Your current / planned brews

Links234

Made another mead, this time with honey I got from the local market! The honey tasted incredible, should make for a really nice mead.

I also got 2 x 1.5KG of Amber LME and 8 x 454g of honey and made a braggot with all of that and a Nottingham ale yeast. That should be incredible, if very strong. :eek:

My little brew cupboard is looking pretty full right now:



There's crazy activity in there, and the smell once you open the door is amazing!

I want to do 2 more meads soon, and leave it at that for a while. One with peaches, and one with ginger.

Oh, we also cracked open a bottle of the Nut Brown Ale, which was only bottled last week, but it tasted damn good! I think using LME instead of brewing sugar has made a huge difference!

blueshed

think i'm going to make a mead reading your posts and looking at your photos ^^^^^^^^

kits made with LME/DME are much better than those with sugar, have you tried adding hops.

Links234

blueshed wrote: »

think i'm going to make a mead reading your posts and looking at your photos ^^^^^^^^

kits made with LME/DME are much better than those with sugar, have you tried adding hops.

The main thing about making mead is patience, it takes ages. Hence why I've been making so much, some of these batches I wanna age for a year.

I did an IPA earlier in the year where I added hops, was wonderful, but I over carbonated it. Didn't add any hops to the brown, just wanted something nice and malty going into winter. The braggot is gonna be super malty!

Links234

The whole house smells of booze! :eek:

Girlfriend thought one of the fermenters or demijohns exploded the smell was so strong when she came downstairs yesterday, today I can smell it from the bedroom!

Black_Knight

Links234 wrote: »

The whole house smells of booze! :eek:

This would be more shocking if your house wasnt in fact full of booze.

blueshed

Links234 wrote: »

The whole Brewery smells of booze! :eek:

!

fixed that for you

poitinstill

Bruphoria james crocket currently smelling lovely 1 week in. Dry hop going in on sunday

Keedowah

Coopers Sparkling Ale on the go since yesterday morning - unreal activity in the airlock today!

Doing this fairly standard, it was the second brew I ever attempted and turned out well - so hoping that my technique has improved and this comes through in the final brew.

blueshed

got the green light for another brew tomorrow, as yet undecided what to brew. have wlp 023, wlp 029 and some 34/70 yeast to use.

blueshed

went with the WLPO23 and brewing a stout today.

4kg pale malt, 750g roasted barley, 300g oats, challenger and ekg @ 60mins.

matrim

Did a Gozdawa Connoisseur American Black IPA this afternoon. It was my first brew in about 18 months so I went back to basics with the kit brew to make sure I remembered everything.

Padraig Mor

matrim wrote: »

Did a Gozdawa Connoisseur American Black IPA this afternoon. It was my first brew in about 18 months so I went back to basics with the kit brew to make sure I remembered everything.

Hopefully it's decent, but the Gozdawa kits have a terrible reputation. I'm dumping the milky stout I made down the sink today - have given it 3 months and it's terrible!

Lovely Bloke

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

BIAB tomorrow, a stout

5kg Pale
500g Chocolate
250g Roast

With Target and Fuggles I think.

First time doing BIAB, so hopefully a success.

Racked this at the weekend, will bottle on brew day Saturday coming.

I was glad the Roast went in, can really taste it coming through in the flavour, just what I was looking for in this recipe, I love that burnt kind of ashy flavour in stouts.

Same recipe again this weekend, then again on a brew day in November.

Buona Fortuna

Baldy is that week of being racked a good rule of thumb?

I'm never sure how long to leave it or even if it matters.

Cheers

Lovely Bloke

Buona Fortuna wrote: »

Baldy is that week of being racked a good rule of thumb?

I'm never sure how long to leave it or even if it matters.

Cheers

Don't know, but most of my brews are 2 (or 3) weeks in primary and 1 week in secondary. Depending on my brew schedule - at the moment I'm brewing every 4 weeks.

I always notice that my paler brews are much clearer with the week's racking, I use finings in all of my brews too.

Probably wouldn't make a difference with Stout with it being black, but I do notice much more residue and sediment in the glass when I've not racked a Stout.

Do remember that racking is not 100% a necessary step, I just do it to clear up the beers, and remove any yeasty sediment and/or flavours that may be left behind, as always, any extra steps are potential extra infection points too. Also, try not to let bubbles form when racking, introducing Oxygen to the beer at that point is also problematic.

bastados

hoping to brew a hearty 25lts of Blackberry/Elderberry combo next week...will post details soon as.

mordeith

bastados wrote: »

hoping to brew a hearty 25lts of Blackberry/Elderberry combo next week...will post details soon as.

I finished my 1st attempt at elderberry ale recently. Started off promising enough with a lovely odour. Finished product a bit disappointing however. No real body and poor head retention. My own fault really though. I was afraid of making a bags of it so I used a cheap extract and generic yeast. I guess you get out what you put in . . . :rolleyes:

mickotoole

Planning a busy brewing schedule in the run up to Christmas.

Currently have the Smithwicks Home Brew Ale cold conditioning and carbonating.

Have also planned a Red IIPA, an IPA and a Stout to have on tap/in bottles over the Christmas.

SWMBO doesn't know about my plans yet so it could very well end up as a trip to the off licence!

baron von something

Brewing a Best Bitter tonight and hopefully a Buried at Sea clone on Sunday

Best Bitter
3kg pale malt
.5kg munich
.5kg biscuit
.25kg crystal 113

50g fuggles@60
20g ekg@25
40g ekg@0

Nottingham yeast

Links234

Number 5 is alive!

I've gone mad on the mead lately, just brewed next year's winter warmer.



5 x 454 jars of honey, SN9 yeast, 1 fresh ginger root, thinly sliced, and 3 teaspoons of sugar. I steeped the ginger and sugar in a bowl with some hot water before adding it to the demijohn. It smells lush!

Links234

Probably soon time to move a couple of my meads to secondary, I picked up a new demijohn today (got 4 of them now!) so once I've got them moved over, there's something I'm very excited to try. A bochet, which is a mead made from caramelized honey. Sounds incredible, no? That's going to be next on the agenda.

Haven't been doing any beer since my nut brown ale, which is nearly all gone now! :eek: only 4 bottles left.

Links234

So, racked my second ever mead to secondary today, made a wee bit of a mess as it's been a while since I've tried siphoning stuff :eek: But anywho, we had a wee taste of it an oh my god, it is good!

This is just the plain mead I was making completely unflavoured to see what it was like, because my first attempt was a Christmas spiced mead. Well, I gotta say I've impressed, I wasn't expecting too much from this at all, just something rather bland as I've been using cheap honey that I assumed I'd need to spice up. €1.99 honey from Lidl has been my go to. This is gonna be lovely after it's aged a while. We'll see sometime next year.

UnknownSpecies

Have a turbo cider on now, with plans to throw some Christmas spices into secondary after about 2 weeks. Hopefully that'll be good to go around Christmas. Then my next brew is going to be my first dabble in AG. Going to do a SMASH with German Pilsner and Columbus hops. Looking forward to making a start into AG brewing

baron von something

Bottled my Best Bitter today and only getting round to brewing my Buried at Sea clone now, a week later than planned. I couldn't get my hands on organic cocoa powder so the regular stuff will have to do, although I might increase the amount used

Links234

Attempting a bochet, or burnt honey mead, which is made from caramelized honey. I am simmering it until it turns dark like a porter. I'd say this is going to be good if it works out. Also gonna throw a few vanilla pods in there so I'm excited to see how this one will turn out.

Mesrine65

baron von something wrote: »

Bottled my Best Bitter today and only getting round to brewing my Buried at Sea clone now, a week later than planned. I couldn't get my hands on organic cocoa powder so the regular stuff will have to do, although I might increase the amount used

https://ie.iswari.net/shop-product/Sports-Nutrition/Raw-Cacao-Powder-Organic/16

MadsL

RasTa wrote: »

I see simcoe has gone up to a tenner for 100g. Doing my PTE clone again and using Northern Brewer instead.

Actually scratch that, I'll be using some Citra or Armarillo

That's a only dollar more than I'm paying in the US, so actually pretty good price.

Lovely Bloke

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

BIAB tomorrow, a stout

5kg Pale
500g Chocolate
250g Roast

With Target and Fuggles I think.

First time doing BIAB, so hopefully a success.

This was brewed on 12 Sept, and I opened a couple of bottles on Sat night.

Really good beer, almost nitro like in the mouthfeel, which I think is down to the carbonation levels.

Brewed the same recipe again at the weekend too, and will be doing again in December - but adding some Whiskey Barrel Chips about 10 days before bottling, I think what I'll do then is leave it all year in the bottles to develop.

After Xmas then will be moving to a Paler All Grain recipe, probably a West Coast IPA style.

UnknownSpecies

Did my first AG brew yesterday evening using BIAB method. Myself and two other lads from work decided to do a SMaSH brew each with the same grain but different hops so we can compare. I chose Columbus so my recipe looks like this..

13L target into the fermenter

2.7kg Pilsner Malt

68C mash for 60 mins

Boil for 60 mins
11g Columbus @ 60 mins
0.5 Whirlfloc @ 10 mins
16g Columbus @ 5 mins

Yeast: Safale US-05 rehydrated with 35C water

Planned additions:
30g Columbus dry hop for 5 days
1 tsp clarifying Gelatin for 3 days

I achieved an OG of 1.050 and pretty much bang on 13L into the fermenter, giving me a 73% brewhouse efficiency.

Overall I'm very happy with how the brew day went and since it's my first AG brew, I learned a lot about my system eg. hourly boil off, trub losses, headspace etc. This should hopefully help my next brews be even more efficient and make recipe planning easier. Let's just hope the finished beer ends as well as the brew day

That_Guy

That_Guy wrote: »

Going to brew a Double Chocolate Stout and a St. Peter's Ruby Red Ale and leave them in the bottle for the winter/Christmas period.

Brewed the Ruby Red Ale last night. Bubbling away like a trooper now. I've been wanting to brew this particular kit for quite some time but was sold out in most places this time last year for whatever reason.

Doubt I'll have the chocolate stout ready in time for Christmas but I'll brew it up in a couple of weeks once my fermenter is free and store a few bottles away for next year.

The girlfriend's mam is buying me an extra fermenter for Christmas so I'll be able to have a couple of brews on the go.

Have a Cooper's English bitter that needs to be used so I'll probably brew that up soon aswell.

Haven't brewed for ages but got the buzz for it again last night.