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A bit of left field fun prepped for tomorrow. A whisky themed strong pale ale, 7% abv. Hops are Flyer (Liquorice, Toffee, Caramel), Bramling Cross (Blackberry, Lemon, Loganberry & Vanilla). With Peat Smoked malt, two crystals for extra Toffee notes, wheat for it's graininess and a big dollop of malted oats, hopefully their silky texture will replicate that of strong alcohol.

Water
Ca-100 Mg-10 Na-20 Co3-15 SO4-177 Cl-89

Mash - 60' @ 67c
Extra Pale Planet - 69%
Medium Peat Smoked Barley - 12%
Malted Oats - 10%
Malted Wheat - 4%
Caramalt - 2.5%
Crystal 77L - 2.5%
First Gold (Home grown) - 50g

Batch -11L
OG -1.067
IBUs - 25
EBC - 13

Boil - 60'
First Gold (Home grown) - 10g @ FW
Bramling Cross - 10g @ 10'
Flyer - 30g @ 0'
Bramling Cross - 30g @ 0'

House Blend (2 parts Windsor, 1 part Notty, 1 part BE256)
 
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Another batch of Flakey Bitter, a stand-by of mine.

15 litre nominal batch size
2925 g Best Ale
75 g Light Crystal
145 g Flaked Barley
22 g Roasted Barley

11 g Magnum +10 g Progress @ 60
20 g Fuggles @ -15
1/2 Protofloc @ -5

I usually go with S-04 for this, but I'm trying Wilko yeast today.
 
I made Mead today. This is the fourth time and the other batches turned-out well, so I'm trying an experiment. I bought the cheapest honey possible. 75p for 340g at Tesco. Bought 12. Made in China, so you know it's quality stuff and the bees were well treated.

Was going to make 10 litres, but the gravity was a bit too high, so I topped it up to 11 litres. OG is at 1.111 (corrected for temperature). Using US-05 as I have before. As I'm trying to make the cheapest Mead humanly possible and intend to add fruit, I'll wait and see what's on sale in the frozen section of the grocery stores once fermentation winds down.
 
Berlinerweisse using the Wildbrew Philly Sour. This yeast gives a modest sour, nutrient/dextrose should add a bit more tartness…

BIAB no sparge
19 liter final batch
1.5k Wheat Pale Malt
1.5 k Pilsner
Mash 67 for 90 min

60 min boil
14g Hallatauer 10 min
142g dextrose 10 min
Yeast nutrient

final SG 1.040

Wildbrew Philly Sour @ 23
 
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In the middle of brewing 30 litres of English porter today adding 500g of pale malt to the Malt Miller's True to Style porter kit that's designed for 23 litres.

20 litres will be fermented as normal with Lallemand's English Style yeast. 10 litres will be fermented with a red wine yeast & then have some Pinotage soaked oak cubes added for some ageing.

Really enjoying brewing the bigger volume so I always get 10 litres to mess about with & experiment.
 
Kölsch, 19L

4kg Pils
225g wheat
225g Vienna
15g magnum @60m for 25 IBUs
Lallemand Köln yeast or kviek, depending on how chilling goes later on

BIAB with a batch sparge due to kettle size

Aiming for 2.5 vols CO2 in the bottle
 
CTRL ALT(bier) DEL

47% Bestmalz Pale
38% Pilsner
9% Munich
3% Caramunich
3% Carafa 2

Magnum to bitter, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh late addition

Wyeast 1007 German Ale

Target abv 5.1%

Brew day **** up was unscrewing the top valve on the GF recirculation pipe to remove the ball and spring, then dropping the valve into the boiling wort. Not my finest hour.

Other than that plain sailing except for the OG. Apparently my efficiency is finally getting to GF "norms". That meant I overshot my expected OG. 1058 instead of 1052. Might end up a 6% er.
 
Why were you doing that in the first place?
Good question. It was a tip from @strange-steve 's GF How To guide on this very forum. A couple of times the spring has got clogged with a bit of hop matter and made transferring to the FM bucket painfully slow. Removing the spring and ball reduces this risk. Steve does say it's very much not essential but I thought I'd try it.

The valve drop meant emptying the wort out, finding the valve, refilling and getting back to boiling point. Pain in the neck!
 
Good question. It was a tip from @strange-steve 's GF How To guide on this very forum. A couple of times the spring has got clogged with a bit of hop matter and made transferring to the FM bucket painfully slow. Removing the spring and ball reduces this risk. Steve does say it's very much not essential but I thought I'd try it.

The valve drop meant emptying the wort out, finding the valve, refilling and getting back to boiling point. Pain in the neck!
I feel for you. I've knocked the hop filter off the kettle before (previous kit) and had to do a similar transfer of boiling wort, reattach the filter and restart the transfer. PITA. I'm glad you came out of it without injury.

I can see how the spring could get clogged with hop matter. The hop filter on the G30 is pants. I use a hop spider.
 
I'm missing an airlock bung. I'm 100% sure it's at the bottom of the conical from when I was sanitising everything.

I really hope the fact it's silicon will save my ass.
 
A small batch simple pale ale today. While back I made three pale ales*, all the same grain bill and yeast, differing only by the hops used (although I did try for a fairly constant IBU figure). this time I swapped 250 g of the base malt out for wheat malt, to see what that will bring to the party.

1750 g Best Ale
250 g Wheat Malt
75 g Caramunich
First Gold to bitter to 35 IBU. (nominal 10 litre batch)

* what I would say about the previous brews, and this probably doesn't speak well in my favour, but I found surprisingly little detectable difference (to me) in the hops used, which were First Gold, Centennial, and Bramling Cross.
 
I'm going to be brewing a golden ale tomorrow. Currently I was thinking of using 100% Maris Otter, but I have some melanoidin malt leftover that I am thinking if chucking in. Any thoughts?
 
A small batch simple pale ale today. While back I made three pale ales*, all the same grain bill and yeast, differing only by the hops used (although I did try for a fairly constant IBU figure). this time I swapped 250 g of the base malt out for wheat malt, to see what that will bring to the party.

1750 g Best Ale
250 g Wheat Malt
75 g Caramunich
First Gold to bitter to 35 IBU. (nominal 10 litre batch)

* what I would say about the previous brews, and this probably doesn't speak well in my favour, but I found surprisingly little detectable difference (to me) in the hops used, which were First Gold, Centennial, and Bramling Cross.
Love this kind of experiment! Please let us know the results
 
A
I'm going to be brewing a golden ale tomorrow. Currently I was thinking of using 100% Maris Otter, but I have some melanoidin malt leftover that I am thinking if chucking in. Any thoughts?
My notes on Melanoidin say: "Adds ruby colour; aroma is honey and biscuit notes. Maximum addition 20%"

I'd say honey and biscuit could work well in a golden ale, if lightly hopped. Might come out a bit dark tho?
 

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