Homebrewists of STW, brewing ‘owt at the moment?

Cider is done. Finished off at 1.006 and has a really quite nice taste to it already (thanks to the saison yeast). Also has a really pleasant apple taste and is not too dry. The cursed porter needs another week, so that will go into bottles next weekend.

Hopefully the yeast i saved from the cider will work in the mead I have planned.

Hi MrWhyte
If you’ve never tried Vocation Brewery Imperial Kirsch Stout then I’d suggest trying it as inspiration for your planned black forest gateaux stout.

My other half made an Eglish Ale with Bavaria Mandarina hops and we tried it last night, really impressed with it but as usual he’s super critical of his brews.

Happy brewing all 🙂

Just put a mead together. 2kg of set local honey in about 4-ish litres of water infused with ginger. I had to change fermenter because the volume got too big for the demijohn and it is still around 1.130 OG.

Yeast was tricky. I am putting a starter of a harvested saison yeast from a cider that should be good, but needs a day to really get started. Otherwise it will be a trip to the shop for a normal mead yeast on Monday.

Then, we wait. The yeast will tolerate 14% alcohol apparently. I expect it to get to that.

It appears I have brewed a lot recently… Just bottled 11L of “Cursed” porter in my lunch break. It’s the one that failed to kick off with the first yeast and then got chewed into by the Voss kviek.

Anyway, it finished early in the week and has been waiting for bottling. Today, that is done. Finished at 1.013 and gave me a 5% porter. FG was higher than I had planned, but the kviek still attenuated it down 72%. And at least it is a beer.

The small sample I had gives it a mild roastiness and soft mouthfeel. Some carbonation will be good for it.

And now, back to waiting to see if the mead actually starts fermenting. I thought the starter was good to go, so added it to the main fermenter yesterday. Thought I saw activity, but I now think it might just have been expansion activity. Still, it’s in the fridge at 21C, so if there is a lag phase, that should be kind to the yeast.

It appears I have brewed a lot recently

yup me too, 3 brews in the last month & will probably do another at the weekend. Kegged the Chrimbo beer – fairly bog standard 6% dark ale with a few spices chucked in! – after only 7 days in the FV. With kegs you can force carbonate & drink only a few hours later so that’s the quickest I’ve ever got a beer from ingredients to a glass! Too quick really, but I was impatient, and it’ll condition in the keg. The DIPA that I rushed previously is already tasting much more rounded after a week or so in the keg (still been drinking it obviously!)

Did a batch recently for the office team which I dished at at a recent away day. Was meant to be a 6% ish IPA but didn’t quite hit my numbers (mash efficiency seems to have taken a hit recently for some reason, not doing anything different and last 4 brews have been consistently 6 to 10 points down – bit of a mystery), was considering not sharing but ‘rebranded’ as a Pale Ale and made my excuses but everyone has come back with good feedback.

Need to catch up on brewing schedule though. Got about 6 batches of ingredients in so need to get cracking.

It looks like the mead has not kicked off like I had hoped. It’s had a week now and there’s no krausen and the airlock activity seems to be temperature related. I took a sample this lunchtime and the OG is still 1.110 or something so if any fermentation has happened, there’s been no huge change.

So… Will be off to the shop this afternoon to pick up some proper yeast for the job and to hope that there is still enough dissolved oxygen in the wort(?) for it to work properly. And that there’s no infection.

New yeast has been added. Prepped a min-starter of nutrient, diluted must and the yeast and let it rehydrate for a couple of hours. It started ripping, so it is now in the main fermenter and I am hoping tomorrow will start seeing some airlock activity.

Slightly worrying is the small amount of white foam on the top of the must. It may just be the tiny traces of fermentation from the weak old yeast, or its the start of an infection. Time will tell.

Just checked. Finally going off. Thank you Mangrove Jack’s mead yeast!

I haven’t brewed for ages, so back in the saddle today with a SMASH golden ale. Plenty of late addition goldings.

Mead is still going. I ended up moving it back into the house because it is now cold enough in the workshop that the temperature was dropping below the heat pad’s abilities. Now it is sitting at a relatively steady 20/21C in tthe bathroom and slowly finishing off. Another week and I think it might be done.

Next up is a hoppy pale ale. I need something to backstop the cheaters cider and the porter I have in the cellar.

Ah, now, this is a timely thread bump. My last couple of brews, the first in our new house, have been a bit off – not dreadful, but not great. They’ve been really quite bitter.

I brew from extract, so method is pretty much steep some malt in about 5l of water, dissolve extract into it, bring to boil, add hops, boil for 60 mins, add hops towards end of boil, cool, into fermenter, add water to 21l, ferment.

A typical recipe is:

250g Crystal
2.5kg light DME
50g each of Fuggles and EKG at start of boil
25g Cascade with 10mins to go

Now, cos of the house move, the hops had been frozen for quite a while (probs 6 months+) and, to further possibly complicate matters, the water in our new place goes through a softener.

From what I’ve read, softened water doesn’t really work for all-grain brewing, but should be fine with extract brewing, so is it more likely that I’ve just got hops that are past their best?

I’m back in the saddle again.
Haven’t brewed for about 6 months or more due to moving house and filling my brewery up with so many boxes, bikes and tools you couldn’t use it.

Got a new bag of pale malt, found some hops in the freezer and packets of yeast in the cupboard so chucked together a simple English pale ale with Centennial bittering hops and Endeavour aroma hops with a wee 80c hop stand. Nottingham Ale yeast went off like the clappers and attenuated further than I expected.

Also moved over to Brewfather software over Beersmith. It’s a lot better, far easier to use.
Need to finish off the iSpindels to link to it and may even look at changing the controllers on my grainfather fermenters to tie in with the system and get fully reactive/automated control over fermenting. Have connected the brewery to the house wifi now*.

Also bought a wee smart plug, so can fill the grainfather with strike water the night before then have it up to temp for when I get up and can mash in before breakfast. Fancy!

*mostly to run a plex media server, but am also thinking of setting up a heater/ethereum mining rig out there

I’m at the end of a keg of kveik amber which turned out nicely. And I’ve a session kveik IPA in the pressure fermenter dry hopping. Both somewhat experimental with Nelson sauvin and ekuanot hops.

At least the cellar is now at a perfect ale temperature!

I’ll be brewing a pseudo-lager with Lutra this weekend for my sons when they come back from university.

Cutting it a bit fine for Xmas tho’…

I haven’t brewed for ages, so back in the saddle today with a SMASH golden ale. Plenty of late addition goldings.

This turned out very well indeed. My previous couple of brews were so-so, hence back to basics with 4 kg Golden Promise malt and 80g of EKG. Yeast was Gervin ale, which lacks character but clears nicely and finished at 1.008.

Bittering added as FWH, aroma hops split equally between flameout and directly into the cube: I no-chill and had had problems with excess bitterness – moving the second aroma addition into the cube meant it went in at about 85 degrees, and the beer does seem to be smoother.

From what I’ve read, softened water doesn’t really work for all-grain brewing, but should be fine with extract brewing, so is it more likely that I’ve just got hops that are past their best?

never done extract, but IME water is the critical factor for making great beer, and some residential water is just awful. Water softener sounds like a terrible idea either way, doesn’t that just add huge quantities of salts to the liquor?

Both beers I made at our new place with just regular tapwater were ok, but had that unmistakable “home-brew” off-flavour twang. Best thing you can do is get a water analysis, not expensive and will massively improve beer quality as they’ll tell you what to add to the water for specific beer styles. Alternatively you can just use mineral water, I used to get the ASDA cheapy stuff in 5L bottles as they used to publish the mineral composition so again you knew what needed to be added.

Also moved over to Brewfather software over Beersmith

I used Beersmith for many years – it’s a great program, but they’re still rocking the circa-1995 interface & the cloud function is still awful. So switched to Brewfather a few months ago and not looked back! 100% recommend. Also got an iSpindel but not been impressed with its accuracy… I think because the beers I make tend to leave a lot of crud on the surface which massively affects the tilt reading. It’s still useful though for telling me when fermentation has stopped, and the integration with Brewfather is great & works flawlessly. Might pick up a Plaato airlock at some point to give that a go instead.

Also bought a wee smart plug, so can fill the grainfather with strike water the night before then have it up to temp for when I get up and can mash in before breakfast. Fancy!

was a bit naughty over Black Friday and my full Grainfather brewery setup just arrived yesterday 🤣 Itching to get a brew on over the weekend now! I (usually) always make decent beer with my current setup, but I want to start experimenting with very precise recipes & techniques wrt to temperatures etc which just isn’t possible at the moment even if I watch it like a hawk. Also my current kettle is not really big enough any more as due to laziness I do no-sparge now, but also like strong beers so normally have quite a hefty grain bill! 😃 (was tempted to use BrewPiLess to add PID & recirc to my current kettle, but a) the time and b) still wouldn’t be quite big enough!)

I’m deliberately avoiding looking at special deals on brewing stuff. I know a Grainfather would make a lot more sense, but I have kit that does the same thing and makes good beer, so I MUST NOT SHOP A GRAINFATHER.

Best thing you can do is get a water analysis, not expensive and will massively improve beer quality as they’ll tell you what to add to the water for specific beer styles.

Any recommendations?

@IHN Murphy & Son. They don’t deal directly with home-brewers any more though so you have to book it through https://www.brewuk.co.uk/water-analysis.html
Fiver off at the moment by the looks of it! (genuine discount as I did pay the higher price earlier this year!!)

Smashing, ta

they’ll tell you what to add to the water for specific beer styles.

Out of interest. what kind of thing might they be telling me to add?

Brewing salts.
Gypsum
Epsom salt
Calcium carbonate
Calcium chloride
Lactic acid
Baking powder
Precipitated chalk

Going off my Yorkshire water info, which is probably not very helpful, I always use those top 5. But I could probably do with a proper water report and some micro scales to do it properly.

what kind of thing might they be telling me to add?

as above! There’s also commonly used a solution called AMS (CRS) – Carbonate Reducing Solution – and a mix of mineral salts called DWB (Dry Water Burtonisation). Both available very cheaply from home-brew shops/online places.

If you’re interested there’s stacks of technical articles on the Murphy & Son site that go into water chemistry (and other technical aspects of brewing) in great detail!!
I was always crap at chemistry at school but now understand & have learned far more about it since I took up brewing 🤣
https://www.murphyandson.co.uk/resources/technical-articles/

Finally got round to checking the progress of the mead. It’s now at 0.997, so I guess it is done!

The plan was for this to finish sweet, but with some character from the initial use of Saison yeast. When the slurry from the cider failed, I used mead yeast and nutrient and I think this is what caused the drying out; the saison woke up and started to out-compete the MJ Mead yeast.

I’m not 100% sure of the OG, certainly it was something like 1.120-ish, so the ABV on this is somewhere around 15/16%. There is still a note of honey on the nose, but it’s strong stuff and there is a strong farmhouse taste to it. It’s a lot like the cider I made with the same yeast, but with less apple (obvs).

I found myself getting a little jaded with porter, so I took the chance this afternoon to get a pale ale ina fermenter.

No planning, just used up the last of some old pale malt, topped up with some pilsner and a quarter of a kilo each of flaked rye and flaked oats. 3kg total grain bill.

Hope was simple… 10g of Magnum at the start of the 30 min boil, with 15g Melon at 15 mins and 25g of Melon at flame out. Yeast was the half packet of MJ Kveik I had in the fridge. It is already bubbling. I love kveik.

The heater for my beer fridge failed so I ended up looking at replacements for the Inkbird controller (it wasn’t the controller, it was was the heater itself). I only knew about the problem as my iSpindel showed the temperature dropping.

If I was doing it again, I’d get 2 IFTT compatible plugs and an iSpindel. It would allow me to control the temperature without walking to the garage and more importantly be able to set temperature profiles i.e. hold 22c for 6 hours as yeast becomes established, drop to 19c until specific gravity below 1005 then raise to 22c until stable for more than a day and cold crash to 5c.

But then I wouldn’t get any exercise!

Dear gods, it smells delicious! The kveik is really doing a number on it, but the airlock is making some really nice fruity bubbles.

This is all making me want to brew again! Things have been a little crazy of late so haven’t made anything for a couple of months. Flip side of that is the mother-in-law has offered me her shed to turn into a brewery and having jumped at the chance I’m now in the process of turning a blank canvas into a beer den.
Currently waiting on parts for a HERMS vessel but when that’s sorted I’ll be using a 3 vessel system rather than an all-in-one which will be something else to learn and totally overkill for what I do but it all adds to the fun of it. Have sourced a second hand cooker hood so need to install that, give everything a clean and then we should be pretty much good to start brewing again. In my head not having to get everything out and then put it away again should make for a slightly quicker brew day, but we’ll see.

I’ve just got around to ordering a water test kit, so it’ll be interesting to see what that comes back with.

On a side note, if anyone wants any bottles for, er, bottling, I’ve got far more than I’m ever going to use at one time. If you’re Peak/Stockport/Macclesfield kinda area, and want to come and get some, let me know.

Yeah, I’m not allowed more bottles. My GF keeps mentioning I have too many and doesn’t seem to accept that I need different sorts for Belgian styles, half litre/weissbeer and “normal” beer.

Well, I’ve had my water report back. It says:

pH – 7.3
Nitrate – 3
Tot. Hardness (CaCO3) – 1
Calcium – 1
Magnesium – 0
Chloride – 22
Sulphate – 7
Alkalinity – 258

Obviously, I’ve got no idea what any of this means 🙂

It says that for a 25l batch of Ale/Bitter/IPA I need to add 30ml of AMS into the water, which is fine, I’ll get some.

It also says to add 6g of calcium Chloride flake and 13g calcium sulphate into the mash. Now, I brew from extract, so I don’t need those two, right? As the mashing has all been done already in the extract?

@IHN as I understand it, the reason for adding salts to the grist is that some don’t dissolve readily in water – so it’s better to have them suspended there rather than just sink to the bottom! (Willing to be corrected on this though!) And although one purpose is to adjust the pH and otherwise promote enzyme activity, it’s not the only purpose, as this article suggests: http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1/water-for-extract-brewing/water-chemistry-adjustment-for-extract-brewing
So you might want to add them to your boil anyway. Or, get a bag, and start brewing properly 😉

Genus did (I think) a good stream on water chemistry, might be worth looking that up on YouTube, but at least you know where you are now and you can buy the various salts and start making the chemistry suit the beer you make.

pH is best adjusted with lactic acid during the early part of the mash. I use (most of the time) pH strips that let me know roughly if I am at about 5.3 – 5.5. The mash works better in that range (so the internet says).

BIAB really is easy to do. If you have a large enough grytta, something that will hold 20l, then a 10l BIAB batch is really straightforward. Call it 2.5-ish kg of grain for a 4.5% beer, the 60 minute mash and the 60 minute or less boil will add time to your brew day, but will let you do more in the way of making different beers.

Tried the new beer last night and am not super happy with it. I was hoping for something more bitter and with more hop character, but I ended up with a noticeably malt forward ale, with way less bitterness and none of the tropical hops that I was looking for.

It’s still drinkable, but I wanted more. I think the main problem was getting the alpha acid percentage wrong for the main hops and under adding in the early boil. I’m also going to dry hop next time.

Dry-hopping’s a great way of getting super hoppy beers, don’t be afraid to go big either – I do a DDH WC IPA that is about 18g/L of hops in total. Key with it is to keep your dry hop relatively short, 2 or 3 days.

I need more practice with dry hopping. I think I tend to under-hop, but leave it in for too long. Thinking about the last NEIPA I made, the 10L batch had 100g total hops in, but I left the first bag in for the whole time it was in the fermenter.

But, moving on from that, has anyone used smoked or peated malts in a stout or porter? I was thinking this might be something to try, but do not want something acrid.

Last NEIPA I made was a kind-of clone of Verdant’s Even Sharks Need Water (different hops) but that was 222g in total for a 10L batch, 150g of that was a dry hop but only for 3 days.

As for smoked malt, I’ve only used it in a Blonde Stout so far and that was 60g out of a 2210g malt bill – but that must’ve been back when I was making 5L batches on the stove as there’s no other way that’d end up as a 5.4% beer. Turned out nice, even if it did mess with your head – looked like a pale, tasted like a stout!
As for any advice, I’d say to not use too much of it, it may be that you don’t perfect the recipe until after a couple of batches but I can’t find any downsides in that 🙂

Dry hop in secondary for a few days is supposed to be the go.

I’m currently drinking a Belgian Ale infused with Davidson Plum juice (a homegrown Australian native plum that is off the charts in sourness). I’ve managed to get just the right amount (750ml in a 19 litre keg). It’s a shame the plums are only ripe every few years.

Did the first brew in the shed with my upgraded 3 vessel system at the weekend, all went pretty well apart from forgetting to close off a ball-valve at the start. The beer’s a pretty simple Scotch Ale so hopefully it’ll turn out decent enough while also being the test beer for my new processes.
The mash was much easier in a shallower & wider tun with a false bottom as opposed to the boiler/basket combo previously, not sure if it was that or the water treatment, but my efficiency is up too.
Have also used my iSpindel for the first time and having that extra info is pretty interesting, although one of us is a bit out as the measured OG vs iSpindel OG is 0.011 different. That said it’s looking like it’s fermented out already (2 days with S-33!) although the iSpindel is saying it’s at 1.027 which (if it is over-reading) is really 1.016 which is pretty close to the 1.012 I’d predicted. If it’s not over-reading I’ve a stalled fermentation to deal with – time to get the hydrometer out.

yeah my iSpindel is pretty hopeless accuracy-wise, I’d guess the krausen on the beer affects the float as it seemed pretty good during calibration/testing. Pretty good for showing when fermentation has stopped without me having to go out to the garage though! There’s another device called a Plaato which I might look into as an alternative, quite expensive though.

all went pretty well apart from forgetting to close off a ball-valve at the start.

don’t think I’ve ever done a brew without making one silly mistake 🤣

I need more practice with dry hopping. I think I tend to under-hop, but leave it in for too long.

brewed a DIPA (Verdant clone) a week ago, did the dry-hopping weekend just gone. Advice I’ve read says you can’t really over-dry-hop, best to do it after most of the fermentation has finished and not leave it too long… I’ll give it 6-7 days then cold crash for a few days, then keg.

My first attempt at a NEIPA turned out great (tasting) but not really the colour or crazy hoppiness I was going for… having done a bit more research sounds like preventing oxidisation is the key (as well as a better yeast!) so just about to pull the trigger on a kit for doing closed-transfers from FV to keg, and will give it another go!