15th March 2009 Effin Adnams Southwold Bitter
- Thread starter Aleman
- Start date
Help Support The Homebrew Forum:
For those who may be interested, a short (24 Minute :shock:) video of the entire brewday is available Here On my website
It's great to see your brewery in action, it certainly is a well thought out and put together system :grin: very good video...not sure if it's just me but although the music selection was great - it kinda drowned out what you were saying 
which is a shame.
which is a shame.
I'm not sure you missed anything not being able to hear my waffle :lol: Too many Umms, errs and "Oh ****!"s to be interesting . . . . what I want to do is mix down an audio track to replace the audio recorded on the video . . . next time I do one I'll skip a commentary and put it on later when I have edited the video to a sensible length. . . . . Any decent windoze audio/video editing packages around . . . Used Moviemaker for this and the audio editing facilities are crude to say the least.
Just checked the gravity and its down to 1.011, so all over bar the shouting . . . could be drinking this in a couple of weeks :lol:
Just checked the gravity and its down to 1.011, so all over bar the shouting . . . could be drinking this in a couple of weeks :lol:
Bru4u
Landlord.
Excellent vid Aleman and thanks for sharing, your too modest about what you have to say, I belive there is a great deal of knowledge in your head and would love to hear it, don't mind the umms and eers, we all do it and can see through it, it's the knowledge we are intrested in. A voice over would be smashing, again nice setup and great vid. :clap:
Bru
Bru
fivetide
Well-Known Member
My Acid Malt just arrived. Once I build my new boiler (and brewing area, actually - it's another little project for next week) then Adnams brews will be top priority! I'll make a special note for that sugar addition though, as I've never added sugar in an AG brew and would definitely forget it.
jamesb
Landlord.
The video doesn't show up for me in FF, although I don't seem to have a problem with other sites using the player.
Not to worry, I just grabbed the flv file and will have look with flvplayer.
Not to worry, I just grabbed the flv file and will have look with flvplayer.
AFAIK Adnam's don't use acid maltfivetide said:
. . . It's certainly something that appeared in GW's latest book and IIRC is only used in the explorer :hmm: I would expect that the beers like Southwold and Broadside have sufficient dark malts to deal with any excess alkalinity they may have in the liquor following water treatment, Explorer being a sop to the 'lager' drinkers, might need a little bit of help . . . and using acid malt is more organic and Eco Friendly than using nasty acids :lol: - which seems to be the way Adnam's are heading.Incidentally they don't admit to using sugar either . . . but the gravity, attenuation, and published abv% doesn't tie up for an all grain recipe
. . . and they don't use dark malts for colour either . . . some sort of brewing caramel was used(Just bear in mind that my comments on these beers do date back to the early 90's . . . things may have changed since)
steve_flack
Regular.
I was in Southwold last week (you know the windy rainy week between two great sunny ones :cry: ) Anyway, Adnams now do brewery tours again. To be honest it's a bit of a **** tour if you like photogenic breweries. It will give you a woody if you like shiny though - basically they've crammed a new German brewhouse into the old buildings (with separate mash and lauter tuns). The FVs are over the road in another building (British built stainless jacketed vessels in a horizontal arrangement).
From what I can recall from the tour - 'The Bitter' (as it's now called) it's brewed from pale malt and crystal (no other malts) and Brewer's Caramel (I did see some No2 invert in the brewery but I don't know what that goes in). The hops are Boadicea for bittering with Goldings and Fuggles late on. (I'm not sure but I think I recall Fuggles being the cask dry hop). The wort is boiled at a high OG (in the 1.060s) and let down to pitching gravity (1.036) before pitching a two strain yeast which takes it down to racking gravity of 1.008 over two days. Pitching temp is 17C with a rise to 19C (Broadside goes warmer - to 21C). It seems that the beers are racked with no additional sugar as the fermentations are stopped early to leave a couple of points of gravity for cask conditioning (this would make FG 1.006). Now, to me this sounds like there is added simple sugar in the fermentation otherwise that's a pretty impressive attenuation. This was not mentioned on the tour.
From what I can recall from the tour - 'The Bitter' (as it's now called) it's brewed from pale malt and crystal (no other malts) and Brewer's Caramel (I did see some No2 invert in the brewery but I don't know what that goes in). The hops are Boadicea for bittering with Goldings and Fuggles late on. (I'm not sure but I think I recall Fuggles being the cask dry hop). The wort is boiled at a high OG (in the 1.060s) and let down to pitching gravity (1.036) before pitching a two strain yeast which takes it down to racking gravity of 1.008 over two days. Pitching temp is 17C with a rise to 19C (Broadside goes warmer - to 21C). It seems that the beers are racked with no additional sugar as the fermentations are stopped early to leave a couple of points of gravity for cask conditioning (this would make FG 1.006). Now, to me this sounds like there is added simple sugar in the fermentation otherwise that's a pretty impressive attenuation. This was not mentioned on the tour.
arturobandini
Regular.
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2009
- Messages
- 254
- Reaction score
- 0
steve_flack said:
Classic brewer's eye in action there Steve.
Shame the tour was a bit of a wash out but some good info gleamed for Adnams fans. I don't find those huge stainless steel breweries particularly attractive when compared to the old style vintage copper and wood. Stainless steel in the homebrewers environment makes perfect sense though obviously.
fivetide
Well-Known Member
Good info from the tour! I've grown up with Adnams on the doorstep, so it's in the blood - literally most of the time. I'm blowing out the GW recipe for Explorer though - I don't understand why it uses Liberty, when Explorer is Columbus and Chinook? Back to the drawing board for me I think. Well, Brewsmith...
Thanks for the info Steve, That two strain yeast is a fairly new addition . . . I would bet that its the old 'Adnams' Strain with a more attenuative strain added. The attenuation does suggest that copper sugars are used and that has always been my impression given the OG and published abv anyway. Personally I would always rather use Dark malts for colouring rather than try and use caramel.
Shame about the old brewery, it was fairly impressive . . . but still if they want to keep up with demand . . . which is the logic behind having a seperate mash/lauter tun . . . You can get another mash on while lautering/sparging an earlier one . . . more brews per day.
FWIW My clone has been sat at 2-3C for the last few days having had Aux Finings and Isinglass added a few days apart. . . . I'm cleaning Cornii tonight ready to recieve the nectar . . . Just waiting for a delivery from Harmony Hut
Shame about the old brewery, it was fairly impressive . . . but still if they want to keep up with demand . . . which is the logic behind having a seperate mash/lauter tun . . . You can get another mash on while lautering/sparging an earlier one . . . more brews per day.
FWIW My clone has been sat at 2-3C for the last few days having had Aux Finings and Isinglass added a few days apart. . . . I'm cleaning Cornii tonight ready to recieve the nectar . . . Just waiting for a delivery from Harmony Hut
steve_flack
Regular.
They said they originally got the yeast in 1942 from Morgans in Lowestoft (or maybe Yarmouth not sure)....shortly before that brewery got bombed. They said it was difficult to keep it stable as one or other of the strains becomes too dominant so they keep an eye on it and pitch a pure batch of the whichever yeast isn't winning (how they tell which I don't know). I did ask what they are like separately and they said not good. Apparently one strain is very flocculant but not a good worker and the other much less flocculant.Aleman said:
I think they can do three brews a day of around 200+ barrels (they could do more but don't do 24/7). They program the control system to start up at about 4am and someone comes in to see it's started OK around 6. Basically it's a push button brewery.
Another little titbit is that they wet mill their grain so the get a good filter bed from the mostly intact husks but can also crush the grain very fine (higher efficiency). There's also an awful lot of heat exchanging going on to recover energy - including from the copper steam.
After 2 weeks of sitting in the fermenter I have cornied the brew Aleman gave me and to be honest it tastes a cracking pint well half as I had it straight out of the FV
Going to leave it for a few weeks and see how it turns out.
Aleman Thanks for the brew mate corking job
Going to leave it for a few weeks and see how it turns out.
Aleman Thanks for the brew mate corking job
damfoose said:After 2 weeks of sitting in the fermenter I have cornied the brew Aleman gave me and to be honest it tastes a cracking pint well half as I had it straight out of the FV
Going to leave it for a few weeks and see how it turns out.
Aleman Thanks for the brew mate corking job
Which probably means the Fresh Wort Kit idea could be a winner If we ever sell She's Grandmums house :evil:
Thanks mate, I'm in the process of cleaning my cornii to stick my brew in, can't wait to try it myself.
I managed to keg this on Friday evening, 2 full size cornii and 2 mini Cornii.
I added primings (25g of DME - Just enough to give 1.2-1.3 Vols of CO2) to one of the Mini Cornii and this afternoon I bottled it . . . 17 bottles, all put away ready for distribution . . . or possibly competition if anything happens this year.
And this is the Feck Result
Its slipping down really easily . . . .Bags of flavour, Malt and Bitterness perfectly balanced . . . and as I was mowing the grass . . . I had the opportunity to test its suitability as a Lawnmower beer . . . Pass :thumb:
I added primings (25g of DME - Just enough to give 1.2-1.3 Vols of CO2) to one of the Mini Cornii and this afternoon I bottled it . . . 17 bottles, all put away ready for distribution . . . or possibly competition if anything happens this year.
And this is the Feck Result
Its slipping down really easily . . . .Bags of flavour, Malt and Bitterness perfectly balanced . . . and as I was mowing the grass . . . I had the opportunity to test its suitability as a Lawnmower beer . . . Pass :thumb:
