Brew No.7 - St Peter's Ruby Ale

[ceejam]

I started this off last night - first two can kit I've done - wanted to do a Red ale, and this looked inteersting.

As per kit instructions so far, added the sachet of hop powder before the yeast, which I rehydrated prior to pitching.

I plan to dry hop with a little Fuggles and a lot of Cascade, to see if I can get the flavour somewhere near Inveralmond's Thrappledouser.

Was thinking 30g Fuggles & 50-60g of Cascade after a week's primary fermentation, left in the fermentor for another week?

My Sparkling Ale dry hopped with Hersbrucker didn;t have as much hop aroma as I was expecting, so probably going to go with a bit more for shorter duration this time.

I've got this out in the garage with my new aquarium heater inside it set to 20 degrees, achieved a nice consistent temp of my last ferment, Mexican Cerveza, which tastes good!

No pics yet, was keen to get it done without stopping and forgetting something!

 

[dorset brewer]

i had abottle of this afew days ago.. not my favourite

 

[ceejam]

I was slightly concerned that the sample from my trial jar was quite bitter, and had seen that mentioned in relation to the kits before.

Was that your issue with it?

Might take some beer out and dissolve some sugar in it whne I go to dry hop it - Any thoughts?

 

[ceejam]

After a week this is starting to taste really good, quite a lot of hop bitterness, but not a million miles away from my memory of Thrappledouser!

So tonight I took out a couple of litres and heated them up to 70 degrees (ish) and added 20g of Fuggles and 50g of Cascade in a muslin bag for about 15 mins, then tipped this back nito the FV and gave it a good stir.

4 hours later, the hop aroma in the FV is amazing!

I'll leave this until the weekend or so before kegging & bottling.

 

[ceejam]

Just finished clearing up after bottling / kegging this.
22 bottles & 2 Mini kegs.

What a lot of faffing to clean that many bottles!

Tastes good, with a Finishing Gravity of 1012, I think the SG was 1038 (didn't post it on here, and not written it down :wha:), which makes it 3.5%, a nice supping ale for my Father in Law.

 

[chrisb2k]

What a lot of faffing to clean that many bottles!

There's a post on here somewhere about cleaning bottles in the dishwasher, using sanitiser instead of the dishwasher tablet/powder. I did this myself with my last brew, with excellent results! Cleans the dishwasher out nicely too

Definitely worth a try if you have a dishwasher.

 

[abeyptfc]

i used to just put my magners or bulmers bottles in dishwasher with a normal tablet and ive never had a problem with infections etc. its so much easier than sterilising every bottle, i got fed up with that though and got myself 2 cornies!