Blackberry Red Ale - September 2014
This was an all-grain, two-gallon batch, our first of this size. It was still produced on the stove top, but we used larger pots. Deb bought both pots as used items from a kitchen supply store, located in Maumee. This beer will ferment in our new, plastic 'BetterBottle' three-gallon carboy that Deb purchased at Titgemeier's. The recipe came from the Brooklyn Brew Shop book titled Beer Making Book.
Ingredients
ABV is suppose to be 6.0%
- fresh blackberries
- sugar
- Maris Otter malt - "is an English two-row "winter" variety of barley"
- Caramel 60 malt
- Aromatic malt
- East Kent Golding hops
- Cascade hops
- English ale yeast - Nottingham
- honey for bottling
Notes
- brewed on Mon, Sep 1, 2014 - Labor Day
- 60-minute mash
- 60-minute boil
- Deb bought a bag of ice at the store to help with chilling the wort. Took only about 25 minutes to get to 70 degrees.
Photos
The pot with the lid contains the mash. The blackberries were warmed in the very small pot. The other large pot contained sparge water.
Sparging
After the boil, Deb chilled the wort in the sink, like with the one-gallon batches. Bagged ice helped cool the wort in a reasonable time. Then we strained the blackberries and other sediment from the wort when we poured the wort into the carboy through a funnel that contained a fine, mesh screen.
Ready to ferment. We'll try to go without a blow-off tube. We'll see if the extra headspace in the carboy allows the first few days of active fermentation to remain within the carboy. A two-gallon batch fermented in a three-gallon carboy may prove handy when using active yeasts, such as the Wyeast Trappist HG 3787.
Bottling
We bottled 21 bottles on Fri, Sep 19, 2014, so it produced a bit more than expected.
For bottling sugar, we used five, hefty tablespoons of local honey.
We tasted some of the beer, and it tasted okay. Nothing special at this point, in my opinion. I detected some pleasant fruity flavors or odors.
The empty (except for the trub), plastic, three-gallon fermenting carboy.
Tasting
We drank the first bottle on Sep 25, 2014, which was six days after bottling. Deb couldn't wait.
The beer tasted really good. Nice carbonation. Smooth. Detected some blackberry aroma.
October 2014
This is definitely a tasty beer. Very smooth. Easy to drink. Any hints of fruit exist in the background. The focus is still on the barley, hops, and yeast. I think that I'm a big fan of the English ale yeasts.
Our five gallon batches of the trippel and wit seem too strong to me. It could be that I prefer beers with an ABV between 5.0 and 7.0 percent, like this one.
November 2014
This is one of my favorite beers that we have brewed. It has good carbonation, but it's not over-carbonated. Very smooth-tasting. After finishing the first one, I crave a second.
December 2014
On Sat eve, Dec 20, 2014, I drank some of our Blackberry Ale and our Imperial Stout. The stout still tastes amazing. The Blackberry Ale is also one of my favorite beers that we have brewed.