Your current / planned brews

Padraig Mor · 24-02-2015 04:18PM

Newbie to homebrew but looking forward to racking up the brews!

First 5L batch went on last Saturday - Lidl cloudy apple juice and red grape turbo cider. Going to do a similar batch this weekend if I get a chance - maybe with white grape juice.

Just ordered a pair of kits from HBW, so next up it's Ditch's Stout, swiftly followed by a Craft Range Wheat (if I can find somewhere to put another fermenter!).

Plan on following these on with a hacked IPA kit, and then the Brewferm Tripel.

baron von something · 27-02-2015 08:54PM

Put in an order today for ingredients for my next 2 brews. Going to do an American Brown Ale next and then maybe an Amarillo SMaSH

CaptainAhab · 28-02-2015 12:33PM

Currently working with three brews at the moment -

Joes Ancient Orange Mead (from homebrewtalk.com) - this is my second mead, the first being just pure honey so I'll be interested to compare them

Blackberry wine - I'm making 2 gallons with 4.5kgs of blackberries I have in the freezer since last year. Hoping to start the OG highish and create a full bodied wine with a hint of sweetness and I will likely oak it too. Probably wont be ready to drink for 24 months but patience is part of this hobby.

Youngs American Amber Ale - my first attempt at beer brewing so I will be interested to see how this tastes.. Going for amber ale as I am a big fan of Kinnegars and 8 degrees amber ales.

In addition to these, I must bottle older mead, sadlers reserve house red and an elderberry wine too.

HopsAndJumps · 04-03-2015 03:31PM

bennyineire wrote: »

Brewed an extract imperial balck ipa on saturday.
Looking forward to this one

Brewed to 19 ltrs , IBU 60+ , AVB ~9%

Steeping Grains
Weyermann Carafa III 113g
bs Chocolate Malt 113g
Briess Caramel 80 227g

Sugars
Dark dme 4KG
Corn Sugar 450G

Hops
28G Summit (60 min)
28G Chinook (15 min)
28G Centennial (10 min)
28G Cascade (5 min)
28G Centennial (0 min)
28G Cascade (dry hop) will do in the future

Safale US-05 Ale Yeast

Are you drinking this yet? I'm interested to know how it turned out.

Looks tasty!

baron von something · 06-03-2015 09:49PM

Brew Night. Brewing an American Brown Ale. First time doing an all grain without any mates to help me out. It was so much handier to get one to pour the grains while someone else stirs. Feckin messy here doing it on my own.plus I've girly upper arm strength. Good luck to me lifting the brewbag out

Malt bill:
Maris otter
Crystal 145 ebc
Crystal 113 ebc
Chocolate 1060 ebc
Biscuit malt

Hops:
Magnum
Ahtanum

stuchyg · 06-03-2015 10:42PM

baron von something wrote: »

Brew Night. Brewing an American Brown Ale. First time doing an all grain without any mates to help me out. It was so much handier to get one to pour the grains while someone else stirs. Feckin messy here doing it on my own.plus I've girly upper arm strength. Good luck to me lifting the brewbag out

Malt bill:
Maris otter
Crystal 145 ebc
Crystal 113 ebc
Chocolate 1060 ebc
Biscuit malt

Hops:
Magnum
Ahtanum

Was surprised myself at how heavy the bag was when i went to remove it, and i lift 4 days a week. Cam see why people use a pulley system

Knifey Spoony · 07-03-2015 12:25PM

Threw on an IPA yesterday based on this recipe.

3.5kg Light DME
100g Carapils
250g Fawcett Caramalt

23g Cascade @ 60mins
14g Cascade @ 15mins
14g Galaxy @ 15mins
14g Citra @ 15mins
14g Cascade @ 5mins
14g Galaxy @ 5mins
14g Citra @ 5mins

1 packet US-05

Planning on a big dry hop with this:
28g Cascade
28g Galaxy
28g Citra

Going to throw on an American Pale Ale with the left over hops and grain today which my friend is going to look after.

HopsAndJumps · 07-03-2015 07:43PM

Put on this brew today its a clone of Russian River Blind Pig. Bertus brewery cloned it. By far my favorite brewing blog on the net.

I learned so much from that site!

My brew day was an absolute disaster!

Undershot my pre boil OG by 8 points, then topped up with extra light spray malt and dextrose. Now im over by 6 points.

It should still be very very tasty!

5.9 kg pale malt
226g CaraPils
170g Crystal 100 EBC
113g Wheat
Mash @ 151*
35g Columbus @ 60
21g Amarillo @ 30
14g ea: Simcoe, Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial @ 0
Starter of WLP001

The Dry Hop will be: 21g ea: Centennial, Cascade, Amarillo, CTZ

Lovely Bloke · 08-03-2015 02:39PM

Won gold for stout at the Nationals yesterday.

Amazed.

11034213_10152737354553873_5113422901384784101_n.jpg?oh=9e5b14ebe8f3682bcbe0865c22fb23ca&oe=5576CB0E&__gda__=1433585009_c872c8f2564c9cc2d526f21ea7f6696c

11034213_10152737354553873_5113422901384784101_n.jpg?oh=9e5b14ebe8f3682bcbe0865c22fb23ca&oe=5576CB0E&__gda__=1433585009_c872c8f2564c9cc2d526f21ea7f6696c

stuchyg · 08-03-2015 02:43PM

Fair play baldy. What kind of stout was it

Lovely Bloke · 08-03-2015 02:50PM

just a simple Irish Dry Stout.

Mesrine65 · 17-03-2015 10:06AM

Rye IPA recipe I've just brewed...

5kg - Pale Ale Malt
1.5kg - Rye Malt
.5kg - Crystal Malt
.25kg - CaraPils Malt
.25kg - Malted Oats

25gms - Chinook Hops (First Wort Hop)
25gms - Columbus Hops (60 min.)
15gms - Centennial (30 min.)
40gms - Mt. Hood Hops (1 min.)
25gms - Cascade Hops (Dry Hopped)

Yeast - Mangrove Jack Workhorse M10

Mash at 68°C for 60 min.
Sparge as usual, cool & ferment at 20°C-23°C

mwrf · 17-03-2015 05:58PM

Started my first brew a few weeks ago. Brewing the young's American IPA kit:

http://www.homebrewwest.ie/youngs-american-ipa-40-kg-beer-kit-3957-p.asp

I've been tracking it here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fp1FVJhU2xmwIcKSIB8EnhRS0Vr9b5_r1aouZ-qLoZ8/pubhtml

Never knew the level of patience required!

lee_baby_simms · 18-03-2015 09:52AM

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

Muntons Nut Brown Ale - boiled up 1.5kg of DME and added 50g of target for 5 minutes. Strained and added to FV along with kit can. Will dry hop with another 20g of target.

This was disgusting.

loyatemu · 18-03-2015 10:53AM

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

This was disgusting.

:pac: - what did it taste like?

lee_baby_simms · 18-03-2015 12:03PM

loyatemu wrote: »

:pac: - what did it taste like?

Initially it just had that really strong stale homebrew smell and taste. It wasn't infected, just not nice. That was after two weeks so I left it for 2 months and by then it had mellowed but still not great. I put on a coopers ipa kit that at the same time, amarillo hop tea and dry hop, and had a bottle of it last night. Really nice.

Bought a biab setup last week so I won't be doing kits/extract anymore.

prionnsias · 27-03-2015 10:08PM

I was thinking of brewing an elderflower ale using dried elderflower. Does anyone have any knowledge of this or tried it before?

Ronan|Raven · 27-03-2015 11:06PM

Supping some of the Amarillo SMaSH.. very tasty, the Loughran Pale Malt is lovely.

Black_Knight · 06-04-2015 11:26AM

Did my first brew on Friday, but I've not seen any real signs of it bubbling. Wondering did I not hydrate the yeast enough, so it's not activated, or maybe my wort was too hot when I pitched the yeast in.

Thinking I'll hydrate some more yeast and add it in now....

RasTa · 06-04-2015 11:50AM

Black_Knight wrote: »

Did my first brew on Friday, but I've not seen any real signs of it bubbling. Wondering did I not hydrate the yeast enough, so it's not activated, or maybe my wort was too hot when I pitched the yeast in.

Thinking I'll hydrate some more yeast and add it in now....

Take a reading first to see if it's dropped. No bubbling doesn't mean much

Black_Knight · 06-04-2015 01:30PM

RasTa wrote: »

Take a reading first to see if it's dropped. No bubbling doesn't mean much

Eh... Mines gone up. OG was 1.030, now it's 1.043.

Edit: Accounting for temperature, its probably in or around the same gravity readings.

Lovely Bloke · 07-04-2015 09:55AM

2 questions, with some comments.

1. how did you "hydrate" the yeast? Warm-ish water, some sugar and add the yeast? If you are doing this you should see a foamy head on the yeast in about 10 minutes, at this stage it's usable.

2. what temp was the wort when you pitched the yeast? Too warm (25+) and it may kill the yeast before it gets going. Too cool (16 or lower) and the yeast won't get going. That temp range is fairly broad though, and even if it's not too warm you can get flavour issues with higher fermentation temps - doesn't seem like you have that issue though.

You shouldn't need to do step 1 if the wort is the correct temp when pitching the yeast though.

willabur · 07-04-2015 11:29AM

made a bit of a mad brew on sunday afternoon

3kg floor malted pilsner
1.5kg MO
0.3 Rye
0.4 Crystal 80
0.3 Roasted Barley
0.4 Beech Smoked Malt

22 litres of 1060 in the fermenter fermenting with Mangrove Jacks Burton Ale

Hops
35g 60 mins Columbus
30g 15 mins Columbus
25g 5 mins Columbus
25g 5 mins Centennial

Dry Hop Mix of Centennial and Columbus 60 G

Tricky brew to categorise - Looks and smells like a BlackIPA so far

Black_Knight · 07-04-2015 01:10PM

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

2 questions, with some comments.

1. how did you "hydrate" the yeast? Warm-ish water, some sugar and add the yeast? If you are doing this you should see a foamy head on the yeast in about 10 minutes, at this stage it's usable.

Nope... I must of glazed over when reading about hydrating my yeast. I just chucked it in.

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

2. what temp was the wort when you pitched the yeast? Too warm (25+) and it may kill the yeast before it gets going. Too cool (16 or lower) and the yeast won't get going. That temp range is fairly broad though, and even if it's not too warm you can get flavour issues with higher fermentation temps - doesn't seem like you have that issue though.

Without embarrassing myself too much, id call the temperature... hot. Well over 25C.

I hydrated some more yeast last night in some luke warm water (about a pint), gave the wort a bit of a splash up to aerate it, and added in the yeast. This morning it was bubbling away every 10 seconds or so.

PS. Made sure everything was sterilized during all of this.

Fingers crossed now, right?

willabur · 07-04-2015 01:47PM

Hydrating the yeast isn't necessarily required. Its something I do more out of habit but anytime I have chucked it right in it has worked fine also anecdotally on other forums others have said this method works fine also.

Don't worry about bubbling in the fermenter. Rather than open it up and risk an infection let it ride out the first inoculation and check the gravity in a week, if you hit 1020 and it stays there you should be fine. It'll be sweet but drinkable.

Biggest thing you learn is that you will be rewarded with patience. Brewing is a very robust process - you will make mistakes but try not to worry about it too much. At this level you probably won't even notice the difference too much unless something goes very wrong - e.g. dead yeast, infection etc

Black_Knight · 07-04-2015 02:48PM

Im pretty sure the heat killed it. And the fact that after I hydrated and added more yeast yesterday (after 3 days of nothing, and no gravity reading change) it started bubbling, gives me some confidence.

Ive no problem playing the patience game, but it seemed pretty clear to me that nothing was happening. Confidence is alot higher now than I was on Monday morning.

RasTa · 07-04-2015 05:42PM

Yeah don't worry about hydrating the yeast unless it's over 1050. Actually when watching the beoir #2 being made they just sprinkled a few boxes on top. Actually wait, they did hydrate! Maybe get into that practice from the start

Black_Knight · 08-04-2015 07:59AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7IYR_rELyE

Lovely Bloke · 08-04-2015 01:53PM

looks good, I don't hydrate yeast at all, just sprinkle it into the FV after cooling the wort.

You can even use yeast in bottles, as I found out a few weeks ago, a chocolate milk stout hadn't carbed in the bottles, and tasted a bit too sweet, so after some advice from here I sprinkled about 1/8 of a teaspoon of yeast into the bottles and re-sealed (swingtops) and three weeks later the beer had carbed nicely.

HopsAndJumps · 08-04-2015 08:46PM

Cracked open the Russian River Blind Pig clone by bertus brewing tonight. Then I cracked two more open......

If you like IPA's then you should brew!

Your current / planned brews

Comments