Call it what you like... Citra maybe

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brumbrew

Regular dufus
Joined
May 5, 2014
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Location
Birmingham
Brief intro

Used to brew loads, then work changed, twice, got married, now have a 3 month old. Have loads of brew gear that has been moved from one room to another. Now man cub has his own room, I've been "asked" to do something with it.

Dragged it out and looked at what we still have. Some hops, 1 pack of mangrove jacks workhorse yeast exp. 2017 (they don't even make this anymore) A few packs of wine yeast, some peated grain, some munich, some crara, some special (medium colour I think) a bit of wheat and about 15kg of MO. Still in the 25kg sack I bought 3 years ago.

It's been stored in a dry cupboard, and doesn't smell off at all. I'm not throwing it away without trying it first so off we go.

2.5kg of MO
500g cara
500g munich

Dough in a 65 dungerees sCience
Mash for 90 minutes, raising temp to 72 with protein rests at 30 and 60 minutes.

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A very full mash tun 👆

I usually brew with a friend, but yea....

He also has most of the home made gear, so I'm doing this with the unmodified spares.

They're liners for pressure paint spraying tanks if anyone is wondering. Somewhere on here, waaaay back on my posts there is a thread where I do AG on the cheap, this is cheaperer 😉

Anyway, about 15 litres to the kettle, used another 5 litres to sparge, run the lot back over the grains again. Second runnings is it called? I forget the lingo now.

Total to kettle was around 18 litres, refractometer said 16% sugar! That's way to high! Anywho let's soldier on. Onto the boil, added 75g citra pellets as soon as it came to the boil. Bunged the rest in, a further 75g at the end.

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It will be citra!

After boil off and filtering out as much hop debris as I could, I ended up with 15 litres to the FV at 18% sugar, that would be 10% ish.

I don't have the chilling coil, it's at my friend's. Even if I did, I don't have the adaptor for the kitchen tap.

Sooo.... Let's dump in some cold water. Topped it off to 23 litres, that brings the OG down to 13% or 1.0526 if you prefer hydrometer readings.

Soo... Not a bad yeild for well out of date ingredients.

Now, that pack of work horse yeast, in it goes. Woke up today and it's going like a rocket!

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The water on the top of the FV is from out of the airlock!

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I would usually use the stir plate for this, but I don't have it at mine. So I've tried to top crop a bit yeast.

I've still got plenty of MO left and two vacuum sealed bags of hops. Dr rudi and maryanka.

Well. Sorry for the long post. But it's been a while since I've brewed. Amazing to see I still had half a clue what I was doing.

Will update you all soon.

Happy brewing 😊
 
About 150! 😂 Way too much, but needed using up, has been in the bag for a long time so doubt it's 12.6% alpha acid now still it did taste very bitter.

Maybe some dry hopping will mask it.
 
Hey all. Checked this today. Its only down to 6.5/7% on the refractometer. The heating has been on as it was going quite slow last week and it's kicked all the trub back up.

Question. At what point would be OK to pop some in the mini keg? Save adding sugar to the keg I could just leave it to ferment the last bit in the keg to pressurise it. No?

Obviously I'll wait a little longer before bottling the rest.
 
Hey all. Checked this today. Its only down to 6.5/7% on the refractometer. The heating has been on as it was going quite slow last week and it's kicked all the trub back up.

Question. At what point would be OK to pop some in the mini keg? Save adding sugar to the keg I could just leave it to ferment the last bit in the keg to pressurise it. No?

Obviously I'll wait a little longer before bottling the rest.
Is this a disposable 5L minikeg or one of the fancy pressurised SS ones like iKegger and Dark Farm sell?

I’m not sure I’d risk it with the former I had a couple of over-carbed ones in the past and it’s not fun pouring pints of foam. The latter would be ok
 
It's a 10 litre plastic keg with the option to inject C02 into the top. I'm also wondering if the high sugar content was too much for the out of date yeast
 
What my thinking is, if I'm adding sugar to the pressure barrel then that would be a few points on the hydrometer/refractometer. So why not just let it finish off fermenting IN in the barrel?

Anyone do this?
 
What my thinking is, if I'm adding sugar to the pressure barrel then that would be a few points on the hydrometer/refractometer. So why not just let it finish off fermenting IN in the barrel?

Anyone do this?
Essentially spunding... Do yea I do this in FV get some carbonation
 
So can I spund an ale?

I'm guessing the FG won't drop too much further. Its currently around 1.010 Though with the heating on now it's started to bubble again quite a bit.
 
Spunding is just the action of bunging the fermenter. Obvs the advantages these days are you can set the PSI on the spunding valves you get to achieve your desired carbonation in conjunction with using a force carb chart (PSI + Temp + Time = co2 volume)
 
I've just spent the last hour reading up. It's a section I must have always glanced over. Now I'm looking at darkfarm kegs 😂

You can buy them on Wish apparently too. Just unbranded.

I'll take some more readings in the morning see if it's dropped much.

Thanks for the help
 
It was stuck at 1.007 so I've just bottled it. Need the big FV for the next brew.

I've put the bottles in spare buckets with a cushion over them just incase 😜

Miscalculated filling bottles and only ended up with a 3/4 full pressure barrel. Oh well. Guess I'll drink that first.
 
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