Homebrewists of STW, brewing 'owt at the moment?

Have a brew day planned for next saturday to make a 11L batch of Swedish Pale Ale. Should be fun actually and gives me a chance to try out a new kylspiral and brew kettle.

From memory I'll be using Swedish Pale Ale and Cara Munich 2 as the malts and Saaz and Chinook as the hops.

I'm also planning a summer ale using local malts and hops where possible. It's a coincidence that one of my neighbours is trying to grow the older, heritage Swedish hops that went out of fashion at the beginning of last century.

Summer ale - that's a point, I was supposed to be attempting a lager at some point, on a long, low fermentation in the brewfridge. Maybe that will be next. Saying that, I've got a bombproof recipe for a Leffe-alike beer which serves well as something cold and fizzy for a barbecue

I am just awaiting on my Belgian Blonde. The flavour is still developing, but have just had a DarkFarm homebrew bar set delivered. So want to transfer to that asap.
This is my first all grain brew, so hoping it comes out well.

I may go for a pale ale next, but look to add coriander and orange. I really like the Einstok white ale. Has any one tried to brew with coriander and orange?

I have been told that less is more with spices, but have never tried myself.

I have a blonde/bitter currently maturing in the keg. It was constructed from extra light DME, a touch of light crystal, and then lots and lots of EKG/Challenger. Fermented using US-05 which I've not tried before.

It ended up sat in the primary for longer than I'd ideally like due to my poor planning 🙁 but doesn't seem to have suffered too much and is getting quite drinkable now.

I'll give it a few more days of warmth and get it into the conservatory to cold crash. One benefit of having a crappy conservatory at this time of year is that you're never short of fridge space.

Reckon I might have a chance to get something going on Saturday. I have something ready to go, but I can't remember what it is or what level of complication it involves to get going!

Looking forward to it though. Love the airlock bubbling away.

Yeah, we have that with home made glögg at the moment. The spare room stinks of semi-fermented wine with a hint of spice.

Mango wheat beer going on at the weekend. Half wheat, half pale plus some citra for fruitiness. Going to try some frozen mango in fermenter after a few days, but have some concentrated flavour in backup in case that fails to excite.

Us 05 yeast is fairly aggressive and will have a go at malto triose after it's deplteded all the simpler sugars. When I used it I found it would start to slow on cooling, then acclimatise and keep on munching
Mango wheat beer sounds interesting, begreat with a hop called Ella or topaz both would add to the pulpy fruit flavours

Just finishing up the last of the Christmas beer, and pretty damned nice it was too.

A special bitter with plenty of EKG, Northdown and Challenger late addition hops. MO pale, 5% medium crystal and a touch of chocolate malt for colour.

Fuller's liquid yeast strain - I saved some in a kilner jar for the next brew.

#1 Schwarzbeir - a German dark lager.
#2 Wee Heavy, pitched warm onto the Schwarzbeir yeast cake - went off like the clappers - dropped 60 gravity points (7.5% abv) in 36 hours, that's whisky fermentation performance!

Cold conditioning them for the next few weeks.

Yourguitarhero, I meant to ask... how is the ‘pub’ going? It was you that was putting together the really small brewery wasn’t it?

It's coming along.
I've got the recipe for the beer I want to do all sorted, and got registered with HMRC to produce beer and had visits from trading Standards and Environmental Health which all went fine.

So I can legally produce beer. Though I can't actually sell it to anyone until I get a further licence - a wholesalers registration scheme thing which I believe is a little more complex to get.

I've been really busy in my day-job, so it's been a slow process. Though patience is my business philosophy so I'm OK with that.

Cider. 11 litres concentrate. 1 jar honey. 2 tsp Super Wine Yeast.
Will yield 20 x 500ml bottles @ 7.5%. ½ tsp sugar per bottle for a bit of fizz. Dry.

Just finished fermenting a fairly basic pale ale but used Voss kveik yeast instead of standard. Interesting to see how it turns out given I pitched at 40c instead of the standard 19!

Well, keep at it! It’s a bit of an inspiration and I am really keen to see how it goes.

Am awaiting delivery of one of these......

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thepinter/the-pinter-welcome-to-a-new-world-of-fresh-beer

Have been told I’m selected as an early tester so should have a brew on the go in the next two weeks.

Voss Kveik is quite an interesting one. I've done a couple of beers with it - haven't found it adds much to the flavour, it's quite neutral, however it is incredibly robust and fast fermenting. You can get some esters out of it if you can keep the temp >35c but not similar to the Belgian yeasts.

It reminds me of the distilling yeasts used for whisky.

Right, well, got the boil done and into the bucket yesterday, into the brewfridge at about midday, temp set to 18-20degC. Or so I thought...

Checked it at about eight last night, temp at 20degC, no bubbling at that stage. Checked it again about half seven this morning, temp at 25degC, airlock bubbled dry... Clearly I'd ballsed up setting the temp on the fridge. Anyway, cracked the lid to get rid of excess pressure, sorted the fridge control, put some water back in the airlock (all quite rushed, cos I was supposed to be on my way to work), we'll see what state it's in when I get home.

If you had a good fermentation going on then it could have blown the bubbler dry. It's an exothermic reaction too, so temps can rise by themselves

It was definitely my balls up, the temp was at 25Deg and the controller was still set to 'Heat'. Anyway, hopefully no harm done, certainly kickstarted the fermentation...

On a related note, is there such a thing as a 'low-profile' bubbler? I've got a boggo one and it only very nearly touches the top of the brewfridge and I can't top it up without taking it out (which is tricky what with it very nearly touching the top of the brewfridge))

Can you not use a silicone hose to a jam jar of water next to the fermenter? That should be pretty low profile

Hmmm, you might be on to something...

Depends on the yeast/beer, but you can just put the lid on the fermenter loosely, or if its in a (clean) fridge leave it off entirely.

The more oxygen the yeast is exposed to the more flavour it gives. Its only the yeasty krausen thats exposed to the oxygen so the beer wont spoil as long as its fermenting.

Its one step back from wild fermentation, its still your yeast, just in an open bucket.

Ah, that's interesting.

I saw a video last night of some bloke making a hefeweissen using open fermentation. Apparently it gives more phenols and... something... that means more clove flavours or something.

Not sure I will try that yet, it looked a bit advanced.

I've left one side of the bucket lid open for the first 48 hours or so before (if no airlock available). Been fine. There's a lot of CO2 being produced which acts as an inert, heavier than air barrier that blocks contact with the atmosphere

Best way to do it is to run a piece of tube to a jug of sanitiser. Especially for very vigorous fermentations where your krausen can come through the bubbler

*insert Finbarr Saunders gif here*

🙂

Quite a few commercial breweries do it, off the top of my head Anchor, Sierra Nevada and Sam Smith all do it. I think most of them have a spout on the fermenter to allow the krausen to overflow and take anything that's settled on it away. I've done it in a fridge before and just let it die down as normal (assuming that the fridge was clean and therefore there wasn't anything to get into the krausen and contaminate it.

Went to bottle my cold crashed Saison and realised I hadn't added the hops. Bottle day postponed until the weekend!

Did you forgot to add hops at all, or just some for dry hopping?

Ihn. It will be fine but will be finished by tomorrow afternoon. Might produce a slight ester profile depending on yeast, so possibly some banana flavour or aroma depending on the grist and hop bill
Can you not get a hole saw and put a 25mm hole near the top of the bucket in a side, fit a grommet then drill a 10mm hole and push a length of fish tank bubbler hose into a 1ltr squash bottle fill with paa

I am new to brwewing recently and did a Youngs IPA kit last year

It was really good!

So much so that I repeated the process a few weeks ago. However the second brew did not go like the first one, the brew seemed to be really furious for a few days and then was almost spent.

I might have left it in the fermenting vessel too long as I was expecting more bubbles for longer.

Anyway I thought I might as well add the final hops and bottle - and see how it goes. This first bottle a month after does not seem anywhere near as fizzy as the first batch and the taste was not right - I'm going to leave it another 2 weeks before testing again

Any tips on what I might have done wrong?

With a kit like that, the variation is either in the fermentation or the bottling.

With fermentation, the temperature is likely to have made the biggest difference. Though, your description sounds about what you would expect.
Did you do this at different times of year (i.e. is room temperature different?)

After main fermentation (7 days-ish), it is best to keep it at a lower temperature (fridge temp) to condition for a couple of weeks. If you can move it to a different bucket for that it helps (just to clear it off the sediment in the first one). This will help make the beer clearer and taste nicer.

During bottling, you want to be consistent in the amount of sugar (best to mix sugar in a couple of hundred mls of water, then put that back in your first (sanitised!) bucket to blend. Then bottle and leave the bottles at room temp for 10-14 days as you are restarting fermentation (fermentation stalls at low temps).

AWRS Scheme is the acronym. Alcohol Warehouse Registration Scheme.
Not alot to it really from what I remember floor plan, vessel layout, bonded area if applicable, paid or duty able area if applicable
Duty gate location, then examples of invoicing system. All doable but time consuming

Just dry hopping

Got some straight turbo cider fermenting and some strawberry variant currently in bottles getting some fizz as the middle daughter loves it.

Met up with another home brewer last night and purchased myself a plate chiller and some other bits of kit. All I need now is a pump and some fittings (and maybe a PID and a heating element) and I will have a mini e-BIAB setup.

Ihn. It will be fine but will be finished by tomorrow afternoon.

Yep, checked it when I got home and it's settled down to 20degC. Not sure it'll be finished today though, it dropped from 1.048OG to 1.024 in just over 24 hours, so a way to go yet.

Tasted pretty good too 🙂

Probably can't bottle it this weekend anyway, got stuff on, so assuming it finishes this week it'll just sit in the bucket for a week or so until I bottle it. Is it best that it sits at 'garage' temp, or 'fridge' temp (not that there's much difference at the moment)?

You should definitely wait longer before bottling it. Bottling before fermentation is really finished leads to over-fizzy bottles and possible shrapnel!
I'd let it sit where it is til the end of the week, then cold condition (Closer to zero C the better) for at least 48 hours, though more is OK) then bottle. After bottling, leave it at room temp for 4 or 5 days then put them somewhere cool and dark til you drink them.

I splurged on a glycol chiller unit past Black Friday sales, but it wasn't working properly when I went to fire it up a couple of weeks ago. New one should arrive this week which will be handy as I need to cold-crash the two beers and there's only room for one fermenter in my fridge and it's not cold enough outside for proper cold crashing any more.

Last few brews have been pretty light on the hops, so next couple will be very hop heavy - a double IPA with 6 varieties of US and NZ hops and a very non-standard saison with lots of Sorachi Ace (lemongrass flavour) and Mandarina Bavaria (orange-y) aroma and dry hops. Along with my favourite saison yeast, Lallemand's Belle Saison. It's a trooper - ferments like a distiller's yeast (heavy on the diastaticus) to produce a lovely dry champagne-y finish that works well with a highly carbonated saison - all the bubbles to carry the easter and hop aromas up your schnozz.

You should definitely wait longer before bottling it. Bottling before fermentation is really finished leads to over-fizzy bottles and possible shrapnel!

Oh yeah, deffo, I meant how long/cold do/can I leave it in the bucket post-fermentation, pre-bottling.

I've used that Lallemand Belle Saison in my SMASH saison Leffe-a-like; Light DME and Nelson Sauvin hops. Smashing thing to drink cold on a summer's day 🙂

I'd say wait 10-14 days after fermentation before bottling.

For an ale/IPA I generally ferment at the yeast's favoured temp for 7-10 days (10 days if dry hopping, hops in for last 3 days) then do 10-14 days at 1c in a different container then bottle or keg

Ta. How important is the 'different container' bit?

Thanks for the tips @Yourguitarhero.

I think I might have bottled the first batch too early from what you have said - it was very fizzy in a kind of stealth way - it looked ok then started to fizz up way more than you would expect

I added the bottling sugar to the main mix to make sure of consistency of dose.

I will try the swapping vessels thing next time and see if that helps manager the sediment.

The results from my kit were great so you guys making brews from first principles must have some fantastic beer to drink!!