White House Honey Brown Ale - Brew Day

Managed to get the White House Honey Ale done today; it was not without its difficulties.

There's obviously a reason most recipes specify a whole number of cans of malt extract. Today being the first time I'd worked with the liquid stuff, that reason, I discovered, is that this stuff is like tar. Try weighing
out exact amounts of it. You'll end up with bowls and spoons caked in the a layer of thick gloop that's just going to end up getting washed down the drain. And I've still got half a can's worth sitting in the fridge that'll have to be used within the next week or so.

Steeping the grains. Like making a big pot of not-so-delicious tea.

The only real alteration I made to the directions was to add the honey once the wort was off the boil after reading in countless places that boiling honey also boils off the lovely aromas. The honey isn't going to add much in the name of flavour (at least, it shouldn't if the fermentation is complete enough), so preserving aromas was the priority here. I also added a bit of Irish Moss about 15 minutes toward the end to help with clarifying. The cold crash I managed to achieve in the sink with cold water and several ice packs should help enormously. I've got a feeling this is going to be a much clearer beer than the last.

The quantities of hops and malt were rounded up slightly, in part because of the scales I was using only going to the nearest gram, so I slipped one or two grams over in places. This should be beneficial; one of the reviews I read for this ale felt the sweetness of the honey to be a bit cloying, noting that more hops would help to balance it. Honey, like the liquid malt extract, is a viscous fella and a pain to measure out so the amount used was probably nearer to 100g than 90g. Generally though, this is an experiment, so I'm not too worried about exact measurements, and hope to learn from any mistakes I may have made.

Now to hop quantities. As I mentioned in the previous post, Obama's recipe fails to mention the alpha acid percentage for the hops used. So, a bit of maths and some guesswork were required. I had to assume that the hops the White House used were of average alpha acid percentage; with a quick bit of Googling I garnered some ballpark values for Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops:

• EKG - 4.7% (source) (a gov.uk address, that's trustworthy, right?)
• Fuggles - 4.65% (source) (only gave me a range, so I took the middle of that range)

The recipe calls for 1.5 oz of each. So we need about 7.00 AAU (1.5 oz * 4.7%), which then scaled down to my embarassingly small one gallon for about 1.40 AAU. Next, I took the AA percentages for the hops I had and divided the required AAU value by these percentages:

• EKG - 1.40 AAU / 7.4% = 0.19 oz
• Fuggles - 1.40 AAU / 5.37% = 0.26 oz

It's by no means perfect, but it'll have to do, (remember this is an experiment more than anything, I'm still learning), at least I know how much has gone in.

In her spot in a dark corner, hopefully not too warm.
Blowoff tube in place of an airlock after the krausen eruption last time.

And now my biggest mistake: I didn't take a proper gravity reading until about 10 mins ago. And I may or may not have greedily poured the sample back in (the hydrometer and trial jar were sanitised, mind). But anyway:

OG: 1.060

Blimey. If this can get down to about 1.015, we're looking at a rather tipsy 6%. Let's hope this ferments completely. It's been in the carboy about six hours now and there's a bit of a foam (krausen, I believe) starting to form on top. So far so good.

Next up: IPA