Hmmm, bit too efficient. Over 90% (fly sparged, probably a little slowly). Currently sat with way too much volume and still at 1.037 where it should be 1.033.

Fingers crossed it doesn’t boil over.

Compensating with a bit more hops at the end to balance out the extra strength and maltyness.

Started using a Corny keg for fermentation. I only make 10L batches so plenty headspace for krauzen. Probably the “cleanest” beer I’ve made – ie no off flavours etc. Problem now is that I think another one would be great so I can keg! Expensive habit.

Also stopped sparging and just doing a top up before the boil. 50% efficiency but I don’t really care too much. Saves the mess of sparging BIAB.

Brewing up an “Old Ale” like a Theakstons Old Peculier this weekend. Yum yum.

Moving house soon and the new place already has a fridge – queue brewfridge conversion!!

What are folks brewing these days? Any new techniques or kit?

Father forgive me, it has been 10 months since my last brew 🙁

Holy thread resurrection!

Made my first all grain brew the other week. A Smash golden ale using S-04 yeast, East Kent goldings and maris otter pale malt. BIAB using a 32 litre pot, I ended up with about 16 litres into the bottle. It mostly went well, except for the following:

1. It was a bugger to get cool. I don’t have a chiller so used trugs of cold water, which worked to an extent, but I need to speed up the process due to Life. Or I could try no chill and pitch the next day. Thoughts?
2. I batch primed from the fermenter into a pressure barrel with the sugar added in solution. The barrel leaked at the tap gasket. PTFE tape and Vaseline?
3. Bottling is a pain. I ran them through the dishwasher on its hottest setting, then soaked them in cleaner/sanitiser, then rinsed in clean water before returning them to the dishwasher rack to drain. I was thinking of buying a bottle tree and some Starsan to speed the process up.

1. It was a bugger to get cool. I don’t have a chiller so used trugs of cold water, which worked to an extent, but I need to speed up the process due to Life. Or I could try no chill and pitch the next day. Thoughts?
2. I batch primed from the fermenter into a pressure barrel with the sugar added in solution. The barrel leaked at the tap gasket. PTFE tape and Vaseline?
3. Bottling is a pain. I ran them through the dishwasher on its hottest setting, then soaked them in cleaner/sanitiser, then rinsed in clean water before returning them to the dishwasher rack to drain. I was thinking of buying a bottle tree and some Starsan to speed the process up.

1) if i didn’t have a chiller I’d no-chill. At the worst you end up with slightly opaque beer, which you may be able to cure with a proper cold crash later on. But plenty of people manage to make it work just fine.

2) New tap, the ones most fermenters come with are a often a bit crap but if you look on the-home-brew-shop.co.uk the more expensive ones don’t leak and last longer.

3) Yes, although you can just clean with oxyclean (generic stain remover powder from poundlan/lidl etc as long as it’s not scented), that will loosen off any gunk in the bottles, then just rinse with starsan and a bottle rinser. No need to drain the starsan bubbles.

Thanks TINAS. Might invest in a cube and give no-chill a crack. If anyone here has tried it I’d be interested in how you got on with it, and if you made any changes to your hop schedule.

Holy thread resurrection!

My SMaSH golden ale turned out pretty well in the end: a bit too bitter but a nice hop aroma, and it improved considerably after being left a month to condition.

I’ve since made a Landlord clone from the Graham Wheeler recipe, and it’s a cracker. This time I left it to cool overnight before pitching, and invested in a bottle rinser and some starsan. Much easier!

Have you lot all given up?!

I have a saison fermenting at 30 degrees right now. It smells extremely promising.

Brewed a green hop beer last Saturday using freshly picked hops, just finished fermenting.

I haven’t brewed all year.

I have ordered a load of ingredients and will be starting a few batches in teh next couple of weeks.

They are all grain recipe kits, can’t be bothered with Beersmith and bulk grains at the moment.

I just started a brewing and distilling masters this year.
So in celebration today is brewday.

Pale malt, columbus hops for bittering and nelson sauvin for aroma and Califonia ale yeast

Something nice and simple. Going back to basics and making sure I get everything spot on – temperatures, gravities etc

Have also got the brew shop up the road ordering in a dome and condensor to turn my grainfather into a distillery and a brew bucket stainless steel conical fermenter.

Just finished a brew morning. Nothing fancy, Festival New Zealand Pilsner.

Have you lot all given up?!

Sadly, yes. Last few batches went horrible so I assume my plate chiller is contaminated, and at £90 a pop I’m not likely to be buying another one soon.

Although I do have a grain kit ready to do if I can find the time

I have a copper immersion chiller I don’t use any more.
£25 posted to you?

I’ve got one of those in the shed brewhouse somewhere, but thanks for the offer

Afternoon all,

I’m looking to get a brew on the go next week however am looking for some recipe advice.

It has been a while since i last brewed and was looking to follow the recipe provided with the 10L massive brewery kit which for me was 2.5kg of maris otter paired with magnum hops as asimple way of getting back into it.

Unfortunately my recipe says add 12.5g hops at start of the boil then “the rest at 5 minutes from the end” and i did not take a weight of the second bundle of hops when i made my first batch. From memory the bundle of hops was about 2-3 times the size of the initial hops but i would appreciate if anyone know what an accurate figure may be.

I’m guessing the Magnum hops have an AA% of about 15?

If so, then 12g will be giving you quite a bitter ale. About 40 IBU, which is about what Punk IPA comes out at. 36g at 5 mins would knock that up quite a bit, to about 60.

Is that you are looking for? Was the first batch very bitter?

How much weight of hops do you have? It might be worth keeping some for 0 min addition and then some for dry hopping afterwards. Especially with just the pale malt, all the flavour will be coming from the late addition hops.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/

You don’t get much bittering acids when added at end of boil. Utilisation percentage drops. I wouldn’t really include the 5 mins additions in your bittering calcs

Sadly, yes. Last few batches went horrible so I assume my plate chiller is contaminated, and at £90 a pop I’m not likely to be buying another one soon.

Stick it in the oven (remove any plastic fittings first), nothing survives above 100C. There will always be crud inside it which could harbour bacteria but if it get’s hot it’s sterile. That and pump the hot wort through it for 15 minutes at the end of the boil (with no cooling water), again nothing survives 100C.

Whenever I get infections it’s always either the fermenter, kegs or bottles (or associated racking equipment) because it shouldn’t be possible to get an infection in the kettle or cooler. If you want to rule out steps in the process, do a forced fermentation with some wort in a thoroughly sterilised bottle, if it ferments (assuming you took the sample before adding yeast), the pH changes, or it tastes rank after a few weeks in a warm place then you have an infection.

The other useful test is a forced fermentation, put a disproportionately high amount of yeast in a bottle and add wort, ferment for 48 hours in a warm place and measure the gravity. This should match the FG of the rest of the beer. Now you can monitor the beer over time and know if it drops further you have an infection rather than just being too quick to bottle it.

You don’t get much bittering acids when added at end of boil. Utilisation percentage drops. I wouldn’t really include the 5 mins additions in your bittering calcs

Mathematically it doesn’t, but most people find it tastes bitter. The formulas work best with ‘normal’ beers, when you’re adding 3x as much at flame out as for bittering in an IPA it’s a bit outside the range they were developed for!

Also bear in mind it will keep isomerisation until cooled, so it’s really 5 minutes + however long it’s steeped/whirlpooled for, all that stops with the boiling is stripping off DMS and aroma.

Oven for plate chiller sounds like a plan, cheers.

I have a kit to put on,if I do that & it goes ok then i’ll Know my fermenter is ok

Here is an example IBU calculation, working backwards from a designated target bitterness and pre-selected amount of aroma hops, with additions at 0 and 48 mins in a 60 minute boil. You can look up the utilisations in tinseth tables.

Hop additions
Time Variety %Alpha %Utilisation Amount
0 Admiral 14.3 35 37.8g
48 Tettnang 5.1 15 210g

Hop calculations
1 BU = 1 mg/l isomerised alpha acid (iso-aa) Total isomerised alpha acid (iso-aa) required to give 25 BU in 140 litres = 25 x 140 = 3500 mg

Iso-aa from late addition:
iso-aa from Tettnang = 210 x 5.1/100 x 15/100 = 1.61g

iso-aa required from Admiral = 3.5 – 1.61 = 1.89 g
Admiral required = 1.89 x 100/14.3 x 100/35 = 37.8 g

You can see the huge extra amount of hops you need to add at the end to get a similar amount of bitterness/alpha acids….

At the end of the day, you should just look at 3 hop additions:
Start of boil = bitterness…. variety isn’t hugely important. Pick what is cheap and has high alpha acid, so it keeps things cheap.

Other 2 are end of boil and dry hops. They give the aromas. Variety is important here, and a blend works well.

Start of boil = bitterness…. variety isn’t hugely important. Pick what is cheap and has high alpha acid, so it keeps things cheap.

ummm . . you going to look into co – humulone ratios , or keep that vital bit of info to yourself?

Thanks for the replies all, the magnum hops I have, have an Alpha Acid of 9.8%. I have 100g so more than I need for this batch. Hopefully enough for 2 or 3 so I can figure out my technique and control over the process.

I wan to be able to produce a simple single malt single hops beer consistently before moving on to mor complex brews.

So plugging some numbers into the IBU calculator based on Aa of 9.8 if I add 12.5g at 60 mins from end then 25g at 10 mins from the end I should end up with an IBU of 30 – 35 depending on my target original gravity.

Not quite sure what my original gravity should be but vaguely recall 1.065 from my last brew but could be off with that.

I wan to be able to produce a simple single malt single hops beer consistently before moving on to mor complex brews.

IMO single malt and single hop brews can be quite hard to get right.

It’s easier to “hide” stuff with a bit of malt flavour as well. A simple English style bitter, like a Landlord or a London Pride clone, is a very straight forward brew.

Magnum is a great bittering hop. Nice soft alpha delivery due to its low co humulone ratio.
Personally I would not use it as a smash hop. Not enough floral notes or fruity flavours for late hopping.

Right then do I throw caution to the wind and scrap the plan of a magnum smash as I have some citra hops as well.

I could use citra at the end instead of magnum?

Citra SMASH are some of the best.

This is one recipe I have used which has no bittering hops, I have also done similar and used Chinook for bittering and saved the citra for flavour/aroma. I usually aim for about 40-60 IBU.

For 23L 60 Minute Boil – 60 Minute mash at 66c

4.5Kg Pale / Marris Otter Malt
34g Citra 14.5%15 Minutes
33g Citra 14.5% 0 Minutes (30 minute steep)
33g Citra 14.5% dry hop (4 days)
For yeast US-05

Citra s m a s h is one of the best / easiest to get great results.

I would use around 20gm aa / bbl for 1hr
then add at -5mins,
EOB or Flameout
Then at + 15mins
a few grams in the FV doesnt hurt either

Be cracking with Europlis as the malt , or Vienna if you can find some

Update:

Then: My Saison was brewed with pale malt, goldings and sugar. Yeast was cultured up from a bottle of Saison Dupont, with an additional packet of Mangrove Jack’s saison yeast. It was lush, with plenty of peppery, spicy and fruity flavours going on. I did have one bottle explode, possibly due to infection or possibly because this style is much more heavily carbonated than my usual brews, and the bottle wasn’t strong enough.

Now: a London porter, closely modelled on the Graham Wheeler recipe for Fuller’s porter. Pale, crystal, chocolate and brown malts and fuggles hops. Yeast is S04, recovered from a friend’s brew. Currently conditioning, but promising, with plenty of coffee, chocolate and liquorice flavour.

Next: an English IPA. Pale malt, medium crystal and a touch of sugar. Fuggles for bittering and lots of goldings for aroma, mostly added at flameout and steeped for 30 minutes. Currently fermenting with Fuller’s yeast, and I’ll chuck in some more hops for a couple of days before bottling. I changed my process slightly on this one by doing a mashout to 75 degrees, and got a couple of points higher gravity than expected, so there may be something to it. I did a bit of water treatment – CRS to reduce carbonates and some gypsum added.

All brews are BIAB and no-chill.

Time for a long overdue bump. What’s everyone been making?

I had success with a SNPA clone, though I added dry hops to suit my preference. One to make again.

Currently fermenting a Patersbier, loosely based on Westmalle Extra. I wanted an abbey ale with an alcohol content low enough to keep my legs working after two pints.

Next up will be a hoppy ordinary bitter, ready for summer guzzling.

I’ve got a part time job running a pub microbrewery now. I have also almost finished my MSc in Brewing & Distilling and am on par to get a Distinction, which I’m pretty proud of as the last time I looked at science was high school Chemistry and Physics in 1997! Going to write a thesis on propagating yeast for craft breweries using single use bioreactors. Very interesting! I like yeast.

Recent brews:
Gluten free Oatmeal stout

IPA (single hop Victoria Secret)

Double IPA (all the hops ever made)

Black IPA

Sorachi Ace Saison

Mixed fermentation (Sacc & Brett) Saison

60 Shilling

70 Shilling

Belgian Blonde

Berlinner Weisse

Eisbock

and just putting together a recipe for a Cherry Imperial Sour Smoked Wit with oak aging.
Which does seem like too many words.
And a Dunkelweisse I’m working on

Well this just turned up:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/24dzNwg]2018-03-28_03-40-47[/url] by thisisnotaspoon, on Flickr

Green carpet and salmon walls by previous owner, monkeys and parquet models own.

First thoughts:

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/the-postmans-been.76583/

Cheeky for sale plug of my old system:

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/3-vessel-brewing-kit.76578/

My first ever ‘professional’ beer just went on tap at the pub I’ve started brewing for.

Having a pint!

It’s a Black IPA and came out great – the pub owners are very impressed.

My first time doing cask beer too. Got the priming and fining just right.

Cheap too – craft beer @ £3/pint