Discussion
I also use an uncalibrated ispindel, this is my current lager, which I am fairly certain is done but nowhere near 1.020 . Rather annoying as I wanted to bottle spund it. Spot where the temperature probe for my heating got knocked out of place, lucky I caught it thanks to the ispindel
Edited by Hanglow on Thursday 4th February 08:39
Hanglow said:
I also use an uncalibrated ispindel, this is my current lager, which I am fairly certain is done but nowhere near 1.020 . Rather annoying as I wanted to bottle spund it. Spot where the temperature probe for my heating got knocked out of place, lucky I caught it thanks to the ispindel
Do you have another way of recording temp? How do you find the ispindel compares?Edited by Hanglow on Thursday 4th February 08:39
I have an inkbird controlling my ferm fridge set at 16 for this beer. The probe is behind a sponge taped to the bucket. The ispindel is recording around 17.5 not sure which is correct.
I'm just about to join the all-grain club, having done a deal with a colleague to buy his Klarstein mash kettle and external pump setup. Will be picking up once the lockdown begins lifting. I've also ordered my first couple of Corny kegs with the intent of getting the last of my tropical milkshake IPA out of my Fermzilla so I can start what will probably be my last extract brew for a while.
Planning on doing a 7.4% imperial ESB using the last 3 tins of my Mutton's Maris Otter LME, with some English Caramalt and DRC.
First all-grain will probably be a pineapple SMaSH NEIPA using Golden Promise and either Denali or BRU-1. Gotta start simple!
Planning on doing a 7.4% imperial ESB using the last 3 tins of my Mutton's Maris Otter LME, with some English Caramalt and DRC.
First all-grain will probably be a pineapple SMaSH NEIPA using Golden Promise and either Denali or BRU-1. Gotta start simple!
scottyp123 said:
I would like to get into this and have had a look at the kits on Amazon but they all look a bit naff.
My dad used to brew it all the while when I was a kid and by all accounts it was pretty good, I was allowed the odd glass of it.
This what I remember, he had a big white bucket that he filled with water, he added some yeast and the brew syrup, he then added some sugar and he reckoned that adding twice as much sugar to the mix made it twice as strong. There was a small heater in it like a fish tank type one and he used to drop a hygrometer? into it until it read 00. When it did he siphoned it into about 20 glass lemonade type bottles which needed about 2 weeks to settle.
So I need a big bucket, heater, hygrometer, the syrup, yeast and twice as much sugar. Are there any decent beer shops in Manchester that anyone knows about that can set me up as opposed to Amazon or Ebay?
Here is an interesting article about how to brew beer which I think you will find useful https://www.brewmart.co.uk/how-to-brew-beers/My dad used to brew it all the while when I was a kid and by all accounts it was pretty good, I was allowed the odd glass of it.
This what I remember, he had a big white bucket that he filled with water, he added some yeast and the brew syrup, he then added some sugar and he reckoned that adding twice as much sugar to the mix made it twice as strong. There was a small heater in it like a fish tank type one and he used to drop a hygrometer? into it until it read 00. When it did he siphoned it into about 20 glass lemonade type bottles which needed about 2 weeks to settle.
So I need a big bucket, heater, hygrometer, the syrup, yeast and twice as much sugar. Are there any decent beer shops in Manchester that anyone knows about that can set me up as opposed to Amazon or Ebay?
You ever have one of those brew days where nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING goes right?
Well, I had one on Sunday...
The plan was to brew what I'm expecting will be my last extract before I transition to doing all-grain, and I'd written up a recipe for an imperial ESB that I was interested in trying, influenced a little bit by the "Three Flow" 7.0% ESB that Vocation do in collaboration with Shure Shot and Amity. My initial recipe was
4kg Maris Otter LME
600g Maris Otter ale malt
300g English Caramalt
200g Biscuit malt
150g Crystal DRC
100g Golden Syrup
100g Black Treacle
25g Target for 30m bittering
30g Fuggle and 20g Challenger at 15 for flavour
30g Fuggle hopstand at 80°c
30g UK Cascade dry hop
1.5L starter of White Labs Dry English Ale yeast
The problems started pretty much the moment I started getting together the grain bill. Way short on Maris Otter. Never mind, I'll throw in a bit of Golden Promise. Except I'm totally out. Pilsner? Nada. End up halving the MO and adding in 100g of Munich. Also short on Biscuit and Caramalt. Erm, don't really have any viable substitutions for these either, so in goes 150g of Melanoidin malt. Not sure I'm keeping within the BJCP guidelines here.
Then I realise I've mislaid all my steeping bags. And now we have Melanoidin in the mix, I can't really get any benefit from it through steeping anyway. Maybe I'll do a partial BIAB then instead? Except I can't find my BIAB bag either. Much to my wife's displeasure, I end up doing a 45 minute rather-too-thin decoction mash in her 5L Le Creuset casserole dish. Mix the wort from this into my normal brew pot, dissolve in the first 1.5kg of LME, and think to myself "well, glad that's sorted".
Except now it's hop addition time.
And when I vacuum sealed my partial packs to go in the freezer, I clearly forgot to label some them.
I have Target somewhere, but no idea where.
Alright, I've got Challenger. That'll do as a bittering hop. Except I don't have very much of it, way short of what I need for my 45IBU target and still have some for flavour given that my Target was ~11% AA and the Challenger is about 6%. In goes 15g of Hallertau Hersbrucker I have kicking around.
Next hop additions go fine, as does my hop stand. I come to add the adjunct sugars and realise that my tin of treacle has welded itself shut. At this point I really can't be bothered to fight it and replace with Belgian dark candi sugar. Almost got a Belgian Dubbel-ESB hybrid thing going on now which is kind of exciting in itself. I chill the first half of my wort and get it into the FermZilla- my brewing pot is only 16L so I need to split normal 19-25l batches in 2 in order to do them. I tend to do most of the primary additions and grain with the first half, then just dissolve remaining LME in the second half and mix in the fermenter.
I chill the second half of my wort down to the mid 30s and dump into the fermenter, mix, pull an OG sample (1.069, right on the money), aerate for 30 minutes with my air pump, and then immediately pitch the yeast.
Without checking the temperature.
Because I briefly forgot I was pitching normal yeast, rather than Kveik.
Turns out I've pitched at 32°c, miles above the 18-21°c range my yeast is supposed to be kept in.
It was STILL 28°c by the next morning, but fermentation is underway (and violently so).
I check my spunding valve- the plan had been to ferment at around 10psi to allow forced carbonation and aid clarity.
The needle hovers around 32psi.Clearly I've forgotten to change this from when I pressure tested the vessel.
Get it back down to a reasonable pressure, apologise profusely to the yeast and recover.
I dry-hopped after 24 hours and by this morning fermentation seems to have stopped. The venting CO2 was smelling really rather good so despite the myriad of mistakes during the process (particularly the abject abuse of my yeast) I'm very much hoping I have something that's going to taste decent come out!
Well, I had one on Sunday...
The plan was to brew what I'm expecting will be my last extract before I transition to doing all-grain, and I'd written up a recipe for an imperial ESB that I was interested in trying, influenced a little bit by the "Three Flow" 7.0% ESB that Vocation do in collaboration with Shure Shot and Amity. My initial recipe was
4kg Maris Otter LME
600g Maris Otter ale malt
300g English Caramalt
200g Biscuit malt
150g Crystal DRC
100g Golden Syrup
100g Black Treacle
25g Target for 30m bittering
30g Fuggle and 20g Challenger at 15 for flavour
30g Fuggle hopstand at 80°c
30g UK Cascade dry hop
1.5L starter of White Labs Dry English Ale yeast
The problems started pretty much the moment I started getting together the grain bill. Way short on Maris Otter. Never mind, I'll throw in a bit of Golden Promise. Except I'm totally out. Pilsner? Nada. End up halving the MO and adding in 100g of Munich. Also short on Biscuit and Caramalt. Erm, don't really have any viable substitutions for these either, so in goes 150g of Melanoidin malt. Not sure I'm keeping within the BJCP guidelines here.
Then I realise I've mislaid all my steeping bags. And now we have Melanoidin in the mix, I can't really get any benefit from it through steeping anyway. Maybe I'll do a partial BIAB then instead? Except I can't find my BIAB bag either. Much to my wife's displeasure, I end up doing a 45 minute rather-too-thin decoction mash in her 5L Le Creuset casserole dish. Mix the wort from this into my normal brew pot, dissolve in the first 1.5kg of LME, and think to myself "well, glad that's sorted".
Except now it's hop addition time.
And when I vacuum sealed my partial packs to go in the freezer, I clearly forgot to label some them.
I have Target somewhere, but no idea where.
Alright, I've got Challenger. That'll do as a bittering hop. Except I don't have very much of it, way short of what I need for my 45IBU target and still have some for flavour given that my Target was ~11% AA and the Challenger is about 6%. In goes 15g of Hallertau Hersbrucker I have kicking around.
Next hop additions go fine, as does my hop stand. I come to add the adjunct sugars and realise that my tin of treacle has welded itself shut. At this point I really can't be bothered to fight it and replace with Belgian dark candi sugar. Almost got a Belgian Dubbel-ESB hybrid thing going on now which is kind of exciting in itself. I chill the first half of my wort and get it into the FermZilla- my brewing pot is only 16L so I need to split normal 19-25l batches in 2 in order to do them. I tend to do most of the primary additions and grain with the first half, then just dissolve remaining LME in the second half and mix in the fermenter.
I chill the second half of my wort down to the mid 30s and dump into the fermenter, mix, pull an OG sample (1.069, right on the money), aerate for 30 minutes with my air pump, and then immediately pitch the yeast.
Without checking the temperature.
Because I briefly forgot I was pitching normal yeast, rather than Kveik.
Turns out I've pitched at 32°c, miles above the 18-21°c range my yeast is supposed to be kept in.
It was STILL 28°c by the next morning, but fermentation is underway (and violently so).
I check my spunding valve- the plan had been to ferment at around 10psi to allow forced carbonation and aid clarity.
The needle hovers around 32psi.Clearly I've forgotten to change this from when I pressure tested the vessel.
Get it back down to a reasonable pressure, apologise profusely to the yeast and recover.
I dry-hopped after 24 hours and by this morning fermentation seems to have stopped. The venting CO2 was smelling really rather good so despite the myriad of mistakes during the process (particularly the abject abuse of my yeast) I'm very much hoping I have something that's going to taste decent come out!
I had one AG brew once which went terribly. Had done several by that stage without issue. As you say, everything that could go wrong did. Stuck mash was the start of it. Ended up with signfiicantly less wort than intended. Watered it down a little to get the volume for some reason!
But the end result was magnificent. It was suppoed to be a pale similar to Hooky Golf, but ended up a 2-3% ABV. One of hte best tasting low ABV beers I've ever had
But the end result was magnificent. It was suppoed to be a pale similar to Hooky Golf, but ended up a 2-3% ABV. One of hte best tasting low ABV beers I've ever had
My disaster altbier turned out to be a very nice drink. I don't know if it was 'on style', I've never actually bought one but it tasted good. Only thing I didn't get was a clarity. Oh well.
I took my first attempt at brewing a lager the other week. It was meant to be a clone of brewdog lost lager, however I couldn't find the correct hops.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view...
It fermented much quicker than I expected. It was near enough done in a week. I transferred to corny after just over two weeks to carbonate and condition. My patience is terrible so I tried a little sample yesterday, after only 4 days in the keg. Already it is a very nice drink. I'm impressed I managed to pull off a lager so nice for a first attempt. Going to leave it another week before trying any more.
I took my first attempt at brewing a lager the other week. It was meant to be a clone of brewdog lost lager, however I couldn't find the correct hops.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view...
It fermented much quicker than I expected. It was near enough done in a week. I transferred to corny after just over two weeks to carbonate and condition. My patience is terrible so I tried a little sample yesterday, after only 4 days in the keg. Already it is a very nice drink. I'm impressed I managed to pull off a lager so nice for a first attempt. Going to leave it another week before trying any more.
marksx said:
My disaster altbier turned out to be a very nice drink. I don't know if it was 'on style', I've never actually bought one but it tasted good. Only thing I didn't get was a clarity. Oh well.
Heh, I had my first altbier quiet recently and think my Dunkel Bock may end up a bit more like one given I missed my OG by a fair chunk. Will have to see how far it ferments down. I'm also fermenting with German Ale yeast instead of lager as I lack proper temperature control.marksx said:
I took my first attempt at brewing a lager the other week. It was meant to be a clone of brewdog lost lager, however I couldn't find the correct hops.
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view...
It fermented much quicker than I expected. It was near enough done in a week. I transferred to corny after just over two weeks to carbonate and condition. My patience is terrible so I tried a little sample yesterday, after only 4 days in the keg. Already it is a very nice drink. I'm impressed I managed to pull off a lager so nice for a first attempt. Going to leave it another week before trying any more.
Did you control the fermentation temperature to lager yeast temps, about 12C if I recall? Pretty sure that plus a couple of weeks at lower temp is required to get a clean lager taste (not that lost lager fits this description to be fair!).https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view...
It fermented much quicker than I expected. It was near enough done in a week. I transferred to corny after just over two weeks to carbonate and condition. My patience is terrible so I tried a little sample yesterday, after only 4 days in the keg. Already it is a very nice drink. I'm impressed I managed to pull off a lager so nice for a first attempt. Going to leave it another week before trying any more.
Jambo85 said:
Did you control the fermentation temperature to lager yeast temps, about 12C if I recall? Pretty sure that plus a couple of weeks at lower temp is required to get a clean lager taste (not that lost lager fits this description to be fair!).
Yes. It was at 12 for most of the fermentation, then I increased a couple of degrees per day for a diacetyl rest before cold crashing.This is the chart. Calibration of my ispindel is a bit off. I use for indication only and tend to trust my inkbird.
My only thought is my starter must have been very effective.
I made a 2 litre starter with a packet of dry 34/70. It was on the stir plate for maybe 4 days.
I've never done a lager before so have no comparison, but from reading I expected it to take around 3 weeks.
Actual number are 1042 - 1007.
I made a 2 litre starter with a packet of dry 34/70. It was on the stir plate for maybe 4 days.
I've never done a lager before so have no comparison, but from reading I expected it to take around 3 weeks.
Actual number are 1042 - 1007.
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