a standard barbed 3/8” ‘T’ from the hardware store and used this to split the wort while siphoning. As long as you are diligent and make sure the siphon tubes after the split don’t contain air bubbles, this method works perfectly.
Thoughts
The yeasts that James chose for this batch were based on using standard yeasts that will do well with the batch we brewed. He decided to go with two Wyeast packages and just save the dry yeast package that came in the kit for another day. We attempted to pick some yeasts that will ferment similarly at a similar temperature, and hopefully have subtle but distinct differences once fermentation is complete. Since were were using two different yeast packages in 3.5 gal batches, there was no need to use yeast starters.
I always love brewing with friends, and with new experiments or brewing methods I get very excited. Though I don’t have much thoughts about this brew at the moment, once we bottle and compare the different outcomes of the yeasts, I will be back with another post detailing what we thought. For now, let us know if you have any unique experiments or if there is something you would like to see try!
