Home Brew Questions

[ExtraRefined]

Just planning my next extract brew...

what say ye?

I might up the bittering hops to get to 35-40 IBU

I'd be inclined to move the hop additions to 60/15/5 minutes, and change the boil hop to just Target. You'll drive off all the aroma components of the boil hop anyway, so might as well stick to a high alpha hybrid.

 

[badseed]

Ok enthusiasts, I am excited about this one.
My heffe has finished primary fermentation (10 days ay 16 degrees). Well and truly finished.
So I added 1kg of mixed frozen berries.

Frozen berries are perfect for this as the water has aleady expanded and burst the cell walls turning the berries to mush.
I put them in a sanitised pan with a 1l of just boiled water. I let the water cool for 5 minutes before pouring in.
I wasn't worried about sanitation but I was concerned about wild yeasts on the skins. I squashed the shit out of them with a potato masher and left it for 20 minutes.

I stirred the beer slowly to get it moving but not splashing then carefully poured in the berry slop.
Second fermentation kicked off straight away, plenty of yeast still around.

I will check the gravity on Saturday/Sunday then maybe crash chill to stop the yeast. When I have made fruit beer before I left it too long and the yeast/co2 took out the fruit flavour.

Milkshake krausen.

 

[Addy]

Looks good, is it your own recipe?

Yeah, I was just tinkering around as I have a lot of tins of cheap malt waiting to be used up.

 

[friedaweed]

Yeah, I was just tinkering around as I have a lot of tins of cheap malt waiting to be used up.

I finally got round to my cheap tins of malt wit brew. It's still bubbling like a fecker on day 4. It's a bit of a concoction that we're all going to get troll eyed on at NYE so if it's nice it's nice if not we wont care

Ingredients
Brupacks Belgian Wit-bier kit (Half price)
(Kit includes. Tin of shizzled malt, Saaz hop pellets, infusion bag containing curaco orange peel, oats and coriander, bruferm Blanche yeast.)
2 tins of coopers wheat malt. (£4 a tin on sale from my HBS)
6 kaffir lime leaves
20 gs dried lemon peel
10 gs crackedd coriander
10 gs cracked Juniper berries
20 gs of malted oats
40 gs of EK Goldgings hops.
200 gs ruby red Belgian candy sugar
1 bag of ice.
A spliff.
1 bottle of westemalle triple


Method
Spark up spliff, pour beer.
Heat up 7 ltrs of water in Burco boiler stolen from undisclosed location. (I've been dieing to use this)

Add both tins of coopers wheat malt bring to the boil.
20 gs of goldings hops in hop bag.
Allow to boil gently for 45 minutes. ( Like fuck it did. I was turning that dial up and down trying to find a steady boil for fucking ages )

Put mop away.
Add hop bag containing the peel, coriander, oats, lime leaves, saaz hop pellets and 20 gs of goldings)
Add brupacks tin of malt.
Add candy sugar
Boil for 15 mins.
Drain hop bags
Empty wort into FV add ice.
Make up wort to 20ltrs with tap water
OG 1058

Pitched Blanche yeast at 20c.

Still bubblin

 

[badseed]

It's a bit of a concoction that we're all going to get troll eyed on at NYE

With all those fermentables it will certainly help with your cause

20 gs dried lemon peel

Should that have been Orange peel?

 

[friedaweed]

With all those fermentables it will certainly help with your cause



Should that have been Orange peel?

No it should have said orange and lemon peel there was about 10/15 gs of orange in the kit so i went for some off the shelf mixed peel as well.

I'm even tempted by a second 'fruit' ferment but that may be over doing it

 

[badseed]

Mine is down to 1060 now, smelling fantastic. Will see where it is on Saturday, if it hasn't changed much it's going down to 4 degrees and then getting kegged. As long as it's refrdgerated after that it should keep all the fruit flavour.
If it's dropped to like 1040 I will give it a bit longer.

 

[friedaweed]

Mine is down to 1060 now, smelling fantastic. Will see where it is on Saturday, if it hasn't changed much it's going down to 4 degrees and then getting kegged. As long as it's refrdgerated after that it should keep all the fruit flavour.
If it's dropped to like 1040 I will give it a bit longer.

That's going to be some yummy brew when you bottle it

 

[Frances Lengel]

Well, a few weeks ago in a thread in, I think, the DF, Mrs Quoad said if he was still an alkie he'd consider homebrew - Anyway, I poo-pooed the idea, citing the initial cost of the equipment & such as drawbacks. But at the time I did have a few dollars spare & it got me thinking, and the upshot of those thoughts was why the fuck not? So, the upshot was I got two fermenting bins & four barrels & I've now got a barrel of woodford wherry, a barrel of better brew IPA, a barrel of better brew mild and one of better brew yorks bitter. And I've constructed a makeshift bar on my balcony - Well, I say a bar, it's a wardrobe door on it's side, balanced on some old speakers.

Anyway, the wherry & IPA got kegged up on 13/11 & I was going to save them til crimbo, but I was that gutted about not being able to afford to come to the mcr meet that I thought fuck it, I'm cracking the wherry tonight - It's got a bit of a chill haze on it, but it keeps it's head nicely and it tastes pretty fuckin good, no yeastieness (gotta say though, I beefed it up a bit with half a kilo of hopped light spraymalt), I've made beer though - Satisfying on a level that can only be described as primal.

The mild and the bitter are still in the warm room doing their second ferment, but I can see the wherry and the IPA getting tanned long before crimbo. I wish I had a camera to show off the balcony bar, looks fit with all my washing hanging off it.

 

[Addy]

Today I bottled up the peach wine and kegged the elderflower pale ale (+ 4 bottles)

I must say that the Muntons Gold yeast done a great job.
2 weeks from start and it got to 1010 and was perfectly clear when I put it in the corny today.
Flavours are comming through a treat from the elderflower and munich malt.
The sediment was so thick I only left an eggcup full of beer behind and no cloudyness at all.

....if only my xmas pudding wine would clear...

 

[existentialist]

Allow to boil gently for 45 minutes. ( Like fuck it did. I was turning that dial up and down trying to find a steady boil for fucking ages )

I can't pretend to actually have done this yet, but (theoretically) the best way to get your Burco doing a nice sensible boil is to replace the stone-age thermostat with a PID controller and solid state relay.

I've stripped the 'stat out of mine, but never quite got around to setting up the PID/SS relay thing. If anyone's interested, then maybe that'll motivate me to extract some digit and get on with it. I might also finally finish building my counterflow cooler, too, then!

The idea of the PID controller is that it's a clever bit of microprocessor-based kit that "learns" the feedback behaviour of the heater and setup, and rather than just crudely switching on/off as the boiler gets to temperature, etc., modulates the heater, so that as it approaches the setpoint, it backs off on the heating. This gives you much less of the frantic boil/nothing happening behaviour you get with the stone age gear. Anyone with a reasonable amount of electrical ability (or just the ability to follow a diagram) should be able to do this without zapping themselves.

 

[existentialist]

I bottled a chilli beer I'd left on trub for WAY too long today. So long, in fact, that it had picked up a slight mould infection on the top surface, oops. But there wasn't much yeast in the bottom, and it doesn't seem to have autolysed, so my brew isn't tainted, albeit probably not at its best. But the chillis cover up the worst of that! So I have 16 litres of session beer to slurp through the season, plus the naughty 8% xmas beer!

 

[Addy]

I bottled a chilli beer I'd left on trub for WAY too long today. So long, in fact, that it had picked up a slight mould infection on the top surface, oops. But there wasn't much yeast in the bottom, and it doesn't seem to have autolysed, so my brew isn't tainted, albeit probably not at its best. But the chillis cover up the worst of that! So I have 16 litres of session beer to slurp through the season, plus the naughty 8% xmas beer!

A Lambic chilli beer .... could be interesting if its not a lactobacterial infection which will just make it taste 'stale'

 

[friedaweed]

I can't pretend to actually have done this yet, but (theoretically) the best way to get your Burco doing a nice sensible boil is to replace the stone-age thermostat with a PID controller and solid state relay.

snip.

Ta for that. The guy at my HBS said there was a way to do this. If you get round to it post it up here mucker.

 

[Dovydaitis]

so, as I appear to be running out of space for the bottled brew for my summer camping trip, I nipped to the local home brew shop and picked up some box bags (they wanted nearly a fiver just for the box!!! am off to the local supermarket/post office for boxes) Anyway, slight issue with how do you actually fill the bags? any advice welcome

 

[Addy]

A cheap STC1000 temp controller like I use for my brew cupboard would work fine unless you want 0.1Deg specific temps.

You just wire the boiler in to the STC and drop the probe in the boil and it switches on/off the boiler to keep a programmed temp range.

 

[Dovydaitis]

so, as I appear to be running out of space for the bottled brew for my summer camping trip, I nipped to the local home brew shop and picked up some box bags (they wanted nearly a fiver just for the box!!! am off to the local supermarket/post office for boxes) Anyway, slight issue with how do you actually fill the bags? any advice welcome

don't worry, I'm a plum! just sussed it

 

[Dovydaitis]

am taking some of my stash to a house party on Thursday. Is it wrong that this makes me sad?

 

[friedaweed]

am taking some of my stash to a house party on Thursday. Is it wrong that this makes me sad?

Absolutely not. I'm taking two crates of beer up to Scotland with me on Friday to sup with some walking pals and I'm sad to see them go. Least this way I know I'll get the bottles back.

Finally got round to putting a wherry on tonight

 

[Dovydaitis]

just bagged my mixed berry cider, had the obligatory shot glass full (quality and all that) and was very impressed. A nice tang as it has brewed out at 6.9% so will go down well I think on Thursday

 

[existentialist]

Absolutely not. I'm taking two crates of beer up to Scotland with me on Friday to sup with some walking pals and I'm sad to see them go. Least this way I know I'll get the bottles back.

Finally got round to putting a wherry on tonight

Yeah, it's losing the bottles that cuts me up! I quite like sharing the beer around - I know I'm never going to drink it all!

I got a commission the other week, though - landlord of a local pub wants 6 bottles to give away to friends as Christmas presents! I've asked him to start collecting his Magners bottles for me in return...

 

[friedaweed]

Yeah, it's losing the bottles that cuts me up! I quite like sharing the beer around - I know I'm never going to drink it all!

I got a commission the other week, though - landlord of a local pub wants 6 bottles to give away to friends as Christmas presents! I've asked him to start collecting his Magners bottles for me in return...

I have free dibs on my footy clubs bottle bin (They chuck them all) plus me old mucker works at the Guinness bottling plant but yeah like yourself I'm more precious about the glass than the beer

 

[existentialist]

I do bottle a lot of mine into 1l and 2l PET bottles, though. Less labour intensive, and handy for parties. Not quite so classy as gifts, though.

 

[Addy]

I don't bottle much these days but when I do its only 76 steps from my front door to the nearest pub to ask for a few magners bottles.
My mate also gave me a box of 1000 caps, so no costs there either

 

[Addy]

Hmmm what recipe to brew first....

Got a couple of wines still going strong. Apple & rasberry and a peach & grape

A keg of Woodfordes Sundew in the beer fridge and another keg of elderflower APA in the shed conditioning.

 

[Dovydaitis]

well tonight is the night my lovingly crafted beers make their premiere.... am feeling nervous!

 

[badseed]

I kegged and gassed my berry heffe weissen last night. A few berries jammed up the tap so I had to siphon the beer into the keg instead of using my usual pipe attachment thing.
Tasted ok from the fermenter, much as I expected. It had the cloudy heffe appearance but was a pale pink colour.

I might try a pint tonight, just to get rid of any sediment which may have settled in the bottom of the keg.
The rest is supposed to be left until christmas, but you know how it is.

 

[friedaweed]

Just Kegged the Wherry. 1014 in 4 days Sat at that with no bubbles for 24 hours and I'm off to scotland with 24 bottles of muntons stout and a dozen diablo so it's kegamundo for the wherry

That's me new years eve ale sorted.

Bottling the wit and the triple on monday

 

[Dovydaitis]

went down well last night. The apple cider which was my first ever was not great but the mixed berry cider and mexican lager flew out!

 

[badseed]

Shit just got real