Coco-Krausen: Brewing with Ovaltine

Crazy for Coco-Krausen?
As part of my Ovaltine experiment, I brewed a bigger 12 litre batch yesterday. I also boiled up some invert sugar to go with it. Here are the details of the Brewing a Beer with Ovaltine Experiment. The recipe became more complex as I fiddled with it. Maybe I should have kept is simple stupid, but I love the complexities.


I started with 1.2kg of Ovaltine in 10 litres of water. This has a specific gravity of about 1.050 in the kettle, if my calculations (guesses) are correct. This gravity is ok for hop utilization. I boiled it hard for 15 minutes and scooped the fat and protein that separated and floated in the foam. I take it that whey powder and milk solids were the grey blobs that were floating up on the side of the pot.


I added 14g of Nugget hop pellets at 15 minutes. I then let it roll hard for another 30 minutes before adding 14g of Cascades as finishing hops. With about five minutes left in the hour-long boil I added 500g of inverted, caramelized brown sugar which I made while watching the boil.

These are the added ingredients that I did not plan on until the last minute. I also added 2 teaspoons of instant coffee and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Apparently, cinnamon in an antioxident and hey, I like Ovaltine in my coffee, so it can't be all that bad. I finished the boil and chilled in a bucket of ice water. I added the thick wort the fermenter and added fresh water to 12 litres. I shock it like mad and picthed a package of Munton's Gold ale yeast that I had rehydrated earlier.

For being a fairly high-gravity brew (1.080?), it was roaring in a few hours! The zillions of happy yeasts were chowing on the chocolate wort making some kind of coco-krausen. See photo. It's been a day and a bit and the experiment seems to be going ok. The smell from the fermenter is of malt, chocolate, hops and fruit. I am guessing that the fruity aroma is coming from some kind of reaction with the cocoa? Or perhaps the inverted, caramelized brown sugar? Anyways, it sure smells good.

When the fermentation is complete, I will rack into a secondary with some gelatin in it. I hope to be able to clear the beer, but have not researched much in the way of finings yet. This is a comepletely different kettle of coco compared to real beer brewing.



Happy brewing!

One Step Closer to 100% Homemade Beer

Brew Day at Last!
I thought I would keep you guys posted on my malting at home experiment.

Today, I did a 10 litre mini-batch with the generic malt I made. All manually crushed with a rolling pin (lots of work) like I mentioned before. For 3 kilos it took me over an hour!

I mashed with a 3.4:1 water to grain with 3kg of malt. I did a long 60 minute protein rest at 45ºC to 50ºC because I don't know the protein content of the malt. If it is heavy in protein I hope this will help. If it's lighter on protein the beer will likely be headless. Going for sweet and fermentable, I went by taste on the beta amylase rest. It rested long and low as I held in for 90 minutes at 60ºC. I want to see how sweet this stuff can get.

I suspect that the malt could have been modified more or I did something to disable some of the enzymes during kilning. More things to try next time.

I found gobs of greyish suspended gloop that looks like cauliflower blobs (proteins?) would glom together when the my makeshift tun was undisturbed. I sparged and more sweet stuff came trickling out. The sparge took about 20 minutes for 5 litres. Maybe something was sticking a bit. Maybe over crush.

I boiled the sweet smelling wort for an 75 minutes. 15 minutes for scunge skimming and 60 minutes with hops in. I got a good hot break. I hopped it with 1/2 oz of Magnum pellets and 1/2 oz of Cascades at 45 minutes. When I chilled in the ice bath I could see more globs forming. Aerated and pitched with 1 package of re-hydrated Cooper's ale yeast. Total yield was just over 10 litres.

I have no idea what kind of beer this is going to be. I hoped to make something quite bitter and dry. Hopefully the yeast has the punch to take the FG down low. Staying away from the alpha amylase rest was the idea there. The color is very light and I suspect it will be quite a pale ale, probably more like a lager in looks.

All good fun. Considering that the unknown in my recipe is the malt, and making malt can be just as much an art as making beer. I'll let you know how it turns out. I expect to hear the airlock to be calling me soon.

This is truly 'seat of the pants' homebrewing in the Philippines.

Cheers!