Used to do a bit of proper homebrewing many years ago but no longer have any kit.

I used to just boil and mash in a Thorne electrim bin with a false bottom which gave ok results, but looking online now I see there’s a lot of kit available.

Is the newer digital control Thorne bin much better for mashing in than the old style, or is it better to get basic boiler and an insulated mash tun?

Any good online shops for kit?

Cheers

Here is a couple I use

homebrewshop

Malt miller

and loads of help here
Jims beer kit forum

I’d go BIAB (Brew In A Bag) – but then that’s what I do, so I would 😉

Electrim do a boiler with digital controller now, about £115. Mashing bag < £10. mash in the bag in the boiler @ 67-68deg, remove the bag & sparge with a couple of kettles full, add back to the boiler, then bring to the boil & add hops as normal. more details on jimsbeerkit BIAB page

I’d go BIAB (Brew In A Bag) – but then that’s what I do, so I would

+1

Yeah BIAB is where I’m heading next. However, saying that I’ve just brewed a Festival Old Suffolk Strong ale and it’s bloody good! Got a Festival Father Hooks on the go as well now, all in time for Christmas hopefully. 😀

so for BIAB i’d need:

Boiler
Grain Bag
Thermometer
Fermenting bin
Barrel

anything else? Do i need a chiller of some sort, or can i get good results without. I dont think i had a chiller when i was doing it previously.

time to start shopping and finding recipes 😀

Chiller helps but not essential. I use bottles rather than a barrel. Hydrometer and trial jar also very useful

Graham Wheeler book Brewing Your Own British Real Ale very useful – plenty of recipes

It’s easier with a separate boiler and mash tun imo,I use separate boiler hot liquor tun and mash tun,so I can sparge straight into the boiler,but that’s just to make it easier still.

This is a useful site too
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/index.php?sid=63fef384f01110e09417d4eae643ec6c

anything else? Do i need a chiller of some sort, or can i get good results without. I dont think i had a chiller when i was doing it previously.

time to start shopping and finding recipes A chiller is £25 of copper pipe from B&Q, wrap around paint pot, remove pot, that’s it – takes 15 minutes to make. Some vids of the process of youtube.

The grain bag for BIAB is a sheet of viole from a garment shop for £1.50, and your mam to sew it into a bag shape.

is the main advantage of a chiller just reducing the time to cool the wort before adding the yeast?

I know it can help precipitate proteins out to reduce haze, but does this affect taste at all or is it more of an appearence thing?

I know it can help precipitate proteins out to reduce haze, but does this affect taste at all or is it more of an appearence thing?

Also reduces risk of infection (which i think is the main benefit).

Thanks

Just wandering off the topic slightly, what are the current brew kits like? Its about 20 years since i made one (found the Hambleton Bard Old English ale pretty good), do they still have the ‘homebrew taste’ or have things progessed?

Any to look at that are worth a try?

I got started with some bits from here…

http://www.massivebrewery.com/index.html

Everything to get going easily. It is 10litres, which suits me as I am experimenting with recipes… From then on the Maltmiller and thehopshop for supplies

Kits are way better than they used to be…

I find Festival kits to be the best at not tasting like brewkits, more expensive but worth it.

Enjoying playing with all grain recipes at the mo tho

I got started with some bits from here…

http://www.massivebrewery.com/index.html

Everything to get going easily. It is 10litres, which suits me as I am experimenting with recipes… From then on the Maltmiller and thehopshop for supplies

I picked up the same kit a couple of months ago. Brewed my 7th batch at the weekend.

Smaller batches are great in some respects, since I’ve now got 7 different brews under my belt, whereas with a bigger set up i’d only have brewed a couple. Much less waste if things don’t go according to plan, and experimenting isn’t so risky.

The downside of a smaller set up is that the effort involved is the same (almost) regardless of the size of the batch, plus the beer works out a wee bit more expensive.

The kit is brilliant, however i’d advise picking up a couple of additional items:

(1) Star San sanitiser. Great stuff and last for ages. Sprays on and doesn’t need to be rinsed.

(2) Buy a couple of additional 10l fermentation buckets (about £5 each) and use those for fermenting batches (means you can have loads fermenting at the same time), then use the one which comes with the kit for bottling purposes. Buying a bottling wand (about £7) which fits in the place of the tap made things sooooo much easier for me for bottling! Just siphon in from the FV to the bottling bucket the night before bottling. Sipon is about £3

(3) buy a proper capper (mine was £9). Much less hassle and risk of broken bottles than the supplied one (quieter too!).

I second the Star San recommendation.

I’d also add a bottling tree with a bottle washer on top if you are going to bottle any significant number of bottles – so much easier to give it a couple of squirts of star san with the washer and stick it on the tree to drain, then take it straight off and bottle it.

Peterfile… 7 under the belt, well done. Would you give us a summary of what the recipes were and how they worked out?

If you’ve got Beersmith (which i’d recommend for making up your own recipes or scaling others) then i can send you the full recipes. Beersmith is great because when you pick the style you want to brew, it will work out where you’re at with bitterness, colour, abv etc and where that sits in the type of beer you’re trying to brew, so you can quite quickly make adjustments and know what the overall effect will be.

I think all my recipes came from the Beersmith recipe website, but then I tweaked a few things based on stuff I’d read in forums. It’s all noted in my own copies of the recipes.

Briefly:

Pale Ale (single hop recipe which came with the equipment. Surprisingly good for my first attempt)

Pale Ale (two different hops, but pretty basic recipe, all went well, it tasted brilliant, slightly over carbonated though)

Old Peculier clone (missed my OG, but tried a bottle last week and it’s incredibly good! Currently bottle conditioning in my loft for a couple of months)

Anchor Porter (everything went well, currently bottle conditioning in my loft for a couple of months)

Sierra Nevada pale ale clone (now been in secondary FV for 2 weeks, just about to bottle, took a sample at the weekend, tastes fantastic)

Bells Two Hearted IPA clone (a clone of one of the best IPAs ever to be brewed. Dry hopped last week, another week in the secondary FV and then will be bottled

Peterfile’s IPA (made up my own recipe to use up some ingredients, based on an american IPA, with lots of Cascade and Centennial)

🙂

I managed to pick up a load of Citra hops from my LHBS, so got a Fyne Ales Jarl type beer planned for this Friday evening.

I started out by brewing quite a few clones of my favourite beers, since then I know how it’s supposed to taste, so I can work out what’s going on and where I’m going wrong etc.

I’m going through a similar process but using beer engine! We should have thought about this and agreed a unified direction to start with…

I bought 10L barrels which I have the original phoenix recipe conditioning in.

From interwebz research…

I made a Marstons Pedigree clone which is fermenting
And then next up is a hobgoblin clone.

I’ve also got a Wychcraft clone in the engine but the weather is not inspiring me to make that.

We should swap recipes, email is in my profile if you’re interested. The engine will export to HTML

Will do mate 🙂

I’m tempted to buy a couple of wee barrels myself, but it’s easier for me to stick bottles in the fridge as required. Plus I can take them away at the weekend more easily too.

you could also try BrewMate from http://www.brewmate.net – there’s a recipes page with hundreds of recipes (ok a lot of duplicates)

And of course there’s http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum, which has a recipes page.

I’ve got an Old Peculier fermenting away right now from the Graham Wheeler book

Are home brewers automatically assumed to be alcoholics or thereabouts?

On the same basis that all cooking enthusiasts have eating disorders?

I use Beer Alchemy on the mac, it’s a great bit of kit and helps making shopping lists and keeping on top of inventory and suggesting recipes already in your library to make from the ingredients you’ve got.

That Beer Alchemy program looks great, I’ll need to try that.

One of the MAJOR things lacking in beersmith IMO is the ability to select recipes based on inventory.

OOooohhh, beer alchemy looks good! will have to try that

A question for those you use BIAB .
I guess you put your grist and some calcium chloride in a large muslin type bag then add hot water at C 72-74’C
Then leave for 60 – 90 mins for the enzymes to do their thing
AFter 90 mins lift bag and drain into your boiler?
Then do you sparge / rinse with boiling tap water? Or do you do what most breweries do and sparge at 76 – 79 ‘C ?
Boiling water into the mash isnt ideal and I would strongly recomend you dont do this.

I tend to lift the bag, squeeze/drain into the kettle, then dunk the bag into another vessel with water at around 80c. I give it a good stir in there and then drain/squeeze again. Then add that wort to the wort in the kettle.

I’ve put a batch on today. festival Premium ale, Pilgrims Hope. It came as malt extract but I’ve got some hops to add in 5 days or so.

mmmmm /rubs tummy.

i’ll do a few malts and if they all turn out alright I’ll move onto the brew in a bag ones

Supping a pint of Green Hop Ale wot I brewed a month back, yummy 🙂

I just finished an all grain brew day and got a batch of Orkney SkullSplitter 8.6% in the fermenter 😯

and relaxing with a pint of Gob Hoblin 😀
got the cleaning up to do in the morning 😥

I do my BIAB mashing in the boiler – that’s the whole point, one vessel boil & mash.

Boiler is a 32L plastic bucket with a tap and a kettle element; there’s also a temperature probe. The kettle element is controlled by a digital box of tricks. Add mesh bag to boiler.

fill up with strike volume of water if possible. For a 21L final volume you need 27L (ish). Plus 4 litres for boiler dead space. It can get a bit full with a big grain bill, so sometimes I hold some of that liquor back until the start of the boil.

Set digital controller to strike temp (71degC). When it reaches strike temp, add the grains, stirring all the time to avoid doughballs. set controller to mash temp (66-68) and leave for 60 mins (if 60’s good enough for Black Sheep, it’s good enough for me)

put a colander upside down in a Fermenter, then when the mash time is over, remove the bag of grains, sit it on top of the colander & let it drain, meanwhile the digital controller is now set to boil temp.

pour some of the wort back through the bag & use some further water at 80deg (ish), then let it drain again – this is as close as I get to sparging (with BIAB it’s supposed to mean you don’t bother with sparging, or that’s how I understand it)

Then add this wort back to the boiler, then boil for 60 mins (see Black Sheep comment above) as with any other AG method