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Just popped on a 40 pt brew this morning, after bottling off 24 pints of Aussie Pale Ale.

Today's started as a Geordie bitter kit, kindly donated by a gentleman of this very forum. :hat:

I added an additional tin of LME, just over 500g of dextrose, and a 500g bag of soft brown sugar.

Rocked up with an OG over a touch over 1.060 :whistle:

I'm a bit of a fan of the hops, so given I've already beggered about with this recipe quite some way, I figured I might add some hops.

Couple of questions arise:

1) suggestions for hops that would add floral notes? I was considering Willamette? Any other thoughts welcomed.

2) advice on whether to add at the end of the ferment, maybe 2 weeks into a 3 week ferment....? I was considering teabags?

Any ideas welcomed.

Cheers

:thumb:
 
Today I brewed. Saison but one that used English MO instead of Belgium Pilsner as I only had MO. Used just over 2kg of this, 1.9kg of Vienna and 400g of Torrified wheat as I didn't have any normal Wheat malt and a touch (112g) of extra dark Crystal. Used the Danestar Belle Saison so will see what this is like as its my first time of using it. Hops were EKG and Dana.
 
Today was a rebrew of my Red Robin Rye IPA. Had a BBQ at the same time and showed some friends how to brew. It was great fun!

268e2e24bff8880eb87560585de5e5be.jpg
 
I'm a bit of a fan of the hops, so given I've already beggered about with this recipe quite some way, I figured I might add some hops.

Couple of questions arise:

1) suggestions for hops that would add floral notes? I was considering Willamette? Any other thoughts welcomed.

2) advice on whether to add at the end of the ferment, maybe 2 weeks into a 3 week ferment....? I was considering teabags?

Any ideas welcomed.

Cheers

:thumb:
When i'm doing a kit I always boil my DME in about 3 litres of water and chuck in some hops for 5 mins.

Check this out : https://ychhops.com/varieties/aroma/floral

A US site but you can get most of those hops over here
 
My advice is to go AG next. You may look over your shoulder and do some kits / Partial Mashes, in the future, but you will never look back.

Decided to put a Cwtch kit on in the end so I can do an AG next weekend when I'll have all day to do it. I can dry hop The Cwtch indoors then, freeing up the fridge for my first AG. Can't wait to get cracking now.
 
Do you mind sharing the recipe?
Of course not.

Title: RB Rye Robin

Author: Redbreast Brewing Co

Brew Method: All Grain

Style Name: Rye IPA

Boil Time: 90 min

Batch Size: 23 liters (fermentor volume)

Boil Size: 26 liters

Boil Gravity: 1.049

Efficiency: 75% (brew house)

STATS:

Original Gravity: 1.054

Final Gravity: 1.012 (aimed for)

ABV (standard): 5.43%

IBU (tinseth): 50.8

SRM (morey): 12.99


FERMENTABLES:

3.3 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (62.3%)

1 kg - American - Rye (18.9%)

500 g - Crystal 80L (9.4%)

500 g - United Kingdom - Cara Malt (9.4%)


HOPS:

15 g - Amarillo, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 8.6, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 0

15 g - Mosaic, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 0

15 g - Mosaic, Type: Leaf/WholePellet, AA: 11, Use: Boil for 15 min, IBU: 0

10 g - Amarillo, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 8.6, Use: Dry Hop for 4 days, IBU: 0

10 g - Mosaic, Type: Pellet, AA: 11, Use: Dry Hop for 4 days, IBU: 0

30 g - Amarillo, Type: Leaf/Whole, AA: 8.6, Use: Boil for 15 min, IBU: 0


YEAST:

Starter: No

Form: Dried

Attenuation (avg): 75%

Flocculation: Med

Optimum Temp: 18.89 - 22.22 C

Fermentation Temp: 20 C
 
Here's my logic:

1. Started on the 5th means only 11 days fermenting.

2. Nothing in the wort that will not ferment.

3. ABV of 5.25% means insufficient alcohol present to kill the yeast.

4. With SG as high as 1.020 there is no reason to believe that the fermentation is completed.

Personally, I would leave it another week and take another look at the SG. :thumb:

Almost 3 wks in FV1, and checked again this evening.

It is clear, and comes out at 1.014, I reckon. Just over 6% or so? Markedly "further on".

Thanks Dutto. :thumb:

May bottle on Sunday.
 
...........

May bottle on Sunday.

SG of 1.014?

The Vienna Lager I started on 13th March is calming down and is now at about 30 "Glubs" an hour ... :thumb:

... whereas the Coopers Stout started on the 19th March (and overflowed the FV on the 20th!) is apparently finished at zero "Glubs" in the same hour! (Maybe due to a leaking FV!) :whistle:

For your brew, I suggest that between now and Sunday you go and sit next to the brew with a good book and one ear cocked towards the end of the bubble tube; just to make doubly sure that fermentation is actually complete!

Four or more "Glubs" in one hour and I would leave it another week. :thumb:

The photograph is what managed to come out of the bubble-tube on Monday evening and here we are about four days later and it has apparently stopped fermenting! Yeah! Right! :whistle:

Blow Off.jpg
 
That's a good point. I've nothing to lose, and I fancy adding some hop pellets into the mix - so maybe I can kills 2 birds with one stone.
 
Nothing so far, but, I've just got back from my local HBS with a box full of assorted grains & hops. Enough to do a clone of Arkell's mild, a Fuller's ESB clone and a Fuller's London porter clone, all from Graham Wheeler's book. About 120 pints in all for ��£23. Can't be bad... can it? :-?
 
To get my recent purchase of 40% off hops from Shane at HBC up to the free delivery threshold, I got some Pilsner Malt - 2x5kg bags.

After a bit of research this week I came up with a Dortmunder Export, using the Pilsner and the bargain basement Strisselspalt hops from the 2013 harvest. So:

Pilsner 5kg
Munich 0.5kg

Pekko hops 14g at first wort (these guys were in there a long time)
SSS/Sp 28 / 25 / 47 @ 15 / 5 / 0 mins.

A number of things happened on the mash - the grain crush may have been a little fine and due to me playing around with racking last fortnights brews upstairs, a lot of stuff went down the central pipe of the GF.


I sparged away, nonetheless and was just boiling it up when I noticed that it looked more like gravy than beer. Using a sieve to get the worst of it out was not working. So at around 85C decided to stop the boil-up and filter the whole wort through the BIAB bag back into the Peco boiler that I now use for heating the sparge water.

Bailed all the wort into the Boiler with a jug, cleaned out the GF (it was a mess) and bailed the wort back into the GF for the boil. Did not like the look of the wort and so made the decision "on the fly" to return the grain basket to the GF and run the wort back through the grain for a bit and see if that cleared it up a bit.

There was too much wort by this time and so I got quite a lot of wort on the kitchen floor, before re-bailing some out of the GF and into the 15L pot.

I ended up with some fairly clear wort in the GF and some fairly unclear wort in the pot, about half an hour later. Boiled both separately, adding the cloudy stuff to the GF gradually.

Added the best part of 500g sugar to get to target SG. A real faff, basically. BYO quote:

"There was nothing wimpy about the lager from this stark, no-nonsense region of steel, sweat and coal dust. Where the Bavarian helles excelled in straw-blond elegance, gentle hoppiness and rich maltiness; where the Bohemian Pilsner excelled in lingering, aromatic Saaz reverberations in the finish; and where the effervescent northern German Pils excelled in edgy up-front bitterness; the Dortmund export excelled in the middle. With a substantial flavor and mouthfeel, the Dortmund export is a solid beer for a solid breed of people."

My interpretation was an honest cock-up due to being distracted and over confident that all would be well with untried ingredients. The yeast - US 05 might yet make a reasonable approximation, but SWMBO nailed it by suggesting that "doing one thing at a time might be a good idea".

Don't you just seethe when she's right? :lol:
 
To get my recent purchase of 40% off hops from Shane at HBC up to the free delivery threshold, I got some Pilsner Malt - 2x5kg bags.

After a bit of research this week I came up with a Dortmunder Export, using the Pilsner and the bargain basement Strisselspalt hops from the 2013 harvest. So:

Pilsner 5kg
Munich 0.5kg

Pekko hops 14g at first wort (these guys were in there a long time)
SSS/Sp 28 / 25 / 47 @ 15 / 5 / 0 mins.

A number of things happened on the mash - the grain crush may have been a little fine and due to me playing around with racking last fortnights brews upstairs, a lot of stuff went down the central pipe of the GF.


I sparged away, nonetheless and was just boiling it up when I noticed that it looked more like gravy than beer. Using a sieve to get the worst of it out was not working. So at around 85C decided to stop the boil-up and filter the whole wort through the BIAB bag back into the Peco boiler that I now use for heating the sparge water.

Bailed all the wort into the Boiler with a jug, cleaned out the GF (it was a mess) and bailed the wort back into the GF for the boil. Did not like the look of the wort and so made the decision "on the fly" to return the grain basket to the GF and run the wort back through the grain for a bit and see if that cleared it up a bit.

There was too much wort by this time and so I got quite a lot of wort on the kitchen floor, before re-bailing some out of the GF and into the 15L pot.

I ended up with some fairly clear wort in the GF and some fairly unclear wort in the pot, about half an hour later. Boiled both separately, adding the cloudy stuff to the GF gradually.

Added the best part of 500g sugar to get to target SG. A real faff, basically. BYO quote:

"There was nothing wimpy about the lager from this stark, no-nonsense region of steel, sweat and coal dust. Where the Bavarian helles excelled in straw-blond elegance, gentle hoppiness and rich maltiness; where the Bohemian Pilsner excelled in lingering, aromatic Saaz reverberations in the finish; and where the effervescent northern German Pils excelled in edgy up-front bitterness; the Dortmund export excelled in the middle. With a substantial flavor and mouthfeel, the Dortmund export is a solid beer for a solid breed of people."

My interpretation was an honest cock-up due to being distracted and over confident that all would be well with untried ingredients. The yeast - US 05 might yet make a reasonable approximation, but SWMBO nailed it by suggesting that "doing one thing at a time might be a good idea".

Don't you just seethe when she's right? :lol:



Sounds like an epic, nice one for persevering.

Oh, and I try to brew only when my wife isn't in the house!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Sounds like an epic, nice one for persevering.

Oh, and I try to brew only when my wife isn't in the house!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sadly, I have had similar experiences in the past and have gone down the same sort of route a couple of times before. Essentially the look of what is in the fermenter now is much like one of the stove top mash and one can Coopers kit "partial mash" brews that I did a good number of. They always turned out OK.

I was doughing in this morning a couple of minutes before 8am and only just got finished in time watch the Rugby that kicked off at 3pm.
 
I've had a disaster of a brew day. I got part way through the mash when my wife shouted through that my son wasn't himself. We ended up at out of hours (tonsillitis) so I had a 2 and a half hour mash. It then took ages to get up to the boil that I'm now sitting upstairs trying to put my son to bed while my wort has been boiling for an hour and a quarter and I haven't put my late additions in. I'm thinking 5 mins or so with my late additions when I get down then onto flame out that way my IBUs will still be where I want them.

Bottled this tonight. Not quite as bitter as I'd planned but otherwise it's phenomenal! Busting with hop flavour and a lovely aroma!
 
Got half a batch of this black IPA on by member JFB
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=67375
Except I did a partial mash for an OG of 1.072 cos I'm a bit of a sucker for strong dark hoppy flavour bombs.
I bought my base malt in 500g bags a few weeks ago, when I was getting the ingredients together I realised it wasn't crushed so had to put a kilo through the mortar and pestle a handful at a time :doh: It crushed down fine though and I did a pretty loose mash and dunk sparged to get the best out of it. Might double the dry hop when it's finished, will wait and see how it tastes next week.
 
Brewed up my ESB yesterday! Tried some new techniques and it all worked fantastically!

I batch sparged, which shaved a good amount of time off my brewday and actually improved my efficiency!

I used first wort hopping, which worked fine too, although the result won't be clear for a couple of weeks at least.

The only hitch I had was with whirlpooling with my pump and draining the kettle. Because I used loose whole leaf hops, everything got clogged up, so I had to use my new 23L autosyphon to get it into the fermenter!

I pitched two sachets of rehydrated Danstar London ESB and the airlock was going crazy within two hours.All looking promising so far!

OG of 1.054 @ 21 litres (I calculated 1.051 @ 20)

Here are some pics

IMG_20170325_093436_308.jpg


IMG_20170325_135126.jpg


IMG_20170325_115829.jpg
 
Yesterday I brewed my tweaked red ipa recipe, even though I was tired (waking up early to catch the F1) it went well. My Ace Grain bag finally gave up though, by my next brew day though I should have a Ss grain basket which should generally help matters of spillages on the kitchen floor.
Got 5% more efficiency than usual too.

Used a fan to cool the outside of the boiler while a chiller took care of the rest, after 15 mins or so hop stand it cooled to about 24c in roughly 30 mins.

Was 6ish when I pitched yeast, 8am this morning airlock is popping. Hydro sample actually tastes better than my current brew I'm drinking.

Two dry hops one at 7 days then 5 days before bottling. 6.2% don't know if to bottle most or keg most. I might try natural carbing the keg this time as I'm not overally happy with how force carbing went in my current brew.
 
... I'm not overally happy with how force carbing went in my current brew.

What was your process? Would like to know because I force carb all my kegs but I've only done it the only way I know. I did one keg condition carbing once and there probably is a little better result but I don't think in carbing but more in the yeast cleaning up more, maybe the process of the yeast slowing down as the pressure increases.
My friend here in Japan has a mid size brewery and all his kegs and bottles are naturally carbed and conditioned before shipped. So I'm sure he isn't wrong.
 
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