Beginner experimentation

[Sventendo NES]

I'm hearing cirta and Amarillo a lot so hop choice number 1 will deffo be one of those.

For hop 2 I think either cascade or rakau but I'm still not full commited to either. Rakau does sound tasty though.

Yeast wise I'm hearing US-05 and verdant so think these are going to be my little army of alcomakers.

Just need to focus on my base kit now. I feel like going for a pretty basic IPA kit would give me a blank canvas but I also don't want to waste my time on some old boot tasting pish.

 

[Sadfield]

I think any of the options would work. My only comment would be to ditch the kit yeast in the control. It's likely going to be Nottingham, but if you don't know exactly what it is, then that's a piece of lost data.

 

[Sventendo NES]

Good point. I have some Young's yeast I got off Amazon I was thinking as my base...?

 

[Sventendo NES]

I did get this for making cider but I read in the reviews people saying it makes beer just fine. Just thought I would use what I got but not sure what type it is.

 

[sifty]

You could also add fruit to a fermentation vessel. When I made a blueberry American wheat I reserved a 1.5l amount in a separate vessel without the blueberries to see how it went...

 

[Sventendo NES]

Thinking this could be my base?

 

[Sventendo NES]

You could also add fruit to a fermentation vessel. When I made a blueberry American wheat I reserved a 1.5l amount in a separate vessel without the blueberries to see how it went...

What vessel did you use? 1.5L seems small to my uneducated mind. Did you do the full ferment in that quantity?

 

[sifty]

It's a giant Grolsch flip top bottle, I just put a bung and airlock in it, and it fitted beside the main fermenter in the fermenation fridge...

So 20-odd litres in the fermenter with fruit, and a small amount reserved beside it. Note I'd pitched the yeast in the whole amount as I added fruit part way through the fermenation, siphoning off into the Grolsch bottle at this point.

 

[Sventendo NES]

It's a giant Grolsch flip top bottle, I just put a bung and airlock in it, and it fitted beside the main fermenter in the fermenation fridge...

Nice. So how did it come out without the Berries?

 

[sifty]

Like an American wheat. Pretty bland but clean and refreshing.

 

[Jim Brewster]

Just a thought, if you get 5x 5L water bottles you have everything you need for under a tenner - the water and the demijohns, if you refit the lids but don't tighten them they make adequate airlocks, as fermentation does down you can tighten them a little

 

[Sadfield]

Excellent suggestion @Jim Brewster

For another tenner, if you want airlocks, the lids can be easily drilled. Would be a shame to miss out on a chorus of fermentations plop-plopping away.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/17492725...ire8bM3TlG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

 

[Twostage]

I'm an experimenter too, its a good way of learning for yourself. One my recent ones was a split batch with Nottingham yeast in one and bread yeast in the other. Turns out the bread yeast almost completely removed the hop flavour and now after about a couple of months it is starting to taste like a saison. Wish I had more than one bottle left

 

[Sventendo NES]

Just a thought, if you get 5x 5L water bottles you have everything you need for under a tenner - the water and the demijohns, if you refit the lids but don't tighten them they make adequate airlocks, as fermentation does down you can tighten them a little

Great suggestions thanks Jim. I actually picked up 17 glass demijohns for 2 quid each including the bungs and the airlocks. As well as a 15L one for a fiver. The guy had a 30L one he only wanted a tenner for but I didn't have any more cash on me. I did intend to flog half of them to make my money back but I'm now deep down the rabbit hole and think I'll just use them for more brews.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I like @Sadfield ’s suggestions in post #10.

You can get more tests out of your brews by also blending the beers at the end. This might give you an idea of the combinations you prefer. Spoiler alert: I found almost any combination of three hops was best

Yesterday I made the effort and brewed four small-batch single-hop beers. I tried to take some of the effort out by mashing once and boiling the wort with the bittering addition, to be used as the base for all four brews. This did mean a pretty full boiler, I think I even pushed it further than @Hopsteep !

View attachment 31696

The recipe was quite simple

4250g Pale malt 82%
700g Malted wheat 13%
250g Crystal 30 5%
Mash for 75 mins at 150F
10g Magnum leaf AA=15.3% 60 mins
At 15 mins add 1/2 protofloc tablet
At 0 mins add 1Kg Glucose in 2 litres boiling water.
Drop temp to 180F and decant 28 litres into two fermenting buckets.

For each of the four beers:
7 litres of the base wort into boiler
Raise to 170F and hold temperature for 30-min hopstand with 60g of the flavour hop
Cool to 70F
Approx 6 litres into FV (Jerry can!)
3g US05 yeast

Each batch will be dry-hopped on day 5 with 20g and day 9 with 20g of the same flavour hop.

Each batch will be bottled on day 14.

Here’s the result, 4 small batch brews in the fermentation cupboard.

View attachment 31697

The plan when these are fermented is to blend them in various combinations to see which hop combinations I prefer. I’ll add more on this as I do it.

 

[Tommo 2]

crossmyloof are brilliant for dry yeast and the dilivery is free. And a hop I’ve tried recently is nectron and is very tasty in an ipa

 

[Sventendo NES]

crossmyloof are brilliant for dry yeast and the dilivery is free. And a hop I’ve tried recently is nectron and is very tasty in an ipa

Thanks Tommo. I just placed an order for a load of different hops and a few yeasts from The Malt Miller as I thought they had more selection.
Here's what I ended up with. Not gonna use most of it this time around but wanted to get a wide range for later play time.

 

[Twostage]

Thanks Tommo. I just placed an order for a load of different hops and a few yeasts from The Malt Miller as I thought they had more selection.
Here's what I ended up with. Not gonna use most of it this time around but wanted to get a wide range for later play time. View attachment 89664

I’ve used verdant in an IPA and it’s a good yeast.