PenSans Brewery - Trelawney Ale Recipe

The Trelawney Ale Recipe

INFO for 23 litres at OG ~ 1038, ~ 22 IBU

Limited process info, specific to Trelawney Ale is given here.

For more detailed info on the PenSans process go here.

MALTS	Amount : Metric	Amount : Imperial
Lager / Pale Ale Malt (90%)	4.100 kg	9 lb
Crystal Malt (10%)	0.450 kg	1 lb

HOPS	Purpose	Boil Time	Metric	Imperial	~ IBUs
Southern Brewer @ 9.0%	Bittering	90 mins	22 g	0.78 oz	8 IBU
Goldings @ 4.0%	Bittering	90 mins	86 g	3.00 oz	14 IBU
Goldings @ 4.0%	Aroma	0 mins	6 g	0.21 oz	0 IBU

Help me with bitterness calculations !

YEAST

Whitbread Ale Yeast, try Wyeast 1098

MINERALS	PPM
Calcium (Ca)	150
Magnesium (Mg)	10
Sodium (Na)	20
Sulphate (SO₄)	225
Carbonate (CO₃)	60
Chlorine (Cl)	150

Help me with minerals using a spreadsheet !

Help me with minerals with a general discussion !

MASH LIQUOR

In your hot liquor tank, adjust the pH using an acid solution to a value of 6.0-6.2.
I choose not to add my minerals to the hot liquor tank, choosing instead to add it to the mash liquor in the mash tun prior to mash in.
Calculate the amount of mash liquor required as being 2.3 litres for every kilo of grain and then add on the volume of any deadspace, e.g. beneath the false bottom if your tun has such a thing.
Calculate your strike temperature to get an initial mash temperature of 68蚓.
Add minerals to the liquor in the tun. The minerals that can dissolve will dissolve in the couple of minutes that you spend gently stirring to ensure a settled liquor temperature.
Mash in using the gentle approach, not the "pour from a dizzy height" or "use a hand drill" approaches. See the PenSans Process section for more.
Mash duration 90 minutes.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

The amount of each ingredient was chosen to give around 23 litres of wort for fermenting. My reasons for this are that (assuming you live in a metric world of sorts) the fermentation buckets are 25 litres in size and 23 litres of wort allows for 2 litres of headspace, not a lot, but its balanced by the fact that you can get 20 litres of beer to bottle !
The basic premise in this recipe is that the base malt (lager or pale) and the crystal malt are used in the ratio 90:10.
So you're probably confused about an English man .. . in Africa . . . brewing ales . . . and using lager malt as the base malt ?! Well stop, its just that the local brewing industry doesn't exactly see a lot of pale malt on offer. . . HUGE amounts of lager malt and little else . . . so the brewer goes with the flow . . . no apologies but use pale if you can get it !
If you have a crystal malt with a low colour ("Lovibond") rating, 90:10 is fine, if you have a higher colour rating then maybe drop the recipe to 93:7.
If you use lager malt, 90:10 is fine but if you use pale malt you may want to change things to 93:7.
The hops are chosen to give a simple one off introduction for bittering purposes (i.e. boil for 90 minutes) and a single aroma stage at boil end. You'll be surprised by how much hop flavour you can get without an in-between hop addition. Heck, experiment, start this way and see if you like the results or not !
Southern brewer hops you say ?! Ha ! This is my turn to get back at all those people who put in hard to get hops at every turn ! Just go for whatever low flavour, decent bittering hop you can get, its boiled for 90 minutes anyway, I use it because its easily available in South Africa. As a high alpha acid hop (circa 9%) it allows my hop stocks to go a little further !

MASH-OUT / SPARGING

Adjust the pH of the sparge liquor in your hot liquor tank to around 5.7, again using an acid solution.
In terms of sparge temperature, some brewers can add sufficient sparge liquor to "mash out", meaning to raise the mash up to 75蚓 at mash-end so as to stop further enzyme actitivty. However, those of us that can't directly heat their mash tuns or add further liqour should aim to sparge at around 75蚓. This at least keeps the run off at low viscosity so it runs off easier. I have previously sparged Trelawney Ale at temperatures up to 82蚓. When you sparge with liquor this hot, the mash will eventually rise to around 75蚓 after the hour's sparge. Using sparge liquor at 75蚓 on a mash that finishes at 63蚓 ain't going to see any mash-out taking place. However, I have recently experienced hazy beers due to the 82蚓 sparge liquor which I do not see at 75蚓. So, even though the "mash-out" stage is never really reached, RDWHAHB !
If you follow the suggested mashing in approach you should have minimal need for recirculation. Once the runnings are clear, sparge at such a rate that it takes 45-60 minutes to collect all your wort.

THE BOIL

Add the bittering hops just as the wort comes to the boil, this will minimise boil overs too.
Boil time is 90 minutes.
Add Irish Moss when you have 15-20 minutes of the boil to go.
After 90 minutes, turn off the heating source, give a gentle but strong stir to get the whirlpool effect going, then throw in your aroma hops, stir for another few seconds and put the lid on !
Allow the wort to settle for 30-40 minutes to allow the trub and hop debris to settle.

THE BIG CHILL

Chill to pitching temperature (18-22蚓) using either an immersion chiller or a counter flow chiller.

OXYGENATE

I STRONGLY recommend that you invest in a stainless steel 'stone' with a porosity rating of a couple micron and use this, with an oxygen bottle, to inject suitable oxygen levels into the wort prior to pitching. Its a part of the real brewing process . . . if you can afford it, don't compromise !

FERMENTATION

Ferment at the correct temperature range for your yeast, this is typically 18-20蚓 for an ale yeast.
If you have made some cracking good wort, cared for it well, chilled it to the right pitching temperature, oxygenated correctly and fermented with sufficient yeast then your primary fermentation shouldn't take more than 4 days. After this, allow it to rest a day or two longer to ensure the yeast has done a thorough job.
You should then transfer to a secondary fermentor with finings and allow a further 2-3 days for things to settle out.

WHAT THEN ?!

Bottle or keg as you normally would. Trelawney Ale is presently chilled to 3蚓 for 3 days prior to filtration at 5痠 and force carbonated. In 7-10 days I can have a great keg of ale ready to drink !

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