Your current / planned brews

baron von something

Interesting is one word for it. Me and a friend tucked into a batch of my 'Joes Ancient Orange Mead' about a month ago.i hadn't been that drunk in years

That_Guy

Ordered a bit of equipment and decided to throw in Munton's Premium Old Ale with 1KG of spraymalt.

Will brew that once I've bottled my current batch in about 2 weeks time.

Keedowah

Have a Coopers Wheat beer (made with orange and corriander) in bottles about two weeks and its turning out really well. Made it around about this time last year also but it was over-carbed and too sweet. Think this one is much better. Delighted.

This weekend I'm going to make a Coopers Draught for the first time, I have brew enhancer 2 that I was going to use with it - not sure if that's a good or bad idea? I'm also thinking of dry hopping it with cascade hops when I transfer it to secondary. I was think about leaving it in secondary for about 4 or 5 days (no more than 7). I've never added hops to any of my brews in the past.

Any thoughts?

Mac-Chops

Going to crack open my first effort of a Warrior IPA tonight. Excitement of a Friday!

If I was following the guidelines to a T, I should hold off until Tuesday but trying a sample bottle as the missus' Da is over for the weekend.

Hopes not very high given my newbieness but at least something mildly pleasant will do just fine!

baron von something

just stuck on a couple of 5ltr batches of "prosecco" using apple juice,grape&peach juice,sugar and yeast
i messed up fitting my airlocks into the lids of the bottles,the hole is a bit big so there might be a bit too much air able to get in

BeerNut

baron von something wrote: »

i messed up fitting my airlocks into the lids of the bottles,the hole is a bit big so there might be a bit too much air able to get in

It makes no difference whether it's sealed or not, there'll be a CO2 blanket on the surface of the liquid and a continuous stream of fresh CO2 coming out during the fermentation. Keep it still and the air won't get near it.

Elbow

Bottled an absolute cracker last night (if i do say so myself )

Head Wrecker*

3.7% ABV


19L Batch

3.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC)
0.75 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (113.0 EBC)
8.00 g Simcoe [9.50 %] - Boil 40.0 min
6.00 g Centennial [10.30 %] - Boil 25.0 min
8.00 g Centennial [10.30 %] - Boil 15.0 min
0.50 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 5.0 mins)
10.00 g Centennial [10.30 %] - Boil 5.0 min
10.00 g Centennial [10.30 %] - Boil 0.0 min
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
28.30 g Simcoe [9.50 %] - Dry Hop 9.0 Days
28.00 g Centennial [10.03 %] - Dry Hop 9.0 Days
40.00 g Simcoe [9.50 %] - Dry Hop 5.0 Days



OG - 1.040
FG - 1.012

75 minute mash @ 68°
60 minute boil

BeerNut

Why boil for 60 minutes if there's no 60 minute hop addition?

Elbow

BeerNut wrote: »

Why boil for 60 minutes if there's no 60 minute hop addition?

I could make up a big technical explanation involving chemical reactions that I don't fully understand but the reality is that I have things nicely worked out for a 60 minute boil and couldn't be bothered changing for the sake of 20 minutes

oblivious

Elbow wrote: »

I could make up a big technical explanation involving chemical reactions that I don't fully understand but the reality is that I have things nicely worked out for a 60 minute boil and couldn't be bothered changing for the sake of 20 minutes

Reason for a 60 min boil:

1) The proteins will precipitated out for you (clarity and reduced infection control).

2) To hit your final volume and gravity, sparing will add a lot of volume to your wort.

3) DME has needs to be boiled off.

4) Colour development.

5) pH will drop over the boil to around 5.2–5.4

ECau

Just bottled my first ever brew on Wednesday night! 10L of Brupaks Extra Irish Stout.

Made a complete blunder and didn't realise until a day into fermentation that I should have had water in the airlock. Would you expect that to ruin your beer?
I've tasted when taking gravity readings and when bottling and it doesn't taste half bad.

As of last night I have a 23L batch of Better Brew Czech Pilsner fermenting. Can't wait to start drinking it all now!

drumswan

Not having water in the airlock will make no difference.

blueshed

ECau wrote: »

Just bottled my first ever brew on Wednesday night! 10L of Brupaks Extra Irish Stout.

Made a complete blunder and didn't realise until a day into fermentation that I should have had water in the airlock. Would you expect that to ruin your beer?
I've tasted when taking gravity readings and when bottling and it doesn't taste half bad.

As of last night I have a 23L batch of Better Brew Czech Pilsner fermenting. Can't wait to start drinking it all now!

did you add anything to the Pilsner kit, lad i know adds can of LME and some saaz hops and it tastes very nice.

ECau

used 1.5kg of LME. Keeping it basic for the minute until I get to grips with the process

blueshed

plan on brewing a stout tomorrow, and this is my recipe. feel free to point out anything wrong.

4kg of either pale or stout malt

300g flaked oats
250g carapils
200g roasted barley
100g carafa III
100g chocolate
100g munich

25g magnum @ 60mins

mangrove jack British ale yeast

90min mash

75min boil

That_Guy

I've got a lager and an ale kit sitting in the house. It's an old ale kit and am half thinking of adding a strawberry mix to it. It's a 12 pint kit so I wouldn't lose too much sleep if it turned out to be crap.

Head says just stick with the lager and spraymalt but heart is willing to be a bit creative.

Very first batch is still in the FV nearly 2 weeks so I'll have a bit of time to decide what I wanna do.

Lovely Bloke

Did some brewing at the weekend, a pretty simple amber ale, with 500g crystal steeped, and 2kg of amber DME, 70g EKG and 20g Hersbrucker in a single 60m addition.

Also made a bit of an experiment, 600g biscuit steeped, 3kg Amber DME, with 60g EKG and 10g Target at 60m, then 10g Target at 30, 25, 20, 15, 10 & 5

However, we opened 4 beers that we'd done over the last couple of brew days

One pretty similar to the first brew above, think the DME was light though
One Stout, which I'm very pleased with
One Xmas beer, which is similar to the above pale ales, but we added ginger, cinnamon and Star Anise late in the boil (I think 15m), the spices are noticeable, but subtle, another three or four weeks in the bottles and they'll be even better I think.
And "The Mongrel" which was made from left over malts and hops before our last buy - it's pretty good pale ale, really well balanced - the only thing going against it is that it's cloudy like a Wheat beer, because we never got a chance to rack it.

All told though, four pretty solid beers to round out our year brewing, and a great base for next year.

Can't wait.

BeerNut

Well done Baldy

I bottled my single-hop Polaris pale ale at the weekend and it was tasting great. Really looking forward to that being ready to drink.

I also brewed an amber ale using 200 EBC CaraBohemian and a mix of Citra and late Summit. It tasted a bit sweaty but I'm hoping some generous dry hopping will freshen it up.

Lovely Bloke

one question.

I've about 140g of cascade pellets sitting around doing nothing, so I was going to throw them into the amber ale that had only the bittering addition, for a week after racking into secondary.

We've had pretty bad results with dry hopping, so looking for a foolproof method to get the most out of these.

Any tips, or actual methods?

loyatemu

bottled up a HBC extract stout last night. then popped open the first of the previous batch, an extract APA - this was tasty but disappointingly flat after 3 weeks in the bottle.

I'm now wondering if racking to secondary, and subsequently racking again to batch-prime has left very little yeast in the bottles - previously I've always gone directly from the primary fermentor into primed bottles...

BeerNut

loyatemu wrote: »

I'm now wondering if racking to secondary, and subsequently racking again to batch-prime has left very little yeast in the bottles

I wouldn't have thought so. The yeast population will grow as long as there's sugar there to feed it.

loyatemu

BeerNut wrote: »

I wouldn't have thought so. The yeast population will grow as long as there's sugar there to feed it.

fair enough - normally 3 weeks would be plenty of time to carbonate. I'll give another couple of weeks before trying another.

Lovely Bloke

That's what we thought after a couple of flat batches, but we upped the sugar from about 110g to 160g for a 23litre batch, and the carbonation has come on leaps and bounds.

How much sugar are you using.

loyatemu

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

That's what we thought after a couple of flat batches, but we upped the sugar from about 110g to 160g for a 23litre batch, and the carbonation has come on leaps and bounds.

How much sugar are you using.

used about 70g (dextrose) for a 12L batch on that one.

actually the one previous batch I had that took a long time to carbonate was using dextrose as well, every other batch I've ever done has been with regular sugar.

Lovely Bloke

never used dextrose, so can't really comment on that, but 70g of table sugar in a 12l batch seems a little short to me.

loyatemu

I'm using this calculator.

think maybe I need to go back to using caster sugar, or being a bit more heavy-handed with the dextrose.

oblivious

loyatemu wrote: »

I'm using this calculator.

think maybe I need to go back to using caster sugar, or being a bit more heavy-handed with the dextrose.

Are you allowing for the carbonation per vol you want and the temp of the beer at bottling?

loyatemu

oblivious wrote: »

Are you allowing for the carbonation per vol you want and the temp of the beer at bottling?

Yep - possibly should be aiming higher. Went for 2.2 in the APA and 2.0 in the stout, based on the style guides on that page.

Having said that, the bottle I tried couldn't even be described as "lightly" carbonated, so either something has gone wrong, or the process is just occurring very slowly.

oblivious

loyatemu wrote: »

.

Having said that, the bottle I tried couldn't even be described as "lightly" carbonated, so either something has gone wrong, or the process is just occurring very slowly.

Is the capper old, it may not be creating a perfect seal?

BeerNut

loyatemu wrote: »

Went for 2.2 in the APA and 2.0 in the stout, based on the style guides on that page.

That's mad low. I can't stand overcarbonated beer and I generally go for 2.3 or 2.4 vols in mine. It gives a nice casky sparkle rather than full-on fizz.