How much beer have you got?

[geetee]

I attended the Brewlab course July to September for 9 weeks and we made 25 litres every week.
Still got two fridges full including

Chocolate mint porter 30 bottles
English bitter Dark 12 bottles
Golden blond (Citra) 15 bottles
American pale ale 15 bottles
New Zealand Pale ale 20 bottles
English bitter Golden 14 bottles

I have had to empty my fridges into boxes in my garage so I can start brewing again

Also got 40 litres of Plum porter conditioning and
40 litres of APA hop monster(comet,colombus, cascade, amarillo etc) making tomorrow/Thursday

 

[jeg3]

I attended the Brewlab course July to September for 9 weeks and we made 25 litres every week.
Still got two fridges full including

Chocolate mint porter 30 bottles
English bitter Dark 12 bottles
Golden blond (Citra) 15 bottles
American pale ale 15 bottles
New Zealand Pale ale 20 bottles
English bitter Golden 14 bottles

I have had to empty my fridges into boxes in my garage so I can start brewing again

Also got 40 litres of Plum porter conditioning and
40 litres of APA hop monster(comet,colombus, cascade, amarillo etc) making tomorrow/Thursday

Would love to make a plum porter, was it made with juice or a puree?

 

[geetee]

Neither, I am trying to make it without plums!
Ingredients include Special B malt, Bramling cross and endeavour hops which all give a dark fruity rain almost Christmas cake type taste. Used US-04 to accentuate the fruitiness and jsut conditioning for a few more days
Nice smooth tasting probably from flaked oats and nice deep red colour.
It is well drinkable as it is so I am going to bottle some next week and to the rest will add a few drops of Plum essence to give it a Plum aroma and see what the difference is.
Titanic make a nice plum porter but I believe their website says they use extract rather than fruit

 

[Orval62]

Too much, about 100 bottles, 35 litres in kegs and 9 litres fermenting. Lots of kits and brews to do..

 

[Linalmeemow]

Apologies Linal, I lost track of this thread.

A pack of Riwaka hops arrived today courtesy of SteveJ, who ordered them from NZ. It's a hop I love but have never brewed with before.

If I was brewing the Riwaka Pale Ale kit, I would not add any different hops, as the Riwaka hop is too sacred! I would add DME, I prefer it to LME, but I would have added 1kg or more, rather than 500g.

1.2kg DME - 1.5kg LME.

I have made beers with kits that have had the fruity hop thing you are after, in the past. I think dry hopping alone will struggle to do this, you want to boil some hops. I could describe a variety of hop boiling schedules but you can keep it very simple. Put 2-3 litres of water in a pan and heat, mix in 500g DME thoroughly as it warms up, and chuck hops in before it starts to boil. Once boiling, let it boil for 5-10 minutes (5 for high AA% hops, 10 for low AA%), switch off and add some more hops to steep while it cools in a sink of cold water. Strain and add the hopped wort to the FV.

You can do this when you make the kit up, and include it in the 23 litres, or make it up and add it after the fermentation has subsided, but leave 2-3 litres out of the FV when you make up the kit - make the kit up to 20 litres, for example, so that the hop addition makes the beer up to about 23 litres.

Example:

Batch Size (L): 23.0
Original Gravity (OG): 1.047
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 4.62 %
Bitterness (IBU): 40 (20 ish IBUs from kit, 20ish IBUs from hop boil)

Cooper's Aussie Pale Ale Kit
1.500 kg Dry Malt Extract - Amber (46.88%)

50.0 g Mosaic Pellet (12% Alpha) @ 10 Minutes
50.0 g Mosaic Pellet (12% Alpha) @ 0 Minutes ( steep for 30 mins while hop liquid cools)

That's superb mate, exactly the kind of precise and usable advice I was after.

So, an idea to run past you - rather than use more DME could I take 2-3 litres of part-brewed wort from the FV 5 days before bottling (in a sterile container of course) and boil the hops in that, then add the hopped wort back in once cooled for the same effect? With the Bruphoria Orgasm kit I mentioned (chinook, cascade and simcoe in teabags, not sure of the quantities as they're still vac packed, aiming for a black IPA style) would you recommend any particular order for boiling or steeping the hops?

 

[clibit]

You could take wort out yes - or deduct some of the DME from the amount added on brew day, and use that to do the hop boil later - but the DME will need to ferment out, of course.

For the Bruphoria kit, why not boil all the hop tea bags in water for 5 minutes, then tip the lot into the FV with the kit when you make it up. That should make a significant difference to simply dry hopping with them. Or you could boil the Chinook and Simcoe for 5 minutes, and use the Cascade for dry hopping.

Another way of doing this is to not use a kit - just use malt extract. Kits are just malt extract with hop extract added. You can buy 1.5kg tins of LME from the Home Brew Company for about £5 each, and 1kg of DME for about £5. Add a bit of extract to 3 litres of water and add hops as above, and mix with the rest of the extract and water in the FV. I saw a thread on an Aussier brewing forum by a guy who boiled 100g of hops for 10 mins and made the beer in this way. And tried different hops - it became popular. Google "10 minute IPA". I think he boils for an hour though, and you don't need to unless you are using grains too.

Which is another option! Steep some crystal malt in the water as it warms up, remove the crystal before it boils, boil for 30 mins and add the hops 10 mins before the end. You are adding some fresh grain flavours as well as fresh hop flavours. Choose your yeast - yeast is a major player in successful beer.

 

[GHW]

I will remind security not to allow anyone called Gareth to enter my village :lol::lol:

I expect they have a 'shoot Welshmen on sight' by law anyway.

Don't know why I thought you were in Manchester. Guilty by association with clibit probably.

 

[clibit]

Behave Gareth. SteveJ is a lord. He shoots pheasants and stuff. I'm a pauper. :thumb:

 

[RobShamrock]

Wow some impressive stock levels. Newbie brewer started in Feb this year.

Nothing fermenting at moment will do one soon so ready to bottle over Xmas break.

Conditioning - 40 bottles Coppers Lightning strike

Drinking:
15 Shocktop Wheat beer
15 Craft range blonde
30 bulldog evil dog dipa
5 coopers heritage
20 Coopers real ale - hacked

So not doing to bad on supplies

 

[stevej]

Well its Friday night so around 5ltrs less:lol:

 

[Dads_Ale]

:drunk::drunk:Not as much as I had at 6pm :drunk:

 

[stevej]

:drunk::drunk:Not as much as I had at 6pm :drunk:

It could be worse for me you could be in my basement drinking my ales :rofl::rofl: