What did you brew today?

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Spent the day sat in the sun, brewing something resembling Abbot Reserve. First I discovered that I was out of Amber, so used a little Dark Munich to add some maltiness, so see what happens. I ended up with 24l at 1.068, 4 points above target, so I swapped the planned Notty yeast for London (ESB), which is a lower attenuator. Looks a nice clean wort, without too much break material, hope it's a tasty brew.
 
14 Calcium
2 Magnesium
12 Sodium
?? Sulphite
11.5 Chloride
19 Alkalinity
Hardness Total as CaCO3 = 44

are mine, as far as I can make out, I don't know much about this water business. But I'm surprised that mine seems so different to Ormskirk and Warrington, which are only a few miles away.

cushyno and Cheshire Cat, I would of course welcome any comments. I've always felt the water here was good; I moved to Wigan in 2017 from Wiltshire, and found the water considerably softer than it was there. Hence I've been using tapwater quite happily thus far.
 
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Although we are all UU customers the sources of our water are quite different. We get ours from North Wales from Lake Vyrnwy. I suspect it's because originally we we were separate companies with their own networks.
 

Typical value
UK/EU limitUnits
Hardness LevelSoft
Hardness Clarke1.47Clarke
Aluminium<32.5200µg Al/l
Calcium7.26mg Ca/l
Residual chlorine - Total0.69mg/l
Residual chlorine - Free0.63mg/l
Coliform bacteria00number/100ml
Colour<1.9920mg/l Pt/Co scale
Conductivity58.62500uS/cm at 20oC
Copper<0.01682mg Cu/l
E.coli00number/100ml
Iron<8.10200µg Fe/l
Lead<0.88310µg Pb/l
Magnesium0.667mg Mg/l
Manganese<1.7050µg Mn/l
Nitrate<2.0950mg NO3/l
Sodium
My tap water come's from the lake district and local ground sources
 
It's frustrating that parts of Manchester gets its lovely water from the lakes, ideal for brewing. Liverpool, not so bad with water coming from lake Vrnwy, and we're nearer to the lakes and further from the river Dee than both, but we get that hard and less brew friendly water here in parts of South West Lancashire. I think Wigan gets water from sources around winter hill? Slid is that way and has really soft water.
 
A stove-top seven(ish) litre batch of Dave Line's Webster's Yorkshire Bitter recipe, updated to replace some of the sugar with malt:

1200g Golden Promise
120g Wheat malt
70g Crystal malt
15g Chocolate malt
100g Brewing sugar

33g Fuggles at start of boil
5g Bramling Cross at flame out

MJ Liberty Bell yeast

OG is a touch low at 1.036, aiming for ABV 3.5%.

I'm just old enough to have drunk the Halifax-brewed original on draught in the Union Cross in the mid-1980s - will see if any memories of the taste are triggered!
Bottled after four weeks, as usual the Liberty Bell took its time but crunched through everything it could find to achieve a FG of 1.007. Out of the fermenter it is tasting like a decent Yorkshire Bitter.
 
A stove-top seven litre batch, loosely based on Graham Wheeler's Fuller's London Porter clone:

1410g Maris Otter
222g Brown
188g Crystal
40g Chocolate
22g Fuggles at start of a 90 minute boil
10g Challenger last 10 minutes of boil
Lallemand London ale yeast

OG three points above target at 1058.
 
Opted for an IPL as my first attempt at pressure fermentation. Brew day went well. Got 78% efficiency from my brewzilla so really chuffed with that - normally get around 70%. Followed David Heath's advice on stirring in the grains very thoroughly and paid closer attention to pH.

Went for 47% pilsner, 47% golden promise (mainly due to running low on pilsner) and 6% Munich. Hopped with citra, mosaic and Simcoe. Fermenting with mangrove jack bohemian pilsner. Should come out around 5% with 40 IBU.

Not going to dry hop but there was a 20 minute hop stand so I'm hoping it'll still be pleasantly hoppy.
 
As the schools are off and my wife's working, I took a last minute day off today. Weather's lovely, relative peace and quiet...get an outdoor brew on!

Today, I'll be attempting my first Kolsch. 👍🏻
 
Made a APA with Cascade, Chinook & Citra today.

When I was transferring, I found it difficult to assess the wort temperature, then I had an idea...........

I have a piece of foam, gaffer taped to the side of my FV, that the Inkbird probe sits behind, why not stick the Grainfather temperature probe in there during transfer?

Worked well.
 
First AG attempt on a new (to me) set up. Get Er Brewed Pimped Up APA.
so far so good, just on the 20min hop stand before transferring to a Jerry can for overnight cooling and whacking in my Fermzilla all rounder tomorrow.
910D7BC0-E519-49B7-8476-BC2607D9CBC3.jpeg

Also trying out the PID I built yesterday, was great for holding mash and boil temps.
 
Spent the day sat in the sun, brewing something resembling Abbot Reserve. First I discovered that I was out of Amber, so used a little Dark Munich to add some maltiness, so see what happens. I ended up with 24l at 1.068, 4 points above target, so I swapped the planned Notty yeast for London (ESB), which is a lower attenuator. Looks a nice clean wort, without too much break material, hope it's a tasty brew.
Why did you substitute a lower attenuating yeast when your OG is higher than expected?
 

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