7 beers 2 men 1 day (Get'er brewed Slovenian hops)

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Demig

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Last Sunday saw the inaugural first joint brew of Demig and F00b4r.

We had planned a joint brew of the Graham Wheeler BYOBRA Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild but having won Slovenian hops from Get'erbrewed we decided that we should test some of these hops using a base test beer.

The recipe for the hop test comes from Brulosophy : http://brulosophy.com/recipes/hop-test-bitter/

The plan was to brew this and split it into batches and produce 1 beer for each hop. This is will allow us to see what each hop is like and also to potentially make some blends and plan for another full batch.

The plan was to test 6 hops:

The grain ready for the hop test bitter:

hoptestbittergrist.jpg


Giving it all a stir before leaving to mash, can you spot the mistake? (We're doing BIAB)

hoptestmash.jpg


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Did you spot the mistake?

There is no bag in that pot, hard to do BIAB with no bag!

This lead to a right palaver transferring things around but it was definitely very useful having 2 of us brewing together at this point!

At this point we got the peco boiler ready WITH BAG! We set this off mashing with a delay in between to give us time to do the boil on the hop test.

shmash.jpg



Whilst this was going we were off with the boil on the hop test. The plan was to get this as far as possible in the buffalo boiler and then split it into pans when the time came to add the slovenian hops.

hoptestboil.jpg


It was all getting a little hectic at this point and another mistake occurred which could have ended the day with a hospital trip. We ran off the test bitter wort into pans to take into the house and finish the boil on the stove. F00b4r filled the first pan and passed it to me holding the pan handles. I took it from the base, it was extremely hot! Fortunately f004br was alerted to this by my whimpering and didn't let go of the handles!

We had enough wort to fill 5 pans which were transferred on to the stove
hoptestboil2.jpg


The first three batches got these hops:

hops1.jpg


Once they were done we got them into demijohns and chilled the Sarah Hughes mild, first time using an immersion cooler, worked really well, maybe 15mins to pitching temp.

chiller.jpg


Back to the split batches and 2 more pans this time with these hops:

hops2.jpg


We got the yeast (WLP005) pitched into the mild and left the demi johns to cool whilst we went to the pub.

"Wait you said 7 beers!" I hear you say, well yes we did:

Here is the 7th:

beer.jpg


I cleared off home and left F00b4r to pitch the Nottingham into the 5 test bitters and get them put to bed. It was a chaotic day but brilliant fun, brewing with someone else is great. Next time we will be slicker as this took us about 8-9hours.

It's currently all fermenting really well. F00b4r has cropped some of the WLP005 from the mild for future use and we are looking forward to tasting it. Facts and figures to follow later but despite some miscalculation when we used the mild figures for the hop test bitter we are pretty much where we need to be.

Love this hobby:) Thanks to ManseMasher and Get'er brewed for the competition and the hops. We'll be posting a full review on these hops as soon as this is ready and we still have the other hops to do

Demig
 
I blame the Grainfather trial for making me forget the bag, thanks goodness for having HDPE fermenters and a 5L jug as it meant it was a relatively quick job to line a fermenter with the BIAB bag, fill, pull the bag, jet out the Buffalo and then transfer the wort ready back for boiling! I won't be nattering away forgetting to do that again! :lol: :doh:

Here are some pics:

75L of water treated the night before ready for brew day along with the Hop Test Bitter grist weighed out and warming up:

78AV8MS.jpg


The Slovenian hopped beers tucked up in the fermentation chamber (the Cascade being the last had a lot more trub/break material in it):

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21L of the Sarah Hughes' Dark Ruby Mild tucked up in the fermentation chamber:

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Early signs of fermentation:

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12 hours after pitching:

2dhpZIrb.jpg

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40 hours after pitching:

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Using a sterilised syringe I drew wort from just under the Sarah Hughes' krausen and transferred it to a sterilised pet bottle and then let this ferment out, within a few hours I could see a nice yeast sediment forming at the bottom; this is now stored in the fridge and should provide a good source for a new starter of WLP005.

Doing so many beers definitely added a long time to the day but it should be great to have a range of beers to taste.
 
Sounds a great day. Would love a brew pal to split brews etc

It is great for a number of reasons:

cost savings by buying ingredients in bulk, saving on postage, sharing equipment (you don't need to buy everything each, especially the nice to have bits)

a bigger range of beers to sample (and maybe try out ones you wouldn't have otherwise)

two hands are definitely useful at times and makes cleanup easier!

motivation to brew

oh and its definitely more fun :mrgreen:

I sold Demig a secondary reg, we got chatting and it came about through that but I am sure that you would be able to find someone to brew with if you have a local club or just by asking on one of the brew forums for who is local.
 
There is nothing local. I have a friend who brews a little but he is 2.5 hours away but I may get him up for a brew day in the summer
 
Using a sterilised syringe I drew wort from just under the Sarah Hughes' krausen and transferred it to a sterilised pet bottle and then let this ferment out, within a few hours I could see a nice yeast sediment forming at the bottom; this is now stored in the fridge and should provide a good source for a new starter of WLP005.

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I read about this method on another forum. What size syringe did you use?
 
I read about this method on another forum. What size syringe did you use?


Yeah it's the method that IPA posted. I used a 100ml syringe usually used for marinade injection but thinking about getting a bigger one to be kept just for this purpose, it made it really easy to do it and transfer it.
 
It's definitely more fun but we did make a few mistakes through chatting and not brewing ;) I dread to thing how much of a mess we would have made if we had been drinking whilst brewing!

Looking forward to tasting these beers, all the Slovenian hops smelt amazing, F00b4r was suffering with man flu so didn't get the full affect but they were wonderful.
 
Nice one guys and great pics, its nice to have someone sharing your fun, I used to enjoy brewing with my old dad, even if he was always dropping his fag ash everywhere!
 
Nice one guys and great pics, its nice to have someone sharing your fun, I used to enjoy brewing with my old dad, even if he was always dropping his fag ash everywhere!


Rauchbier? [emoji3]
 
We will see where the gravity of the Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild is tomorrow but think we will just leave the test bitters for two weeks as they are relatively small batches (the krausen has almost fallen completely on them today though and they are clearing already). I have to say I am tempted by the PET 23L better bottles as fermenters as I do like to see what is happening with the fermentation and to see how the different yeasts vary from brew to brew.
 
It is nice to see what's going on, the demijohns look fantastic. So much less risk than cracking the lid. One small problem with brewing as a team is that I can't go and see what's going on, f00b4r is having to text daily pics of how our precious beer is doing in his fridge ;)
 
Totally agree, I have a clear fermenting bin and a gallon DJ and a half gallon DJ that I've been doing small batches in and I love sitting there watching the strange and amazing things that go on during fermentation and seeing what happens during the different stages. :thumb::thumb:
 
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