guyb
Regular.
I happened to be in Birmingham at the weekend, and in anticipation of the trip had a look to see if there were any brewing shops in the area (my local one shut a couple of years back, although the nearest is only about 12miles away in Sheffield).
Anyhow, I popped into the Hampstead Brewing Centre after finding it by the sat nav eventually.
I was looking for another kit, and I got talking to the bloke in the shop who was a little goldmine of information.
Basically, they do what is called a "design a brew", where you can mix pre-determined quantities of <edit> pre-hopped <edit> extract malt, grain, wheat and hops - I gather this is called "steeping", although am not sure if the process is called extract brewing? I say this as I am wanting to make that step up and away from just kit beers, so some of the terminology is new.
Anyway here's what I bought from Hampsteads (the bloke there helped me to put this together), the numbers correspond to the Hampstead convention of labelling the products (they also do a recipe book) - the website is a bit of a mare to be honest:
1x No.3 medium base colour 30 EBU bitterness 40 EBC (1.5kg)
1x No.4 medium dark base colour 50 EBU bitterness 40 EBC (1.5kg)
1x No.1 crushed torriefied wheat teabag (50g)
3x No.4 crushed crystal teabag - 145EBC (50g each)
1x Hop Pack - Styrian Goldings teabag (20g) AA 5.2%
1x Hop Pack - Challenger teabag (20g T90 hop pellets) AA 7%
1x Design a Brew yeast (I don't quite know which yeast type this was - it was 6g)
Method:
Steep the wheat and crystal for 20mins at 66deg C, with a volume of water 1 litre per teabag (so 4 litres for this brew).
Stand the malt in warm water.
Remove teabags from the pan, add the liquor and the malt to a FV, add the hop teabags to the FV (I believe this is dry hopping?), add up to the 23 litre mark with water, I left to cool to 23degC, then pitched the yeast.
OG was 1.040 at 23, which I believe corrects to 1.041 (according to some tools online).
It's going like the clappers 24hrs later, I did try it before I pitched the yeast, and it tasted amazing.
Perhaps that is the difference between doing a kit, and taking it to that next step.
It has given me more confidence that's for sure.
I am sure there are other brew shops that do this type of thing - it was dead easy doing it in simple steps.
Anyhow, I popped into the Hampstead Brewing Centre after finding it by the sat nav eventually.
I was looking for another kit, and I got talking to the bloke in the shop who was a little goldmine of information.
Basically, they do what is called a "design a brew", where you can mix pre-determined quantities of <edit> pre-hopped <edit> extract malt, grain, wheat and hops - I gather this is called "steeping", although am not sure if the process is called extract brewing? I say this as I am wanting to make that step up and away from just kit beers, so some of the terminology is new.
Anyway here's what I bought from Hampsteads (the bloke there helped me to put this together), the numbers correspond to the Hampstead convention of labelling the products (they also do a recipe book) - the website is a bit of a mare to be honest:
1x No.3 medium base colour 30 EBU bitterness 40 EBC (1.5kg)
1x No.4 medium dark base colour 50 EBU bitterness 40 EBC (1.5kg)
1x No.1 crushed torriefied wheat teabag (50g)
3x No.4 crushed crystal teabag - 145EBC (50g each)
1x Hop Pack - Styrian Goldings teabag (20g) AA 5.2%
1x Hop Pack - Challenger teabag (20g T90 hop pellets) AA 7%
1x Design a Brew yeast (I don't quite know which yeast type this was - it was 6g)
Method:
Steep the wheat and crystal for 20mins at 66deg C, with a volume of water 1 litre per teabag (so 4 litres for this brew).
Stand the malt in warm water.
Remove teabags from the pan, add the liquor and the malt to a FV, add the hop teabags to the FV (I believe this is dry hopping?), add up to the 23 litre mark with water, I left to cool to 23degC, then pitched the yeast.
OG was 1.040 at 23, which I believe corrects to 1.041 (according to some tools online).
It's going like the clappers 24hrs later, I did try it before I pitched the yeast, and it tasted amazing.
Perhaps that is the difference between doing a kit, and taking it to that next step.
It has given me more confidence that's for sure.
I am sure there are other brew shops that do this type of thing - it was dead easy doing it in simple steps.