What did you brew today?

[Martybhoy]

Today I brewed Brew Dog's Brixton Porter, using Edinburgh Ale Yeast instead of Californian Ale Yeast. All numbers hit within 1 point. I finally have my kit sussed and brew days are generally a relaxed affair.

Good, reliable fermentation is the final frontier.

 

[chub1]

Today I brewed Brew Dog's Brixton Porter, using Edinburgh Ale Yeast instead of Californian Ale Yeast. All numbers hit within 1 point. I finally have my kit sussed and brew days are generally a relaxed affair.

Good, reliable fermentation is the final frontier.

Did this one myself a while back,although slightly 'tweaked'. Came out ok:thumb:

 

[Martybhoy]

How did you tweak it? And by ok, do you mean decent, or just average?

 

[chub1]

How did you tweak it? And by ok, do you mean decent, or just average?

Did a small batch partial mash and slightly altered /added a couple of malts. No Bravo hops ,didn't have any and kept to bram x and challenger.
Yup it was ok,it all went:lol:. Never ever had it so could not compare anyway. Have tinkered with a few diy dog recipies and all have gone down well:thumb:
To be honest,if i try any known recipies i tend to 'tinker' with them rather than follow them like for like.

 

[BrewAwamutu]

Still very new to this (in my first year) and enjoying immensely. Now have three sets of bottles and a second fermenting barrel to keep things ticking over.


Planning / Thinking about

I've got the basic Coopers Lager tin that came with my second starter kit (which incidentally was an absolute bargain at NZ$80 or 40 quid). To do something different with a brew I hear some dubious things about, I am planning to take a big handful of chopped chilies and drop them in to give it a tasty bite. My first lager had a handful of kafffir lime leaves in so why not do similar this time? :)

Fermenting / Conditioning
is a Mangrove Jack Irish Stout that is propped up with 1.5 litres of fresh coffee and 250g of 100% cocoa. Only made up to 20litres and looking forward to sampling in a couple of weeks.

Drinking

A Coopers Dark Ale that was supplemented with 500g of additional dextrose and 250g of golden syrup. This is absolutely lush and a doppelganger for the immortal Newcastle Brown Ale! :thumb:


Any advice re chilies & lager much welcomed!

 

[Slid]

Did a second wheat beer today, using First Gold Hops and Coriander & Tangerine peel with a Belgian wheat yeast.

 

[alsch890]

Brewed a version of the Palmer Brown Ale yesterday, fairly painless brew day. I was bottling an Amber at the same time and almost (as in had already filled one bottle) forgot the priming sugar! Not sure I'll try multi-tasking again. :-)

Brown Ale:

Mash: Pale ale malt 3.25kg
Amber malt (Malanoidin) 1kg
Crystal 60 malt (Caramunich III) 250g
Chocolate malt (Carafa II) 125g


Boil: Wort 22 litres
Nugget hops 15g 9.5% 60 mins
Willamette hops 15g 4.50% 15 mins
Irish moss 1 tsp 15 mins

Fermentation: Safale US-05 1 packet

 

[MmmBeer]

Had a day off yesterday, so decided to attempt something that's been on my 'To Brew' list for a while, a 1698 clone. It also gave me a chance to christen my latest d.i.y. addition, a grain bag draining stand, using a small washing up bowl with the bottom cut out as a support for the rim of the mashing bag. This allowed me the chance to recirculate the wort over the grain bed using a jug.

The only recipe I could find online was pretty vague, 77% pale malt, 12% crystal malt, 11% syrup,
Target & Goldings to 41 IBU.

Reading a little further someone had suggested substituting some chocolate malt for some of the crystal, with this in mind and the fact I had no Target hops, my 10L recipe ended up as.
2kg Maris Otter
220g crystal malt 100
90g chocolate malt
300g golden syrup (added at start of boil)

20g WGV 6.7% at start of boil
1/2 protofloc at 15 min
10g Goldings 5.4% at 10 min
10g Fuggles 4.5% at 10 min
5g Goldings 5.4% at flameout

1/2 sachet Corssmyloof Real ale yeast, rehydrated and pitched at 23 C, o.g. 1.070.

My first observation was that its very dark, overdid the choccy malt, but I have done three recipes from Graham Wheeler's book and always think they come out much lighter than the original (and lower in hop flavour). The wort in the sample jar tasted good though. :grin:

 

[VillageBrew]

I also had the day off yesterday (:thumb:) and, despite a late start, brewed up Greg Hughes' Dunkelweizen. The sample jar tasted brilliant (not too hoppy) but my OG was 1.066 (instead of the planned 1.056). I think my Cygnet manages to boil off at a much higher rate than 'normal'. Never mind - I'm sure I won't be complaining at Christmas! :drunk:

 

[pms67]

I also had the day off yesterday (:thumb:) and, despite a late start, brewed up Greg Hughes' Dunkelweizen. The sample jar tasted brilliant (not too hoppy) but my OG was 1.066 (instead of the planned 1.056). I think my Cygnet manages to boil off at a much higher rate than 'normal'. Never mind - I'm sure I won't be complaining at Christmas! :drunk:

I’m suspecting this as well, I have the 30l Burco, seems vigorous, think I’m losing a lot over an hour ?

 

[Fore]

Courage Directors (Wheeler recipe), AG#13. Likely one of my cheapest brews, as the hop bill is very low, and there is not a great deal of malt either (added dextrose). I'm thinking about £8 for 23l, and it should be coming out above 5%. Starting to move away from Brun Water for acid addition, as I'm starting to find my own feet with that. Hit my 5.4 pH target. I find I always undershoot mash pH if I follow Brun Water directly; not sure I'll ever know why. Had stuck (batch) sparge but just push on now. I stirred again, pushed the malt up one end, reduced the rest, and reduced the vorlauf. It came through, perhaps not as clear as it otherwise would have, but I nor anyone else will ever know in the final beer. Efficiency won't be hurt with batch sparging either. I calculated a 90% mash efficiency; not quite sure I believe that though. Brewhouse efficiency was 74% and it almost always falls about 10% below mash efficiency, but then dextrose is thrown into the mix to confuse things.

Recent brews have seen me move into more additions such as campden tablet & yeast nutrient. I think it all makes a difference, as my brews are slowly improving. Not sure what has the most influence though, or if I could cut something out completely without any negative impact. Anyway, it's all dirt cheap and the brews are on the up.

I still brew kits, but they are really nowhere close to AG. I brew them only because I don't have time to brew sufficient AGs to keep a steady supply of beer. Kits all have the same salty taste to them; not the killer HB twang of the old days. I'm thinking the IBUs are higher in most kits I get, and that's possibly what I perceive as salty. Not really sure. All I know is, that at 2-3 times the cost, they are half as good, and that shouldn't be.

 

[user 18729]

1910 Fuller's AK from Ron Pattinson's book.

Tried to follow it as closely as possible, couldn't get any cluster for the buttering addition so went with Fuggles instead. Looking forward to tasting something from over 100 years ago [emoji6]

 

[m_rawdin]

Kolsch today, first time using crossmyloof kolsch yeast, aimed for SG of 1.046, got 1.044.

 

[Linalmeemow]

A clone of Firestone Walker's Velvet Merlin oatmeal stout. Looks like I'm going to overshoot the abv by around 1% bringing it in at 6.5%. Brewday went really smoothly though - I was concerned about the sparge as there was a lot of oatmeal in there but there were no problems at all.

Recipe is here if you're interested: http://www.craftedpours.com/homebrew-recipe/oatmeal-stout-recipe

 

[VillageBrew]

I’m suspecting this as well, I have the 30l Burco, seems vigorous, think I’m losing a lot over an hour ?

Not sure if I'm being too heavy handed in the boil? I'm always more worried about it not boiling so would rather suffer the extra loss. If I could just tweak the temp down by 1-2 degrees it might hit the sweet spot, but the thermostat on the Cygnet doesn't seem to be that sensitive.

(Apologies - I seem to have gone off-thread a bit!)

 

[BeerCat]

Not sure if I'm being too heavy handed in the boil? I'm always more worried about it not boiling so would rather suffer the extra loss. If I could just tweak the temp down by 1-2 degrees it might hit the sweet spot, but the thermostat on the Cygnet doesn't seem to be that sensitive.

(Apologies - I seem to have gone off-thread a bit!)

There was just a thread about making a voltage regulator on here which would be perfect or wire up a PID and use it for that. Or top up with cold water at the end which is useful to bring down the temps for steeping.

 

[Irishwizard]

Had a day off yesterday, so decided to attempt something that's been on my 'To Brew' list for a while, a 1698 clone. It also gave me a chance to christen my latest d.i.y. addition, a grain bag draining stand, using a small washing up bowl with the bottom cut out as a support for the rim of the mashing bag. This allowed me the chance to recirculate the wort over the grain bed using a jug.

The only recipe I could find online was pretty vague, 77% pale malt, 12% crystal malt, 11% syrup,
Target & Goldings to 41 IBU.

Reading a little further someone had suggested substituting some chocolate malt for some of the crystal, with this in mind and the fact I had no Target hops, my 10L recipe ended up as.
2kg Maris Otter
220g crystal malt 100
90g chocolate malt
300g golden syrup (added at start of boil)

20g WGV 6.7% at start of boil
1/2 protofloc at 15 min
10g Goldings 5.4% at 10 min
10g Fuggles 4.5% at 10 min
5g Goldings 5.4% at flameout

1/2 sachet Corssmyloof Real ale yeast, rehydrated and pitched at 23 C, o.g. 1.070.

My first observation was that its very dark, overdid the choccy malt, but I have done three recipes from Graham Wheeler's book and always think they come out much lighter than the original (and lower in hop flavour). The wort in the sample jar tasted good though. :grin:

Excuse my ignorance but what is WGV???

 

[chub1]

Excuse my ignorance but what is WGV???

Think you will find that is possibly Whitbread Goldings Variety

 

[Gerryjo]

Think you will find that is possibly Whitbread Goldings Variety

I wouldn't have had a clue neither.

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

 

[MmmBeer]

Think you will find that is possibly Whitbread Goldings Variety

Yes it's the Whitbread Goldings Variety. I was planning a recipe a while back that called for Fuggles, my LHBS didn't have any in stock at the time, but they recommended the WGV as a suitable substitute.