Your current / planned brews

howamidifferent

I threw a few kits on last night.
First was a Better Brew 2.1KG Czech Pilsner with 1.5KG LME & 1KG Dextrose. OG was 1062. Added a hop teabag to this one.

Next was a Better Brew IPA 2.1KG with 1.5KG LME & 1KG Dextrose. OG was 1060.

Hoping for some high ABV beers...

I have a Cooper Irish Stout and a Coopers Australian Draft Ale in the bottle now 2 weeks so I'll sample a few tonight...

lang

lang wrote: »

Put on this brew yesterday:

Coopers Original Real Ale (1.7kg Can)
Can of Liquid Malt Extract (Light)
300g Dry Malt Extract (Light)
Hop Tea: 30g Cascade Leaf @20m, 12g Fuggles Pellets @6m (The 300g DME was used in this with about 1.5 litres pre-boil of water)
Yeast: Safale s-04 pitched straight into wort, left on top for 10 minutes and then gently mixed in. Pitching temp about 22C
Checked on it this morning and all is bubbling away nicely. Will keep it in Primary for about 10-14 days, transfer to Secondary and Dry Hop with about another 30g Cascade.

Racked this to Secondary today. Nice a simple. Will be leaving it in there for about 2 weeks and in the Second week I'll be adding about 30g of Leaf Cascade for a bit of Aroma.

I know people live in two seperate camps here on the whole 'to Rack or not to Rack'. I've done it from the first brew and to date I haven't had a proplem with it. I think it helps develop the flavour and get rid of the 'off' flavours. There is the added issue of the increased potential to introduce infection to the brew but if you make sure to sanitise everything then you should be alright. I'll continue racking to Secondary for as long as I've got no bad brews as a result.

Herb Powell

Filled a langerload of bottles today, always a good feeling. I'll have to see how it is in a couple of weeks.

gazahayes

lang wrote: »

Looks very nice. Might built a few myself. I always have a brew in the bottles and the cardboard boxes are beginning to get a bit tatty. Did you have a specific plan you got from interweb or did you just work out measurements youself? Would just have to make sure to store them outta the light or keep covered with blanket or something.

I got the idea from
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/how-make-beer-crate-12oz-beer-bottles-318788/
And just adapted it to how many bottles and the sizes as well. I don't. Mind the light getting at them as it's nearly all cider I brew

VeVeX

My next brew -

Partial SMaSH Partial mash IPA

Ingredients:
3kg Maris Otter
1.5kg HBC Light LME
200g Cascade Pellets
1 Tablet Whirlfloc
Safale US-05 Yeast

Hop Schedule
50g Cascade – 60 minutes boil
30g Cascade – 30 minutes boil
30g Cascade – 20 minutes boil
30g Cascade – 10 minutes boil
30g Cascade – 3 minutes boil

30g Cascade Dry hop in Secondary

Should be slightly hoppy

Herb Powell

Sneaky taste of my IPA today. Tastes wonderfully English. Soft, fuggles hops I think, with a real warming body, but not cloying or overpowering. The head is also one of the creamiest I've seen from ANY beer, which suprised me. And it's clear!

Gonna leave it at least another week conditioning though.

eurofoxy

put on a coopers irish stout yesterday, and added the chocolate as per another thread, smelled very strong of chocolate, but will see how it turns out, up next is another turbo cider, gonna put that on this week sometime...

Khannie

Khannie wrote: »

I have two variations on a "classic".

1) Mixed berries + cloudy apple (1.2KG of berries to 11L of apple - put them in sanitised tights).
2) cloudy apple + juice of cooking apples.

Looking forward to both.

Bottled both of these. The berries one looks and smells amazing. I have very high hopes for it. The tights helped a lot by keeping the gick out of the brew though they were constantly inflated because they're too fine to let out any air when wet (very minor issue). I bought some muslin bags in the mean time which I'll use in future.

The cooking apples one smelled really good so I have high hopes for it too.

stuchyg

Presume the berries were frozen khannie

Khannie

Yep. 1 bag of mixed berries and 1 bag of raspberries from the frozen section in lidl. Added apple juice to them and blended then poured them through a funnel into the tights (in the bucket).

Just before blending:


The finished product:

loyatemu

Khannie wrote: »

Yep. 1 bag of mixed berries and 1 bag of raspberries from the frozen section in lidl. Added apple juice to them and blended then poured them through a funnel into the tights (in the bucket).

you using any sweetener in these Khannie? One criticism of my previous cider attempts (from home-grown apples) is that the result is always very dry.

Khannie

I am - 3 sweetener tablets per 500ml in the mixed berries one. That gives a sweetness level well below commercial stuff. The berries one doesn't need a lot of sweetness, so I think you could probably get away with even less. I would imagine that home made cider is mouth puckeringly dry stuff if you're not using any sweetener at all though. They make quite a bit of fully dry cider in France and I tried a few when I was over there - I just found it to be too much for my taste.

stuchyg

Did you top up with more apple juice once you added to the fermenter. When you say sweetener tabs are you talking canderel and the like.

Speaking of which, could you pour VitaCider when fermented and add a tab of sweetner if its too dry

Khannie

stuchyg wrote: »

Did you top up with more apple juice once you added to the fermenter.

I fermented out 9 litres of cider fully, then blended the berries with some juice and added it to the cider in the sanitised tights, then let that fully ferment out then primed, sweetened and bottled. It takes quite a bit longer than a normal brew to get to the bottle, but it retains flavour well this way.

I tasted it last night (couldn't wait ) and it is as good as (or better than) commercial mixed berry cider. I think the brew process above would be hard to improve on for an apple and berries cider.

stuchyg wrote: »

When you say sweetener tabs are you talking canderel and the like.

Yeah, but not Canderel. It's aspartame based and that breaks down in alcohol. I use the cheapo lidl sweetener (cologran). The tesco everyday one is the same. I may move back to splenda though.

howamidifferent

I bottled 44 x 500ml bottles of Muntons Gold IPA last night. ABV of 7%.
First time using a secondary fermentation, 3 weeks in first and a few days in second and it cleared it up brilliantly. Smelled and looked magnificent.

Have a Czech Pilsner and a better brew IPA on the go since 25/03 also.

howamidifferent

Just saw Lidl are doing packs of frozen fruits/berries on offer this week at €1.99 down from €2.99...33% off. Maybe of use to anyone wanting to add to a cider or other brew...:)

Khannie

WOOP! Thanks for the tip. I'm going to do a large batch of the mixed berries and raspberry one that I did up recently. It is *amazing* stuff.

Lovely Bloke

Brewing this weekend - the plan is to do

1. Extract Brown Ale
2. Ginger Ale from scratch (about 18litres)
3. IPA Kit
4. Wheat Beer Kit

Also bottling a Coopers Pale Ale (Lager) straight kit, plus a half kit of Coopers Irish Stout with Chocolate, Treacle and Vanilla, and a half kit of Coopers Irish Stout with 2 quartered chillis in it.

Going to be a long Brew Day, hoping to get started at about 1030 or so, which will include cleaning 100 Pint bottles which I'm picking up from a pub in the next hour.

*******************************

For the Ginger Beer I'll be getting 2 or 3 kilos of ginger, peeling and mashing it, before boiling it in about 3 litres of water. Going to also squeeze about 4 or 5 limes into it, and use about 3 kilo of Sugar and 500g of Medium Spraymalt, topping up to about 18 litres in the fermenter.

The Brown Ale will have the following

340g Roasted Malt
230g Biscuit Malt
230g Crystal Malt
110g Chocolate Malt
2.5kg Light DME
35g Kent Gouldings for 60mins
15g Kent Gouldings for 15mins
English Ale Yeast.

Hopefully get about 20 litres.

Any tips would be handy, it's out first extract brew

stuchyg

Khannie wrote: »

WOOP! Thanks for the tip. I'm going to do a large batch of the mixed berries and raspberry one that I did up recently. It is *amazing* stuff.

Khannie are you planning to try enter the cider market, id say Bulmers are reading this thread and shi1ting themselves.

PS thanks for the pics of the mixed berry cider, will be making it in the next couple weeks

Khannie

stuchyg wrote: »

Khannie are you planning to try enter the cider market, id say Bulmers are reading this thread and shi1ting themselves.

howamidifferent

I put on 26L of Lidl cloudy Apple juice last night.
Picked up some frozen berries in Lidl also so will add to secondary in a few weeks. Looking forward to this...

matrim

Have a couple of plans for upcoming brews

1. Full 5 gallon IPA extract brew. Crystal malt, LME, Chinook and cascade.
2. Small 1 gallon Wit beer style. Similar to this
3. This one is still a maybe but I might try a small 1 or 2 gallon version of the Turbo cider (maybe fruit version)

Tom75

Last night - 20L apple wine
and plan for Friday - 20L of prunes wine

fobster

Kicked off a wheat beer kit (Munton's Connoisseur range) last Sunday. Using White labs WLP 300 liquid yeast though the Munton's yeast is pretty good.

Dry-hopping it with an ounce of Citra for 5 days, hoping for a tropical twist.

Boardnashea

I'm just starting to tuck into the first few bottles of Coopers Heritage lager. I thought it had stopped fermenting a little early but it is just great. Very nice head on it. It went into Coopers (I think) 500ml plastic bottles which seem to work well. Only downsides are the plastic bottle always seems very light in the hand and the box they come in is light cardboard and probably won't last too long.
Previous brew was a Coopers Pale Ale which is a bit too flavoursome. Too treacley - but well drinkable all the same. That went into 2 L bottles. Much prefer the 500mls.
Next on the cards.. not sure yet. Might stay with the Coopers for a while yet. Going to get a 25L bucket with tap and bottling wand for next time though.

fobster

Boardnashea wrote: »

Previous brew was a Coopers Pale Ale which is a bit too flavoursome. Too treacley - but well drinkable all the same. That went into 2 L bottles. Much prefer the 500mls.
Next on the cards.. not sure yet. Might stay with the Coopers for a while yet. Going to get a 25L bucket with tap and bottling wand for next time though.

I recommend getting length of pvc tube as well and you can then attach the tube to the tap and put the bottling wand on the other end and just dip & fill, dip & fill.

How much did you get into the bucket for the pale ale? And what ingredients did you add?

Currently - 1 demijohn of pea-pod wine.

Planned:

Dandelion wine (in next week or so). Probably make 1 demijohn of it.

Beech-leaf Noyau (in next month or so).

Elderflower champagne (20 litres), Elerflower wine (1 demijohn), Elderflower liquer (1 litre) - obviously dependant on when elderflower is in bloom. Will also make a litre or two of cordial, but that's non-alcoholic!

My birch sap collection plans were scuppered this year as it was below freezing most nights the sap was flowing, and I didn't think my "taps" would work properly. :mad:

Druss.

tommiet

goin brewing this beer today..


Recipe Specifications

---

Batch Size: 23.00 L
Boil Size: 30.50 L
Estimated OG: 1.037 SG
Estimated Color: 21.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 23.3 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:

---

3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 76.9 %
0.75 kg Crystal Malt - 60L (Thomas Fawcett) (60.0 Grain 19.2 %
0.15 kg Chocolate Malt (Thomas Fawcett) (508.0 SRMGrain 3.8 %
30.00 gm Fuggles [4.50%] (45 min) Hops 15.1 IBU
30.00 gm Fuggles [4.50%] (15 min) Hops 8.2 IBU
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-
Ale Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Batch Sparge. - Hot
Total Grain Weight: 3.90 kg

what ye reckon... any tweaks. only have fuggles hops..

gazahayes

[Deleted User] wrote: »

My birch sap collection plans were scuppered this year as it was below freezing most nights the sap was flowing, and I didn't think my "taps" would work properly. :mad:

Druss.

Now is the perfect time for collecting sap I was trimming branches of birch and got soaked from the sap coming from the cuts

Knifey Spoony

Prepared my first ever brew yesterday. It's just a standard Copper's pale ale, but I can't wait to taste it and even have my next two brews planned out which will be tweaks to standard kits. But, that's provided that this first batch goes smoothly.