A collection of (hopefully soon) useful random stuff

Aside from our much needed breakmaker, I spent my amazon voucher on brewing stuff!

I ordered the following

Books: 
• Principles of Brewing Science: A Study of Serious Brewing: A Study of Serious Brewing Issues by Dr. George J. Fix

 

Bottling Equipment:

• Twin Level Bottle Capper
• 150 Crown Caps
• Bottling tree to hold 80 bottles

 

Boiler Equipment:

• 2x 15mm Compression Ball Valves
• 2x 15mm Compression Tank Connectors
• A pack of elbows for connecting everything up

 

Fermentation Cabinet:

• An STC-1000 temperature controller

 

Brewing Supplies:

• A vial of white labs WLP-300 -Hefeweizen Ale Yeast

 

I also managed to pick up a freezer from Freecycle to use as the fermentation cabinet. It seems like there may be an issue with it though… The freezer was said to have drawers which come out… it does, but it also has shelves which have the coolant pipes running through them. This means that the shelves do NOT come out, and my keg(s) will not fit into the freezer.

I may have a solution to this however. If I can use the new freezer for food then I can pull the drawers from the old freezer and use that for fermenting. I just need to get a fermenter heater to wrap around the vessel that is controlled by the STC-1000. It’s not a very elegant solution, but until I find a fridge to replace the new freezer, it will have to do.

Time to wet my teeth with my first ALL-GRAIN brew!
I brewed this one (New Flat Ale) on Sunday June 12th, and everything went pretty smooth.

I only encountered a couple of issues with this one:

Other than those few minor issues, the brew went without a hitch!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand here are the photos of the brew day!

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

From AG #1 – New Flat Ale (12 June 2011)

This is my first ever AG recipe. I nabbed it from some forum.

OVERVIEW
Style:    American Pale Ale
Name:    New Flat Ale
Yeast:   US-05
Fermentation Temp:   18 C
Original Gravity:   1.045
Total IBU's:   34.81
Colour (EBC):   24.6
End of Boil Efficiency   76%
Mash Length (mins):   90
Boil Length (mins):   60
Notes:   A very popular and robust recipe. Amounts can be varied greatly whilst still getting a great beer.

Adjuncts         Minutes
Adjunct:    1 teaspoon yeast nutrient      10
Finings:   1/2 tablet of Irish Moss      10
Mineral:   None

 

Started: 02/04/2011
OG: 1050 @ 18c
FG:
ABV:

02/04/2011: I followed the advice of The Homebrew Forum and followed the recipe of “Apple Juice + Yeast”.

Recipe:
4L Lidle Cloudly 100% Apple uice
One packet dry Cider yeast/sweetener

Placed it into my new 5L DJ which I then placed inside a bucket as I was told that TC takes off like a rocket and may spill over. Sealed the DJ and let it do it’s thing.

1.5-2 hours after sealing the DJ, there is a yeast head and bubbles in the airlock. I removed the airlock and ran a tube from the DJ into a bucket of water in prep for the inevitable overflow. It never happened.

04/04/2011: Still no overflow. Still bubbling away happily though. I am going to replace the original airlock as the bucket is taking up a lot of extra room and is likely no longer necessary. Will check the SG when the bubbling slows down.

05/04/2011: Bubble activity has slowed, so I’ve put a normal airlock onto the DJ.

SG: 1010. That puts this 3 day old cider at ~5.4% ABV. It tastes like apple cider (not a SINGLE hint of alcohol in it).

I moved the DJ into an FV and put water into the FV to create a water bath. Regulating the temp of the water bath is my aquarium heater which I’ve changed the plug on. The heater is set to 20c, so we’ll see how that works out.

Hoping the SG will drop some more to give me around 6% or 7% cider in the end!

Started: 28/02/2011
OG: 1042 @ 33c = 1046 (Corrected)
FG: 1013 @ 19c = 1013
ABV: ~4.4%

28/02/2011: Another two can kit. This time it is the Milestone Raspberry Wheat. The kit came with the two cans as normal, but it also came with a small sachet of Raspberry flavoring to be added in secondary.

Rehydrated the yeast with water and then added 250ml of cooled wort later. The yeast sat for a long while before it was pitched due to the wort taking forever to cool. Will take this into account next time, as the fermentation stalled.

Yeast pitched at 27c.

01/03/2011: SG: 1020 @ 20c. The fermentation seems stuck. Oh fun. Still haven’t sorted my temperature control problems, but the temp is 20c. I think the issue is from the yeast sitting out for so long before being pitched. Will remedy this next time.

Looks like this will be sitting in the primary FV for 3 weeks as I will be away to the US.

28/03/2011: Back from the US and the beer looks fine. A pretty big layer of sediment has been thrown. Kegged the beer, but forgot to take an FG reading until after adding priming sugar and flavoring. FG: 1013 which puts the beer at around 4.4% ABV. This is probably a bit higher though because the FG is likely raised from the 80g of sugar added.

Started: 04/12/2010
OG: 1041
FG: 1012
ABV: 3.8%

04/12/2010: I put on a two can kit that requires no extra sugar. I’ve been told that this leads to a much “thicker” beer that has body as opposed to the thin beers I’ve been making thus far.

It seems like I still put in 106g of Munton’s Light Spraymalt though… strange. I don’t recall if the instructions called for this or not… I seem to have gotten a relatively normal OG, so maybe they do.

07/12/2010: SG: 1020 @18C. Shit, my fermentation is stuck as the dreaded Wherry is known for. Gave it a small stir and tried desperately to warm it up. This is the same time of year that my summer ale got stuck, so it it obv a problem with my temp control.

10/12/2010: SG: 1020 @ 20C. Well, this makes no sense….

11/12/2010: Added some more yeast and nutrient.

15/12/2010: SG 1013 @ 20C. Not too bad. Taste is pretty decent too. Gonna check the SG tomorrow and most likely rack to secondary.

17/12/2010: SG 1012@ 20C. Racked.

17/02/2011: Kegged the Wherry. The beer is ULTRA clear as it has had a LONG time in secondary to drop sediment. Kegged with 80g sugar, bottled 6.

So I started up a Burton Bridge Brewery Summer Ale kit on 1/12/2010. Taken me almost FOREVER to post about it though

OG: 1031
FG: 1011
ABV: 2.8%

Talk about a session beer. This one was very disappointing, but the taste was pretty excellent. We’ll get into what went wrong a bit later.

I used 420g Munton’s Light Spraymalt and ~360g Brewing Sugar

It fermented quite happily in the beginning, but by the 3rd, the bubbles had stopped and it was only sitting at 18C. I could NOT get this thing any warmer despite wrapping it in TONS of layers of blankets, moving it next to the radiator, turning up the heating in the flat, etc.

It finally made it to 1011 on the 10th and got stuck. On the 12th, I added more yeast and some nutrient, but no luck.

On the 15th, I gave up and racked to secondary with the beer at 2.8% ABV.

In my notes, I wrote that I would avoid this kit in the future, but I think my main issue is temperature control. Look for a post about that coming up soon.

The brew is bubbling happily away at the moment. Here’s a pic that Nicola sent me yesterday while I was at work:

It’s hard to see in the pic, but there is a massive foam head on that baby

I cannot WAIT until this brew is done primary and I can rack to secondary. Gonna give it a little taste when I check the SG in a couple of days. I really think that the spraymalt along with the extra caution in keeping air out will make a huge difference to this batch.

I’m also really excited to possibly be bottling some of this brew as well! Got a couple of friends looking out for Newcastle bottles as well as the Grolsch with resealable tops