A brew from a fellow All Grain Homebrewer

This evening I had the pleasure of sampling a bottle of Porter which a fellow all-grain brewer sent to me by post. Here is what I made of it : To say that this was bottled from keg upon opening the cap there was a pleasing 'Hish!' which meant that the master brewer of this beer had done the business and it had travelled well and kept its carbonation, the bottle had been filled within a 1cm of the rim which I think helped. The immediate aroma was one of sweet coffee, when poured it had a nice head, much better than most commercial bottled beers, the picture above doesn't do it justice it had fallen by the time i'd fannied around with the camera. The beer is lovely and clear (when held to the light) very deep dark red/black. It was well carbonated, a little too much initially for my taste, but hey who am I! The flavours I got were a sweet coffee/liquorice a slightly dry aftertaste the flavour really lingers, I have a feeling i'm going to have this one in my throat in the morning. It tastes very 'clean' though and has a definate kick, but at 6.5% thats no surprise.

All in all, if this were a commercial bottled beer i'd buy it on a reasonably regular basis, it's a good old fireside pint this.

Monday Night Brewing

To try to get a good balance between family time, work and brewing I decided to have a go at an evening brew last night, with a bit of preparation the day before I was able to switch the boiler on at 5.45pm and dough in by 6.20pm.

After the excellent results I had with Hookey Street I decided that I had to brew it again, there are two changes from the last time I did this, the first is the bittering hop, using Oregon Fuggle rather than Northdown (as I forgot to pick them up) the second is the addition of Cara-Pils to aid head formation/retention.

Grain Bill
5000.00 gm Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (5.9 EBC) Grain 90.3 %
410.00 gm Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (19.7 EBC) Grain 7.4 %
130.00 gm Chocolate Malt (886.5 EBC) Grain 2.3 %
260.00 gm Cara-Pils (3.9 EBC) Grain 4.4 %
Hop Schedule
70.00 gm Oregon Fuggle [4.70%] (90 min) Hops 30.1 IBU
20.00 gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (15 min) Hops 2.6 IBU
20.00 gm Styrian Goldings [3.00%] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep) Hops -
Other
1 Whirlfloc Tablet (10 mins)
11g Gervin English Ale yeast starter

25L Batch
Target OG 1052 (75%)
Estimated EBU 31

The brew evening was a success with the yeast pitched and all put away by 11:40pm I missed my target OG by 4 points and ended up with 1.048 rather that 1.052 so it will be a 4.8% beer rather than a 5.3% beer, I can live with that, I think that I rushed the sparge so next time on an evening brew I'll up the grain bill to accommodate for the brewhouse efficiency drop (75% to 69%)

This morning the yeast seemed slow to start but by the time I got home this evening it was well on it's way. Monday night brewing it is from now on then!

Milestone - Lions Pride

As time is tight at the moment I've started to mix kits brews into the schedule along with all grain brews to make sure I've got a healthy stock of available ale. As I've also managed to lure a couple of friends into having a go at home brew I thought I'd try to document a kit brew as best I can.

I've gone for a Milestone - Lions Pride kit which is fairly new on the market and certainly wasn't around when I was last brewing from kits before going all grain.

The blurb reads

The lion is the symbol of power,courage and confidence and also acknowledged as the king of the jungle. As the box shows the 3 lions have long been used as a crest for the Kings and Queens of Europe.

A well balanced light and refreshing copper coloured session ale.

No sugar Required for this 3Kg kit

Makes 40 pints at an ABV of 3.8%

The first thing I noticed about this kit is the fact the the instructions are very clear and go into much more detail than any kit I'd brewed before, ideal I'd say for anyone starting out.

Equipment used :

Steriliser
500ml PET Bottle - for the yeast starter
Large Stock Pot - used to hold the cans to warm them up
Can Opener
Plastic Brewers Paddle
Fermentation Bucket with tap
Thermometer
Hydrometer


The kit comes in a box which contains 2 cans of the wort reduction, a packet of Gervin English Ale yeast (small silver packet) and the all important instructions.



The first and most important stage is to sterilise everything that you are going to use and is going to come into contact with the beer.

Once you've done that it's time to make up the yeast starter, I did this by adding 50ml of cooled boiled water (30 degrees C) and 1/2 tsp of sugar to a sterilised 500ml PET bottle, to this you add the contents of the yeast packet and gently swirl around, loosely fit the lid and wait for it to rehydrate.

Next Boil the kettle and stand the two unopened cans in a large stock pot and pour the boiling water around them, this is to soften the contents so that they are easier to pour, this takes around 10 minutes.


After the cans have been warming for about 10 minutes wipe the lid with a sterilised soft cloth and open with a sterilised can opened and pour them both into your sterilised fermenter.


Next you will need to rinse out the cans to get all of the 'goo' out and into the fermenter, I do this by boiling the kettle (twice) and filling each can and waiting a couple of minutes, then using oven gloves (hot cans) empty ONE into the fermenter then pour the contents of the other can back and forth from one can to the other until the cans become clean inside then add this to the fermenter.

Using your brewers paddle stir the goo and hot water together until it has completely mixed in. Once you have done this top the fermenter up to the final volume, for this kit that was 22.5L. I attach a large tube to the tap and hold the end over the bucket and make sure that plenty of air gets mixed in so that the wort it thoroughly aerated, snap the lid onto the fermenter for a bit.

Remember that yeast starter, well that should now look like this, with the yeast nicely re hydrated and hungry for some wort! Add 250ml of your wort to this via the fermenter tap tighten the lid and shake it like mad for 30 seconds,then loosen the lid sightly to let the air escape as the c02 builds up.

It will take a little while for the yeast starter to get going, this one took around 45 minutes.







At this point I took a hydrometer reading, it came out at 1042.







Once the yeast starter is chomping at the bit it's time to pour it into the fermenter to get going on the bulk wort, I pour it in then refill the bottle from the fermenter tap and swish around and add to the fermenter to make sure I get all of the yeast in there.

To keep the light from getting to the brew I 'black bag' the fermenter, this should avoid off flavours caused by 'light strike'.





12 hours later a nice yeasty head had started to appear and the airlock was very active.

Hookey Street - The Finished Product

I brewed Hookey Street a while ago, this is the finished product it's 6% and a proper dark winter warmer.

Glug

This morning the kitchen is very noisy, all four airlocks are going crazy - everything that I brewed yesterday has got off to a flying start, the krausen on the AG brew is nice and clean, hopefully a sign that I managed to avoid too much trub getting in there.

The Storm After The Calm

Well after not brewing for a while, I got stuck in today and did an all-grain brew, a kit brew and two wine kits.

The AG brew was Grumpy Bum, I altered my usual recipe to add in some carapils which should give the finished beer a bit of a better head and head retention, I also went back to using Oregon Fuggles rather than Northdown I preferred the taste from the Fuggle.

The Grain Bill & Hop Schedule was as follows :

4130gm Pale Malt (MO) 86.40%
410gm Crystal Malt 8.58%
240gm Cara-Pils 5.02%
85gm Oregon Fuggles [4.70 %] (90 min) Hops 40.3 IBU
35.00 gm Styrian Goldings [3.30 %] (15 min) Hops 5.4 IBU

I also mashed a little hotter this time, targeted 68 degrees got 67.5 this is to try to give the brew a little more 'body' and maltiness, previously I'd mashed at 65 degrees and it may have left the beer a little 'thin'.

I also got my head around hot and cold breaks with whirlfloc today, boiling hard with both elements when the whirlfloc tablet went in at 10 mins from the end then chilling right down to 20 degrees to get a good cold break, there was lots of trub left behind and the wort that I transferred to the fermenter was quite clear.

The mash and boil were both 90 minutes. This beer should be around 4.2% and 45 EBU's and a nice deep golden colour. The OG of this beer is 1042. Fermented with Gervin English Ale Yeast.

The kit that I brewed was a Brupaks Almondbury Old, not tried this one before but have read good things about it, I replaced the kit yeast with Safale S04.

I also started off 2 wine kits both California Connoisseur, Liebfraumilch and Cabernet Merlot, these only took 10 mins each to do and produce great wine for about £1.50 per bottle.

This is a picture of the 'trub' that was left behind in the boiler, filtered out by the hop bed, I wonder if it is this that has been giving me chill haze problems with some brews?



The wort that went into the fermenter was nice and clear.







The end result of the day, from left to right, Brupaks Almondbury Old kit, Grumpy Bum AG brew, Cabernet Merlot, Liebfraumilch.

It's been a while...

Well it looks like things might just be settled for me enough to do a brew a week tomorrow, i'm down to my last ~90 pints so to make sure I have some properly conditioned beer i'll probably brew an all grain, most likely "Mr Grumpy Bum" and also do a kit to turn it into a double brew day, just need to decide which kit to do...?