get about 9 litres of water up to 74 degrees

Can I just check – Did you mean 9 litres for the mash, or is it 6l?

Quick (daft) yeast question – I’m going to start a 10l brew and I’ve got a slant from Brewlabs. Instructions provided say to prepare starter with 300ml water, but doesn’t say what qty of wort that’s for (I’d imagine default is 5 gal).

For my 10l brew, do I scale the water down accordingly (ie add it to 130ml)? Or add to 300ml and pitch 130ml? Or just pitch it all?

Not sure if I need to do a starter for a 10l batch but I’ve bought the slant now!

If relevant, brew is a Summer Lightning clone, using Thames Valley (slant), and I’ve got a packet of Safale Light Ale as a backup if the starter falls over.

Am feeling happy with my purchase today

From Lakeland, tidy little bottle capper.

My brew is coming along. Brown foam is starting to dissipate.
Will start taking some gravity readings soon.

Bob
Just prep it as per the instructions . you could downsize from 20litre to 10litre by only adding half of the 300ml . Personally i would add the lot but be prepared to put it on cool 1-2′ ealier as it might not stop as quickly.

aye, I’ll pitch the lot then. You don’t tend to hear of problems from adding too much yeast, do you?

Can I just check – Did you mean 9 litres for the mash, or is it 6l?

Sorry albino, only just spotted this. I can comfortably get 9 litres in the kettle with about 2.5kg of grain for the mash. Then I just do a dunk sparge in a few litres of water to top up to my boil volume.

flashy, those things are a must! The supplied capper is a disaster waiting to happen IMO, the proper capper makes things so much easier and safer.

can I recommend getting some of these (or equivalent):
http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/bottling/bottles/coppers-pet-bottles.html

Use one or two of these bottles in each batch, so you know when it’s carbonated. When freshly bottled, a PET bottle is squishy, as you’ll know from opening a PET bottle of your favourite fizzy pop; when it’s fully carbonated, it’s rock hard – as you’ll know from an unopened bottle of said fizzy pop.

I find 1/2 teaspoon of brewers sugar (dextrose) is just about right per 500ml bottle for priming, but if you want it more lively, a full teaspoon should be enough. 2-3 weeks in the warm to get the carbonation complete, then as long as you can bear to leave it in a cool place for bottle conditioning

I know its a long shot but does anyone remember the brewer who had some immersion chillers available. I now have need of one for someone’s birthday present 😉

That would be me .

PM me and I will try to get one in the post. £5 posted which is cost basically.

The supplied capper is a disaster waiting to happen IMO, the proper capper makes things so much easier and safer.

Indeed, but in the interest of costs, you can see where Steve was going with the included one.

I’m interested to see if he comes up with any new variants on the kit for Christmas. Such as a ‘deluxe’ version, with a proper capper etc, for example.

Oh absolutely, it wasn’t so much a dig at the supplied capper other than highlighting the huge improvement the other capper makes to the bottling. The massive brewery kit is great in that it provides you with (almost) everything you need to brew good beer, which gives you the experience you need to make educated decisions about upgrades.

I did find that capper quite tricky to use though, but i suppose it would improve with practice.

In all honesty, I think the kit is nearing perfect for new brewers. The price point and small pack size are great and get rid of all the “cons” normally associated with starting brewing. Plus, with such a low cost you don’t mind upgrading later.

I’ve got a bench capper from BrewUK, brilliant bit of kit and happy that i made the right choice to spend a bit more first time round. Makes bottling a 1 man job and i could cap 40 bottles in a few minutes no probs.

@Peterfile – Cheers for the heads-up. Just finished clearing up after brewing the Two-Hearted IPA. All seems to have gone well. I used the 2 bags and came out with an OG of 1.054 which, (I hope) will come out at something around 5%.
Is the 9 litre in the pot method something you’d do for all brews?

Think I’m going to go for an everyday drinking bitter next. Maybe something like a TT Landlord…unless anyone has any other suggestions.

TT Landlord is a great one to try – had some good brews on that recipe, but not had one (yet) that’s really come close to the authentic Landlord taste. V hard to brew a true clone, really, as the yeast will almost always be different.

Cheers for the heads-up. Just finished clearing up after brewing the Two-Hearted IPA. All seems to have gone well. I used the 2 bags and came out with an OG of 1.054 which, (I hope) will come out at something around 5%.
Is the 9 litre in the pot method something you’d do for all brews?

It will be great at 1.054. The first time I brewed it was when I was still using two bags and I hit about 1.052. Second time I brewed it I used one big bag and hit the target of 1.070. In all honesty, I preferred the first version.

Definitely dry hop it though, it makes an astounding difference to the aroma of the finished beer. I dry hop almost all my pale/IPAs now.

hey guys,

I’ve started monkeying about with beersmith and got PF’s equipment profile up and running on it. Its not the most intuitive software – i couldn’t see how to import or hack the quipment profiles, so just ended up copying the values into one.

I was looking for a first recipe and think someone mentioned the SNPA recipe as a reasonably easy recipe. Firstly, do you think it would be a decent brew for a first BIAB attempt? Secondly, does anyone have a foolproof recipe anywhere? There are 5 or 6 efforts in the beersmith cloud, all with different variables, so a pointer would be great. I’m still a fair bit off doing my first brew, just trying to get things sorted.

Cheers

To open Peter’s file just click on “File-Open – [Select Folder where you saved it] and click Open.

This will open a new tab in Beersmith with all the correct info.
When you open a new recipe (My recipes – on the left hand-side), you can then click the “Scale Recipe” button to get the required levels for the Massive Brewery kit. Peter seems to have done a pretty good job so far, especially using his 1-bag technique, which had me hit the OG spot-on with this evening’s brew!

I’d suggest using the MB recipe for the first brew. It helped me to understand various things that I would never have been able to if I started with Beersmith. It’s still very much a learning process for me but 3 brews down and I feel a lot more confident already.

More to follow, when I finish last few bits of clean up!

SNPA is quite a complex recipe so might not be ideal for a first brew. Lots of hops at several different intervals.

you might be better with a fairly simple recipe to start with. Preferably one you know you like…

Thanks for the advice J_D. Reviewing the thread i note peterfile put an SNPA recipe on the first page – oops 🙂

I’ve seen references to a SMASH recipe (I think Trout used the term) so i’ll go on the hunt for something simple. I didn’t buy the MB kit so i’ll have to source the ingredients anyway, so i’ll scour the BS recipe cloud for something simple and tasty like an IPA. Any suggestions welcome!

I should have been a bit clearer above Albino, i could import PF’s equipment profile just fine, i just couldn’t find a way to set it as my default, even by placing it within the XML for the application. I have got a manual profile set up now using the figures and it scaled ok, but only if you hit the “scale” button – it doesn’t rescale if you just thange the profile. Its all the wee tweaks that i’m learning that make it fun 🙂

Cheers

To open Peter’s file just click on “File-Open – [Select Folder where you saved it] and click Open.

This will open a new tab in Beersmith with all the correct info.
When you open a new recipe (My recipes – on the left hand-side), you can then click the “Scale Recipe” button to get the required levels for the Massive Brewery kit. That didn’t work for me! You can load the profile in OK but it doesn’t appear in the list when you use the “scale recipe” button. (At least, it didn’t for me).

I found (after much frustrated clicking – probably would have been quicker just to retype it all!) that with the new profile tab selected you can click on “Edit > Copy” on the menu, then bring up the Equipment tab and click “Edit > Paste” on the menu. I could then use Peter’s profile to scale recipes.

Overall Beersmith is very unintuitive (especially the cloud function!) but it’s fine once you understand how it works. Very powerful bit of software, and great fun playing around with various recipes and ingredients!

Brewmate is good. Quite easy to use and change scale. From http://www.brewmate.net – PC version only IIRC. lots of recipes there too, although there is a lot of repetition

yeah zilog, just a wee “set as default profile” button would have solved a lot of issues. All credit to the guy though, its a better app than i could design 🙂

You’re right Zilog it doesn’t work that way! I’ve had a good think and I’m really not sure how I got mine/Peter’s in. Definitely didn’t do it manually and I don’t think I did it your way either! Not so intuitive at all!

On another related note; does anyone know what kind of profile I would use to add recipes from a brewing book like this one into Beersmith?
All the recipes are for 23l batches but apart from that, there’s no other batch information. I’d like to be able to input them and then scale down for the Massive kit. There are some interesting clone recipes in there provided by some pro brewers.

Brew day tomorrow, have had a starter going since Sunday afternoon (brewlabs slant in spraymalt broth, in the airing cupboard at about 20º). Not having used a starter before, how do I know it’s good? I’ve got a packet of S-06 ‘just in case’.

The starter doesn’t seem to be doing much. There’s a tiny bit of froth on top. At what point do I chuck it down the sink and use the packet?!

Bottled the first batch with the Massive kit yesterday! Got 15 bottles at 3.9%. Tasted quite hoppy but a bit watery and lacking in bite. Not unpleasant though! Hopefully the bottle conditioning will improve it!

Already got ingredients (and a couple of extra FVs) for the next 2 batches and will hopefully be brewing both up at the weekend!

quick bump as I’ll be pitching in an hour or so. The starter (see above) is cloudy, looks like wheat beer but with a bit of loose bubbly head. Some dead yeast on the bottom. Smells like beer, not bad in any way, haven’t tasted it though.

Pitch it or bin it?

Yeah, my first batch from the massive brewery is ready to bottle. Final gravity was 1.010 this morning, will test again tonight to make sure.

Had a wee taste. It tastes like beer. Not very good beer, but definitely in the right ballpark. We’ll see how it goes in the bottles.

quick bump as I’ll be pitching in an hour or so. The starter (see above) is cloudy, looks like wheat beer but with a bit of loose bubbly head. Some dead yeast on the bottom. Smells like beer, not bad in any way, haven’t tasted it though.

Pitch it or bin it? Give it a taste, if it doesn’t taste foul, bung it in! The yeast at the bottom isn’t dead, it’s just the yeast cells that have settled out. Give it a shake before pitching to be sure to get most of the yeasties in the wort.

EDIT: rousing starters, giving them a shake, regularly ensures more oxygen gets into the starter beer and results in a bigger, healthy cell count. Have a look at DIY stir plates if you plan to use liquid yeasts and yeast slants regularly.

Cheers,
Jamie

So Bob, did you pitch the starter?

Cheers,
Jamie

Hi Jamie, thanks for the tip. I’ll pitch it, still got half an hour of boil to go yet (took far longer to get a rolling boil than I imagined!). I tasted it – not foul, a bit like flat non alcohol beer. It looks like this (after 48h-ish), though not sure what you can deduce from a phone photo. The black specks aren’t dirt, they’re remains of a marker pen measuring line!

Probably didn’t shake it enough. Ironically I built a magnetic stirrer plate with a mate last month but our brew days coincided and he got dibs 🙁

Looks active enough, as it tastes fine I’d pitch it- you can always bung in the dried yeast if the gravity doesn’t move much after 3/4 days.

Cheers,
Jamie

Hope so, I panicked when I checked it this morning and it was dead flat; that head (not sure it counts as krausen!) has developed since.

Next drama is that I’ve lost the connector to hook up the wort chiller to the tap! It’s about 12º outside so I’ll stick the kettle on the window ledge with a wet towel over it.

Brewed up beers 2 & 3 with the Massive kit over the weekend!

Noticed a big difference in my own kitchen on my puny stove as opposed to my mate’s place with his massive range burner type thing. The first brew (with the lid on) took long enough to get up to boil but the second one took forever (45 mins!) as I’d filled the pot to the brim so had to do it with the lid off. Plus I can only get a really gentle boil going on my stove as opposed to a really aggressive one on my mate’s, assume that’s OK though!

Tempted to get a slightly bigger stock pot so I can brew up the same volume but have a bit of headspace so I can stick the lid on. Aldi have a 12L one (slightly bigger than the one supplied with Massive) for £20 at the moment, it seems a little bit more substantial as well.

Secondly my mashing efficiency seemed a little low (63% for the second brew). I am using a single bigger bag as suggested above so I can stir it properly (although I didn’t stir it mid-way through and perhaps I should have). Have read online about people routinely getting 80%ish. Any tips? I’ve read that size of grind is critical for BIAB efficiency and that smaller is better – anyone grind up their grain any smaller?

Both brews seemed to go well though and the fermentation seemed to kick in quite a bit earlier than the first attempt, within 12hrs. I used an electric whisk to aerate the wort whereas I didn’t do anything the first time. Seemed to do the job, although I notice online almost everyone is taking about using cordless drills with paint stirrers for aeration (could be because people are doing it away from a power source though I suppose). Was interesting to see the visible difference in fermentation between my two brews, using WB-06 and US-05 yeasts.

Buy a fish tank bubbler and stone for aeration and sterilise it in your kitchen kettle.
Leave it bubbling away for an hour or 2 after you have pitched your yeast.
Keeps the yeast up in the wort better as well.

63% extract is awful, but I am unfamiliar with BIAB . Generally most crushes are a little course but should yeild more . Try raising your strike temp 2′ if poss to give you some temp to allow for stirring and get this done at the begining of the mash stand. No point ( IMO ) in stirring it halfway. Overstirring is bad though as it can seperate flour from husk. Your problem might be sparge related though . Taste the spent grains , should be no sugar and not like a cereal bar , just roughage if that makes sense.

Thanks, I’ll mash hotter next time, I was right on the bottom end of what I was shooting for temperature wise.

re: the sparge. Brew 1 I used a dunk sparge (as recommended by the instructions in the Massive kit) and for brew 2 used a batch sparge (think that’s what it’s called, basically pouring 80 deg water through the grains a few times). That seemed to work better. Didn’t think of tasting the grains though!

The wort coming off after batch sparging was obviously sugary but noticeably lighter than the main mashed wort. I was a bit worried about carrying on sparging and diluting the wort too much. Is that a problem or should I literally be trying to get as much out as possible and just boiling for longer in order to hit the correct OG?

Room for improvement with 63%, certainly, but at least you’ve got a lower benchmark and can take things from there. Did you do a mashout? That can extract a bit more sugar.
Probably need to experiment with how you’re handling the sparge process or equivalent (not a sparger myself), see if that has an impact.

Just opened the first of my latest. Mainly crystal, with a little chocolate malt, Goldings hops.

It’s a belter! Rich, deep flavour. Really happy with it.

Sounds good Captain! Cheers! I’m not a big fan of big malty beers but I was thinking about having a go at the Original Ringwood Old Thumper clone from Graham Wheeler’s recipe, (5.8% – as opposed to the lesser Marston’s 5.1% version) for my Dad’s birthday present.
Got to say, after my 6th brew now, I’m really enjoying the whole brewing lark and have got it down to a 4 hour window including clean-up now. I reckon a small water boiler/urn might be the next purchase to cut a little more time off.

Just opened the first of my latest. Mainly crystal, with a little chocolate malt, Goldings hops.

It’s a belter! Rich, deep flavour. Really happy with it.Awesome. I have just taken delivery of some chocolate malt which will be used for batch no. 4 this weekend (allegedly the original Hobgoblin recipe!)

Will be bottling batch no. 2 tonight probably, it was supposed to be Hoegaarden-esque but I was a bit disappointed with the taste – my fault, low efficiency as mentioned above. However I’ve been dry hopping it for the last 3 days which seems to have rescued it to some extent so we’ll see how it turns out after a week or 2 in the bottles.

Batch no. 3 (pale ale) on the other hand is tasting great at the moment! Been in the FV for 2 weeks now, will give it another week then dry hop and bottle.