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These 63 comments are related to the topic:
Home Brew
Home Brew
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Replies: 63
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I was aware of that competition on gbhomebrew.
I think it may be a little early for me, but I can picture Ovalman now collecting the prize money and having his Black Lager on sale at Waitrose. |
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lol Jack, I just looked at that (thanks for the link Delta) but not sure I could have a decent lager done in that time.
Smithwicks ran a competition: https://www.smithwicks.com/homebrew I didn't enter but the 2 competitions are something to consider next year. I will have some stiff competition from Clouseau and Jack though as they'll be seasoned pro's by then  |
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Doing an Oatmeal House Stout
3kg Maris Otter 1kg Quakers Porridge Oats 500g Black Barley 100g Acidulated Malt 25g Styrian Aurora 8.8% hops 60mins Putting it onto the trub of a brew I made 3 weeks ago, a Neales Ale Yeast Should make 44+ pints of 4% stout. |
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Did my first Grainfather brew on Tuesday. Had a few things go wrong, including stuck sparge, power cut and unhappy wife, but have ended up with some stuff in the fermentor.
Its bubbling......  |
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That's great, I notice a few Grainfather noobs suffering problems but they soon fix them. I'm guessing the power cut was a trip switch? I wait until my wife is out and then brew outside.
What did you brew? I've to bottle my Stout and then that's me until July. My first 2 brews in my new brews (Mish mash and Lager) are really clear which I never had from my old boiler even though they were virtually identical. |
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I did CraftyBrews Mosaic IPA. I followed the mash water volume in the kit recipe, but it appears I should have used Grainfather volumes as mash was probably too dry causing the stuck sparge. Kit said 13 litres, GF 18 litres! Nope, proper power cut. Beyond my control. Probably a good idea to brew out of domestic kitchen! Fewer domestic problems! I do have a shed.
Stout sounds good. It is on my list. Glad your upgrade is paying off. I want to brew some lager for the summer. But I believe it has a longer fermentation period. Maybe I can get a fermenter in the spare fridge we currently use for beer, wine, food overflow from no. 1 fridge. I would like to try the black lager you like. Might I find any in a supermarket? |
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Lagers need cooler temperatures, somewhere in the region of 9 - 13° There is a quick lagering method where you brew for 1 week in the fridge and ramp the temperature up to room temperature before cold crashing just before bottling, this is the method I employ and can't notice a discernible difference. It also frees up my brew fridge for another brew, as I say get that production line going
 I've never seen a dark lager (schwarzebier) anywhere, only in Prague but it is a style that there are plenty of recipes. I've always kept things simple and create my own according to style. I won't brew again until July but I'll stick my recipe up when I create it. |
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Anyone thinking about getting started here is a great deal:
http://www.wilko.com/cider+beer-brewing/ibrew-real-ale-20-pint-starter-kit/invt/ib00017 Spend over £50 and take advantage of this : http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/today-only-spend-50-with-wilko-get-10-amazon-e-gv-voucher-code-2714664 Add the Woodforde Wherry £17.60 and brewing sugar £2.50 to bring it to just over £50. |
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I couldn't find anything I needed from Wilko.
 Have been thinking about re-using the yeast, but at my early stage, I want to keep things simple, minimise risk and standardise what I do. I have dry-hopped my first GF brew. I will probably do another this week, I plan to do a half batch using a recipe from the Brew UK forum that is meant to clone Purity UBU. I am not convinced it will match up exactly, but it will be more experience. Full batch weights ..Maris Otter 4.5kg, Crystal Malt 210g, Black Malt 20g. Challenger 100g (bittering) and Cascade 100g (late hop). My step-son is a complete novice and wants to make a stout with me on the GF I have put the ball in his court re recipe, but did mention your stout. Could you add a bit of detail for your brew..mash time/temp...sparge...water volumes..? Ta. |
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Recipe as above, mash at 68° (although I stupidly forgot to turn my temperature down from 75° strike water until 15 minutes into the mash).
Strike water 18L Sparge @ 77° 13L (took about 30 minutes pouring over manually) Pre Boil Volume was 25L and final kettle boil was 21L. These numbers are all rough as my boiler isn't great to measure in. I didn't measure the gravity pre boil so no efficiency recorded. I still haven't bottled this but I'm expecting a final ABV of 4.1% |
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Got me first batch through... fecked up on the pre-bottling sugar and some came out a bit gaseous... not fizzy as such but gaseous.
Bottles I am drinking tonight aren't bad but know where to improve... hic  |
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Give it more time Clouseau and if you can, store the bottles in the fridge for at least 2 weeks. This will help compress the yeast caused by priming and make a clearer beer. Get that chain going though!
My daughter bought me 10 bottles of mixed beer for Fathers Day. I'll sample them along with a few of my own over the weekend. Also bottle my stout on Saturday. |
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One way of getting genuine brewers yeast was to buy a bottle of Worthington's White Shield.
This was a genuine real ale with secondary fermentation in the bottle. Pour off most of the booze and drink it leaving the yeast in the bottom, add to this a bit of warm water 70 degrees, a touch of sugar and yeast nutrient, and with a bit of luck it would start fermenting. When it was really going add it to your prepared wort. You could do it with bottled Guinness as well for brewing stout. I don't know if it's still possible. I'm going back a few years now. |
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I always found that brewing in barrels came out quite a bit better than bottling it.
It's a lot less trouble as well |
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Some brewers have harvested yeast from bottles on the forum I'm on (homebrewforum.co.uk) but I've never tried it. There are still a few bottled beers you can harvest them from.
All beers have yeast in them but modern techniques filters the beer through 1/2 micron filters where the yeast can't get through. They then force carbonate the beer. I think Guinness is now employing that method. At the start I wanted to clone beers like Guinness but now I just brew my own. S04 and S05 work well in Stouts but I have my latest brew onto the trub of a Neales Ale Yeast, we'll see how it works. Bigger containers are easier to sterilise. Those mini kegs (Adnams Ghost Ship) in Tesco's can be reused with the purchase of new stoppers. I have corny kegs and CO2 but don't have space or chillers to get best use out of them. |
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Thanks Ovalman for the added detail. It is on my list of brews to do.
I did my half-batch yesterday. Using the GF calculator, I calculated efficiency at 80%. I sparked with 74 degree water rather than the 77 I was aiming for. I had 15 litres of wort and I had a pre-boil of 1030 which I thought was very low compared with my other efforts. Post boil I had 13 litres and a 1040 reading. Had the hops loose and lost quite a bit of liquid mixed in with them, in the kettle and ended up with about 10 litres in the fermenter. |
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I thought about having a go but sounds like a load of old faff to me. Got to have a serious drink habit to get through the gallons of stuff you produce. Can get so much variety in shops these days I don't think I'll bother
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Blackberry wine is worth the trouble.
I used to brew enough after August to last me the year. That was enough for a bottle at weekends and others to give away. |
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I never found brewing in barrels too much trouble either.
It was simply a matter of an hour to start off the brew. Then perhaps another hour a week later or whatever, to sterilise the barrel and pour the beer in with a bit of sugar. Leave it a little longer to ferment again and clear before it was ready to drink. If you've got two barrels you can space it out, depending on how quickly you get through a barrel. At two pints a day that's a brew every three weeks. Of course serious drinkers will need to work considerably harder than that in order to keep their thirsts under control. |
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I never got into brewing to save money, rather than I visited a pub in Prague called http://en.ufleku.cz/
Saying that I do drink too much at the weekends and brewing my own of varying strengths doesn't help much, that's why I try and make my brews under 4%. Anyone can brew, it's not rocket science nor expensive to get started but to produce really good stuff takes time and skill, something I'm still aspiring too. I've brewed that black lager from U Fleku but it's not a patch on the real stuff, I'll get the recipe correct eventually. Clouseau, you can batch prime: boil some sugar and water, let it cool and put an equal measure with a syringe into each bottle. I never worry about priming but it's maybe something I should think about in my finished product. |
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Can't you mix the appropriate amount of sugar/water and put it in the fermenter, stir slowly so to not disturb the trubb?
Baron, I think a big part of it is the challenge. I don't plan on drinking any more just because it is in the fridge. Also, a lot of people are happy drinking Carling. If you appreciate decent beer or lager, you will want to drink decent stuff, rather than that. |
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Boiling sterilises the liquor, i suppose you could just mix in a sterilised container and yes stir into FV works (doh!)
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Six weeks on and I have a couple of brews bottled and a couple more to bottle in the next week or so.
I was disappointed with the first one which had a home-brew tang to it. So much went wrong due to my unfamiliarity with the equipment, so not totally surprised. Brew 2 was a Purity UBU clone and although I forgot one of the malts, it turned out very well indeed. Much better to my taste buds than most supermarket bottles or pub draughts. Sods law I only did a half batch of that one. Got a simcoe and citra IPA in the fermenter and also a guiness clone. Monitoring SG prior to bottling and had a quick taste and they seemed OK. One thing that I hadn't understood and that is the effect of temperature on SG - which meant some of my early readings were meaningless. |