Continue reading »]]> Since upgrading the kit to a 100L kettle for larger brews the old hop stopper became clogged on a few brews and took a very long time to let the wort drain. I have replaced it with 1.5M of stainless steel pipe braide.

The braide is secured to a T which has a small piece of pipe angled to the base of the kettle.

While the gaps in the braide are not as small as the previous filter the run off seems to be nice and clear after a bit of recirculation as the hops provide the natural filter bed.

Continue reading »]]> Thought I’d try a single hop black IPA. I have recently changed my kit to do 50L brews and had some issues with my hop filter becoming clogged with the extra hops and break. I have now changed the filter for just over a metre of stainless steel pipe covering. It seems to work a treat.

For some reason my target volume has been a bit under so I have been slightly more liberal with my mash volume and as such collected a lot more than anticipated. I went for 50L and got 57L into the fermenter. The new hop filter has allowed me to get more out. Next brew hoping to get the numbers better.

I cold steeped the Carafa for a couple of hours and added to the second batch sparge.

I was expecting 50L at 1.055 and got 57L at 1.052/1.054, depends on how you read the blurry photo, the refractometer said 12.2 brix.

The yeast I used was Wyeast 1318 London Ale yeast. Absolutely awesome. I have now saved some for another brew.

The Citra hops are amazing. I recently had Blueball’s Tropical IPA and it inspired me to go for a Citra beer myself. The overall taste was not hoppy enough so I have added 100g to the secondary ferment for a week. Let’s hope it perks up a bit. If not I will just rename this Citra Noir!

Fairly photo heavy now.

Blurry cam grain

Some hops

Steeping Carafa

Mash runnings

The boil

Cooling

Gunk

Wort for measuring

Not so dark when in a thin vessle

1.052 or 1.054?

Ferment under way

Looking good

Going full tilt

OMG it's alive!

Can't have too many hops

Beer before the secondary - tasted lovely

Continue reading »]]> A week after the AG22 Summer Lightning clone I made the next brew. I had skimmed some of the Summer Lightning yeast off and stepped up a bit. I was aiming for a slightly darker beer and also the chance to use up some ingredients before they went off. This is more of an experimental brew and from the small sample I have had it tasted quite good.

I was brewing for a 50L batch with a desired gravity of 1.049 and final of 1.012.

Hop schedule as follows for a 60 minute boil, protofloc at 10 mins.

Given that I had some issues with my hop filter falling off on the previous brew I modified the connector and attached properly this time. The filter was too small for the amount of hops that I was using so a new one was required.

The photos:

The mash

The rig

Hops in

Boiling away

Hydrometer shot

Break

I ended up with 1.052 and after fermenting 1.010 giving me an ABV of 5.6%.

Continue reading »]]> Followed Mr Wheeler’s Summer Lightning recipe for this brew and doubled the 25L one for a 50L output. Used new equipment for this so didn’t expect everything to go to plan. Didn’t help that my friend @tek_junky was over to help and we drank all through the session…

On the recipe I swapped the Goldings for Bobek and that was the only change. Yeast was reclaimed Summer Lightning yeast from three bottles.

I had major issues with the hop filter as it fell off and the break material got into the FV. All said and done the gravity was 1.050 for 47L (ish). Rousing the the SL yeast is quite tough and it appeared to finish fermenting at around 1.018, a few points higher than hoped for giving a final ABV of around 4.4%.

The photos:

Brew kettle

Final runnings from mash tun

About to cool the brew

Colour looks about right

Too much crud from kettle

Yeast is defo forming!

Result!

End of first ferment

75 bottles

Continue reading »]]> The recipe changed a bit at the last minute due to not enough hops and no point in having a few grams of wheat left over etc.

Pale Malt – 1800g
Torrefied Wheat – 100g
Wheat Malt – 3010g
Munich Malt – 475g
Cara Aroma Malt – 300g
Jaggery – 250g

Fuggle – 24g at 60 mins
Hallertauer Hersbrucker – 18g at 60 mins
Styrian Goldings – 5g at 15 mins

Orange zest – 26g at 15 mins
Lemon zest – 6g at 15 mins
Crushed corriander seeds – 40g at 15 mins
Plain flour – 5g at 15 mins

Protafloc at 10 mins

Munich dry yeast

Some photos:

Some ingredients:

Bits and bobs:

The mash:

From the mash tun:

New chiller – a bargain 20m of 8mm copper in B&Q for a tenner:

From the boiler:

6L short of target, all the crap and break bunged up my mesh filter, glad it stayed in there and not in the fermenter:

Beer Engine reckoned 1.058 without the Jaggery, I ended up with 1.059. If the filter hadn’t have bunged up I think I would have been bang on my 23L length. The wort tasted devine, it smelled amazing and again I could have drunk it as it was without the ferment.

Today the yeast had kicked in and was going nicely.

I really can’t wait for this to be ready…

Continue reading »]]> As it is not very summery at the moment I thought I’d inject a bit of summer into a beer. Having decided to do a light summer ale I was persuaded to do a honey ale. Rather than just a honey ale I decided to make a mash up and ferment out, split and add honey to the secondary ferment of one half. Really not sure how it will turn out but that is what experimenting is about.

The mash was over 60 minutes and recirculated for 45 minutes in a 2 batch sparge.

The fermentables:

The hops:

The golden syrup and a spoon of protofloc were added at 10 minutes to go. The wort was recirculated and cooled for 45 minutes and left to settle for an hour.

The target gravity was 1.056 for 23L which I hit but due to using my older backup boiler (main sprung a leak) the tap was slightly higher and around 2L of wort was left in the boiler. Shame.

From doing the calculations:

Mash volume = 30.6L
Mash gravity = 1.050
Efficiency = 90.9%

Boiled volume = 21L
OG = 1.056
Efficiency = 76%

The photos:

The final gravity is expected to be 1.012 making this 5.7%ABV. Let’s see if the S04 yeast does the job.

Continue reading »]]> I brewed this last week but only just got round to sharing it…

The initial recipe was to be PDTNC’s Nelso Brucker but due to a few different ingredients I’ve given it the name of Admiral on Deck on account of the Nelson Sauvin hops.

I did a 60 minutes mash with about 20 minutes of recirculation with the solar pump. 2nd batch sparge for 30 minutes with a 15 minutes recirculation, followed by a 60 minutes boil.

Managed to get a higher efficiency than I was expecting on the mash, I did use too much water on my sparge so the final output was 27L of wort, not 23. The gravity was on target of 1.045 so had it been 4L less I’d have a stronger beer…

The US-05 yeast has done a good job and it is now tucked up in the secondary fermenter with a current gravity of 1.012.

Continue reading »]]> I had intended AG11 and AG12 to be a double brew day but this was unable to happen. As it was I transferred AG11 to the secondary fermenter and then started with AG12.

I used exactly the same recipe but this time I was meticulous with the amount of water used, previously I had done it but eye on a rough scale and had got 24L, this time I got 25L. Time to adjust my settings…

Sadly no photos on this brew, didn’t have time.

The grain bill:

Pale malt – 4800g
Crystal malt – 250g
Cara-pils – 200g
Chocolate malt – 150g
Torrified wheat – 85g

Fuggles – 50g 60 mins
Bobek – 40g 15 mins
Bobek – 25g -5 mins 90C

OG = 1.054, was expecting 1.052 but hoping for a 1.057 like the last batch.

I used the yeast slurry from AG11 which was a mix of Nottingham and S-04.

I did a 60 minutes mash with 30-40 minutes of recirculation with the solar pump. 2nd batch sparge for 30 minutes with a 25 minutes recirculation, followed by a 60 minutes boil. Rather than use my ice bath I opted for the hose pipe feed (no ice this time).

Continue reading »]]> Some time ago I made a clone of the Hobgoblin ale based on Orfy’s recipe. I did make some slight changes but unfortunately I had a hard disk crash and lost my altered recipe. That ale got named Viking Clawfinger and was a success among friends and family. I have produced a new version of it but this time stuck to Orfy’s recipe but with the addition of Torrified Wheat. Kept the VC name as I like it.

The brew went well but the fermentation has had some problems getting started, I am putting this down to a dodgy batch of Nottingham yeast.

Pale malt – 4800g
Crystal malt – 250g
Cara-pils – 200g
Chocolate malt – 150g
Torrified wheat – 85g

Fuggles – 50g 60 mins
Bobek – 40g 15 mins
Bobek – 25g -5 mins 90C

OG = 1.057, was expecting 1.052

I did a 60 minutes mash with 30-40 minutes of recirculation with the solar pump. 2nd batch sparge for 30 minutes with a 25 minutes recirculation, followed by a 60 minutes boil. Cooling with a new bit of kit, an ice bath with water butt pump into the IC. Unfortunately the ice melted faster than I had thought it would and I replaced water bath with hose pipe feed. So much for being more green…







The Nottingham yeast that I had problems with, 30 hours with no activity, batch number 1080961099V expiry 12/2011. This batch number tallies with a few other brewers’ failed ferments… I added a packet of S-04 and it has started to froth up. Fingers crossed.

Finally some yeast action, not sure if this is the Nottingham or S-04 or a combination…

Update:

The brew shed smells lovely, lots of beery yeasty smells. I was greeted by the following. I think that the Nottingham took a while to kick in and then went berserk!

Update 21/09/2010:
Gravity is at 1.014 so with a temperature of 21.7C the corrected gravity is 1.015. Expected is 1.014 so a few more days and this will be transferred into FV2.