In addition to the gear update (below) heres a vague low down of what i've brewed in the interim, starting with the most recent, because thats the easiest to remember!
June: Final day of the month saw my first foray in to morning brewing and a double hitter of 15L of Obama's porter, and King Bob(Goblin) - Hobgoblin clone brewed to approx 6%. 10L of porter is destined to be Coconutted (worth another try!) for a friends birthday party, and 5L is destined for my own 'private stock' because it was damn good last time.
A mere week before that i attempted to turn around a 'light summer beer' on request for a family-friends wifes birthday party. While i think i missed the mark on summer beer, starting with a tweaked Fullers AK recipe and dropping the hopping rate slightly the result was a 4.5% Toffee Flavoured Bitter that was well received and thanks to the miracles of protofloc, yeast harvesting, filtering and force carbonation was a very drinkable, crystal clear pint that went from grain to glass in 10 days.
Prior to that was a super-brewday seeing Tom and I take ludicrous leaps forward in the fields of recipe formulation, parti-gyling and brewing with fruit, making a 20L split batch of 7% porter and 3% Mild, which once fermented was split again in to 5L of each which were bottled and 5L of each which were transferred to secondary and added Damsons from Tom's Mums garden. God knows what its going to come out like, but i can confirm the (unfruited) mild is already excellent.
In addition to this on this Joyous day, Tom's Lady-friend Christine joined my Lady-friend Georgie in forming the 'brewsters' brewing up their own recipe of Golden belgian beer on my 5L kit. I was completely hands off on this one so can't tell you what went on, but it all looks very promising when bottled last weekend.
May: Saw me brewing numerous recipes for my own birthday party, served on an uncharacteristically hot day in our garden on my ebay acquired 3 handpump-bar. Putting it all together was a bit of a headache, but it was an excellent day and the beer went down well. 'On tap' was;
Fullers Old Harry & X Ale; my first foray in to parti-gyling. A bit of a headache to figure out, but easy enough thanks to my new 'jam' boiler rendering my stockpot and induction hob unused meaning i could have both batches on the boil simultaneously. Brewed to the letter of the recipe and pretty much nailed, the Old Harry was very well recieved - the X Ale maybe a little less enthusiastically but only because i served it second and everybody had already had a taste of the 'good stuff'...
Also on tap was my Sam Smiths Oatmeal stout - an excellent recipe, but really worthy of note in my own brewing experience due to the fact that having brewed a month earlier, i eagerly cracked a bottle to discover that something had gone horribly wrong in the boil and there was no hop flavour at all to balance the sweetness.Distraught i left them alone for 2 weeks until a few days before the party rolled around. Having a brainwave i figured i could try to add the hop flavour back in - Boiling up some fuggles for an hour with a few litres of tap water, i let cool overnight and then cracked a bottle and added the boiled hop-tea in different quantities. Georgie and i established the preferred quantity of hop-juice to add from 5 different samples, which i then scaled up to 5L. Being that this was about 2L of hop-tea itself i boiled it down to approx 100ml of dark green sludge, added it and decanted bottles in to a 5L Water bottle, screwed on the top and crossed my fingers. The day of the party i was astounded to say it came out perfectly balanced, no off flavours and was extremely well received. Good lesson there i think - beers can be saved!
I also produced some more 1952 mild which didnt end up on tap and is currently bottled and a Haus Pale which was sadly far too young at the party, and oxidised afterwards so was binned :(
UP NEXT: Tom's Birthday Beer Bonanza, so far featuring Kolsch, Citra Pale Ale, Black IPA, some kind of smoked beer & possibly more. Not sure what it says about me but i'm f'ing excited!
Thursday 4 July 2013
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Gear Update!
Its been a while!
A quick round up of what has occurred, hopefully in an attempt to spur me in to start updating this again.
When shopping the post-Christmas sales with George, i picked up small book and began to make detailed notes on all my recipes for 2013. This has unfortunately caused the destruction of my attempts to catalogue things on here. This said it works a little better for me, as it has allowed me to make clear notes of exactly what i actually DID, including all my (in hindsight) totally stupid mistakes. Not that anyones reading this, but the idea of putting my failures and misunderstandings on display (combined with the lag time between brewing and writing causing some confusion over what actually occurred) was the source of some potential embarrassment. At least this way mistakes can be recorded and rectified off the record.
Since last writing i have acquired some new equipment; 2 x Lidl Jam Makers. I happily stumbled across them one Sunday afternoon at 30% off on clearance in Lidl - Initially seeing it as a cheap way to obtain a larger boiler than my current 13L stock pot, its actually proved invaluable as an HLT - water heated to surprisingly accurate temperature and held there for a period of time has been perfect for hands-off mash preparation as well as far more accurate sparging, and contributed significantly to the overall quality of my beers as well as a more relaxed overall brewday - an absolutely excellent purchase. Although the provided plastic taps are next to useless and i recommend changing to a 15mm tank connector, which required some careful filing (so as not to chip the enamel) with a very fine file.
Sadly it doesnt fare so well as a boiler as its appears to stop-start on the power to maintain an overall temperature means it doesnt presently hold a decent rolling boil which has given me a couple of issues with both lack of boiloff making the result less concentrated/lower gravity than expected and in one case involving a hopbag, not enough vigorous boiling to break them up and release the oils, winding up with a basically un-hopped stout.
In addition to this i've set up and put in to use my temp controlled brewing fridge. A simple set up of a small fridge with a tube heater in the bottom, temperature controlled by a stc1000.
I'll admit to being skeptical as to how much difference this was going to make, which is probably why i dragged my heels setting it up. I can now comfortably say that i'm an idiot, and the temp control has not only eliminated problems experienced with fusel alcohols and slight off flavours, but meant i can actually ferment things out cleaner and quicker and experiment with the difference in outcome at different temps - accentuating fruitness in bitter by fermenting high, and going as clean as possible fermenting low. Not only is this evident in the beer but in the fermentation itself - relatively low resulting in a much more....gluey krausen and high giving nice thick cap of bubbles.
As a superbonus being a fridge freezer its allowed me to crash cool which settles out the yeast and trub in to really solid cake resulting in cleaner beer & quicker turn around times.
This is starting to sound like an advert.... not the intention but if you're reading this and havent got it set up yet, i'd say this is the next BIG step to take in taking your beers from awesome to 'proper class' as the head brewer of a local brewery was kind enough to describe my Altbier.
A quick round up of what has occurred, hopefully in an attempt to spur me in to start updating this again.
When shopping the post-Christmas sales with George, i picked up small book and began to make detailed notes on all my recipes for 2013. This has unfortunately caused the destruction of my attempts to catalogue things on here. This said it works a little better for me, as it has allowed me to make clear notes of exactly what i actually DID, including all my (in hindsight) totally stupid mistakes. Not that anyones reading this, but the idea of putting my failures and misunderstandings on display (combined with the lag time between brewing and writing causing some confusion over what actually occurred) was the source of some potential embarrassment. At least this way mistakes can be recorded and rectified off the record.
Since last writing i have acquired some new equipment; 2 x Lidl Jam Makers. I happily stumbled across them one Sunday afternoon at 30% off on clearance in Lidl - Initially seeing it as a cheap way to obtain a larger boiler than my current 13L stock pot, its actually proved invaluable as an HLT - water heated to surprisingly accurate temperature and held there for a period of time has been perfect for hands-off mash preparation as well as far more accurate sparging, and contributed significantly to the overall quality of my beers as well as a more relaxed overall brewday - an absolutely excellent purchase. Although the provided plastic taps are next to useless and i recommend changing to a 15mm tank connector, which required some careful filing (so as not to chip the enamel) with a very fine file.
Sadly it doesnt fare so well as a boiler as its appears to stop-start on the power to maintain an overall temperature means it doesnt presently hold a decent rolling boil which has given me a couple of issues with both lack of boiloff making the result less concentrated/lower gravity than expected and in one case involving a hopbag, not enough vigorous boiling to break them up and release the oils, winding up with a basically un-hopped stout.
In addition to this i've set up and put in to use my temp controlled brewing fridge. A simple set up of a small fridge with a tube heater in the bottom, temperature controlled by a stc1000.
I'll admit to being skeptical as to how much difference this was going to make, which is probably why i dragged my heels setting it up. I can now comfortably say that i'm an idiot, and the temp control has not only eliminated problems experienced with fusel alcohols and slight off flavours, but meant i can actually ferment things out cleaner and quicker and experiment with the difference in outcome at different temps - accentuating fruitness in bitter by fermenting high, and going as clean as possible fermenting low. Not only is this evident in the beer but in the fermentation itself - relatively low resulting in a much more....gluey krausen and high giving nice thick cap of bubbles.
As a superbonus being a fridge freezer its allowed me to crash cool which settles out the yeast and trub in to really solid cake resulting in cleaner beer & quicker turn around times.
This is starting to sound like an advert.... not the intention but if you're reading this and havent got it set up yet, i'd say this is the next BIG step to take in taking your beers from awesome to 'proper class' as the head brewer of a local brewery was kind enough to describe my Altbier.
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