New Year - Slid Brewday

[Slid]

Tomorrow I am planning a Saison, leaving the Parti-gyling for the 18th of April.

Grains are weighed out:
5kg MO (as, like, how different is that to Pilsner plus Vienna / Munich?)
300 Wheat malt
200 Special B

Will add some combination of homemade Golden syrup / homemade Marmalade / horribly expensive honey to around 500g in total.

Belle Saison yeast and perhaps Hallertau Northern Brewer and Bobek (Styrian Goldings) in restrained quantities.

 

[Slid]

Great brew day, with the above recipe. In the event it was around 225g Honey, 225g Golden Syrup and a few large dollops of Marmalade. Plus the skins of about 4 Tangerines added at flameout with the Bobek (35g).

 

[Slid]

Hi all, I have not updated this thread since I fell over in the living room on Boxing Day, fracturing my left humerus (shoulder), It is only this last week that I went back to work. 9 weeks at home might sound like fun, but it was not.
Anyway, feeling better and today I decided to use up the open bags of grain (my last brew day was 14th December). So here is was:

MO 4,5k
Brown Malt 500g
Chocolate Malt 273g
Roast Barley 224g
Dark Crystal 368g

Hops - Progress 70g at 60m and 30g @ 15m

Very smooth brewday, except that the GF cut out again at around 93C, which involves having to bale it all out into the Peco Boiler I use to heat the sparge water. Using a grain bag gets rid of about a tennis ball sized amount of grain dust that seems to cause the sludge to stick to the boiler plate and cause the cut-out.
Then I have a methoology thet involves using the 2 boilers (Peco and GF) in conjunction to heat up the strained wort, befors transferring the Peco contents back to the GF. This messing about takes around 40-45 mins, but gives a good result and no scorching, so I think that, on the whole, a 15% increase in time for a brewday is perhaps the least bad thing that could go wrong.

I bottled this beer on 23 March. I had a 10L carboy of the most recent Old Peculier clone that had been in storage for about 15 weeks by March 23. So, I first bottled 6x2L bottles of the brew above that I termed a "Dark Porter", then basically poured in the contents of the carboy to continue bottling in 500ml bottles. The siphoning attempts got some liquid through, but pouring is always an option....

Anyway, the blend of the two was excellent indeed. They are actually very similar and the Old plus the New beer worked very sweetly.
Am sampling the Dark Porter tonight, as it is a week off this week.
Am very pleased with this one also. I do like a malt forward dark beer and this one ticks the boxes. Not quite the aged complexity of the blended beer, but a good, solid, Porter style brew.

 

[Slid]

A few weeks / months ago, I was out for a walk and passed the Bank Top Brewery in Bolton and dropped in on a whim. I have been on one or maybe two tours of the Brewery many years back and engaged the bloke there in friendly brewing discussion. He outlined his current proposition around the lines of "Trad English, with influences from US and wider New World Hops". So this is the Fullers grain bill with US hops. To 25L:

MO 5kg
Caramalt 500g
Light Muscovado 500g

Warrior 23g @ 60m (Whole Hops)
Cascade and Ahtanum 15g each @ 10m (Pellets)
C&A 45g each @ 0mins

US05

To update on this one - very floral, but already the flowers are fading. Definitely one to brew again, but I would be careful to make this the only pale beer to be ready at the time, as it does need to be drunk young to be at its best.

 

[Slid]

I am on leave from work today, using up my Holiday allowance. Unbelievably both SWMBO and #1 daughter are both "WFH" today.
Totally overestimated the amount of MO I had left, so today is a "using up the bits" recipe for an American Stout at 25L:

MO 2.56kg
Munich 1kg
Amber 0.5kg
Crystal 0,5kg
Black Malt 0.5kg
Dark Muscovado Sugar 0.5kg
Light DME 0.5kg

Warrior 26g @ 60m
Cascade 20g @ 15m

Dry hop with Cascade and Ahtanum 20g and 40g.

And this one really is good. The hops are a beautiful counterpoint to the dark malts and the whole thing just works really well, even sampled slightly early.

 

[Slid]

Today's brew is a repeat of the Euro-Hop IPA I've done on a couple of occasions in the past:

Maris Otter 4.9kg
Wheat Malt 0.26kg
Crystal Malt 0.24kg
White Sugar 0.3kg
Admiral 20g at first wort to bitter and re-used US05.

Hops are Hallertau Blanc and Huell Melon, used half and half throughout the schedule:
20g of each @ 15m
22g of each @ 5m
12g of each as a hop tea, as my volume was a bit les than I wanted in the FV, partly due to messing around, with the GF cutting out twice today.

This has turned out really well previously, so fingers crossed with the slightly higher hopping rates.

 

[Slid]

Today's brew is a repeat of the Euro-Hop IPA I've done on a couple of occasions in the past:

The two hops in question seem to compliment each other very well, so here is a slightly lighter version, which uses up the remains of the two bags of HB and HM over the two brews.:

Maris Otter 4.56kg
Wheat Malt 0.10kg
White Sugar 0.32kg
Admiral 20g at first wort to bitter and re-used US05.

Late Hops are Hallertau Blanc and Huell Melon:
HB 19g and 27g @ 15m / 5m
HM 16g and 28g @ 15m / 5m

Another frustrating brew-day on the GF with a cut out at 72C on the mash-out. Then, at the 99C point on the lead in to the boil phase, it cut out again.
Today was #90 brew on the GF. Now, half my brews since restarting HB in 2013 have been using this kit.

I think my problem is with an over-sensitive cut-out switch that has become more prone to tripping with use.

Next time, I am going to tape it up and see what happens, with much care, of course.​

 

[Slid]

Tomorrow I am planning a Saison, leaving the Parti-gyling for the 18th of April.

Grains are weighed out:
5kg MO (as, like, how different is that to Pilsner plus Vienna / Munich?)
300 Wheat malt
200 Special B

Will add some combination of homemade Golden syrup / homemade Marmalade / horribly expensive honey to around 500g in total.

Belle Saison yeast and perhaps Hallertau Northern Brewer and Bobek (Styrian Goldings) in restrained quantities.

Had a couple of bottles to test this out, what with the hot weather this week! Very Saison-ish. My previous brews with Belle Saison were kit brews and were not really in the same ball-park as this.

So good, I am planning to add 2kg of Rhubarb to the same sort of recipe for the next brewday. I picked up 2kg at work recently for £6 - I have Andy Hamilton's Brewing Britain and he mentions Saison as the style of the future and Rhubarb as being an option for at least one Brewery in the "Rhubarb Triangle" in Yorkshire. The Rhubarb is chopped up fairly small and in the freezer.

I may be a bit short of time this weekend, so am thinking of an overnight mash, as a dry finish is unlikely to be a bad thing on this sort of idea. Also, there is no rugby on Friday evening, so I could do HB brewing (as opposed to merely drinking) instead and crack on early doors!

 

[Slid]

Had a couple of bottles to test this out, what with the hot weather this week! Very Saison-ish. My previous brews with Belle Saison were kit brews and were not really in the same ball-park as this.

So good, I am planning to add 2kg of Rhubarb to the same sort of recipe for the next brewday. I picked up 2kg at work recently for £6 - I have Andy Hamilton's Brewing Britain and he mentions Saison as the style of the future and Rhubarb as being an option for at least one Brewery in the "Rhubarb Triangle" in Yorkshire. The Rhubarb is chopped up fairly small and in the freezer.

I may be a bit short of time this weekend, so am thinking of an overnight mash, as a dry finish is unlikely to be a bad thing on this sort of idea. Also, there is no rugby on Friday evening, so I could do HB brewing (as opposed to merely drinking) instead and crack on early doors!

This was brewed on Saturday last and today I added the defrosted rhubarb in 2 paint straining bags, together with 200g of dissolved sugar.

Planning for a single hop beer tomorrow. Maybe Rakua or Motueka? I picked these up recently from the usual supplier - Worcester Hop Shop. Their new website, btw, is one of the least user-friendly pieces of software I have ever seen.

 

[Slid]

In the event it is a Rakau (Maori spelling not my strong suit) with Admiral to bitter, as I want to dry hop with the 28g or so that would have gone in at 60m.

It rained all morning here in Bolton, but the sun is out now.

 

[Slid]

Well, the Rhubarb Saison is now bottled and the Rakau pale ale has been racked. Today's beer is a Brown Porter from the Greg Hughes Book.
So:

Maris Otter 4400g
Brown Malt 500g
Crystal 370g
Chocolate Malt 255g

Endeavour Hops (2015 harvest) should do fine.
30g @ First Wort
21g @ 10 mins

Have done a similar beer a couple of times with good results using the house yeast, US05.
This one came in @ 1.055 and 25L after adding some light brown sugar.

 

[Slid]

A third Saison for the summer today! Nice and simple, measures in kg:

MO 4.78
Wheat 0.20
Crystal 0.29
Sugar 0.25

Added 19g of Endeavour (cos it was open) @ FW
Then the last of the Bobek 28g @ 0 mins

As per usual, I ended up doing the boil in the Peco Boiler due to cut-out on the Grainfather. This despite cleaning and acidizing the boiling plate half way to the moon and back.
The Endeavour hops were pellet and the Bobek leaf. The hop filter on the FGF got clogged up to hell, so I had to shovel the wort back and forth like Cool Hand Luke. "What we had here last week, was a failure to communicate…"

On the plus side, Saison #1 for the summer (see post 121 on April 6) is just spot on.

 

[Slid]

Very simple beer today - 5.2kg MO and some Golden Syrup (homemade, of course!).
Hops are Columbus 20g to bitter, then 100g of Cascade 20g/20g @ 15m and 5mins. Rest for DH or HT. US 05 (new sachet).
Used up the last of the base malt and it turned out to be more than I thought, so just went with that.
Cascade is always nice and summery, so an easy recipe. As usual I am planning to re-use the yeast by pouring the trub into a few 250ml bottles.

Rhubarb Saison a bit cloudy yet, others are good, though and I plan to do one, maybe even two more over the summer.

 

[Slid]

In the event it is a Rakau (Maori spelling not my strong suit) with Admiral to bitter, as I want to dry hop with the 28g or so that would have gone in at 60m.

It rained all morning here in Bolton, but the sun is out now.

I am sampling (read guzzling) this for the first time now. If I think of peaches or nectarines when sipping, maybe I can get the "stoned fruit flavour" thing. As usual, though, hops taste mainly of hops.
This is a nice beer, though. Am not sure it will be a regular. At the moment, Huell Melon and Hallertau Blanc is my go-to pale ale / bitter style.

 

[Slid]

As the weather today is rubbish, I spent my last day off brewing another Saison, with half an eye on next week's weather forecast. Recipe:
Minch Pale 4.3kg
Munich 1kg
Wheat 200g
Special B 250g
Columbus 14g @ 60m
Mandarina Bavaria 25g @ 0m

My usual supplier (WHS) does not despatch until next Monday, so I got some stuff from the HBC in Ireland.
The Minch pale malt seems to be quite a fine crush, as I had a very sticky mash and sparge.
The mash in the GF was just weird, as the pump kept picking up air as well as liquid and there was a load of froth on the top.
The sparge had to be "hand-balled" by removing the top plate and stirring in the sparge water in half litre additions.
This seemed to give a pretty decent efficiency, but the wort in the FV was very cloudy indeed.
No doubt there will be a lot of trub at racking.

 

[Dutto]

...........

The mash in the GF was just weird, as the pump kept picking up air as well as liquid and there was a load of froth on the top.

.............

Weird! There must be a limited number of reasons (air being dragged in somewhere being one of them) so I suggest that you track it down PDQ before you finish up with a load of sticky stuff all over the floor!

 

[Slid]

Weird! There must be a limited number of reasons (air being dragged in somewhere being one of them) so I suggest that you track it down PDQ before you finish up with a load of sticky stuff all over the floor!

My best guess was that there was so much water sitting in the grain basket that there were air pockets under it. The temp display was all over the place at times, which suggests that the probe kept being exposed to air, Plus there was some noticeable scorching of the boiling plate at the end.

 

[Dutto]

I stopped "dough balling" by back-filling the Mash Tun. I always thought (obviously erroneously) that by lowering the basket into a GF it would give the same result ...

... unless the container was just "dropped in" of course!

 

[Slid]

Decided on a pseudo Lager today. It was very warm throughout and again a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the GF and the Peco boiler.
The crush on the HBC Minch Hook Head pale malt seems a bit fine for the GF, more suited to the BIAB method, which is probably more popular than the expensive "All in One" systems.
The mash was very "sticky" and Stirred it through a couple of times during the mash. The sparge was basically hand-balled as well, adding 1L of water at a time and stirring the grains+ water with the big metal stirrer.
Post sparge, filtered the wort through a BIAB bag back (hand-balled with a plastic jug) into the Peco boiler that is used for the sparge water. Then heated up to boiling in the GF and Peco roughly half and half.
As the GF did not cut out, used it for the actual boil.

So the recipe:
Pale malt 5.28kg
Caramalt 0.25kg
White sugar 0.29kg

Mount Hood (dated 2014 - they were cheap!):
31g @ FW
22g @ 5 mins

The wort is like a soup, due to the fine bits from the grain crush (I think).
As I was cleaned up by 2pm, it counts as a pretty smooth brew day, with only familiar issues to work-around.

 

[Slid]

Very similar sort of day to a fortnight ago, doing a Motueka Pale Ale. That is, lots of decanting wort from GF to Peco and back. Recipe:

Pale (Minch) malt 5.35kg
Carapils 255g
Light Brown Sugar 300g

Columbus 17g @FW
Motueka 20g at 15m
Motueka 20g at 5m
Rest of bag is intended for dry hopping / hop tea.