IainM's brew day

[BeerCat]

Looks good, i bet its going to be a great beer! I did a cross between Punk IPA and Jaipur with 20% Rye and it was awesome. Don't normally get a stuck mash using Rye but last time i had to use a coffee grinder and it came out like flour. Was a nightmare. I had ordered uncrushed by mistake.

 

[IainM]

Well, the Polish brunch went of far longer than expected, so I started far later than expected. Thus, it was a bit of a rushed brew, but a learning experience for the Bulldog Brewer. First mistake I made was to assume that the 2L Ashbeck bottles of water have 2L in them. I though I had mashed in with 22L and sparged with 10L, but I ended up with 30L to boil. I definitely used 16 2L bottles, I counted them! The extra strike water meant that, once the grain was doughed in, the water level was above the overflow pipe, so the recirculation wasn't recirculating through the grain. The second mistake was to assume that the temperature sensor was accurate and not check the strike water temperature with a thermometer, so I ended up mashing at 69C instead of the intended 66C. Still, despite these issues, I did the boil at the full 2500W and got 22L at 1.052 so not too far off the numbers and the trial jar tasted decent. I still have high hopes for this one.

 

[IainM]

Looks good, i bet its going to be a great beer! I did a cross between Punk IPA and Jaipur with 20% Rye and it was awesome. Don't normally get a stuck mash using Rye but last time i had to use a coffee grinder and it came out like flour. Was a nightmare. I had ordered uncrushed by mistake.

Cheers BeerCat, that is encouraging. I hope this one turns out well too!

 

[BeerCat]

Cheers BeerCat, that is encouraging. I hope this one turns out well too!

Sure is will be excellent. I am doing a Rye BIPA tomorrow. Checked my notes and i did a Rye Kolsch which was 47% Rye and that was no problem. Hoping i can pick out the Rye taste when its ready. I watched a video the other night about a 100% Rye BIAB beer and apparently that is very gelatinous like cooking okra.

 

[IainM]

I'm a bit surprised by how low the Rye IPA has gone. Despite mashing at 69C, it has dropped from 1.052 to 1.006 where it seems stable. 6% abv is a bit higher than I anticipated, but I can't complain. I added 15g Simcoe, 50g Amarillo and 50g Galaxy on Sunday at the end of the fermentation. Will add the same again tonight and bottle Monday. The trial jar is promising, clear, dry and hoppy with a lovely colour.

 

[Manxnorton]

Great one Mick.
Love reading your progress :thumb:
Bri

 

[IainM]

OK, a quick update. The Rye IPA is good. A proper hop bomb. If I were to do it again I'd tone back the bitterness, or counterbalance it with more crystal malts, or mash a bit higher temp. It is a little dry, so won't be winning any competitions, but I'd be happy to pay for it. Since then I've put on a widebuddy merlot 30 bottle kit with 3L Asda 100% red grape juice and two Muntons red grape juice concentrate. Will bottle that tomorrow. Today I put on a clone of Gales Festival Mild. The original won CAMRA awards for Winter Beer of Britain in 2003, 2004 and 2006, before Gales brewery was bought by Fullers and it was consigned to history. At 5.3% it is closer to a historical mild than the weaker modern versions. The Gales yeast was apparently "borrowed" by a US brewery and is now available as Wyeast Northwest Ale, so I've done it with that. Should be a fairly fruity yeast. Anyway, the recipe was adapted from Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Ale. My efficiency was higher than the book assumed, so I didn't bother with the white sugar and still hit the numbers, and I didn't have any black malt so I subbed for roasted barley. My fuggles are quite high AA%, but I kept the quantities because I shortened the boil from 90 to 60 mins and I don't mind a little extra bitterness.

25L @ 1.054
5kg Pale
320g Roasted Barley
175g crystal malt
90g torrified wheat
Total grain = 5.6ishkg - used 16L for dough in, after 1.1mm crush.
67C 90 min mash.
51g fuggles leaf (6.5%AA) 60min
20g fuggles leaf 10min
Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale 1.5L starter

I'm thinking about taking half of this, splitting that half into four, and doing a "twist" for each, then selecting the best one as an entry for Thornbridge's Great British Homebrew competition. I'm currently thinking about toffee apple, maple, pistachio and blueberry. Though I'm also contemplating coconut, peanut butter, orange, black/morello cherry, salted caramel, raspberry or coffee. Hmmm....

 

[Martybhoy]

Hi Iain, can I ask where you got your grain mill from and how much it was?

 

[IainM]

Hi Iain, can I ask where you got your grain mill from and how much it was?

Hey Marty. It's the bulldog malt mill. It was a gift, so I can't check where they got it from, but it was an online shop and I think cost somewhere around £85.

 

[IainM]

The Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale yeast is the most flocculant strain I've used, even more than WLP002! I just check the hydrometer reading after a week in the fv, expecting for it to be finished as it had stopped releasing CO2, but my 1.054 ale was at 1.028. I've never had a stuck beer before. The krausen had solidified across the fv and wasn't dropping back in! Just raised the temp from 19 to 20C, and given it a gentle stir. Hopefully it will restart.

 

[IainM]

The Gales Festival Mild clone has finally finished, after 19 days in the fv, so I bottled it today. FG was 1.007, so at 6.2% it was stronger than I had anticipated. Trial jar tasted a bit green, but lovely. This will be a cracker with a bit of conditioning. Last night I put on four brews after work, from two mashes. The first was a Black IPA. I liked the Centennial/Mosaic late addition and Galaxy/Amarillo dry hop in the Rye IPA, so I'm going with the same here:

25L batch size
5kg Pale
0.25kg Vienna
0.25kg Munich
0.25kg BlackPrinz
0.25kg Midnight Wheat
5g Warrior pellet 17.5%, 60 mins
15g Mosaic leaf 11.3%, 20 mins
15g Centennial leaf 9.8%, 20 mins
20g Mosaic leaf 11.3%, 10 mins
20g Centennial leaf 9.8%, 10 mins
15g Mosaic leaf 11.3%, 5 mins
15g Centennial leaf 9.8%, 5 mins
10g Amarillo, 20min steep
10g Galaxy, 20min steep
50g Amarillo, 7 day dry hop
50g Galaxy, 7 day dry hop
50g Amarillo, 4 day dry hop
50g Galaxy, 4 day dry hop
2x packets US-05, rehydrated
I got 80% brewhouse efficiency: 1.060, estimated IBU 46.
I expect it to finish at 1.011, giving 6.4%. I pitched at 20C, though its now sitting at 21C.

At the same time I did a 25L BIAB with 6kg pale and 250g cara malt. 9L of this was boiled for 20 mins used as the fermentables for a John Bull IPA. I got 23L into the fv with OG of 1.046. Its bubbling away nicely this morning. The rest of the wort was split into two experimental brews to taste a couple of random hops I found at the LHBS. After boiling the OGs were a bit high and the volumes a bit low, so I topped them up to the following:

11L in 3 DJs:
5g warrior (17.5% AA) 60 mins
10g 007:Golden Hop (10%AA, 2015) and 20g Amarillo, 15 mins
15g 007 10 mins.
I've got 31g of 007 left for a dry hop, though I might use them for only one or two DJs and do the rest with cascade aroma oils and/or amarillo
OG was 1.062. Pitched three quarters of a pack of Nottingham at 20C. They are all bubbling away nicely.

3.5L in 1 DJ:
10g Experimental Grapefruit (16.6%AA) 10 mins
10g Experimental Grapefruit 5 mins.
I'll do a 15g dry hop with the same hops.
OG 1.056, pitched a quarter pack of Nottingham at 20C, and is bubbling away.

Didn't finish until 1am, but I think 6.5 hours for four brews isn't too bad.

 

[Manxnorton]

Bumming 'ell
All going on m8!
Great read
Bri

 

[IainM]

Bumming 'ell
All going on m8!
Great read
Bri

Oh yeah. Plus, I just bottled some mead, cyser and melomel, and I'll probably put a TC on later. Building up stock.

 

[BeerCat]

I would of definitelty screwed something up there. Good work Ian. For some reason i keep thinking about doing a DIPA, probably inspired by your thread. Thinking of doing a parti gyle with a thickish mash for the 1st runnings. Maybe ferment about 7l and add what i dont need to the second runnings for a pale ale. How does Chinook, Citra and Nelson Sauvin sound?

 

[Covrich]

That is plate spin brewing!

 

[IainM]

I would of definitelty screwed something up there. Good work Ian. For some reason i keep thinking about doing a DIPA, probably inspired by your thread. Thinking of doing a parti gyle with a thickish mash for the 1st runnings. Maybe ferment about 7l and add what i dont need to the second runnings for a pale ale. How does Chinook, Citra and Nelson Sauvin sound?

Yeah, it was busy getting two mashes on, juggling three different hop schedules, rehydrating three sets of yeast at the right time and temp, moving the chiller straight from chilling the partial mash wort to the BB to get to steeping temp, then to the other two brews. 6.5 hours pretty much non-stop work.

Your DIPA sounds good. The NEDIPA is the best beer I've done so far.

 

[IainM]

Right, those four beers are all bottled up now. The DJs I could cold crash in the fridge to drop the hop pellets, but in this heat the dry hops wouldn't drop on the BIPA, so I used one of these hop filters which I bought ages ago. I think Dutto recommended them, and it worked a treat. Summary:

The John Bull IPA partial mash dropped from 1.046 to 1.014, giving 4.2% abv. I got 41 bottles of various size. Trial jar was pretty nasty to be honest. No temp control, and used the kit yeast, so I'm not really surprised. This one will need a lot of conditioning I think but should come good eventually.

The experimental grapefruit single hop dropped from 1.056 to 1.006, giving 6.6%. I got 10 330ml bottles. Trial jar ok, hoppy, but not particularly grapefruity.

The three DJs of the 007:Golden Hop IPA were dry hopped differently; one with 23g 007, one with 20g Amarillo, and one with 10g Amarillo and 12g 007. They dropped from 1.062 to 1.006, so 7.1%. Got 32 330ml bottles and the trial jars tasted ok - I think the Amarillo one will be the winner.

The best of the bunch though was the Black IPA, but that isn't surprising as this is the one that I used temp control, a decent pitching rate and a tonne of hops. I got 41 500ml bottles, and it dropped 1.008, giving a 6.8% abv. Trial jar was very promising indeed. Gotta say, I'm really looking forward to this one.

Oh, I also did 2 DJs of plain TC, which finished around 4% abv and filled 15 bottles of various size and a 1.9L growler. So, in total, that is 181 bottles filled in the last three weeks, not including the DJs of mead, cyser and melomel I bottled after 9 months bulk conditioning. Suffice to say stocks are replenished, which is just as well really as in the next four weeks we should be moving house and having another baby, so I doubt I'll find much time for brewing!

 

[Ajhutch]

in the next four weeks we should be moving house and having another baby,

Good luck - we did those things six months apart and I haven't recovered yet! I'm massively impressed with your mega brew day and its results, good work.

 

[pms67]

Good luck with both,I moved house six weeks ago and all I have is one measly Cwtch kit bubbling away and about 100 emptied bottles

 

[IainM]

Time flies ey. Four weeks ago my daughter was born so I haven't had much time for brewing and stocks are low. The BIPA is down to the last bottle, the two experimental brews turned out surprisingly well and are long down the hatch, so without dipping into the beers I'm ageing then I've only got the nasty JB IPA, meads and winebuddy wine left. I was hoping to have moved house by now and sorted up the my new brew space, but the bloody solicitors are taking their sweet time. Nevertheless, the plum tree has presented me with an opportunity for some quick brewing. A bumper harvest coupled with the recent weather has meant that a large branch has fallen off the tree. Most of the plums are ripe or almost there, and I didn't want to waste them, so yesterday evening I put on a plum wine:

2.2kg plums, washed, pitted and sliced.
1kg sugar, boiled and poured on the plumbs.
Topped up to 7Lish, then added 2 campden tablets, 1tsp yeast nutrient and 1 tin of Youngs white wine enhancer.
I've added a tsp pectolase and will pitch some Wilko universal wine yeast when I get home.

This year also seems to be a bumper crop for pears so some more perry will definitely be on the cards.