Brewing in Brighton

[hopsandglory]

Hi all,

Newbie to both the forum and to brewing here. Based in Brighton. Excited to join the community!

I am extremely new to the hobby - last night I bottled my first ever brew, which was a Brooklyn Brew Shop Everyday IPA All Grain kit (1 US gallon). Loved doing it and enjoyed the challenges along the way, including a stuck fermentation and losing about half a litre of an already-small batch during the bottling process (leaky pot)! We'll see how it turns out, but the beer out of the fermenter tasted OK...

I am limited to circa 5l brews at the moment due to space and a rubbish electric cooker which struggles to bring wort to the boil, but it suits me fine since I am new and still learning. I quite like the idea of small and frequent batches.

This evening I'm going to try a friend's recipe - a Citra pale ale, 1 US gallon again. Maris Otter extra pale, handful of Carapils and then lots of Citra. I have bought some Brausol special to try attain a clearer beer. I plan to dryhop with 50g of Citra. I know that I should really be thinking about water treatment in Brighton, but I'm not going to bother for this one since it all seems quite complex - and I don't have a ph meter etc.

Any advice or tips always v much appreciated!

Looking forward to browsing, posting and learning from you all! Cheers.

 

[The Baron]

Welcome to the forum
What you are doing will stand you in good stead when you upgrade eventually

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[obscure]

Welcome nothing wrong with small batch brewing, I still mostly do 4.5-10L batches. Given your typical losses it might be worth scaling up slightly to about 5L that way fingers crossed you will actually get a full gallon out of your fermentor (and the extra cost for the grain is fairly minimal).

 

[crowcrow]

Enjoy! As you say water treatment can come later but if you want an easy quick win now I'd suggest half a campden tablet and pouring your water into the pan the night before you brew. This vents off the chlorine and the campden mops up the chloride.

Campden tabs are really cheap.

Alt at your small sizes using cheapo bottled water is also a possibility, or just use tap as you are - it isn't that bad!

 

[Gerryjo]

Hi and welcome to the forum...