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Made my plum porter again today. Made a couple of changes, added a little sugar for a bit more strength, added some torrified wheat to improve head retention, and increased the special-B malt. Also added a little more (10g) Fuggles at bittering. Hopefully not ruined it!

3600g Maris Otter
500g Brown malt EBC 140
350g Crystal EBC 385
350g Chocolate malt EBC 1125
300g Special-B malt EBC 300
240g Torrified wheat
75 min mash at 150F, pH=5.2
10 min mash out at 175F
45g Fuggles AA=4% (60 mins)
25g Fuggles AA=4% (15 mins)
30g Bramling Cross AA=6.8% (15 mins)
1/2 Protofloc tablet at 15 mins
500g sugar
24 Litres in FV, OG=1062
20g Empire ale yeast
That sounds lovely. I might give that a go.
I’m a big fan of beers like this.
 
First attempt at a Helles larger. Had planned on using hallertauer mittelfrueh hops but couldn't get any delivered in time for my brew day, ended up using citra and azacca.

4.5kg pilsner
200g carapils
120g wheat
25g citra
10g azacca

Now for the hard part waiting to try it
 
Tokyo Rice Pilsner

4500g Pilsner
500g Flaked Rice
85g Munich malt
40g Tettnang 60m
15g Tettnang 15m
Saflager W34/70
OG 1054
 
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Today I brewed something that may shock and horrify some people an unadulterated 1 can kit, with a kilo of brewing sugar. I did disregard the enclosed yeast (the kit had being sitting forgotten about in the garage for the past year) but decided just to pop it in a fermentor with a kilo of brewing sugar and hope, for the best.

Kit itself is a Wilko Lighthouse Keeper pale ale, I still have about 10g of Mosaic left in the freezer which I will toss in alongside the hop sachet provided with the kit. Yeast is dried Sigmund Voss Kweik from Crossmyloof, and specific gravity came in at 1.040, so hoping this will come out around 4%. Ideally hoping this will proof to be a good summer session beer.
 
Today I brewed something that may shock and horrify some people an unadulterated 1 can kit, with a kilo of brewing sugar. I did disregard the enclosed yeast (the kit had being sitting forgotten about in the garage for the past year) but decided just to pop it in a fermentor with a kilo of brewing sugar and hope, for the best.

Kit itself is a Wilko Lighthouse Keeper pale ale, I still have about 10g of Mosaic left in the freezer which I will toss in alongside the hop sachet provided with the kit. Yeast is dried Sigmund Voss Kweik from Crossmyloof, and specific gravity came in at 1.040, so hoping this will come out around 4%. Ideally hoping this will proof to be a good summer session beer.

Christmas, a year ago, my youngest daughter bought me a couple of kits from Wilco and I brewed them because she’d bought them for me. My expectations were low but I followed the instructions and they were surprisingly good actually given the contents (a can of liquid malt, a small bag of yeast, and the tiniest packet of hops). I think they were called Thirsty Devil and Feeling Hoppy. They did lie about how soon you could drink it!! 🤬
 
Christmas, a year ago, my youngest daughter bought me a couple of kits from Wilco and I brewed them because she’d bought them for me. My expectations were low but I followed the instructions and they were surprisingly good actually given the contents (a can of liquid malt, a small bag of yeast, and the tiniest packet of hops). I think they were called Thirsty Devil and Feeling Hoppy. They did lie about how soon you could drink it!! 🤬

Good to hear some positive feedback on this range of kits, this sums up the one I got probably from the same range actually as it’s being in the garage for at least a year. In all honesty I generally find I can still produce a pretty decent beer from kits if I disregard the part of the instructions on how quickly they will be ready.
 
Tribute Clone
4200g Pale Irish Malt
200g Munich
200g Cara Pils
100g Torrefied Wheat
35g Challenger 60m
25g Willamette 15m
15g Willamette 0m
S-04 yeast
 
It's actually what are you bottling today and it's the dark wheat from Greg Hughes that I messed about with.

25 litres 6.2% BH efficiency 77%
2.8kg minch pale (45.9%)
2.4kg wheat malt (39.3%)
500g biscuit malt (8.2%) <--- think this is why it's lovely
300g crystal wheat (4.9%) <--- made it myself by stewing/baking
100g carafa special II (1.6)
18g columbus @ 60 for 27.2 IBUs.

I did 1g of CML kristalweizen and 0.5g CML kolsh and make up a 1 litre starter with the last runnings from the mash at 1.020 and had it on the stir plate for 24 hours.

Just tasted it and it is effin gorgeous. It tastes sod all like a wheat and it's much more like Tanglefoot or something like that. Country pub just hits you in the face even though the samples I've drawn off with the syringe are at 0.5c the flavour is wow.

So of course I've got 25 litres of bloody lovely beer but I can't leave it there, can I. Oh no. Taking off:
5 litres and adding a coriander/orange peel tea.
5 litres and adding a Huell Melon tea.
3 litres and adding metabisulphite at 10ppm. When I did this before it was horrible and like sulphury dog farts.

I was going to carb this to 3.3 vols like I do with wheats but because it's more like an amazing bitter I'm wondering if I should rail back, and maybe only carbonate the orange/coriander one and some of the plain to wheat beer levels.

I've let my friends know what I'm up to on Whatsapp and everyone is like LEAVE IT ALONE.... I.... I can't! It's not the way.

I've got about an hour to think about it or take suggestions.
 
Haven't brewed since last Thursday and getting the shakes.
Experimented with a SMaSH of Simpsons Imperial and Centennial some while ago and while it's drinkable, it's nothing to write home about. Malt profile is lifeless and the hops just don't go. Repeating experiment twice: first with Imperial and second with Red-X 85% each with 10% Caramalt and 5% Barley flakes bittered with Challenger and dongered up with EKGs. If I've got time, I'm going to grow up some dried used using sugar solution just to get to the bottom of whether you can or can't build yeast cultures this way. Will keep the forum informed of results.
 
Trying my first 'no chill' brew today with 16L of an attempt at Glastonbury Brewery's 'Mystery Tor', what should be a 3.8% session golden ale. Combining no chill with a 30 minute mash and 30 minute boil meant all was complete in 3 hours athumb.. Once at the correct temperature tomorrow I will be pitching an S04 starter. I will be interested to see how this little experiment goes.
 
Coopers Premium Selection Brew A IPA (think the A is for American, not sure)

Can + yeast
1kg Brewing sugar
500g hopped light DME Young's
100g maltodextrin
10ml Clarity Ferm

20L total

OG: 1.054 (I think, can't find my hydrometer instructions!)

Brewing understairs @ 20 / 21 degrees-ish (hopefully)


Gonna give it 2 weeks then decide if I'm gonna risk going for adding some mango to it or just leave it. Then it'll be fining and bottling and conditioning. Called 'A Promise Kept' as this is for everyone who helped me move just before the lock down kicked in. Was the best way I could think of saying thanks, sure you all agree

Cheers acheers.
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Just brewed up 23 litres of st.peters ruby red ale been meaning to do it for couple weeks. First time i have seen hop oil powder just maltodextrin and hop oil I believe,usually I just use the pellets but interesting to see how it turns out.
 
I had a bit of an odd brewday today.

Brewed a Galaxy IPA- BIAB in a 15L pot as ever, AG attempt 4.

2.6kg Maris Otter Pale
170g pale ale malt
225g Barley Flakes

10g Magnum 30 mins
15g Galaxy 10 mins
15g Galaxy 5 mins
30g Galaxy 0 (dropped into wort when it was below 80

Strike temp of 77, mash temp 67.2 which dropped a bit lower than I was aiming for at 65.6 after an hour. I used 9L of water for strike and 5 for sparging expecting usual 3L loss or so from grain absorbtion and roughly 2 from boil off. However when I had finished sparging and twisted the bag repeatedly, there was closer to a FULL pot there, and once I started the boil it was obvious a boil over was coming. I turned the heat off and was forced to scoop out about half a litre, at which point I restarted and carried on without further boil incident. Ended up with about 10.5L.

Next weird bit- my OG was a full 10 points higher than the 1.056 expected, reading I got was 1.066. I topped up to 12 I aimed for in the FV using bottled water and a calculator tells me that this dilution would give an OG of 1.061. Once I had finished and cleaned up I checked my hydrometer in water out of curiosity and found it measured 1.004, so 0.04 high- so I guess my OG was REALLY 1.057 so more or less spot on. I haven't calibrated my hydrometer in ages so that was a lesson worth learning I guess that it was out.

Pitched about 3/4 pack of Mangrove Jack's M44 and whacked it into fridge to ferment at at 19c. I haven't brewed with Galaxy before and wort smelled good so hoping it turns out okay. Will dry hop for just a couple of days as I hear Galaxy gets grassy otherwise.

No idea how I ended up with so much liquid post mash and sparge, should I be concerned, especially as the OG was actually about right at 70% efficiency ultimately .. Any ideas?
 
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