Tasting Number XI

Fantastic, just what I was aiming for, vigorous fermentation ended Monday and all is quiet now and I have 20+ litres of golden brown beer. With 3 more weeks to soften it will be great.

Measured final gravity at 1014@20C, will do the alcohol calculations another day.

Brewing Number XI

Number XI will be a winter beer for a new year's eve party, brewed along the same lines as Adnams Broadside.

4kg Pale malt
500g Munich malt
70g Black malt
1 tsp gypsum

Boiling Hops
Start of boil:
Challenger 39g
Fuggles 34g
Goldings 14g

Last fifteen minutes:
Fuggles 12g
Irish moss 12g

Yeast - WYeast 1968 propagator London ESB from 21APR08

Following the same method as number 7

1. 10l water heated to 63C
2. 13:30 Added the milled grains and gypsum and hold at 56C for 30 mins.
3. 13:55 Start heating 5l water in another pan.
4. 14:00 Add the 5l boiling water, make sure temperature is now 68C and hold at 69C for 30 to 45 minutes.
5. 14:45 Raise just slightly to 70C and hold 10 to 20 mins until an iodine test indicates complete conversion.
6. 15:00 Start heating another 5l water for flushing grains.
7. 15:10 Raise temperature again to 75C and separate grains from wort. Flush grains with hot/boiling water.
8. 15:30 Conversion complete, grains washed using white plastic barrel, worked well actually. Heating to boil started.
   
9. Put the hops in the grain bag for a trial, should be easier than filtering the hops from the liquid later.
10. 16:00 Boil started.
11. 17:30 Boil finished.
12. Measured OG at 1054@20C, really I should do this before the boil as I guess it doesn't change much. Diluted with 6l cold water after cooling, final temperature 23C, yeast pitched.
13. 18:30 All done for the beer, clearing up started for another half hour.

In the end it has made about 20l and the OG is 1038@20C so it should make a respectable beer. I'd have preferred a bit higher but couldn't be bothered to boil some extract.

Still face the problem of filtering the beer before it goes through the cooler, not sure what to do about that. Will consider options when I get my own boiler.

Yeast preparations

Opened yeast today, Monday, slow expansion through the week as it is old.
Pitched to 1l starter on Friday morning, by Sat morning it was going well. Perfect timing.

Opened the first bottled No. 10

Oh, I needn't have worried about the bottles being carbonated or anything. They're very lively, and taste OK too - I was worried that the 48 hours spent in the barrel with so much air would have sent the beer off, but it's OK. It will be interesting for those who said 'I don't like homebrew because it's not carbonated' to try and see if they like it now. I carefully explained the 2 stage fermentation but I guess some just didn't get it. The best part of this was the wife said she liked it! Excellent.

Anyway, nine bottles still survive...

Bottling No. 10

Again, done in a hurry but the 5l left over from the party (The beer was well received, although I didn't like it much as it wasn't hoppy enough for me. That's different tastes I guess...) was sitting in an open barrel and would go off so I sterilised 10 bottles and filled them.

The only interesting bit was the priming which was done with 1 heaped teaspoon of glucose per bottle, plus 3 for luck, boiled in 1l of water for 15 mins and then distributed by eye amongst the bottles. Let's see how it works...

Brewing No. 10

Number 10 is an extract brew done in a hurry for a party we're having in a week and a half...

Ingredients:

1x Muntons connoisseurs range beer kit 1.8Kg for 23l
1Kg Light malt extract
2 Packets of Brewferm blanche dried yeast, rehydrated in boiled water.

Boiled in 10l water for about half an hour, cooled and made up to 20l.
Yeast pitched at 28C, moved immediately to cellar as yeast ideal temperature is 18-23C and it's hot here at the moment.

OG1038 @ 28C, correction is 0.002 to 0.003 per 10C, so OG = 1040.

It's so much easier brewing these kits than a full grain brew!

No. 9 Alcohol content calculations

Taken from the calculations for No. 7:

OG 1.038 @ 25C, correction to 20C gives 1039
FG 1.010 @ 20C


ABW = (1.039 - 1.010) * 105 = 3.0%
ABV = 3 * 1.010 / 0.794 = 3.8%

Note: Correction to hydrometer readings of additional 0.002 to 0.003 per 10C over 20C.

For Adnams bitter that's about right! The book says OG 1036 but end at 1006, giving 4%, and another point is I've got about 25l but brewed aiming for 30l. Next time I'll add more sugar or grains, I think the sugar I've got (Dextrose/Glucose) is very light and when it says 'Use 30% more than normal sugar' it means this for brewing beer as well as other uses.

This afternoon I measured the FG again and it's still 1010 so fermentation is done, but it's very cloudy after moving. Will leave it another week or two in the cellar to clear, but as soon as it's clear I'll decant it into another barrel. Should really investigate dropping it down the stairs in a pipe, not carrying the barrel.

No. 9 Fermentation complete

As I said by Sunday the fermentation appeared to have stopped, this made me quite worried as it was so sudden, I was sure it was somehow stuck. Now today I've measured the FG and it's 1010 at 20C, (21C as indicated by the foil thermometer, this seems affected by the warm bathroom). Anyway, it now appears I can remove the barrel from the bathroom and score some girlfriend points. She's not a big fan of beer in the bathroom. Weird.

As a side note the other yeast was pitched into 1l starter on Friday and has now slowed to almost nothing again. I'll bottle it into two separate yeast bottles and store it for a while before brewing a beer kit later, probably. I'm also trying Chemipro Oxi to sterilise the bottles.

Fermentation going well

This morning the lock was bubbling away happily and the foil thermometer was registering 26C and all appeared well. Very happy, scraped the Krausen off the top, by the end of the day fermentation had slowed noticeably. Apparently no activity and I was a bit worried for a while but I suspect all is well.

No. 9 Brewing process

So, how will it go... Last night I did a 'dry run' which proved a lot wetter than planned as the tap installed for running the cooler leaks from its mechanism. Oh crap, but it's not bad and can still be used.

10:15am Measured 20l water into boiler. Note, this is more than enough, 15l is better.
10:25am Started it heating to 77C and started weighing grains. Noticed that No. 8, that worked well, had 8Kg grain/extract so will increase my recipe to 6Kg. Note: I only did this because I forgot about the sugar. Duh.
11:30 Grains are ground, water at 74C, grains added to water in grain bag, temperature in bag is around 66C
13:00 Iodine test indicated conversion not complete, repeating every 15 mins to see what happens.
13:30 Conversion complete, heated 4l sparge water to near boiling, drained sweet liquid into large pan. Sparged twice, second time with 2l, draining into small pan. Managed to return liquid to boiler at 60C.
13:45 Started heating sweet liquid and measuring hops.
14:30 Boil started. Time for lunch and to retrieve the fermentation barrel for sterilisation. Added 250g sugar (Glucose/Dextrose).
16:00 Boil complete, started cooling. All fits well, cooled to 27C indicated by foil thermometer on barrel. Added 6l cold water, OG1040. Added 2l more - OG1038 and we're off. Pitched the yeast at 21C.
16:45 All done.


Notes:
Used 6Kg grains only because I forgot about the sugar!
Heating 15l water to 77C for mashing is enough and allows more for sparging.
When returning sweet liquid to boiler careful to filter settled muck out as far as possible. This will have settled in the pan and can simply be left behind.

Preparation for brewing No. 9

No. 9 will be a variation of the recipe for Adnams Bitter in Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler and Roger Protz (CAMRA/Storey ISBN 1-58017-102-8). As usual I'll brew 30 litres, the recipe below is scaled up from the 25l version in the book. For the malt I've substituted pale malt for the Maris Otter because that's what I could find.

Recipe for 30l:
Pale Ale malt 4Kg 7EBC Should be Maris Otter pale ale malt
Black malt 60g 1200EBC
White sugar 450g

Boiling Hops
Start of boil:
Challenger 39g
Fuggles 34g
Goldings 14g

Last fifteen minutes:
Fuggles 12g
Irish moss 12g

Method:

Heat 20l water in boiler to 77C.
Add grains and hold at 66C for 90 minutes or when iodine test shows conversion complete.
Run off liquid into barrel with tap.
Remove grains from boiler to another barrel with tap.
Heat another 10l water in boiler to 77C and sparge grains.
Return sweet liquid to boiler, boil for 90 minutes.
Cool to 21C

Preparing No. 9 - Yeast Starter

Arrived back in Munich on Monday night and a delivery from Brouwland had arrived so opened a yeast propagator pack WYeast 1968 London ESB and within a day it was fully expanded probably to its stated 25 billion cells. On Tuesday evening made a 1.5l starter with 150g light malt extract and it's been bubbling away steadily on the bathroom floor ever since.

Brewing will take place today, 20th March 2008

Also at the same time (Monday night) I opened a packet of WYeast 1028 London which has been in the fridge forever, the manufacture date is 15th May 06. This is just an experiment, to see how it goes. It's expanding slowly, now about 3cm thick and I'll probably brew a beer kit with it later in the week to see how it goes and save a yeast culture in a bottle for experience.

Maris Otter malt & Another useful link

I stumbled across this:
http://www.probrewer.com/ while looking for Maris Otter malt on the net. Lots of information there, including a very handy forum.

Other bits about Maris Otter and brewing in general:
http://www.warminster-malt.co.uk/marisotter.html
http://www.brewboard.com/

And finally a place in the UK from where this stuff can be ordered:
http://www.beertech.co.uk/

Or how about ordering Maris Otter malt extract:
Art of Brewing