So this is my summary of my first 6 months of home brewing. Having thought about doing it for a few years, I finally moved into my own place with my girlfiend having shared rented accomodation in London for my entire adult life. Now I have the space for brewing and storing my own beer.
It'a been an exciting time so far and I think I'm improving my technique and recipes and as finances allow I hope to upgrade my equipment to make things even easier and tastier.
Fortunately my other half also loves drinking beer, so does not mind me taking over the kitchen for the best part of the day on a weekend; I just have to make sure I brew something that she will drink.
These are the beers I have brewed so far and what I learnt on the way.
Brew 1!! Tiny Rebel Cwtch kit
Loved this beer in the pub so was an easy option.
Beer turned out ok. It had the flavour but was very murky. This could be down to bottling in 2 litre fizzy water bottles (really couldn't be bothered bottling 40+ 500ml bottles).
Brew 2 - First all grain
Didn't want to do any more kits so dived straight into AL BIAB. This was a basic pale ale with Chinook & Cascade (should have been Citra but the LBS didn't have any).
10 litre (ish) batch bottled in 500ml bottle this time.
Result: drinkable but a little thin despite having oats in the mash, and not enough hop flavour, but for a first attempt surprising decent.
Brew 3 - ESB
My first attempt at composing my own recipe having read many others first.
Result: This was much better. Got a slight red tint which I wanted, and loved the Bramling X hops. Still a little thin and needed more carbination. Have recently discovered a rogue bottle of this in cupboard which is 5 months old. Will look forward to trying it at christmas.
Brews 4 & 5 were a bit "meh". Pleasant enough, and discovered that I'm not a big fan of too much melanoidin. But lessons learnt and beer was drunk.
Brew 5 - First Porter
Porters are nororiously easy to get good results, and that's what happened here.
First use of East Kent Golding which I liked.
Brews 6 & 7 were more about learing. I learnt that I'm not a big fan of Wit Bier and also that my thermometer was not very accurate which I think explained the lack of body and low FG in the previous brews.
Brew 8 - Bitter V1 (I need to up my beer naming game :whistle:)
This one was good. Again with EKG and first use of flaked barley. This one could have been a bit more bitter, beersmith says it should be 45IBU but I don't think it is.
I also vowed never to dry hop in the bottling bucket without a hop sock ever again! My bottle wand kept getting logged with hop debris and in the end I just ended up bottling straight from the tap. Luckily only the last half a dozen or so had hop bits in them. These bottles were big gushers and picking out bits of plant matter while drinking was not fun.
Brew 9 - Something hoppy
I'm getting the hang of this now. A little sweet due to the mash temp being too high. Looking for body which I probably didn't need in this beer.
Lot's on Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe in this one. Nice orange colour but surprisingly the hops really weren't shouting at me. This I think is down to my very soft water in Stockport. Research was done and water will be adjust from here on in.
Brew 10 - Porter V2 (Oaty!!)
Another porter very similar to my first, but a bit darker and inadvertently extra oaty. I forgot that I had ordered my grain kit with oats and decided to add more oats to the mash (15%). This one sat in the FV for a while as I broke my wrist while cycling home from work so is still conditioning, but I'll try and save these for christmas.
FG was quite high, but I think that that the extra body from the oats may affect the reading slightly??
And here we are today having just put brew 11 into the FV. This one is a Darkstar Hophead clone, well almost as I didn't have enough cascade to only use one hop so threw some Simcoe in at the end instead.
First use of water treatment as well. Gypsum and calcium Chloride added as per Strange-Steve's instructions and EZWater calculator. Looking forward to trying this one as it's the first "clone" I've done and really liked Hophead when I lived down south.
So there is my brief history of brewing so far. Sorry for making such a long post, but thought I would get it all out in one go while I could still remember everything.
My next 2 brews are already to go; a clone of Tim Taylors Boltmaker and Clibit's Half Hearted Ale from the recipe section.
Also really really want to get a keg system going. Waiting 3-4 weeks for bottles to condition is the worst part.
Big thanks to the forum and it's members for getting me this far. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute what little knowledge I have to other forumites in the future.
:thumb::drink:
It'a been an exciting time so far and I think I'm improving my technique and recipes and as finances allow I hope to upgrade my equipment to make things even easier and tastier.
Fortunately my other half also loves drinking beer, so does not mind me taking over the kitchen for the best part of the day on a weekend; I just have to make sure I brew something that she will drink.
These are the beers I have brewed so far and what I learnt on the way.
Brew 1!! Tiny Rebel Cwtch kit
Loved this beer in the pub so was an easy option.
Beer turned out ok. It had the flavour but was very murky. This could be down to bottling in 2 litre fizzy water bottles (really couldn't be bothered bottling 40+ 500ml bottles).
Brew 2 - First all grain
Didn't want to do any more kits so dived straight into AL BIAB. This was a basic pale ale with Chinook & Cascade (should have been Citra but the LBS didn't have any).
10 litre (ish) batch bottled in 500ml bottle this time.
Result: drinkable but a little thin despite having oats in the mash, and not enough hop flavour, but for a first attempt surprising decent.
Brew 3 - ESB
My first attempt at composing my own recipe having read many others first.
Result: This was much better. Got a slight red tint which I wanted, and loved the Bramling X hops. Still a little thin and needed more carbination. Have recently discovered a rogue bottle of this in cupboard which is 5 months old. Will look forward to trying it at christmas.
Brews 4 & 5 were a bit "meh". Pleasant enough, and discovered that I'm not a big fan of too much melanoidin. But lessons learnt and beer was drunk.
Brew 5 - First Porter
Porters are nororiously easy to get good results, and that's what happened here.
First use of East Kent Golding which I liked.
Brews 6 & 7 were more about learing. I learnt that I'm not a big fan of Wit Bier and also that my thermometer was not very accurate which I think explained the lack of body and low FG in the previous brews.
Brew 8 - Bitter V1 (I need to up my beer naming game :whistle:)
This one was good. Again with EKG and first use of flaked barley. This one could have been a bit more bitter, beersmith says it should be 45IBU but I don't think it is.
I also vowed never to dry hop in the bottling bucket without a hop sock ever again! My bottle wand kept getting logged with hop debris and in the end I just ended up bottling straight from the tap. Luckily only the last half a dozen or so had hop bits in them. These bottles were big gushers and picking out bits of plant matter while drinking was not fun.
Brew 9 - Something hoppy
I'm getting the hang of this now. A little sweet due to the mash temp being too high. Looking for body which I probably didn't need in this beer.
Lot's on Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe in this one. Nice orange colour but surprisingly the hops really weren't shouting at me. This I think is down to my very soft water in Stockport. Research was done and water will be adjust from here on in.
Brew 10 - Porter V2 (Oaty!!)
Another porter very similar to my first, but a bit darker and inadvertently extra oaty. I forgot that I had ordered my grain kit with oats and decided to add more oats to the mash (15%). This one sat in the FV for a while as I broke my wrist while cycling home from work so is still conditioning, but I'll try and save these for christmas.
FG was quite high, but I think that that the extra body from the oats may affect the reading slightly??
And here we are today having just put brew 11 into the FV. This one is a Darkstar Hophead clone, well almost as I didn't have enough cascade to only use one hop so threw some Simcoe in at the end instead.
First use of water treatment as well. Gypsum and calcium Chloride added as per Strange-Steve's instructions and EZWater calculator. Looking forward to trying this one as it's the first "clone" I've done and really liked Hophead when I lived down south.
So there is my brief history of brewing so far. Sorry for making such a long post, but thought I would get it all out in one go while I could still remember everything.
My next 2 brews are already to go; a clone of Tim Taylors Boltmaker and Clibit's Half Hearted Ale from the recipe section.
Also really really want to get a keg system going. Waiting 3-4 weeks for bottles to condition is the worst part.
Big thanks to the forum and it's members for getting me this far. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute what little knowledge I have to other forumites in the future.
:thumb::drink:
