Homebrewists of STW, brewing ‘owt at the moment?

@davros – i’ve brewed that Physic beer a couple of times. Very nice it is, too.

It’s currently winter here (of sorts) so i’m onto my second keg of an old favourite Whitbread 1811 Porter from the Shut up about Barclay Perkins blog. Massive quantities of brown malt are fun. This year I dialled back the hops a bit and it’s worked nicely (I suspect the original recipe would have been aged forever and most of the hop bitterness receded so this seems more realistic). First keg i did with the old British hops and this one i’ve done with US-style hops for a tinker. It’s come out well.

Everything gets fermented in a freezer with a thermostat wired in here to keep temps optimal.

Tripel should be ok at ~27c if you were using a Belgian yeast strain

Thanks yourguitarhero, we used White Labs WLP550 Belgian Ale Yeast and pitched as a starter so hopefully you’re right.

OH put a cherry wine* made with local cherries that are just there, trees growing in plain sight and all laden with gorgeous, plump fruit. The wine’s really nice, I’m not usually one for country wines but I think he got this one bang on. It’s kind of a rosé sort of affair and is good chilled.

* See also: Cherry pie, cherry crumble, etc… 😁

We missed the cherries this year (birds had them), but my OH managed to grab an absolute tonne (ok, carrier bag) of plums. There are still more there, so may attempt a plum wine.

On the beer front, I made a raw NEIPA last week. Well, using the NEIPA recipe I had, but having to miss the boil because I ran out of time. Got it to 95C for a bit to sterilise the chiller and add some bittering hops, then went to 75 for a 15 minute hop stand. Citra and Mandarina Bavaria for the stand and the first dry hop, Mandarina Bavaria and something else for the second. Because I ran out of Citra. Possibly Amarillo, possibly Nelson Sauvin.

How’d the NEIPA turn out?

Seem to have got involved in an informal homebrew competition, just working on the recipe but I’m planning an Imperial Stout with an addition of spiced rum soaked oak chips to give it a barrel-aged character. Been working on it for a while now so this is a good excuse to give it a go.
Just need to finalise the IBUs and bittering hops, will probably keep it simple with some Magnum at 40ish IBU.

@madhouse Well, it fermented ok. Went down to 1.017 which was about according to plan and took a couple of dry hoppings.

Bottling was a freaking nightmare. The yeast cake had not really compacted much and a lot of hop matter had come out of the bags, so the first part of the move to the bottling bucket was a plug of sludge. I also managed to spill about a half litre on the kitchen floor…

Anyway, it’s cloudy as hell, pale as a ghost and has a very fruity orange/citrus aroma. The taste I had is resinous, but with a firm mouthfeel, so not painfully bitter. The weekend should be ok for the mid-carbonation test.

We currently have a lot of apples in the village. I’m trying to organise a cider pressing.

Haven’t brewed for months, but did just acquire 10 CO2 extinguishers from work so am pretty sorted there!

I’ve got an azacca single hop kveik pale in the keg carbonating. Early signs are good. Shame my cellar is a bit warmer at the moment. I’ll have to bottle some for the fridge.

Got a few on the go here. Getting to the end of a batch of West coast IPA that didn’t last long thanks to a small gathering last weekend where it went down particularly well, a Sarachi ale ready to bottle, a NEIPA I’ve just kegged, and a lager that seems to have been going for ages…last time I do a lager, what a faff. Cant even be bothered to drink it now its been such a PITA to make while at the same time trying to maintain my usual drum beat of other beers, might just give it away, I’m not even that much of a fan of lagers really.

Doing a batch of IPA with Verdant yeast for work collegues this weekend. 2nd batch of this brew, first one was amazing, definitely one of my best brews yet.

Also got a new plate chiller and Hop Missile to play with. Hopefully can take a good 40 mins or so out of a brewery with the plate chiller.

To be honest, that was the main reason I did the NEIPA raw. Took so much time out of the day. The only thing I worry about is the bittering and hop utilisation, something I think works better for NEIPA because it is not hugely bitter and is more about the lower temperature hop usage.

Next time I need to remember to sparge a bit more. 8L in bottles is just not enough if the beer is good.

@wobbliscott Kolsch… Like lager but not at the silly fermentation temp. Also, beer is beer. Lager has a place, so is worth keeping it around.

Yeah, just went into it without properly researching and not realising the effort and time it requires. I’m not a particularly patient brewer…I like a quick turn around of small batches of beers and lagers just seem to take forever in comparison, but seems like you need to have one in your repertoire. Might try a Kveik ‘lager style’ next time and if its close enough to a proper lager then that might be the way forward.

I’m going to be brewing an English Barley Wine for Xmas this weekend.

@bakey Hell yeah! Should have some nice maturity by then.

You can do a decent lager fermentation in *less* time.

Caveat – using liquid yeast or a pre-propogated starter from dry yeast

4 days at 12c (primary)
1.5 days at 18c (diacetyl rest)
14 days at 4c or less (secondary) – having a conical fermenter helps here.

That will do it.

Big commercial breweries are fermenting with bottom (lager) strains at 16 or 17c these days then cold crashing and getting good results.

I can report that the raw NEIPA is cloudy, pine-y and fruity as hell. Needs more carbonation, but it’s a cracking beer.

Heather and honey beer just kegged yesterday. Will let it sit to mature for a bit then probably bottle with a sugar top up to bottle condition it.

Once fermenter cleaned out I have made a NEIPA. Realized I was low on pale Maris otter malt and have improvised with extra Munich but I don’t think it will do too much harm!

The weekend’s brew went ok, I should’ve checked what malt I had left so there were a couple of ‘adjustments’ and with the amount of grain I did an extended (2hr) mash so it was a long one.
But, I hit my SG of 1110 so am happy. It’s bubbling away nicely in the brew-fridge now.

Also just got one of those iSpindel thingies off eBay because I’m a geek and I like the idea of seeing how my fermentation’s going.

Will give the Impy Stout two or three weeks and then I’m gonna give a fake Pilsner / Kolsch a go. Oh and I need to do some Malt shopping.

I’e got an iSpindel. Brilliant things, feel blind fermenting without one now. Even if you ignore the gravity readings and just use it to track the progress of the brew they’re extremely useful…and prevent the needless waste of beer continually taking samples.

I love my iSpindel – just watch the gravity go down until it levels out then it’s done. Which is still 2 weeks after starting to ferment, but at least I know for sure now!

I’m forever just leaving it a couple of weeks and then kegging without remembering to take an FG reading, so hopefully this’ll not only tell me when it’s done but also give me a record of my numbers.

Do you guys use ubidots or something else to connect it to?

I use Brewfather, it links in and provides a readout with a data point every 15 minutes.

Brewfather looks good, is the connected devices thing a premium feature though? Seems to suggest it is on the app store and that’s £20/yr.
Yes, I know that’s not loads of money but I’ve already got an app for all my brewing, so I’d be paying that just to see my iSpindel data.

Not sure. I have paid so maybe it is. Its very useful though.

I did originally set up with Ubidots, but the integration with Brewfather is seamless so if you’re using that already and a paid up member then its a no-brainer.

Brewer’s Friend has recently stopped working so well on my iPad, so I’m waiting for their new version to come out to see if that will be any good. At some point I will probably go and buy a subscription to the website too, just to make things easier. I still use a notebook to record recipes and the brew day because it does not have an annoying screen timeout like my iPad does…

I use Ubidots because I’m cheap

Have a bucket of cider on now. 11 litres(-ish) of Ikea Kallmust, half a capfull of yeast nutrient and a packet of Mangrove Jacks French Saison yeast. It started off at 1.047, so I _should_ get about a 5% cider out of it.

The yeast will make it quite dry, but not as dry as taking it all the way down to 1.000 and I am hoping that a 25C ferment gives it a bit more of a farmhouse feel than a straight fermentation with a cleaner yeast.

Saison yeast used because the shop was out of cider yeast and I have used this in the past and it works really well. I do need to get another beer on the go though, probably a normal hoppy west coast IPA.

That cider sounds like it’ll turn out nicely, I like the idea of using a Saison yeast to give it a bit more depth.

Just checked on my impy stout. Three weeks in and it’s still bubbling albeit slowly, but as the yeast’s still working on it I’ll leave it be other than upping the temp to 20 to help it finish up.

I don’t have the time or space to brew from grain unfortunately. I did a stint as at brew pub which produced some fine ales BITD. None of it was very scientific, some simple monitoring tools and being on top of the cleaning.

My wife bought me a home brew starter kit 12 years ago. If been “brewing” from kits ever since. I’ve settled on the Festival range of kits for the last few years. Always gives good drinkable results.

I found another online store during lockdown, Get Er Brewed in Northern Ireland, and their range of Experimental Brews. I’ve done the Citra last year, I’ve now got the Vic Secret Pale Ale in a pressure barrel conditioning. Early tasting is so far superb.

Was cruising the local second hand marketplace the other day and this popped up:

https://www.blocket.se/annons/flera%20platser/walholl_brygghus_ol_bryggeri_till_salu/97094181

Got me thinking about whether I should leave behind my misspent youth and embark upon a career as a brewer.

Also, my girlfriend is away this weekend. I could get a pale in on the go if I am organised on Sunday…

On the back of this thread I bought one of those Ispindels linked to Ubidots. It was pretty interesting seeing the fermentation in real time. For £35 I’m very impressed.

Just bottled the first batch of a Stout kit with it last night – Used the “Simply” kit and Made with a half tin of treacle and bottled with a wee dod of maple syrup for secondary.

Ended up using too much water at the start so ended up at just over 3% abv but still as dark as I wanted.

Hopefully the postie will be bringing the next Kit in the next couple of days – a Christmas beer; Woodfordes Twinke Toes.

Weekend brewing happened, but the pale ale ended up being a porter. Not too unhappy with that as I did get to hang out with a friend.

BUT… First fermentation bucket was leaking (maybe the seal around the tap) and I only noticed when I had it in the fridge. I had to quickly sanitise another bucket and transfer to then new bucket and now there is no fermentation going on, even after 24 hours. Temp is in the specs for the yeast, it was oxygenated, the only thing that I can think of is that the yeast was going BBE in december. Still overpitched, so that should not matter.

If there is nothing going on by the evening, it’s getting another packet of yeast.

back brewing with a vengeance now after about 5 years off! We moved last year so have a lot more space, but the main driver was we now have a garden for the first time so planted some hops which did very well – so I had to make a green hop beer! 😃

I’d always planned a kegerator build as despised bottling although never gotten around to it … but with the green hop sitting in the FV ready to go I pulled the trigger on a Mangrove Jacks 3-tap unit. A fair investment but not IMO crazy money versus commercial-grade equipment which seems to be the only other non-DIY option (was vaguely considering something like a Lindr before but obviously they are £££ and for a home bar probably not actually as good!)
Anyway, really pleased with it, great build quality, takes all the faff of bottling away plus you can force carbonate so the beer is ready to drink that day which is a massive bonus! Not to mention the novelty factor of being able to pour your own beer from a proper tap.

So currently pouring the green hop beer, got a Verdant DIPA clone fermenting, and just ordered the ingredients for a mid-6% Chrimbo brew which I’ll do next!

On the back of this thread I bought one of those Ispindels linked to Ubidots. It was pretty interesting seeing the fermentation in real time. For £35 I’m very impressed.

I do like a gadget so picked one of these up from eBay. When it came there was a card for the guy’s website where he was selling pre-calibrated ones for only a few quid more which I’d definitely have gone for if I’d seen it as the calibration is a bit of a faff! Great bit of kit though – basically an open source version of the Tilt hydrometer which costs many times more! I like that it can send data direct to the Brewfather app which I’m using now (and from there you can send the data on to anything else e.g. Home Assistant).

I already have a fermentation fridge (actually a small chest-freezer which is the exact size of one of my FVs inside!) controlled by an STC-1000 which I built years ago. Will be looking at replacing that controller with something a bit more sophisticated now – probably BrewPiLess as the iSpindel integrates well with it, and I can use the iSpindels built-in thermometer rather than a separate probe taped to the side of the FV which I have at the moment.

Just had a check on the porter. After the original yeast did not take off, I added half a packet of Kviek and that, well, did it. I then forgot about it in the fridge for two days and only checked on it today.

It would appear that the temp probe fell off at some point and the beer just free rose up to about 25C-ish, causing a bit of a blow off and leaving the airlock open. Luckily no porter in the fridge, so the airlock is just topped up for now and I’ll replace it with a clean one this weekend.

This really does appear to be a cursed beer.

It would appear that the temp probe fell off at some point and the beer just free rose up to about 25C-ish, causing a bit of a blow off and leaving the airlock open.

iSpindel would help prevent that kind of technical malfunction! 😃 I’ve never bothered with an airlock tbh, seems an unnecessary faff – I just crack the lid of the FV, and seal it up again if I’m leaving the beer in the FV after fermentation has finished.

A better solution than pre-used tape would be a plan as well!

Well, the cider looks to be about done and the ‘cursed porter’ is about the same… Got to love kviek for that. This weekend may end up being a bottling weekend, with a Sunday spent getting the mead started.

I may need another ale before the end of the month though, just an ale, something hoppy and light. People seem to like those.

So probably a silly question, but I am looking at an iSpindel. Does it directly link up to your phone via WiFi? If so, what is the range? I have an outhouse about 10-15 metres from the house where my ferm fridge sits.

I need to get a Christmas brew on. I am thinking a Black Forest gateaux stout. So Kirsch cherries, some vanilla and nibs. Only in the planning stages.

@mrwhyte you connect directly to an AP on the iSpindel to configure it, afterwards no you can’t connect directly to your phone – it connects to your WiFi (although it spends most of it’s time asleep so you might not actually see it listed on your network!) and sends the data to wherever you’ve specified. They suggest a cloud service called Ubidots (which is then viewable on your phone) however I’ve recently started using an app called Brewfather (seems really good, there’s a subscription for certain “pro” features but it’s very reasonable) and the iSpindel can send data to their server which allows you to track the progress of the fermentation via their app on your phone/tablet/PC etc.

There’s actually loads of options now (I upgraded to the very latest firmware) for sending data out including MQTT and generic HTTP so you can configure whatever custom service you want for receiving the data! If you have something like a Raspberry Pi or other always-on computer you can use that for local data logging.

The range is probably not great as it only has a tiny aerial however it works from inside my fermentation fridge (I do have a separate wireless AP in the garage where the fridge is though!) As the iSpindel is basically a DIY project though, I have seen a version with a beefier aerial – there’s also a separate project called Nautilis iSpindel relay which is a second device that acts as a booster and gives you a little readout screen etc.

I’ve been getting a lot of inconsistent readings from mine at the moment – but I think that’s because it’s an 8.5% beer, there’s a lot of Krausen which is probably sticking to the iSpindel so it can’t balance correctly. I guess it’s more accurate right at the start and at the end of fermentation, and possibly not might not be such an issue with a weaker beer!