Fury Tea's brewdays

[fury_tea]

Here's a pretty picture of my Belgian Pale Ale. I was trying not to drink in the week this week but having this on tap makes that almost impossible.

Had a bit of a nightmare with my Huell Melon Vienna Lager. I think I overfilled the keg. I might cut down one of my gas posts (the part that goes into the keg) next time.
The issue was that the post got blocked with crud, I heard the PRV constantly off gassing and the gauge was stuck on 40psi. I tried to let pressure out via the prv but it kept blowing crud out. I unscrewed one post just a bit, it let some gas out then stopped, I pulled it all the way off the a geyser of foam shot out, it didn't stop so I grabbed another post from another keg and quickly screwed it on. That fixed the issue but damn did it make a mess. I only lost about a pint I think but it was all foam and it got everywhere!

 

[fury_tea]

First brew day in months! Having a baby really eats into your brewing time (and drinking time for that matter).

My home grown hops were ready and if I didn't harvest this weekend it would probably be too late.

So I thought I would keep it super simple, the base is just 5kg Vienna malt.

617g of hops harvested (probably some bugs as well).

Brew day was long, I mashed in thinking I can harvest while it mashed. Well 2.5hrs later I was still plucking hops off the bines.

The rest of the brewday was pretty uneventful, used 50g of challenger at 60 mins to provide some bitterness, then with the wet hops I took @An Ankoù 's advice and split the batch in 2 - a 10 minute addition and an 80c addition.

Doing no chill as usual so it's sat in the garage until tomorrow when I will pitch some Nottingham and set the fridge to 20c.

I have another brew upcoming, a smaller batch, not a for my 10L keg. Watch this space...

 

[fury_tea]

It's experiment time...

Friend gave me a Simply Lager kit he was given for Xmas by his ex MIL and doesn't want...

What's the fun in brewing a kit how it's meant to be brewed though?

So... Peanut butter & chocolate milk stout!

Doing 12L brew (to end up with 10L in my small keg). Thinking I want it stronger than the 4-5% the beer kit will give me so I'll do an easy mini mash with 1kg of base malt, and throw the lager kit in to a 15 minute boil and chuck the PB, lactose and cacao nibs in at 1 min.

No need for hops because the kit is already hopped (and using it in half the intended volume essentially doubles the ibus). My guess is the lager kit will be quite lightly hopped as it is so not worried about bitterness. I am half tempted to throw a handful of EKG in at flame out though, just for flavour.

Tonight I'm doing an overnight steep of the choccy malt and roasted barley and that can go in at maybe 5 min too.

It's actually ended up being quite a pricey brew even with the free beer kit, although there will be cacao nibs and lactose left I think.

See how it goes anyway...

 

[fury_tea]

Peanut butter milk chocolate stout:

12L brew (but ended up with a bit more in the fermenter due to not taking into account the amount of space all the adjuncts would take up! It's close to the top of the fermenter so I just hope it's not too lively!

Overnight cold steep:
100g Roasted Barley
230g Chocolate Malt

Mini mash:
1.4kg Vienna

Added into the bucket:
1.8kg Simply Lager Kit
2x 180g Peanut Butter Powder
250g Lactose
250g Cacoa Nibs

Once cooled to 80c:
20g EKG

I did a full volume no sparge in the Robobrew, once that was done and boiled, I added it all into the fermenter and chilled in there. Added the kit yeast and away we go.

I forgot to take a sg but the brewing software said 1.082 so let's say that's right!

 

[fury_tea]

So kegged these 2 today. Went quite smoothly.

Choc PB milk stout: 3L of trub, pb and Cocoa nibs in this bad boy. It tastes like a really nice milk stout but I can't taste even a hint of PB - if I didn't know it was there I wouldn't be able to tell. I didn't bother taking a gravity reading because I thought all the adjuncts would throw it off but I think it should have ended up around 7%.

Fresh hop ale: first taste and it's really nice. I wouldn't call it 'hoppy' by my usual standards but it's got a nice mild bitterness and no unusual grassy notes that I can distinguish. The colour is much lighter than it looks in the pic too. Once it's carbed and settled I'll be able to get a proper feel for how it came out but if it stays along the lines of what I tasted today I'll be well happy.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Your recipes are certainly nothing but adventurous! Good on you :-)

 

[fury_tea]

First brew day since Nov last year! Who knew working for the NHS and having a 1 year old child would sap all your time?

Had a tidy up of my brew space and found mouse/rat droppings on some of my gear.
Everything got a good bleach and soak, luckily my grain is in plastic boxes so I guess they were just hoovering up any stray grains. I'll keep my eye out and maybe let the cat in there a bit more often.

Also my gas has ran out over the winter, it was close to running out anyway (the needle was already dropping which is a sign it's close). I'll have to get some ordered on Monday. Wonder if the prices have gone up.

Brew day went 'ok', I decided to do 2 beers today as we have my wife's family over to stay from France next month and I wanted a couple in stock.

Beer #1: User Upper Pale Ale. Bit of a mish mash this one, just kind of winging it here. I had a load of left overs from previous brews so thought I'd just use them all up. 3kg Vienna, 1.5kg Maris otter, 1kg wheat.
I tipped about 20g of a random mix of hops (from a previous batch that I'd forgotten to dry hop) at 60 mins and decided not to hop it at whirlpool and I'll just put everything into dry hopping.

I've got about 600g of random hops left over from last year that have been in the garage fridge over winter, so will probably do 2x 250g hop charges then keg hop with the last 100g. It's a mix of hüll melon, citra, Amarillo and an unnamed mixed bag.

SG on this is 1.052. Currently no-chilling in the garage. Yeast will be a Kentucky common I got from crossmyloof last year.

Beer #2 is a smaller batch of Chinook pale.

After transferring the first beer there was about 9L of wort (including dead space) left in the Robobrew, so I topped back up to 15L with RO water, added a 1.5kg tin of 'Geordie lager' kit.

60 min boil, then whirlpooled and added 100g Chinook at 80c.

Collected 13L of wort, also no-chilling and I'll dry hop with 200g Chinook in a few days.

OG was 1.048 on this one and I'll just use the yeast that came with the kit.

Should have a couple of alright beers there I reckon.

 

[fury_tea]

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.

 

[fury_tea]

Braggot brew day was yesterday!

Never even tried a braggot before so I am excited to taste this one. My friend came round to help and we each ended up with 20L. Ended up doing a partial mash, on the Brewzilla 35L.

SG: 1.074 (estimated)

Recipe:

Munich malt 2.5kg
Pilsner Malt 2kg
Wheat malt 800g
Caramel 240 250g (I wonder if this might have been a bit much - but I lowered the chocolate malt amount and added this. Hoping for some residual sweetness in there to bolster the honey flavour...)
Choc malt 50g

10g Cryo Cascade @ 60min
15g Cryo Cascade @ 0min

At flame out - turned the recirc on and added
Wildflower honey 1.1kg
Buckwheat honey 900g
Light LME 1.5kg

There was 30L of wort so we split that between the 2 fermenters and filled with previously boiled RO water.

In a few days I (and my friend) will add another 900g of buckwheat honey to our fermenters. Not sure where it will finish but if it's 1.010 then we're looking at around 8.4% which isn't bad.

Hoping to get another brew day going soon - a Kveik pale ale for Christmas!

 

[fury_tea]

Brewed a Kveik hazy pale ale type thing today.

Didn't take a SG for some reason but software said it was around 1.060 so I'll go with that. 40 Min mash, 40 Min Boil on this one too.

Recipe

Grain bill:
3kg Pilsner malt
1kg Munich
700g Wheat malt
500g Porridge oats

40 Min Boil
10g Riwaka

Whirlpool @ 80c
15g Riwaka
25g Mosaic

Dry Hop
50g Riwaka
50g Mosaic
15g Citra Cryo

Keg Hop
25g Riwaka
25g Mosaic
10g Citra Cryo

Looked a bit of a weird colour when in the fermenter, not sure how much of a great idea the munich was but time will tell, I just wanted to give it a bit more flavour on top of the pilsner.

My ferm fridge has the braggot and kombucha in at the moment so having to get creative with this one. Popped the malt pipe retaining ring thing off the kettle so my fermenter would fit in, filled with water and set to 36c. As with most my Kveik brews this took off within 2 hours and is chugging away right now. I never know when to dry hop Kveik but might do it tonight before I go to bed, about 8 hours after yeast pitch.

Should have some stock for the Christmas period at this rate.

 

[fury_tea]

Another brew day today. That's 3 brews in 8 days, might be a record for me! I also did a kombucha end of Nov so not going thirsty any time soon.

Brewing something a bit different this time though. I wanted something low ABV (under 3%), thought it would be nice to have something chuggable over the Xmas period without getting too drunk.

I bought this frightfully expensive bottle of Japanese yuzu juice a little while back, thought it might be nice to do something approaching a Japanese yuzu lager (but hoppier, and using kveik). I am using some leftover Voss from my last brew which I know isn't ideal for a lager or low gravity as it's not a clean fermenter and it likes higher gravity beers, but I will throw a load of nutrients in and see what happens. Hoping it will be ready for Christmas.

I tried a drop of the yuzu in a bottle of Stella 0% and it was very strong. I will have to go easy on it, might try 50ml in a 19L batch to start with, maybe even less than that, it's better to have it taste mildly of yuzu than be too strong I think.

Recipe

Grain bill:
1.3kg Pilsner malt
500g Wheat malt
500g Japanese Rice (pre-boiled for 20 mins)

40 Min Boil
8g Sorachi Ace

Whirlpool @ 80c
42g Sorachi Ace

I mashed at 70c. I also threw half a handful of crystal 240 in after about 10 minutes for a touch more colour.

SG: 1.025

It was weird to have such a small amount of grain, didn't even need the handle for the malt pipe I could just lift it out with one hand.

Gone for no chill on this one, left it in the garage for a couple of hours and it was down to 40c so i pitched the yeast and set the Brewzilla to 36c.

I saved a few hundred grams of the yeast from the bottom of the fermenter while transferring out my last beer (from Thursday), will ferment it in the Brewzilla again.