simon12
Landlord.
Hi all, I only joined the forum a few days ago but brewed my 1st wine nearly a year ago and have been making all grain beer for a couple of months and thought I would post a brief history of how it went if anyone is interested.
The Kit days
Got a Wilko Cab Sav. kit with a demijohn last winter an dfermented it as per instructions. I tasted awful until it was 3 months old and I only had 1 bottle left when it became quite good. I bought a few more demijohns on ebay and made various fruit juice and tea bag wines with mixed success and a Beaverdale rioja which was amazing. This inspired me to get a large plastic fermenter from Wilkos to do 30 bottle kits and also used it for a 30l litre batch of cider (from juice) which went down well with everyone at a barbecue. I have done a few more beaverdale kits all good and did a cheap wilkinsons ale (I never thought you would get beer more than just drinkable from a kit before) but this was good (not great though) and has been my only non all grain beer)
Move to all grain
I did this course http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Mashing_Course.html#.VBGXXvldXjc I think in june as I could not really picture the all grain process from reading about it and it made the whole thing seem alot easyer. At first I was thinking of spending £500+ on a fancy stainless boiler and mash tun but in the end decided to do it as cheap as possible and got a 33l plastic bucket a plastic tap and the element out of my spare £5 kettle for a boiler and a £15 cool box with a tap and bazooka screen for a mash tun.
1st all grain brew day
The day before I had measured the dead space in the equipment and was worried the mash tun droped 3C in half an hour when half filled with 65C water. I did a simple recipe on beersmith 4kg maris otter 500g crystal malt and 100g fuggles 75g for 60 mins and 25g for 10 mins aiming to make a 23l (into the fermenter) batch. Being worried about the temp drop in the mash tun I started the mash 3C hotter than the 66.7 beersmith suggested but as I covered it with a duvet I got less than a 1c temp drop over the hour. The other problem was it looked like I had got the volume wrong and there was too much and ended up nearly 5 litres under as a result (ass the volume was spot on just seemed to much). This meant I ended up with an OG of 1.057 when the target was 1.047. Despite the issues the end product was better than I ever thought possible. It was the most flavourful beer I had ever tasted and was just amazing.
Brief description of later brews
Next I made a porter and got a similar issue with volumes which resulted in ABV being 1% higher than target. A good beer but I think its to dry and lacks something. Next go was a weeker 3.5% ordinary similar to the 1st brew I did but using more hops later and 1st gold as the bittering hop so less needed early, I now seem to have got the quantity cracked and ABV wqs dead on target. The end product was very similar to youngs ordinary in the feel and body but loads more flavour and very happy with it. Next I tried to copy the 1st try but getting the quantity correct and changing the hops for a mix of 1st gold and EKG, I made a mistake no this one by changing the hop additions at the last min and increasing the bitterness to a high level when I adjusted the recipe in beersmith. This was only bottled on Sunday so end result unknown. Also not bottled yet I tried the same recipe again but adding all the hops as late additions and a lot more of them to get a good level of bitterness and hopefully a lot of hop flavour, I planned to use a full body mash rather than medium but forgot to pre warm the mash tun and ended up with medium temp. Last sunday I made a brew using the left over fuggles I had for bittering and a whole pack of wai-iti hops as late additions also using 500g of cara red malt and only a small amount of crystal.
Despite the issues the 1st batch I made is the best to date I think my next move will be to try to replicate it maybe with more late hops.
Hope someone finds this interesting
The Kit days
Got a Wilko Cab Sav. kit with a demijohn last winter an dfermented it as per instructions. I tasted awful until it was 3 months old and I only had 1 bottle left when it became quite good. I bought a few more demijohns on ebay and made various fruit juice and tea bag wines with mixed success and a Beaverdale rioja which was amazing. This inspired me to get a large plastic fermenter from Wilkos to do 30 bottle kits and also used it for a 30l litre batch of cider (from juice) which went down well with everyone at a barbecue. I have done a few more beaverdale kits all good and did a cheap wilkinsons ale (I never thought you would get beer more than just drinkable from a kit before) but this was good (not great though) and has been my only non all grain beer)
Move to all grain
I did this course http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Mashing_Course.html#.VBGXXvldXjc I think in june as I could not really picture the all grain process from reading about it and it made the whole thing seem alot easyer. At first I was thinking of spending £500+ on a fancy stainless boiler and mash tun but in the end decided to do it as cheap as possible and got a 33l plastic bucket a plastic tap and the element out of my spare £5 kettle for a boiler and a £15 cool box with a tap and bazooka screen for a mash tun.
1st all grain brew day
The day before I had measured the dead space in the equipment and was worried the mash tun droped 3C in half an hour when half filled with 65C water. I did a simple recipe on beersmith 4kg maris otter 500g crystal malt and 100g fuggles 75g for 60 mins and 25g for 10 mins aiming to make a 23l (into the fermenter) batch. Being worried about the temp drop in the mash tun I started the mash 3C hotter than the 66.7 beersmith suggested but as I covered it with a duvet I got less than a 1c temp drop over the hour. The other problem was it looked like I had got the volume wrong and there was too much and ended up nearly 5 litres under as a result (ass the volume was spot on just seemed to much). This meant I ended up with an OG of 1.057 when the target was 1.047. Despite the issues the end product was better than I ever thought possible. It was the most flavourful beer I had ever tasted and was just amazing.
Brief description of later brews
Next I made a porter and got a similar issue with volumes which resulted in ABV being 1% higher than target. A good beer but I think its to dry and lacks something. Next go was a weeker 3.5% ordinary similar to the 1st brew I did but using more hops later and 1st gold as the bittering hop so less needed early, I now seem to have got the quantity cracked and ABV wqs dead on target. The end product was very similar to youngs ordinary in the feel and body but loads more flavour and very happy with it. Next I tried to copy the 1st try but getting the quantity correct and changing the hops for a mix of 1st gold and EKG, I made a mistake no this one by changing the hop additions at the last min and increasing the bitterness to a high level when I adjusted the recipe in beersmith. This was only bottled on Sunday so end result unknown. Also not bottled yet I tried the same recipe again but adding all the hops as late additions and a lot more of them to get a good level of bitterness and hopefully a lot of hop flavour, I planned to use a full body mash rather than medium but forgot to pre warm the mash tun and ended up with medium temp. Last sunday I made a brew using the left over fuggles I had for bittering and a whole pack of wai-iti hops as late additions also using 500g of cara red malt and only a small amount of crystal.
Despite the issues the 1st batch I made is the best to date I think my next move will be to try to replicate it maybe with more late hops.
Hope someone finds this interesting
