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).