Homebrewists of STW, brewing 'owt at the moment?

Have a brew day planned for next saturday to make a 11L batch of Swedish Pale Ale. Should be fun actually and gives me a chance to try out a new kylspiral and brew kettle.

From memory I'll be using Swedish Pale Ale and Cara Munich 2 as the malts and Saaz and Chinook as the hops.

I'm also planning a summer ale using local malts and hops where possible. It's a coincidence that one of my neighbours is trying to grow the older, heritage Swedish hops that went out of fashion at the beginning of last century.

Summer ale - that's a point, I was supposed to be attempting a lager at some point, on a long, low fermentation in the brewfridge. Maybe that will be next. Saying that, I've got a bombproof recipe for a Leffe-alike beer which serves well as something cold and fizzy for a barbecue

I am just awaiting on my Belgian Blonde. The flavour is still developing, but have just had a DarkFarm homebrew bar set delivered. So want to transfer to that asap.
This is my first all grain brew, so hoping it comes out well.

I may go for a pale ale next, but look to add coriander and orange. I really like the Einstok white ale. Has any one tried to brew with coriander and orange?

I have been told that less is more with spices, but have never tried myself.

I have a blonde/bitter currently maturing in the keg. It was constructed from extra light DME, a touch of light crystal, and then lots and lots of EKG/Challenger. Fermented using US-05 which I've not tried before.

It ended up sat in the primary for longer than I'd ideally like due to my poor planning 🙁 but doesn't seem to have suffered too much and is getting quite drinkable now.

I'll give it a few more days of warmth and get it into the conservatory to cold crash. One benefit of having a crappy conservatory at this time of year is that you're never short of fridge space.

Reckon I might have a chance to get something going on Saturday. I have something ready to go, but I can't remember what it is or what level of complication it involves to get going!

Looking forward to it though. Love the airlock bubbling away.

Yeah, we have that with home made glögg at the moment. The spare room stinks of semi-fermented wine with a hint of spice.

Mango wheat beer going on at the weekend. Half wheat, half pale plus some citra for fruitiness. Going to try some frozen mango in fermenter after a few days, but have some concentrated flavour in backup in case that fails to excite.

Us 05 yeast is fairly aggressive and will have a go at malto triose after it's deplteded all the simpler sugars. When I used it I found it would start to slow on cooling, then acclimatise and keep on munching
Mango wheat beer sounds interesting, begreat with a hop called Ella or topaz both would add to the pulpy fruit flavours

Just finishing up the last of the Christmas beer, and pretty damned nice it was too.

A special bitter with plenty of EKG, Northdown and Challenger late addition hops. MO pale, 5% medium crystal and a touch of chocolate malt for colour.

Fuller's liquid yeast strain - I saved some in a kilner jar for the next brew.

#1 Schwarzbeir - a German dark lager.
#2 Wee Heavy, pitched warm onto the Schwarzbeir yeast cake - went off like the clappers - dropped 60 gravity points (7.5% abv) in 36 hours, that's whisky fermentation performance!

Cold conditioning them for the next few weeks.

Yourguitarhero, I meant to ask... how is the ‘pub’ going? It was you that was putting together the really small brewery wasn’t it?

It's coming along.
I've got the recipe for the beer I want to do all sorted, and got registered with HMRC to produce beer and had visits from trading Standards and Environmental Health which all went fine.

So I can legally produce beer. Though I can't actually sell it to anyone until I get a further licence - a wholesalers registration scheme thing which I believe is a little more complex to get.

I've been really busy in my day-job, so it's been a slow process. Though patience is my business philosophy so I'm OK with that.

Cider. 11 litres concentrate. 1 jar honey. 2 tsp Super Wine Yeast.
Will yield 20 x 500ml bottles @ 7.5%. ½ tsp sugar per bottle for a bit of fizz. Dry.

Just finished fermenting a fairly basic pale ale but used Voss kveik yeast instead of standard. Interesting to see how it turns out given I pitched at 40c instead of the standard 19!

Well, keep at it! It’s a bit of an inspiration and I am really keen to see how it goes.

Am awaiting delivery of one of these......

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thepinter/the-pinter-welcome-to-a-new-world-of-fresh-beer

Have been told I’m selected as an early tester so should have a brew on the go in the next two weeks.

Voss Kveik is quite an interesting one. I've done a couple of beers with it - haven't found it adds much to the flavour, it's quite neutral, however it is incredibly robust and fast fermenting. You can get some esters out of it if you can keep the temp >35c but not similar to the Belgian yeasts.

It reminds me of the distilling yeasts used for whisky.

Right, well, got the boil done and into the bucket yesterday, into the brewfridge at about midday, temp set to 18-20degC. Or so I thought...

Checked it at about eight last night, temp at 20degC, no bubbling at that stage. Checked it again about half seven this morning, temp at 25degC, airlock bubbled dry... Clearly I'd ballsed up setting the temp on the fridge. Anyway, cracked the lid to get rid of excess pressure, sorted the fridge control, put some water back in the airlock (all quite rushed, cos I was supposed to be on my way to work), we'll see what state it's in when I get home.

If you had a good fermentation going on then it could have blown the bubbler dry. It's an exothermic reaction too, so temps can rise by themselves

It was definitely my balls up, the temp was at 25Deg and the controller was still set to 'Heat'. Anyway, hopefully no harm done, certainly kickstarted the fermentation...

On a related note, is there such a thing as a 'low-profile' bubbler? I've got a boggo one and it only very nearly touches the top of the brewfridge and I can't top it up without taking it out (which is tricky what with it very nearly touching the top of the brewfridge))

Can you not use a silicone hose to a jam jar of water next to the fermenter? That should be pretty low profile

Hmmm, you might be on to something...

Depends on the yeast/beer, but you can just put the lid on the fermenter loosely, or if its in a (clean) fridge leave it off entirely.

The more oxygen the yeast is exposed to the more flavour it gives. Its only the yeasty krausen thats exposed to the oxygen so the beer wont spoil as long as its fermenting.

Its one step back from wild fermentation, its still your yeast, just in an open bucket.

Ah, that's interesting.

I saw a video last night of some bloke making a hefeweissen using open fermentation. Apparently it gives more phenols and... something... that means more clove flavours or something.

Not sure I will try that yet, it looked a bit advanced.

I've left one side of the bucket lid open for the first 48 hours or so before (if no airlock available). Been fine. There's a lot of CO2 being produced which acts as an inert, heavier than air barrier that blocks contact with the atmosphere

Best way to do it is to run a piece of tube to a jug of sanitiser. Especially for very vigorous fermentations where your krausen can come through the bubbler

*insert Finbarr Saunders gif here*

🙂

Quite a few commercial breweries do it, off the top of my head Anchor, Sierra Nevada and Sam Smith all do it. I think most of them have a spout on the fermenter to allow the krausen to overflow and take anything that's settled on it away. I've done it in a fridge before and just let it die down as normal (assuming that the fridge was clean and therefore there wasn't anything to get into the krausen and contaminate it.

Went to bottle my cold crashed Saison and realised I hadn't added the hops. Bottle day postponed until the weekend!

Did you forgot to add hops at all, or just some for dry hopping?

Ihn. It will be fine but will be finished by tomorrow afternoon. Might produce a slight ester profile depending on yeast, so possibly some banana flavour or aroma depending on the grist and hop bill
Can you not get a hole saw and put a 25mm hole near the top of the bucket in a side, fit a grommet then drill a 10mm hole and push a length of fish tank bubbler hose into a 1ltr squash bottle fill with paa

I am new to brwewing recently and did a Youngs IPA kit last year

It was really good!

So much so that I repeated the process a few weeks ago. However the second brew did not go like the first one, the brew seemed to be really furious for a few days and then was almost spent.

I might have left it in the fermenting vessel too long as I was expecting more bubbles for longer.

Anyway I thought I might as well add the final hops and bottle - and see how it goes. This first bottle a month after does not seem anywhere near as fizzy as the first batch and the taste was not right - I'm going to leave it another 2 weeks before testing again

Any tips on what I might have done wrong?

With a kit like that, the variation is either in the fermentation or the bottling.

With fermentation, the temperature is likely to have made the biggest difference. Though, your description sounds about what you would expect.
Did you do this at different times of year (i.e. is room temperature different?)

After main fermentation (7 days-ish), it is best to keep it at a lower temperature (fridge temp) to condition for a couple of weeks. If you can move it to a different bucket for that it helps (just to clear it off the sediment in the first one). This will help make the beer clearer and taste nicer.

During bottling, you want to be consistent in the amount of sugar (best to mix sugar in a couple of hundred mls of water, then put that back in your first (sanitised!) bucket to blend. Then bottle and leave the bottles at room temp for 10-14 days as you are restarting fermentation (fermentation stalls at low temps).

AWRS Scheme is the acronym. Alcohol Warehouse Registration Scheme.
Not alot to it really from what I remember floor plan, vessel layout, bonded area if applicable, paid or duty able area if applicable
Duty gate location, then examples of invoicing system. All doable but time consuming

Just dry hopping

Got some straight turbo cider fermenting and some strawberry variant currently in bottles getting some fizz as the middle daughter loves it.

Met up with another home brewer last night and purchased myself a plate chiller and some other bits of kit. All I need now is a pump and some fittings (and maybe a PID and a heating element) and I will have a mini e-BIAB setup.

Ihn. It will be fine but will be finished by tomorrow afternoon.

Yep, checked it when I got home and it's settled down to 20degC. Not sure it'll be finished today though, it dropped from 1.048OG to 1.024 in just over 24 hours, so a way to go yet.

Tasted pretty good too 🙂

Probably can't bottle it this weekend anyway, got stuff on, so assuming it finishes this week it'll just sit in the bucket for a week or so until I bottle it. Is it best that it sits at 'garage' temp, or 'fridge' temp (not that there's much difference at the moment)?

You should definitely wait longer before bottling it. Bottling before fermentation is really finished leads to over-fizzy bottles and possible shrapnel!
I'd let it sit where it is til the end of the week, then cold condition (Closer to zero C the better) for at least 48 hours, though more is OK) then bottle. After bottling, leave it at room temp for 4 or 5 days then put them somewhere cool and dark til you drink them.

I splurged on a glycol chiller unit past Black Friday sales, but it wasn't working properly when I went to fire it up a couple of weeks ago. New one should arrive this week which will be handy as I need to cold-crash the two beers and there's only room for one fermenter in my fridge and it's not cold enough outside for proper cold crashing any more.

Last few brews have been pretty light on the hops, so next couple will be very hop heavy - a double IPA with 6 varieties of US and NZ hops and a very non-standard saison with lots of Sorachi Ace (lemongrass flavour) and Mandarina Bavaria (orange-y) aroma and dry hops. Along with my favourite saison yeast, Lallemand's Belle Saison. It's a trooper - ferments like a distiller's yeast (heavy on the diastaticus) to produce a lovely dry champagne-y finish that works well with a highly carbonated saison - all the bubbles to carry the easter and hop aromas up your schnozz.

You should definitely wait longer before bottling it. Bottling before fermentation is really finished leads to over-fizzy bottles and possible shrapnel!

Oh yeah, deffo, I meant how long/cold do/can I leave it in the bucket post-fermentation, pre-bottling.

I've used that Lallemand Belle Saison in my SMASH saison Leffe-a-like; Light DME and Nelson Sauvin hops. Smashing thing to drink cold on a summer's day 🙂

I'd say wait 10-14 days after fermentation before bottling.

For an ale/IPA I generally ferment at the yeast's favoured temp for 7-10 days (10 days if dry hopping, hops in for last 3 days) then do 10-14 days at 1c in a different container then bottle or keg

Ta. How important is the 'different container' bit?

Thanks for the tips @Yourguitarhero.

I think I might have bottled the first batch too early from what you have said - it was very fizzy in a kind of stealth way - it looked ok then started to fizz up way more than you would expect

I added the bottling sugar to the main mix to make sure of consistency of dose.

I will try the swapping vessels thing next time and see if that helps manager the sediment.

The results from my kit were great so you guys making brews from first principles must have some fantastic beer to drink!!

so you guys making brews from first principles

I'm not quite going from first principles (i.e. all grain, mashing, all that), I'm 'extract' brewing using malt extract, but still boiling using proper hops and stuff. It's kind of a halfway house between kits and all-grain, all you need on top of what you have already is a 'gert big pan (about fifteen quid from Wilkos). Worth doing if you get into the brewing lark but can't be bothered going the whole hog.

So, unsurprisingly, mine's finished fermenting pretty darn quickly after it's, erm, accelerated start. 1.048OG and seems to have bottomed out at 1.014 in about three/four days.

Now I'm wondering whether to dry-hop it or not... I've got Fuggles, EKG, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin to pick from. Hmmm...

So, unsurprisingly, mine’s finished fermenting pretty darn quickly after it’s, erm, accelerated start. 1.048OG and seems to have bottomed out at 1.014 in about three/four days.

My last brew dropped to 1.014 in three days, then another ten days to finish at 1.010.

Yeah, I've had two 1.014 readings 24 hours apart but I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it's actually stopped.

Not brewing owt but a kit at the moment but my new Chinook and Cascade hop roots turned up yesterday, so the kids and I will be planting them this weekend.

Got 2 first gold plants going into their second year now so should get a good haul off them for bittering and use the fancier ones for aroma. I'm quite looking forward to a green hop beer!

Where d'you live scaled? I was under the impression that hops like a very particular climate

^^^Interested to see how this goes.

Brew day is tomorrow... Really looking forward to this.

Manchester! They're not that particular at all

These are form last years MCR hop project but you get the idea.

This years haul...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFEaIoJWkAIhAxj?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Commercially they're viable in the SE mostly, but you can still grow them just about anywhere.

They're also great for a bit of guerrilla gardening. After a few years, dig up some of your plants roots, chop into bits, plant against a fence on any old wasteland. You'll have more hops than you know what to do with.

Ta. How important is the ‘different container’ bit?

I presume it's to separate the beer from the hops and yeast?

Depends how quickly you drink it, if you wanted 20l of IPA for a party you could go from primary in a bucket for a week, secondary in a plastic keg for a week with some sugar, chill it (cold crashes out the remaining yeast and any haze and also reduces the pressure to zero as the beer can hold more co2
when cold for the next bit), lid off and hops go in ~4 days before party and purge with a CO2 canister, then just let it warm back up to serving temp over the 4 days and drink it.

Having the hops still floating around has a few advantages. Stops the beer circulating by convection and coming into contact with oxygen at the top of the keg. And they're anti-microbial so will prevent it getting infected as well.

Bottling I'd do similar, but I'm lazy and tend to just put the hops in the primary around day 10 or so (i.e. it's well and truly finished), give it 4 days, then bottle straight from the fermenter and cold crash in the bottles once it's conditioned. Only limitation of doing it that way is you have to keep it chilled until you drink it otherwise the haze comes back.

Brew day done!

All told, it went well. Pre-boil gravity a couple of points low, OG a couple of points high, but otherwise a smooth day of brewing. But... I did have to drop the spare volume to 6L from 10L as my kettle was getting on the full side (only 20L) . It actually helped a lot with the boil though as this was the first I have done on an induction hob and it took a while to get up to 100C.

I’m also really happy with the new chiller spiral. Cooled rapidly and made the whole process a lot easier. I have that plate chiller for the future, but that means I need a pump and that’s a future thing to do.

So, total volume into the fermenter is 10L from a 14.5L water bill. The yeast is a high attenuation variety (M41 Belgian Ale), so as long as my FG is around 1.012, I should hit 4.9% and have an amber coloured beer with a really nice hoppy edge. I think the 10 minute Saaz addition worked well.

Points learned:

- I need to keep to a 15L pre-boil size if I want a bit of safety from boiling over
- I need a better insulating cover for the kettle to get it to the boil quicker and to keep it warm during the mash
- I need to find a way of keeping it at 67C better during the mash. The insulating blanket worked ok, but I forgot to measure the final temperature, so have no idea how much it lost.
- I need to buy an Ikea strainer that I can use when sparging

Now, just a waiting game for the first bubbles

When I did BIAB, I put the put the pot in the oven at its lowest temp during mash. Helped keep a steady temp (only dropped 0.5c an hour)

I have that plate chiller for the future, but that means I need a pump and that’s a future thing to do.

Not nesecary IME. Gravity is plenty, the plate chiller has negligable pressure drop.

I run a water butt pump though and just circulate it, its a 300l water butt so a 25l batch dropping by 75deg barely makes any difference to the temp in the butt. Feel guilty just running a tap to chill it!

That is a dammed good idea and probably something I will steal, thank you.

The nervous wait is over... Airlock is being treated to a lot of gas from the fermentation. Looks like beer is coming.

Sorachi Ace is overated IMO , there are nicer hops out there
Growing US hops in the UK from Ribose or root stock will not produce the same hops asyou buy in from the USA. They are great for UK grown hops but lack the depth of flavour of the US stock. So much so the Slovenians are / have renamed there US deriviatives to avoid comparisons, Chinnook and Cascade iirc , UK chinook and Cascade are ok but maybe only 2/3 of the flavours of the US versions
But , for free , afater 2 years waiting well worth growing , watch for red spider mite , aphids, powdery mildew , frosts - sunburn all destroy the flowers

Also, for plate chiller, see if you can find an unused central heating one, same thing but about half the price (or 1/4 if you find a s/h one that was never fitted for whatever reason) without the bilchmann / homebrewing premium.

I found the best way was to have long silicone tubing tails that went onto the exchanger and hung you the window, then hosepipe addapters on the ends, otherwise you end up with leaky hosepipe addapters in the kitchen. The beer side i just had standard silicone tubing in and out, brewdevil on the worktop and the beer just runs through it and drops into the fermenter.

Just tasted my first brew (pale ale) with Voss Kveik and after 10 days (5 in the FV and 5 in the keg) it's still fairly cloudy but taste-wise its lovely. Started fermenting at 40c and dropped naturally to about 18c over the 5 days. Tastes remarkably 'clean' given what I've heard about Voss imparting flavours.

As I've harvested and dried a load of the Voss I'm going again with the same recipe but fixing the fermenting temp at about 37c in order to try and catch some of the Voss characteristics.

If my liver doesn't give out first....

Well, after three days of intense fermentation, the yeast appears to be in the final throws of activity. Now have a solid-looking cake sitting in the bottom of the fermenter and I am thinking of letting it warm up a bit day by day to see how much I can get it to attenuate.

The main problem is just that I know now it is nearly beer. And I want to see what it is like. And I have to wait...

Yep, mine's bottomed out at 1.013, steady for a few days now. Tastes okay, slightly odd taste, I'm guessing from the over-hot initial fermentation.

Plan now is to:

- dry hop tonight (I'm thinking 50g EKG), leaving the brewfridge at 19degC
- turn the temp down to 1-2degC on Sunday night
- turn the fridge off next Friday night and let it come back up to garage temp
- batch prime and bottle next weekend
- two weeks in brewfridge at 19degC to carbonate
- fridge off, leave it in there to condition for a month or so.

Sound reasonable?

Sounds like an overly long process? I'd skip the final conditioning step and just drink once it is carbonated.

Sounds like an overly long process? I’d skip the final conditioning step and just drink once it is carbonated.

Really? I'm basically (I thought) just dry hopping for a few days, cold crashing for a few days, then bottling.

And I'll definitely try at least one as soon as it's bottled 😉

Sound reasonable?

I'd give it a week as it is (or even warm it up a bit). It'll help the yeast metabolize any off flavors. It'll be quicker to "condition" it now than in the bottles.

Also, no point warming it up to bottle it, just dissolve the sugar in some warm water and give it a gentle stir to mix it without disturbing the yeast.

After waiting patiently and seeing the yeast activity die off, I took the decision to bottle last night. The large yeast cake made the decision to transfer to a new bucket for me and I ended up with 25 bottles of golden ale with an abv of about 5.4%.

I’ll see how this goes with bottle conditioning, but I know I have some changes to make to the process next time. As for the next brew, soon. Maybe an IPA or a proper pale ale this time.

I got my replacement glycol chiller up and running, so have my Schwarzbeir sitting at 2c for the next wee while. Might give it a very subtle dry hop of hallertau before bottling.

View this post on Instagram

Saison is coming along nicely, up to around 7%abv after a couple of days, though temp is at 25c (my fermenters have heaters in them). Still got a sugary taste so more to go. Mash was stepped at 64c and 70c before a 78c mash out - have found this helps provide lots of fermentable sugars for good fermentation if aiming for a dry finish to the beer.
Using a yeast called Bruxellensis Trois (WLP644) which gives lots of fruity flavours like a beer in the early stages of a brettanomyces infection/fermentation, but is a saccharomyces yeast so no issues with infection of equipment. Planning on a large dry hop of Sorachi Ace (lemongrass) and Mandarina Bavaria (orange) to compliment those esters. Has 85% attenuation too, so should be nice and dry like a classic Saison Du Pont.

Got a wee heavy conditioning in a glass demijohn with a pillowcase over it in a dark/cold corner of the brewery and am planning on brewing a double IPA with around 500g of hops (20 litre batch) with my friend at the weekend - it's for his 40th birthday party.

500g of hops in one batch? Holy crap! What varietal?

I'm actually quite happy with how the ale turned out given that I strayed from the recipe so much. I'll have to wait until it's finished conditioning before I really know though.

Things to remember for next time:

1. Use a decant bucket with a tap that does not leak
2. Estimate sugar requirements, make solution and add to decant bucket before transferring to the beer
3. Consider getting a keg system so that I do not have to wash up so many bloody bottles.

Put an American IPA on yesterday (from a kit) and also tried iSpindel WiFi hydrometer for the first time. Beer fridge is at 22C but beer is a lot warmer. I suspect that it'll be done in a week. Next batch I'll drop the beer fridge temperature and see how it goes.

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Yep, mine got bottled on Saturday, 34 bottles at about 4.6%

It's turned out pretty good, even the wife said so from trying it still-slightly-hazy-straight from the fermenter. Give it a week to settle out properly in the bottles and it should be pretty good I reckon.

Speaking of which, also took the opportunity of a first try of the turbo cider I bottled in August (I think) that's been sitting in the garage ever since. Absolutely, and surprisingly, smashing 🙂

How are you finding that iSpindel hydrometer?
Been considering getting a couple so I can monitor my fermentations remotely - my brewshed is in a different town.

So far my wee heavy is conditioning away nicely - likely bottle it at the weekend as well as kegging my Schwarzbier which has also come along nicely.

Sorachi Ace Saison has been dry hopped and is rather pleasant blend of saison and NEIPA. Cold conditioning for another week or two before I bottle or keg it.

Ludicrous hops IPA brewday at the weekend went well. The friend I was brewing with also happened to bring some hops, so there will be around 500g of hops going in over two dry hop periods. Going to smell amazing! I I imagine the hops will sook up all the liquid so losses will be quite high. Luckily it's a 9%-er

iSpindel is great - I bought one built up off ebay and I'm glad I did, very neat soldering and build.

Setup was easy using the docs - the only gotcha is that when you put it into config mode it always goes to its own SSID. You need to have Ubidots set up to start off with to see that it's working.

It's showed me that my thermometer was in the wrong place so the beer fridge was running hot. I've taped the thermocouple to the fermenter and it's now good - as the graph shows

[url= https://i.ibb.co/r6H9GLx/beer-graph.pn g" target="_blank">https://i.ibb.co/r6H9GLx/beer-graph.pn g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://clueyblog.com/yogurt-face-masks ]yogurt face pack for dry skin[/url]

Part of me now really wants that. I mean, who would not want to have that level of tech applied (wirelessly) to brewing beer?

Tried my latest last night after a week of bottle conditioning and was pleasantly surprised. It's already pretty well balanced and has a good body to it. Well carbonated too. Another week should finish it off nicely.

The next brew day is a hoppy summer IPA using Nelson Fluvain. I was going to make a strong, dark Belgian ale using molasses in the boil to bring up the OG and the SRM, but was persuaded to go lighter and use up the 5kg of pale malt I have in the cupboard.

It's been several years since I left brewed anything... I mostly started home-brewing due to the lack of decent beers in NZ when we moved here, you can barely move for awesome beers nowadays, so less need to diy.

I just cleared out the wardrobe in #1 child's bedroom so I can build some proper shelves and found a box of old homebrew. Mostly an Old Speckled Hen clone which was very sub-par but not bad enough to throw away. A couple of lagers, and a couple of ginger beers. All dated mid-2011...

Just cracked an Old Speckled Hen. Apart from being slightly over-carbonated, it's not bad! Way better than when it was a couple of months old, and a reasonably close clone.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/iTLCXQoyyikNrmDx8

Will try the ginger beer next, it was pretty rough back in 2011, might be perfect now 😁🍺

Just put only my second all grain brew in to the fermenter. It was a small kit of a white ale with orange and coriander. Hoping its similar to the Einstock white ale.

My first grain brew tasted OK, but just took much much longer than expected. I think small batches are the way to go for me. I have a 5l keg from Dark Farm, and tempted with a 10litre now.

Are there any decent books you can recommend reading for recipes and advice on hops.. Flavours and yeasts? I have the big book of home brewing and has some clone recipes in, but all from the US, some UK ones would be good.

Had a brew day planned for Saturday with some friends, but it got postponed due to plague so I did it on my own instead. However, i did save the good Nelson Sauvin hops for the real brew day and dis an experimental IPA with Citra instead.

10L BIAB batch with a mix of 2.5kg of Pale Ale malt and 500g of flaked oats with 25g of Citra pellets added at 60 minutes and 15 minutes. Yeast was another Mangrove Jack packet, M44 this time though and, as last time, it went off like a rocket. Pre-boil and original gravities were weird and not according to plan, and the 15min addition was supposed to be at 5min, so I guess we will see what it turns out like.

If I get more malt this week, I may make another Belgian Ale, or maybe go for something more rural with the Kveik yeast I have coming.

Ah, a timely thread resurrection, I tried my brew at the weekend and it tastes a bit weird. In fact it tastes a bit weird in the same way that the previous one did, so I've just been googling.

The taste is sort of vegetably, which the Googling reckons is Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS), which, apparently, I may have managed by boiling with the lid on. Bugger. Will fade with time apparently, which makes sense as the last one I made is getting slowly better (it's been bottled about four months now). I may just sling them all in the garage and forget about them until next year.

All mine are tasting amazing, am totally back in my groove. Shame noone will.get to taste them.

Got 25l of 99+% GNS in the shed so next brewday is hand sanitizer.

Or does anyone know if starsan kills Corona?

Also, boil with lid off! Colour and sugar concentration via evaporation! Essential to the recipes you're probably follot

Also, boil with lid off!

Well I know that now. Genuinely though, none of the guides I'd read beforehand mentioned it. Ah well, live and learn.