AG#14 - Deaf Kev's Single Hop Black IPA

[kev]

Righty-ho, brew on and waiting on boil to start. Was supposed to be a double brew day but my pale malt from The Malt Miller hasn't arrived as I ordered it after the cut-off for post on Thursday. No big deal. I'll use my local homebrew store.....and YET AGAIN I've been let down by them.

Rant alert......

I was in there a while ago and noticed they had a 25kg sack of pale malt. I said to the guy that I didn't know he sold crushed grains and he said he'd recently got that in. Cool I thought. I asked how much it was and he told me £50. Now FFS that's ridiculous. I pay £20 from various online stores and that's delivered to my door and freshly milled. God only knows how long his sack had been sat there.

Anyway, today I thought I'd buy a few kg's from him to complete my 2nd brew of the day and wasn't really bothered about the cost. So, my first 3 calls went unanswered and finally I got through to a coughing man. Awesome.

Me: "Hi, do you sell crushed pale malt"
Coughing man: "Yes but you need to order it"
Me: "So you don't have any in?"
Coughing man: "I could get some next week if you wanted?"
Me: "No thanks, bye"

So let me get this right.....I ask you to order a sack of grain. You call another store and get it delivered. You then more than double the price and give it to me when it suits you as you're never bloody open when normal people are going about the town.

I'm constantly being annoyed by this store because I REALLY WANT TO SPEND MONEY IN YOUR SHOP AND SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS!!!!

Is that clear enough?

I've been brewing for about 10 years and have drove past a closed shop more than I've been in it. The only thing I've found useful in the shop is bloody steriliser. It's a complete joke how this store has remained open for as long as it has baffles me.

It really pisses me off as I want to support my local businesses and buy from them whenever possible, but as far as I'm concerned the shop is terrible and can't close soon enough. I can only assume that there's an ample supply of ageing men after out of date shitty £9 cans of malt extract, because that's all he seems to stock. Places like this, give homebrew a bad name/impression.

Annoyed.

Pics of SINGLE brew day to come!

K

 

[kev]

Okey dokey. Here goes.

I was planning on pinching the Trashy Black recipe on here and was all set to buy the ingredients on Monday night so they were here by today for the brew day. I work away a lot and was away on Mon so thought that I would park up in a pub on my own, have some grub and a few beers and order the stuff on wifi. However, when I walked in the pub they had a few ales on (reason I went there!) and one of them was called "Cascadian Black". So in I went. It was lovely. Really really good and that got me thinking. So, I sat in the boozer with Beersmith and came up with this beauty!

In addition, I've reading a few posts/links recently about late hopping. In other words, using a larger amount of hops later on to get the desired bitterness but not from boiling the hops for 90 mins. So......130g of cascade later.....we have this :

What I'm brewing :

Grain shot :

Mash on - getting stirred :

Mash and HLT setup :

Not sure if I posted this or not - new gas mgmt board :

Other cronies awaiting filling :

Start of mash :

Total loss over 90 mins :

Mash done and being sparged :

Runnings :

Boil on :

Hot break :

The mother-load :

Hop soup :

Cooler on :

Cooling :

Aeration :

Gravity :

Colour :

Rubbish :

Done :