Hi from Lincolnshire

[lee smeaton]

Hello everyone,
I am a cider maker that is just branching out into beer and a little drop of wine.
I have a 75 tree orchard full of many different varieties, I use either my 20 tonne hydraulic press or a 40 litre water press depending on quantities and a fruit shark 800kg/hr scratter. My cider matures in used whisky barrels.

I also have a grapevine (concord variety) that gave me 20 bottles last year (very acidic but slowly mellowing and drinkable when theres nothing else left)

The reason I have joined this forum is to find out more about beer making. I have a few kits on the go but am looking to eventually get beer on tap in my home bar.

I have a varied selection of equipment - I have standard home brew pressure barrels, some Cornelius kegs and somewhere in the shed are a couple of beer chillers.

my plan is to rig all of this up and run beer from the Cornelius kegs through the chillers to some beer taps.

the big question, where do I start? is there an idiots guide. Its the wrong time of year for cider, but if anyone in south Lincolnshire wants they can come and use my kit in the autumn.

I will obviously read through the existing posts and threads but thought it best to say hi first.

regards

Lee

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum Lee. :thumba:

 

[LeeH]

Welcome.

What part of Lincs?

 

[lee smeaton]

Welcome.

What part of Lincs?

Im in Gedney - halfway between Spalding and Kings Lynn

 

[Banbeer]

Welcome aboard, happy brewing

 

[marshbrewer]

Hello from another Lincs resident, welcome to the forum.

 

[pvt_ak]

Welcome - not too far away in Leics.

 

[Tony Palmer]

Dear Lee,

I am a retired professional brewer of over 40 years experience
. I live in Stamford and would be happy to assist you in any brewing issues. I started my brewing career in Bass's old No 2 Brewery and have worked for Whitbread, Courage and Guinness. The last 12 years before retirement I was a consultant working in the industry, and have literally travelled the world. These days I am interested in home wine and liquer making. The reason I have offered some help is to gain access to the fresh apple juice you obviously have access too. What scale do you want to brew? To achieve commercial standards/ tastes you need to base your output on brewing from malt & forget about kits.
Sincerely,

Tony

 

[lee smeaton]

Dear Lee,

I am a retired professional brewer of over 40 years experience
. I live in Stamford and would be happy to assist you in any brewing issues. I started my brewing career in Bass's old No 2 Brewery and have worked for Whitbread, Courage and Guinness. The last 12 years before retirement I was a consultant working in the industry, and have literally travelled the world. These days I am interested in home wine and liquer making. The reason I have offered some help is to gain access to the fresh apple juice you obviously have access too. What scale do you want to brew? To achieve commercial standards/ tastes you need to base your output on brewing from malt & forget about kits.
Sincerely,

Tony

Hi Tony,
At the moment its just personal use, looking to make a 5 gallon batch every 3 or 4 weeks or so. Unlike the cider which is a once a year thing which as long as its strong enough should last the year through. I am an insurance inspector (pressure systems) and am very lucky that amongst my clients are Crisp Maltings and Elgoods Brewery in Wisbech - so its good to get to see how the pro's do things. I love the Lambic setup they now have at Elgoods where they have the oak planks above the copper cooling bath to get the natural yeasts to drip into the beer in the condensation - and they have a fantastic old riveted steam boiler. My main priority is to get a setup for my bar where I can serve beer on tap. I am happy to use kits at the moment (they have come a long way since when I first tried as a schoolkid back in the early 80's) I currently have an IPA and a Pilsner on the go using Wilko kits that contain hop pellets and I will see how they go. Once the bar setup is complete I can then start looking at making from scratch - I have a barn that I use for the cider making and there is plenty of room in there to add beer making equipment and I can get a 32 amp power supply to it if needed. Once that's up and running I will definitely pick your brain if that's ok.

With regards to apple juice - when its ready (from about September / October) you are more than welcome to come and get some. I have a selection of Cider trees - mainly chosen for their names rather than their taste characteristics - lets face it, if you hear of a variety called Hen Turd you just have to have it. Others include Slack ma girdle, Hangy down, yarlington mill, Hereford redstreak, peasgoods nonesuch, grimoldby golden, foxwhelp, strawberry norman, browns, bollingbrooke beauty, and many others whose names I have forgotten ( I have around 20 or so varieties that are historic Lincolnshire types)

I also have a concord grape vine that managed to give me 20 bottles of battery acid last year (slowly mellowing but will nonetheless get drunk at some point)

…. and then there's the plum trees, I made plum wine one year but left the stones in when smashing the plums up - which gave me a milky wine that was undrinkable(probably poisonous) and never cleared.

By the way, I graft new trees from scion cuttings so if anyone on here wants to get some cuttings from my orchard they are more than welcome (might just get away with scions this late in the spring - but might have to go for bud grafts)

My cider is more of an apple wine as I have been very lucky over the last couple of years to get a secondary Malo-lactic fermentation so it probably goes up to 10-11% in the spring when the proteins get converted.

 

[GerritT]

Get some books. You know way too much already for us to start telling you how or what.
Greg Hughes, Graham Wheeler, James Morton, Ron Pattinson. They wrote the books.
Spend a week reading them. Two weeks. The only thing you miss in knowledge is how to finetune a malt crusher.

 

[Attwell]

Welcome mate

 

[bobukbrewer]

Tony Palmer - I live in Kettering and brew 13 litres of beer most weeks (all grain naturally). Would be happy to meet in Stamford for a nattter (=pick your brains on water treatment) happy to give my Email [email protected]

 

[Dutto]

Im in Gedney - halfway between Spalding and Kings Lynn

Welcome to the Forum.

Gedney Drove End used to have a Police Station and legend had it that if you ever ****** off the Chief Constable you got posted there until some other PC committed a non-sackable crime that came to the Chief’s notice!

Just back from the local French supermarket where they had 13% “bio” wine on sale for £6.30 per 3 litre box! I can’t wait until we get back to the Duty Free so that I get limited to ONE bottle of spirits or TWO bottles of wine!

Back to the booze!

 

[smithsj1]

Hi Lee, good to see another person from Lincolnshire on here. I am in Moulton near Spalding so you are just 7 miles or so up the road from me.

I have been home brewing for a couple of years just because I was blowing too much cash on these new fangled craft beers and thought surely I can brew that without costing an arm and a leg!! I have done a few off the shelf kits over the winter and will be doing my 3rd all grain batch of the season shortly now that I have freed up one of my kegs this evening.

Did some ciders last year but close your ears I used shop bought juice ... and it's OK I guess but never really been that happy with my Ciders. My favourite is when I add some summer fruits to the mix.

I am currently without work so can pop over to swap stories at some time if you're free.

All the best

Stuart

 

[lee smeaton]

ha , your just round the corner, I am in Gedney - you will have to come and get some of my apple juice in the autumn!

 

[smithsj1]

ha , your just round the corner, I am in Gedney - you will have to come and get some of my apple juice in the autumn!

That would be great. Thank you. I can heartily recommend the books recommended by GerritT and if you haven't come across Ron Pattinsons website yet then you should take a look. It has a lot of history of beers and breweries with a number of old recipes. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/ . You can buy his books from his site as they are printed to order so a bit be expensive but have loads of information in them.

 

[Oneflewover]

ha , your just round the corner, I am in Gedney - you will have to come and get some of my apple juice in the autumn!

Gedney, that's a blast from the past! Spent the first 8 years of my life in Lutton (Colley's Gate), and used to cycle to a mate's house in Gedney

 

[haxenhammer]

Hi Tony,
At the moment its just personal use, looking to make a 5 gallon batch every 3 or 4 weeks or so. Unlike the cider which is a once a year thing which as long as its strong enough should last the year through. I am an insurance inspector (pressure systems) and am very lucky that amongst my clients are Crisp Maltings and Elgoods Brewery in Wisbech - so its good to get to see how the pro's do things. I love the Lambic setup they now have at Elgoods where they have the oak planks above the copper cooling bath to get the natural yeasts to drip into the beer in the condensation - and they have a fantastic old riveted steam boiler. My main priority is to get a setup for my bar where I can serve beer on tap. I am happy to use kits at the moment (they have come a long way since when I first tried as a schoolkid back in the early 80's) I currently have an IPA and a Pilsner on the go using Wilko kits that contain hop pellets and I will see how they go. Once the bar setup is complete I can then start looking at making from scratch - I have a barn that I use for the cider making and there is plenty of room in there to add beer making equipment and I can get a 32 amp power supply to it if needed. Once that's up and running I will definitely pick your brain if that's ok.

With regards to apple juice - when its ready (from about September / October) you are more than welcome to come and get some. I have a selection of Cider trees - mainly chosen for their names rather than their taste characteristics - lets face it, if you hear of a variety called Hen Turd you just have to have it. Others include Slack ma girdle, Hangy down, yarlington mill, Hereford redstreak, peasgoods nonesuch, grimoldby golden, foxwhelp, strawberry norman, browns, bollingbrooke beauty, and many others whose names I have forgotten ( I have around 20 or so varieties that are historic Lincolnshire types)

I also have a concord grape vine that managed to give me 20 bottles of battery acid last year (slowly mellowing but will nonetheless get drunk at some point)

…. and then there's the plum trees, I made plum wine one year but left the stones in when smashing the plums up - which gave me a milky wine that was undrinkable(probably poisonous) and never cleared.

By the way, I graft new trees from scion cuttings so if anyone on here wants to get some cuttings from my orchard they are more than welcome (might just get away with scions this late in the spring - but might have to go for bud grafts)

My cider is more of an apple wine as I have been very lucky over the last couple of years to get a secondary Malo-lactic fermentation so it probably goes up to 10-11% in the spring when the proteins get converted.

Hi Lee, my name is Vitaly. I've come across your post where you say that you have different varieties of cider apple trees. I'm a beginner cider maker and I collect different varieties of apple trees, and there are almost no good apple trees for cider in Russia. I want to buy some apple seeds from your orchard, about 20-50 seeds of any cider trees, if it's possible of course.

 

[Tony Palmer]

Hi Lee,

Good to hear from you, and of course I am interested in some apple juice when the time is right.

Even better to hear you have Crisp maltings in your portfolio as it’s a good start with regard to your malt supply. Moving away from kits to your own mash set up would be significant step forward. I would be very happy to advise you on setting up your own facility. The key issue is to try and decide the scale at which you want to operate. The brew length is absolutely crucial and from the sound of it you have plenty of room for the venture. You might also consider a larger operation if you come to some arrangement with a local pub or alternative outlet. After that you have to consider how to package the product. Obviously with scale and flexibility comes cost so it’s a balance worth discussing fully before any commitment.

Hopefully the current restrictions will change and enable us to meet at some point. Please send me your e-mail address.

Best wishes,

Tony
[email protected]