New Year - Slid Brewday

[Slid]

Tomorrow I am hoping to do the GH Dubbel-ish. I racked the Belgian Wit and saved some yeast trub for the brew.
Am also using up the last of the crushed base malt and also ~2kg of MO bought whole and crushed by hand in the Bulldog Grain Mill that SWMBO assembled last weekend. I got the Bill of Materials (for the Grain Mill) out and started playing with it and, as she likes doing that sort of thing, sent me make a cup of tea whilst she sorted it.

Here is the recipe planned:

Maris Otter 5.4kg
Special B 0.3kg
Dark Crystal 0.5kg
Sugar syrup of 0.6kg cane sugar.
Huell Mellon 30g plus 40g @ 60m / 15m
Safale 33

The syrup is made to the Golden Syrup method found off the internet, but darkened slightly to a sort of dark red colour.

I have been moaning a fair bit about the grain crush on the Crisp MO I get crushed - it being a bit fine for the GF. I carefully spaced my rollers at the "credit card" gap recommended by David Heath. Needless to say, the grains I milled today look very similar to the ones out of the pre-crushed sack.

Onwards and Upwards!

 

[Slid]

Today went quite well and I did not mess with the mash / sparge at all and ended up with 24.5L at 1.055 (before the syrup, which I added directly to the FV.

As ever, I did the Mash, sparge and cooling in the GF and the boil in the PECO boiler.

 

[Slid]

Here is the write up for the beer I made almost 2 weeks ago. It is an English ESB with a new US05 (I re-use yeast from the trub routinely - it's my contribution to carbon footprints ).

Has to be said up-front that having bought a grain mill (decent one - Bulldog) I crushed the base malt at a gap of a credit card, which is 0.76mm or thereabouts. Strangely, this resulted in a grain crush profile very similar to the bought pre-crushed grain from Crisp or the HBC Minch. This is, of course, the very profile I was hoping to avoid by buying the Mill.

So, to labour the point about the milling gap, I thought about measuring the gap using playing cards. Bridge cards are fairly thin - generally ~0.25mm apparently, a bit thinner than Poker cards. The novelty James Bond pack we have never really opened turns out to be a bit thicker and estimating the full 55 card pack at 1.7cm gives the simple result that four cards will equate to roughly 1.2+ something - so in the "zone" for the GF, I think.

I intend to go with the "4-card trick" on this weekend's Brown Porter, but to return to the brew from the 16th, here it is - ESB:

Maris Otter, crushed too fine 5.2kg
Dark Crystal 385g
Chocolate Malt 115g
Sugar syrup ~300g

Bittering with Admiral 20g
Progress 18g and 24g at 10m and then as a hop tea, having forgotten to add at flame out.

 

[Slid]

Well, I made up the 6lb (imperial measurements, FGS!) and bunged the marmalade into 3x 2lb Jars yesterday, one of which was added to the initial FV.

Today's Dark beer was thus:
MO 4.7kg
Black Malt 230g
Crystal 300g
Amber 500g
Marmalade 900g
Chocolate Bar 100g

Progress 35g & 25g @ 60 / 10m
S04, by way of a change from US05, so as to leave more sweetness to counter-act the very bitter Seville oranges.

By way of explanation, the odd looking quantities were just finishing off open bags of grain (except the Amber). The chocolate came from an M&S thingy pack my work colleagues got me 7 months ago when I was off for 9 weeks. It was 70% cocoa solids and came from Ecuador. The marmalade is quite bitter, so I dropped the bittering hops which are 5.2% Alpha.

SWMBO suggested that this would turn out more like a Jaffa Cake than a beer.

This is just amazing! Absolutely worth doing again and much the best of my fruit plus beer experiments.

As regards the other beers in the meantime:

• The dry stout is great
• The Orkney Dark Island is better still - that clibit guy could pull a recipe together
• The US Pale has a slightly nasty aftertaste, but good gulping beer - I really can't do this style, though, with aged hops.
• Saisons, of which I made 5 over the summer, I may leave for a while, although the Rhubarb, the first of them, pitched 18 May, is now excellent by any standards
• The Dubbel looks a bit cloudy, but will bottle in 500ml bottles this weekend nonetheless
  
• Wheat beer was worth the hassle in the end as this is very drinkable even after 4-5 weeks

To return to the Parti-Gyle from April, the Barley Wine has been in an 11L demi-john for about 6 months now. I will rack over the ESB tomorrow, then the trub from the initial FV will get re-used.
Then I intend to add the BW to the secondary lees after bottling the following weekend and bottle that up on the same day.

 

[Slid]

Well, I made up the 6lb (imperial measurements, FGS!) and bunged the marmalade into 3x 2lb Jars yesterday, one of which was added to the initial FV.

Today's Dark beer was thus:
MO 4.7kg
Black Malt 230g
Crystal 300g
Amber 500g
Marmalade 900g
Chocolate Bar 100g

Progress 35g & 25g @ 60 / 10m
S04, by way of a change from US05, so as to leave more sweetness to counter-act the very bitter Seville oranges.

By way of explanation, the odd looking quantities were just finishing off open bags of grain (except the Amber). The chocolate came from an M&S thingy pack my work colleagues got me 7 months ago when I was off for 9 weeks. It was 70% cocoa solids and came from Ecuador. The marmalade is quite bitter, so I dropped the bittering hops which are 5.2% Alpha.

SWMBO suggested that this would turn out more like a Jaffa Cake than a beer.

This is a very nice beer indeed, neither the small bar of chocolate nor the marmalade are particularly prominent but may add something, I feel.
The Xmas Barley Wine from the Parti-Gyle is in the bottle now for a week and, after 7 months in the Carboy, should be OK by the festive period.
Most recent ESB, I have had a cheeky taste of and it will be better after a month or so in the bottle.

 

[Slid]

Another brew day today, a Mosaic SHA (sort of). Day went well, out of bed at 7 am and 25 L in the FV by 1:10 pm - not bad with the usual GF cut-out at 82C.

Cut down the gap on the Grain Mill to around 1 mm for the base malt and this seemed to make things better - good efficiencies and no issues with mash / sparge today, I felt.

Here is the recipe:
MO 5.2kg
Carapils 300g
Demerrara sugar 300g
Admiral 10g @60m
Mosaic 15/18/17/50g @ 60/15/5/0 mins.
US05

1.055 OG and a nice tasting wort.

 

[Slid]

Today was a Belhaven Wee Heavy from the old GW book. Used a slightly finer crush than last time - basically a credit card thickness as per David Heath's suggestion.

MO 6.62 kg
Carafa 3 170 g
White Sugar 600 g

WGV 70g @ FW and 30g @ 10m.
US 05

Have 26L at 1.068, which looks like pretty good efficiency, without putting it into any software. I used Brewmate and was very happy with this, but have now lost both copies of the software.. The on-line programs just irritate me as they are over-functionalised for my needs.

With the ever reliable US05, I expect a bit more than 7.5% ABV at the business end.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Try this Slid
https://softfamous.com/brewmate/

 

[Slid]

For some reason I fancied a Wheat Beer. My usual supplier has Safale 33, which suggests on the packaging that it does a Belgian Wit. As I have home made marmalade to burn at the moment (check out the Lakeland marmalade kit below) I added half a 2lb jar at the end, straining out the peel.

Rest of the recipe is a bit basic & standard:
XPMO 3,04kg
Wheat Malt 2kg
Oats (Tesco Scottish) 275g
Marmalade 450g (ish)

It will, no doubt be decent beer after a few weeks (or months).

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/13801/Home-Cook-Marmalade---Prepared-Seville-Oranges-Medium-Cut-850g

Well, I am just drinking the very last of this Marmalade Wit beer as I type. Fantastically drinkable beer. So good I repeated it yesterday. Both were bittered with 30g of Huell Melon hops at FW.

Was expecting trouble, but went fairly smoothly, except the mash went very sticky towards the end and I did an "emergency" type sparge, by removing the top plate and adding 1L of sparge water at a time and stirring it into the grains and helping it through using the paddle.

Hell of a lot of trub in the FV, but WTH, I rack all of the beers to secondary after 2 weeks for a further week, before bottling.

 

[Slid]

Try this Slid
https://softfamous.com/brewmate/

Hi Rod - I finally did get around to downloading this and it does work OK. Many thanks for this!

 

[Rodcx500z]

Glad to oblige

 

[Slid]

Today I took a day off to get SWMBO's car serviced and MOT. Did the Summer Lightening recipe from BYOBRA by GW in between drop and collect:

Maris Otter 5.44kg
Challenger 50g @ FW
Bobek 20g @ 10m

Bobek 20g @ 0m

Yeast used is Mangrove Jack's Liberty Bell, which I have not used before.
Wednesday evening I decided to give the GF a special clean - Boiling water and GF cleaner and then clean water to rinse. Scrubber the boil plate a bit as well.
Result - BGF cut out at 81C as usual, so familiar faff with jugging into the Peco boiler through a BIAB bag (it collected the familiar tennis ball sized lump of grain dust) for the boil and then back again to GF for the transfer to FV using the counter-flow chiller.
According to BrewMate (Cheers Rod!) I got 78% BH efficiency today. ​

 

[Slid]

Have been fancying a Raspberry Wheat Beer (GH) for some time and picked up 8x 350g of Frozen Raspberries from ASDA a few weeks ago. Here is today's recipe:

Lager Malt (Hook's Head Minch) 3.3kg
Wheat (source - ditto above) 2.2kg
Huell Melon 30g @ FW
Safale 33 - re-used.

Pleasant Brew day with just a bit of hand-balling from GF to Peco Boiler and back and some playing around with the sticky mash / sparge.
Plan to add all the defrosted raspberries maybe Tuesday or Wednesday evening in the paint straining bags I use for such things. Leave a week or so and then continue as normal.

 

[Slid]

The Raspberries went in on Tuesday evening and a week or so seems usual. Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out. £12 for the raspberries seems like a lot to a tight-wad like me, but they did smell OK when I opened the bags up.

Yesterday was one of the holidays I have to take before 31 March and I spent most of it bottling the Summer Lightening and brewing a Fullers London Porter clone beer that I have made in the past.

Maris Otter 4.1kg
Munich 500g
Brown Malt 720g
Dark Crystal 600g
Chocolate 130g
Brown Sugar 300g

Progress hops 5.18% - 70g @ First Wort and the rest of the 100g at 10mins. US05.

Collected 25.5L in the FV @1.061, which Brewmate tells me is 77% BH efficiency (thanks Rod!).

Went OK, with the usual transfer from Grainfather to back-up boiler and back after the boil. The GF has no issue with heating up the wort at 94C back towards boiling, but cuts out somewhere in the 80s C after the sparge.
Have now basically decided to just accept this as part of the process, as it adds ~ 40mins to the brewday, but does give a lot less gunk in the boiler. About a tennis ball sized lump of fine grain gets collected in the BIAB bag used at the first transfer from GF to Peco boiler.

Am now beginning to feel that this sort of beer is actually my favourite. Certainly less of a faff than using wheat.

 

[Slid]

Today I brewed a clone of Black Sheep Riggwelter, from the GW book. I've done this one before and over did the chocolate malt, so as per the recipe, pretty much:

Pale, mainly Maris Otter 4.59kg
Wheat 548g
Special B 362g
Chocolate 115g
White sugar converted to Golden Syrup540g

Challenger 25g @ First Wort

First Gold 25g @ First Wort
First Gold 25g @ 15m

US 05

Hops were just English Hops that were to hand. Won't make much difference what they were, as this is not exactly a hop forward beer.​

 

[Zephyr259]

I've been eyeing this brew for a while but never seem to get round to it. How much chocolate malt did you use the first time? Turn into more of a porter?

 

[Slid]

I've been eyeing this brew for a while but never seem to get round to it. How much chocolate malt did you use the first time? Turn into more of a porter?

Last time I used 160g choc, which was a bit much. As you say, very much like a porter style. First time was a bit less and I would like to be able to say that I remember it well, but really I just drank it!

 

[Slid]

With an eye to the forthcoming summer, which will rescue our paranoid and delusional nation from self induced panic, I am intending a light summery brew for tomorrow. It borrows from Clibit's Bobek Ale and from the Exmoor Gold recipe in GW's book, but is really just a very simple beer to the usual 25L target:

Minch Lager Malt 4.8kg
Wheat Malt 251g

Admiral / Challenger to bitter to 40 IBU's
Bobek (Styrian Goldings) 25g @ 15m and 25g @ 5 mins.
The hops will empty 2 bags and nearly a third.

MJ Liberty Belle yeast - re-used (and stuff the instructions on re-using for a first try)

Will take a view on the OG when it comes out and may add some sugar to maybe as much as 5% ABV

 

[cushyno]

I've re-used Liberty Bell successfully for 3 or 4 generations. It ferments ok, and 2nd generation at least was spot on.
I blamed that yeast for some off flavours in later generations but now believe it was due to getting the pitching rate wrong, both underpitching and overpitching.

 

[Slid]

I've re-used Liberty Bell successfully for 3 or 4 generations. It ferments ok, and 2nd generation at least was spot on.
I blamed that yeast for some off flavours in later generations but now believe it was due to getting the pitching rate wrong, both underpitching and overpitching.

That is interesting. My take on re-using yeast is leaving some actual beer (half a litre?) at the rack to secondary and putting the swished up trub into, say, 2-6 250ml PET bottles. These go in the fridge and get used later. They always seem to kick off off OK .

I only go one "generation" down, though. Once the "daughter" yeast is gone it is back to a "mother" pack next time. US05 is the go-to for many reasons.