Sausages
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2021
- Messages
- 23
- Reaction score
- 17
Hello all, been meaning to start a brew thread for a bit and since I've got one on the go at the moment it seemed a good time to start. Thought it would be good to log what I'm up to and be an opportunity for you lot to spot any mistakes I'm making!
So to start the thread I'm doing a Woodfordes Tinsel Toes kit. Made up per the instructions, in the FV then FV goes in the water bath to keep it warm. the bath is a big Really Useful box, with polystyrene stuck to it to reduce heat loss and a thermostatic heater. I brew in the utility room which we don't heat much, and I don't have a brewing fridge, hence most of my brewing is done in the cooler months when I on;y have to worry about keeping things warm.
That was 2 weeks ago though. Bubbles through the airlock had stopped and two consecutive gravity reading show it finished at 1.008.
As I broke my auto syphon on the last brew I made a new one from various plumbing bits and an 8mm pushfit valve.
Now what I thought was cool about this was being able to plug a big syringe into the end to fill the syphon up. This was much easier than my previous attempts of getting syphon to, well, start syphoning!
The syringe is bottom right of the picture. its big enough to fill the syphon in one go, then with the valve shut I can remove the syringe, plug in the short length of hose and get the keg filled.
Normally I would plug the syphon into the corny beer out post. As this is my first dry hopped brew I was a little concerned about blocking the post with hop debris (the memory of multiple post and syphon blockages from fruit pulp when experimenting with blackberry porter are still quite raw!). This time I lay a sanitised muslin cloth over the keg opening and syphoned onto that. Which was a stupid idea as the beer then dropped down to the bottom of the keg making a bit of a splash and introducing some unwanted oxygen. Oh well! Next time, might investigate putting a filter in the syphon line (maybe a bouncer).
Keg full and sealed, the rest went into 6 swing top bottles. Keg then got put in the bath to carb up, bottles can hang out in the kitchen for a week or so.
Thinking for next time, to use an electric belt heater to keep the keg warm during carbonation, which would keep the bath free for another brew. Would also save me having to lift the keg up into the bath which does my shoulder no favours!
My initial 10psi CO2 prime in the keg dropped to 4psi after 2 days, and has now started climbing.
Once this has finished I have a Mangrove Jacks wheat beer kit to get on, and some improvements to make to my cleaning setup. In the meantime I'm finishing the last few bottles of treacle stout off in order to make space for more beer!
So to start the thread I'm doing a Woodfordes Tinsel Toes kit. Made up per the instructions, in the FV then FV goes in the water bath to keep it warm. the bath is a big Really Useful box, with polystyrene stuck to it to reduce heat loss and a thermostatic heater. I brew in the utility room which we don't heat much, and I don't have a brewing fridge, hence most of my brewing is done in the cooler months when I on;y have to worry about keeping things warm.
That was 2 weeks ago though. Bubbles through the airlock had stopped and two consecutive gravity reading show it finished at 1.008.
As I broke my auto syphon on the last brew I made a new one from various plumbing bits and an 8mm pushfit valve.
Now what I thought was cool about this was being able to plug a big syringe into the end to fill the syphon up. This was much easier than my previous attempts of getting syphon to, well, start syphoning!
The syringe is bottom right of the picture. its big enough to fill the syphon in one go, then with the valve shut I can remove the syringe, plug in the short length of hose and get the keg filled.
Normally I would plug the syphon into the corny beer out post. As this is my first dry hopped brew I was a little concerned about blocking the post with hop debris (the memory of multiple post and syphon blockages from fruit pulp when experimenting with blackberry porter are still quite raw!). This time I lay a sanitised muslin cloth over the keg opening and syphoned onto that. Which was a stupid idea as the beer then dropped down to the bottom of the keg making a bit of a splash and introducing some unwanted oxygen. Oh well! Next time, might investigate putting a filter in the syphon line (maybe a bouncer).
Keg full and sealed, the rest went into 6 swing top bottles. Keg then got put in the bath to carb up, bottles can hang out in the kitchen for a week or so.
Thinking for next time, to use an electric belt heater to keep the keg warm during carbonation, which would keep the bath free for another brew. Would also save me having to lift the keg up into the bath which does my shoulder no favours!
My initial 10psi CO2 prime in the keg dropped to 4psi after 2 days, and has now started climbing.
Once this has finished I have a Mangrove Jacks wheat beer kit to get on, and some improvements to make to my cleaning setup. In the meantime I'm finishing the last few bottles of treacle stout off in order to make space for more beer!
