Guest blog on brewing with hops in the Green...

I've been growing hops on my allotment for three years and they are monsters .... but my hubby enjoys making interesting beer so I'll let him take over my blog this time as he really wants to talk about his new toy; the Braumeister:

Green Hopped IPA

Hello, I am Vicky's husband and a guest writer on her blog this time around. I've been brewing my own beer for many years now. Like many people it started with dodgy kits from Boots, basically a tin of malt extract and hops that you put in a fermenting bin, added plenty of water, some extra sugar, yeast, and hoped for the best. Normally, you ended up with something that was almost but not quite exactly unlike beer. However it was cheap.

The Dread Machine

Some years back, having got out of the habit of brewing, I tried one of the more modern "2 can" kits. These don't require any extra sugar and are much better than the old days. They give drinkable beer! However, unable to leave things well alone, I decided to graduate to "all grain" brewing which means using actual malted barley and hops. This means doing a full "mash" (essentially soaking the grains in water at the correct temperature to encourage enzymes to convert starches to fermentable sugars), a "sparge" (rinsing the grains to get more sugar) and a boil (adding hops at various stages over what for me is typically 90 minutes, to get a balance between bitterness and aroma. I bought a boiler and mash tun (which was a converted Thermos picnic coolbox) and set to it. I was hooked! The beer was another step up in quality.

Earlier this year I finally gave in and bought a Spiedel "Braumeister" which is an all-in-one mash tun and boiler, with a computer controller to take care of temperature and operation of a circulating pump. The beer has improved once again but more importantly brew days are less fraught, and the results a bit more consistent.

We have an allotment and 3 years ago planted hops  (Note blog owner: I planted hops... ): Fuggles, East Kent Golding, and Challenger. The first 2 are still struggling but the Challenger have gone mad. We harvested the hops recently so the obvious thing to do was make an all-challenger brew with the "green" hops. Brews with fresh rather than dried hops should be a little more aromatic and perhaps zesty. I made a brew last year with the smaller hop crop and it turned out well, so this year I wanted to try it in the Braumeister.

 I made the recipe using software called "Beersmith" which helps with getting the bittering right and is able to predict alcohol levels and colour quite well.

Improvised funnel!

Grains in a bucket...

The next step was to measure out the grains. Here they are in the bucket. The dark grains are the black malt, being added to darken the beer a little, and the light powder is a mineral mix to treat the water to make it more suitable for brewing. The water in Hertford is extremely hard, and so I add an acid to it to reduce carbonates, and add minerals to balance it out and hopefully enable more hop character to come forward.

And so it begins...

The braumeister is fired up and it starts by heating up the water to "strike" temperature, which is where you tip in the grains

Then we add the grains. I invert the lid of the Braumeister to make a funnel, making the process easier.

And here are the grains all installed and ready to start the mash.

After about 90 minutes the mash has been completed and as you can see, the result ("wort") has a nice colour and looks nice and clear.

Oooh look at my wort

Green hops

Green hops laying down their
lives for a greater purpose

And now it's time to get the hops in! Because the hops are fresh and not dried, they are quite bulky and I will need to use quite a lot of them.

And here are the hops in the now-boiling wort

That wort is cool 

After about 90 minutes of boiling, and having added hops at various stages, the next step is to cool the wort. I use a steel coil that is immersed in the wort, and run cold water through it from the garden tap. This makes for a very efficient heat exchanger and it can normally cool the wort from boiling to 22-25degrees in about half an hour. A fast cool helps the final clarity of the beer, as unwanted proteins and residue in the wort drop out out before it gets transferred into the fermenting vessel.

Splish splash all
over the kitchen

Nearly there. All that remains is to transfer the wort in the fermenter

You'll notice this is being done from quite a height. This is deliberate; we want to reintroduce oxygen to the wort which will have been drive out by the boil. Yeast needs oxygen to ferment properly.

And finally, having settled the fermenter in a warm place, I took a small sample to check with a hydrometer.

This wort was still quite hot and the hydrometer is calibrated for liquid at 20 degrees. So adjusting for this the Original Gravity ended up at something like 1056. This might mean a resulting beer of around 5.6%. Quite a strong one, but in keeping with my wish to make a strong hoppy IPA.

I'm not drunk after licking the hydrometer,
it's quality control honestly...

The yeast used was a liquid yeast that I "washed" and reused from an earlier brew. It's the first time I've tried this technique so it'll be interesting to see what happens. You take the yeast and residue left over from a brew, and put it into a sterilised container. You then wait for the "trub" (residue that isn't yeast) to settle at the bottom, and for beer/water to rise to the top. The stuff in the middle is the yeast. You pour off the top liquid, carefully, and decant the yeast into another vessel and discard the trub. Repeat this as necessary, then keep the resulting yeast safe in the fridge ready to use next time. I'm given to understand you can do this a few times with yeast but eventually it will become nonviable, or take on off-flavours from the earlier beers. I am hoping to get 4-5 uses out of this one. The original liquid yeast cost about £6.

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A Plethora of Plums aka Plum Crazy!

This last four weeks or so it seems to have all been about plums! In August I received a tip from a fellow foodswapper of a stand of wild plums so I picked about 8kgs; although as I tweeted when you get home it's much better if your keys are not in the bottom of the bag of plums...Then on Monday I was offered the last pick of the Victoria plums off of a friend's tree. So Tuesday night was spent frantically halving plums as they were all pretty ripe, finishing at 1130 with a follow up cooking session on Thursday.

With the wild plums I made two different chutneys and a rather spectacular jam (even if I do say so myself); the chutney is currently maturing so recipes will follow if it turns out to be good!  The Victorias were made into a mincemeat, adapting a recipe from the Preserves book of the River Cottage handbook to be thyroid friendly and a yummy plum sauce that will be replacing HP on my bacon butties for the foreseeable future.

Today there will be a lot of apple related activity as I was offered apples via Streetbank from a neighbour's tree and I've offered to make apple jam and chutney for Hertford Apple Day (11th October). I made apple and rowan jelly a week ago and I love the taste but I think it may be like marmite as people either tell me they love it or hate it...

In the recipes below I've assumed that the basics of jam/chutney making are already known. If not please read a basic jam guide (particularly the bits about not putting cold stuff into hot jars and vice versa plus how to test for a set) before attempting any of these recipes.

Wylde Plum, Elder and Serendipity Berry Jam

Good on toast and is a natural flu jab!

1kgs wild plums

1.3 kgs white sugar

500 gms elderberries

500 gms of 'serendipity berries' (basically any berries that you happen to have to hand. Mine tend to have a distinctly blackberryish lean supplemented by raspberries/ loganberries /cherries/ grapes etc. Frozen berry mixtures are a good standby for if you don't have enough picked berries to hand)

1 tbsp cider vinegar

juice of a lemon

Halve the plums (after washing!) and discard any manky bits plus the stones. I normally add in about the same amount of plums from the extra to replace the manky discards. Sling into a bowl mixing with the sugar and leave in fridge for at least 2 hours (I left it overnight) to draw out the juice.

Boil up the elderberries with 50 ml of water for about 20 mins. Use a potato masher to bash them but be careful not to put on too much pressure as the seeds are really really bitter and will spoil the taste. Pass through a wide sieve pressing with the back of a spoon (gently see previous about bitter seeds). I left this to drip overnight as the elderberries taste divine and are also good against flu/colds so I want as much of the yummy goodness as possible!

Throw the plums, elderberry juice and serendipity berries into a pan with the remaining ingredients, heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved then bring up to a rolling boil.  Skim the scum and test for a set at 10 mins, keep testing until ready                                                                       then bottle up. 

Plum Mincemeat

2 kgs plums

zest and juice of 5 large oranges

1kg scrumped (with permission) apples 

500 gms dried figs

600 gms juicy raisins

100 gms cranberries

200 gms rhubarby grapefruit jam (or other citrus jam as this is one of mine)

500 gms demerara sugar

1 tsp cloves

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ginger

1 grated nutmeg

200 gms chopped brazil nuts

200 ml plum brandy (I made this in 2012 but normal brandy would do)

Chop the plums any way you can get the stones out but mostly in half. Throw into a saucepan with the orange juice and cook for about 20 mins until soft. Blend until completely smooth with the cloves. If you have a spice mill powderise the cloves but I didn't so there may be some interesting clove surprises in the finished results...

Quarter the figs and remove the hard stem bit; although I think I will also chop in half widthways next time to make the results less chunky. Chop the apples as finely as you like them in mince meat. Throw in all the other ingredients except for the brandy. Give it a good mixing and put in the fridge (covered) to mature overnight (or for a day and a half in my case). 

Dollop it into two large oven proof dishes (maximum surface area) and put into the oven on gas mark 1/2 /130 deg C for 2 hours, Move your shelves around to get both dishes to the bottom of the oven so you can get your clean jars in and put the oven up to gas mark 2 and sterilise your (clean) jars for half an hour. Pot up and put into the dark 

                                                                               jam cupboard to mature for a couple of months

Plum Ketchup 

This is probably the best sauce I've tasted for putting on your sausage and it's relatively healthy...

3.5 kgs plums

300 gms dates

200 gms raisins

2 large onions (chopped)

10 garlic cloves

Large lump (about 4") of root ginger grated

1.5 tbsp coriander powder

2 teaspoons of all spice powder

Several shakes of chilli (to taste)

1.5 tbsp tumeric

1 grated nutmeg

500 gms dark muscovado sugar

Good grating of sea salt

1.75 lt cider vinegar

Wash, halve and destone the plums. Put the spices, plums, dried fruit, onions, garlic into a pan with half the vinegar. Simmer for around 40 mins then blend. Sieve the results into a pan through a wide mesh sieve. I kept blending the stuff that wouldn't go through the sieve until I was left with about 1/2 a sieves worth of stuff that just wouldn't go through. This was used as a immediate eat chunky chutney (waste not want not!).

Add the vinegar to the sieved stuff then simmer for about 40 mins until it's as thick as you'd like it to be for a pouring sauce. Ladle into hot sterilised bottles and seal (I use corks). You could put into jars if you prefer but this does mean using a spoon to decant and my lazy nature means I prefer a bottle plus I bought 56 bottles about a year ago and happened to have some left. 

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