Black beer brewing
Black beer
(with apologies to John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
Black beer brewing in the dead of night
Take these malted grains and learn to mash.
All your life
You were waiting for this moment to convert.
Black beer brewing in the dead of night
Take these Golding hops and learn to boil.
All your life
You were waiting for this moment to cool.
Black beer fly.
Black beer fly into the thirst of a deep, dark throat.
Black beer brewing in the dead of night
Take this yeast and learn to brew.
All your life
You were waiting for this moment to be drunk.
Black beer fly.
Black beer fly into the thirst of a deep, dark throat.
Sunday before last I brewed a black beer as a specimen beer. The grain bill was overly complicated with 6 malts – I will be coy about exactly what. The idea is to see how it comes up and then knock out one or two of the malts to get an approximate working recipe. At this stage there is no point trying to work out detailed recipes because it will not translate exactly when scaled up from 20 odd litres to 1,700 litres, and different sets of equipment will produce different results. For example, the extent of caramelisation in the kettle will be greater with direct heat from a gas flame compared to the indirect heat of steam jackets. Once the beer is worked out then I’ll tell you what’s in it. Secret recipe stuff in brewing is silly – it’s technique and fermentation which really count.
Hops were Northdown and East Kent Goldings.
This beer is now due to be racked. It could end up at home or at St Marys. I am not sure yet.
I love that song – the original one isn’t to bad either!
Its good to hear that you’ve started on recipe formulation – if you need a guinea pigs, I’m your man, assuming you don’t need useful feedback…