Brew #3: Tsukiji Brown; December, 2009

Why Tsukiji Brown, you may ask? Well, it turned frackin' cold this winter for one thing, and I needed to brew an ale that would warm me up. Not much into stouts or porters, and didn't feel confident doing a traditional spicy, high alcohol winter ale, so I settled on a brown. Oh, and I live in Tsukiji, which is not only a cool, old school type place to live, it's just fun to say: "Tsu-KI-ji!"


I bought a used copy of Zainasheff and Palmer's Brewing Classic Styles, and after going through it till I found the American brown ale section, chose the recipe 'Janet's Brown Ale' as a basis from which to tweak. You should buy the book and compare the recipes. Fun!

label by me

12L boil volume, added 10L dilution to get 22 L final vol.

Steeping grains:

500 g Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt

400 g Crystal 40

400 g Cara-pils

200 g Chocolate Malt

(see video for steeping process)

500 g Munton's Wheat DME

1500 g Munton's Light DME

Hops:

10 g Simcoe (13.0% alpha acid) @ 60 min.

15 g Amarillo (8.5%) @ 15 min.

30 g Amarillo @ 10 min.

30 g Amarillo @ 0 min.

40 g Simcoe added as dry hops added to secondary fermenter

Yeast:

Safale US-05

Original Gravity: 1.052

Final Gravity: 1.014

Alcohol by volume: 4.8%

IBU: 37.2

This was the funnest brew day so far, as you'll see in the videos below. Brewing with a partner versus brewing solo makes a world of difference. Witness.

Bottling was the only sucky part of the process, and there's no video for that, thank god. It was such a mess. I lost a lot of beer, and probably contaminated the rest by getting my hands all in it. I was pretty depressed afterwards, and didn't have any hope for my precious brew #3 at all. Here's how the tasting went.

Yes, it was much, much better than I'd anticipated, and I knew I was well on my way to 'getting it' as a brewer. As I mention at the end of the video, I shouldn't have used loose pellet hops in the secondary. They disintegrated into hops confetti and dispersed themselves all through the beer. They did settle a bit, but the slightest vibration would stir them up, causing mayhem and misery.

That was the reason bottling was such a nightmare; both my siphon hose and the bottling valve, and then the spigot itself kept getting clogged up with tiny hop leaves, and there's not much you can do about it without somehow getting a filtering screen down into the fermenter. And then that will clog up too, so you're still screwed. Not only that, but I'm 99% sure that leaving that organic matter in the beer contributed foul flavors which I have noticed in all three batches of beer. Well, I should say that not straining the hops out of the boil must do the same thing. You want to extract the hop oils, and then maybe get some of the flavors that the cellulose imparts, and then get it out of there. That's my theory. That will be something to verify with my next brew, when I strain from the boil, and use hop bags for dry hopping.

I also need to go a little less crazy with the hops and care a little more about the malt balance. It's really too dark for the style I think, and lacks the 'mouthfeel' and biscuity or nutty flavors that I wanted. If you closed your eyes and took a drink you'd swear you were drinking an IPA. Nevertheless, brew #3 is a tasty beverage, and a milestone on my brewing journey for sure. 

So, I've familiarized myself with hops, and now my next task is to delve deeper into the wild and wooly world of malts. I'll keep you posted.

Tsukiji Brown, cold kickin' it