Not been brewing much recently at all but my home grown hops were turning brown so I thought I would do a super quick brew to save what I could (although it's turned into a bigger project).
I bought a Coopers lager kit, was thinking that's quite a cheap way to get a fairly neutral base beer that I can build off. That came with enhancer and I was going to steep some grains to add a bit of extra flavour.
Well I changed my mind last minute and did a mini mash (I've got like 20kg of malt there that needs using up but just did 3kg light malt - i'll keep the enhancer for some other project), and i added in some random quite old hops I found in my brew fridge (Saaz) at the end of the boil, added the coopers tin to the fermenter and put the mini mash on top to dissolve it.
SG 1.055 and used Lallemand Voss. I pitched the yeast at 1am Friday morning - sprinkled directly on top and kept ferm fridge at 35c. No yeast activity Sat morning so took a gravity reading and it was 1.010. Crazy quick - maybe 24hr-32hr from start to finish. Had a taste and it is pretty good, no off flavours or anything and quite fruity
Harvested hops today and just threw them in along with the rest of the old Saaz and added a few tablespoons of brewing sugar and gave it a stir (it was at 25c by this point) - but I always think kicking off a little bit of fermentation is a good way to use up any oxygen that's been introduced and push any oxygen out of the fermenter. Not sure there's any truth to this but it makes sense to me.
They are floating which isn't ideal, should have bagged them up and put a weight in but I didn't have a hop bag handy.
Got friends coming this Saturday so will likely transfer to keg on Tuesday, cold crash and add gelatin and hope for the best!
Here's a pic of the hops (I got about 2/3x that amount) - some have seen better days tbh, should have got round to this a few weeks ago really. I probably wasted about 1/2 of them that were too far gone.