Fireside Chat Ale

Just about every year I make a winter homebrew, which I’m calling Fireside Chat Ale. It is my version of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome based on the recipe from Clone Beers by Szamatulski. It’s a nice winter warmer that comes out about 6% ABV. I use whole grains, which takes about 6 hours of my time. The end result has been worth the wait, giving a fresh toasty beer with delicious English hops. If luck is on my side, I’ll be submitting 3 beers to the Black Flag Febrewary homebrew competition, as well as drinking a few this February.

This year’s version will be more “English”, using two Thomas Fawcett grains, Maris Otter as the base grain and Crystal II, a 65L crystal malt. Also, I’ll use two hops found in just about every British beer, East Kent Goldings as my dominant hop, with Fuggles for taste. Finally, I’ll use Wyeast’s Ringwood yeast. This will be my first try with a Wyeast product.

Maryland Homebrew

When I go to Maryland Homebrew (MDHB) I feel like a kid in a candy store. When I visit, I follow a routine, or I might never get out of there. I always start with the grains, which you can grind right there. I collect and label the necessary plastic bags to help get organized. Then I weigh each set of grains and run it through the mill. My own particular idiosyncrasy is an accident I somehow perform every single time I crush grain. At least one batch goes through the mill where I fail to position the plastic bucket below the chute, leaving a mess on the wooden platform. This time it happened with the crystal II. I hastily turned the mill off, swept the crushed grain into the bucket, and then carefully positioned the bucket correctly before finishing the milling. I always give a furtive glance around to see who witnessed my ineptness. People are usually too polite to laugh. Once the grain is safely in its plastic bags, I gather up the hops and yeast from the refrigerator section.

The Mash

Years ago, I purchased an enormous brew pot, which holds 10 gallons of liquid. Since I had 13.5 pounds of grain, I needed 4.5 gallons of water heated to 165° F. I used a labeled bucket to measure 4.5 gallons of water, which I poured into the brew pot and heated full blast. It’s always amazing how long water takes to boil. What’s that saying about a watched pot?

My mash/lauter tun is a converted Coleman cooler. By the way, mash means to soak malted grain in hot water  (called strike water) to release sugars. I pour the strike water into my lauter tun a half gallon at a time, using a large glass measuring cup. Then I close the converted cooler and let the lauter tun

warm up. Pouring the grain into the strike water while stirring is a 2-man job. The smells that waft up are delightful, so it is easy to find a volunteer. I check the temperature, which should be around 152° F for the next 90 minutes. I wrap the lauter tun in an old sleeping bag which keeps the insides around 152° F for the duration. I check the temperature every half hour. If the temperature drops significantly, I add some hot water to raise the temperature.

Meanwhile, I measure out 5 gallons of sparge water which goes into my trusty brew pot. Sparge water is hot water used to filter (lauter) through the bed of grain to rinse the malt sugar from the grain. This time my target temperature is 168° F. With about 15 minutes to go in the mash, the mash temperature had only lost about 1 degree, so I did not bother making any adjustments. I did setup my bucket below the lauter tun with a plastic tube running to it. When the 90-minute mash finishes, I take off the sleeping bag, open the cooler top and open the lauter tun valve. Using my trusty large measuring cup, I capture the first few cups of sweet malt water or wort to ensure clarity. I just pour those few cups back through the grain bed, then let all the wort drain into the bucket. I get about 2.5 gallons of delicious wort, which must be sampled. Always a sweet treat!

The Sparge

I put the wort in another, smaller pot on the stove and start to heat it up. Then I put the bucket back below the lauter tun and start the sparging. I sparge the grain bed with my large measuring cup, pouring sparge water at 168° F over the grain, using my large plastic spoon as the sparge arm, so that the grain bed is not disturbed. I leave the lauter tun valve open and collect 4.5 gallons of remaining wort, making 7 gallons in total. All the wort goes into the big brew pot, and the heat is turned to full blast. Even though the wort is about 150° F, it still takes almost a half hour to bring it to boil.

Specific Gravity Adjustment

While waiting for the water to boil, I like to check the specific gravity using a glass hydrometer. Specific gravity is the density of liquid and a good way to estimate alcohol potential. Because the wort is very hot, my hydrometer is breakable glass and the hydrometer case is meltable plastic, I use my ever present glass measuring cup to dip out some wort to cool. Once cool enough, I pour some wort into the case. Then I ease the hydrometer into the wort, giving it a little spin. My temperature adjusted reading is 1.038. Based on the current volume of wort and the target gravity at 1.069 with 5 gallons, I calculate I need to add about 2 pounds of dry malt extract (DME) to reach my target gravity. Unfortunately, I only had about 1.25 pounds of DME, so I added all that I had. I decided to run the boil a little long in order to near my target gravity. It would mean a few less beers, but hopefully a better beer.

The Boil

I stirred the wort until it boiled, then added 1 ounce of East Kent Goldings and a teaspoon of gypsum for water treatment. I set the timer for 90 minutes. I kept stirring until the hot break to prevent boil over. With 15 minutes left of the boil, I added ½ ounce of Fuggles and ½ ounce of East Kent Goldings. I also added 1 teaspoon of Irish moss, a clarifying agent. Irish moss is actually some kind of sea weed. Since I wanted to run the boil a little longer (15 minutes), I forgot to add the aroma hops. So…I’ll have to dry hop that in the secondary.

Chilling

After the boil, sanitizing becomes important. I keep a spray bottle with Iodophor handy at all times. I spray anything that may come in contact with the wort. That includes my

hands, spoons, buckets, carboys, wort chiller, etc. A few years ago I received a wort chiller as a gift. It is copper tubing that one immerses in the wort, running cold water through the tubing. Because is it winter, the water from the faucet is very cold and the wort cools quickly, maybe 15 minutes. Once the wort reaches about 80° F, I turn the water off and take the chiller out of the wort. I use my large spoon to spin the wort in the pot, causing the sediment to settle into a large mound in the middle. This is important, because the less sediment, the easier the syphon process.

Syphon

My syphon starts with after a few pumps. I run it through a filter which sits at the bottom of my funnel. As the filter clogs with sediment, I stop the syphon. Using a spoon, I encourage the liquid through the sediment until most of the liquid goes into the bucket. I then clean out the filter, re-sanitize and restart the syphon.  Sometimes this takes 3 or 6 cleanings to syphon all the beer, depending on the type of beer. Today it only takes 3 times.

It looks like I’m just shy of 5 gallons due to the extra-long boil. I take the specific gravity. After adjusting for temperature, my original gravity hits the target gravity exactly — 1.069! Sometimes it helps to be lucky! I aerate the wort using a handy homemade aerator and a drill. After a long day of brewing, my potential beer is prepped for the yeast.

Pitching the Yeast

Wyeast 1187 Ringwood comes in a large plastic packet. Directions say to smack it on a

corner to break the vessel inside, shake, and then pour. I put an airlock on my carboy, lug it to the basement. It should be ready to move to the secondary in about 7 days.

Cheers,

Warren

PS All grain ingredients:

• 6.2 lbs Maris Otter
• 12 oz. Crystal II
• 8 oz. Crystal 20
• 1 oz East Kent Goldings (bitter hop)
• ½ oz East Kent Goldings (taste hop)
• ½ oz Fuggles (taste hop)
• 1 oz East Kent Goldings (dry hop)
• Wyeast 1187 Ringwood yeast

 

1. Mash grains at 152° F for 90 minutes.
2. Add bitter hops at beginning of the boil.
3. Boil 90 minutes
4. Add taste hops and Irish moss with 15 minutes left in the boil.
5. Dry hop

Summary

• Style: winter warmer
• ABV: about 6%,
• Original Gravity: 1.069,
• Final Gravity (estimated): 1.017