We’re already into November so it is about time I picked up my beer brewing. I think can fairly safely assume that it will be a while before the general temperature tops 23°C so no danger of the yeast getting too hot while doing its work. I’ve chosen to pick up with the same base brew as I finished off with in April (Marjoram Spring). That was a pale Exe Valley Spring Beer recipe from Graham Wheeler’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale. That one was supplemented with an extract from marjoram harvested from the garden; this one I’m calling Three Gold Wings because I’m using an extract from my harvest of small crab apples from my Malus trilobata tree, which has gorgeous, three-lobed leaves.

As well as the crab apple extract (just washing and boiling the fruit, then letting it stand for a while before increasing the gravity up to about 1.040 with light dried malt extract), I added a small amount of torrified wheat. I bought that quite a while ago and hadn’t actually used it at all but, in theory, a moderate addition should aid the formation and retention of a creamy head on the beer. The condensed recipe was 7,600ml water to mash 1,000g pale malt and 50g torrified wheat for just over an hour at about 66°C. After removing the grain and bringing to the boil, I added 10g of target hops, followed by the crab apple juice after about an hour and, after taking off the heat ten minutes later, a couple of grams of East Kent Goldings stirred in.

This was transferred to my plastic jerry can to cool overnight and now I’m rehydrating about 5.5 of Mangrove Jack’s Burton Union yeast (the other half of what I used in April – stored in the fridge in the meanwhile and turning to a nice, creamy mixture as it wakes up. The original gravity of the wort is 1.043 @ 18°C and, in a few minutes I’ll put the yeast in my fermenting vessel and tip on all the rest of the wort, which will mix it and add some oxygen. I’ll then put in my fermenting cupboard with a brewbelt controlled by my Codlo device to maintain a steady 21°C fermentation temperature and, all things being equal, I hope to be bottling next weekend.