Anyone brewing this weekend?

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RegBadgery

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I'm planning a stout - I'm really developing a taste for dark ales. I'm not all that fussed on VB or New but I do like a drop of Sheaf stout or Coopers Stout - haven't tried Southwark stout.

Everyday should be brew day.

cheers
reg
 
I didn;t time my Christmas brewing too well - I ran out of my last IPA about a week before Christmas and didn;t really have anything ready to be had during Christmas - oh well. I have some lagers that ahouls be really in about a month.

Haven;t decided what I will brew next. I was thinking something a little different - a Ginger Beer maybe? Anyone got a good recipe for that?
 
Yeah, I'm with Fiscus...

Does anyone have a good ginger beer recipe, I'm keen...

My friends aften ask if I have ginger beer, but alas, I only have a selection of fine home brewed beers for them.
 
Here is a recipe I recently made.
It came out great. In fact I'm brewing it again now (although I've added more dark brown sugar and dextrose to make it darker and more alcoholic).

Beer Makers Ginger Beer kit
Dextrose 800g
Powdered Light Malt 400g
Corn Syrup 200g
CSR Dark Brown Sugar 200g
20.2 litres of purified water
Yeast from kit re-hydrated with nutrient from kit

It came out at about 3% this one.

Cheers,
Doc
 
I actually did some brewing yesterday.
Kegged a beer and put another down.
The new beer is a birthday beer for my sister (hence the topic I started on parties and kegs).
The new beer is one I did a while back that she particularly liked. I called it a Wilsener as it is a cross between a pilsener and a wheat beer :p .
Looking forward to this one myself too.

Cheers,
Doc
 
I am on holidays and I have been making up for a too busy November and December. I have made an ordinary bitter and ESB, a special bitter with a mate down from Brisbane who wanted to see how to mash ( Hi Greg ), and yesterday I brewed an IPA and a BBQ Blonde. Couple of days ago I used 1.5 kg of extra light LME with 750 gms of honey and 2.2 litres of grape juice, 25 grams of tettnanger for bitterness and Safale yeast for a whatever . if it doesn't work out I am in need of beer snail bait.
Monday I hope to make Foreign Stout and Robust Porter. Gee I am enjoying myself.
 
Hi Barry - sounds like a brewing bonanza - be interested in hearing how your malt/honey/grape combination works out. May I have your recipes for foreign stout and robust porter? - I'm on a bit of a dark ale kick right now.

cheers
reg
 
Good Day Reg
These are the recipes, virtual the same
as the last few I have made with slight variations due to what is available.
Foreign Stout OG 1.080, FG 1.016-18, IBU 66, BUGU 0.83

Stout Malt 6 kg (or what every pale malt you can get)
Brown malt 0.4 kg
Choc malt 0.3 kg
Crystal 0.3 kg
Roast Barley 0.6 kg
Flaked Barley 0.5 kg
Rolled Oats 0.1 kg

FWH 20g Goldings
Boil 55g Northern Brewer
Last 10 mins Fuggles flowers

CaCl 3g mash water

Mash? 65oc for lower FG or 67/68oc for fuller body, I am still thinking about which I will use this time.
I have mash the flaked barley with some stout malt at 50oc for 20 mins then add this to the main mash, as this might help the conversion of the oats and flaked barley but it is not essential.

I am using the WLP Irish this time but have used the Edinburgh yeast last time with good results.
I usually add 2 litres of boiled water to reduce the OG to 1.072 so you might want to reduce the the contents by 10%

Robust Porter OG 1.060. FG 1.015 IBU 50, BUGU 0.83

Stout Malt 4.5 kg
Brown 0.2 kg
Choc 0.6kg
Crystal 0.5 kg
Rolled Oats 0.2 kg

FWH 30g Goldings
Boil 35g Northern Bitter
Last 10-5 mins Goldings

CaCl 3g in mash water

Mash at 67oc
Will use the Irish for this one too but the Edinburgh or WLP005-british are also good
Hope this gives you some ideas.
 
Well, I brewed my first extract beer last saturday (an IPA, 3kg of pale malt extract, 250g of steeped crystal, and lots of goldings hops) , racked it to secondary today (first time i've racked too).
As soon as I'd racked the beer, i threw a 15L ESB APA fresh wort ontop of the trub (WLP008 yeast) and topped up with another 5litres of water.

The secondary fermenter has started bubbling very slowly, I expect this will stop within a day or so?
 
Thanks for the recipes Barry. Who produces the stout malt and what differences do you notice in using stout malt as a base rather than pale malt?

cheers
reg
 
Hi kook - I've noticed some renewed bubbling activity in secondary and it does seem to die down again pretty soon (though I don't remember how long it took last time). I think the transfer tends to mix things up and perhaps rouses the yeast into renewed activity??

If you've not previously added a new wort to a yeastcake, you maybe in for a surprise (particularly if you use the whole cake). Fermentation tends to take off pretty quickly and quite vigorously. I think this relates to the large quantity of yeast.

One thing to watch out for if your fresh wort is warm - the temp may creep up a wee bit. When I started mashing, I cooled a boiled wort to about 24 degrees celcius and then pitched onto a yeast cake. Fermentation was so fast and vigorous that the temp crept up a bit too much (due to the heat that's generated during fermentation).

You probably shouldn't have this problem as it's likely that your wort kit + tap water will lower the starting temp. If you do find it to be a problem - in future you could perhaps use less of the yeast cake (less than 1/2 a cup would be plenty).

These days I usually chill my wort to around 16-18 degrees, then aerate, pitch the yeast and allow the temp to rise a bit. (I use a bung fridge with iceblocks so I need to keep an eye on things as I don't have automatic temp control - also not blessed with a cellar).

(I tend to be perhaps a bit overly concerned about temp control - though a while back I had a really crook experience with a brew that ended up tasting like nail polish.)

cheers
reg
 
Good Day Reg
I got the English stout malt (Hughes Baird) from ESB Peakhurst and they still had some in stock the last I heard.
This is what Wes Smith said about it

"Stout malt on the other hand, has been malted to preserve the DP
so it will handle the much higher level of adjunct (15 -20%) used. But like
all things in life it is not that simple - Glucanase is also crucial to
the conversion of unmodified starches such as FB and raw wheat. Stout malt has very high levels of Glucanase "

So it is made to help convert flaked barley etc. I have been very happy with it but any good English or Aussie pale malt will make a good stout. The Aussie malts will have more than enough diastic power.
 
Thanks Reg.

I dont have any method of good temp control, however both my fermenters have a wet towel around them (its soaked twice a day) and a fan blowing on them. Its the best I can do at the moment. The temp seems to be staying under 24 which is ok. About an hour after i'd pitched the fresh wort i had 2 litres of huge foaming bubbling krausen, very impressive :). I topped up the frest wort with 5 litres of cooled tap water from the fridge, so it had a temp of around 20 initally.

Next time I might use less of the cake, the only reason I pitched ontop of it was because I used liquid yeast on the IPA that was in the fermenter before it. It cost me $17 for the vial and I didnt want to only get 1 brew out of it. Plus theres the issue that it was the last american style liquid yeast vial left in WA afaik :)
 
Hi kook,

Something I tried recently - took some yeast cake from primary (in this case a Wyeast 1968 ESB) and used it to ferment a 10 litre 1.040 wort - just straight extract and water.

At the end of fermentation I gave it another feed of dissolved extract, and let it ferment out again. After this second fermentation I mixed up all the yeast into the liquid and bottled - really sloshed it around and kept it in suspension during bottling. This gave me a number of bottles with a nice thick layer of yeast on the bottom. (In retrospect I probably could have just used one fermentation cycle - plenty of yeast I'd say.)

I'm planning to use each bottle as the basis of a starter. Before I begin a brew I'll decant off the liquid, add some fresh malt extract and bring the yeast back to life.

This is the plan, anyway. I like you was thinking of ways to reuse my yeast. I'll be interested to see how this turns out.

cheers
reg
 

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