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so you guys making brews from first principles
I'm not quite going from first principles (i.e. all grain, mashing, all that), I'm 'extract' brewing using malt extract, but still boiling using proper hops and stuff. It's kind of a halfway house between kits and all-grain, all you need on top of what you have already is a 'gert big pan (about fifteen quid from Wilkos). Worth doing if you get into the brewing lark but can't be bothered going the whole hog.
So, unsurprisingly, mine's finished fermenting pretty darn quickly after it's, erm, accelerated start. 1.048OG and seems to have bottomed out at 1.014 in about three/four days.
Now I'm wondering whether to dry-hop it or not... I've got Fuggles, EKG, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin to pick from. Hmmm...
So, unsurprisingly, mine’s finished fermenting pretty darn quickly after it’s, erm, accelerated start. 1.048OG and seems to have bottomed out at 1.014 in about three/four days.
My last brew dropped to 1.014 in three days, then another ten days to finish at 1.010.
Yeah, I've had two 1.014 readings 24 hours apart but I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it's actually stopped.
Not brewing owt but a kit at the moment but my new Chinook and Cascade hop roots turned up yesterday, so the kids and I will be planting them this weekend.
Got 2 first gold plants going into their second year now so should get a good haul off them for bittering and use the fancier ones for aroma. I'm quite looking forward to a green hop beer!
Where d'you live scaled? I was under the impression that hops like a very particular climate
^^^Interested to see how this goes.
Brew day is tomorrow... Really looking forward to this.
Manchester! They're not that particular at all
These are form last years MCR hop project but you get the idea.
This years haul...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFEaIoJWkAIhAxj?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Commercially they're viable in the SE mostly, but you can still grow them just about anywhere.
They're also great for a bit of guerrilla gardening. After a few years, dig up some of your plants roots, chop into bits, plant against a fence on any old wasteland. You'll have more hops than you know what to do with.
Ta. How important is the ‘different container’ bit?
I presume it's to separate the beer from the hops and yeast?
Depends how quickly you drink it, if you wanted 20l of IPA for a party you could go from primary in a bucket for a week, secondary in a plastic keg for a week with some sugar, chill it (cold crashes out the remaining yeast and any haze and also reduces the pressure to zero as the beer can hold more co2
when cold for the next bit), lid off and hops go in ~4 days before party and purge with a CO2 canister, then just let it warm back up to serving temp over the 4 days and drink it.
Having the hops still floating around has a few advantages. Stops the beer circulating by convection and coming into contact with oxygen at the top of the keg. And they're anti-microbial so will prevent it getting infected as well.
Bottling I'd do similar, but I'm lazy and tend to just put the hops in the primary around day 10 or so (i.e. it's well and truly finished), give it 4 days, then bottle straight from the fermenter and cold crash in the bottles once it's conditioned. Only limitation of doing it that way is you have to keep it chilled until you drink it otherwise the haze comes back.
Brew day done!
All told, it went well. Pre-boil gravity a couple of points low, OG a couple of points high, but otherwise a smooth day of brewing. But... I did have to drop the spare volume to 6L from 10L as my kettle was getting on the full side (only 20L) . It actually helped a lot with the boil though as this was the first I have done on an induction hob and it took a while to get up to 100C.
I’m also really happy with the new chiller spiral. Cooled rapidly and made the whole process a lot easier. I have that plate chiller for the future, but that means I need a pump and that’s a future thing to do.
So, total volume into the fermenter is 10L from a 14.5L water bill. The yeast is a high attenuation variety (M41 Belgian Ale), so as long as my FG is around 1.012, I should hit 4.9% and have an amber coloured beer with a really nice hoppy edge. I think the 10 minute Saaz addition worked well.
Points learned:
- I need to keep to a 15L pre-boil size if I want a bit of safety from boiling over
- I need a better insulating cover for the kettle to get it to the boil quicker and to keep it warm during the mash
- I need to find a way of keeping it at 67C better during the mash. The insulating blanket worked ok, but I forgot to measure the final temperature, so have no idea how much it lost.
- I need to buy an Ikea strainer that I can use when sparging
Now, just a waiting game for the first bubbles
When I did BIAB, I put the put the pot in the oven at its lowest temp during mash. Helped keep a steady temp (only dropped 0.5c an hour)
I have that plate chiller for the future, but that means I need a pump and that’s a future thing to do.
Not nesecary IME. Gravity is plenty, the plate chiller has negligable pressure drop.
I run a water butt pump though and just circulate it, its a 300l water butt so a 25l batch dropping by 75deg barely makes any difference to the temp in the butt. Feel guilty just running a tap to chill it!
That is a dammed good idea and probably something I will steal, thank you.
The nervous wait is over... Airlock is being treated to a lot of gas from the fermentation. Looks like beer is coming.
Sorachi Ace is overated IMO , there are nicer hops out there
Growing US hops in the UK from Ribose or root stock will not produce the same hops asyou buy in from the USA. They are great for UK grown hops but lack the depth of flavour of the US stock. So much so the Slovenians are / have renamed there US deriviatives to avoid comparisons, Chinnook and Cascade iirc , UK chinook and Cascade are ok but maybe only 2/3 of the flavours of the US versions
But , for free , afater 2 years waiting well worth growing , watch for red spider mite , aphids, powdery mildew , frosts - sunburn all destroy the flowers
Also, for plate chiller, see if you can find an unused central heating one, same thing but about half the price (or 1/4 if you find a s/h one that was never fitted for whatever reason) without the bilchmann / homebrewing premium.
I found the best way was to have long silicone tubing tails that went onto the exchanger and hung you the window, then hosepipe addapters on the ends, otherwise you end up with leaky hosepipe addapters in the kitchen. The beer side i just had standard silicone tubing in and out, brewdevil on the worktop and the beer just runs through it and drops into the fermenter.
Just tasted my first brew (pale ale) with Voss Kveik and after 10 days (5 in the FV and 5 in the keg) it's still fairly cloudy but taste-wise its lovely. Started fermenting at 40c and dropped naturally to about 18c over the 5 days. Tastes remarkably 'clean' given what I've heard about Voss imparting flavours.
As I've harvested and dried a load of the Voss I'm going again with the same recipe but fixing the fermenting temp at about 37c in order to try and catch some of the Voss characteristics.
If my liver doesn't give out first....
Well, after three days of intense fermentation, the yeast appears to be in the final throws of activity. Now have a solid-looking cake sitting in the bottom of the fermenter and I am thinking of letting it warm up a bit day by day to see how much I can get it to attenuate.
The main problem is just that I know now it is nearly beer. And I want to see what it is like. And I have to wait...
Yep, mine's bottomed out at 1.013, steady for a few days now. Tastes okay, slightly odd taste, I'm guessing from the over-hot initial fermentation.
Plan now is to:
- dry hop tonight (I'm thinking 50g EKG), leaving the brewfridge at 19degC
- turn the temp down to 1-2degC on Sunday night
- turn the fridge off next Friday night and let it come back up to garage temp
- batch prime and bottle next weekend
- two weeks in brewfridge at 19degC to carbonate
- fridge off, leave it in there to condition for a month or so.
Sound reasonable?
Sounds like an overly long process? I'd skip the final conditioning step and just drink once it is carbonated.
Sounds like an overly long process? I’d skip the final conditioning step and just drink once it is carbonated.
Really? I'm basically (I thought) just dry hopping for a few days, cold crashing for a few days, then bottling.
And I'll definitely try at least one as soon as it's bottled 😉
Sound reasonable?
I'd give it a week as it is (or even warm it up a bit). It'll help the yeast metabolize any off flavors. It'll be quicker to "condition" it now than in the bottles.
Also, no point warming it up to bottle it, just dissolve the sugar in some warm water and give it a gentle stir to mix it without disturbing the yeast.
After waiting patiently and seeing the yeast activity die off, I took the decision to bottle last night. The large yeast cake made the decision to transfer to a new bucket for me and I ended up with 25 bottles of golden ale with an abv of about 5.4%.
I’ll see how this goes with bottle conditioning, but I know I have some changes to make to the process next time. As for the next brew, soon. Maybe an IPA or a proper pale ale this time.
I got my replacement glycol chiller up and running, so have my Schwarzbeir sitting at 2c for the next wee while. Might give it a very subtle dry hop of hallertau before bottling.
Saison is coming along nicely, up to around 7%abv after a couple of days, though temp is at 25c (my fermenters have heaters in them). Still got a sugary taste so more to go. Mash was stepped at 64c and 70c before a 78c mash out - have found this helps provide lots of fermentable sugars for good fermentation if aiming for a dry finish to the beer.
Using a yeast called Bruxellensis Trois (WLP644) which gives lots of fruity flavours like a beer in the early stages of a brettanomyces infection/fermentation, but is a saccharomyces yeast so no issues with infection of equipment. Planning on a large dry hop of Sorachi Ace (lemongrass) and Mandarina Bavaria (orange) to compliment those esters. Has 85% attenuation too, so should be nice and dry like a classic Saison Du Pont.
Got a wee heavy conditioning in a glass demijohn with a pillowcase over it in a dark/cold corner of the brewery and am planning on brewing a double IPA with around 500g of hops (20 litre batch) with my friend at the weekend - it's for his 40th birthday party.
500g of hops in one batch? Holy crap! What varietal?
I'm actually quite happy with how the ale turned out given that I strayed from the recipe so much. I'll have to wait until it's finished conditioning before I really know though.
Things to remember for next time:
1. Use a decant bucket with a tap that does not leak
2. Estimate sugar requirements, make solution and add to decant bucket before transferring to the beer
3. Consider getting a keg system so that I do not have to wash up so many bloody bottles.
Put an American IPA on yesterday (from a kit) and also tried iSpindel WiFi hydrometer for the first time. Beer fridge is at 22C but beer is a lot warmer. I suspect that it'll be done in a week. Next batch I'll drop the beer fridge temperature and see how it goes.
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Yep, mine got bottled on Saturday, 34 bottles at about 4.6%
It's turned out pretty good, even the wife said so from trying it still-slightly-hazy-straight from the fermenter. Give it a week to settle out properly in the bottles and it should be pretty good I reckon.
Speaking of which, also took the opportunity of a first try of the turbo cider I bottled in August (I think) that's been sitting in the garage ever since. Absolutely, and surprisingly, smashing 🙂
How are you finding that iSpindel hydrometer?
Been considering getting a couple so I can monitor my fermentations remotely - my brewshed is in a different town.
So far my wee heavy is conditioning away nicely - likely bottle it at the weekend as well as kegging my Schwarzbier which has also come along nicely.
Sorachi Ace Saison has been dry hopped and is rather pleasant blend of saison and NEIPA. Cold conditioning for another week or two before I bottle or keg it.
Ludicrous hops IPA brewday at the weekend went well. The friend I was brewing with also happened to bring some hops, so there will be around 500g of hops going in over two dry hop periods. Going to smell amazing! I I imagine the hops will sook up all the liquid so losses will be quite high. Luckily it's a 9%-er
iSpindel is great - I bought one built up off ebay and I'm glad I did, very neat soldering and build.
Setup was easy using the docs - the only gotcha is that when you put it into config mode it always goes to its own SSID. You need to have Ubidots set up to start off with to see that it's working.
It's showed me that my thermometer was in the wrong place so the beer fridge was running hot. I've taped the thermocouple to the fermenter and it's now good - as the graph shows
[url= https://i.ibb.co/r6H9GLx/beer-graph.pn g" target="_blank">https://i.ibb.co/r6H9GLx/beer-graph.pn g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://clueyblog.com/yogurt-face-masks ]yogurt face pack for dry skin[/url]
Part of me now really wants that. I mean, who would not want to have that level of tech applied (wirelessly) to brewing beer?
Tried my latest last night after a week of bottle conditioning and was pleasantly surprised. It's already pretty well balanced and has a good body to it. Well carbonated too. Another week should finish it off nicely.
The next brew day is a hoppy summer IPA using Nelson Fluvain. I was going to make a strong, dark Belgian ale using molasses in the boil to bring up the OG and the SRM, but was persuaded to go lighter and use up the 5kg of pale malt I have in the cupboard.
It's been several years since I left brewed anything... I mostly started home-brewing due to the lack of decent beers in NZ when we moved here, you can barely move for awesome beers nowadays, so less need to diy.
I just cleared out the wardrobe in #1 child's bedroom so I can build some proper shelves and found a box of old homebrew. Mostly an Old Speckled Hen clone which was very sub-par but not bad enough to throw away. A couple of lagers, and a couple of ginger beers. All dated mid-2011...
Just cracked an Old Speckled Hen. Apart from being slightly over-carbonated, it's not bad! Way better than when it was a couple of months old, and a reasonably close clone.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iTLCXQoyyikNrmDx8
Will try the ginger beer next, it was pretty rough back in 2011, might be perfect now 😁🍺
Just put only my second all grain brew in to the fermenter. It was a small kit of a white ale with orange and coriander. Hoping its similar to the Einstock white ale.
My first grain brew tasted OK, but just took much much longer than expected. I think small batches are the way to go for me. I have a 5l keg from Dark Farm, and tempted with a 10litre now.
Are there any decent books you can recommend reading for recipes and advice on hops.. Flavours and yeasts? I have the big book of home brewing and has some clone recipes in, but all from the US, some UK ones would be good.
Had a brew day planned for Saturday with some friends, but it got postponed due to plague so I did it on my own instead. However, i did save the good Nelson Sauvin hops for the real brew day and dis an experimental IPA with Citra instead.
10L BIAB batch with a mix of 2.5kg of Pale Ale malt and 500g of flaked oats with 25g of Citra pellets added at 60 minutes and 15 minutes. Yeast was another Mangrove Jack packet, M44 this time though and, as last time, it went off like a rocket. Pre-boil and original gravities were weird and not according to plan, and the 15min addition was supposed to be at 5min, so I guess we will see what it turns out like.
If I get more malt this week, I may make another Belgian Ale, or maybe go for something more rural with the Kveik yeast I have coming.
Ah, a timely thread resurrection, I tried my brew at the weekend and it tastes a bit weird. In fact it tastes a bit weird in the same way that the previous one did, so I've just been googling.
The taste is sort of vegetably, which the Googling reckons is Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS), which, apparently, I may have managed by boiling with the lid on. Bugger. Will fade with time apparently, which makes sense as the last one I made is getting slowly better (it's been bottled about four months now). I may just sling them all in the garage and forget about them until next year.
All mine are tasting amazing, am totally back in my groove. Shame noone will.get to taste them.
Got 25l of 99+% GNS in the shed so next brewday is hand sanitizer.
Or does anyone know if starsan kills Corona?
Also, boil with lid off! Colour and sugar concentration via evaporation! Essential to the recipes you're probably follot
Also, boil with lid off!
Well I know that now. Genuinely though, none of the guides I'd read beforehand mentioned it. Ah well, live and learn.
@IHN, really? I could barely move from a page without seeing warnings about DMS and lids... Mind you, it does mean that my extractor gets a good cleaning from the condensation.
Four days in and my fermenter is looking like it has slowed down. I'm really wishing that I had gone for a tilt or iSpindel or something so I knew what was happening in there. I know that last lot of Mangrove Jack I used went off quickly and finished after less than a week, but it still seems strange given that most fermentations are supposed to be about two weeks.
Would over pitching cause this? I added a complete pack to a 10L batch of wort, but the packs are for 15-25L...
And just collected another coupe of hundred gams of hops and some yeast. Hopefully this will stave off boredom and give me something to look forward to.
Now, if only I could find a decent recipe for mosaic hops and kveik yeast...
My white ale is ready to keg this evening. First time conditioning a beer in my Dark Farm keg. Once that is kegged, I'll probably do a small batch of an American Pale Ale. This will be my second all grain brew, the first wasn't an amazing success. But it is all a learning process I suppose.
but it still seems strange given that most fermentations are supposed to be about two weeks.
Would over pitching cause this? I added a complete pack to a 10L batch of wort, but the packs are for 15-25L…
The yeast multiplies very quickly as it eats it's way through the dissolved oxygen, double the amount doesn't halve the time, it's probably more like a few hours. Over pitching takes a lot of yeast.
Depends on too many factors to say "most take 2 weeks". I've fermented, bottled, conditioned and drunk heffeweizen in 2 weeks! A lager on the other hand is only just getting going after the first week.
You could probably get away with half a packet if you wanted to save it, but it won't make a significant difference to the fermentation.
Well I know that now. Genuinely though, none of the guides I’d read beforehand mentioned it. Ah well, live and learn.
It may well be cobblers though. Read this http://brulosophy.com/2016/10/31/the-boil-lid-on-vs-lid-off-exbeeriment-results/
I boil with the lid on (cracked slightly at one side to prevent boilover) and plenty of steam still escapes. I've never detected DMS in my brews.
That brulosophy site is interesting.
If I were to add a tap to the bottom of my Big Boiling Pan, would this sort of thing do the trick do you think?
^ I have the tap and filter in this link https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/33-litre-stainless-boiler/
Works very well. I'd be concerned that your link isn't designed for heat.
Works very well. I’d be concerned that your link isn’t designed for heat.
Assuming the washers are silicone it should be fine?
My old boiler was a 40l polypropylene bucket with kettle elements and pipe fittings from screwfix
Or you could go mad with a step drill and some silver solder and then just use PTFE tape to secure the tap.
Assuming the washers are silicone it should be fine?
My old boiler was a 40l polypropylene bucket with kettle elements and pipe fittings from screwfix
My pan is used on a gas burner... so the tap gets a lot hotter than 100 degrees.
I should say that we've just had an induction hob fitted, so I will need a new pan as my existing one isn't magnetic. Does anyone have a recommendation?