New Year - Slid Brewday

[Slid]

Red Spider Rye IPA today from the new CAMRA / GW book. Bloody terrible brew day today. Only used 80g of Rice Hulls and the mash was very sticky and the sparge was the "handball" version, adding a litre at a time, with the top plate removed and a big stir up to get the grains properly mixed with the water before it drained out slowly..

To put the top hat on it, the bloody boiler cut out around 40 mins into the boil and could not find the fault. Wort down to 80C before I transferred back to the GF. At around this time, the Tesco order arrived. SWMBO was buying stuff for Elderly parents and #2 daughter as neither of them can get HD slots. We can since we have used the service since it first came out. Most of our stuff came, but only about 2/3rds of the other stuff and...

... (expletive) NO MILK at all.

At this stage she stared screaming at me about why we did not have a small freezer full of frozen milk already and it's somehow my fault...All this, when I have, like, real world beer type issues.

After the bunfight I was left with very cloudy wort - maybe equivalent of 25L @1.060 and perhaps 2-2.5L of extra trub. To put the final cherry on the cake, I can find no electrical fault with the boiler element not any of the cabling I used during the panic. I can only conclude that there must have been a dodgy connection into the boiler (i.e. one of the females trod on the cable and I noticed too late to sort it early enough to stop messing it about). Recipe is only slightly tweaked to 25L - Simcoe for Columbus and Cara / Crystal quantities swapped. Possibly Vienna instead of Munich.

Lager Malt Minch 1.5kg
MO 2.8kg
Rye Malt 700g
Crystal 400g
Vienna 300g
Caramalt 250g
Carafa 3 36g

Simcoe and Centennial 100g in total. More Simcoe early doors as it is 2015/6 and the Centennial is more recent. US 05

 

[cushyno]

I don't know how you can persist with that bit of kit crapping out on you every time, it'd drive me spare. Please send it back for repairs or use it as a mash tun.

Most of our stuff came, but only about 2/3rds of the other stuff and...

... (expletive) NO MILK at all.

I had a word with our milkman on Friday. We buy a nominal 3 pts a week just for the purposes of supporting a local service. Decided to up it to 5 days worth of milk. He said he's had loads of extra business since the impending doom was announced. So, grab your local bovine lactation delivery service and get them to drop off a couple at your door each day. You'll be supporting a local dairy, you know it makes sense.

 

[Slid]

I don't know how you can persist with that bit of kit crapping out on you every time, it'd drive me spare. Please send it back for repairs or use it as a mash tun.

I kind of do use the GF as a mash tun, then for the counter-flow chiller. Today was #119 with the GF, which still does 2/3 of its job.

I have a Klarstein replacement for the PECO boiler, that is still in its box. This does the missing third, i.e. the boil.

There is a farm about 1km from where we live that does bottle deliveries. Strangely it did not occur to me to think of this with a demented Harpy screaming at me. Good shout, though. :hat:

 

[Slid]

Here is a quick update on some recent brews:

The ESB from November had too much chocolate malt and it is just smoothing out now. Least impressive of my efforts with this genre.
Mosaic SHA was very good indeed - I may have 2 or 3 bottles left. Nice hoppy sort of a beer.
Bellhaven Wee Heavy Clone is a fantastic beer if you like a malt forward brew. 11L are still sitting in a Carboy. This was pitched 4 Jan.
Second Marmalade Wit is much as the last one. Worth the effort with mash and sparge.
Brown Ale with US (quite old) hops is surprisingly good. Would not describe it a hoppy, but it is much better than I thought.
Summer Lightening Clone with MJ Liberty Belle tastes quite peppery and I will leave this a while longer yet.
Raspberry Wheat beer is magnificent, with the tartness from the very prominent raspberries complementing the usual wheat beer qualities of softness and carbonation. £12 for the Raspberries, but well worth it.
Have tasted the Fullers London Porter and the Marmalade Stout and they are very drinkable already.

 

[Dutto]

.....

The ESB from November had too much chocolate malt and it is just smoothing out now. Least impressive of my efforts with this genre.
.......

Without a lie, every brew I made with Chocolate Malt tasted of way too much of "chocolate" until I started halving and then halving again how much I put in there!

I started out by buying 2 x 1kg's of Chocolate malt and I still gave away one of the bags, when I gave up AG brewing over a year later.

 

[Slid]

Two and a half weeks of WFH and am now displaying some signs of claustrophobia.
My planned brew for the Weekend is Trad English - a Fullers-ish clone of a Marmalade-y sort of beer.
Many will find this Malt bill familiar:
MO 5kg
Crystal 500g
I may sub out 200g of Wheat Malt for MO.

Mandarina Bavaria is the Hop of choice (given that I have 2x100g of pellets from 2015 and 100g of 2018 harvest). Something like:
25/30/45 @ 60/15/5 mins.

Will use up the last re-used Liberty Bell yeast 250ml bottle and then for the secret ingredient:
- a full 900g jar of actual Marmalade I made from the kit you can (could?) get from Lakeland, the hugely over-priced, over-rated and over frequented rip-off destination for bored tourists on a wet day in Bowness on Windermere. Below is a link. It actually makes better marmalade than you get from Tesco. If you can brew you can make Golden Syrup and Marmalade.

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/13801/Home-Cook-Marmalade---Prepared-Seville-Oranges-Medium-Cut-850g

 

[Slid]

Today went well. I had to wait for the Tesco delivery before I could start, because the last two weeks deliveries have seen SWMBO in full Harpy mode. Fortunately all the order came OK with minor subs. Very difficult to get delivery slots, though.
The hops turn out to be 9.3% 2018 hops (but a bit skanky looking, to my eyes) so it went 20/30/50 on the hop additions. Very little aroma from the hops, but then, there never are..

Nice clear wort and super efficiencies @ 78% BHE.

Added 200g wheat to the recipe. Had to do the milling this morning.

 

[Slid]

Bank Holiday Monday, so what do you do? Use up the rest of the Simcoe and Centennial, obviously.

MO 5kg
Wheat 300g
Caramalt 250g
Special B 120g
Sugar (as Golden Syrup) ~ 300g

Warrior to bitter and the Simcoe and Centennial as 10/5 minute additions and the rest for a dry hop.
US05, obviously.
78% BHE again today and a bit over 26L in the FV before 2pm.

Was thinking of doing a Dark Wheat beer today from the GH book, but lacked too many bits.

 

[Slid]

The Raspberry Wheat beer was so good it is all gone. Did a Weissbier on 26/4 using MJ Bavarian Wheat yeast, the last of the Huell Melon hops and the following Grain Bill:
Pale (MO) 3kg
Wheat Malt 2.5kg
Oats 200g

After 5 days, added 2.45kg of Raspberries (7x350g), bought frozen, defrosted overnight.If it is anywhere near the last one, I will be well pleased. Racked it off the yeast and saved some yeast / trub for one more Bavarian Wheat and a Roggenbier later in the summer.

Tomorrow, I am planning a Parti-Gyle day to produce ~12L of Barley Wine and a full length 25L hoppy Golden Ale thing.

6.5kg of Maris Otter, 500g of assorted caramel malts in the mash and adding 1kg DME to the second runnings beer. Both may need a fair amount of sugar to hit target gravities.

This is something that is easy with the GF, as the first runnings can be pumped out into a boiler of some sort and the same volume added back in water at mash temps by under-letting via the central pipe and a funnel.

Am planning to blend the BW with 11L of Bellhaven Wee Heavy that has been sitting in a Carboy since 25 Jan.

Only other beer news is that the Red Spider Rye IPA from the new GW book is fantastic after six weeks. Very nicely balanced beer indeed and highly recommended.

 

[Slid]

Bit of a muddle today. Used the new Klarstein Masher / Boiler as a boiler for the second Runnings beer and the Peco Boiler for the First runnings beer. First runnings came out very short at 10L and ended up adding a litre of sparge to get it to 11L at a fairly disappointing 1.086. This will make it not much stronger than the Wee Heavy at the best part of 8%. Main issue was blocked filter, I think.

Second runnings went much more smoothly at 1.059 OG. Both these readings are a bit dodgy, given that I timed the boil of the first brew to end almost exactly as the second had been transferred out of the GF. This meant I never seemed to have time to think about anything and ended up doing it "on the fly", adding sugar here and there as it seemed fit.

Very chaotic and it will definitely be another year or so before I do this sort of thing again.

 

[Slid]

Did a Dunkelweizen today and used the MJ20 Bavarian Wheat from the last Raspberry Weissbier.
Also used 200g of rice hulls and these worked a treat - bit of a funny mash with the wort going right over the top of the tea-strainer on top of the central pipe on the GF. Sparge went OK and got 26L at 1.058 and 78% BHE. This efficiency and smoothness of the day could not have been possible without the rice hulls!

Here is the Recipe:
Pale Malt MO 3.04kg
Wheat Malt 2.55kg
Medium Crystal 300g
Special B 300g
Rice Hulls 200g

There are 15 IBU's of bittering in this recipe, from the GH version of the bible, which came from 30g of 2015 Harvest Hallertau Blanc. The hops smelled OK, if a bit nondescript, and kept their cone structure well during the boil, which to my way of thinking, suggests they will have been fine for this purpose at least.

 

[Slid]

Did a Golden Ale yesterday:
Pale Maris Otter 4.75kg
Medium Crystal 250g

Warrior 15g to bitter and 59g Cascade and about 59g of the Hallertau Blanc as late additions (because they were open).
US 05 yeast and an OG of 1.049 and 25L

 

[Slid]

Found some Lallemand Abbaye yeast 2 years out of data in the fridge recently, so I made up a starter with 100g DME and 1L of water on Tuesday. Decided on a Patersbier using up the open hops in the freezer.

Pale Malt 4.5kg
Marmalade ~ 400g sugar
Sugar syrup ~ 100g sugar

Hop additions of Hallertau Blanc & Challenger to 18.5 IBU. Got 25L plus the starter chucked in as is.
Efficiency up around 80% today, 4.5kg grain bill is the efficiency sweet spot in the Grainfather, which today cut out at 74C after me cleaning the base plate manically yesterday evening.

 

[Slid]

Last of this season's wheat beers today, so:
Wheat malt 2.15kg
XP MO 2.6kg
DME (Wheat/ Barley) 400g
Beet sugar 200g
Huell Melon 32g @ FW
MJ 20 Bavarian Wheat yeast.

GF conked out at 73C during the mash-out, so a bit of a wait to get the thing up to a rolling boil, but with 200g of rice hulls, the mash and sparge went smoothly. Did not stir the mash today as the wort looked nice and clear at 30m in. Hence ~ 77% BH efficiency, for those amongst us who care about such things.

 

[Slid]

I had decided to do a variant of a Durden Park recipe today, but a few things went counter to plan:

Can't buy Pale Amber at the moment and so I did just under 1kg from Base Malt, following the instructions in the Appendix to the Durden Park pamphlet. It came out looking no different to when it went in. Perhaps I should have used the oven temps as quoted and not knocked off 10C for it being a fan oven. Also possible is I misinterpreted the timings and under cooked it by 30 mins.

Did the grain crush yesterday and was pratting around with the gap between the mill rollers. The upshot of this was that some grain got smashed and some basically dropped through. When I started adding the grain to the GF I didn't like the look of it, so decided to run the stuff not already in the grain basket through the mill again at a re-calibrated gap. This basically had the effect of virtually atomising it. This is fine and an approach in its own right, but meant that the mash was very gloopy and I kept getting froth on the top of the wort and wort flowing down the central pipe etc.

As often times before, this meant that I "hand-balled" the sparge by removing the top plate completely and chucking the sparge water in 0.5-1L at a time and stirring it up to drop through into the main body of the machine. This is a sort of an immersion-cum-sparge technique that is unlikely ever to go mainstream.

Because the sparge was so slow, I put the grain basket on top of a large pot to collect more wort (this is the usual practice in the Slid Brewhouse) and it collected around 5L instead of the usual 1-2.

The wort was cloudy as hell and I ended up doing effectively two separate boils, one in the Peco boiler, as the FGF had cut out at circa 80C as F usual, and one in the said large pot (Wilko) on the stove.

Ended up with around 24.5L of wort and 2 bonus litres of trub that will slowly gravitate to the bottom of the FV as things progress.

For what it's worth, here is the recipe:

Pale Malt (Crafty Maltsters) 5.1kg
Home-cocked Pale Amber 970g
Cane Sugar 400g

Marynka Hop Pellets 50g / 20g @ FW / 15m
(Yeah, like I do get that these are, like, Polish, but it's not really a hop forward beer, so what the...)

US 05, as it's so warm and humid just now that English Ale Yeast would be unthinkable.

 

[Dutto]

Hmmm! Definitely a "Here's hoping!" recipe!

It will probably be so nice that you will want to replicate it, which will be near impossible.

 

[Slid]

About three weeks ago now I did a second Durden Park malt recipe, sort of, which was bottled and thus tasted yesterday. This was the Whitbread London Porter from 1850, the recipe for which is posted up, along with the Simonds Bitter recipe on the Durden Park Website.
The Brown Malt for the recipe was also done from Pale malt in the oven, following the method outlined in the Appendix to the DP pamphlet.

Pale Malt 5.15kg
Brown Malt 1kg
Carafa 3 295g
Chocolate Malt 141g
Cane Sugar 300g

All Hops added at First Wort - Marynka 35g and Mandarina Bavaria 26g. Nothing like using the actual varieties available at the time, eh, chaps? Just what seemed like a good idea, given that the hops are basically just for bittering anyway. Again US 05, which was just as well, given how the weather has behaved in the meantime.

Now, here is an interesting fact - both of these DP tribute beers fermented right down to 1.002 (I checked my hydrometer calibration after each reading as I did not believe it either). I have recently used both a Belgian Abbey style and a Weissbier yeast as well as US 05 and suspect that there could be some carry over from FV's between beers. Both tasted not bad at bottling (Porter with the Brown Malt a bit smokey yet, so don't suspect totally rogue yeast.

 

[Slid]

Now moving on to this morning's effort, which was an Abbey Style beer, recipe compiled with GH open at the relevant page. I picked up 500g of Abbey Malt, I think from the HBC and used this in lieu of Biscuit Malt. Also chucked in some sugar for the principle:

Pale Malt (Crafty) 5.5kg
Abbey Malt 500g
Beet Sugar 500g

Mandarina Bavaria 20g @ FW and 20g @ 10m
Also citrus peel (accumulated & frozen from daily small citrus fruits) 240g @ 10m
Re-used the Lallemand Abbey Style yeast.

Tired of moaning about the GF, but today it cut out at 71C, which suggests it is going to be replaced soon - When it won't hold mash temps it is binned.

Tried a slightly wider grain crush this time and there was much less dust than the last two beers. Made the day go a bit more smoothly, especially the sparge, but "only" got 73% BHE according to BrewMate. (I concede that "only 73% BHE" is the epitome of a first world problem, BTW).

 

[Slid]

Hmmm! Definitely a "Here's hoping!" recipe!

It will probably be so nice that you will want to replicate it, which will be near impossible.

Yeah, it will be impossible to recreate the weird weather for sure. The hops are not particularly prominent in these styles, I suspect, other than for bittering, so we shall see over the next six months or so!

 

[pilgrimhudd]

Hello mate, how did that Marmalade(y) beer end up that you brewed in April? Any good?