A mild case of Goblins

Over the weekend I had a frantic few hours of brewing, which were very productive.

I had two missions for the afternoon:

1. Bottle the fermented Hobgoblin.
2. Brew up a new batch of something.

Number one was helped by my lastest acquisition – a bench capper. Capping bottles isn’t a terrible job, but it’s not the greatest either. Using a two-handed capper is a bit painstaking, and it’s possible to put caps on skewiff, which means you have to take it off and try another one. The bench capper though is a tabletop machine, which is basically just a big lever. Bottle goes on the platform, cap on top, pull lever down, pop bottle out.

The Hobgoblin had fermented down to 1.010, which was .002 below what I was aiming for, but because my OG was .002 below too, I came out pretty much where I needed to be at 4.3% ABV. I primed it with 90g of white sugar and the colour is pretty much spot-on.

 

hobgoblin clone sample

Looks like a ruby ale to me…

The taste is where it excels though. Even the sample with no conditioning tastes fantastic, very, very close to Hobgoblin. It might be a bit premature, but I think I’ve nailed this one. We’ll find out in two or three weeks.
The second part of my brewtastic weekend was cooking up something new. I’ve got a real urge to do a nice witbier, but until I finally finish making the brewfridge, it’s not going to happen. Instead I’ve gone for a wintery beer – Chestnut Mild.

Chestnut in this context is meant to refer to the colour, but I found a nice recipe with actual chestnuts in it, so I’ve used that. I’ve no idea how it’ll turn out, but it’s the weakest (3.4% ABV) beer I’ve brewed. I’m hoping for something pretty neutral, very British (Fuggles and Golding hops), and nice easy drinking. Mash, sparge and boil went by the book and it’s sat in the no-chill now, ready for me to pitch yeast tonight.

One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to be spending much on beer this winter.

3 Responses

  1. katie says:

    Enjoying your blog which I found when searching for info on beer fridges. Just got my very first brew from a kit on 6days ago so im right at the start of my brewing journey!

  2. Adam says:

    So I’m curious as to how the taste compared to the original ? I can’t seem to duplicate the intense bright sweetness of Hobgoblin.
    What yeast did you use ?

  3. Adam says:

    Very close actually. I did a blind taste test with some friends and the only difference anyone noticed was that the bubbles were much smaller in mine, not quite as ‘fizzy’ as the original.

    I used a Wyeast American Ale 1272 smackpack for the yeast, and it seemed to work really well. Quite a good match for Wychwood’s own.

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