Nicks90's Brewdays

[Nicks90]

Two minor updates,
The mandarina IPA is INCREDIBLE.

In the past week it's flavour has changed dramatically. Gone has the slight floral note and WHAM! it now smacks you in the face with citrus/mandarin orange.
Awesome

Second update is my bayou IPA once cooled had an OG of 1.058
So I had to water it down a little bit and now have 20l bubbling away on the trub from my bitter. I must have made a mistake with my weighing out, otherwise I hit 90% efficiency. I think not!

 

[Stephenj]

OH ****.
The packet of S05 turned out to be a packet of cider yeast!
So i am doing a real bodge job which i hope will work. I've siphoned out a 500ml PET bottles worth of the trub from AG15 (which has just about finished) on the assumption there should be plenty of viable yeast in the bottom and the little bit of darker bitter wont affect the overall colour or flavour when added to 17l of ipa wort.
I;ve popped a tiny amount of sugar in the bottle to see if it starts to firm up overnight to prove there is yeast in there, whilst the wort cools down in my cellar.

If the bottle is firming up by tomorrow morning, i will be confident it should be ok to pitch. If not then the cooled wort will have to wait until thursday before i can get to the shops to buy some yeast.

Edited to add - Wasnt confident that it was going to work. There was probably only an inch of sediment/yeast in the bottom of the PET, so i must have done a crap job trying to syphon the trub out!
So instead i transferred my bitter to a bottling bucket and pitched the IPA on to the yeast cake. Sorted

That's some quick thinking. How much swearing and head shaking did you do? That's my standard response to a balls up

 

[Nicks90]

AG# 17
English summer ale / IPA

The brewing machine continues at some rate of knots and more beer must be made!!!!!
This time I fancied a nice sessionable summer english ale, just on the off chance we actually get a summer.

3kg Irish malt
200gm crystal 110 ebc
100gm carapils

18l mash at 67c for an hour followed by a 4l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 20l wort for a 60 minute boil - with 16l in the FV

Hops
15gm Target 60 min
10gm Fuggles 15 min
10gm EKG 15 mins
10gm Fuggles 0 min
10gm EKG 0 mins

I wont be dry hopping this one, as i dont reckon it will need it.

Yeast - S05 of course

shooting for 5% abv and 35 IBUs and colour of 8 SRM
I'm a little concerned about some feedback I've read on here that target is a thug and giving a harsh bitterness. Whereas others have said its a really good bittering hop used in things like Fullers, which is very smooth!
But sod it, bought 100gms to experiment with so its gone in!

 

[Nicks90]

AG number 18

Oat Stout
My promise to save the oat stout (ag13) for christmas isnt really working, its nearly all gone. So this time i am going to hide at least 20 bottles of the stuff so i cant touch it!

3kg Irish malt
100gm crystal malt 240ebc
100gm crystal malt 340ebc
200gm Oats
200gm Chocolate malt 900ebc
200gm carafa special 2 1100ebc

18l mash at 67c for 60 mins. Followed by a 4l sparge. As usual a damn good bag squeeze
Leaving 20l wort for a 30 minute boil

Hops
20gm Target at 30min
20gm Target at 5mins
Yeast - Nottys finest!

Looking at an OG of 1.060 and 35IBUs with 35SRM. I am hoping with just using target hops, its going to have a real earthy spicy undercurrent, which will compliment the choc malt and slight burnt taste of the carafa.

 

[Nicks90]

bayou IPA and the summer ale have both been bottled - yeah i know i only put the ale on 8 days ago, but its been finished for 4 days, so what the hell.
my oat stout ended up yielding 18l at 1.055 after a 30 min boil, so i am not complaining about the figures and if it tastes anything like the last lot, i will be very happy indeed!


Next up, i think another go at a lager, as i am fortunate enough to have a proper cellar that sits around 12C all year round.

 

[Slid]

bayou IPA and the summer ale have both been bottled - yeah i know i only put the ale on 8 days ago, but its been finished for 4 days, so what the hell.
my oat stout ended up yielding 18l at 1.055 after a 30 min boil, so i am not complaining about the figures and if it tastes anything like the last lot, i will be very happy indeed!


Next up, i think another go at a lager, as i am fortunate enough to have a proper cellar that sits around 12C all year round.

Yeah, now, that really is pretty cool.
Like, man.

 

[Nicks90]

AG 19 lager thingy MK2

Time for another stab at a lager, basically repeating ag8 but with different hops that I got a good deal on. If my workplan goes as it should, tomorrow afternoon is free and I can crack on!

3kg Irish malt
100gm caramalt

16l mash at 65c for an hour followed by a 4l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 19l wort for a 60 minute boil

Hops
30gm pacifica at 60min
50gm pacifica at 0 mins
20gm pacifica dry hop

Will be using mangrove Jack M54 California lager yeast as I don't have time to let it sit a month brewing, followed by another month to carb/condition.
Aiming for OG1.055 and 25ibu.
Should be a good fruity combo with that yeast and hop and quite looking forward to this one.

 

[Nicks90]

And yeah I know M54 isn't a 'true' lager yeast, fermenting at ale temps - i meant to do this one months ago to allow proper lagering time in my cellar. But I forgot and hence I'm cheating.

 

[matt76]

I just googled it and it says lager yeast on the pack - so as far as I'm concerned you're not cheating at all.....

.....or at least no more than me using WY2124 (also good up to 20degC).....

..... Nevertheless, some sort of high tech temp control might be useful just to stop it getting too warm (remember fermentation produces a bit of heat that could take you a couple of degrees above ambient)

 

[Nicks90]

Brew day went pretty much as planned, except I over measured my sparge water and had 20l for the boil and 17l in the fv at the end
Can't imagine it will make much difference to the OG, maybe a couple of points. But who cares....

 

[Shaun Clark]

Love your 'thingy' style experimentation. I have played the brew all the bits left from other recipe game and got some great results. I made a Hefferweisen/Hoegaarten thingy that was flippin awesome. Problem is I can never replicate it as I just bunged a load of various malts left over, some porridge oats and some spices with a good wheat beer yeast in a bucket. Damn you beer gods!!!

 

[Nicks90]

Hi Shaun, I've done a couple of "thingy" brews now, but I always write down everything I put in.
That way if the beer god's decide it's the world's best beer, I might stand half a chance at replicating it
Have to admit I haven't actually completely copied any of my brews yet. Too many styles, to many hops too much choice!

 

[Nicks90]

As I have a light day at work today, decided to partake in my favourite pastime - MAKING BEER!

Decided to revisit my original summer ale I did in AG9 and combine it with AG17 summer IPA and tweak the hops.

AG number 20

Summer Golden Ale mk2

3kg Irish malt
100gms crystal 40ebc

17l mash at 65c for an hour followed by a 4l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 19l wort for a 60 minute boil

Hops
15 g Target 60 min
15 g Fuggles 0 min
20 g EKG 0 min
Yeast, Gervins finest!


Shooting for 4.5% abv and 30 IBUs and colour of 6 SRM

 

[matt76]

Looks good @Nicks90 My first two brews were quite similar with MO + EKG & Fuggles - I actually tried to rebrew AG#1 recently as it was a really nice, moreish summer golden ale but something went a bit pear shaped so I've recently reprised it as an ESB, maybe not a million miles from yours. Must have another go soon at rebrewing AG#1 though

 

[Nicks90]

AG19 lager thingy mk2 has been dry hopped for 4 days now and has been completely stable at 1.010 since then.
Unfortunately i dont remember what the OG was (or even if i took one!) so its getting bottled this afternoon as an unknown abv lager! But it will be somewhere in the region of 4.5-5% unless my efficiency was massively off.

A quick taste from the sample jar shows it to have a very clean floral orangy/citrus flavour - quite crisp with just a hint of malt flavour coming through.
Cant wait for this one to carb up and get stuck in!

 

[Nicks90]

AG21 - Riggwelter Clone

"And tonight Matthew, I'll be appearing as........." a nice dark Yorkshire beer!
I've done Foxbats mainline a couple of times now, one slightly lighter than the other - and they were lovely. But I like making my own recipes and fancied having a go at my take on a classic. So here it is:

3kg Marris Otter
150g Crystal 110
100g Chocolate Malt
150g Torrified wheat (shredded wheat)
200g muscovado sugar

17l mash at 67c for an hour followed by a 6l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 21l wort for a 60 minute boil

Hops are
10g target at 60min
20g EKG at 5min
20g fuggles at 0min
Yeast mangrove jack's M15 empire ale

Aiming for OG of 1.050, 34IBUs and 15SRM colour
Slightly changed the recipe compared to what i put originally in the recipe discussion forum, as i found a website that details the srm and ibu of both riggwelter and old peculiar, so its been tweaked to hit the mid point between the two in terms of bitterness and colour.
As i am about to go on holiday, this is going to brew in the primary for 3 weeks instead of the usual 2. Wont do it any harm i suppose.

 

[foxbat]

Looks like a good bitter to me. I've done one before with chocolate malt, actually the low colour variety, and it did turn out well. You could definitely got richness without any burnt bitterness.

 

[Nicks90]

Riggwelter clone was touch and go for a while due to having an unknown pellicle - but after consulting on here and with the wife - turns out it was lactobacillus. its been bottled for 2 weeks and is already a half decent pint. But its going to get put away for a month or two to condition.

AG# 22
Last of the summer IPA (Bayou IPA mk2)

Time to get the last of my ingredients used up and chuck in what i have left of my hop stocks!

3.2kg Irish malt
130gm crystal 110 ebc
120gm rolled oats

17l mash at 62c for an hour followed by a 4l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 19l wort for a 30 minute boil - targetting 16l in the FV

Hops
15gm Centennial 30 min
15gm Simcoe 30 min
15gm Centennial 0 min
15gm Simcoe 0 min

Will dry hop with what i have left (about 15gm of each) after 5 days
Reckon this will be about 4.5% and 45 IBU

Yeast:
Nottys finest

edited to add - refined my volumes with exactly what i had left!

 

[Nicks90]

Been a while since I did a picture of one of my beers, as I tend to concentrate more on supping than photo-ing them.
But here's a piccy of my lager
AG 19 lager thingy MK2

Irish malt and Pacifica hops. Very pleasant beer for a lager. The mangrove jack's M54 yeast has given it a bit of depth, a slight peppery funk that you always get with a cali-common - but otherwise very clean and refreshing

 

[Nicks90]

AG number 23

Random IPA wotsit
Found a few more ingredients - like you do - so definitely this is the last of my current stock and another user-upper type brew

2.5kg Irish malt
35gms crystal 40ebc
65gm crystal 240ebc

17l mash at 65c for an hour followed by a 2l sparge and a good bag squeeze
Leaving 16l wort for a 60 minute boil with 12l in to the FV

Hops
17 g centennial 60 min
27 g Simcoe 0 min

Yeast, Gervins finest!

It'll turn out like it wants to! Be reeeeet