An Ankoù brewday:

DocAnna said:

Crikey 115 to 120 litres of beer is a lot to bottle - I thought half that was a bit of a mountain to climb . Five brews in a week sounds like a commercial process, I'm well impressed. .

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Thank you, Anna, for those words of encouragement, I fear I'm trying the patience of The Wise One, though, to it's limit. So I'd better get on with something else, like picking the last of the blackberries for blackberry wine.

An Ankoù said:

In his book co-written with Roger Protz "Homebrew Classics - India Pale Ale", Clive la Pensée has a right old rant about how much he enjoyed an IPA crafted by one James McCrorrie, A Durden Park member, and how it was by the the best among what appears to be an absolute shedload of IPAs that they necked down that particular lunchtime in May. Later in the book he provides the recipe scaled down from McCrorrie's 12-gallon batch and, I have to say, I'm dubious that the grainbill he recommends will give the required OG per volume. Anyway, I've corrected that and knocked up 12 litres this morning. The recipe's below. I have to say that the malt and overall hop quantity are very similar to the recipe for Lovibond XB (1864), which is becoming one of my favourites, but the hop timings are different and the IPA is dry hopped. Here we go. What is there to lose? A little lightweight for an IPA I thought, but let's get on with it. He calls it Balham IPA.

Balham IPA
12 litres, OG 1055, IBUs- a fair few.
Water treated for IPA (ie, Burtonised) He recommends Murphy's Liquor Treatment. I used the scrapings from the floor of the budgie cage.
MO Pale Ale Malt (I used Hook Head) 3 Kg
Hops: Goldings Early Bird (I used up some open bags of EKGs, Worcester Goldings and a tad of WGV in the first charge to make up the weight)
50g at start of boil (mine go in as FWH)
25g for 30 minutes
(Irish moss (protofloc) last 10 minutes)
22g at flameout
15g dry hops

Mash at 68C for 90 minutes
90 minute boil
Yeast not specified. I've used W1028 London Yeast as I had some ready in the fridge.

There's much more detail given in the book including dry hop in Cornelius kegs for 7 days and roll them twice daily (not going to happen as I'm bottling) and drink as soon as clear. For those who have the book, it's on page 150.
Everything came out as it should. I liquored back from 11 litres to just over 11½ litres to hit 1055 and Bob's your uncle.
I wish I'd had some Early Bird, but I've never seen it for sale. As it happens, I've got three bines of Calais Goldings just about to pop so I'll knock up a later green-hop batch with those when they're ready. They're alleged to be like Early Bird.

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Well. It's getting bottled tomorrow. Racked and dry hopped it last thursday and the racking gravity was 1014. A little bit of activity during the following days, but all quiet now. RG is still 1013-1014 and I would have expected a bit of hop creep. The beer tastes quite nice- very rich, in fact due, no doubt, to it's gravity. It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it's carbed up and aged a bit. It's a pleasant enough beer, but I don't see (yet) what Clive was wetting his knickers about.

An Ankoù said:

Well. It's getting bottled tomorrow. Racked and dry hopped it last thursday and the racking gravity was 1014. A little bit of activity during the following days, but all quiet now. RG is still 1013-1014 and I would have expected a bit of hop creep. The beer tastes quite nice- very rich, in fact due, no doubt, to it's gravity. It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it's carbed up and aged a bit. It's a pleasant enough beer, but I don't see (yet) what Clive was wetting his knickers about.

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Yummmmmmm

I see it's ages since I posted in this thread. Shame on me. that's not to say I haven't brewed anything. I suppose it's only worth posting new and exciting brews, but even then there are plenty of those. I'm particularly excited about so called "pseudo" or "faux" lager. I thought I'd have a go and my expectations weren't high, but the beer lived up to the claims made for it and I'm going to do a few more with different hops. That one was knocked up with Nectaron hops.

Today's brew was inspired by a thread elsewhere about having something dark for Christmas. I'd been ferreting around the Gladfield Malts recipe book and was taken by their Extra Stout. I already had the recipe all written out and ready to go so it was a simple matter of getting off my fat bum and doing it. So I did.

It's rated at 5.7% abv- my FGs are always a bit lower than target so I reckon I'll get 6%, which is perfect for a winter stout. I might even add some lactose to part of the beer before bottling it up. We'll see.

Here's the recipe converted into European malts as Gladfield's malt names are a joy in themselves (see end of post) and recalculated to my standard 20L batch.

20L OG/FG/abv 1056/1013/5.7% IBUs 40

Pale Malt 3.25 Kg
Flaked Barley 500g
Crisp's Cara Gold 400g
Château Black Wheat Malt 385g
Fawcett's Brown malt 208g
Crisp's Chocolate Malt (850 ebc) 208g
Château Cara Clair 208g
No pH adjustment to water with CRS. CaCl2 3g, CaSO4 2g (That's for my water)
Mash @ 65C
One charge of hops at start of boil Pacific Jade recommended to 40 IBUs
(I finished off an open packet of Pac Jade and made up the difference with Green Bullet, also open)
Boil 60 mins + 10 mins with copper finings
BRY97 recommended. I used CML Atlantic (which I'm very impressed with).

All went well. Best brewday for a long time- the wind had dropped and so I could brew outside and full length. Ended up with 19½ litres at target OG. All pitched and now just waiting for the beer.

Apologies for the malt bill, I spent an age decoding Glafdfield's malt specs and making my own substitution chart- their own is very approximate.

Gladfield Extra Stout - NEW!
(15C. Irish Extra Stout)
Batch Size
30L Kettle Full; ~23L (in fermenter)
Targets:
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.013
IBU: ~40
Colour 70 EBC
Efficiency: 74%
Ingredients:
Malts
4.20kg Gladfield Ale Malt (64.5%)
0.65kg Harraway’s Rolled Barley (10.1%)
0.50kg Gladfield Toffee Malt (7.7%)
0.35kg Gladfield Eclipse Wheat (5.4%)
0.27kg Gladfield Brown Malt (4.1%)
0.27kg Gladfield Light Chocolate Malt (4.1%)
0.27kg Gladfield Gladiator Malt (4.1%)
Hops
60min–
32g Pacific Jade 12.7% aa (40 IBU)
Yeast
Lallemand BRY-97 West Coast Ale Yeast (1 Packet)
Est ABV 5.7%

I like a stout but rarely brew them as I can not drink many as I need to be in the mood for them and a keg full will last too long and tie up a keg. It is a staple for some though

I thought I was the only person on here using Pacific Jade - nice hop

i will second cml atlantic

Time I posted a brewday. Bit of a panic on: it's getting very warm and the tap water is now 18C- not good for cooling. And I've got some slap-pack yeasts to use up before the summer.
This is a marker as I had difficulty finding my old thread.
More to follow.

An Ankoù said:

Time I posted a brewday. Bit of a panic on: it's getting very warm and the tap water is now 18C- not good for cooling. And I've got some slap-pack yeasts to use up before the summer.
This is a marker as I had difficulty finding my old thread.
More to follow.

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Here we go:
No disrespect to @MisteBadger and his ancient yeasts from Palestine, but that's nothing to what I found lurking at the back of my fridge last weekend; a slap-pack of Wyeast 1469, West Yorkshire with a manufacturing date of April 2020. Thought I'd better get this one going and I made up a starter culture last Sunday which showed no signs of life until Thursday afternoon. Then lots of fizz on swirling but no head at all. By Saturday it had used the fermentables in the starter medium and this morning is staring to drop out.
So, I'm going to make a small, 10 litre batch just to be sure I've cultured the target yeast and not some alien species. My culturing technique is clean with everything done at 100C until the moment of pitching, but I don't have the facility to autoclave the kit and the medium.
So, as it was a recent thread on hops for TT Landlord that reminded me I even had this yeast, I'm going to do A near SMaSH with Golden Promise and HBC's Styran Goldings which I think are Savijnski. I'll chuck a bit of torrified or flaked wheat in there, but that'll be it. If the yeast is good I'll decide what to do with it later. I'll post the recipe with the beer report.

Also found a big pack of Citra lurking at the bottom of my other fridge. These had been opened a couple of years ago, resealed with sellotape and wrapped tightly in a ziplock bag. This must be when I went through a phase of being completely citra-ed out and off all ghastly American hopped pale ales and IPAs. However, I've got through that and want to make them again. To make a long story longer, my first reaction was to chuck them as I've had bad experiences with open hop packets (Galaxy doesn't keep at all). But I thought I'd have a sniff and, while they're not a pungent as I remember, they definitely smell kosher so I've knocked up a quick 15 litre batch of Morton's Undead APA, leaving out the crystal malt and the Munich malt, neither of which have any place in an APA in my opinion, and pitching onto a CML Five cake. Half expecting to have to chuck this one and I've already ordered some fresh Citra. But we'll see. It's off like the clappers of hell this morning and it smells promising. Report to follow.

It's a long time since I posted a brew although I've done loads since I last posted here. Well, the weather's absolutely foul so there'll be no brewing outside until it improves. A perfect opportunity to do some indooors, small-batch brewing. And what better than to try to resolve a couple of problems: My last batch of Old Thumper made with Chevallier was awful so I'm going to do a Chevallier SMaSH with fuggles to remind myself of the basic characteristics of this malt. I also had trouble with my Oakham Citra clone, but more on that later.
So. 7 litre SMaSH, OG 1046 (should have been 1050 so Chevallier doesn't have as good a yield as other malts). Hops boiled in bags and removed. Everything else went into the fermenter with a bit of nutrient and 5g of CML Ale yeast.

Look at this:
3 attempts at a video doesn't work. I'll post some stills later.

Don't know if you can see in the second photo that the beer is absolutely boiling. The flocs are either lumps of trub or clumps of yeast. The ambient temp is about 21C and the beer temp was 23.5 (higher than I would have wanted) but the maximum recommended temperature for "Ale" is 25C so we're within tolerance. All smells good, and now, early evening, the internal temperature has dropped and the lumps are beginning to settle out. If there's a clear sediment tomorrow, I'll rack the beer into a new PET and have a crafty taste to see if there's any evidence of yeast bite. Hope not.
The first photo shows how simple it is to do these small batches. I use an 8-litre mineral water PET and a plastic freezer/lunch bag held in place with a rubber band. By this morning, the yeast had blown off into the bag and so I just pulled it off, wiped the top of the PET clean, discarded the bag and fitted a new one. I've got loads of these PETS, they cost less than 2 euros when full and they can be used over and over. I use them for wine, too.

That’s some excellent low cost brewing.

I like to watch the roiling that goes on in an active fermentation. I used to just put the lid on loosely the escaping CO2 would make it click.

The roiling has now stopped and the lumps of yeast/trub have settled on to the bottom of the PET.
It looks like Granola or like the yeast you used to find in Freeminer beers, if anyone remembers that. I'll rack the beer this afternoon and wait for it to drop clear before bottling.

I used to use the plastic water cooler bottles to ferment cider in, admittedly a long slow ferment in the garden shed over the winter, I did find them quite oxygen permeable. Couple of containers left for a really long time I made either acetone ( nail polish remover) or cider vinegar. If only I'd known it was such a wonder substance I could have bottled it!

The beer won't be in there for long enough to worry about oxygen contamination. It'll be bottled by the end of the week.

Realised your beer would be moving on quickly, but just a warning in case you did decide to use for something longer.

RoomWithABrew said:

Realised your beer would be moving on quickly, but just a warning in case you did decide to use for something longer.

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Thanks. I do start my wines and meads off in these as this allows me to make up a batch which, when racked, will fill a demijohn nicely. Not too worried while the wine's saturated with CO2, but there's a temptation to leave it if it's not clearing very quickly.. And I do leave my wines and meads for months before bottling.

Just been having a look through some old threads (going back to 2015) about Bestmalz Red-X malt. Some are quite amusing as to what people think it is and how it should be used.
I haven't used this for quite a while and I've just taken delivery of a new sack. I've got some old, pre-crushed stuff to use up in the meantime and it seems to be in perfect condition. So looking back through my notes I remember the following:
When used on it's own, it tends to drink a little thin. Yet Bestamalz recommend using it alone with an OG of around 1050.
When I used it alone with an OG of 1060, it made a very good american-style IPA. In fact it was a copy of Stone Brewing's Pataskala Red-X IPA, which they seem to have retired.
It also works well in a bitter, but needs a bit of backbone to hold it up.
I also made an adaptation of @The Baron 's rye beer using Red-X which I thought was very good.

With this in mind I'm resurrecting the Red-X. First off my Redbreast Bitter, last brewed April, 2020.
12 litres, OG 1045, BU35
85% Red-X; 10% Caramalt (Minch); 5% Flaked Barley.
Challenger to 35 IBUs assuming 20% utilisation. EKGs last 10 mins and at flameout. Pitched with CML Ale.
This one has been in the fermenter since Wednesday and primary fermentation is over

I couldn't remember what i thought I was hoping for from the flaked barley so I've brewed another one without it:
12 litres: 90% Red-X and 10% caramalt.

Minch caramalt is about the same colour as Red-X (around 30 ebc) so I'm hoping for a lovely bright red beer in each case.

Next up:
A vivid red pilsner using 100% Red-X and noble hops to be decided.

Same as above but adding 10% caramalt to improve body and head retention (I want to see what difference it makes) and hopped with NZH-101, which have been pulled from development. Fortunately I got half a kilo when heard the bad news; they're a lovely hop- better than NZH-102 which became superdelic, in my opinion.

And of course the Pataskala.

So that should get me through the old stock and well into the new. 3 beers planned for next week so I'd better get the rest of my small fermenters out of the loft and put the big ones away for the moment.

HAS ANYBODY ELSE USED THIS MALT? I'D LOVE TO HEAR WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF IT AND DO WITH IT.

Barley flakes = full flavour, foam stability

Red X Recipe: