Homebrewists of STW, brewing ‘owt at the moment?

Bottling day today. 20l of IPA, White Shield style. Tastes quite promising.

I managed to get an order from Malt Miller so have pale malt, hops and yeast. If anyone has top tips for using kveik, please share them!

Broke lockdown, went to my girlfriend’s house, kegged two brews, got laid and came home. Now drunk.

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The beer taps were running low. Disaster averted!

A post shared by Craig Turner (@iamthebeerjesus) on May 12, 2020 at 11:24pm PDT

For Kveik, ferment hot if you can. Can go up to about 45c and you get insane fermentation performance. You need >30c to get any esters, else it’s just aneutral (fast) yeast.

Also, set up a blow off tube as it will burst through your airlock.

^cheers. I have an aquarium heater that goes up to 35 I think.

Bottled a West Coast DDH IPA yesterday, wow that smelt amazing and tasted just as good – classic WC bitterness and hops all day long.

Started my first pilsner today, all went well and it’s now chilling down to a pitching temp of 12 degrees. I bottle carb so it’s not a brew for the purists but hopefully it’ll come out ok.

Update on the iSpindel. Tilt angle suddenly started to be a constant 0 degrees. Tried reflashing it and then it wouldn’t connect to Ubidots.

After much faffing around, I finally downloaded Visual Studio Code, installed the PlatformIO extension, synced to the Github repository, added my own console output statements and found that if the accelerometer fails, iSpindel loops.

New accelerometer on the way from China.

That is not terribly confidence inspiring… Maybe I do not need one _just_ yet.

Monday was a busy day. The Nelson Sauvin IPA came out of the bucket and got bottled (managed to get 9.8L in the end, which is nice), but it does not seem to have as much of the blackcurrant hop taste as I thought it would yet. Maybe it just needs to condition a bit more. We’ll see in a couple of weeks.

I also bottled about 4L of the experimental sour I made with the sourdough starter. It was very hazy and orange in the demijohn and stayed that way after shifting to a bright tank for the priming sugar addition. It’s now in bottles and the sneaky taste confirmed that it was sour. Only a little bit mind, but sour.

I’ve also given up with the recirculation pump I ordered through Amazon. Delivery lost initially and the replacement not sent for “QC” issues. I ended up finding the same pump at a place in Sweden, so ordered it from them. Just annoyed at the delay from the first purchase.

What recirculation pump did you get? Am currently thinking of adding one to improve efficiency.

It was one of the high temperature ones with a stainless head and 1/2BSP connectors. The pump is labelled as a ‘Magnetic Pump’ here: https://www.thehomebrewery.co.uk/magnetic-pump-mp-15rm-stainless-steel-head

When the initial order got messed up, I had thought about getting something like a chugger or a riptide, but those are a lot more expensive. This is cheap enough to justify given my current level of brewing, even though it was more expensive than the initial order. This means I can recirculate, whirlpool and also use the plate chiller.

Just been asked to make a batch of “pale ale or IPA, something simple, something easy to drink” for a friend. Needs to be ready tog o early July, so it looks like I’m brewing again next weekend.

Trying to decide whether to use the Zappa hops, or some of the domestic ones I got from a man in Sundsvall. Or Mosaic.

This does mean I get to use the new re-circulation pump though. Tried it yesterday with the plate chiller and I think I have managed to seal up the joins/fittings enough.

Update on the iSpindel – accelerometer arrived from China, old one desoldered and new one fitted. All working fine again. Desoldering the through pins was a pain so I’ve ordered some desoldering braid in the unlikely event I need to so something similar in the future. Also, modern lead free solder needs a higher temperature!

Girlfriend was flying tunnel this morning with her team, so I decided to make a quick batch of beer so I can keep the bottles filled. It was also a good excuse to try out The recirculating pump and plate chiller.

Recipe was a SMASH with Viking pale ale malt and domestic Korsta hops at 60, 15 and 0. It should be about 45 IBUs and quite pale, but I have no idea what AA content the hops are.

The pump worked well. No leaks from hose QDs, coped with the mash temps and the sterilisation during the late boil. I ended up mashing with the hob on about 2 to keep the temp up, so it for sure dumps heat. As for the plate chiller. Wow. About 6-8 minutes to drop from boiling to 20C. A pain to clean, but quick as hell.

Will see if the beer has kicked off tomorrow night, but it should be ok.

Tried my WC IPA yesterday, tastes great, not quite clear yet but that’s not an issue.

Bottled the Pilsner today, tastes ok and carbonation will make a big difference. Still a good few weeks before I can try it though.

Finished making the recirculation kit today too, magnetic pump from eBay, quick disconnects and a bit of 15mm pipe with holes drilled in it. Worked well with water, hope to try it on wort soon.

Ooooh! You made a sprinkler head for it? What sort of pipe, copper? I ended up just clamping the hose to the side and letting the mash water circulate around in the kettle.

I just checked my notes and it seems that I actually got within a point of my predicted numbers for Pre-Boil and original gravities, so this my be about the first time I have been actually close to hitting my theoretical brew-house efficiency.

A bozo question for the experienced brewists:

I’ve just bottled my second batch of all-grain using a basic set up. The results are drinkable but share the same off-flavour which I believe is phenolic, from using untreated/unfiltered tap water.

I have my ingredients for the next brew day. Should I use tap water with a campden tablet or bottled water from the supermarket? Is either likely to give better results than the other?

If this next batch is poor I’ll probably give up!

Cheers!

^ I just put half a crushed campden tablet in tap water and have never had a problem. You could also try letting your water sit overnight, so chlorine would evaporate.

What about your cleaning regime? Are you using bleach?

Thanks Ransos, that sounds promising. I’ve been using a powdered no rinse sanitiser so I don’t think it’s bleach based.

I have my ingredients for the next brew day. Should I use tap water with a campden tablet or bottled water from the supermarket? Is either likely to give better results than the other?

sorting your water out makes a MASSIVE difference IMO. Think Tesco Ashbeck was the “go to” cheapo mineral water when I was using it a few years back. A lot of them are labelled (or you can find out) with the mineral content so you can tweak it if required to the particular beer style. Definitely worth doing if you’re not brewing massive batches & hence using loads of water. Ended up going the extra step & sending off a water sample to Murphy’s for analysis (was a lot cheaper back then, just checked and it’s £35 now!). You can then use a water calculator to work out what you’ve got to add to it to get it the way you want it. The beer always came out great (if I may blow my own trumpet 😎)

Definitely DO NOT just use untreated tapwater if you care about how the beer tastes!!

The results are drinkable but share the same off-flavour which I believe is phenolic, from using untreated/unfiltered tap water.

Ah, this is an interesting point. My brews have a certain mildly-off taste, doesn’t render them undrinkable but is definitely there. I don’t treat the water, maybe I should. I know I’m in a hard water, no flourine area.

What about your cleaning regime? Are you using bleach?

I use Chemsan, the instructions for which says that if it goes cloudy the water may need to be treated. I’ll be honest, it goes a bit cloudy, but I’ve never taken any notice…

Thanks zilog, I definitely won’t be using untreated again. The campden tablets are already in the post but I was wondering whether bottled water would make it even less likely to end up with the same result. It’s very demoralising spending all that time and getting excited for poor results!

I’m sure I made many mistakes during the first two brews so it wouldn’t surprise me if it relates to another issue, but reading about the different off-flavours and tasting yesterday I’m hopeful it’s the water. 🤞

@davros all my early brews were done with cheapo bottled water (5L jugs from supermarket), didn’t have a bad one!!

Yeah, since moving my brewing from Edinburgh (excellent brewing water) to Linlithgow (no idea) I need to get an analysis done to get a baseline. My beers aren’t coming out as well and all other factors are the same….

Think I have found a malt supplier for part of project get-legit, so got a bag off them and did a test brew today. A summer ale – just the pale malt, a little cara-pils for head retention then some English hop additions. 1.048 OG and should be ~40 IBU.

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Testing out a potential malt supplier. Summer ale with 4.5kg pale malt, 0.25kg carapils, some EKG and Fuggles hops and a pack of US-05 I found in the back of the cupboard

A post shared by Craig Turner (@iamthebeerjesus) on Jun 10, 2020 at 1:30am PDT

Looks good!

Which supplier did you go for? Also, which malt is that? I bought a sack of Viking Pale Ale early spring and my mashes seems to be a lot darker than that, although they do lighten up in the fermenter.

You made a sprinkler head for it? What sort of pipe, copper?

Currently it’s a single plastic pipe (no copper in the garage) with holes at varying angles. Tested it all with water and it’s workzing and is leak-free.

Will try it on the next brew which should be in the next few days. If it works I’m tempted to revise it and use copper, probably into a cross or Y shape so it sits better on the top of the kettle.

The malt is from Crafty Malt – a small maltings on a farm in Fife, close to where I grew up.
Prices are good (they don’t do a cheaper price for bulk buying, so good for the small amounts I’m working with – will be 25kg a month once I’m in production.)

It’s just a pale ale malt. 3 SRM according to the spec sheet? That photo was near the start of the mash.

Crush was good – sparge went through OK and I hit my target volume and OG perfectly, so happy with its performance. Will see how the beer comes out!

That is the second time I have heard mention of Crafty Malt, I can’t remember who the first person was, but I think it was from something I watched on YouTube. Local is good though!

Just finished bottling the Nordic SMASH (https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1007754/nordic-smash) I made the other week. The yeast had gone through the bulk of fermentation over a weekend and I had seen no signs of fermentation for about four days, so thought it was time. Gravity had dropped to 1.012, which was right on plan.

Beer is darker then I expected, more of a honey/golden than the pale colour i was expecting. Really bright and clear though. A crafty taste told me it was not as bitter As some of my beers, so I am interested to see what conditioning does to it.

The next beer is getting kveik… summer is here and I have no fermentation temperature control.

Screw it… I had a really nice local heffeweissen last night and have now changed my mind. I think my summer beer will be wheat!

Before I try and create one, does anyone have a trusted recipe for a Bavarian-style weissen?

I stuck a Leffe-esque saison type thing in the brew bucket at the weekend; Pale LME, Nelson Sauvin hops, some toasted, crushed, coriander seeds, saison yeast. Have done it a couple of times before, normally a pretty reliable summer tipple.

(First time treating water with a campden tablet too, so interested to see what a difference that makes)

I had a brew day on Saturday with a brewstore American amber ale grain kit. Third brew and first attempt using bottled water so I’m hoping it will come out better than the first two. I’ve refined my process for sparging and used my mash spoon in the drill to aerate, which worked nicely. And I’ve found a better place for the fermenter where it’s dark and the temp is more stable. So I’m more confident about this one 🤞

Style: Weissbier
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
————————–
Boil Size: 28.00 l
Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.051 SG
Estimated Color: 2.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 11.5 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 83.2 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
————
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
0.25 kg Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjun 1 4.8 %
3.00 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 57.1
2.00 kg Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 3 38.1
30.00 g Saaz [3.75 %] – Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 11.5
1.0 pkg Bavarian Wheat (Mangrove Jack Yeast 5 –

Mash Schedule: Grainfather
Total Grain Weight: 5.25 kg
—————————-
Name Description Step Temperatur Step Time
Saccharification Add 17.68 l of water and heat to 67 67.0 C 60 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.0 C over 4 min 75.0 C 10 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 14.58 l water at 75.6 C

Legend!! Thanks @yourguitarhero

Actually, I think I have both Saaz hops and that yeast in the fridge…

Right… I’m joining in!

I’ve done a kit Brew this morning. A beer works American pale ale. It’s only my third go at home brew, the last one went quit, quite wrong!

anyway my question. I’d like to bottle it as being a bit of a heathen I like a colder beer. Now the instructions say to pop a bit of sugar in each bottle, fill with beer and store to condition.

is there any reason I can’t siphon to another bucket add sugar in bulk (as if it was going in a keg) but then bottle from the second bucket?

obviously it adds a level of cleaning/disinfecting but am I missing something fundamental?

Welcome!

is there any reason I can’t siphon to another bucket add sugar in bulk (as if it was going in a keg) but then bottle from the second bucket?

None at all, it’s called batch priming, it’s what I do. Get another fermentation bucket with a tap and a bottling wand. Boil about half a pint of water and dissolve the appropriate amount of sugar in it (there’s tonnes of priming sugar calculators online, basically more sugar means more fizz). Put that in the bucket, syphon the beer into the bucket, bottle it through the tap/wand.

Oh, and buy another tap for your existing bucket, much easier than pissing about with syphons.

And/or, give me a ring 🙂

anyway my question. I’d like to bottle it as being a bit of a heathen I like a colder beer. Now the instructions say to pop a bit of sugar in each bottle, fill with beer and store to condition.

is there any reason I can’t siphon to another bucket add sugar in bulk (as if it was going in a keg) but then bottle from the second bucket?

You’ve described batch priming – it’s what I do as it guarantees the same amount of sugar in each bottle. My method is as follows:

Three days before bottling (and after at least two weeks in primary) I syphon the beer into a thoroughly cleaned and sanitised pressure barrel. One day before bottling, I make up a sugar syrup (amount depending on how much carbonation you want), boil, cool in a sanitised jar, and transfer gently to the keg. Give it a very gentle stir with a clean spoon.

On bottling day you should hear some gas escape when you undo the barrel cap, indicating that the sugar is starting to do its job. I then use a bottling wand attached to the barrel tap.

is there any reason I can’t siphon to another bucket add sugar in bulk (as if it was going in a keg) but then bottle from the second bucket?

obviously it adds a level of cleaning/disinfecting but am I missing something fundamental?

You can do that. However, you are potentially exposing the beer to a chance of an infection, not that much, as beer is pretty robust, not as likely to get infected as some make out. It’s all about selling more cleaning chemicals.

You will be exposing the beer to more oxygen which is not a good thing at that stage of fermentation.

TBH adding sugar to the bottles is really easy and probably quicker than transferring to another bucket and the extra cleaning required.

A fair point made by both sides. I batch prime when I bottle and it seems to work ok for me now that I have a routine for it. The risk of oxidation is there, but I try to mitigate that as much as I can, same with infection by being super careful.

I see the main advantage of batch priming as being able to get a more consistent load on the priming sugar, so a more consistent carbonation with just normal table sugar.

Just be really careful on sanitising.

Heffeweissen done. Well sort of and I could really do with some advice from the more experienced brewers…

This was a small batch (10L to the fermenter) with only 2.1kg of grist (1.1kg of wheat malt, the rest pilsner) , aiming for a pre-boil gravity of about 1.032 and an OG of about 1.045.

Things were going well during the full volume mash, I had 17L in the kettle and it seemed to be working, with gravities looking like they were about right. Pre-boil, same thing, gravity a point below, volume on plan.

The problem came after the boil it seems… OG low by 10 points. The batch volume was higher than I expected, maybe be a litre (11L to the fermenter) but would that be the cause of the gravity being so low?

As it stands, the beer may get to 3.5% if it attenuates all the way, so still drinkable and good for summer, but it is disappointing to have it not turn out on plan. What went wrong?

How do you measure gravity?
Hydrometers and refractometers are designed around a temp of 20c, so measuring mash temp or boiling wort throws them off. Also, where did you take your wort sample from? Best is to take it from the chilled wort once the fermenter is full (being aware of contamination risk).

Generally, your beer will be about where you want it to be SG-wise, as long as you know your kit/process and grain is from a decent supplier (i.e. you didn’t try malting it yourself). Differences should only be a few percent from what you calculate.
My readings are often all over the shop, but it’s linked to mixing in the beer machine/temp/crappy instruments (in comparison to the Anton Parr stuff they use commercially).

The pre-boil gravity was taken and used a temperature correction to get the “right” value, the same with the OG. I took that sample from the remains of the wort from the various hoses to the pump. The temperature on that was around 23C.

The grain was _not_ malted myself! I’m ok having brewing kit and some bags of malt lying around, but I think that it would be going too far to have the spare room doing malting. Although I do have a shed at the house…

I have just been told that things have kicked off in the fermenter. Got to love Mangrove Jacks M20.

11L of summer weissen in bottles! Looking at the above, it seems that fermentation was done within a week, so I will have to see what it turns out like. Maybe it could have stayed in the fermenter until next week down in the basement where it was cool, but I was keen to get it conditioning so that it is ready for summer leave.

It appears to have attenuated down to plan (1.012), but does taste pretty weak, so I think the OG was right. It’s a folk öl, about 3% according to the calculator. That’s not a bad thing though and it should be a decent summer beer.

I also got to taste a two week old Nordic SMASH with the Korsta hops that I got sent. Even in a week since the first tasting it has changed. There’s a lot more depth to it now and it is certainly more carbonated. It’s still quite “beery”, but there’s something quite nice about it.

Well…. I batch primed my brew and bottled it yesterday. Should be ready in 3 weeks.
fingers crossed it turns out ok!