My third go at this brilliant ale, and this one’s destined to be kegged and enjoyed rather than bottled and given away. I’m kicking this off at a time when I have no vacancy in the ferment fridge, so I’m substituting the supplied yeast for some Opshaug Kveik that I’ve top-cropped from Vienna Lager and grown via a yeast starter. Tracking using red Tilt Pro here.
Well, that 5 litre mini keg didn’t last long! Taste was great right until the end, carbonation perhaps a little bit high though. Going forward I’ll do this again with Kveik as it seems to give it a touch more body than the included yeast.
Need to think about a better way of tracking consumption too; I tend to only have one or two small glasses per day and decrements against the keg are in litres, so with the intention of reducing the stock every other day I often forget and then it looks like I’ve knocked out 8 pints in one hit. Not really sure how to best fix this.
Both my 19 litre kegs are in use, so I’m putting this away as best I can; 1 x 5 litre MJ Mini, 1 x 10 litre MJ Mini, 6 x 500 ml yellow crown cap bottles. The 10 litre keg is going straight into the kegerator at 15 PSI serving pressure and should be carbonated in about a week. I don’t have a spare line for the 5 litre keg, so I’m cranking it to 35 PSI and sticking it in our main fridge, complete with pressure gauge to let me know when it needs more gas.
The excess beer from this operation went into 6 x 500 ml standard crown caps along with 5 ml of dextrose, and now they’re in the server room for about a week. FG looks like 1.009, which means that this, my third incarnation of Bure Gold, comes in at 5.0% ABV – quite a bit above the standard 4.2% with included yeast as per my previous two brews. Can’t wait to see if there’s any difference in taste.
Both the Opshaug Pale and Bure Gold that I’m brewing with my resident Opshaug Kveik are still fermenting when they should have finished out a couple of days ago, though to be fair the trend graphs provided by Tilt Pro are now beginning to flatten out a little so I’m looking forward to getting both of these put away in the coming week.
I don’t pay attention to the absolute values reported by Tilt, but I think it’s safe to say that both of these brews are going to be way stronger than they’re supposed to be; Bure Gold should be around 4.3% (previous efforts were 4.3 and 4.2%) and Tilt thinks we’re nearer 4.6% right now, Opshaug Pale was aiming for 5.3% in the recipe (5.9% adjusted for actuals) and I’m presently in the neighbourhood of 6.7%.
The only negative aspect of this continued fermentation is that my finishing hops will have had their contribution diminished a little due to the production and venting of CO2, but there’s nothing I can do about that now other than record what’s happened and adjust subsequent brews using this yeast accordingly.
#wisdom: I’m not sure if it’s a trait of WLP518 or the way I’ve harvested / re-used it, but my Opshaug Kveik has not started as furiously as expected, and taken much longer to ferment. If the Opshaug Pale turns out well then let’s repeat it, but dry-hop much later.
The Kveik has been doing a great job here and fermentation appears to have slowed up over the last 36 hours, so I’m going to dry-hop now (day three) rather than on day four as directed. There’s still a layer of Krausen on top the pellets easily go through, all looks good. I hope I’m not too early, but wanted to do this while there’s still some fermentation going on in order to protect against oxidation while leaving it late enough to not loose too much of the hop oils along with CO2 being produced. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to strike this balance, especially as I’m doing something different each time. Gravity weighs in at 1.024 today.
Kicked off the second of two kits that I purchased towards the start of the year, and unlike the other one this is will be kegged and enjoyed rather than given away. I’m also using it as a test bed for some top-cropped WLP518 Opshaug that was liberated from Good Night Vienna on 26th May.
The brew was started in the usual way according to instructions, adding 3.5 litres of boiling water to the contents of both tins, which were then rinsed out by half-filling with more boiling water. A teaspoon of Wilko’s yeast nutrient was also chucked in at this stage. Adding 3 five litre bottles of Tesco Ashbeck with semi-frozen slush brought the temperature of the 25 litre SS Brewtech bucket down to 20.2℃ at which point I pitched a small heaped teaspoon of yeast from a jar that had been allowed to almost get up to room temperature for approximately 40 minutes from the refrigerator. OG came in at 1.047, so slightly higher than my previous two runs at this brew which were both at 1.044.