Cushyno Brewdays etc..

[user 18729]

Setting up for tomorrow, SWMBO was consulted and as she's partial to everything German and especially lagers, we're looking at a Munich Helles.

2.5L starter of MJ Bohemian yeast had been on the go since Friday night.

About 5kg of grain milled and 31L of water treated. That includes 16L of fresh Lancashire rainwater to cut my horribly hard groundwater from the tap.

Father's Day brew in the garage in the rain is forecast.

Do you collect the rain water from the roof?

 

[cushyno]

Yes. The rain was heavy toward the end of last week so I let it pour down for half an hour to flush the dust and leaves off the roof, then diverted water from a downpipe. Collected it through a funnel lined with fine mesh bag to catch any debris.

First time for this, so fingers crossed.

 

[user 18729]

Yes. The rain was heavy toward the end of last week so I let it pour down for half an hour to flush the dust and leaves off the roof, then diverted water from a downpipe. Collected it through a funnel lined with fine mesh bag to catch any debris.

First time for this, so fingers crossed.

Love the idea of this! I guess you can’t store it for long unless you pump it through an RO unit before use

 

[cushyno]

I believe @An Ankoù had a bit of experience using rainwater. A couple of comments recently inspired me to try.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/brewshed-and-rainwater.87498/post-911590

 

[samale]

That's really interesting, I live in Ireland and it rains a lot.

 

[cushyno]

Love the idea of this! I guess you can’t store it for long unless you pump it through an RO unit before use

I never considered RO due to the amount of waste water. If I was able to pump rainwater through an RO system, that might just work. How much pressure do those things need?

 

[user 18729]

I never considered RO due to the amount of waste water. If I was able to pump rainwater through an RO system, that might just work. How much pressure do those things need?

My little thing, the same one that @strange-steve mentions in his posts, runs off my mains pressure out of my tap so I imagine a half decent pump would be man enough to do the job

 

[cushyno]

AG27 Dunkelweizen was bottled yesterday.

As I have begun building some stocks, some bottles from the bottom of the storage box have been in there a while and needed a good clean. Cleaning and bottling and various interruptions, the whole process took a big chunk of the day. I'm happy that I've done a good job though.

FG was down to 1.011, which is better than planned, though as this was fermented at 23-24°C and left for a full two weeks, should have been expected.

Sample tasted good. I'm happy that the brown malt brings something different to the party. Looking forward to trying this next week when it's carbed up.

Bottling went well except for smashing one weak bottle while capping. Cleaning up the glass and beer took a while. Garage still smells of beer 24 hours later.

Black caps look good for a dark beer:

 

[cushyno]

One for @Hopsteep
2nd generation St Austell, 400ml first step due to plenty of yeast in a bottle of Tribute Tribute.

I had PB'd the Tribute Tribute but put some in bottles for portability. So poured one of those tonight to harvest the yeast. When I poured the bottle lots of sediment became freely suspended in the beer. This yeast sinks pretty well but it doesn't stay stuck to the bottom like some yeasts.

 

[user 18729]

One for @Hopsteep
2nd generation St Austell, 400ml first step due to plenty of yeast in a bottle of Tribute Tribute.

View attachment 28589

I had PB'd the Tribute Tribute but put some in bottles for portability. So poured one of those tonight to harvest the yeast. When I poured the bottle lots of sediment became freely suspended in the beer. This yeast sinks pretty well but it doesn't stay stuck to the bottom like some yeasts.

Mine is going bloody mental on the stir plate tonight. Puts a lot of wyeast/white labs to shame

 

[cushyno]

It's a creamy dream of a yeast!

 

[cushyno]

Stepped it up. Awful picture, but this is 12 hours after dumping another 1.5L on top of the first 400ml. I hope my sanitation was good enough last night as it was late and I needed sleep.

 

[samale]

What size of starter do you need for a IPA with a starting gravity of 1.060

 

[cushyno]

@samale I think that would all depend on your starting point and how many step-ups you're prepared to do.

Are you starting from a bottle conditioned beer, saved slurry, a smack pack, or dried yeast? And how much do you have to start with?

If you go from a small volume to a large volume starter in one step it produces less yeast than doing two steps so you'd need a larger volume with one step.

 

[samale]

@samale I think that would all depend on your starting point and how many step-ups you're prepared to do.

Are you starting from a bottle conditioned beer, saved slurry, a smack pack, or dried yeast? And how much do you have to start with?

If you go from a small volume to a large volume starter in one step it produces less yeast than doing two steps so you'd need a larger volume with one step.

No from a standard liquid yeast. I have did a couple now. 2 litres with a starting gravity of 1.036. Just checking that this is correct. I have watched some on YouTube pitching less. Maybe they have decanted the starter

 

[cushyno]

No from a standard liquid yeast. I have did a couple now. 2 litres with a starting gravity of 1.036. Just checking that this is correct. I have watched some on YouTube pitching less. Maybe they have decanted the starter

Checking brewunited which I think uses the similar formula to brewers friend, if you have a standard 100bn cell liquid yeast pack and it was produced 1st April onwards, you'd just get away with a 1.5L starter in a single step on a stir plate.
If it's a manually shaken starter you'd need more than 3L!

You might be right about decanting before pitching. Books I've read that have a section on starters usually suggest pitching whole starter at high krausen, whereas many online guides suggest crashing and decanting after krausen has died down. I've used both and can't detect any difference. Though I haven't been that critically analytical of my own brewing to be honest.

 

[cushyno]

AG29 Fuller's London Porter

Having a range of lighter ales and lagers in the store cupboard I'm thinking ahead for the end of summer. I came across this recipe recently when reading up on brown malt. BYO did an article on brown malt, and the recipe was there and looked good. So plugging the numbers into Brewer's Friend app, I found that the grain quantities listed for a 19L batch exactly matched what I would need for a 23L batch at my predicted BH efficiency, only the hops needed adjustment to get the right IBU's.

Other tweeks: Crystal to match what I had in stock (might be on the dark side), a dash of Special B as a user-upper, plus First Gold hops for some of the bittering to keep the Fuggles to a nice 50g total.

Brew day was yesterday and went nice an smoothly out of the way in my garage, while keeping on top of other family things.

Recirculating the wort at approximately 1600W power from the element while bringing up to boil takes a while, but certainly avoids scorching. I have had no problems with this method for the last couple of brews, so threw caution to the winds and did no vorlauf or lautering except for lifting the mash bag out of my cooler and giving it a healthy squeeze. All liquid was then jugged straight into the boiler.

Batch Size: 23L
Efficiency: 75%
Original Gravity: 1.049
Target Gravity: 1.011
Ingredients
Grain
3.400kg Bestmalz Pale malt
0.680kg Crisp Brown Malt
0.320kg Crisp Chocolate malt
0.250kg Crystal 40L
0.200kg Crystal 122L
0.100kg Belgian Special B

Hops
16g First Gold (7.5% aa) @60 mins
29g Fuggles (4% aa) @ 60 mins
21g Fuggles (4% aa) @ 15 mins


Yeast
St Austell, healthy starter grown from a bottle of AG25 Tribute Tribute (originally from Proper Job), ~78%AA

Water adjustments to approximate Fullers London Porter water
Ferment at 20°C

OG came out 1 point high, but bang on target after pitching about 1L of starter. Crashing the starter wasn't finished by pitching time, so decanted off as much as I dared of the clearest liquid from the top.

I have high hopes for this dark beauty.

 

[matt76]

Good luck with the Helles, I have plans to make another one myself soon.

Regarding the porter, I read that BYO article a while back - I'm sure it'll make a tasty beer but I have my doubts how close it is to Fuller's. When I was researching I found a thread on Jim's Beer Kit citing a recipe in The Real Ale Almanac. From my experience the one in GH is also pretty close too.

I've been developing my own porter recipes more recently - I've found chocolate rye malt is really good! I did one earlier this year that ended up a very quaffable 3.8%, but I'm planning a more robust version around 5.5% (and also mulling over plans to tweak this further into a Baltic Porter!)

I do like a porter - seems to be one of those really good styles that for some reason gets overshadowed

 

[cushyno]

@matt76 Yes, the GH Brown Porter recipe isn't far off the BYO recipe, but definitely differs in the hop department.

I have gone research crazy on some recipes previously, particularly before doing recent Saison and Dunkelweizen. Yet for this one I just jumped straight in the BYO recipe and thought it looked good. It's never going to be a close clone so as long as it turns out tasty I'll be happy.

If I had the chance to brew regular smaller batches like yourself I'd love to have a go at tweaking and honing a recipe over time. Right now there are so many different styles to try so I get tempted to keep jumping on board very different recipes.

 

[cushyno]

Thanks for the tip about chocolate rye malt!