2 Brews 1 day

[MEB]

As i'm almost out of beer, haven't brewed in ages and have just about enough grain to do two brews i'm doing 30L DP Simonds Bitter(6.5%) and 40L Shelobs Sting(6.8%) tomorrow. I've made up two 2L starters of Thames Valley Yeast. This is the last so i'll have to use the yeast cake to produce some more. Or just pitch direct onto the cake :hmm: I plan on brewing 50L+ per week for the next two month's to get my cellar back up to a reasonable level and get some DP's put away for my monstrous 40th in Dec. :party:
Anyway the plan is this. Get up at crack of dawn, have a ****, shower and brush teeth. Get HLT on with 65L liquor. Consume a few rounds of marmite on toast and plenty of coffee. Mash in grain for SS. Mash for 90 mins, sparge for 90 mins. Refill HLT and bring up to sparge temp. Boil SS wort. Mash in SB(3hrs plus mash out) whilst cooling SS. Pitch first starter in SS. Sparge SB for 2 hr's. Boil SB. Cool and then pitch second starter into SB. Clean up brewery. Have a nice drink or two. I reckon with a 6am start i could be finished by 9pm and have 70L of strong Ale all ready to do 'it's thang', so to speak.
Wish me luck-cos i'm gonna need it...
The following day my new sacks of MO should arrive along with 5kg of Amber malt. Which will give me the opportunity to try out a DP mild and another 25L batch of DP's 1837 IPA(9%)-my fav beer of all time.

Now i KNOW i can brew fine and tasty brews i'm planning on getting my beers brighter-this should Please Aleman But i've always believed that trying to alter everything at once is a surefire recipe for disaster. So i've concentrated on getting my brewing down so my beers are fine tasting before worrying about them being bright-besides i don't give a **** about them being bright. It does put people off and if they won't drink my cloudy brew then they can drink the ***** commercial awfull kiwi lager they prefer, which suits me fine as they don't deserve REAL Ale anyway. I've also pretty much brewed my own recipe's apart from DP recipe's which are always barnstormingly good. But i have learnt a lot about what malts alter the flavour, length of maturing times, what hops taste like what and what hops go with the brews i brew etc. Which stands me in good stead for my next step up the ladder-getting my beers bright. I've also decided that my kegged beers don't taste half as good as my bottled versions. So i will be back to bottling the majority of my brews again.

So, MEB is back on the scene again after an incredibly busy summer taking wanky tourists(mostly) out to a beautiful Marine Reserve. From now on i am refusing to take any French people-they are just obnoxious idiots and the whole crew have had enough of their arrogant ways-not to mention they ALWAYS **** in our wetsuits the dirty bastards. As i have said before they are a bunch of arseholes. :twisted:
Mind you the Roar will be in full swing within a week and the duck season starts on first sat of May. So i'll be off hunting for a bit.

 

[A T]

That's a busy day, good luck to you :shock: I fully agree about the bottled beers tasting way better than it's kegged version but i'm sooooooo lazy i think i'll buy more cornies :lol:

 

[jamesb]

My first thought was 2 girls 1 Cup. (DON'T look that up)

The second one was a cover of Crowded House - 4 homebrews in one day!

Nice to see you're back brewing MEB.

 

[MEB]

That's a busy day, good luck to you :shock: I fully agree about the bottled beers tasting way better than it's kegged version but i'm sooooooo lazy i think i'll buy more cornies :lol:

I used to think i was lazier than you but now i'm not so sure... :rofl:

Hey A T. Fools gold is a cracker by the way. I used Ringwood yeast and it really bought the NS hops through. I drank the stuff in no time though-I think it evaporates in air quicker than most beers :whistle: Definately one i'll do again but i'd like to try it with London III yeast this time. I think that would be the best match for it myself.

 

[A T]

Cheers MEB i'm planning on doing it soon myself and i might give London III yeast a go and see how it turns out. Did you prime the Fools Gold bottles with honey?

 

[MEB]

Cheers MEB i'm planning on doing it soon myself and i might give London III yeast a go and see how it turns out. Did you prime the Fools Gold bottles with honey?

No, I kegged it and force carbed. I like REAL Ale that is similar to a hand pulled pint and isn't really carbonated. I use honey in my yeast Top tip from Master Brewer Dennis Fring-it's changed my brews for the best more than anything i've ever done. He's a bloody clever chap that Dennis, bloody funniest German i've ever met too and has become a good friend over the last 6 months. Different yeasts respond in different ways to the addition of honey rather than spraymalt or processed sugars. I use a 1010 wort and bring it up to 1025(my worts are usually over 1060) with honey(my particular fav is Manuka Honey) which then gets topped up till i've got a 4L starter going like a fury. This then gets added to my standard 40L batch and i get less than 2 hr lag time. If you add a starter that is just getting going at 1020 and your main batch is more than double you will knock the yeast on the head for a while-if you pitch twice as much yeast that is really fermenting not just starting you get tiny lag times. Dennis gets less than 30 mins lag time with a 1100L batch-i've a feeling he over-pitches even more than i do. :hmm: I put a lid on the FV for the first two hours and then open ferment. My fermenting takes 6 days now. Completely finished at 6 days. Dennis has taught me to massively over pitch. Although i've not been brewing a great deal i still have been brewing and keeping the normal anoraky extensive notes. But now i have a Master Brewer helping me along

 

[Vossy1]

Hope the brew day went well MEB :thumb:

 

[MEB]

It went well indeed. I'm ucking crackered though-time for beddies...

 

[Wez]

Great work MEB - i bet you were knackered !! :shock: