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Spruce Ale

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AToE

AToE

NewBee
Registered Member
Jun 8, 2009
4,066
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0
Calgary AB Canada
Spruce Ale – 06/19/10

Initial volume 5.75 gallons for 5 gallon yield.

Grains and extracts:

2kg (4.4lbs) Light DME
1lb Carastan/Crystal 30L (Said both… odd)
1lb Crystal 70/80L
1ln Crystal 120L

Hops/Etc

1oz Chinook Pellets 11.5AA
1oz Fuggles Pellets 5.1AA
Roughly 1 gallon packed of spruce tips (half chopped up half whole)

Yeast – S-33

Process: Did a partial mash by bringing some water up to 175F, stirring in the grains, then when it dropped to 155F I stirred in 1 tsp of Amylase enzyme, covered the pot and wrapped in towels. Let steep for 1 hour, strained and rinsed the grain, total volume from steep was 2 gallons.

Added enough water to make 2.5 gallons and set on stove to boil. Boiled 1oz Chinook for 60min, then boiled 1oz Fuggles for last 10 min. Right before “flameout” I stirred in the gallon of spruce tips, then set in a cold water bath to cool.

After a half hour steep in the hot wort (somewhat cooled but still hot) I strained out the spruce tips and added water to bring volume to 5.75 gallons.

SG: 1.037
Expected FG: 1.012 (maybe lower due to the amylase, we’ll see)

Rehydrated the yeast in water and added some wort in steps to acclimatize it, then pitched. Lag lasted roughly 12 hours, after which I had a bit of an overflow, lost maybe a ¼ gal. (I am fermenting in a 6 gal carboy, left open, sitting in a water bath in my primary bucket, which has its lid on) I wasn’t surprised by this.

I managed to keep the temp below 70F most of the time, and as such avoided much of the esters this yeast can give off. I could have kept it cooler, but there wasn’t room for frozen water bottles in the water bath, had to use smaller ice packs. Next time I’ll plan for a wide water bath vessel.

Ferment seems to have calmed down now, 2 days after pitch. I’ll do a closer investigation in a couple days to see if it’s about done, then rack to a 5 gallon carboy.
 
I did mention it above, but it's a bit buried, I went with S-33 because I have it on hand and it's given me better results so far than some of the other yeast I've tried (I do have access to a bunch of good lager and ale yeasts though, but they're the liquid variety and I'm sticking to dry for now).
 
Well, I'm going to bottle this soon. If 1 cup of honey is a good strong I think 3/4 cup sugar should be ok, and I've read around that 3/4 - 1 cup is good for 5 gallons when using sugar. I like to be on the safe side, plus everything I've done recently seems to by crazily carb'd and overflows on me half the time. ;D
 
Done, got 40x 500ml bottles out of it. I used 3/4 cup of golden brown sugar because this is a low ABV brew and I'm worried about it being thin tasting.

My initial SG was 1.037, and what I measured today was 1.016 (both before and after adding the priming sugar, which I find VERY odd...). So that gives me an ABV of only 2.98, plus something like 0.12% from the priming sugar, so...

final ABV of roughly 3.1%

Weirdly lower than I expected, but I guess I should have known that crystal malts wouldn't ferment nearly as completely as other kinds and would leave me with a high FG.

Hopefully this is good, I'm scared that I may have killed it by sticking it in the super-session beer range.
 
S-33 is a "slow but steady" yeast, so it may just take a very long time to chew through the new priming sugar -- but beware, it may continue to work on that residual sugar (provided that it is fermentable) and you may end up with some over-carbonation. I would have expected at least some of those more complex sugars to have been broken down by the amylase, so I wouldn't be surprised if things proceed, albeit slowly, to a lower ultimate gravity.
 
Hmm, that's a bit frightening, I didn't think of that. I don't mind if it over-carbs a bit, but I definitely don't want bottle bombs.

How much SG movement would I need to worry about for bombs? According to the mead calculator 0.75 cups of sugar should have only added about a point (and I did measure it to be about the same after the addition)... and I know I've had a good 4 point carb before safely.
 
Change in SG can be used to estimate the amount of carbonation (in potential volume of CO2) but I don't remember the relationship offhand and I am not home to check my notes. Let me take some time later today to re-derive it, and I'll then post a more specific answer for you.
 
Thanks guys. I know from experience that 4 points produces enough carb to be a pain in the arse, so I can see where above 5 gets scarey.

Unfortunately since I don't know how fast these'll ferment I don't really have any way of controlling/watching this. I often get carb'd in just 1 or 2 days, so what I could potentially do is crack on tonight to see how it's doing, then another tomorrow and so on.

If S33 is going to slowly chug through those complex sugars though I'll have no way to tell.

... but, if it was at 1.016 at only 3% ABV after two and a half weeks, I'm thinking that everything that's left is complex, and I'm certainly not lagering this (sitting around 73F). So I'm thinking (from nearly NO beer experience though) that the likelihood of it chewing through a full 4 or more points of complex carbs is not high?

Sorry for the ranting, I'm just scared of bottle bombs.
 
How does it taste? If its good, it'll be gone very soon, so don't worry. My batch this year is in the keg, at 8% I'm wanting to let it age a while longer. I used cheaper maple syrup, grade B, got a lot more maple flavor this time, and the American oak sits nicely as a background flavor.
 
Since the process will be slow, if it happens at all, you can simply pop the top on a bottle every couple of weeks to check progress. You'd want to do that for tasting evaluations anyway, right? ;)

Thanks, Medsen, for supplying the rule of thumb. That's consistent with my memory, but when it comes to bottle pressure I didn't want to post something that I wasn't completely confident about (like I wasn't completely sure that it was 1.5 points = 1 vol of gas, or was it 1 point = 1.5 vols of gas??). The difference can be significant! ;D
 
DaleP said:
How does it taste? If its good, it'll be gone very soon, so don't worry. My batch this year is in the keg, at 8% I'm wanting to let it age a while longer. I used cheaper maple syrup, grade B, got a lot more maple flavor this time, and the American oak sits nicely as a background flavor.
Click to expand...

I chilled some of the leftovers from bottling (still obviously) and it was nice but pretty thin. I think carbonation will breath some life into it though, or so I hope anyways!

And yeah, I don't have any intentions of letting it stick around for long if it's decent!

I'm going to buy another big stock pot so that I can do say 15 litres in each and try to do all grain next (DME seems to be more expensive).
 
Hey, is there any way to calculate rough calories per serving based on ABV and final SG? Finding out the calories in 1% ABV for a certain volume should be easy enough on the old interwebs, but what about calories per SG point for a given volume?
 
Check out this handy site. The dropdown on top also gives you tools for figuring out how much priming sugar to use and other options which might lead to buying more toys. ;D
 
Coool, that is handy - what does it mean when it gives me my "real" final gravity? Is that what my FG would be if there wasn't alcohol in the mix lowering the gravity? That means this is even lower ABV, 2.7% (plus priming).

Also, it says 129 calories?!?! Is that because of the high FG? I would think that a sub-3% beer should be way lower than that... how much is a beer usually? EDIT: I used good ol google to answer that, I guess 129 is actually pretty low for beer. How the heck did Molson (shudder :() get a beer down to 67 calories at 3%?? It doesn't taste dry either, maybe they hit it with bloody splenda?

Arrg, so much for a low cal beer for my calorie-counting friends.
 
Chevette Girl said:
Well, it's still got fewer calories than a Coke... and probably 10x better for you too!
Click to expand...

I think the only thing less healthy than Coke just might be battery acid. ;)


I just chilled and popped one of these for a taste - slightly carb'd and way way too sweet. I'm not getting much bitterness/hops taste or spruce tips taste out of this yet, we'll see what it does when fully carb'd. I re-sealed it because it was no good to drink... might still carb up near fully from this point.


I'm getting tired of my beers not being any good! (of course this may come around), this is my 3rd beer and I need to start making something good so I can have faith in the investment.

I'm thinking of just doing a paler ale next with something like 6lbs of Canadian 2-Row and 6lbs of Munich, then 2 oz fuggles for 60 min, 1oz for 20 min, and at least 1oz for dry hopping.
 
AToE said:
Coool, that is handy - what does it mean when it gives me my "real" final gravity? Is that what my FG would be if there wasn't alcohol in the mix lowering the gravity? That means this is even lower ABV, 2.7% (plus priming).

Also, it says 129 calories?!?! Is that because of the high FG? I would think that a sub-3% beer should be way lower than that... how much is a beer usually? EDIT: I used good ol google to answer that, I guess 129 is actually pretty low for beer. How the heck did Molson (shudder :() get a beer down to 67 calories at 3%?? It doesn't taste dry either, maybe they hit it with bloody splenda?

Arrg, so much for a low cal beer for my calorie-counting friends.
Click to expand...

Molson gets its beer down to the low calorie mark by mashing for extended periods of time at the mid 140 degree range. Most beer makers are content to mash until the starch is broken down, leaving lots of unfermentable sugars still in the wort. Doing a an exract with grain does not allow this. That and your heavy hand at the crystal malts leads to a sweet beer. A southern brown ale comes to mind based on this recipe. Too bad you are in the frozen northland, or I'd send you a bottle of mine.
 
Ah, that makes sense, so they end up with a very dry beer. I really thought it tasted sweet though... I wouldn't put some artifical sweetener past them!
 
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