• Length: 25 litres
• Yeast: US-05 (since I have a packet that needs using)
• OG  1.036
• FG
• ABV

Recipe:

Comments:

Another outside boil, since it’s such good weather!

Set strike temp to 2C higher than usual, at 76C.  When doughed-in I had a mash temp of 67C, which is bang-on.  During the mash it rose to 68C and dropped to 66C, so I’m very happy with that.

I’ve decided to drop the sparge volume by 2 litres from that suggested by the calculator, as I always have too much wort.  If need be I can always dilute it down towards the end with plain water!

The digital thermometer seems to be behaving.  It does say on the packaging (not that I’d noticed before) that it should be kept out of direct sunlight, so this may have been the cause of my previous problems.

I forgot to add the sugar, so I mixed it with wort and added at the same time as the yeast – you do this sort of thing with kits, so I’m hoping it will be ok!  Measured OG at 1.034 without the sugar, so that should be 1.036 with, which is 2 points low, but 24 litres of wort, so about 69% efficiency, which I can live with.

We were staying outside Chester earlier in the year for my parent’s ruby wedding anniversary, and while we were there we took the opportunity to pop into the Frodsham Brewery and collected a mixed case of their many beers.  I’ve enjoyed, to greater or lesser extents, all of them, but wanted to make a note about this one.

It’s described as “An English wheat beer with distinct elderflower aromas.”, which sounds rather appealing. On drinking, I didn’t get the elderflower particularly.  It was remarkably clear for a wheat beer, and with noticeable though subtle banana notes to it.

One thing it did remind me of was, ignoring the wheat beer characteristics, the hoppy notes in Sharp’s Monsieur Rock. It’s been a few months since I drank M. Rock, and it’s not like I really know what I’m tasting, but for me it was like a subtle wheat beer with distinct saaz hoppiness to it.

I really enjoyed it, so it’s definitely worth considering a small (10 litre) experimental batch later this year of the wheat beer recipe, but with saaz as the hops, and with increased bitterness levels.  Maybe late hopping most of it, too, to try and keep more of the flavour.

All the bottles of Frodsham we brought back, the yeast at the bottom of the bottle (they’re all bottle conditioned) was very loose and there was quite a bit of it, so great care has to be taken when pouring – more than once I ended up having to wait quite a while for the yeast to settle before I started drinking, as I’m not keen on lots of floaty yeast in my pint!  It’s a lot more noticeable than in my own homebrew, even the stuff I’ve fined with gelatin, which is reputed to make the yeast more fluffy and easily disturbed.

• Length: 16.5
• Yeast: Safbrew WB-06
• OG 1.040
• FG 5Bx = 1.007
• ABV 4.4%

Recipe:

Grist:

• Wheat Malt 55%
• Bohemian Pilsner Malt 45%

Hops:

• Tettnang 8g @ 90 min
• Perle 5g @ 90 min
• Tettnang 4g @ 45 min
• Tettnang 4g @ 15 min

Comments:

Measured 1.020 @ 66C = 1.039 of collected wort – around 20 litres, which gives an efficiency of 76%.

Post-boil there is 17 litres in the copper, which gave 16.5 litres in the FV, at measured 1.040 / 10.4Bx.  More wort than I needed, but at a lower gravity, which gives an over all efficiency of 64.6%.  Not sure what went wrong here…  The lager malt is different, and the mash temp was a little on the low side (64C), but it was last time as well.  Very little change in gravity from the reading I took at the end of the sparge and the end of the boil, which is very odd given the evaporation, so I assume I must have measured a stronger bit of the wort at the end of the sparge.

Another reminder of the fermentation temperature timings:

1. Sun 19:00 – 12C
2. Mon 18:00 – 13C
3. Tue 09:00 – 14C
4. Tue 18:00 – 15C
5. Wed 09:00 – 16C
6. Thu 09:00 – 17C
7. Thu 18:00 – 18C

2011-06-16: Bottled 48 x 330ml.

The Oatmeal Stout is rich, coffee-like, smooth, with a great mouth-feel and subtle bitterness.  The Deuchars is a bit more bitter than the original, but a zesty light IPA, very refreshing and easy to drink.  The Angry Yank IPA is chock-full of those American hop flavours.  Very lightly carbonated in the bottle, rather bitter but without being too much, and a pleasure to drink a pint or two of, thought I may not want to spend a night on it.

Right, what shall I brew next??

• Length: 25 litres
• Yeast: Nottingham
• OG  1.050
• FG 5.8Bx = 1.015
• ABV 4.5%

Recipe:

Comments:

Think my digital thermometer is out – maybe by up to 5C, which is less than ideal.  Mash temp was 66.6 (after 1 kettle), read by both glass thermo and the ATC, but the digital thermo was reading 71C.

Only got 23 litres of wort – the hops ate up an awful lot today!  Refractometer was reading 10.6°Bx at first, but after a while was reading 12.6°Bx, which matches the hydrometer reading of 1.049.  Does it take a while to stabilise?

2011-05-17: Filled 2 x 5 litre mini-kegs, plus 20 bottles.  After the dry-hopping robbed me of more beer, I ended up with about 21 litres.  Tastes good at bottling time, mind you.  High hopes for this one!

2011-06-03: I really should have kept better notes on how I did this one.  It was 3 weeks and 2 days from brewing to bottling.  I believe it was 1 week @ 21C for the fermentation, then 5 more days @ 21C with the dry hops thrown in the top of the FV, then drop the ATC to 1C, which realistically means dropping the brew to around 5C, where it remained until bottling.  Wife and friends all agree that this is the best beer I’ve brewed – hence the need to try and remember how I did it, as another set of ingredients are on their way from themaltmiller.co.uk!

This is yet another recipe from Mr. Wheeler’s magical book of beers.

• Length: 25 litres
• Yeast: Nottingham
• OG  1.038
• FG 1.005
• ABV 4.3%

Recipe:

Comments:

Another sunny day and an outside brew.  Again I had a bit more wort than I needed after sparging, but by my refractometer at the end of the boil I was bang on the money at 9.8°Bx = 1.038.  This time when I read the refractometer it was a very clear line, so something was clearly up with the oatmeal stout.

This is also my first all-grain with a pale malt other than Maris Otter – this one was Golden Promise.  Don’t know if it’s the malt, but the wort was a bit cloudier and had some bits in it.

2011-04-22: Measured gravity at 4.6°Bx = 1.006, so it’s fermented very well! If it’s the same tomorrow then I’ll bottle in the next couple of days.

2011-04-22: FG 4.5°Bx = 1.005, so just about finished, and very fully!  Racked into a second FV with 5g of gelatine in 100ml water, since the Burton Bridge is a bit cloudy still in the barrel and mini-keg.  Bottles are bright, mind you, so it’s just taking a while in the larger containers.

2011-05-02: Bottled 12, 5 litre mini-keg, rest in barrel.  Looks like around 23 litres in the end.

2011-05-21: Dropped clear already, tastes good.

After looking at some comments on the home brewing forums, I settled on a kit from California Connoisseur.  They’re regarded as “premium” kits – it seemed worth trying a decent kit, as if we didn’t like a cheap one then that might just be because it’s a cheap kit.

We bought the Pinot Noir from BrewUK, as we like the grape.

The kit was simple to make, and seemed forgiving that my schedule didn’t allow me to do some of the steps exactly when the instructions said.  I even bottled 10 days late, but I figured that since it was in a demijohn with airlock that it would only have CO2 above it so should last ok.  I also forgot to take a gravity reading at the start, so don’t know how strong it ended up.

The 6-bottle kit ended up as 5 full bottles and 1 large glass of wine: we started with 6 bottles worth (4.5 litres) of must, which after syphoning and losses to the yeast, was a bit over 4 litres at bottling time.

Since there was a glass left over, I forced myself to drink it… Rather fruity, very easy to drink, and quite tasty.  Not the finest bottle I’ve ever had, but I hardly expected so, but certainly not the least pleasant I’ve had even in the last year. Comments on the forums lead me to believe that it should improve with a bit of aging as well, so it will be interesting to see how it tastes in a few months (if they last that long, of course).

It wasn’t completely clear, but it’s not filtered.  This didn’t make any noticable difference to the taste or mouth-feel, so I think we can live without a filter for now.  It will show more with rose and white wines, of course, but I believe it’s mainly a cosmetic thing, though I’m sure it does also remove some of the remaining yeast and so may lessen the risk of bottle bombs!

We plan to try a White Zin and some form of white wine as well.  It certainly seems worth persevering, and I think the 6 bottle kits are the way to go until we settle on some as firm favourites, when a 30 bottle kit might be worth a bash.

• Length: 25 litres
• Yeast: Windsor
• OG  1.049
• FG 1.011
• ABV 4.9%

Recipe:

Comments:

As recommended by Aleman, I attempted a Beta Glucan rest with this recipe.  I toasted the oat flakes (45 mins at 130C, but they weren’t looking very toasty, so I raised it to 180C for another 15 mins).  I combined the oat flakes with 145g of the pale malt and around 2.2 litres of warm water.  My water was too warm so I ended up with a sticky mash at around 50C rather than the suggested 35C.  A bit of cold water brought it down to 40C, at which point I left it alone for 30 minutes.  This is all while the main mash is going on in the mash tun.

After it had 30 minutes I put the heat on and raised it to 67C, then I added it to the mash tun.

Notes for future attempts: do the toast the evening before (as the oats were still hot when the went into the mash, hence the temperature overshoot!).  This was my intention, but it’s been a long week and last night I was too tired to be bothered.

A bit more wort than I needed – it’ll be around 35 litres.  Measured at 11°Bx = 1.042.  I collected 15 litres from the first sparge, but the second was more than I expected – I suppose I should have shut the tap off earlier, but it doesn’t really matter.  I’m doing the boil outside again, since it looks like a reasonable afternoon.  The boil should have been reached a bit quicker than it actually was, but that’s because I forgot to turn the socket on, and it took me a while to wonder why it wasn’t making kettle-like noises!

OG measured at a definite 12°Bx, maybe 12.6°Bx at the most (I should probably work out where to read the thing!), which means I have 1.046 to 1.049.  Hydrometer agrees with 1.049, and I have about 24 litres of wort.

2011-04-16: Bottled 12, 5 litre mini-keg, plus ~13 litres in the main keg.

2011-05-21: God, this is good stuff.  Smooth mouth-feel, roasty coffee flavours, enough bitterness.  Lovely stout – my favourite all-grain so far!

So.  What is the purpose of this post?

This.  Which seems to be the same as this.

It’s the first time I’ve had a BrewDog beer – I know, that’s barely believable – but I stopped off at Tesco on my way home to grab a few bottles, and the Double American IPA was one I chose.

The nose is amazing, delicious, fresh, hoppy, yummy.  The taste, though, to my palate, wasn’t so great.  It’s interesting, but for the entire bottle I couldn’t decide if I could tolerate it, or if I just plain disliked it.  It was kind of resiny, obviously there were a hell of a lot of hops, but the taste disappeared beneath this duvet of resin.

Not to my taste, clearly.

It will be interesting to see what I think of the Punk IPA, which I also bought – I’m expecting to like this one!

On a separate but different note, last night we were at our local Wetherspoons for their pub quiz and (this few weeks) beer festival.  My favourite of the night was the Angry Yank Pale Ale, brewed at Roosters Brewery.  It’s the first place winner at last year’s CBA National Homebrew Competition, and Gareth Lester-Olivier, the brewer got to have his beer brewed by a proper brewery and to have it supplied by JDW.  It’s a great ale, my huge congratulations to Gary/bosium, and we even have a recipe available here and here (the latter being the Roosters brew of it), so we can all try to recreate it if we wish.  And I certainly intend to do so: expect a post about it in a few brew’s time!

Update 2011-03-30: I tried a bottle of each of BrewDog’s Trashy Blond and 5 AM Saint over the weekend, and really liked them, so it’s just the hardcore that I don’t like…  Still wouldn’t spend an evening drinking them, but they made really interesting one-offs.