Impromtu Snowday Brew! Pictures!

[RobWalker]

I'm here in spirit with Sean_Mc, who is also brewing an APA on account of having nothing to do and being snowed in, after working from 5.30am until, well, 9:30am. All I need to fit in today is a quick walk with the dog and a few cheeky beers. god bless precipitation :

I wanted to use some leftover hops and open malt bags so I can clean out my junk and go in fresh, last year I bought way too many hops so I'm gonna try being a bit smarter this year. Being binned are bobek, northern brewer, mount hood etc, crappy hops really...far too old too. the rest were used in this APA. After a rather disappointed brew using calculated water, i'm kicking that idea in the face, so here's the new method - no real measuring except a 3.15kg bag of Pale Malt. With the quantity of grain, i'm expecting up to about 6%. At the end of the day, like I always say, it'll probably be good beer. I'm using my favourite hops and simple malts, so what can go wrong? I also plan to boil until I get the OG I want, and not worry too much about the final volume, but getting a good mash temp and abv instead. I've filled my boiler (also my mash tun) with grain and water to the top.

Somewhat inspired by this thread here, where johnny_dove mentioned an american/english/german IPA. I realise saaz are czech, but meh.

Hops:

East Kent Goldings
Nelson Sauvin
Cascade
Saaz

approx 120g all in all. 60, 30, 10 and 0 min additions.

Malts (roughly

Pale malt (most)
Wheat Malt
Carapils
Caragold
Some bag of paley looking stuff. I assume it can only be carapils, pale or wheat.

Yeast:

Munich :lol:

Mashed in, 71c Strike, resulted in 66c mash temp! So perfect so far. Walkies time for Dogbert now.

Hops!

Dough In

Various Grains

 

[Sean_Mc]

Have a good one Rob :thumb:

Forgot to put my recipe up

 

[Vossy1]

Enjoy your walk Rob and have a great brew day :thumb: ...love the casual nature of the brew

 

[dx4100]

Im sorry but the only thing I would rather do more than brew beer is go and play in the snow :)

Get your **** outside and do some snow angels :P

 

[RobWalker]

I did them at work earlier! :lol:

this is going very well, good gravity and the boil is on, nice and clean and painless. vossy, i seem to be edging towards easy peasy brewing more and more lately. eventually i'm gonna get it to the point where I know exactly what's going on, and all i need to do is dump the grain in the water, run it out of the boiler, drain the bag and chuck the hops in. no mess, no squabbles, good beer!

Anyway, will update properly when it's over. :

 

[artyb]

looks ideal...

i like your style.... :thumb:
at the end of the day you will always end up with a nice beer, :drink:

 

[RobWalker]

Well, here's me notes! pretty happy with how this went, nice to just take it easy and not worry about a recipe too much.

All 4 hops blended (if they were equal amounts) come up at 7% AA, with about half of the total 90g going in at 60 minutes that makes it roughly 40 IBU before the other additions. That's about all I can be arsed to calculate, and it's somewhat wrong as there isn't quite 25g of each hop in there, so let's see where that leads eh! But should be nice and hoppy. In the end I split the rest between 15 and 0 mins. Lots of aroma I hope.

Pre boil OG was 1.054. Post boil OG is 1.068! Jesus. Lost a fair bit, collected just under 15L, but I think 7% will be fun, so i'm not liquoring back. A good efficiency for BIAB really.

This beer also contains actual snow, as some made it into the starter when I was using the snow to cool 100ml of the wort. And then the whole batch was cooled in the snow. Whats uuuupp!

Starter cooling in the snow.

Boil on! This was a lid on boil because it's coooold in thurr!

First hops in.

The mad dash to the compost bin to dump the spent grain. Wear respectable attire next time.

2 weeks ago I brewed this, Winter Warmer. came up far too weak due to evaporation being much lower than expected from BIAB calculator. Tasting decent now, chocolatey and hoppy, just a little watery because of the efficiency! But it's looking good, and I hope it will round off properly.

The wort, mashed, bag drained and added back into boiler. about 19L collected with a few litres of space left in the mash, so good to know for next time!

Arooo! Millie's first day in the snow.

Cooling outside in the snow, shot from the warm. Happy days. Ray Mears ain't got **** on me!

That's all folks. :

 

[Ceejay]

Hehe, I love this time of year. Everyone gets sent home from work and we end up with impromptu brewdays all over the country and numerous "Snow Chillers" being utilized. Loving the relaxed attitude dude, and your dog looks pretty cool too. :

 

[RobWalker]

She's a flippin nightmare! But for the record, anyone attempting snow cooling, do it the easy way - fill your bathtub and add a bucket of snow in there. Cooling was so slow because of the snow around the brew melting I gave up! As I cool in the bucket, I made a quick starter and when cooled, put my hand over the airlock hole and gave it a quick shake. I often struggle with a fast ferment but this has rocketed overnight, os anybody wondering how to do that - there's your answer.

 

[Sean_Mc]

Cracking stuff Rob :thumb:

 

[RobWalker]

Welp, few days later, it's almost fermented out and after tasting a very bitter (almost washing up liquid tasting) wort, it's tasting much better now! i can taste the nelson sauvin clearly :p

should be a cracker!

 

[RobWalker]

kegged. still tasting bitter, lots of hot alcohol, and cloudy to boot, so no idea on taste. hope it's good :lol:

 

[Loetz]

Arooo! Millie's first day in the snow.

:thumb: :drunk:
That's a nice looking dog.

 

[Loetz]

This is mine:

Her name is Olive.

 

[RobWalker]

she's class! same sort of colours as ours - what's she got in her? ours definitely has german shepherd, rough collie, and some sort of sprinting dog in her...

 

[Loetz]

We're not really sure but maybe some german shepherd. The vet thinks she has some husky in her too, but we have no clue.