IainM's brew day

BeerCat said:

I have been brewing a similar wheat recently but no boil. I throw some un malted wheat as well in to keep it cloudy. Keg it after 6 days and drink it.
What temp do you ferment at? Seems to be a difference of opinion as to high or low. Been fermenting mine at 24c and trying to under pitch. The most banana i have tasted was from a sample taken after 48 hours. By the end of the week though the flavour had faded.

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Ha! The first post in this thread was a hefe, and the first question was also about fermentation temperature. Last time I did it at 17C and got loads of banana. This time round I upped it 19C. The trial jar a couple after nine days was clove, but by the time I had cold crashed and bottled after 12 days, there was some definite banana there. I'm interested in how this turns out, as we're putting it in a comp next week.

Right. I've got everything for the next three brew days, a Belgian Dubble adapted from Brew Like a Monk, version 5 of my Black IPA recipe, and given the success of my lambic-inspired beer, a gallon of which is sitting on a kilo of cherries, another on some mango pulp, and another for long-term storage, I'm going to have a go at a Flanders Red Ale which I'll age for 18 months. Will be something to look forward to in the spring of 2020. The Wyeast Roeselare Ale blend contains a Belgian and a sherry sacch, two strains of brett, a lactobacillus and a pediococcus, so I'm hoping to get some complexity. The recipe was designed to use up some stuff I have lying around but isn't too far from the one in the Greg Hughes book or others you can find online. I've been meaning to use unusual grain for a while, and given that a lot of people add unmalted wheat to Flanders Red recipes to give the brett and bacteria something to chew on, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to use up some of the bag of Khorasan wheat sitting at the bottom of my speciality grain bucket.

Belgian Dubbel, 20L
Mash at 67C, 60 mins
4kg Pilsen
500g wheat
250g aromatic
280g munich
230g biscuit
500g dark candi
230g special B
230g cara-vienna
60 min boil
35g Tettnang 4.5% 60 mins
Ferment at 18C with WLP-500 Monastery ale yeast, then ramp up for the second week. The yeast was dated BBE September, so I've put a 500ml starter for that on and I'll step it up to 2L.

Flanders Red Ale, 23L
Mash at 68C, 60 mins
3.5kg vienna
1kg Pilsen
500g pale
500g wheat
100g kamut
270g special B
100g cara-vienna
200g cara-munich III
60 minute boil
20g of old Hallertauer Hersbrucker, 1.2%AA
Ferment at 22C with Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale

Black IPA #5
Mash at 65C, 60 mins
6kg Pale
250g Midnight Wheat
100g Dark crystal
60 min boil
Bittering with ~25g of admiral for 60 minutes
I'm still working out the hop schedule, but late additions, flameout and dry hop will amount to:
100g citra
100g amarillo
100g centennial
50g nelson
Ferment at 19C with US-05 x2

The dubble is bubbling away. Volume was overshot, so I got 24L at 1.062. In other news, the hefe won a local brew comp last night, the prize being going to a brew pub in town and making a large batch to put on tap there and a couple of other places in town.

IainM said:

the prize being going to a brew pub in town and making a large batch to put on tap there

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Ooooooh! Fame at last

IainM said:

The dubble is bubbling away. Volume was overshot, so I got 24L at 1.062. In other news, the hefe won a local brew comp last night, the prize being going to a brew pub in town and making a large batch to put on tap there and a couple of other places in town.

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Nice one!

IainM said:

... In other news, the hefe won a local brew comp last night, the prize being going to a brew pub in town and making a large batch to put on tap there and a couple of other places in town.

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Nice one! Hope the large batch turns out well too.

Well done on winning the comp!

The barleywine dropped to 1.011, giving about 11%. Trial jar suggests that this will need quite some time to condition. Hopefully it will come good by February, when the local brew club has a "strong beers" competition. The dubble dropped to 1.006, giving 7.1%. Trail jar for that was good. I'd better put something a bit more quaffable on to drink while these are conditioning!

The Flanders red just went in the fv. I changed the recipe a bit to fit with what I had, and didn't get the best efficiency. I could have got a bit more trubby stuff out the bottom of the fv, but left it and only drew crystal clear wort. It should still hit above 5.5%, and a lower abv and volume is probably for the best seeing that the smack pack is 3.5 months old already. I originally tried to crush the Khorasan wheat, but there the grains were so hard there was no way in hell it was going to go through the mill, so I boiled them in a little water, blitzed them, and added it to the mash tun before adding the grain.

Flanders Red Ale
22L, 1.052
Mash at 68C, 60 mins
3.5kg vienna
200g Pilsen
1kg pale
565g wheat
100g kamut, cooked and blended before adding to the mash tun
270g special B
104g cara-vienna
200g cara-munich III
60 minute boil
6g Hallertauer Hersbrucker leaf (2014, 2%AA), for 2 IBUs
Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale

Looks good, what's the fancy wheat you used?

I'm finally going to be brewing my pale sour with Roeselare a week tomorrow. Although to fit in another brew I'm going to primary with Voss Kveik and secondary with Roeselare.

Zephyr259 said:

Looks good, what's the fancy wheat you used?

I'm finally going to be brewing my pale sour with Roeselare a week tomorrow. Although to fit in another brew I'm going to primary with Voss Kveik and secondary with Roeselare.

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Back when I did the coconut IPA, the company I ordered the coconut from did some unusual grains, so I thought I'd order some as adjuncts to mess around with; amaranth for a Saison and Kamut for something like this. People often put unmalted wheat into Flanders red for the brett, ped and lacto to munch on, even though it isn't traditional, so I thought I thought the Kamut would work well. It tasted a bit nutty, which I think would work with the style. I've heard that the Roselare blend is fairly tame, so I'm not sure how much sourness you'll get from only putting it in secondary: the lacto like simple sugars too. I toned down the IBUs as a last minute recipe change to give them a good chance. The Sour Batch Kidz on the other hand, that has gone crazy. I just bottled the gallon I put onto cherries and the gallon on mango, and it is seriously sour now. I like 'em sour, but this is a bit much. I've git a gallon of the base beer batch aging and I was planning on blending it with a younger sour in a couple of years, but now I'm thinking of blending it with something else, perhaps to make something along the lines of Petrus Aged Red (beautiful beer btw). Now I think about it, I should probably have not bottled all the dubble and put a few litres on some cherries for a few months before adding some wood to blend at a later date. Ah well, I'm sure I'll brew something suitable in the not too distant future.

Ah right, I remember you taking about amaranthe now you mention it.

I've heard that the first gen Roeselare can be a bit tame too, I was going to put it through a small batch first and see how it went, but it's not been convenient. Problem with putting it in primary is I'd then be best segregating that FV as my sour one and getting a new one, but that's another bulky bit of kit to store in a jammed cupboard. I still have my eye on a stainless FV from Brewbuilder but saving up for it is proving tricky. Might pitch the Roeselare then add the dregs from my bottle of Cantillon to see if they help, although I'm starting to find that I enjoy funky with a more gentle sourness. Having just re-read Wild Brews it seems that lacto doesn't do much in traditional lambic and the sourness is mostly down to pedio.

Good luck with your blending ideas, a too sour beer is an excellent excuse to brew a nice sweet malty brown ale for blending, although I always thought this was a bit weird as won't the microbes just dry out the beer again? Do you keep them cold and drink them quick? Some pasteurise these days but that can't have been widespread in times past. The Petrus beers are on my sour wishlist when I next fancy buying a crate of beer, but thanks for the recommendation.

I fancied putting a brew to test out my new shiny Anvil fermenting bucket but not with an expensive brew like the black IPA I've got planned, so it had to be something which uses what I have lying around. So, I decided to do a version of the Timothy Taylor Landlord clone from the Graham Wheeler book, but made a tiny bit stronger and a bit hoppier. The brew day was a breeze. I'd sorted the water treatment and weighed out the grain the night before, and chilling was super quick with the cold ground water, so in all it took only 4 hours. The new pump on the Bulldog Brewer recirculates with ease and the wort was crystal clear.

Timothy Taylor Landlord-ish, maybe (AG#43)
22L
60 minute mash @ 66C
4.5kg pale
30g black malt
60 minute boil
35g EKG 5.1%AA @60 min
10g Styrian Golding Bobek 4.4%AA @60 min
20g Styrian Golding Bobek @ 20 min
20g Styrian Golding Bobek @ flameout
15g EKG @ flameout
½ Protofloc @ 9min
Safale s-04
4L absorbtion, 23L wort, 4L boil off, 2L dead space, 33L in total
14L mash, 19L sparge: 2.5g gypsum, 2g calcium chloride, 1g table salt, 12.5ml lactic acid, ½ campden tablet, to give ca 150 mg 4 na 23 cl 71 so4 74.
I got 21L at 1.047 and diluted a litre and a bit with the yeast
22L with OG 1.045

Good to hear the pump is working out well, was hoping to hear positive things before taking the plunge myself. Last time I looked it was a job to find one with UK plug. Will look again after Christmas now

Oneflewover said:

Good to hear the pump is working out well, was hoping to hear positive things before taking the plunge myself. Last time I looked it was a job to find one with UK plug. Will look again after Christmas now

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Soooooo much better. I have the tap after it to throttle it, and in the brews I've done since then, including a couple of high gravity ones, I haven't had to open the valve more than half way. It's also strong enough to suck some of the smaller debris through the bazooka filter, which then settles on top of the mash, so by the end of the brew is just flows freely into the fv.

IainM said:

Soooooo much better. I have the tap after it to throttle it, and in the brews I've done since then, including a couple of high gravity ones, I haven't had to open the valve more than half way. It's also strong enough to suck some of the smaller debris through the bazooka filter, which then settles on top of the mash, so by the end of the brew is just flows freely into the fv.

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Sounds ideal. Just so I understand properly, have you put a new tap inline on the out side of the pump? And sorry to trouble you, but you haven't got a link to the pump you bought have you?

Oneflewover said:

Sounds ideal. Just so I understand properly, have you put a new tap inline on the out side of the pump? And sorry to trouble you, but you haven't got a link to the pump you bought have you?

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No trouble at all. The pump, all the bits, and how I put it together, are all here: https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/any-experience-with-£25-homebrew-pump.78603/

Cheers, had forgotten about that thread (and my multiple posts on it)

IainM said:

I fancied putting a brew to test out my new shiny Anvil fermenting bucket but not with an expensive brew like the black IPA I've got planned, so it had to be something which uses what I have lying around. So, I decided to do a version of the Timothy Taylor Landlord clone from the Graham Wheeler book, but made a tiny bit stronger and a bit hoppier. The brew day was a breeze. I'd sorted the water treatment and weighed out the grain the night before, and chilling was super quick with the cold ground water, so in all it took only 4 hours. The new pump on the Bulldog Brewer recirculates with ease and the wort was crystal clear.

Timothy Taylor Landlord clone (AG#43)
22L
60 minute mash @ 66C
4.5kg pale
30g black malt
60 minute boil
35g EKG 5.1%AA @60 min
10g Styrian Golding Bobek 4.4%AA @60 min
20g Styrian Golding Bobek @ 20 min
20g Styrian Golding Bobek @ flameout
15g EKG @ flameout
½ Protofloc @ 9min
Safale s-04
4L absorbtion, 23L wort, 4L boil off, 2L dead space, 33L in total
14L mash, 19L sparge: 2.5g gypsum, 2g calcium chloride, 1g table salt, 12.5ml lactic acid, ½ campden tablet, to give ca 150 mg 4 na 23 cl 71 so4 74.
I got 21L at 1.047 and diluted a litre and a bit with the yeast
22L with OG 1.045

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Looks a good best bitter but I'm not sure how Landlord-y it will be. Landlord uses Savanjski Goldings (I've seen youtube vid with the head brewer confirming this) and no EKG

MyQul said:

Looks a good best bitter but I'm not sure how Landlord-y it will be. Landlord uses Savanjski Goldings (I've seen youtube vid with the head brewer confirming this) and no EKG

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Sure, the EKG at flameout isn't right at all, but I do love EKG. The Graham Wheeler recipe that people rave about does have some at the start of the boil though. From what I understand Savinjski Golding and Styrian Golding are the same thing, and Bobek is a type of Styrian Golding, though I'm not 100% on this. Using s-04 probably wasn't the best choice either, West Yorkshire would've been better, but it's what I had on hand. In fact, I should probably edit the post.