Planning batch #4

No sooner is one batch in the bottle than I'm thinking about the next batch! After some thought and research (and some advice from you lot) I decided to go for an Altbier. There are loads of good recipe collections around the internet - the Recipator is a one I refer to quite a lot. I eventually found this recipe which I tweaked using the recipe function in BeerSmith. This is a very useful function as quite often you can't track down exactly the same hops as in the recipe, or exactly the same malt extract etc.

So then I went to place the order with my favourite local homebrew shop - Hauraki Home Brew. Unfortunately their website was down (I found out afterwards that their provider has had a major outage) so I had to phone it in. As it turned out this was a good idea as I got to discuss some aspects of the ingredients, For example, I usually use Muntons liquid malt extract as it is known to be very high quality. Tiffany at Hauraki said they were out of stock because their distributor was also out of stock. The first alternative was John Bull malt extract. This is not quite as high quality as Muntons, and the stock they had was quite old (and so would be slightly darker) but I decided it would do the job.

I had to compromise on the hops a bit too - typically an Altbier would use Spalt hops but Hauraki don't stock them so I'll be using Saaz hops as an alternative. The final compromise is on yeast - it is possible to get a proper Alt yeast from Wyeast but it has to be imported from the USA and is relatively pricey so I'll be using good old dried Safale-S04 yeast. I won't be bang on for style but the colour, maltiness and hoppiness (IBUs) should be correct.

Assuming the delivery arrives OK I'll be kicking this brew off at the weekend. I'll let you know how I get on.