New Year - Slid Brewday

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It's a bit like a brewing version of 'Letters from America'.
Always something of interest athumb..

Yes indeed, Terry. And almost always a new way to **** things up. Despite all my technical inadequacies, there is usually very good beer at the end.
 
Does the home made 'Golden Syrup' taste like T&Ls. I occasionally use latter in brewing and it does introduce its own flavour to the finished product, so you have to be careful. But not as careful as anyone tempted to use 'black treacle' ashock1
 
The home made golden syrup is 100g plus a small amount of water, then added lemon or lime juice for acidity. I find the early addition of the acid really helps the whole process. You cook the sugar in the pan until it gets to the wanted depth of colour and then slowly add ~300mll of water (boiling) and then ~500g of sugar and slowly simmer for 40 mins or so. There a few vids on the Net that really show how easy this is.

I think using Lime instead of Lemon juice could make a real difference to a USA style pale ale.

As an aside, many. many British beers have made use of the addition of golden syrup. Belgian beers? Well, that's almost a given, in many of the great styles.
 
There a few vids on the Net that really show how easy this is.

I think using Lime instead of Lemon juice could make a real difference to a USA style pale ale.

As an aside, many. many British beers have made use of the addition of golden syrup. Belgian beers? Well, that's almost a given, in many of the great styles.
Ta.
One of your earlier posts in this thread linked to this

I might have a go.
I've got some citric acid crystals. I might use that instead of a lemon slice to give a neutral taste, although I like the idea of using different citrus fruits. Grapefruit in a cascade beer perhaps?
Anyway I suppose a taste test is required. athumb..
 
I would doubt the flavour comes through in the end but I've not tried this method yet.

Interesting that you add the lemon at the start Slid, means you'll be inverting right away so your caramelising mostly fructose rather than sucrose which would make it happen a bit quicker. Wonder if it affects the flavour?
 
I would doubt the flavour comes through in the end but I've not tried this method yet.

Interesting that you add the lemon at the start Slid, means you'll be inverting right away so your caramelising mostly fructose rather than sucrose which would make it happen a bit quicker. Wonder if it affects the flavour?

I found that if I don't add the acid at the start, I get crystallisation rather than caramelisation and it looks like a big mess.
 
Ta.
One of your earlier posts in this thread linked to this

I might have a go.
I've got some citric acid crystals. I might use that instead of a lemon slice to give a neutral taste, although I like the idea of using different citrus fruits. Grapefruit in a cascade beer perhaps?
Anyway I suppose a taste test is required. athumb..


There are a few vids on U-tube and it is very easy to make.
 
I found that if I don't add the acid at the start, I get crystallisation rather than caramelisation and it looks like a big mess.
Oh, that's interesting, maybe not enough water? I make caramel fairly often and add more water than recipes recommend as it makes it easier to fully dissolve and the only downside is it takes a bit longer to boil off again and colour. By adding the acid you're inverting it which prevents crystallisation. Just a theory. :-)
 
There are a few vids on U-tube and it is very easy to make.
Well I made some invert sugar/golden syrup this afternoon using the Youtube vid I/Slid linked above to see what it was all about.
I closely followed the process described and found it was quite easy, although I used one quarter tsp citric acid instead of one quarter lemon. From 900g or so of ingredients I now have 750g of syrup in two jars, so I lost 150g through evaporation.
Observations
- Colour very light and clear, a bit like **** seed oil. I put this down to stopping the initial caramelisation stage early on. And it didn't really darken very much during the main simmer. Leave it longer at the beginning and it will be darker.
- It is slightly less viscous than shop bought GS. That's because I only kept it on a low heat and probably didn't lose as much water as intended.
- Tastes of a slightly fruity sugar, with only a trace of caramel. Again if I had let the caramelisation carry on for a little longer the taste would be more caramel.
Anyway I've now got to decide what to do with it. Use it in brewing, or get Mrs terrym to make some flapjack. aunsure....
 
Flapjack gets my vote! I really love it. #1 Daughter makes a great flapjack, so good that it never lasts very long.

Back in the 1970's Ben Turner did a book called something like "The Home Winemaker and Brewers Calendar". It had two beer recipes I did a few times in an extract style. One with Dark DME and Fuggles, which was a mild and one using Pale DME and a good amount of Golden Syrup and Goldings - that was a bitter. They were better than the kits of the era, which is not really a great recommendation, TBH.
 
Two weeks on, I am intending to rack this Old Ale onto 1kg of dried fruit (mainly raisins), rehydrated with boiling water & left to cool. May give it a gravity reading at this point, but what it will really tell me, I don't know. Don't really fancy the idea of adding spices as well and brewing beer with raisins seems to be in vogue in the USA at the moment.
Will then give it another 2 weeks in the secondary FV, before racking again to clear for a further week and bottling.

This Christmas beer, pitched on the 2nd of March, turned out at around 10% and has been sampled a few times since - each time it has been fairly awful, TBH.
Tried a bottle this evening, warmed up to room temperatures, and it is a reasonable Christmassy sort of beer. No chance I will do the same next year, though!

As I still have a fairly large number of bottles, it could be hanging on until next Christmas.
 
Flapjack gets my vote! I really love it. #1 Daughter makes a great flapjack, so good that it never lasts very long.
I got the best of both worlds.
Flapjack was produced anyway, and most of the invert sugar went into a brew yesterday. I used a little in a yeast starter as well and the yeast seemed to love it!
 
Oh no! That's a shame, what's made it terrible? The fruit do something strange to it?

I think that beers of this strength seem to need the best part of a year to be any good. It might mature quite a bit faster in bulk, I guess, and to that end, I have a 10L carboy to experiment with. First in over the weekend will be an Old Peculier clone, OG 1.073, that I will leave for 3 months or so, longer if I forget!
 
On to today' 25L Brown Ale:

Pale 4.55kg
Crystal 310g
Chocolate 200g
Brown Sugar 300g

Green Bullet 12.2% - 22g @ FW, 22g @ 15m, 25g @ 5m and the rest of the 100g bag @ 80C in the chilling.

This is sort of clibilt's Centennial Brown, except that I used Green Bullet instead and didn't have any wheat malt either.

Brew day went well, with no GF cut-out. Used Gypsum and Epsom salts again, along the lines of the Water Treatment thread on the Forum.

I had a first taste of this today and it is really good. Newer hops might improve it, but it is fine as is.

By coincidence, I did another variant on the Centenniel Brown recipe today:

MO 4.25kg
Chocolate 300g
Wheat 220g
Crystal 200g
Brown sugar 320g

Centenniel 10.3% 19g/27g/25g/29g @ FW/15/5/0 and US05.

The hops are pellets (from the Worcester Hop Shop - 2x for £7) and between the highly crushed grain and the pellet hops, the pump / chiller got clogged up, so familiar straining through the grain bag into the PECO boiler and back to get rid. This makes for a 6 hr brewday, but WTH - if it's as good as the Green Bullet, it is worth the time and effort.
 
OK, so today was brew day. An excellent choice of a day to waste in the kitchen, given that it has rained lightly but persistently all day here in Bolton.

The actual numbers are a bit weird in places, due to basic incompetence on my part.

Pale Maris Otter 6.42kg
Special B 307g
Chocolate 124g
I bunged in the last of the bag on the Choc, as intended, but I really did appreciate your insistence that that would be more than sufficient. Honest!

Hops @ 60m
17g Flyer, 12g Fuggles and 15g Savinjski Goldings (Why tf I put the 1.1% SG's in, I cannot rationalise)
Hops @ 30m Hallertauer Northern Brewer 20g (The Mittelfrueh are only 2.4% Alpha)
Hops @ 15m 19g Savinjski Goldings and 23g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh.

The Sav G's were in a 35g bag, and I mis-used them terribly. I can only hope they forgive me.

I've chucked in both jars of invert syrup. It's dead easy to make. You just need granulated sugar (600g) and some lemon or lime juice (very cheap in the baking section at Asda).
100g sugar and 2 tablespoons of sugar in the pan to start off. Add the citric acid from the juice now.
Heat and stir until it first all dissolves and then until it turns to the colour desired - golden for a pale beer, dark red / black for a dark beer.
Then add 300ml (that is 300g) of near boiling water very slowly and then another 500g granulated sugar.
Stir it under a low heat until all is dissolved (add more acid if it crystallises) then simmer for 45mins.

So to belatedly answers the question of @Dutto "what does it taste like?" There is an initial answer, albeit a bit later than the question.

This already shows great complexity of malt flavours. Very nice 250ml bottle sipped bit by bit tonight, since it is nearly Xmas, even though the alarm goes off at 04:45 tomorrow.

I see a little of what the fuss is about. Sufficient hyberbole, I feel.
 
So to belatedly answers the question of @Dutto "what does it taste like?" There is an initial answer, albeit a bit later than the question.

........ sipped bit by bit tonight,.............

Aha!! I've brewed quite a few beers that tasted lovely when "sipped".

I admire the nearly four month wait; in fact I still have a few pints of the "Mild" I mentioned back in August after "sipping" the other 30 pints or so into oblivion!
 

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