The South Street Shed Brewery

AG #47 Honey Hill Wheat

2012-01-20T23:11:00.003Z

Ever since I bumped into a bee keeping local beer lover we've discussed making a honey wheat beer and sharing the batch and, this last holiday, I eventually got round to it.

The problem with adding honey to a beer is that honey tends to harbour rather a lot of wild yeasts. You can kill them by boiling but the simple act of boiling tends to drive off the honey aroma. Some brewers add it to the fermentation after the initial high krausen has died down and others prime the beer with it.

Being a bit of a prat, I decided to do all three. I added a jar and a half (about 350g) during the boil, a jar (227g) at the back end of the ferment and primed with 164g. If you're wondering why I've primed with so much sugar, an American homebrewer I've been speaking to on Twitter directed me to these extremely useful pages on priming solutions and how to calculate the amounts of sugar in them.

So, with the Honey Hill Wheat, I struggled with the volume of CO2 - it's not a measured term I've ever come across before. Turning to the table at the bottom of the page on priming solutions I've used the value 2.7 for American Wheat as I figured it was at the low end of fizzy. Once I decided that, the rest was pretty self explanatory and I ended up dissolving the honey into a little boiling water and put it in the brewfridge to warm condition for a week

3kg Pale Malt
3kg Wheat Malt
550g (ish) Honey + 164g for priming.

25G Hallertauer Hersbrucker 4%AA @ 60min
10g Sorachi 12.2 %aa @ 15 mins

Yeast Safbrew WB-06

OG 1055
FG 1006
ABV% 6.46
IBU 15.8
Brewlength 16L

Three Brewery Mods

2012-01-02T20:16:00.000Z

Oh the joy of a bit of chill out time over the holiday period; not only did I get four brews on but I also managed to make some much needed modifications to my brewery.

I've been meaning to get round to these for ages but have been simply waiting for the time, or in some cases the money.

Chillers Plumbed in Parallel

I've got two stainless steel coiled immersion chillers and, until I discovered a spare JG speedfit T-piece in my box containing odds and sods, I'd been plumbing them in series. I've got two because they have a fairly small surface area, much smaller than the standard copper immersion chillers, and I have always plumbed them in series, that is with the cold water going into the bottom of the first chiller, out of the top, and then in the bottom of the second one, etc.

It has often occurred to me that if I have them plumbed in parallel (i.e. via T-pieces) I could get a quicker crash cool, either by having them both cooling from the bottom up, top down or one of each. It's too soon to say whether or not this set up cools beer quicker but at least I've got a little more flexibility. I've also taken the opportunity to connect the chillers through the lid of the boiler. This has the effect of suspending the chillers directly above the hop strainer so I should be able to close the lid of the boiler without bending the plastic pipe on the top and risk springing a leak into the wort.

Boiler Exhaust

One of the things I've had to deal with regarding brewing in the shed is condensation, and I've realised that not only is it ruining the shed but it's a potential source of infection as well, especially if condensation dripping from a cobweb filled ceiling drips back into a cooling boiler.

So I've bastardised a tap set up from an old and broken hot liquor tank and drilled a hole in my boiler lid for a tank connector and popped a ball valve and 90 degree bend so that the the exhaust can go out of a hold I've drilled in the side of the shed.

I've added the ball valve for a couple of reasons; firstly I can close it when I add flame out (aroma) hops so I can stop the aroma escaping but also because I am planning to connect the water feed into the shed through the exhaust and I want to be able to shut it off when necessary.

Motorised Wort Pump

I've written about my wort pump before. Until now I've been operating the flojet pump with a hand operated pressure spray. As friends who have brewed with me, pumping 38 litres of wort between mash tum and kettle is no fun at all but I wasn't about to spend £100+ on a compressor to operate the pump.

So when he was Brew Monkeying for me one day, my good friend Matt suggested I modified a tyre inflator to do the same thing. I was a little reluctant at first but when I went to check my tyre pressures and realised the hose on my inflator had broken, I realised I had nothing to lose.

I cut off the tyre adaptor with a a pipe cutter and then heated some silicone tubing in warm water to join the high pressure hose to the 3/8" OD beer line that goes into the flojet pump. The compressor/inflator works on a 12v DC cigarette lighter adaptor so I cut that off and connected it to a rechargeable 12v battery that I used for another, now redundant, project; it even fits in the recess of the pump so it's all rather small and cosy.

I've tested the pump and it seems to recirc 30 litres of water in no time, I'll be testing it at the weekend so I'll be sure to let you know how the new modifications performed.

Why I'm Not Opening a Brewery Any Time Soon

2011-12-29T16:24:00.001Z

It's a question I'm often asked, and I was asked again when I was interviewed by the local paper for this story. "Would you like to do it for a living?"

Quite apart from not being good enough, I love the way people assume there's little or no difference between a hobby and a professional operation; then there's the current economic climate which is hardly conducive to new business development. Yet there are new breweries opening up every month it seems. In Kent alone, the number of breweries (including brewpubs) has doubled in the last two years.

Yet we are constantly hearing that pubs are closing at an alarming rate. So, let me work this out for a moment. You've got more manufacturers competing in a shrinking market. Where are these breweries going to sell their beer?

Seriously, I can see a saturation point arriving in the not too distant future.

I work in the healthcare industry for a company that sells medical consumables to care homes. We're are not unique in what we do but we succeed because we have what, in management speak is known as a USP or a unique selling proposition. If you have a USP you do not have to deal on price; this is expressed much more eloquently by Tandleman and Hardknott Dave on their respective blogs. How many of these breweries have a USP? How many of these breweries will still be trading this time next year?

So unless you have your USP you are competing in an increasingly competitive marketplace where price and progressive beer duty are your only weapons, you've then got transportation costs, casks to buy (and more importantly get back from the pubs) and late payers to deal with.

So, if you could cut out the transportation costs, cask issues and late payers, all you've really got to come up with is a point of difference; whether that is in cask, keg or bottle, it is possibly viable. Yup, I'd bodyswerve a new brewery but a small scale brewpub, in the right location, I'd jump at (if I had the readies).

Beers I'd Like to Brew in 2012

2011-12-23T19:51:00.002Z

Given my travails with infection over the past year, I guess the short answer is most of the ones I've buggered up in 2011 but there's more to it than that.

During my home brewing odyssey I've developed a love of stouts partly, it has to be said, because they appear to be the only beer I can't ruin. I think a lot of it has to do with the water here in East Kent which suits stouts perfectly; when I was doing water chemistry (which I can't be bothered with until I've sorted out my infection woes) I barely had to change my liquor at all.

I've been inspired by Bristol Brew Co's 12 stouts of Christmas (none of which I've tried) and it has occurred to me that it could end up like the shrimp scene from Forrest Gump; Oatmeal Stout, Toasted Oatmeal Stout, Imperial Stout, Coffee Stout, Vanilla Stout, Bourbon Stout, Vanilla Bourbon Stout, Coffee Vanilla Bourbon Stout.... und so weiter.

So Coffee and Vanilla (separate) stouts are on the menu for next year and I might get round to ageing some on oak chips soaked in bourbon.

I'll also be revisiting the Red Spider Rye and #IPADay recipes as I think these are cracking recipes I never got to drink because of my dirty downpipe (ooh matron). One thing I'll probably not be doing is bottling much. I'm fed up with it; it is a complete ball ache and I love my cornies too much.

West Coast Stella Mark 2 Recipe

2011-12-21T22:42:00.000Z

It's a little early to re-evaluate the recipe for a beer which hasn't even had time to condition yet, but I just can't help myself.

The beer needs a slightly higher alcohol level to balance out the hops and, I think, some caramalt or light crystal to add a little more colour and body.

To compensate for the extra alcohol, I've upped the late hops by 10g.

Grain Bill (based on 70% efficiency 19L brewlength)

5.5kg Maris Otter
450g Carapils
450g Caramalt
450g Aromatic

Hops
10g Stella (16%AA) FWH
10g Stella @ 30mins
15g Stella @ 20 mins
15g Stella @ 10 mins

Protofloc @ 5 mins
US-05 Yeast

A Year in Home Brewed Beer

2011-12-18T12:58:00.000Z

December is traditionally a time to reflect on one's performance over the preceding 12 months; we see reviews of the year, sports personality of the year, record of the year, golden pints and so on. This year is my first full year of all grain brewing so, while the "Gone for a Burton" is mashing in, I thought I'd take the time to review the beers I've brewed in a chronological order, work out which were the best, share with you the (sadly large) list of failures and, in true Nick Hornby blokey listing fashion, rank them in a top ten. I appreciate that reviewing my own beers does seem rather self indulgent but, on the other hand, doing it in this way, allows me to see the errors of my ways so, hopefully, other home brewers can benefit as well.

January

I started off on New Year's Day by making a St Petersburg Clone, complete with Peat Smoked Malt and Sorachi hops. In all honesty the version I did in October had better balance (this one had too much smoked malt flavour although they followed an identical recipe) and a lovely mouthfeel. It's one of my favourite beer styles, even though this example isn't the best ever. However it did improve throughout the year. This example was bottled, I'm not sure a keg version would be as good. 5/10

The weekend of the 29th January must have been a busy one because, according to the brew diary, I did two brews in one day. One was Starvation Point smoked porter and the other was a Whispering Bob. This was the initial incarnation of the Starvation Point; I did slightly different versions later in the year. Again, as with the St Petersburg, the porter benefited for some ageing. 6/10.

Whispering Bob was a different story, I quickly realised that I'd hit upon a winning combination with the grain bill when I made it the previous year. It's basically a combination of carapils, aromatic, crystal and pale malts. Combine that with US-05 and you've got a platform for hops like Simcoe and Amarillo to really shine through. 8/10

February

Just the one brew this month but it was a parti-gyle brew. I took my basic Whispering Bob recipe and did a strong beer using T-58 instead of US-05. The small beer I did with Sorachi and Citra instead of Amarillo and Simcoe (but used US-05). From memory the T-58 version took an age to come into condition but when it did, the yeast seemed to accentuate the caramel notes of the malts. The Sorachi Citra was unbelievably sharp until the hops died down about three months later. T-58 7/10 Sorachi Citra 6/10.

March

Just the one brew in March too. This was an English Pale Ale I did for Easy Home Brew in Ashford; the idea was to release it as a full mash kit but nothing came of it in the end, still it was a decent beer and one I did later in the year to good effect. 7/10

April

Looking back on the brew diary I can see that this is when the infections started coming. At first I assumed it was due to water because it only seemed to be affecting my pale beers but I'm pretty sure it is down to poor sanitation in the tubing exiting the boiler. South Pacific a pale beer hopped with Green Bullet, Pacific Gem and Nelson Sauvin - straight down the drain. 0/10 However the Starvation Point porter was a completely different story. I did two versions of this with the kegged one being matured for three months over bourbon soaked oak chips. Bottle 6/10 Keg 7/10. I also had another attempt at the South Pacific but, although it made it as far as the bottle, it was also undrinkable. 0/10

May

This was my first attempt a mild for May. Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild. Apart for using too much crystal malt, I now suspect this has some kind of infection, or at least a very strange back taste. The reason for this is that I over pitched a second batch of Easy Home Brew EPA straight onto the trub, this gave a very odd straw taste not dissimilar to a Belgian Farmhouse ale. I called it my unintentional lambic. Dred Penguin observed that if I'd called it a Belgian Farmhouse Ale rather than an EPA I'd be considered a "bloody genius". If I liked Belgian Farmhouse Ale it would have got more than the 2/10 I'm giving it. The SHDRM also gets a 2/10

June

June was a better month by far with three brews, none of which were infected. First up with my first attempt at a Red Rye Ale, I called it Double A because I used Apollo and Amarillo hops. I sneakily chucked a handful of Simcoe hops in the dry hop. Amarillo and Simcoe are pretty much the best hop combo I've come up with this year. 8/10

The Oatmeal Stout recipe I lifted from the Beer Smith website has rapidly become a staple brew; I've brewed it four times now but I've given up bottling it as most of them seem to gush even if I under prime. 7/10

Possibly the best of the lot was the Horsebridge Imperial Stout Again I lifted the recipe from Beer Smith before adding Dark Muscovado sugar and Carafa 1. This was bottled in 58 Budweiser bottles and many of them given away to friends who seemed to like it. 9/10.

July

Only two of the three July brews were drinkable with the IPADay brew going the way of the drain. 0/10.

The other two were tweaked versions of my first attempt at a Rye Ale - but this time with Cascade and Centennial instead of Apollo and Amarillo. This one had some funny stuff growing in the fermenter so I kegged it quick to get it under CO2. It tasted ok but not a patch on the double A version. 5/10

Probably the best of the three was an elderflower infused version of the Easy Home Brew Pale ale which we ended up calling Elders and Betters. I swapped out the Fuggles for Bobek and added 80g of locally grown Elderflowers 15 minutes from the end of the boil. This was brewed for a mate's party and must have gone well because they drunk one and a half cornies worth. 7/10.

August

Because I was in Ireland and working at Easy Home Brew for most of August there was only the one (double) batch of Oatmeal Stout made which tasted exactly the same as the previous version so gets a 7/10.

September

This month I managed a crack at a lower abv Whispering Bob for another party and what became known as School Night Ordinary Bitter. This was partly motivated by the need for a session beer (I hang my head in shame) and partly to use up old ingredients. The Saaz and Cascade combo was interesting but the whole beer had a slightly sharp taste. 4/10. The Whispering Bob that came out about 4.5% again went in a single evening, yes it was some party in case you were wondering. 7/10.

October

October (and the beginning of November) saw my greatest disasters. First of all my HLT broke when brewing Ringwood Old Thumper with Clokey74 so we didn't acheive the sugar conversion in the mash which meant we were about 2% ABV light, then the whole brew got infected anyway. 0/10.

November

I had such high hopes for Red Spider Rye but that went the way of the drain but I think it is a good recipe so I'll be brewing it again in the New Year. 0/10. The Styrian Pale was a step in the right direction inasmuch as it wasn't infected. However whether it was because I used amber malt instead of crystal S33 instead of S04 or just that my boil was weak, I just can't seem to get it to clear. Tastes ok though. 5/10.

December

Having established that the cause of my infections is 95% likely to dirty tubing, with other possible causes being brewing in the shed itself or a dodgy yeast split. The first two brews in December are coming along nicely. The most recent Oatmeal is the best yet, possibly due to the inclusion of 20g Willamette in the dry hop but most likely due to the fact I'm just so relieved to get a drinkable beer. I was going to give it 8/10 but perhaps the dry hop is only worth half a mark. 7.5/10.

Perhaps what might turn out to be the best beer might have to be saved until next year. The West Coast Stella tastes pretty insane at the moment. I'm not going to score it because it has only been in the keg 24 hours and it hasn't had the opportunity either to clear or develop.

Conclusions

Probably the most important lesson to learn here is "Keep It Clean"; think how much more lovely beer I'd have if only I'd followed that maxim. So, to the top ten, in time honoured tradition in reverse order.

10. Starvation Point Smoked Porter (Bottled)

9. Whispering Bob with T-58

8. Standard Oatmeal Stout

7. Easy Home Brew EPA

6. Elders and Betters (with Styrians & Elderflowers)

5. Starvation Point Smoker Porter (with bourbon oak)

4. Oatmeal Stout (w/Willamette)

3. Double A Red Rye

2. Whispering Bob (Original)

1. Horsebridge Imperial Stout

This Weekend's Brew - Gone for a Burton (again)

2011-12-17T21:29:00.000Z

I did this beer about 18 months ago, according to my brew diary it was my second ever all grain brew. Didn't really know what I was doing but it tasted ok so I thought I'd revisit it on the basis that I have a better idea now.

This version will use Burtonised water but not Burton yeast because I don't have any. It was a toss up between Ringwood and Irish Ale, Ringwood won because I had 4 bottles of it. The recipe is a little unusual as it calls for 500g of dark muscovado sugar, I'm not really sure why the recipe calls for it but I've decided to include it in my tweaks.

I've got some Burton Water crystals to add to the mash but I've not no mash ph strips to test the mash ph so I've no idea how much to add. I'm going to add a level teaspoon and hope for the best.

As I write the water is prepared (36L and a crushed campden tablet), the grain weighed out and the starter (two lots of Ringwood) has been prepared. I'm going to pop this in the brewfridge and set to 23C overnight to make sure it gets going. All I need to remember is to set the timer on the boiler so I can get up at 7, mash in then go back to bed for an hour. That way I can be all cleaned up by lunchtime, or at least before I lose the light.

I've taken the opportunity to do something that I should have done donkeys years ago; properly calibrate my boiler. If I shine a spotlight from the other side of the boiler the levels show up quite nicely.

Recipe is as follows:

Fermentables

5kg Maris Otter Pale Malt
500g Crystal Malt
500g Dark Muscivado Sugar

Hops

25g EKG (FWH 5.5%AA)
38g Northdown (FWH 7.2%AA)
20g Fuggles (5.2%AA) @ 20 mins from end
20g EKG @ 10 mins from end
25g Fuggles dry hop

Misc
Protofloc @ 5 mins

Yeast
2 x starter of Wyeast #1187 Ringwood Ale.

West Coast Stella - An update

2011-12-17T17:07:00.002Z

I've just kegged the pale ale which I single hopped with Stella hops last week. As befits the homebrewer I've had a sneaky taste out of the fermenter. I definitely got a hint of passion fruit/mango out of the beer.

The beer has fermented out to 1006 giving an ABV of around 6.3%. I've dry hopped it with a further 20 grams of Stella and it's under 40psi of CO2 for a week, or until I give in to temptation.

Brewing in the conservatory also seems to have eradicated the issues with infection I've been having so I guess it is down to fresh air if it isn't raining and conservatory with the door open if it is.

New Hop Variety - Stella

2011-12-10T18:42:00.001Z

I had the good fortune to be supplied a sample pack of Stella, a new variety of hop grown in Australia. According to the Hop Products Australia website Stella is:

".. a new aroma variety which contributes hoppy and floral notes, with subtle hints of anise and a satisfying fullness of palate. Stella is reminiscent of, yet distinctly different in character to noble European varieties, and provides a contrast to the citrus and tropical fruit characters of many modern hops.
Stella grows vigorously, producing moderately large, dense cones which mature mid- to late-season, with a broad harvest window helping to ensure excellent physical and chemical quality in the final product.
With an alpha acid content of ~15%, Stella is an aroma hop with options. This newly developed aroma hop deserves experimentation – the hoppy characters and texture on the palate would provide a new twist to a pilsner or lager, while the floral characters could provide a highlight in a wide range of beer styles."

The arrival of of Antipodean hops on these shores owes much to the craft beer explosion in the US that has spread like an aromatic plague on this side of the pond. Demand for signature Stateside varieties like centennial, amarillo, simcoe, columbus from the big boys and micros alike have left the hop merchants uttering the phrase "rarer than rocking horse shit" to the home brew shops who ring up hoping for the odd 5 kg bale to sell to the growing army of home brewers.

With the 2011 US harvest only beginning to arrive in the last month or so, brewers have been turning to New Zealand and, increasingly, Australia for their houblon fix. Galaxy and this one, Stella, are two of the varieties beginning to appear in some of the more progressive breweries. I've recently had an example of a Galaxy beer at a commercial brewery that, frankly, blew me away.

I'm going to try this as a single hop beer so I can get a full sense of the hop. I'll be using the standard base of 90% Pale Malt, and 5% each carapils and aromatic malt. I'll be bittering it to 50-ish IBU and aiming for a 5% ABV.

Late hops-wise there'll be 20g going in at flame out and another 20g going in the dry hop.Yeast will be US-05.

Sneaky Kitchen Brew

2011-11-27T14:17:00.001Z

Realised this weekend that if I don't get a brew on soon, I'll be knackered for Christmas beers. The problem for me is that I have a broken HLT and an issue with infection. I've slowly been replacing my kit and have narrowed down the issue to contaminated yeast starters and/or tubing.

I've replaced the cold side tubing on my boiler with new sanitised tube and I've used my last packet of dried yeast which happens to be an S33. According to the information on the Fermentis site S33 is:

A very popular general purpose yeast, displaying both very robust conservation properties and consistent performance. This yeast produces superb flavour profiles and is used for the production of a varied range of top fermented special beers (Belgian type wheat beers, Trappist, etc.). Sedimentation: medium. Final gravity: high. Also recommended for bottle-conditioning of beers. Excellent performance in beers with alcohol contents of up to 7.5% v/v but can ferment up to 11.5% v/v.

Quite how this will come out in an English Pale Ale made with Styrians, I'm not quite sure but there's only one way to find out.

Grain Bill

4.5kg Maris Otter Pale Malt
250g Amber Malt
250g Carapils

Hops

Bobek 5.2%AA 30g FHW
Bobek 5.2%AA 25g @ 30 mins
Bobek 5.2%AA 10g @ 20 mins
Bobek 5.2%AA 10g @ 10 mins
Bobek 5.2%AA 25g @ Flame Out

Brewing Al Fresco

2011-11-10T08:55:00.000Z

A couple of times last summer it was simply too hot to brew in the shed so I decided to make the most of the patio and brew there. We don't seem to have held any of our annual parties this year (slapped wrists) which means that nobody (i.e. me) has cleared up the patio.

Once I had the boiler, HLT and mash tun set up, the advantage of shorter power cables and hoses (I have to run both down to the shed which is a bit of a pain in the bum) was immediately clear. However this advantage is slightly offset by the number of wasps that soon developed a taste for my sweet wort. On balance, it is something I will certainly do again given a good weather forecast.

It's made me think about a number of modifications I need to make for the brewery, first among them to get some kind of extractor fan set up in the shed but, ultimately, I'd like to get some kind of proper power and water feeds down there. Mind you, if I made it too comfy, I'd probably never come out.

Beer Porn - Oatmeal Stout and SNOB

2011-11-07T08:20:00.000Z

Before I emptied the cornie last weekend I thought I'd take a pic of the only two beers I have on draught at the moment.

On the left we have Oatmeal Stout, 4.8%ABV and as smooth as you like, thanks to some Carafa I. The other one is School Night Ordinary Bitter (or SNOB for short). This one was a "use up the ingredients" sort of brew and ended up being a flavour combo of Saaz and Cascade. It's slightly sharp and I've probably used too much Cascade and not enough Saaz but I'll have another go at it before too long, possibly with some Styrians.

The idea behind the SNOB was to have something around the 3.8% mark but it fermented out at 1.006 which meant in ended up being 4.2%.

Red Spider Rye

2011-11-06T08:45:00.003Z

I've been planning this one for quite a while. I've done a couple of these before, one with Amarillo and Apollo (Double A) and one with Centennial and Columbus (Double C).

I wanted to save the Amarillo to use with something else, so I've gone with Centennial, Columbus and Cascade for the late and dry hopping and Green Bullet and Columbus for the bittering.

Recipe details

Batch size19L
Expected OG 1070
Expected ABV 7%
Bitterness 73 IBU

Grains

3.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain
1.00 kg Munich Malt (25.0 EBC) Grain
0.75 kg Rye Malt (Pale) (4.0 EBC) Grain
0.30 kg Aromatic Malt (150.0 EBC) Grain
0.30 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) Grain
0.29 kg Carared (50.0 EBC) Grain
0.08 kg Caramalt (24.0 EBC) Grain

FWH
10.00 gm Columbus (Tomahawk) [17.90 %] (60 min)(First Wort Hop)
20.00 gm Green Bullet [13.60 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)

Boil Ingredients

30 min 25.00 gm Cascade [5.50 %] (30 min)
20 min 10.00 gm Columbus (Tomahawk) [17.90 %] (20min)
10 min 10.00 gm Centennial [10.00 %] (10 min)
5 min 1.00 items Protofloc (Boil 5.0 min)

Yeast

Wyeast Labs #1056

Dry hops

15.00 gm Centennial [10.00 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)
15.00 gm Columbus (Tomahawk) [17.90 %] (Dry Hop 3 days)

When Infection Strikes

2011-11-06T08:06:00.000Z

I've had more and more of the dreaded infections over the past few brews so I've decided that radical action is required. The six fermenters I've been using since I re-started brewing in 2009 have clocked up more than 80 brews between them. No surprise then, that when I inspected them they are scratched to buggery.

Where brewing is concerned, scratches are BAD. Infections can lurk unmoved by boiling, scrubbing or any amount of disinfectant, it would appear. So, this time I've opted to replace my fermenters one by one, dating them, naming them and calibrating them before use.

In my brew diary spreadsheet, I've now added a column to include which numbered FV I've brewed them in. This way when an infection strikes, I can chuck out a fermenter and eliminate that from the causes.

So what are the other causes? Well, basically, anything that is not sanitised. In the past I've identified dirty airlocks, little bottler taps, syphons. If you're not sure, chuck them out because replacing all of these still work out less than the cost of chucking a brew down the drain.

The Joy of Turbo Cider

2011-10-20T20:09:00.005+01:00

Called turbo because you don't have to grow the apples, turbo cider or TC is one of the easiest steps into the world of home brewing and winemaking. You could say it is the home brewing version of growing mustard and cress. The equipment required is minimal and the ingredients are dirt cheap. I make two strengths of TC; Vagrant's Delight and Park Bench Reserve which come out at between 6 and 8.5% respectively.

To make a gallon of the stuff you need the following:

1 x Demijohn
1 x bung and airlock
Sterilising tablets (milton etc)
5 x value apple juice (the cheaper the better)
1 x cider or champagne yeast
1 x syphon tube
4 x tonic water bottles
household sugar for priming

These items are handy but not absolutely necessary

1 x hydrometer
250g brewing sugar for the Park Bench Reserve
1/2 cup of stewed black tea (to replace tannins lost by missing apple skins).

The method is easy enough:

Sterilise the demijohn, rinse so you can't smell bleach any more then pour in 4 of the five cartons of apple juice.
For Park Bench Reserve, add the 250g of brewing sugar (you can use household but you will find brewing sugar dissolves more easily and doesn't affect the taste) and give it a bit of a shake. Add the stewed (black) tea if you want to.
Take original gravity with the hydrometer if you're bothered about knowing how strong it will be. It's worth tying some cotton around the tip of the hydrometer so you can pull it out of the demijohn (I didn't and it was a right bastard to get out)
Add cider or champagne yeast, fit bung and airlock
Half fill airlock with cooled boiled water and leave for a week somewhere around 20C is ideal, after about 24 hours you'll start to hear the soothing sound of the airlock "plipping"; very therapeutic.
On day five (or when the bubbles in the airlock have subsided) remove the bung and airlock and add the fifth carton of apple juice.
Leave another three or four days and then take the final gravity (you're looking for a reading of 1.000 or lower, remaining stable for a 48 hour period).

Bottling.

Once you've reached this stage you have choices. Prefer still cider? You can syphon it into a second demijohn. Want it fizzy? In that case you sterilise the four tonic water bottles, then add a level teaspoon of household sugar to each bottle for priming; this is the period of secondary fermentation where the last of the yeast present in suspension will convert to a very small amount of alcohol and, mainly, CO2.

Once you've primed your bottles, cap and gently invert them to mix the priming sugar then leave in a warm place (not the airing cupboard) for a week before leaving somewhere cooler for 3-4 weeks to condition.

Fizzy cider made this way will throw a sediment to, when you open the bottle, best to decant into a jug. Alternatively you can use 500ml diet coke bottles but halve the amount of priming sugar.

Calculating the ABV%.

This is best done by using the readings from your hydrometer. You'll have made a note of your OG (original gravity) and your final gravity. Then simply put the values into here and adjust the temperature reading to 20c. Typically, apple juice without added sugar will read about 1.042 on a hydrometer and will ferment out to about .998 which will give you about 6% whereas the addition of 250g of brewing sugar takes the OG up to the 1.060 region.

The cider does improve with age so, by all means get another batch on as soon as your demijohn is free. A word of warning though, Turbo Cider does have remarkable knicker elastic loosening properties but, guys, don't get excited because it will also make your cock drop off.*

*The last statement may be a lie

South Street Ordinary Bitter

2011-09-15T23:15:00.005+01:00

I want a decent ordinary bitter, around the 4% mark that I can have a couple of pints of on a school night and still be able to fill in the old mileage return afterwards. I also want to use existing ingredients because money's a bit tight and I only want a cornie's worth.

I've had a bit of a dig around in the freezer (and BeerSmith) and I've come up with this:

19L Brew length

Esitimated IBU 35
Estimated Colour 16 EBC
Estimated ABV 3.94%

Grain Bill

2.6 kg Maris Otter
250g Crystal
250 Torrefied Wheat
150 Crystal Wheat Malt

Hop Additions

25g Northdown (7.2%) 90 min
10g Cascade (5.5%) 30min
30g Saaz (4%) 15min

Starter of 1056 Wyeast American Ale

20g Cascade Dry Hop

Collaboration Recipe Honey Wheat Beer

2011-09-12T21:48:00.001+01:00

Here's the thing, my friend Phil has harvested his honey and we're going to make a Honey Wheat beer. Here's the next thing; I've not a clue what I'm doing. My last Wheat beer was infected and it is a style I hardly ever drink but then I drank a Lovibonds Gold Reserve. It's a honey wheat beer, not especially cloudy but one of the only beers I've ever consumed where you can actually taste the honey.

And there's the problem with a honey beer, if you want the flavour to come through you have to take a risk. Honey harbours loads of wild yeasts so, unless you add it to the beer in the boil, the likelihood of an infected beer is increased. Of course if you add it to the boil, the flavour is largely boiled off. I'm prepared to take a risk (it is only a 19L batch after all) and add it to the beer after the initial fermentation has died down.

But, all I've got as far as a recipe goes is 2.5 kilos each of wheat malt and maris otter and a kilo of honey. I want some input from my readers (and let's face it - anyone else) who reckons they know a bit about this kind of beer style. So let's open up some suggestions and debate on a recipe.

I'm looking to make this beer in the next two to three weeks so give me time to propagate a yeast strain (preferably Wyeast as they're most easily available to me) and let's use hops that are readily available in the UK at this time.

In terms of inventory I have the following hops in stock. Ahtanum, Apollo, Atlas, Amarillo, Cascade, Cluster, Citra, Columbus, Challenger, First Gold, Fuggles, Green Bullet, Hersbrucker, Northdown, Saaz, Simcoe, Sorachi, Willamette.

So, please leave your comments below and we'll have a recipe by collaboration (or not) in a couple of weeks time.

Ten Things I'd like To Do Before I Die

2011-08-21T10:52:00.001+01:00

I'm not planning on dying any time soon, I should add, but I'm coming to the time of life when I should hopefully have the time (if not the money) to at least try and save up for some of these. I've been a husband and father (by choice, I might add) since I was twenty so am anxious to do what some of my friends did in their twenties before I'm too old to do them.

I'm blogging about it here but they aren't all beer related so I apologise for that. They're not listed in any particular order.

Buy a holiday home in Normandy: I love it there and will certainly be going back at the next available opportunity. Hopefully a place like this would pay for itself in 10 years or so as I would let it out during the peak times. Obviously there would be a barn or cellar type place in which to brew.
Attend the Boxing Day test in an Ashes series. I know that, unless I want to get divorced, I will never achieve this. My wife hates cricket and would never agree either to accompany me or allow me to spend so much family budget away from her.
Motorhome across the USA. This is actually a more concrete plan for when we retire. For me this would obviously involve visits to as many craft breweries as I could fit in during the trip which we plan will take 12 months.
Build a shiny new brewery. Another one that is fairly achievable, this will allow me to do much temperature controlled mashing. I'm currently working out whether or not to go for propane or electricity. Whatever happens, it's not going to happen overnight.
Drive through France and Spain on a culinary tour in a camper van.
See a Test match at Lords. I've only been twice, once was in 1987, the year my mother died when the local publican, my father and I went to see the Saturday of the England v Pakistan test. It rained all day and not a ball was bowled. Later that year, they got tickets to the Saturday of the Oval test but I couldn't get the time off work. The only other time I went to Lords was to see what must have been a centenary test match where I saw Malcolm Marshall bowling to Sunny Gavaskar.
Visit every racecourse in the UK and Ireland. I love a bit of horse racing but admit that ticking them all off is a bit nerdy.
Brew one beer that is so awesome a commercial brewery picks it up and runs with it.
Get to more county cricket matches at St Lawrence. I've not been since 2009 and it really is something I must address.
Avoid cancer and dementia long enough to see my children achieve their dreams. My eldest has embarked on a successful career in insurance and the pleasure it gives me is immeasurable. Yet, medically, cancer and dementia are our biggest challenges and, as we live longer, only become more prevalent. I'm not convinced I have either the courage or fortitude to live through either. I just hope the younger two manage to achieve their dreams whilst I'm still old and well enough to see it.

What To Do With 58 Budweiser bottles?

2011-08-17T21:59:00.000+01:00

Budweiser bottles, bless them, they've had a sad life; mass produced and then force fed tasteless over carbonated beer. What better thing to do, then, than re use them. I filled mine with and Imperial Stout made with all English hops but with T-58 yeast.

I'll be honest, I'm really pleased with the results; velvety smooth with a moderate (for RIS) level of alcohol. I bastardised a recipe on BeerSmith to reflect the ingredients I had in stock. Carafa I for Black Malt may have enhanced the overall smoothness. I also added 450g of Dark Muscovado sugar and I used the T-58 yeast because I'd not bothered to make a starter for my Irish Ale yeast.

You may be wondering how 58 Budweiser bottles came to be in my house in the first place. The answer lies in the fact that I am a parent of teenage sons and Tesco's happened to have them on special offer. Alex was 18 the month before last and everyone seemed to turn up with a case of these. Clearing up after the party I thought to myself that a 300mm bottle would, in fact, be an ideal receptacle for a 7% beer. And then there was the irony of the previous contents.

Recipe

Brewlength 19L
IBU (EST) 51
EBC (EST) 97
OG 1075
FG 1020
ABV 7%

Grain Bill
Pale Malt 5450g
Crystal Malt 450g
Roasted Barley 450g
Carafa I 350g
Chocolate Malt 230g

Boil Ingredients
450g Dark Muscovado Sugar
40g Northdown (7.20%AA) FWH
43g EKG (5%AA) @ 30 mins
14g Fuggles (5.22%AA) @ 5 mins
1 x protofloc

Yeast - T-58

Water treatment
55ml CRS,
8g table salt added to boiler
14g Calcium chloride added to boiler

Beer. Wine. Saturday Kitchen.

2011-07-02T20:33:00.001+01:00

I wasn't watching Saturday Kitchen today but I was watching my twitter feed with some interest as it filled with tweets about matching beer instead of wine with food.

The argument, beautifully put by Dave Bailey in his blog, is that a publicly funded broadcaster should not, almost exclusively, match wine with food when beer which, as many of us know, goes just as well (if not better). This bias is made all the worse when we consider that beer is our national drink. Beer is what made Britain great; it is right up there with Rolls Royce, British Airways, BT and BP.

Only last month we were being reminded of the export heritage that was Russian Imperial Stout and how British brewers are taking that beer style back to St Petersburg. So why are we allowing our national broadcaster to eschew our national drink in favour of a largely foreign beverage, and promote supermarkets in the process?

Would we be as forgiving if, switching on BBC1 on a Saturday evening in November, we were to find handball or volleyball on the TV instead of Match of the Day? It couldn't possibly happen could it, after all football is our national game, right?

What I love about Britain is its diversity; I love it that I can walk down Whitstable High Street and choose to eat Indian, Thai, French, Italian, seafood and so on. However our national broadcaster fails to reflect this diversity by solely sticking to pairing wine with food.

Learning to home brew has opened my taste buds to a world of wonderful flavours, largely not available in supermarkets. To a degree I could argue that it has ruined my appreciation of beer; I'm drinking a beer now that I used to think was the mutt's nuts but now I find I can't finish it and I'm drinking a pint of Red Rye home brew instead. How did this happen? The beer I always loved didn't suddenly get crap, my taste buds evolved and they evolved by embracing the diversity that is the British beer scene. Our national broadcaster would do well to do the same.

New Recipe - Imperial Stout

2011-06-19T09:46:00.000+01:00

I was watching BBC Breakfast News yesterday when I saw this film about a group of British brewers taking Imperial Stout back to Russia. I've only done one Imperial Stout before, a version of Thornbridge's St Petersburg.

This recipe is bastardised from one of the recipes on the excellent Beer Smith website, which reminds me, I must download the new version of Beer Smith (2). It uses slightly more traditional hops and there's no smoked malt at all in there.

My own modifications are to replace the black malt with Carafa 1 to try and make it a little smoother and to add 450g of dark muscovado sugar in the boil.The mash schedule is also rather unusual in this one; it includes a 30 minute protein rest and a 30 min saccrification step.

Recipe

Batch Size 19L
Estimated OG 1087
Estimated IBU 50.4
Estimated Colour 97.1

Grains

5450g Pale Malt
450g Crystal Malt
450g Roasted Barley
350g Carafa Special 1
230g Chocolate Malt

Boil Ingredients

450g Dark Muscovado Sugar
Northern Brewer 8.5%AA - 33g FWH
EKG 5.22 AA 43g 30 mins
Fuggles 5.41%AA 28g 20 mins
Fuggles 5.41%AA 14g 2 mins

Yeast

SafBrew T-58

Mash Schedule

Protein Rest - 10L at 57C; Mash at 50C for 30mins
Saccrification - 10L at 95C; Mash at 70C for 30 mins
Mash Out - 9L @ 90C; Mash at 75.6C for 10 mins
Sparge with 4L @ 75.6C

Review - Dred Penguin's Oatmeal Stout

2011-06-06T22:43:00.000+01:00

I've been looking forward to trying this for as while. I love dark beers, especially oatmeal stout and I was intrigued to see what Sorachi Ace would impart to the beer.

I popped up to Gregg's place while he was getting a brew on. As it was a couple of days before the Derby, there were plenty of no parking signs. I can't remember what he was brewing but it sure smelled good. If it turns out as good as good as the Oatmeal stout it'll be well worth trying. Of course, if there's the tiniest bit of chill haze, that'll be my fault. I distracted Gregg while he was brewing and he forgot to add the irish moss.

So to the beer. It pours bible black with a tan head and medium carbonation. I love the full mouthfeel of the beer and the slight treacle taste I got at the back of my mouth. I had some fresh bread and mature cheddar for my supper and it went very well. Gregg's not the first to try Sorachi in a stout; Thornbridge's St Petersburg imperial stout uses it amongst others but it's a completely different animal. I can't really tell what Ace imparts to the beer other than a relatively smooth bitterness.

To read a bit more about Gregg and see some of his excellent photographs pop along to abeeronthedowns.blogspot.com

First Attempt at a Rye Ale

2011-06-05T12:09:00.000+01:00

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about this beer style other than I like it very much. I've only tried three; Zerodegrees RyePA, London Brick and Founders Reds Rye which was easily the best of the three.

I looked up a few Rye PA recipes on the net but ended up bastardising a Whispering Bob recipe thus:

Batch Size - 23L
Estimated OG - 1068
Estimated Colour - 23 EBC
Estimated Bitterness - 61 IBU

Grain Bill
5000g Maris Otter Pale Malt
500g Aromatic Malt
500g Pale Rye Malt
350g Caramunich
300g Carapils
150g Crystal Wheat Malt

Hop Schedule
FWH - 25g Apollo 18%AA
FWH - 20g Amarillo 10.4%AA
Late Hops (last 10 mins) 5g Apollo, 5g Amarillo
Steep Hops (20mins @ 80c) 30g Apollo, 40g Amarillo
Dry Hops 20g Amarillo

Water Treatment
40L Water
50ml CRS
1.5g Gypsum added to Mash
1.5g Gypsum added to boiler
6.5g Epsom Salts added to boiler

Miscellaneous
1 x Protofloc Tablet @ 5mins

Yeast
1 x Wyeast American Ale #1056 in 1L starter

Mash Schedule
Mash In - 18L @ 77C
Hold Mash @ 70C for 60 mins
Mash Out - 7L @ 91.5C
Hold Mash @ 75C for 10 mins
Sparge with 15L @ 75C
Add water to achieve pre-boil volume 30.5L

I ended up with an OG of 1062 and a volume of 25L so I must have added too much water at some point (my boiler isn't terribly well calibrated) but, if it ferments out to 1010 I'll have a beer at 6.8%.

Liquor Treatment

2011-05-06T23:23:00.000+01:00

So, now that I've got the more basic parts of brewing sorted it is time to deal with the aspect of brewing that leaves me cold. Water chemistry.

I was never much of a student at school and, although I loved chemistry dearly, Mrs Flowerdew seemed to take my enthusiasm for being a pain in the arse and issued me with minuses for effort on a monthly basis. Consequently, in spite of scoring a respectable, if not outstanding, 66% in the end of year exam, I was not selected to take the subject to O level.

Couple that with a general crapness at maths and maybe you can begin to see my reticence to attempt water chemistry.

Luckily for me at The Home Brew Forum they have a series of really useful calculators and together with a water report from my local water company, it completely demystified the whole process for me. Having said this, I've yet to brew a beer with the modified water, erm sorry liquor, so perhaps I ought to reserve judgement.

First things first, I needed to get a water quality report from my water provider. This proved to be easier than some pro brewers have found. I went on my water providers website and filled in the contact form, 10 days later (not bad given that we've had two consecutive bank holiday weekends) I have a water report from which I plug the relevant concentrations into the THBF's water treatment calculator, then choose a beer style from the drop down menu and away we go.

The last word on water chemistry calculations should go to Yellerbelly Brewery who blogged about it a year ago. He keeps winning beer competitions so he must be doing something right and I suspect attention to detail is a large part of it.

The Easy Home Brew Guide To Bottling

2011-05-05T20:32:00.002+01:00

I wrote this for the other blog I write for. As there is some crossover I thought I'd publish it here too.

Often referred to as the "home brewers biggest pain in the bottom" bottling takes time but, if done in an organised manner it can be mildly tolerable.

Priming

For me the most laborious aspect of bottling was putting priming sugar in each bottle so one of my early purchases were a little bottler and bottling bucket. Using this method of bottling eliminates this particular hassle and also ensures you get less sediment in the bottle.

Racking from fermenter to bottling bucket

A bottling bucket is simply a fermenter with a 25mm hole at the bottom of the wall to accept the little bottler. The idea is that you simply rack the fermented beer in to the bottling bucket using a syphon. Leave the beer in there for 24-48 hours for it to settle out. Then you need to draw off about 200-300 ml of beer into a sterilised jug and warm it in the microwave (you can also warm it on a hob if you have no microwave). You then add the requisite amount of priming sugar (i.e.85g per 23L) and return in to the bottling bucket gently so as not to introduce too much oxygen.

After that it is simply a case of adding the bottling wand and bottling away; the valve at the bottom of the bottling wand opens when it touches the bottom of the bottle and allows the beer to flow through, when the beer reaches the top of the bottle, withdraw the wand and, hey presto, you've got the requisite amount of head space.

Cleaning and Draining

The other godsend I couldn't bottle beer without is the bottle rinser and drainercombination. Since I sterilise my bottles (and the drainer) in the bath, I then need somewhere to drain them whilst one of my teenagers requires the bathroom. I've taken to adding three chlorine bleach tablets per bath of water, leaving the bottles, rinser and drainer in there for half an hour.

When I'm sure the bottles are sterile, I take the drainer and rinser out, assemble it and then take the bottles out of the bath and leave them to drain. I then fill the rinser with boiled and cooled water and the bottling production line is almost complete.

Capping

Unless you use PET or swing top bottles, the final part of the bottling production line is capping. We sell three types at Easy Home Brew; the single handled hammer on capper, the twin lever capper and the bench capper. If you bottle a lot, I would look no further than the latter, because you can cap any bottle designed to take a crown cap which cannot be said for the twin handled lever capper. When using the bench capper, it will greatly assist your production line if they are all the same height as this will prevent you from having to adjust. Whichever method of capping you choose, please remember to sterilise your crown caps.

Production Line

I tend to use two crates which holds 20 bottles each. I fill these with beer then turn the tap on the little bottler off (you may need to place a jug underneath to catch the drips), I then move the first crate to another part of the kitchen, and cap them before starting on the second crate. This means the beer is not exposed to air longer than absolutely necessary.

Once the bottling is done, I label, pack into wine crates, which I also label and leave in the warm for a week (circa 20c) before transferring to the shed (c13c) for a period of conditioning.

Look What I Found

2011-04-23T10:35:00.001+01:00

Whilst visiting one of my customers last week I came upon a rather sad looking tea urn that had failed its PAT test due to a nick in the cable. The care home I was visiting were going to chuck it out so for a small donation to the residents fund I had a 27L boiler I could turn into a copper.

Luckily the nick in the cable was near the end so it wasn't a tough job to pull the cable through into the housing, cut it, and re connect it. Having done that it was a pretty simple job to replace the tap assembly with a tank connector and ball valve.

I also had some 15mm compression fittings to push fit 90 degree adapters so I used those. I had been thinking about utilising a hop sack instead of a hop stopper but after some good advice from those at The Home Brew Forum I bored out the tank connector with a dremel so that the hop stopper could be accepted and connected it through the tank connector and onto the ball valve. I'm sorry but I forgot to take a pic of this.

Then it was simply a matter of drilling rows of 2mm holes in the underside of the stopper, tightening everything up and giving it a boil test. With its 3kW element I'm pleased to say that it passed with flying colours so it is just a matter of doing a brew with it tomorrow to see how we get on.

I've given the inside a bit of a clean but haven't bothered with the outside because I plan to wrap some insulation around it.

Increasing The Insulation of my Mash Tun

2011-03-12T20:39:00.000Z

I finally got round to using that roll of insulated bubble wrap that Eddie gave me to make my mash tun. Isn't it amazing what you can do with a roll of gaffer tape. I realise modern (American) parlance refers to it as duck tape but when I used to play guitar in a band it was always called gaffer tape. If it was really good gaffer tape you could usually tape the drummer to the wall, but I digress......

The roll of insulation, MT on its side and the "hat"

As things stand my mash tun is simply insulated by a double skin of bubble wrap and a blanket but I was losing a couple of degrees an hour so definitely time for an upgrade.

I started off by rolling the mash tun on its side and rolling the insulation around it, leaving about four or five inches overlapping the bottom and making a cut out for the tap.

Then I turned it upside down and folded the insulation over the bottom before taping that down. Then I got the lid of the mash tun, put it on and made the "hat" in much the same way.

So now I've got double the amount of insulation that I had before and hopefully much more stable mash temperatures. Of course, if I was in any way organised I'd have done this before the onset of winter and not after but that's me I'm afraid.

Incidentally today's recipe has been inspired by Mark Dredg's "Regular Beer" post on his blog, Pencil and Spoon; if you're a beer lover or even if you're not, I'd definitely recommend giving it a read.

Reading the blog made me realise that the beers I currently have on tap are a little on the insane side; a 7% APA (Whispering Bob), a Belgian Dubbel and a Smoked Porter. Add to that the two parti gyle brews I made last week and you'll see why I wanted something a little more "regular".

So in this one we've got 4.5kg of Maris Otter, and 250g each of Caramunich and Wheat Malt which will be bittered with a combination of Challenger and First Gold before a generous late hopping of Fuggles and East Kent Goldings which I got quite cheaply from Easy Home Brew. I'm also using a combination of SO4 and Nottingham yeast - just for the hell of it.

Well the good news was that I only lost 0.5C in the hour long mash, still not perfect but a considerable improvement. I think the remaining heat loss may be coming from the metal tap and metal strainer and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do to stop that.

For the record, the rest of the brew went pretty well and I was all cleaned up before dark which was excellent news. The brew came out at 1042 so should come out at around 4.5% if it ferments out around 1008.

First Attempt at Parti-Gyle Brewing

2011-02-26T23:39:00.002Z

I've been thinking about parti-gyle brewing for some time now; it may be the first time I've done it but it is an age old principle where a strong beer is made from the first runnings and then a small beer is made by adding some further grain (a process known as "capping the mash").

It meant a bit of juggling with my Beer Smith recipe software; I ended up doing three recipes, a double cornie length brew to get the right grain bill and then two 19 length brews to get the right levels of bitterness. The base was mainly Maris Otter with some aromatic malt, carapils and caramunich. The total grain bill came to 10kg, 1.5 of which was kept back to cap the mash.

The first beer ended up being a slightly less bitter version of Whispering Bob with T-58 yeast instead of the usual US-05. Of course it came out a bit stronger than I originally thought with an OG of 1072. If it ferments out as low as it usually does, that'll end up being around 8.5% abv.

Guessing that the small beer would mean fewer bittering hops would be required, I reduced the bittering hops, a Sorachi/Citra combo but was slightly surprised to find a pre boil gravity of 1034 turned into a post boil one of 1048.

The whole process took a couple of hours longer than a normal brew, although having a separate HLT and a 10 gallon boiler and mash tun certainly helped, It is certainly something I'll be doing again.

Grain Schedule

8260g Maris Otter Pale Malt
620g Aromatic Malt
620g Cara-Pils
550g Caramunich

Total grist weight 10050g

Hold back 15% for small beer, 1500g.

Strong Beer - Hop Schedule

31g Centennial 10%AA (FWH, 90 mins)
27g Amarillo 8.5%AA (FWH, 90 mins)

9g Simcoe 13%AA (Boil 30 mins)
9g Cascade 7.6%AA (Boil 30 mins)

22.5g Simcoe (Flame out)
22.5g Cascade (Flame out)

Yeast Safbrew T-58
Protofloc 5 mins from end of boil.

OG 1072
Estimated ABV 8.5%
Estimated IBU 74

Small Beer - Hop Schedule

18g Citra 13.8%AA (FWH, 60 mins)
18g Sorachi 12.2%AA (FWH, 60 mins)

10g Citra (30 min)
10g Sorachi (30 min)

25g Citra (Flame Out)
25g Sorachi (Flame Out)

Yeast US-05
Protofloc tablet 5 mins from end of boil.

OG 1048
Estimated ABV 5.5%
Estimated IBU 74

Beer Porn - Whispering Bob Mark 3

2011-02-20T20:23:00.000Z

Obviously there's no way I should be drinking this yet but the last lot ran out today and I just had to test it. It needs to be in the keg to develop for a couple of weeks and it should be absolutely killer by then.

I'll be getting the next batch on next weekend; I think I am going to try the same recipe with a little candi sugar and T-58 yeast and Belgianise it a bit.

Beer Porn - Starvation Point Porter

2011-02-14T20:02:00.000Z

I'm pretty pleased with this although I'm not sure I'll brew to this recipe again. The smokiness isn't too much but the beer is a little thinner than I'd like. If I were to brew this one again I think I would find a way to thicken the beer up a little and perhaps dry hop with some Fuggles. I like the First Gold and EKG combo but I think a porter needs Fuggles.

A Quick Thank You

2011-02-05T09:12:00.000Z

Mother always brought me up to thank people who have done nice things for me and my friends so a big thank you to Andrew Morgan of Bottle Shop and to Nicky Fieldwick of Easy Home Brew for supporting the inaugural East Kent Amateur Brewers.

Andrew's love for beer is well known and we're all thrilled to see Bottle Shop enjoying the success it so clearly deserves. As well as organising and hosting the monthly event (first Wednesday of the month) Andrew has registered a domain name for the society as well.

Nicky has also weighed in with a significant discount voucher for members which can be used either in store or online. So thanks so much to you both. It was a small beginning but I feel it will soon grow.

My New Toy - A Wort Pump

2011-01-29T22:17:00.001Z

One of the bigger pains in the bottom I've had to put up with recently is having to pick up a five gallon fermenter and pour the contents into my copper ready for boiling. Add to that, my set up is a a 10 gallon one and moving full containers that big is a bit of a non starter, especially for one with such a history of back problems.

Lugging 46L of wort is no fun

With there being a distinct lack of height in my shed I realised pretty early on that a gravity fed system was going to be a non starter so a pump was a must buy. My first attempt at using a wort pump was not exactly an unqualified success; I used a pump designed for transferring water around solar heating systems. As the pump was not self priming I had to suck the wort from the fermenter in the first instance. As a result I can exclusively reveal hot wort isn't the most comfortable thing in one's mouth.

Having braved the blisters in my mouth I was then faced with the pipework coming out of the fermenter and spilling wort all over my shoes and jeans. To cap it all, the whole thing packed up after three brews.

Having parted with the best part of £60 (that's a lot of drinking vouchers, folks) I was understandably reticent to put my hand in my pocket again. Luckily the brewing community is a broad church and full of such generous folk. James from Sandstone brewery suggested a flojet pump, his Epicness Kelly Ryan then linked me to the instructions and Pete Brissenden from Lovibonds saved me from having to fork out upwards of £100 for a compressor. How? Read on.

Flojet pump and pressure spray

The flojet pump in question runs on compressed air. It's also self priming so no more sucking (matron) and can be run from a compressor or via a bottle of compressed gas. I've got dispense gas for my bar but lugging it down to the shed was impractical, and you need to have adequate venting. I was all set to break out the credit card at toolstation when Pete suggested using a pressure spray, the type of thing you can get from B&Q.

That rang a bell with me and following a short rummage in my loft I found a pressure spray (used for treating carpets in care homes for urine spills - don't laugh that'll be us one day) when the pressure relief valve had failed. I'd kept it for spares. All I then needed to get was a 1/2"BSP female to 3/8" JG pushfit and the job, as they say, is a good 'un.

Pumping water from lower FV to upper.

So, after some testing in the conservatory, all was working. I'd half filled the pressure spray with water to lessen the amount of pumping I needed to do.

So how did it perform? Pretty well and much better than anything I've used before if I'm honest. As well as pumping from a fermenting vessel to the copper, it also did a great job recirculating wort back into the mash tun. Fantastic.

I'll be honest, I did two brews today and I was a bit knackered with all that pumping so I enlisted the help of one my teenaged sons, made a few jokes about masturbation and low and behold my wort was in my copper. Another good thing about the pump is that it can be wall mounted so, going forward, there'll be more room. However, best of all I'll now be able to do double brewlengths the whole reason I invested in a 10 Gal set up.

Recipe Formulation - Starvation Point Porter

2011-01-26T21:11:00.003Z

I'm trying to decide whether to "smoke" the porter or not but I'm looking for a dark brown rather than black beer with a hint of coffee/choc sweetness which is why I've chosen the Carafa1 and Pale Choc combination. I've come up with this:

Starvation Point Porter

Grain Bill

4.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain
0.40 kg Melanoiden Malt (39.4 EBC) Grain
1.00 kg Rauchmalz (17.7 EBC) Grain
0.30 kg Pale Chocolate Malt (500.0 EBC) Grain
0.15 kg Carafa I (663.9 EBC) Grain

Boil Ingredients

90 min 30.00 gm First Gold [7.50 %] (90 min) Hops
45 min 25.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [4.80 %] (45 min) Hops
10 min 15.00 gm Goldings, East Kent [4.80 %] (10 min) Hops
5 min 1.00 items Protofloc (Boil 5.0 min) Misc

Yeast Nottingham
EBC 46
IBU 37
Est OG 1059
Est ABV 5.5-6%

Starvation Point is a place opposite the harbour gates in Whitstable, Kent, so called because it was where sailors and dockers used to look for work in the 1800's. Clearly some were luckier than others. I'm not entirely sure whether I'll use the Rauchmalz or not but I've got a couple of days to think about it.

How to set up a Gas Management Board.

2011-01-23T13:14:00.001Z

Nearly six months after I bought it, I've finally got my home bar up and running. Properly.

For this, I have to thank my good friend Yonny from Copper Kettle Home Brewing who bought one of these for his kegerator project. For those who don't know, a kegerator is essentially a modified chest freezer with cornies inside and taps coming out of the wall. Google Kegerator project and you'll see what I mean.

So this is a gas management board. They were originally invented for dispensing soft drinks but they work perfectly with cornies full of beer, once you set them up properly.

I made the mistake of working from left to right but, actually, if you work the other way it makes much more sense.

So, from the right you have the main reg, the display of which tells you how much pressure you have in the gas bottle. Next are five (or six in my case) red gas control valves.

The CO2 gas in goes on the main reg. You can't see it too well on this pic but there is a screw on the main regulator on the right. This sets the pressure on the furthest valve to the right. This dial is marked carbonator on my management board. There is a pressure gauge above it.

The next valve is marked diet on my board; I think this is a bit of a bloody cheek frankly but if I ever do brew a diet beer..... The pressure on this one is set by the right hand (of two) red knobs on, to set the pressure you need to pull the knob towards you, set the desired pressure then push it back in.

The following four valves are all controlled by the remaining red knob on the left hand side. The important thing to remember is that you can't set a higher pressure than the gauge to the right. I set mine up thus:

Disconnect all kegs
Turn gas on at the bottle and open valve number 6
With a blade type screwdriver adjust the pressure to the gauge above valve 6.
Open valve 5.
Pull the knob above valve 5 and adjust until you get the desired pressure.
Open valve 4 and repeat the process, only this time using the left hand red knob.

I've got mine set to:

Valve 6 (carbonator) 40psi

Valve 5 (diet) 20psi

Valves 1-4 (syrup) 7psi

Temperature Conundrum

2010-12-29T19:26:00.002Z

I've tried rewriting this post a few times now, and I can't get it to sound any less geeky. So I'm just gonna embrace my inner geek and roll with it.

I was having a particularly testing brewday today, due mainly to my failing to get an early start because of the cricket in Australia (I've been up nights for the last three or four days and today the body said no more).

This was my first brew with my new HLT and sparge arm and it worked flawlessly, which is more than I can say for the mash tun. I really ought to service my brew plant after every few brews because, whilst sparging, the ball valve to my mash tun fell off. Luckily I managed to push it back on and didn't lose too much wort but my worst nightmare came after darkness had fallen.

Given the fail in my mash tun, I chose to test my chillers. I have three 10mm bore stainless steel chillers plumbed in series. I ran some water through them which duly pissed out at the JG fittings. I looked and saw that I'd lost one of the little black washers so I had to replumb and got down to two chillers until I can get some more 10mm JG fittings.

Having established the watertightness of my immersion chillers I then set about chilling my wort. For the second or third time, I've been using an aquarium thermometer to measure the temperature drop with the probe dangling in the wort. Today it was dangling near the bottom of the copper, and reading 10C lower than the wort at the top. I wondered how this could be, and then I checked the chillers. The coils finish about 5-7cm from the top of the wort for one thing, and then the cold water is fed into the bottom of the first chiller.

I'm guessing that the heat exchange only works at the bottom of the wort, which has led me to consider whether I might plumb my two chillers in parallel with the cold water feed going from the bottom in one and the top in the other. I wonder if this will lead to more efficient cooling?

Converting a "Burco" style boiler to a Hot Liquor Tank

2010-12-23T16:22:00.005Z

As I may have bored you about recently, I picked up a 25L tea urn type boiler a couple of weeks ago for next to nothing (did I tell you I only paid a fiver) and today I set about converting it into a Hot Liquor Tank (HLT).

First of all, why would you want a separate HLT and Copper? Many brewers quite happily manage without as did I until I realised how much more convenient it was to have the copper bringing the wort to the boil at the same time as I was finishing off the sparging.

So, without further ado, take your boiler, descale and clean it if it is a second hand like mine was then remove the tap. Actually, if you don't want to remove the tap it wil stiff function perfectly well but I want to fly sparge, again to save hassle and time so I've made the conversion.

You will need

a length of 15mm copper pipe
a 15mm compression fit ball valve
two 15mm compression fit end caps
a 15mm tank connector
90 degree elbow
15mm speed fit t-piece
PTFE tape

Tools

2 x adjustable wrenches
pipe cutter
scissors
drill & drill bits

You could use a compression fitting T piece but, as I need to remove and attach the sparge arm frequently, I've opted for the speed fit option.

First thing to do is to place the tank connector into the void left by the removal of the old tap. Try to get it as central as possible to avoid potential leakage.

Seat the tank connector into the aperture vacated by the old tap.

Once the tank connector is in place, assemble the ball valve and 90 degree angle with the three bits of pipe required to connect them together. While putting these together get then roughly in position and trim the pipe afterwards if required.

The first part of the tap configuration

Once I'm happy with the alignment, I dismantle and reapply piece by piece with PTFE tape. It is important to apply the tape in the opposite direction to the travel of the nut to ensure a good seal. The finished assembly should look like this.

The finished assembly.

When you've completed that, it is time to test it for watertightness under pressure. For this it is important to fill the vessel as full as you can and then put it on to boil. If you see any leaks - note from where, drain down and reseat where necessary.

While the water is coming to temperature, you can start on the sparge arm. You don't have to use a T-piece, you could just as easily use another 90 degree bend but I've chosen this method. All I did here is cut the remaining pipe in half and fit the endcaps to the speedfit tee. To end up with this.

Sparge arm, ready for drilling

Tomorrow I shall be drilling in on each side of the tubing (i.e. 90 degrees each side of the upright part of the tee) so the water will exit both sides of the sparge arm. Hopefully I will be able to test this sooner rather than later, on a brew between Christmas and the New Year.

What's On the Bar this Christmas

2010-12-20T18:48:00.002Z

I filled the Cornie with some Irish Extra Stout this evening, and realised that I've now got three of them on at once which must rank as pretty bad planning.

I'm sitting here trying to decide which three to connect up to the T-bar and which one to put on the beer engine. Will one particular style lend itself to hand pull and does it really matter if they are all in kegs anyhow?

Anyhoo, I've got one beer connected to the T-bar at the moment and that's the Oatmeal Stout which must be due to finish soon. The full list is as follows.

Cornie 1 - St Petersburg Imperial Stout

Cornie 2 - Oatmeal Stout

Cornie 3 - Belgian Dubbel Bubble

Cornie 4 - Whispering Bob American IPA

Cornie 5 - Sanitiser (in Preparation for Irish Extra Stout)

Cornie 6 - Beer line cleaner.

So, if there's any consensus on what goes better where - I'd be pleased to hear it. And, no, I'm not going to be drinking beer line cleaner any time soon.

Going to be brewing between Christmas and the New Year and I'm trying to decide what to make. I really want to brew a Black IPA but I'm conscious that I've brewed loads of dark 'uns lately so might go for a simple Tony Christie Pale Ale but I'm open to suggestions so do fire away.

Christmas Brewery Modifications

2010-12-20T08:59:00.003Z

Delighted to report that I've been able to source a cheap hot liquor tank (HLT) for the brewery which should speed up some of the processes and enable me to start fly sparging.

However, due to the lack of headspace in the shed, I'm going to have to invest in a pump to send the wort from the mash tun (via a collecting vessel) to the copper. I've used a pump before but, frankly, it wasn't man enough to do the job and failed after three brews. So I've gone for a FloJet pump, a bit like one of these which will be operated by a compressor. As long as the compressor has a regulator on it, I should be able to control the flow just as I want it.

Work has been pretty bonkers the last few weeks and the weather hasn't exactly helped so I'm hoping to spend plenty of time in the shed over the festive period. For a guy who is pretty awful at DIY, building the brewery has been strangely therapeutic most of the time. The biggest challenge has been getting everything watertight but the joy of achievement far outweighs the frustration of leaks.

I approached the conversion to all grain brewing with some trepidation but, with 20 brews under my belt, I now realise it was the only way forward if you really want to brew "your own" beer. I hope that readers of this blog realise how easy it is to brew in this fashion; in the new year I hope to conduct some all grain demonstrations at Easy Home Brew in Ashford. Stay tuned for more updates.

Moonlighting

2010-11-06T10:18:00.003Z

Just a quick bit of shameless self promotion; I'm going to be doing the first of my brewing demonstrations at Easy Home Brew in Ashford. Nicky and Matt bought the business earlier in the year and, following a website re-brand, they're now stocking a not insignificant selection of homebrew essentials.

As well as the usual hardware, chemicals and kits for wine and beer, they also have a small selection of grains, hops and yeasts suitable for kit tweakers and all grain brewers alike.

I'm booked in to do two demonstrations before Christmas; today Saturday 6th November and again in a fortnight Saturday 20th November. Both sessions start at 2pm and will feature basic kit brewing techniques followed by a Q&A session.

Latest Boiler Mod

2010-11-01T20:28:00.002Z

Thanks to some excellent advice from my good friend Jim The Brewer of Brentwood Brewing Co, I've now modified my boiler to make sure the hop oils from the late additions are not vented off.

All I've done really is to drill six 10mm holes so that the 3/8" hose that connects my triple stainless steel immersion chillers can remain in the boiler while the lid is put on.

A slightly surprising by product of the lid is the decreased cooling time. This time my wort cooled from 95c to 72c in 8 minutes. At this time I turned the chillers off, added the steep hops and popped the lid on for 10 mins before putting cooling down to 35c in a total of 40 minutes.

The temperature of the water exiting the chillers was upped from 50c to 58c. Of course the real test will be how hoppy this beer - an American IPA - turns out to be.

Whispering Bob - The Recipe

2010-10-22T19:13:00.002+01:00

I was listening to the BBC Radio Four Today programme some months ago on the occasion of Bob Harris' 40 years in broadcasting. They played an audio clip (they tend to do that on radio programmes) in Bob's trademark whisper: "kick back, open a bottle of pale ale and listen to this."

Now it's fair to assume that, when the legendary broadcaster originally uttered that phrase, this isn't the kind of pale ale to which he would have referred. If it were around at all, the American craft brew scene surely hadn't evolved to the level it has now at the time Bob was cutting his teeth on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Yet, US style craft beer and Whispering Bob have so much in common; they're both born of geeky innocence, bursting enthusiasm and a genuine love of their fellow musician/brewer. By being at the cutting edge of their respective fields and unafraid to push the boundaries, they have won the loyalty and respect of their fans.

So this is what I'll be brewing tomorrow and I hope it is a fitting tribute to a highly respected broadcaster.

6.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain

0.40 kg Aromatic Malt (51.2 EBC) Grain

0.40 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) Grain

0.25 kg Caramunich Malt (110.3 EBC) Grain

0.25 kg Pale Crystal Malt (55.0 EBC) Grain

Bittering Hops

30.00 gm Chinook [11.40 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop)

30.00 gm Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop)

Flavour Hops

30 min 10.00 gm Simcoe [13.00 %] (30 min) Hops

15 min 10.00 gm Cascade [7.60 %] (15 min) Hops

5 min 1.00 items Protofloc (Boil 5.0 min) Misc

Late hops

25.00 gm Cascade [7.60 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

25.00 gm Simcoe [13.00 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)

Yeast US-05

Estimated OG 1069

Bitterness 70.6 IBU

Colour 21.5 EBC

Estimated ABV 6.45-7%

OK it is more San Diego than Nashville and it might take me a few goes to get it right but it feels like I am on the right track.

Back to Kit Brewing - Briefly

2010-10-18T20:46:00.003+01:00

On the homebrewing forum I am a member of, it is often said by the All Grain brewing community that, once you've tried All Grain beer, you'll never go back to kits.

Well, that's not strictly true in my case. As I've said before, All Grain brewing makes excellent beer but it can take hours to do whereas a kit can be knocked up ready to ferment in 30-45 minutes.

It has been more than six months since I last brewed a kit but I am booked to demonstrate the principles of kit brewing at a local homebrew shop, so I wanted to give myself a quick refresher. This kit is an out of date brewbuddy kit which I've brewed with a pack of Windsor yeast, a kilo of beer kit enhancer (50/50 spraymalt and brewing sugar) and a hopped tea made up of Simcoe and Cascade hops.

Adding hopped teas and changing the yeast is referred to as kit tweaking. In order for the yeast to do its best, it meeds to have lots of sugar and oxygen to feed on so one of the other important things to do in kit brewing is to get as much air into the wort as possible. This can be achieved by letting the water drop from a great height or by thrashing with a beer paddle.

The thing is, I'm quite lazy and I've found that, by using a hand blender, you can whip loads of air into the wort. It is worth noting that in the 48 hours since I placed the fermenter into the brew fridge, the wort has fermented down from 1055 to 1012, which is pretty cool.

The reason I've gone for the Simcoe and Cascade hop combo is that I'm beginning to love the West Coast style. I'll be putting a Cascade/Simcoe all grain recipe together pretty soon and it will be nice to see how they effect the Brewbuddy kits. I find, if you have a number of identical kits which you brew with identical yeasts, it gives you a decent test bed for testing hop additions. Of course the only problem with kit beer is that it takes about 5-6 weeks to be ready to drink. Still I've given myself the refresher course I needed and now I'll be ready for my demonstrations in a few weeks' time.

Dark Beer Time

2010-10-10T17:38:00.003+01:00

I don't quite know what it is about the darkening days but it makes me think of a warming fire and a strong dark beer full of chocolate malt and roasted barley. I've got two such beers fermenting away; a dark porter called Dogbolter made from a recipe from Ramsgate Brewery and an Imperial Stout called St Petersburg which is brewed by Thornbridge.

The Dogbolter, on the right of the picture, needs to be racked today or tomorrow and has fermented down to 1009 giving me a 6% abv. I've got 20g of Kentish Fuggles sitting in a sterilised stocking. It will add a resinous grassiness to the beer.

On the left of the picture is the St Petersburg. Although it fell four points short of the OG at 1068, it has fermented out to 1010 so far, giving an ABV of 7.6, just under the commercial version.

The next brew on the horizon is another stout, this time an oatmeal variety. I'm not entirely sure why I've got all these dark beers on the go at once, it must be the impending wintertime but I'm sure looking forward to drinking them.

My Competition Red Ale Recipe

2010-09-01T13:55:00.002+01:00

So here I am, sitting in a converted French school house listening to Planet Rock, drinking Jentain Ambre and dreaming up recipes for my Brew It Yourself competition Red Ale. It's all good.

Not knowing an awful lot about red ale; all I've got to go on is the Beer Smith's definition of Red Ale and the competition guidelines which state the beer must be:

A dry-hopped red ale between 4.8% & 5.5% ABV

Beer Smith's definition of Red Ale:

Style OG 1.044 -1.060

Style FG 1.010 -1.016

Style EBC 17.7-35.5 EBC

Style IBU 17.0-28.0 IBU

I've recently taken delivery of a small amount of Sorachi hops, and I like to try my first beer as a single hop beer because I like to get a full sense of the hop flavour. Well it makes sense to me anyway.

Anyway, here is the first draft of the recipe.

Brewlength 23L

Est OG 1.054

Est Colour 32.5 EBC

Est IBU 27 IBU

Grain Bill

Maris Otter 5.9 EBC 4800g (87%)

Carared 39.4 EBC 390g (7%)

Amber Malt 43.3 EBC 112g (2%)

Torrefied Wheat 3.3 EBC 112g (2%)

Chocolate Malt 689 EBC 55g (1%)

Black Malt 55g 985 EBC (1%)

Hop Schedule

20g Sorachi (12.2%AA) FWH

30g Sorachi @ Flame Out

20g Sorachi Dry Hop (3 Days)

Protofloc at 5 mins. In terms of yeast I can use US-05, S-04, Windsor or Nottingham. I haven't made any decisions on that yet.

Is this the answer to sediment in the bottle?

2010-08-24T09:06:00.003+01:00

Sediment in home brewed beer has been an issue for donkeys years. As I'm sure most of you know, it is by product of secondary fermentation and cannot easily be avoided. Until now perhaps. A product called Brodies, widely used in Australia, comprises a sediment trap and bottle cap.

They're reuseable and allow the bottle to stand upside down, therefore collecting all the sediment. You can then remove the trap, leave the cap in the bottle and store your home brewed beer on its side in the fridge or drink it straight from the bottle.

I can tell you more about these but there is an excellent instructional video by an independent home brewer in the US available here which explains things much better.

I could do with trying some of these but the company who makes them is still looking for a UK distributor. So I thought, how about a bit of blog/twitter market research. Home brewers, can you tell me if you think they are a viable option.

Would you buy these so you could either drink homebrew from the bottle or lay it down in the fridge?

Do you prefer sediment in the bottle?

Bearing in mind they are reuseable, spares are available and obviate the need to use crown caps, would you pay,

a: £1 each for these

b: £2 each for these

Or do you think the price differential from using conventional crown caps outweighs the benefits?

Leave a message below. I'm interested to hear what the UK home brewing community has to say.

So Many Brews.... So Little Time

2010-08-21T09:26:00.003+01:00

I've been going into brew overload this last week deciding what sort of beers to brew next, and next, and next. There are so many I want to do and no free weekends until I return from holiday.

I've got a Red ale for the October Brew it Yourself competition, two Thornbridge recipes I want to do (a Jaipur and a St Petersburg Imperial Stout), Sierra Nevada Pale Ale as well as mark two versions of my Summertime Pale (which I have christened Whispering Bob in tribute to the legend who has just celebrated his 40th year in broadcasting) and my Green Bullet Pale Ale which will be tasted at Beervana in Wellington.

That's six brews, and looking at my diary for the next couple of months, I can see I might get two done in September, definitely two in October and the rest in November. I need to learn patience and maybe become like this wise old bull.

Latest Brew - Summertime

2010-08-17T08:30:00.001+01:00

I'm very pleased to have got this recipe in the cornie at long last. I've been having a bit of trouble with a couple of infected brews and was anxious (and for "anxious" read bricking it) that this pale ale would be similarly afflicted.

I need not have worried; it's not as nice as the Green Bullet single hop beer but it's a good starting point. I used a little Caramunich in this, too little really but the Cascade/Chinook aroma hops come through. It is quite crisp but a little thin.

The original recipe was

4500g MO

240g Torrefied Wheat

100g Caramunch

28g Northern Brewer (90 min AA 8.5%)

23g Cascade (25min 7.6%)

8gm Cascade (5min)

20gm Chinook (0 min)

After consulting with those who know far more about brewing than I, the next incarnation of this beer will have another kilo of pale malt and 500g more Caramunich. The hop schedule will also be radically altered with a lot more late hops going in.

The trouble is, though, by the time I get round to brewing it, we will probably be in November by which time a summer pale ale might seem incongruous.

(Green) Bullets to Wellington

2010-08-16T20:07:00.003+01:00

So I got an email the other day from Evin O'Riordain from The Kernel Brewery, fast becoming (rightly) recognised as one of the finest craft brewers in the British Isles, telling me he'd had a visit from "a fellow in the NZ beer scene" who was looking for beers single hopped using only New Zealand hops.

He then went on to tell me that, as he had "not a single bottle" of the Nelson Sauvin single hopped ale that the Kernel was famed for (it's not one that I've had the pleasure of tasting either). Evin went on to tell me that, "as I couldn't let him leave empty handed" he gave him a bottle of my single hopped Green Bullet IPA.

Blimey.

He went on to tell me that the beer will be tasted at the Beervana NZ event organised by the NZ brewers guild:http://brewersguild.org.nz/beervana2010. Not so much coals to Newcastle as Bullets to Wellington.

It is fair to say that by this time I was bricking it. I mean, the Green Bullet was only my fifth all grain brew and here was Evin sending it half the way round the world. There I was thinking about the steps one would take to avoid drinking my beer (and sending it to New Zealand is an absolute masterstroke) when I received a second email from Evin reviewing the second bottle I'd sent him. I was pleased to read "Not hugely aromatic, but beautifully clean and had a great bitterness, Lovely Beer" I don't think they'll be flying me over to New Zealand as a brewing consultant just yet but it was a much appreciated comment from a lovely bloke who really does know his beer.

Brewing Update

2010-07-20T22:03:00.002+01:00

I brewed my sixth all grain beer last weekend. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster; I've brewed the best and worst brews ever on consecutive weekends.

The worst was an attempt at Brentwood Best which I think, suffered from a blip in my cleaning regimen. It didn't taste infected but it certainly tasted rank and it has been suggested to me that I may have failed to adequately rinse out the cleaner/sanitiser.

The best was a pale ale single hop beer for which I used Green Bullet at 90mins, 30 mins and flame out, 90% pale malt with 5% crystal and 5% torrefied wheat. Amazingly it was drinkable at 7 days in the bottle but at a month it is a crisp, thirst quenching pale bitter. There is a hint of aroma that doesn't actually encourage me to take a sip but, other than that, I'm well happy.

Last weekend I also put the finishing touches to my bar, I've eschewed my King Kegs in favour of four cornelius kegs, a chiller, three tap T-bar and a beer engine. Obviously I have a lot to learn about the set up (like not to leave the gas on for a start!) but it's a start and I hope to have four drinkable beers in there in a couple of weeks' time.

Beer Porn - My First All Grain Pint. Amarillo Pale Ale

2010-05-31T07:51:00.002+01:00

For my first effort I wanted to keep things simple and recipes don't get simpler than this:

4kg Pale Malt

200g Torrefied Wheat (for head retention)

45g Amarillo @ 90mins

35g Amarillo @ 10 mins

15g Amarillo @ 0 mins

I'd like to say that the recipe was mine but it wasn't and need to thank Drew the Brew from the Brew it Yourself forum for it.

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

2010-05-30T08:48:00.003+01:00

Things have been a bit quiet on the blogging front for a couple of weeks; mainly due to my birthday party last week but also due to work, the onset of the cricket season and a number of other pressing engagements.

The most recent of these was a visit to the Rough Old Wife cidery in Old Wives Lees just outside Canterbury. They make their cider the traditional way with a long slow fermentation in old whisky barrels which certainly leaves its stamp on the cider.

I've never been the greatest fan of cider but what I drank yesterday, including Blushing Old Wife made with 10% raspberries was fantastic. It has certainly given me ideas for what to do with my demijons in the winter.

Tomorrow I'll be starting my third all grain brew, a beer in the style of Brentwood Brewing Company's Best Bitter. I've now moved the brewery permanently into the shed and bought a small pump to transfer the sweet wort from the collecting vessel back up to the boiler. While it is mashing and boiling away I'll also be bottling my Black Rock Cider (made from a kit) and my "Gone for a Burton" which should both be ready in time for my brother in law's birthday in three weeks time (I made an 35 litre batch, of which about 27 litres were kegged last week and the rest racked and further dry hopped for bottling tomorrow). All of this is good news as my kegs and bottles took rather a hammering at last week's party; two (admittedly already half empty) kegs and a good 60 bottles went which I take as a sign that my beer wasn't all that bad.

In the meantime I'll be knocking up another summer ale recipe using Northern Brewer as a bittering hop and Cascade for the flavour (no prizes for guessing where I got that idea from). Hopefully I'll post a couple of pictures of the new brewing in action tomorrow.

An "As live" Brewday

2010-05-16T09:54:00.005+01:00

This posting appeared on Facebook but for those who don't have access to that social media and would like to read my wibblings here please see below.

0810 Hot Liquor Tank on, before and of you fnarr fnarr about me having a hot licker in the shed, a Hot Liquor Tank is a posh name for a boiler, in brewspeak, liquor = water. Make the tea.

0820 While water is warming up, the shed needs to be cleared out so that both I and my brewery can both fit in there.

It's a bit tight in the brewing shed.

0830 Weigh out the grains; in this case 8.10 KG of Pale Malt (Maris Otter) and 840g of Crystal Malt.

0900 Temp of water up to 80C, run off a couple of litres to pre heat the Mash Tun

0910 23 Litres of Liquor at 77C and then "dough in" the grains, make sure the mash temperature hits 66C (which it does) and then cover it up and set the timer for 90 minutes.

"Doughing in"

0930 Hang the washing out. There's a lot of downtime in All Grain brewing as Russ Pope with tell you so it never hurts to earn those brownie points from the other half. During this time I'm also going to attempt to sterilise some bottles and a keg in preparation for kegging/bottling last week's brews.

1010 Weigh out items for the boil. 40g Northern Brewer, 40g East Kent Goldings, 840g Golden Cane Sugar (all for the 90 min boil) 20g Fuggles and a protofloc tab for the last 2 mins.

1040 Drain and recirculate the first few litres of sweet wort then, when it runs clear, collect it in a fermenter (or bucket). Top up with 15 litres of water at 75C then leave for 10 mins. Prepare the last 18L of water for the second batch sparge.

1200 Put collected wort back into the boiler and switch the elements on. I've collected just over 10 gallons which was slightly less than I needed which will mean the beer is a little bit stronger than I will originally have planned.

1300 Rolling boil achieved added the sugar, Northern Brewer and East Kent Goldings. Pop round to the neighbours with the spent grain for their chickens and return with half a dozen freshly laid eggs. Apparently the last lot of grain has caused the yolks to be even yellower. Woohoo.

Lots of hoppy goodness

1428 The late hops for aroma and protofloc to help prevent chill haze when the brew is bottled.

1430 Chillers in; this helps to cool the wort quickly to pitching temperature which helps prevent bacterial infection. Rehydrating yeast in some cooled boiled water

OG spot on. This may be a strong one. I think I'll call it "Gone for a Burton"

This takes about 40 mins so I've got time to bottle my last (but probably not last ever) kit brew. This one is one of what is known on Jims Beer Kit as an Out of Date Brewbuddy experiment. My good friend and fellow brewer James Wilson got his mitts on some out of date Youngs Brewbuddy kits from a supplier. I've taken five of them and am applying identical (kit) brewing techniques with different ingredients.

With this one I brewed with 1kg of Beer Kit Enhancer, a hopped tea made with 15g Nelson Sauvin hop pellets courtesy of Gadds of Ramsgate followed by a dry hop with the remaining 28g. My brewing colleague Philip Bird has also done such experiments and between us we have East Kent Goldings, Pacific Gem, First Gold and Nelson Sauvin versions. I've used S04 yeast with mine but not sure what Phil used with his. I've got an Amarillo version to do and probably a Fuggles one as well (but this time with Windsor yeast).

1530 Running the wort into the fermenters from a height to achieve good aeration. Because this brew is to 35L I'll need two fermenters. I've taken the OG which, adjusted for temperature, comes out exactly at 1067 which was the target OG.

Lovely clear wort

1600 Pop off to Tescos to do a bit of shopping, come back and split the yeast into the fermenters using a sterilised 60ml syringe.

1630 Fermenters in the brewfridge at 20C and time to clean up. Actually I had other things to do at this time so the cleaning up has still to be done.

I'm pretty pleased with my second all grain effort and I'll be going another brew in a couple of weeks time when I've had the opportunity to empty some kegs and some bottles.

For other pics please see the thread on the Brew it Yourself forum

Popping My Full Mash Cherry

2010-05-09T09:26:00.003+01:00

It's been coming for a long time but yesterday it finally happened. Do I feel any different? Has it changed the way I feel about kit brewing? "Not really" is the answer and obviously the jury's out until the ale is ready to drink but what is different is that I theoretically have much more control over what I'm going to brew.

Luckily I've got the help and support of a great brewing community both in forum land and the twitterverse which meant I've effectively got a pocket guide to brewing at my beck and call. Thank you, you know who you are and I couldn't have done it without you.

The brewday started with moderately ok weather so I fired up the HLT in the garden. Big mistake; by the time I'd doughed in the grains it was raining hard enough to encourage me to continue the brewday in my conservatory which is a complete mess. The recipe I used was nicked off a friend in the Brew It Yourself forum.

4 kg MO pale Malt

250g Torrefied Wheat

45g Amarillo @ 90mins

35g Amarillo @ 10mins

15g Amarillo @ 0 mins

I used Windsor yeast with this one.

The target OG was 1048 which I managed to hit and the smells coming out of the boiler were absolutely first rate, I really can't wait to drink it.

I've put pictures over on the Brew it Yourself forum. You can see the results here

10 Gallon Brewery Construction

2010-05-05T21:01:00.002+01:00

I was going to write a "how to" construct an all grain brewery but I'm so incredibly retarded at DIY that my attempts should probably be referred to as a "how not to". However the testing has been completed and I'll be popping my AG cherry on Saturday, weather permitting.

It all seemed so simple when I started out a few weeks ago bit of plumbing here, bit of drilling there, butcher a couple of kettles and bob's your uncle.

Why go for a 10 Gallon set up?

It was pretty simple really, my kegs are all 23/25L capacity and I'd like to do some bottling as well so why half fill a keg. The plan is to bottle 15 or 20 x 500ml bottles and fill a keg, once I've got the hang of it, that is.

And then the trouble started. First of all I had to find something to drill holes in the side for the kettle elements, I settled on a 38mm hole saw. The outside of the hole looked perfect but there were a lot of rough edges on the inside. I filed them down as best I could but they both leaked, not a lot, but they leaked.

At the weekend I tried top have a boil up and still had a small leak in element 1 but, worse still, the boiler wouldn't heat up. I went back to the drawing board and realised I'd forgotten to link the wires on the element to complete the circuit. I can build a computer from scratch but give me some simple household electrics and plumbing and I'm a gibbering wreck. In the end, the right amount of food grade sealant (i.e. lots) seemed to do the trick.

Last night I tested the boil and no leaks. It is hard to describe the feeling but I think the only way to describe it that is a bit like being a kid the night before Christmas crossed with a dog who's just discovered he can lick his own balls.

I'll post some pix of my first brew at the weekend, assuming it's not a complete balls up and I'll include the hop strainer which was the only thing that went right first time. Remember, if someone as hopeless as I can build a brewery there's hope for us all.

Copper Kettle Home Brewing Goes Live Today

2010-05-04T22:14:00.002+01:00

Run by my good friend and fellow home brewer Yonny, Copper Kettle Home Brewing went live today. Just in time for my first venture into All Grain Brewing. Do visit his site and compare the prices. He's been selling for a while (with good feedback) on Ebay but this is his first venture on his own so to speak.

Beer Porn - Wherry with Elderflowers

2010-04-14T21:01:00.002+01:00

Took me a while to get used to this one, a standard Woodforde's Wherry kit brewed top an OG of 1050 (temperature adjusted to 1051) and dry hopped with 40g of dried Elderflowers. Tastes completely different out of the bottle compared with the keg.

Obviously, because of the crap winter, Elderflowers will be a bit late this year but when they do grow, I think I'll try an All Grain beer with Elderflowers as well as hops. I'm looking for a summer beer so feel free to suggest some grains.

Who else has made beer with wild ingredients? I'd love to hear some suggestions.

My Road To Damascus

2010-04-09T09:48:00.004+01:00

Or, how a brewing competition finally tipped me over the edge into All Grain brewing.

It's been a busy week it the world of beer and brewing for me. On Saturday I attended the 5th Planet Thanet Beer Festival where I drank many beers, some excellent like Gadds' Uberhop and Tiger Rut from Millstone, an all Chinook beer. I also met the Eddie Gadd and had an interesting discussion about cricket. Now most of my brewing friends and acquaintances fall asleep when I turn the talk to cricket (as do most of my cricketing colleagues when I talk about beer - or perhaps it's just that I am a boring git). Anyway the upshot of the conversation was that I will soon be off to the Ramsgate Brewery to watch/take part in/clean up after a brewday. I am quite excited about this and have bored my wife about it many times this week.

Then earlier this week I read about the brewing competition being run on Beermerchants blog and thought about how I would love to be a part of that. Then I read through the competition rules and realised that kits, however well tweaked, weren't going to be allowed and that pushed me over the edge.

My plan was always to attempt the conversion in about September this year by which time I would have built a second shed in which to put all non brewing related crap but the competition deadline is in June so I need to find a tarpaulin under which I can store a barbecue, lawnmower and two push bikes until I can afford the shed.

Thanks to those nice folk on the Brew it Yourself forum and other places on the Twitterverse I've got step by step instructions on how to make a 10 gallon boiler, false bottom mash tun and immersion chiller.

Hopefully I can get all these things made over the next couple of weeks and be ready to get a brew on in time for submission to the competition.

An Insight into the Life of a Dozy Brewer.

2010-04-03T09:27:00.003+01:00

There are several sorts of brewer but I think I must be the dozy sort; I spent a good hour looking for the lid of my fermenting vessel yesterday so I could put on a second brew (well it is Easter you know) and failed miserably.

This was a bit of a shame really because, my good friend Jim has got hold of some out of date Youngs Brewbuddy beer kits which a number of home brewers on Jim's Beer Kit are coming up with experiments for.

I wanted to do two kits side by side so that, apart from hops, they would have the same ingredients, the same conditioning time, etc. but my own lack of organisation meant that the first experiment was an epic fail, as my teenaged sons would tell me. This experiment involves using rehydrated S04 yeast, 15g of East Kent Goldings in the cafetiere for a hopped tea, a kilo of medium spraymalt and 25g's of EKG's for dry hopping purposes. This one's already bubbling away in the Brewfridge.

Oh and by the way, the lid to the aforementioned fermenter was in the garden on one of the garden chairs. Doh!

Recognition for Blog and Brewer.

2010-03-24T15:57:00.003Z

Bit of a highlight for little old me in the last couple of weeks was to have the blog mentioned on the sites of bloggers far more superior than I.

Many of you will have visited this blog via Melissa Cole's Taking The Beard out of Beer. Melissa reviewed (very favourably, I might add) my Amarillo IPA. I've got a modified tweak on the go with half the hops so it'll be interesting to see how they compare.

Last weekend I also had an interviewed on Drink with the Wench, which was tremendous fun. Mind you there are some "proper" brewers on there which made me and my kit tweaks seem very humble in comparison. It felt like going for a swim with Michael Phelps whilst wearing armbands.

Back to the beer, tonight I will mainly be bottling my Linthwaite Light. Forty brown (heeding your words regarding light strike, Melissa) beer bottles await and then I'll get round to bottling the lager at the weekend.

With our friend Mr Darling putting up duty on cider, the requests my wife and the teenagers in my household have come flooding (well, trickling) in. I'm currently experimenting with something called THC (to quote Chris Evans, it's not what you think) which is a cider kit made with apple juice instead of water because, now, cider kits will work out cheaper than cider.

Stepping Up Production, a Dilemma.

2010-03-16T20:05:00.002Z

So, after a particularly heavy night at Beer Club, I am faced with the need to step up production due to the club's burgeoning membership. The problem, as usual, is the time taken from brew to drinking.

Assuming it will be bottled (which most beers for beer club will be), a typical kit will spend 14 days fermenting, 2-3 days in the bottling bucket, a week warm conditioning and then a minimum of four weeks cold conditioning before it even becomes drinkable. That's 7-8 weeks from brewing. Kit beers taste even better when allowed to condition for 6-12 weeks so that'as anything up to four months.

As I wibbled earlier this year, I've been making lager which requires a three week lagering (obviously) period between fermenting and bottling and it then requires the full 12 weeks conditioning. The Brewferm Gold I brewed first thing this year is unlikely to be ready until mid May at the earliest. Not only does it take an age to be ready but it ties up a fermenter for five weeks. These days I have four FV's (fermenting vessels); two standard fermenters, one bottling bucket (fermenting vessel with little bottler attached) and a wine fermenter which doubles as another bottling bucket and a cider fermenter.

I've released my inner nerd and knocked up a spreadsheet which enables me to schedule my brewing and maximise my productivity but it is still only going to give me drinking beer mid May. I seems my options are either to buy a fifth fermenter so that I can double production in the short term or to invest in a 10 gallon all grain set up which finances dictate will probably occur in September. I've just put a request on my local Freecycle/Freegle board and we'll see what happens but an extra fermenter looks like the only option in the short term. Running out of beer would be, frankly, disastrous.

Beer Porn - Coopers Dark Ale

2010-03-15T21:41:00.004Z

Brewed with 500g Dark Muscovado Sugar, 500g extra dark spraymalt and 250g golden cane sugar. It's come out about 6.5% so it's no session beer.

Beer Porn - Brewferm Gallia

2010-03-09T19:22:00.000Z

I found her hiding from me in the shed; tucked away in a long forgotten crate. As I stroked her elegant neck, I smiled and I remembered how she tasted during our last brief but exciting meeting.

It came back to me in a flash; her effervescence, her golden appearance, her sweet heavy scent. I swear I could taste the candi sugar she was surely made from as she slipped down my throat slaking my parched thirst.

And then she was gone, just a memory. And yet I felt sure it was not the last time I would see Gallia or her sweet Belgian sisters.

Beer Porn - Amarillo IPA

2010-03-08T18:28:00.003Z

I realise that kit brewing is seen in some quarters as the baseball cap wearing, bling encrusted, chav cousin of the all grain brew but there's something to be said for a beer that can be knocked up with a minimum of fuss inside an hour.

Yet it can also be turned into something really special with a bit of dry hopping, some beer kit enhancer and a means of keeping the fermentation temperature constant like a brewfridge.

So, to paraphrase a well known upmarket food retailer; this isn't just a beer kit, this is a South Street Shed Brewery, dry hopped, super aerated, IPA.

Shall I pass you the kleenex now?

Summer Brewing Had Me A Blast

2010-03-07T16:47:00.002Z

Something you need to do with brewing is plan about three months in advance especially if, like me, you're kit brewing. Some of my best brews last year were coming into their own just as some greedy git (usually me) was draining the last out of the barrel.

So this year I've been particularly good at building up my rolling stock. I've now got four kegs and two kits worth of bottles on the go at any one time. This weekend I've bottled or kegged three kits; one cider, one lager and a real ale kit tweak.

The tweak is a Woodforde's Great Eastern which I've dry hopped with 20g each of Amarillo and Pacific Gem hops. I've also eschewed the standard kit yeasts in favour of S04.

All of these are planned to be ready around the third week in May which, curiously enough, coincides with my birthday and I'm now planning the next series of brews which will take me through the second half of the summer.

I've got a Brupaks Linthwaite Light kit bubbling away as I type. This is a light but strong summer style beer that'll be going into bottles. I brewed to an OG of 1050 so I'm hoping for something around the 5% mark. I've been really impressed with every single Brupaks kit I've done to date and I expect this will will certainly be up to the mark, judging by the reviews my homebrew friends have given it.

Not being much of a lager drinker I stand to be corrected on this but I do believe that Cerveza style lagers, slightly sweeter than the pils style, are pretty decent barbecue fare so I've got a Muntons Mexican Cerveza on the go in one of the brewfridges. That's got another 10 days in the FV then it needs to be racked and lagered for three weeks or so before bottling. Of course the sort of weather we're getting at the moment lends itself rather well to lagering; I don't think it has been much above 5 degrees in the shed all week.

For later in the summer I'll be doing a Coopers European Lager and a Black Rock Cider. One of my brewing buddies gave me a Coopers European to try and it was very crisp and clean to taste. The Black Rock I don't drink (teenaged overindulgence put me off cider for life) but my wife and the children are pretty big fans of this stuff. Hopefully I'll get these on next weekend.

Foam Party in my Conservatory

2010-02-21T13:37:00.002Z

Thanks to some excellent advice from some of my brewing chums I've hit upon a way to really get the fermentation kicking off quickly. Here's a pic of my Great Eastern with added Amarillo and Pacific Gem hops. The pic was taken 12 hours after the yeast was pitched.

1. Ignore the calibration of the FV. Completely. I now add contents of the tin(s) enough hot and cold water to give a wort temp of 25 deg C. I then pop the hydro in and pour water in slowly until hydro reads my desired OG - in this case 1042. On this FV that reads 20 litres, on the other one it would read 17-ish.

2. Rehydrate the yeast. I've started using S04 and rehydrating it at 25 deg C for half an hour before.

3. Super-aerate the wort with a hand blender. I've picked up one that had a detachable blade shaft that can go straight in the steriliser. It's also got a turbo button which allows me to create a foam party of biblical proportions.

This is the second brew where I've adopted these methods; the first, last week's Almondbury Old was kegged yesterday at 1010, a brilliant result for a 2 can kit, I'm sure you'll agree.

The stocking contains 20g each of Amarillo and Pacific Gem. Clearly I need a heavier weight.

Ten Classic Homebrew Cock ups

2010-02-18T19:08:00.002Z

Or, how difficult it is to screw up a kit beer.

According to my Brew Diary, I'm now on my 40th brew since March last year. During this time I've made some pretty sensational cock ups on the brewing front. In all but one case the beer has remained drinkable. So here, without further ado, are ten things not to do when kit brewing.

Don't assume that your fermenting vessel is correctly graduated. I've got three and not one of them is accurate to with in a litre. I've even got one that is approximately three litres out. When I got the latest one I couldn't work out why the first two brews with expected ABV's of 5% turned out at 3.6% and 3.83% respectively. In fact I now eschew the graduations in favour of the hydrometer and stop adding water when I get to 1050.
Having established that your fermenting vessel is correctly graduated do not then add 22.75 litres of water. This doesn't take account of the two cans of wort. Make the whole lot up to 22.75L.
Don't forget to give the wort a really good stir, otherwise the wort will be heavier at the bottom than the top and you won't get an accurate hydrometer reading.
Don't expect fermentation to occur if the temperature is too cold or too hot. Depending on the yeast strain, optimum temperature range is 18-24 degrees c. Too colds and it won't ferment out, too hot and you may get off flavours.
If aerating the wort with a hand blender make sure that anything that shouldn't be in the wort like thermometer, hydrometer or steeping bag of grains (yes I did the last one) has, in fact, been removed.
Don't, whatever you do, ever warm condition beer in an airing cupboard. It's too hot and causes off flavours - I have a brew that simply refuses to improve because I've done this. It's going to have to go down the sink.
Don't forget to pressure test your kegs prior to use. Pay particular attention to tap assemblies; half a keg of beer on the floor just isn't funny.
Don't assume yeast is ok and sprinkle it on the top. Always rehydrate in a cup of cooled boiled water (25-30 deg C is usually ok) and leave for half an hour - at least you'll know it is ok.
Don't try and brew half cut, just don't. It is asking for trouble.
When raking into a bottling bucket it is often a good idea to make sure the tap is turned off.

So there you go, I've done all of these things and still produced decent beer and if a complete idiot like me can do it, so can you.

Saturday Brewathon Planned

2010-01-29T14:57:00.002Z

It's been a quiet couple of weeks on the brew front, largely due to the need to tidy the conservatory in preparation for the Sky engineer who fitted the new HD box in the bedroom yesterday.

In the shed I've got my first lager kit, a Brewferm Gold, lagering away in the brewfridge; it's got another two weeks to do at 11 degrees centigrade and will then be bottled and conditioned at 2 degrees.

My wife's hosiery has again been put to good use in the conservatory, this time holding elderflowers for the Wherry kit tweak. I'm also using Nottingham yeast for the first time so I'm making sure fermentation has definitely finished before I rack it into the bottling bucket.

Haven't decided for sure what I'm going to put on to ferment tomorrow; it is a toss up between Munton's Mexican Cerveza which will be down with a Youngs Lager yeast or the Brewferm Pils kit that I've got a specialist lager yeast in for. Saflager S189 was, apparently, developed by the Hurlimann brewery in Zurich. For the uninitiated Albert Hurlimann was a yeast expert of world renown and is responsible for the world famous Samichlaus doppelbock.

Now, I have no desire to produce a 14% ABV beer but I am keen to see what a specialist yeast can do to what is a pretty decent kit.

The other thing I simply must do is get another Chablis Blush kit on. Four and a half demijons of rose wine ready to drink in seven days. Guaranteed to keep me in my wife's good books.

First Brews of 2010

2010-01-13T17:01:00.000Z

My brewing resolution this year is to experiment more with kit brews before possibly moving to all grain brewing later in the year. I say possibly, I'd really like to do it but lack of space and the fact the the full mashers seem to spend a whole day brewing keep putting me off. On the other hand, I'm told that "when I try brewing all grain once, I'll never go back"

The promise of beer ready to drink in half the time of conventional kits, that's streets ahead of anything I've ever tasted in my life before seems hard to resist; but how's a lazy twat like me ever going to get round to it?

In any event, I've decided with my latest brew to experiment with some dry hopping. Avid readers (and anyone else who has been subjected to my written or verbal wibblings) will know that I've fallen in love with the citrus zing associated with the Amarillo hop. So I've borrowed (like she's going to want it back) a stocking from my lovely wife, sterilised it and stuffed it full of 40 grams of amarillo with a stone and a couple of rubber bungs to weigh it down.

As you can see from the (bottom) pic, I need a considerably heavier stone. If you're ever shipwrecked, make sure you've got a sackful of hops close by, you'll never sink!

This one's made it down from 1048 to 1010 in five days meaning it will come out about five and a bit percent. The plan is to give it another five days in the fermenting vessel then rack it in a secondary FV for 2-3 days before bottling, add 85g of brewing sugar then bottle. Ideally it'll then get a week in the conservatory and six weeks in the shed but I bet I start it after four.

The second beer of the year if my first attempt at a lager. Just sometimes lager drinkers can get right on my tits. "Have you got any proper beer?" they'd say to me at barbecues last year without even giving it a try. I gave in and got a case of Becks to shut them up but this year, I'm going to have three or four brews to keep lager boys (and girls) happy.

The first one's in the baby FV now. It's a Brewferm gold kit I've made with Youngs lager yeast and some brewing sugar. As you can see from the top pic it's crusting away quite nicely. It started off about with an OG of 1056 and I'm hoping it'll get down to 1016 which would be about 5.2%. To be honest, going for strength alone is missing the point. I want flavour and balance; I've made some cracking beers around 3.5% and a couple of stinkers at 5-6%.

Got a bit of a busy weekend coming up but I hope to have time to rack the Amarillo IPA so I can get the next one on the go, which will be one of a Brewferm Pils, Coopers European Lager or a Mexican Cerveza, and if anyone dare ask me if I've got any Stella or Becks at my next barbecue they can stick it where the sun don't shine.

Best Homebrewed Beer to go with a Curry?

2010-01-09T19:51:00.000Z

It is a genuine sadness that, for years, the reputation of the English in an Indian restaurant, beautifully parodied in Goodness Gracious Me, consisted of ordering a million poppodums and a vindaloo or phall washed down with as much lager as humanly possible.

These days the Indian restaurants I've been to have wonderfully delicate balances of flavours and aromatics yet most restaurants serve lager or a lager variant. Now I do like a drop of Bangla but I think ale drinkers could come up with hundreds of beers that would accompany a curry more appropriately.

There are lot of things completely wrong with lager as an accompaniment to spicy food; it is too gassy for a start and, for me, it very often doesn't have enough "cut" and the flavours are rather one dimensional.

For my experiment I made notes of six beers, all of which I brewed myself from kits widely available in local homebrew shops or online. Some were brewed "as is" and some had added ingredients but, for benchmarking purposes, all were drunk with the same curry, a chicken bhuna made with sharwoods bhuna sauce. I had originally thought I would make a curry from scratch but, if you do that, they all turn out a bit differently and, far more importantly, I'm a lazy git and I really couldn't be bothered.

The six beers were:

Woodforde's Great Eastern with Elderflowers (6.25%)
Coopers Aussie Pale Ale (brewed with hopped light spraymalt and golden cane sugar, 6.25%)
Geordie Mild (brewed with Dark Spraymalt & Golden cane sugar, 7%)
Brewferm Abdij (Brewed with dark Candi Sugar) 7%
Coopers IPA with Amarillo hops 5%
Brupaks Scammonden Dark (brewed "as is") 4.2%

The Great Eastern was a lovely beer, light golden in colour and floral in bouquet and a lovely drink it its own right but it just didn't go with the curry. It was too gassy (my fault, I'd not let it ferment out before I bottled it. I suspect the version I'd done before without the elderflowers that had a caramelly finish (I'd drunk the lot by the time it was five weeks old) might have gone better.

I'd nominated the Aussie Pale purely because when I first tasted it, it reminded me of a Bangla, like a lager but a bit maltier. It goes ok with the curry but didn't really rock my world to be honest.

The same could not have been said for the Geordie Mild. As far as I am concerned Mild and Porter styles are born to go with curry, not too gassy, full of winter fruit flavours, subtle enough not to dominate the dish and strong enough to hold it's own. At 37.5 p a pint it was also the cheapest pint in the test.

The Belgian style kits really do need long maturation times. I'd made this one back in August but didn't test it until late October when it was not terribly pleasant at all. However, by December it had really come into its own. The Abdij, a dark abbey style beer went well with the Bhuna although the carbonation was higher than I would have liked.

I'd expected the Indian Pale Ale to go well with Indian food and with the extra Amarillo hops giving it a really citrussy lift I wasn't disappointed. This is one of my favourite brews so far and has a fair chance of becoming my house brew (I've got another one on and I'm dry hopping the Amarillo this time). Carbonation levels were good but not over gassy.

The Scammonden Dark is another example of the excellent Brupaks kits. I brewed this one as per instructions including making a "tea" out of the hop tea bag. It truly pushed the Geordie Mild to the limit and had many of the same characteristics, robust but not overpowering flavour and it did seem to pick out the spices in the curry particularly well.

Ultimately, the Geordie Mild won this battle of the brews; I don't suppose my words will be having restaurateurs galloping off to their nearest micro brewery demanding bottles of mild to go with their curry but if one person who reads this blog tries a mild with their next takeaway it'll be worth it to me.

Brewer's OCD

2010-01-08T09:42:00.000Z

We've all heard about certain ahem, conditions, brought on by alcohol (like Shakespeare said "provokes the desire but takes away the performance" and all that) but I need to bring to your attention a far worse plight to afflict the brewer.

When I restarted brewing last March, my friends on the Home Brewing and Winemaking Forum told me I'd soon be obsessed. I laughed them off but they were right and soon I was brewing beer much faster than I could drink it.

At first I thought it was my "inner nerd" calling me and that I would be the same with any hobby, but this one's different. From September to Christmas when I had to dismantle the brewing paraphernalia and decamp it to the shed, I was brewing at the rate of one brew per weekend. Goodness me I even started making cider and wine (I hate cider). As a result I've had only one pint of shop bought beer in that time (excluding a trip to France when there was obviously no homebrew available).

My "inner nerd" has morphed into full blown OCD and I can't stop brewing. It's got so bad that I've run out of storage space, and I've got 100 empty bottles awaiting the next brew.

Judging by the activity on home brewing forums and anecdotal evidence by all of the home brew shops I've visited, home brewing and winemaking is a burgeoning hobby. Speculation abounds that it's due to the rumours of the government's 50p per unit policy but, whatever the reason, those who dip their toes in wort soon become attracted by its sticky sweetness.

For me it was all about saving money at the start but, as soon as I realised I could brew beer that tasted better than anything I could buy in a supermarket and at a fraction of the price, even cost went out of the window. My worry is that eventually the trend will become so obvious that the government will apply a duty to beer kits, malt, yeast and hops. Now that really would be a sad day.

How Long Before the Shed's Snowed In?

2010-01-08T09:26:00.000Z

Before I put my beer in my Brewfridges to keep them at a constant 12 deg C, they were coming out of the kegs really flat as all the CO2 was being absorbed. Until it started snowing I had four kegs on the go, two of which were at 12 degrees and therefore had a decent supply of well conditioned beer to last me through the cold snap.

Curses; now my innate laziness has come back to bite me on the bum. I'd taken a keg to my brother in law's for Christmas Day and one to my Father in Law's for Boxing Day. I could have collected them both last weekend but now I'm snowed in and I've only got 20 pints of Scammonden Dark and a couple of pints of stout to keep me going. My main worry is that I won't be able to open the shed door tonight (don't look at me like that Temperance Society, it's a Friday) or, worse still, the shed roof won't be able to take the weight of the snow.

Early tester of Munton's Smugglers Light

2010-01-07T20:12:00.000Z

Not clear yet, it's only been on the bottle three weeks but the early signs are promising. I've brewed this one long so the ABV came out at 3.66% instead of the 5% it should have done. Another three weeks and it'll be quite decent though, I reckon.

Constructing a Brewfridge

2010-01-06T19:26:00.000Z

One of the first things I noticed about brewing in the shed was that the extremes of temperature seem to affect my brew adversely in terms of how long it would take; it would sometimes get "stuck" at a specific gravity of 1018 and take days to shift.

Quite apart from anything else, the extremes of temperature in my rickety old shed, aren't going to lend themselves to conditioning too well either, so I followed some advice on the Brew it Yourself forum and started constructing a temperature controlled brewing environment.

In principle it's quite a straightforward idea; you use a fridge, a heater and a means of switching them both on and off a degree either side of the specified temperature.

The tube heater in the botton of the fridge.

The fridge I picked up on Freecycle, but the heater and controller were slightly more expensive. The tubular heater can be bought from any online electrical retailer but I would avoid Chemist Direct who took 10 days to deliver mine.

There are a few temperature controllers on the market; I chose one called an ATC800 from a company called Forttex. These are more often used to regulate the temperatures of tropical fish tanks but have applications in brewing also.

The ATC800 controller.

Basically you set a predefined point at which you want your brew toferment (or condition) and wire the fridge and heater into either end of the controller, a probe goes into the fridge. For my current brew (A Woodforde's Wherry) the ideal fermentation temperature is 24 degrees C. So I set the ATC800 to 24, with a 1 degree tolerence either side. The heater comes on until the temperature reaches 24, when the hearter goes off. The temperature continues to rise and when it reaches 25 degrees, the fridge comes on until the temp reaches 24 when it turns off, then when it gets to 23 degrees the heater kicks back in.

Now how's that for service?

2010-01-06T18:36:00.000Z

Placed my first order with Barley Bottom yesterday; a couple of packets of yeast and some hops. Paul gave me a call today to let me know one of them was out of stock, and did I want something else or wait til next week.

It's a simple thing, but knowing most of your customers like to get a brew on at the weekend is something other online HB retailers could learn from.

Does it save you money?

2010-01-05T19:02:00.000Z

I was recently asked the question "have you saved money by brewing your own?" After rather a lot of head scratching I've come up with figures that seem to suggest that I've not actually saved any money but just reappropriated it in the family budget.

This disappointed me initially as the main reason for taking the hobby up in the first place was that I couldn't justify spending £20 a week on bottled beer in Tesco. Now, before all you holier than thou unit counters start tutting, I'm talking about about 12 x 500ml bottles of real ale (none of this fizzy lager pish) and not three cases of cut price Stella; that's enough for a bottle of ale with my dinner each evening and a couple of extras on Friday and Saturday.

That works out at £1040 per year so, if your set up costs and the first year's brewing don't exceed that, you're on a winner, right?

Well, yes, but accurately calculating it is quite another matter. There are a whole load of items you have to factor in:

brewing sugar, or spraymalt

sterilising chemicals

ullage

electricity

carriage charges

Brewing Sugar

If you brew using a 3Kg (two can kit) you'll only need sugar for priming (secondary fermentation) and ordinary household sugar (preferably cane) if perfectly ok for this and you'll only need between 85 and 100g for this deopending on how fizzy you like your beer so the cost is negligible.

However if you prefer the single can kits (1.5-1.8 kg) you'll need to add anything from 800g to 1.5Kg or fermentable. This may be cane sugar, brewing sugar or spray dried malt (spraymalt). Spraymalt comes in Light, medium and dark varieties which are either hopped or not. You can also use honey, treacle, golden syrup etc. I generally use golden cane caster sugar (about £1.30 a kilo), brewing sugar (£2 a kilo) dissolves more easily somne believe it gives a cleaner taste to lagers but I've never brewed a lager so couldn't tell you. In some darker brews I use dark spraymalt (£3.99 for 500g) and in the Geordie Kits I use their Beer Kit Enhancer which is 50% brewing sugar and 50% spraymalt (£5 a kilo).

Sterilising Chemicals

Most brewers use VWP a cleaner/sanitiser but I've never used it so can't comment. I personally favour soda crystals for cleaning and sterilising tablets like the ones you use in baby bottle kits. I think they're around 80p for 54 tablets in Tesco but you'll need 5 of them every time you sterilise a fermenting vessel.

Ullage

Most kits are rated at a 40 pint or 23 litre brewlength yet one rarely gets the full 40 pints out of the kit. A little is lost when syphoning into the bottles/keg/bottling bucket and the last bit of the keg can be notoriously difficult to get out. And, of course there's always the odd cheeky snifter. I typically get 20 x 1 litre bottles out of a 40 pint kit which equates to about 36 pints.

Electricity

The last one is really tricky to sort out and frankly I don't even want to think about it with 2 x fridges, 2 x tube heaters and lights and brewbelts all using up the juice in the shed.

Carriage Charges

Simple for this one - don't pay 'em. If you have a local Home Brewing Shop, use and support it. Take advantage of their expert knowledge and save yourselves up to £7 in carriage. Alternatively, most online shops offer free carriage for orders over £60, so stock up, plan your brews in advance. All brewers should have a rolling stock and am empty fermenting vessel is a heinous crime indeed.

So, having heeded all of the above, have I saved money. Well not quite. An inventory of the brewing equipment reveals I've spent £367 on equipment and £460 on beer kits. I've brewed 996 pints of beer (give or take) at an average price of 83p a pint. So, between March and Christmas (I'd like to think I've got enough to last until then) I've spent £827; during the same period I would have spent £780 on shop bought beer (39 weeks @ £20). However the home brew also supplied three rather large parties in the summer saving me a minimum of £30 per time on shop bought beer. Therefore by my rudimentary mathematics I'm just shy of fifty quid in front.

All of this, of course, is rather missing the point. How many hobbies give you ANY return on investment at all AND give you this much pleasure. Hmm thought not....

The Joy of Brewing

2010-01-05T17:17:00.000Z

A little bit of Sean's brewing history for you.

I first brewed on beer in the early 1980's. It wasn't intended to be that way; my mother bought my father a homebrew starter kit from Boots and then the Royal Navy decided to send him to the Falklands so I decided I'd brew it for him in his absence. Quite how much was left when he came back from deployment I can't say for sure but I did a few brews without much success and forgot about it until last year when financial hardship caused me to look at the amount I was spending on beer.

Now before the temperance society starts to look down its nose at me, I should point out that we're not talking about three cases of beer for £20 from a supermarket here. We talking about £20 worth beer bottled in 500ml bottles, sometimes bottle conditioned, sometimes not. However the thought of eschewing a pint after work in the comfort of my own home in favour of fruit tea (not that there's anything at all wrong with fruit tea - it's just not a pint isn't it) was just too much to bear.

So I looked at t'internet and I saw wonderful things. I saw that beer kits had come on a long way in 25 years; part of my reticence to return to kit brewing was the fact that my brews of the early 80's just weren't that good. Then I read some forums and realised that, a bit like a curry sauce from the early 90's wasn't all that compared to what can be bought today, so kits appeared to have improved also.

After about eight weeks mandatory procrastination (I'm quite good at this) I bit the bullet and broke out the credit card and bought a starter kit. The rest, as they say, is history. That was in March, 35 brews ago.