Homebrewists of STW, brewing ‘owt at the moment?

No ascot if acid to hand, so I went with the Max fill on the bottles. We shall see what happens in a couple of weeks…

I did try a sample when I was taking hydrometer readings, a bit more bitter than I wanted, maybe more utilisation from the hops in the dry hop, but still good. The smell is awesome! FG finished one point high giving about 76% attenuation. That makes me think I could have left it another few days.

I did a bit of an experimental brew yesterday:

250g Crystal 180, steeped for most of the afternoon

20g Target
20g Challenger
750g LME
Boil for 50mins

10g EKG
200g cocoa
454g Treacle (small tin)
Boil for 10mins

1.5kg DME

Into fermenter, about 19.5l, OG 1.054

Safale S04 yeast (had already made a starter)

Bubbling away nicely this morning, let’s see…

Did you use cocoa powder? only ever used nibs before so am interested to hear how it turns out.

I had an experiment yesterday too – an IPA in the style of Verdant’s Only Sharks Need Water, just with British hops instead. I’ve not made this style, used this yeast or the hops so we’ll see what happens!

Malt was Pale, Wheat, Oats and Dextrin, tiny amount of Magnum in the boil, boat-load of Olicana & Jester in a whirlpool. Lallemand Verdant yeast (obvs) and then even more Olicana & Jester a couple of days before bottling.

At bottling it’ll have had 22.2g of hops per litre, reckon that’s probably enough for now.

Oh an update on the root beer – bottled it a few weeks ago and while it tasted alright, it looked like mud. So I’m leaving it in the fridge to see if it settles out.

Another 100L+ pressed on Saturday:

4x 30L bins pretty much brimmed. 2 bins I add campdens then yeast a day later, the other 2 I just leave to the traditional method and let nature take it’s course…

So that’s around 160-170 litres in the garage for my 2020 Cider season!

Uk chinook and uk cascade are very good imo. Then Ernest and olicana are probably the best of the rest
First gold can be ok
Magnum, german good bitterness hop
22gm ltr is not really commercialy viable as it hike the hop cost way up
Will be intersting though

Lallmand Verdant is good stuff, I think I will make that my go-to NEIPA yeast from now on.

Speaking of which… My normal schedule for a new beer is to leave it for a week, then have one as a sample, make notes, then leave for another week, repeat the smapling and put the beer into general circulation (bribes, favours, etc). I sneaked a sample of the NEIPA after three days to find it had carbonated well enough and had an amazing peach/apricot nose and smooth, subtly bitter taste. The colour was a foggy, darker orange/copper (Cara Munich 2 there), so maybe a little darker than the distinct orange I was going for.

BUT… It’s a really lovely beer, possibly the best I have made so far and a recipe I will be doing again next summer. I’m also likely to be keeping most of the bottles and using the two pale ales for bribes from now on.

Did you use cocoa powder? only ever used nibs before so am interested to hear how it turns out.

Yep, cocoa powder. The yeast clearly like a treacley chocolatey brew, cos it was bubbling through the airlock within a couple of hours, and by the next day was steadily going at 2-3 ‘pops’ a second. Will probably take a reading tonight, see what it’s doing.

IHN
Dont let SO4 get too warm
I notice it starts to produce off flavours above 24c, when i say off i mean less than disirable or needing a vextra week in a ct to clean up
Although witj a darker heavy some banana notes might add an edgr to the nose, think Theaksyons old peculiar

Noted, ta. It’s set at 19.5c to 20.5c in the brew fridge, so hopefully will be fine.

Tested and tried it this evening, down to 1.020 after 48 hours. Nice treacle note to the taste, but there’s a real bitterness coming from the cocoa. Hopefully that’ll lessen as it settles out.

Just bottled the elderberry wine I’ve had going for a … while. FG had it at 0,997 which put it at a 13,4% ABV end result. It certainly smells it, but the taste is something that may need time to mellow! The bottles are currently getting labelled and will be going to the basement to start their ageing.

I last made elderberry wine with my mum way back when I was in my mid-teens, from what I remember it was always pretty dry and a bit harsh when young.
Elderflower was always pretty great, as was primrose. Blackberry was easily our favourite though. On the other hand, the orange wine we made was pretty rank.

I think my next attempt at wine is going to be using actual grapes and those will come from a friend next year. They have a lot from the vine that grows around their garage.

I’m also thinking about making a small batch of cider using must from IKEA. Only 5l or so, just to see what it turns out like. I have four different beers in stock, so can’t really justify another batch of that (although with winter approaching, I’m tempted to try a lager)

^funnily enough,the best wine I’ve made was from grapes. You do need an absolute shedload of them though.

Well, my chocolatey treacley thing is down to 1.012, so 5.7%ish, will probably go a bit more yet I reckon.

Lovely treacley taste, a bit like treacle toffee, which is great, however that’s followed by cheek-sucking bitterness… I think a lot of the cocoa powder is still in suspension, which isn’t helping.

Anyway, I think I might add some lactose when I bottle, sweeten it up a bit. I may have to try and add something to help clear it to, anyone know if finings etc works on cocoa solids?

Adjunct might. Ad it now, do a 250ml glass sample add 1ml, wsit an hour to see. Works bedt on a dropping temp and the convection current moves it around

Did my AWRS application last night. 45 days away from going pro

Adjunct might. Ad it now, do a 250ml glass sample add 1ml, wsit an hour to see. Works bedt on a dropping temp and the convection current moves it around

Cool, I’ll have to buy some but that’s no issue. Assuming the test works, would adding it at the same time as cold-crashing be a good idea?

Yes, thats the go to method for the pros but cam be added to a ct or a cask pre fill

yourguitarhero
Free Member
Did my AWRS application last night. 45 days away from going pro

Oooh! Nice work @yourguitarhero!

Dry-hopped the NEIPA last night, Olicana and Jester totalling 15g/l. Didn’t look the trademark bright orange but then it’s in a S/S bucket so there wasn’t much light around.
Not worried about the colour though, just as long as it tastes good!

Kegging on Saturday, keeping the dry-hop under 72hrs on this one.

My chocotreacle thing has been cold crashing with BeerBrite since Tuesday, will probably bottle it on Sunday, maybe with the addition of some lactose to sweeten it a bit. It’s ended up about 5.8%, which is a bit pokier than I anticipated…

Currently a Belgium Tripel fermenting with (overpitched) M31. Projected at 9.6%.

First time using this yeast; I’m ramping up the temp by 1 degree every 2 days.

I’m brand new to Homebrew and bottling my first all grain batch this Saturday and brewing my second. Still working to see if I can get consistency of result so brewing the same recipe a few times to see if I can get consistent results before messing with the recipe and trying other things. Only done one stove top kit brew before which turned out pretty well considering the instructions that came with the kit were pretty non existent so was googling temperatures and times on the fly, so seemed I was lucky….or the kit is designed to be pretty fool proof. We’ll see in a couple of weeks once my first all grain batch has conditioned.

I’ve not brewed beer for years and the standard seemed to be 5 gallons.

I don’t drink that kind of quantity anymore.

What’s the smallest brew you can do these days?

I did a 5L batch of sour a few months ago. All it needed as a pot big enough to hold about 7L of water and a brew bag. That gave me about 4L of sour beer in bottles from memory. It’s not really worth it, but it was experimental, so needed to be a small batch. It also was nice, so I spent a while wishing I had made more!

The majority of my beer gets brewed in 10/11L batches now and those get swapped, given away or drunk whilst others are fermenting. I have four different types down in the basement storage right now and am planning on getting a Czech Amber Ale ready for brewing next week.

Much like Willard, I started on 5l batched but have now moved to 10l – seems to be the sweet spot for me of having just enough to drink/give away before the next brew is ready.

Well, ‘Tis about a fermentation and bottle condition away from the season to be jolly, so I got a Christmas beer in the bucket tonight.

Loosely based on a David Heath Christmas Bok (because I had bought a kilo of Munich malt and had the right yeast), but with some changes to the other two speciality malts (CaraMunich 2 and Dark Crystal instead of CaraFoam and Carafa Special 3), it still looked right when I transferred it and the spices (Star Anis, nutmeg and Cinnamon) are noticeable now.

One thing I did notice was being a long way away from gravity numbers agpfter the mash, something like 10 points low. I added some molasses in at the boil and managed to reach the right OG despite getting about a litre more in the bucket.

Anyway, Bohemian Lager Yeast is in, it’s down in the cold storage and I will check on it tomorrow to see if it is cooking. Hopefully it will be cool enough down there.

This does mean my plan for a light, refreshing hoppy lager will get put back until next week.

Just bottled another batch of barley wine, in sizes from 150ml to 1 litre!
And mashing in on a weiss beer this morning.

Anyone fancy doing a Christmas bottle exchange?

Would love to, but posting to and from Sweden might be a challenge!

My chocotreacle thing got bottled at the weekend, the BeerBrite cleared it quite a lot, hopefully the rest will clear on the bottle. Huge amounts of chocolate-mousse-like trub at the bottom.

Added 500g of lactose has sweetened it up, and initial taste is, well, okay. Hopefully with a bit of conditioning it’ll come good.

I reckon you have 52ebu of alpha in there, as its so green it wont taste great. Probably abit twiggy or claggy with a twang.
Warm condition 1 bottle for a week at as close to 30c as you csn hold it
Then outside for a day or 2
This will fizz it up a treat and soften then alpha greenness
Think target has a stiff co humalone ratio so will be more pronounced than say a noble hop

Have googled to no real effect: my mate brews (bit I have a vested interest as he always passes me a few bottles), uses an old fridge with an ST 1000 controller to cool the wort. He loves over complicating things and wants to cool it slower – anyone know of a controller that’ll allow that to be programmed in? I did suggest leaving the door open a crack etc but repeatability..

not cheaply
omega controllers are rampable but are over £100 and tricky to program
when you say wort , i hope / think you mean beer post fermenation???
1’F an hour is the rule of thumb , but your man could knock off 2 degress at say 0700 and 2 degress at say 1900 to kinda get the same result

Yep wort was a stab in the dark! Can’t remember the terminology. How do brewers usually achieve it? He’s just using a Freecycled fridge.

Yeah, that’s about it really. Stc-1000 or the Inkbird plugs are the ones most people seem to use and, for fridges, anything that is big enough to hold your fermenter and airlock.

I do not have a fridge yet, but my plan is to get one when we move or, if our lease is extended, by summer next year. Pretty much all of the hints for better beer start with getting fermentation temperature controlled. No, being clean and sanitary. Ok, temperature is second. After good quality ingredients and cleaning.

By the way, I saw this on another forum and, despite being started already, may be of interest:

https://www.edx.org/course/beer-the-science-of-brewing?source=aw&awc=6798_1605340533_df81a0b37801b1b16c92331d40c8db5c&utm_source=aw&utm_medium=affiliate_partner&utm_content=text-link&utm_term=78888_Skimlinks

Leuven uni have a good brewing school, there’s quite a lot of big breweries in that area.
I once played a gig in a hippy squat above a garage in Leuven.

As for more advanced fermentation control than manually changing the temp on the STC1000, your pal could look at https://www.brewpi.com/

Brewed at the weekend: 100% Dingeman’s malt, EKG and Mangrove Jack’s French saison yeast. Incredibly simple. It’s now sitting in a waterbath at 30 deg C.

That should hurry things along a little! Should give it some nice esters too.

I checked on my Christmas Bock last night and it is still happily fermenting, so I have decided to let it sit for another week before I get it into bottles. It is not going to stop me brewing on Wednesday though.