I decided to avoid the use of sugar though brewing a smaller volume than usual, and started to assemble my ingredients. My local homebrew store usually fulfills my needs though has been unable to supply dark malts ready-crushed and I have never enjoyed crushing these at home. I thus went surfing to The UK-hombrew Suppliers List and found Blades Homebrew of Bolton (email Liz Blade from here) who were able to supply all my malts ready crushed, as well as giving me excellent directions to the shop.
The brewing process started on 12/08/96 with the preparation of a yeast culture, using the methods advocated by Graham Wheeler in his books "Home Brewing - The CAMRA Guide" and "Brew Your Own Real Ale At Home" published by CAMRA. I used the sediment from two half-pint bottles of a secret special ale, commercially brewed in 1984 to a gravity similar to that intended for Bah Humbug; then I enjoyed the amazing and complex character of a 12-year old ale! Unfortunately, this starter never got started, so on 21/08/96 I tried my usual starter ale, Shepherd Neames Spitfire. This too proved reluctant to start; I suspect that as this was a 12-month old bottle of Spitfire, what sediment was available was inactive. My impending holidays prevented a further attempt until 17/09/96, again using Spitfire, though this time purchased specially for the occasion! Success! 24 hours later a light frothy head and a bubbling air-lock indicated activity from what was a very small amount of sediment. This signalled the start of the cleaning and sterilisation process that is the bane of all homebrewing - if only we could use disposable, ready-sterilised equipment the whole process would be much more fun! Alas, a further 24 hours later and the starter was giving me cause for concern as it had not developed as well as I would have expected; although it was still active, there was no decent yeast head, just a thin, wispy layer of bubbles. I wonder if Shepherd Neame have changed the yeast used in their bottles! The following day, 20/09/96, I decided to prepare a starter with a commercial packaged yeast, Richie Products' "Premier Crus Real Ale Yeast". I used 2 packets pitched into about half a pint of malt liquor which became very active within the hour! I decided to wait until I was ready to pitch the yeast into my wort before making a final decision on which starter to use but as my Spitfire yeast shows only meagre activity, there was little doubt it would be the Richie!
On Saturday morning, 21/09/96, I was up early (well, nine o'clock-ish is early after a couple of pints of Cains Red Fox and Youngs Dirty Dick's at the Grapes!) and by 9.30 was washing the breakfast things and drying the dishes from last night (thanks Babs!). I soon had my boiler full and set to simmer to get my 15ltrs of liquor up to strike temparature. I gave my mash-tun a final sterilise and rinse then ran my liquor in and started adding my grains. Foolishly, I had not opened all my individual bags of grain and so the adding of the grain took longer than usual and the temperature of my mash had fallen to less than 60 degrees. This required the addition of more hot water to raise the temparature and a mash temperature of 67 degrees was achieved at 11.30, just as the electricity went off! I quickly insulated my mash and left it to do it's business and set about restoring power to the house. It transpired that the RCD had tripped, possibly because I had both my boiler and the kettle going to get hot water quickly!
At 12-30 I recharged my boiler to ensure sufficient water was available for sparging/re-mashing and again cleaned and sterilised my next bucket and tidied my working area. I started running off the mash at 1.00 and using a technique of re-mashing, rather than sparging, I was able to get about 3 gallons of wort of around 1080 degrees. I think this was quite reasonable as the recipe requires the addition of sugar to achieve 4.5 gallons of 1085 degrees. The boil was started at 2 o'clock but I then decided to drain my boiler and ensure that the element was sparklingly clean as I have suffered with my last two brews with the cut-out operating during the boil. This meant that I had to drain the boiler mid-boil in order to clean it, so I decided to clean it sooner rather than later!
The wort came to the boil at 2.30 and the first batch of hops were added. I then got on with the job of cleaning everything (again) and at 4.00 I decided to add about 150gms of syrup to get a reasonable quantity of wort followed at 4.15 by the second batch of hops. At 4.40 I returned to my boiler to find that the cut-out had cut-out! I think this had been brought on by the fact that the wort had reduced to about 1 gallon, only just covering the element of the boiler. I had obviously been lucky to reach (near enough) the end of the boil!
The wort was cooled quite rapidly with my home made wort cooler and I added about the same volume of cold liquor to achieve 1085, ending up with about 3 gallons of wort. The Richies yeast was still very active and definitely looked better than the Spitfire culture so the Richies yeast was pitched at 5.30 and I once again started the cleaning process!
Six hours later a good thick head had formed showing the fermentation had started OK. The following evening the head had evened out and by Monday night the activity seemed to be dropping. On checking with a Hydrometer I got a reading of 1025 degrees and so prepared for kegging the following night.
Tuesday, 24/09/96 and the fermentation had all but stopped. The gravity was down to 1024 so I syphoned the green beer off the yeast waste and into my ready cleaned King Keg along with a solution of boiling water and approx. 50gms of Golden Syrup as a primer - this should ensure the fairly rapid creation of CO2 to purge the air out of the keg.
The Bah Humbug Ale was put away into the garage until early December when I intended to sample it prior to the arrival of Birchy and Lyn. The beer was well sampled over the period of thier visit and continued to improve into the new year and beyond.
It was especially liked by Birchy and Don and it was Don who successfully nagged me into making another brew the following year. This time I added a small jar of honey in place of the syrup in the boil and Bah Honey Humbug was born! This was repeated the following year together with a lower gravity beer to go with it.
For the Millenium celebrations, Don and Ian both ganged up on me to brew again! This I did but only on condition that Ian would help! This time a single mash was used for two brews - the first runnings, by far the stronger extraction, went for the highish (more than 6 percent) strength best ale with the second runnings giving us a 3.5ish brew. My son Daniel, now seven years old, was commisioned to christen the beer and design and draw the pump clip....Bah Milleni 'umbug was born! This proved to be an excellent beer for new years day and the lower strength beer was also very passable!
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