AG#6 - IPA

Sun 30th October 2011

Another slightly damp but not too cold late autumn day just begging for a brew, so I unselfishly obliged !

This brew will be an IPA, adapted from a recipe I found whilst looking for a most elusive recipe for Fuller's Bengal Lancer. Suffice it to say UI didn't find a recipe directly but stumbled upon one "in the style of" it, which is as close as I came to finding it.

The recipe called for some 125g of Fuggles hops, with a late addition of the same at 20 minutes and flame out. I didn't want it quite so bitter so used 76g up front, with Styrian Goldings at 20 minutes and the rest of my Fuggles pack at flame out, 20g.

Grain

Brew monkey a-mixing

4500g Maris Otter pale malt
150g Amber Malt
150g Flaked Barley
150g Torrefied Wheat

Mash

Seasonal dress for the mash tun :)

Mash temperature: I went for 68'C and lost about half a degree over the 90 minutes which is great!











Hops


76g Fuggles @ 90mins
20g Styrian Goldings @ 20mins
20g Fuggles @ 0mins







Boil

The sparge this time only eventually got down to a hydrometer reading of .990 when I'd drained the HLT, and I liquored back a little during the boil due to evaporation loss, so expecting this to be fairly strong, close to the 5.3% Bengal Lancer gets in the bottle. Good old trusty Electrim boiler maintained a solid 99.6'C to 100'C for the whole boil. If only it was 30Lcapacity instead of 25L :) Touch and go again with the pre-boil foam up, but quick a blast from the hose, on sprinkle rather than power-hose this time, sorted that out.




Yeast

White Labs WLP002 English Ale yeast pitched at 23.5'C

Gravity

QBrew said the OG should be up around 1.061, but I got a temperature corrected 1.053, so looking for it to ferment down to 1.013 to give an ABV of 5.3%. Must look into why the gravity is always quite a lot lower than expected. It could be due to too much liquoring back during the boil, too thin a mash, or perhaps, as previously mentioned, too fast a sparge though this time it was 1L per minute which should be fine.

Quite a nice colour this one. Amber, due most probably to the amber malt:

Fermentation update

Dropped down to 1012 which gives and ABV of  5.4% - about right for an IPA :)

Bottled it looked like this - I used half a cup of DME boiled in about 400ml of water. Slightly cloudy because of this I dare say, as it was very clear before bottling.

Can't wait til this one is ready. Will give it about two weeks to condition then get stuck in!

AG#5 - Director's clone

Sun Sep 18th, 2011

All-grain brew #5 is an attempt at a Courage Directors clone. The recipe is adapted from Graham Wheeler's "Brew Your Own British Real Ale".

I am ably assisted today by the oldest of my three brewing apprentices. She has lately confirmed that she "likes the smell, but not the taste, but, well, I don't know, I might like it, but well, when I'm older I might ..." ;)

Brew Length: Aiming for 20L

Grains
Maris Otter Pale Malt - 3100g
White Sugar - 300g
Crystal Malt - 220g
Black Malt - 22g

Looked something like this (grain is piled up the side, not an egg shaped grain bucket thankfully :) )

Mash info
90 minute mash @ 66'C, Strike temp 76'C

I actually got 66.8'C after strike - close enough tbh. If I lose more than a degree or two with that lot on it something's gone seriously wrong :)

EDIT: Lost 2'C ! More than I had hoped for. Will look at insulating the lid of the tun properly for next time, as that'll be where most of the heat escapes I imagine

Hops
Target - 22g @ 90 minutes
Styrian Goldings - 4g @ flame-out

Boil
90 minute boil, with hops going in as above. Irish Moss and chiller in @15 mins

In an attempt to quell the rapidly rising pre-boil foam (below), a quick burst from the hose, which turned out  not to be on the "tap" setting but on "pressure hose", sent froth up the shed wall.

After that a mercifully uneventful rolling boil! 99.6'C sustained for the whole 90 minutes - not bad for a single element Electrim :)

Yeast
Safale S-04 @ 20-28'C

Pitched @ 26'C - got impatient.


Gravity
OG: 1046 - 1048
FG: 1011 - 1013
ABV%: 4.4 - 4.9

Actually achieved 1042 @ 26'C which temp. corrects to 1044. Not a million miles away, probably lost a couple of points when liquoring back during boil.

SO! All in all a very good brew day - no major problems, a couple of tight timing moments.

Yeast cracking on apace this morning:

Now to think about what next month's brew will be ...

UPDATE 2/10/2011
Final gravity was 1012, giving an ABV of 4.2% - a little low but will turn into a perfectly adequate session beer :)

And finally into the Corny keg:

Some brewing terms explained

Liquor: Just hot water.
HLT: Hot Liquor Tank, holds water to be used for mashing/sparging
Brew Length: Basically just volume, in this case 19L
Strike Temp: The temperature at which the liquor in the HLT hits the mash tun. Adjusted up by 10'C in this case, to account for the cooler tun and the grain temp of 20'C, so strike temp was to be 78'C (was nearer nearer 80 in truth)
Mash: conversion of starch in malted (roasted) barley into sugar at specific temperatures
Sparge: The process of extracting sugars from the mash, adding liquor to the mash tun.
Boil times: 90 mins means at the start, 15 mins means 15 mins from the end.
Flame-out: The end of the boil


More to follow ...

AG #4 - Apache Longbow APA

Sun Aug 07, 2011

I've munged together a recipe I found online for SNPA with what I had in my cupboard to hopefully come up with something APAish.

Qbrew tells me I should expect OG of 1052 and an FG of 1013. I came in at 1050 which I am really quite pleased with as my last few have been quite a way off.

Brew length 19L

Grain
3800g Maris Otter
600g Crystal (60L)

Hops
13g Target @ 90mins
13g Cascade @ 30 mins
28g Cascade @ 10 mins (along with Irish moss)
50g Cascade @ 0 (I know, it seemed a ****load of hops to me but I thought I'd go with it as per this recipe I found)

Yeast I used was Safale US-05

Post boil hopping is not something I've done before  so I did what I had look on The Home Brew Forum for the post boil hops, which said to chill to 80'C, pop the hops in for 20 mins, then chill down the rest of the way. Not sure how it will turn out but it currently smells great ! :D

In all a thoroughly enjoyable brew day. No pics unfortunately as my camera batteries needed charging but here's one of the yeast that's got going already:



Some additional pics of this one in the bottle. Still very cloudy but hopefully only a result of the priming DME.

AG #3 - Oldfort Brown Ale

Sun Jun 19, 2011

A Brown Ale on Father's Day Sunday (NBA from a clone book) for AG#3:

Brew length 19L
4200g Maris Otter
60g Crystal malt
60g Chocolate malt
30g Black malt

25g Target @ 90mins
15g EKG @ 45mins

Yeast S-04

OG 1051
FG 1013
IBU 26
ABV 4.7%


Found a distinct lack of Target hops existing in my brew cupboard so used my only alternative, Northern Brewer. Hope this will be ok, apparently its a similar AA level?!

Also forgot the campden tablet whilst being sidetracked by the The Boy (who also managed to sneak into some photo's as you will see). I put it in pre-boild wort instead, as I saw this can be done online somewhere. Again hope it will be ok

OG was 6pts below target, maybe because I liquored back too much despite only reaching 19L. I wonder if too quick a sparge may also have contributed? Anyway, wound up at 1042@29.5'C, which corrects to 1045. Maybe I'll get it below 1010 in the ferment and make it up at the other end. No huge shame if not, 4.5% is perfectly adequate for my general needs

At least the hoses stayed attached to my chiller this time.

Grain:



The camera steadfastly refused to focus on the thermometer whilst trying to capture the mash temp, but it was 67'C which is just about right according to the book. On to the boil:



Hoses on the chiller, where they belong:



A good day really, but a little disappointed with the low OG at the end

AG #2 - "London Bitter" mash kit

Sun May 29, 2011

I got this London Bitter mahskit free with my equipment so thought I'd better use it up. Contents unknown but I've heard good things about it.

 All done and dusted by half 3 despite a repeat of the hose popping off the chiller again ffs

This is my new setup, 4 tiers using 2 Electrim boilers to save lugging wort around the place:



Grain bill unknown, as it came pre-mixed in the bag but there was 3.8kg of it. Spent grain looked like this anyway :



Boiling merrily:



Hop schmutz:



Hit about 1042 - no idea if this is right or wrong as there's no guideline in the instructions, but guess this will go down to about 1012-1010 ?



May be the lighting in the brew shed but it looked a bit lighter than I was expecting. That said it's a nice colour though:



And that was that! AG#2 in the can - yeast pitched at 22'C and now sat under my dining table for 14 days (or as long as I can get away with it before SWMBO has enough of it being there:) )

AG #1 - Blackwell Stout

 Sat Apr 09, 2011

Finally pulled my finger out and cracked on with my first AG. Great day, despite a lot to think about and the odd mishap

Recipe used was a clone stout and was very similar to:

3700g Maris Otter
225g Munich
225g Crystal
200g Chocolate
115g Flaked barley
60g Roast barley

28g Northern Brewer (-90 mins)
7g Cascade (-15 mins)

Wyeasts 1098 British Ale Yeast

which looked something like this (a pre-mix shot which, I'm led to believe, is necessary in order to appease the brew gods). Excuse the randomness of the pics, I was concentrating on getting the brew right and forgot to take pics a lot of the time



HLT heated the liquor to 78'C and achieved 68.0 at dough in (67.7 advised by clone book so close as can be without faffing). Mash bin covered in duvets to preserve heat:



Mash out temp was 67.6'C ! lost less than half a degree so pleased as punch with that as a first effort. Let the sparge commence!



Fat bloke sparging



Boiling away merrily. In went the Northerns at -90 mins, and Irish Moss and Cascades at -15 mins as per recipe.



Chiller - British engineering at it's finest. Shame the hose clips were seemingly tightened up by a four year old child



Yeast pitched at 22'C with an OG of 1055. The recipe said 1051-1052 so we were a little off but not too bad for a first effort.

A few hairy moments. The FV under the mash tun got stuck under the tap and freed itself violently over brew buddy Rich's shoes. Lost very little though thankfully. Second "oh ****" moment occured when the hose popped of the chiller at about 45'C, pouring about half a litre of cold dirty hose water into the wort. Fingers crossed there will be no ill effects

Only concern is that I misjudged a few quantities and wound up with closer to 17.5L as opposed to 19L. Will need to work on the boil I think and try and squeeze more out of my 25L FV's ...