From: "Molly Wolf" To: "Anglican List" Subject: St Sam's Black Ale Recipe Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 Dear aspirant brewmeisters: The problem with my giving you the St. Sam's Black Ale recipe is thusly: I make SSBA in a brew-you-own establishment. That means I can make it up in bulk (usually 50-52 litres, or over 13 gallons). I boil it up in a humungous kettle that has a spout near the bottom for taking the hot wort off the remaining hops. The BYO people do all the filtering and carbonation work. So I can't give real directions if you're making up this stuff on the back of your stove. I suggest you take the recipe, get a book on home brewing, and customize the recipe to fit the methods in the book. Not terribly helpful, I know....But here goes. St. Sam's Black Ale Bring 48 litres (12-1/2 gallons) of water to a boil. To it add: 3.5 litres (3.75 quarts) dark malt 4 litres (4.25 quarfts) hi-malt glucose In a muslin bag, tie 140 grams (5 oz) of Cascade hops and add to wort. Boil 30 minutes. Now, pile loosely into a muslin bag: 300 grams (10-1/2 oz) black malt 150 grams (5-1/4 oz) Carastan malt 150 grams (5-1/4 oz) chocolate malt 40 grams (1 oz) Cascade hops Add to wort and boil 10 minutes. Remove bags. Turn off heat. To wort add 3 tablets Irish malt 30 g. (1 oz) Tettnanger hops Let sit 4 minutes. Drain beer. Add 15 g. (1/2 oz.) brewing yeast. Ferment, prime, and bottle as the recipe directs. -------------------------------------- Responses: From: "Bethany K. Dumas" On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Molly Wolf wrote: >Dear aspirant brewmeisters: [etc.] Fascinating. I no longer brew beverages, but when I was a grad student, I fell heir to a treasured beer recipe from Germany that was passed around among select drinking members of the community. We did not cook our brew. We made it in large palstic garbage "cans," so made about 40 qts. a a time. At the time I last made it, it cost me about 5 cents (US) to make a quart. Brings back memories ... Once, a landlady asked me to be gone all one day so she could have new carpet installed in my apt. I agreed, then warned her about the beer brewing in the garbage can. She laughed and said okay. Late that night, when I returned, I discovered some strange material floating in the brew. The next day whe told me that she had thought I was joking and had thrown some trash in the garbage can before she realised that it really was beer! (Yes, we drank it anyway.) Bethany -------------------------------------- From: Sean Kilpatrick On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 17:41:06 -0500, Molly Wolf wrote: Dear aspirant brewmeisters: I could tell there were a lot of hops in that brew, but I didn't realize how much and what variety until I saw the recipe. A few questions. Do you use primary and secondary fermentation or just bottle from the primary? I imagine that the pre-bottling phase is about 2 weeks of fermentation with a week or two in the bottles. Is that about right? Do the BYO people bottle with CO2? I wouldn'tthink so with the final prime before bottling. I'm hoping to be living somewhere that I can do some more brewing. Working in my three room apartment just dosn't cut it especially when my wife complains about the smaell of the hops boiling. -- Roy Murphy -------------------------------------- From: "Molly Wolf" Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 Sorry to take so long to answer this, but I finally talked to my brew-your-own person, Susan. She says that they don't use a hydrometer; they can tell when the fermentation is finished (as I always could when I brewed at home) by the end of the production of CO2 -- usually a week to 10 days at home. Susan also says that it wouldn't help home brewers to give a detailed description of process because you just can't do it the same way in home brewing (and if you find a BYO, they'll have their own methods). Her advice mirrors mine: adapt a brew-at-home recipe. What makes SSBA distinctive is the use of lots of Cascade and Tettninger hops (both of which are aromatic and not bitter) and the black and chocolate malt, which give the beer its body. So if I were trying this at home, I'd start with a suitable homebrewing recipe for brown ale and I'd work out the proportion of hops and grains for the volume of water. A home brewer is also going to have to prime the beer before bottling, for secondary fermentation. SSBA is best with only a little carbonation, so keep the priming sugar levels down. Sorry, everybody else. - Molly