Hi! My Name Is...

[simplefisherman]

Greetings and salutations! I've been reading some triffic stuff on this site and it's inspired me to start trying some new and interesting things (for me anyway...)
So I've got a coopers euro larger (sic) chugging away @ 10-12* w/ 150g crystal steepings, 1kg be2, 100g dark brown sug and just added a 15g tettnanger tea (500 ml boiling water, 2 min in microwave, cooled then in 'bag n all') at day 8. I used 2 kit yeasts and plan on harvesting to use on the 2nd can. Bit of a pain swapping out ice packs but hey its a labour of love. This will be going into a 20l willow cont 4 lagering in the keg freezer/fridge until the next ones ready to lager. Gotta make the most of winter ay!

My other fermenter has a coop Canadian blond with:
500g be2
1.5 kg amber lme
150g crystal steeped in 1.5l boiling water and rinsed in same again.( 'bout 10min soak each time)
S-04 yeast. OG 1050 @ 18*
I had a 15g goldings teabag which I planned to boil in steepings for 10 or so minutes, I thought a lower grav boil and possibly some tanninns from Crystal would balance the malt a bit...?
In practice however, lme had some white mould on the top (not a lot) and I thought by golly I'd best boil that into submission, dumped it in the pot then realised the hops should have gone in 1st.
My Retrospectoscope (tm) informs me that at this point I should have probably just taken some of the malt soup put it in another pot with more water an boiled hops in that. But it has been wrong before...
(dear god is this prick ever gonna ask a )
Question;
Would it be reasonable or advisable to do a small hop + malt boil cool then add to fermenter (its about 1 week along @ 18*) to add some bitterness, or try and find some liquid hops extract?
Not really sure what style I was aiming for with this one, had visions of a nice winter warmer, ie not a hop monster but don't want to be drinking fizzy horlicks either...

Nother question; I want to try & sneak a toucan past the Mrs, was gunna go the old dark/stout which seems popular but chickened out and went old & English bitter. Have top cropped the s-04 and was thinking the cans plus .5kg be2. Has anyone tried this or would it be the fore-mentioned hop monster?

Just one more before bed; how good are them steam cleaners! (this ones rhetorical BTW) a bit more peace of mind I usually blast it after the no-rinse (well its not exactly rinsing is it?) And I also got a spare liquid out post with a ss nipple to hold the poppet so I can steam my beer lines out.. means I don't need an empty keg to flush them.

Well congrats if you've made it this far, guess I had a bit of back pressure after reading these forums for a while.
Thanks in advance for any assistance or opinions. Cheers sf

 

[dougsbrew]

welcome to ahb simplefisherman,
1st brew looks good, the second - ah mouldy lme, jeez mate, i would of chucked that.
as for the hop boil, being day 8, personally id just throw those in the top of the fermentor(dry hop), crush them up and sprinkle over the top of the brew. if you want more ibu the liquid hops you mentioned will do it.
ive done the english bitter before as per can instructions and turned out pretty good for a low alc beer, i preferred it over the euro lager.
i did age some euro lager for 6 months as per can instructions, found it didnt make much difference. found it lacked a bit of malt character i see you have steeped grain which is a good thing for this kit. good luck with it all.
and that steam clean thing - got any pics more info on that setup.

 

[simplefisherman]

Hey yeah probly shoulda taken it back ay but wasnt a chance to.
Was only a couple of bits which I scraped out 1st. Guess time will tell.

The steamer is an el- cheapo from aldi which works fine on all of the equipment.
I'll try to attach a photo but basically there's a liquid out connector same as on the keg, which has a nipple screwed into it instead of onto the keg. I had to get the nipple from a hydraulics shop, its not the exact same thread as the keg must be an odd size. Dosen't really matter it just has to hold the poppet in so as to open the shutoff on the disconnect when you clip it on. Now when you open the beer tap it's an open line and you can run some water thru it to flush or just shove the flexible hose of the steamer in the nipple and start pushing the button on the steamer. Best to start slow until all the liquid is out obviously, then steam away. I'll be looking at a way to screw the hose onto the outer part of the nipple so it can't pop out, but starting slow and wedging the beer tap open seems to stop it from coming out too much.
Hope that makes sense and please remember that steam deserves a bit of respect from a safety aspect.
Cheers sf