Good day to all my fello brewers.

[The Englishmans Fox]

Hello everyone in the home brewing world. My name is Richard and I have an old english style restaurant in the north west of England called The Englishman's Fox. It specialises in all things English and I am passionate about local produce. I have recently brought a lovely home with my wife and beautiful three year old daughter. Now more importantly the garden has a lovely brick shed that I have converted into a three tiered micro brewery. I want to start producing home brewed beer for the restaurant, typically English Stouts and pale ales. I have done mountains of research and watched hundreds of videos and feel like I know the mechanics. What I'm struggling with is the measurements. How much crushed grain do I need to mash to create wort and how do you work out how man kg of hops to use in relation to the grain. I've read a lot about gravity and was wondering where do I start if I won't to create my own pale ale style. I also won't to brew all grain. I have several kilos of different grains and several types of hops but m unsure how much to use for one batch. Thanks for all you help guys. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[stylis]

Hi Richard. Just thought I would say hello. Can't help with your question as I'm pretty new to brewing myself but you have come to the right place for advice. Everybody on is here is really friendly and helpful. Welcome and good luck with your brewing.

 

[Moley]

Welcome to the forum :

What sort of volumes are you wanting to brew? How big are your mash tun and boiler?

 

[pittsy]

As mentioned how much do you want to brew , for a standard size batch of beer which is 23 ltrs you could have approx 5kg of grain which should make a 5% beer and would start you off at approx 1050 gravity and probably would finish fermenting at around 1012 points gravity (give or take ) The grain bill depends on what you want to brew , a base malt is the back bone like pale ale malt , then you may use crystal malt(5 to 10%) for a bit of caramel/sweet taste and maybe a bit of dark grain for colour like choc malt (1 to 10%) and so on . While hops also depends on what you want , a lager or wheat beer has low hops and mainly aroma type (maybe 50/100g), bitters may have lots of bittering hops with lots of aroma hops too (maybe 100/200g ish ) So you need to give us a bit more info of what you want to brew and size of batch and so on . p.s welcome. :thumb:

 

[The Englishmans Fox]

Hey guys, thanks for all the welcomes. It's nice to have a place where you can discuss brewing with fello home brewers. Here's a little more information on my first brew.

1) I want to brew a pale ale maybe similar to an IPA. I was thinking using a base pale malt, with some crystal as well. (Thanks for the help on that one wheat chief).

2) I don't want the beer to be to dark.

3) Hop wise I was thinking East Kent Golding and Fuggles but have no clue at what stage to add these or what they do to the flavour at different times of addition.

4) Not sure what yeast to use. I like the look of Wyeast as it seems to be fresh and alive.

5) My three tier system is gravity fed and my mash tun and boil kettle are 70L. Not sure what my target amount would be. My strike water and sparge water are all heated by a propane burner which feeds direct into my mash tun which in turn feeds into my boil kettle which is also powered by a propane burner.

Cheers for the help guys I appreciate it

 

[graysalchemy]

Welcome to the forum. :thumb:

I take it you are going to learn the basics and then build a larger micro brewery as 70L isn't going to be worth the effort if you are planning on supplying your restaurant :lol: :lol: .

As you are probably aware there are a lot of hoops to jump through in order to legally produce beer to sell. Have you read 'the micro brewers handbook'.

A few people on here have successfully set up micro breweries.

Good luck :thumb:

 

[PD]

Welcome " The Englishmans Fox "

Will you be specialising in a certain brew for the restaurant ?

Possibly " Old Speckled Hen " ...... :grin:

 

[Moley]

So you've got a 3-tiered system and are using gravity as opposed to a pumped system. This is probably more suited to home brewing rather than micro or craft brewing to serve in your restaurant, unless you brew regularly or have a fairly small clientele.

Have you yet done any brewing whatsoever?

For recipes and general guidance, take a look in the Book Reviews section.

There are several forum members who operate commercial breweries on various scales, so I will leave it to them to recommend courses or books on the subject.

If you've got a 70 litre boiler then your batch size or ‘brew length’ is going to be limited to around 60 litres.

For that volume of an IPA you would probably need around 12-14kg of grain, maybe 150g of hops added at the start of the 90 minute boil and the same again added for the final 15 minutes.

Take a look at this excellent Guide to your first AG brew. Whatever volumes you are working to, the principle is the same.

 

[The Englishmans Fox]

Cheers everyone. I have done a small amount of brewing in the past mainly using malt extract but I followed recipes to the line with mixed success. I want to achieve more unique and induvidual results rather then following someone else's recipe. I want to brew mainly pale ales and I understand the yield will be small for supplying a restaurant but just want to start small and get a grip of the brewing and if the results are good then will look down the route of legally selling it. At the minute it will just be for m drinking pleasure or anyone's else that wants to sample it for feed back. Most of the sites I've looked on and the videos are American measurements so its hard to get my head around it.

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

Most of the sites I've looked on and the videos are American measurements so its hard to get my head around it.

The main difference is in volumes, and purely because the US gill (1/4 pint) is 4 US fl. oz, while the UK/Canada gill is 5 imp fl. oz. (There's a difference in the size of the US & UK fl. oz of <4%, small enough to be irrelevant for most purposes.) This makes all British/Canadian measures from the gill upwards (gill, cup, pint, quart & gallon) ~25% larger than their American equivalent. Therefore:

To convert from US volume measures to the UK equivalent, multiply by 0.8

To convert from UK volume measures to the US equivalent, multiply by 1.25

 

[pittsy]

many recipes from the usa as mentioned different amounts , 5 us gallon is 18.9 ltrs while british 5 gallon is 23 liters so i divide by 18.9 then times by 23

 

[joe1002]

Welcome to the forum :

 

[oldbloke]

many recipes from the usa as mentioned different amounts , 5 us gallon is 18.9 ltrs while british 5 gallon is 23 liters so i divide by 18.9 then times by 23

That seems unnecessarily complicated. Especially as 5 Imperial gallons is 22.73 litres, not 23.
The US gallon is 4/5 of ours [1], so just multiply by 1.25 (aka 5/4), or add 25% (aka a quarter)


[1] US: A pint's a pound the world around (blatant Yankeee imperialist lie)
UK: A pint of water's a pound and a quarter

 

[radioactive]

Welcome to the forum I am certain you are going to fit right in :thumb: