Your current / planned brews

oblivious

gosplan wrote: »

Just thought I'd fire a quick question in her rather than start a new thread.

I've some 10 month old Saaz leaf hops that have been in the freezer since purchase. Want to dry hop a pilsner kit with them.

Will they be OK.

Should I boil them for a min to sterilise or anything or just pop them in a muslin and put them in the secondary and rack the beer on them?

No need to boil them

Defrost as small amount and when they warm up see if they smell good.

Boiled-egg

Hello folks, New to the home brewing forum and indeed brewing. Just started my first attempt from a kit. Coppers Canadian blonde. It's only fermenting a few days and al ready I want to start another. Fingers crossed.

Ronan|Raven

Sampling a pint of the Evil Dog IPA. It is still very young (under a month since starting)
SG 1.062
FG 1.002
ABV 7.88% or so..

Even though it is so young it tastes great, I dry hopped it for 4 days before bottling. Considering how strong it is, it hides the high alcohol content well.

I am looking forward to trying it again in a few weeks.

Khannie

Just ordered that a few days ago.

Riddle me this - FG being that low indicates a lot of simple sugars, am I right?

Ronan|Raven

Khannie wrote: »

Just ordered that a few days ago.

Riddle me this - FG being that low indicates a lot of simple sugars, am I right?

i have no idea to be brutally honest! I just used the 4KG odd bag of wort and did not add any other fermentables to it. It varies a lot, a lot of people on the homebrewforums.co.uk report a FG of 1.008 some lower. The yeast is quite a beast..

Khannie

Fair enough. I was just trying to find out how much was malt extract and how much was sugar. I'm looking forward to it anyway.

baron von something

Ronan|Raven wrote: »

Sampling a pint of the Evil Dog IPA. It is still very young (under a month since starting)
SG 1.062
FG 1.002
ABV 7.88% or so..

Even though it is so young it tastes great, I dry hopped it for 4 days before bottling. Considering how strong it is, it hides the high alcohol content well.

I am looking forward to trying it again in a few weeks.

might give this a go too.my wife saw my homebrew shopping basket for stepping up to extract and nearly blew through her blow-off tube (see what i did there),so eh she doesn't want the kitchen to be turned into my personal extract brewery and doesn't want all the extra equipment lying around.man,my first world problems.looks like its kits for me for another while so

Lovely Bloke

haha, I was able to extract brew in my house with a few friends up until the mrs got pregnant, after that it was borrowed time, so we moved the operation to my parent's (it's just the 2 of them in the house, so they love the company every 3rd Saturday )

Today was Red Ale and an Oatmeal Stout, bottled a Red Ale and a Brown Ale.

baron von something

I'm trying to convince my mates its in their benefit for me to do it in their place seeing as they'll be the ones drinking it

Ronan|Raven

I would like to try extract at some point. Alas finding room to store the brews I have made is tricky enough. Just back from a trip to Ian in http://themottlybrew.ie/

Picked up a Triple Tykes, a Coopers IPA, and a Finlandia Lager kit, some bags of DME and some of the packs of hops they now stock.

I'm going to put on the Finlandia kit now and see how it turns out. It was too cheap to leave behind, I plan to brew it with 500G of light DME and 1KG Dextrose and will use some Saaz hops, why Saaz? I have no idea!

Lovely Bloke

what hops does he have?

and Saaz are a lager hop really - you've heard of Saazenbrau right?

Ronan|Raven

It is just the Bulldog range of finishing hops, the small 12g pouches.

Ronan|Raven

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

and Saaz are a lager hop really - you've heard of Saazenbrau right?

It is the 1980's all over again!

Lovely Bloke

Ronan|Raven wrote: »

It is just the Bulldog range of finishing hops, the small 12g pouches.

Saw it here, that's a very uninspiring hop range.

Lovely Bloke

So after yesterday's brewing, my sister has made some bread using the spent grain, going to pick up a loaf tomorrow.

The One Doctor

Currently have 9L of Joe's Not So Ancient Orange Mead to be bottled and about 20 bottles of fairly crap but drinkable ginger beer. Oh well, never mind.

Next up will be an extract heather beer, I'd like to go over to partial mash but my girlfriend is pregnant and I don't want any undue stress on her with me rushing around, plus we're in a tiny apartment. Maybe a small bag of speciality grains (1kg or so)?

gosplan

I know people kind of look down their noses a bit at kits but I just checked a Bulldog evil dog DIPA kit I put on 10 days ago.

OG -1068
Current - 1006

And it's not finished.

Kit came with a monster yeast pack.

Was 4.7kg and includes hops for secondary.

Hope it's nice, there's a lot of it.

Edit: Still going a couple of days later guessing 1.004 now. With temp adjustment OG would have been 1.070 so it should come in at 8.8%

calnand

Right after my Extra Irsh stout turned out nice, I'm deciding to go for a Weissbier for the summer, I've always loved having a pint of Friar Weisse on a nice summer day. after much research, I've come up with my recipe for a 5-gallon extract, which I hope to keg, when I purchase a system soon.

Steeping Grains.
500g Pilsner
500g Wheat

Boil
3KG Wheat LME
500g Extra Light DME

This should give me a OG of 1.048

60 Min Boil time
one Hop addition of 30g Hallertauer Mittelfruh @ 45 Mins

Using WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Liquid Yeast, will have to make a starter, but I'm looking forward to trying that out.

After all that I should end up with a FG of 1.013 and a nice Weissbier to enjoy during the summer.

If anyone has any experience of doing a Weissbier I'd love to hear it, before I put in my order.

stuchyg

Tasted a lovely extract a couple of weeks ago and there was no steep involved, just the boil and some saaz hop addition with safbrew yeast

tyler71

calnand wrote: »

Right after my Extra Irsh stout turned out nice, I'm deciding to go for a Weissbier for the summer, I've always loved having a pint of Friar Weisse on a nice summer day.
.

That's gas, I've just brewed an Extra Stout (just started bubbling this morning) and am also planning a Weissbier. I was just going to use the 'Brewing Classic Styles' receipe, which is similar to yours but simpler - basically 3.9kg Wheat LME, 23g Hallertau at 60mins and WLP300yeast. I don't get why you're looking to steep Pilsner and Wheat though, they're base malts so they'll really need to be mashed and even then you won't get anything that different from them than you'd get from the LME - having said that, I've never tried it so I'm not sure, but it just seems unusual.

calnand

I was hoping by steeping the wheat and pilsner grains I would bring a proper flavour to the beer, also from my research the wheat can help with head retention, which seams to be a problem with most of my previous beers. It never hurts to try anyway. Hopefully should order ingredients tonight and get a delivery during the week, I'm trying to see if I should order supplies for a second beer, I'm thinking an ale but not sure yet. I made a gallon of turbo cider last night, and it's bubbling away nicely upstairs. I've never been a huge fan of cider but I've read good things about it here.

baron von something

finally convinced my wife to let me get my extract hardware.gonna brew the hbc discover america pale ale for my first extract brew tonight.i thought there was going to be extra hops in it to dry hop but sure no matter
made up my own recipe using the Brewtarget software so i'll go mad and give that a lash next

tyler71

calnand wrote: »

I was hoping by steeping the wheat and pilsner grains I would bring a proper flavour to the beer, also from my research the wheat can help with head retention, which seams to be a problem with most of my previous beers. It never hurts to try anyway. Hopefully should order ingredients tonight and get a delivery during the week, I'm trying to see if I should order supplies for a second beer, I'm thinking an ale but not sure yet. I made a gallon of turbo cider last night, and it's bubbling away nicely upstairs. I've never been a huge fan of cider but I've read good things about it here.

I just don't think you'll get anything from them that you don't already have- you already have loads of wheat in the LME and I'd bet that your light DME is made from Pilsner. There's very little flavour in Pilsner anyway and you'll have to do a mini mash at 62-67deg with it to get it to convert, so it just seems like a lot of work just to get a fermentable sugar. I think making a starter with the WLP300 will be the more important factor in getting a good flavour, that's what I'm hoping anyway!

oscarBravo

I just kicked off a gorse flower wine, broadly in line with a recipe I saw in the Guardian. Five litres of gorse flowers, five litres of water, a kilo of cane sugar, 450g of honey, 500g of chopped raisins and the juice and zest of two lemons. It will probably be the end of the year before it's really ready to drink - can't wait. OG is 1098.

Ronan|Raven

Just bottled the Finlandia Lager kit I made.
Figured I may as well make the Coopers IPA now. I have high hopes for this IPA kit, it gets pretty good reviews.

Lovely Bloke

stuchyg wrote: »

Off the top of my head for a 5ltr brew

150g of carapils
500g spray wheat
14gHersbrucker @ 60
7g @ 15
7g @ 3

Teaspoon of orange zest and half teaspoon coriander @ 0

I use safbrew 33 yeast when I make mine, this delish

made a version of this today, smelled amazing in the FV before the yeast went in. Can't wait to bottle it and then try it.

Also bottled Red Ale Batch 4, and an Oatmeal Stout that had a lovely smooth mouthfeel, looking forward to it.

Then my Dad found a bottle of extract that we made some time last year, it had become lodged between his chest freezer and tumble dryer. All the time in the bottle hasn't stopped it being an absolute overcarbonated mess, but the beer inside is a lovely dark porter, I was at the time and remain extremely disappointed that we got the priming wrong on it.

stuchyg

hope it turns out well for you, fresh wit blows anything you can buy here out of the water

Khannie

Fired up that double IPA yesterday. Looking forward to sampling it. OG was 1.074 which gives an estimated ABV of over 8% assuming a FG of 1.008 ish.

Ronan|Raven

Khannie wrote: »

Fired up that double IPA yesterday. Looking forward to sampling it. OG was 1.074 which gives an estimated ABV of over 8% assuming a FG of 1.008 ish.

It can and most likely will go lower than 1.008!
I have a bottle of it in the fridge cooling at the moment, it is getting better every week, I have had to "hide" a batch of 20 bottles out of my reach.

oscarBravo

I sampled the second bottle of my turbo cider last night, it has improved dramatically. I'll leave it a while before trying again.

I also racked the gorse flower wine into a demijohn for secondary fermentation. I took a sneaky sip from the SG sample - I'd drink it as it is!. I think it's going to be one of the nicest things I've ever tasted, when it's finished.