K & B Dark Ale Recipe Suggestions

[robbo5253]

Will stick with the all malt and aerating it with the yeast cake!

Thanks for the tip with the coopers yeast, only my second extract brew and first time re-using the yeast cake, so will see how that goes a few more times before I work on the coopers reculture.

Just to clarify I just need to scoop out around 2/3 cup of the slurry, clean and sanitise my fermenter and then just pitch the slurry ontop of that?
Do I need to wash it a few times or is this not required if repitching straight away?

Cheers

Robbo

 

[buttersd70]

Will stick with the all malt and aerating it with the yeast cake!

Thanks for the tip with the coopers yeast, only my second extract brew and first time re-using the yeast cake, so will see how that goes a few more times before I work on the coopers reculture.

Just to clarify I just need to scoop out around 2/3 cup of the slurry, clean and sanitise my fermenter and then just pitch the slurry ontop of that?
Do I need to wash it a few times or is this not required if repitching straight away?

Cheers

Robbo

scoop, clean, sanatise. Add new wort, aerate and pitch. That's all. Don't chuck the rest of the cake, put it in a sanatised plastic bottle in the fridge for later use. Just check it in a few days and vent the cap to release some gas out of it, cos it might have a little bit of activity left with the small amount of wort that you scoop with it.

 

[robbo5253]

I had saved 2 1.5l glass juice bottles that I was going to use, so if I put around 1l of slurry in there and top up with boiled cooled water and shake, then pour off and repeat then just use around 2/3 of a cup of this to pitch? is that correct?

Cheers

Robbo

 

[buttersd70]

pretty much, letting it settle in between. Leave a little bit of head room, though.

 

[robbo5253]

Sweet, thanks again butters!! You are a champion, full of knowledge!

 

[RdeVjun]

Hey Butters & co., what sort of age do you get from harvested yeastcake?
Most of mine have found a new home within two months and I've had no problems firing them up, although 1768 seems to take about two to three days, I now give it a special 'wakey wakey, hands off snakey' feed of starter wort a couple of days before I need it so it becomes more of a conventional starter.

I also harvest mine slightly differently, pour cooled boiled water into the fermenter on top of the cake, swirl around to liquefy, then bottle into 500ml schotts through the tap. I aim to dilute <50/50, really only want enough water to thin it out enough to get it to run out easily. It saves scooping and pouring through a funnel, and if I use the storage container as the water boiling container, I don't need to sanitise anything else.

My 2c, just a thought... :icon_cheers:

Edit: Spelling, layout...

 

[buttersd70]

Age? well, if sanitation and storage is up to snuff, yonks and yonks. Couldn't give you a more accurate timeline. :lol: I've direct pitched at several weeks old (4 weeks, maybe. ish), with no issues at all, any older than that, I'd step up to a starter just to check viability, health and sanitation....I'm pretty confident in my processes, though, so best practice would probably be to step to a starter for checking for anything that's more than a week or two.

 

[RdeVjun]

Thanks Butters, that ties in fairly well with my experiences. I reckon its definitely got to have some wake up tucker after more than a few weeks, but if I brewed even more frequently than I do, it just wouldn't be an issue!

The tardy whole repitches I've had have been with 1768, most others are away overnight and I usually give them a day or so at room temperature to get their act together.

In some respects with older cakes its not all that different to reculturing from a bottled beer, just with an enormous amount of sediment! Not long ago I broke out some 1768 that had been in the fridge for 10 weeks, worked fine in a starter. Also when opening up a stored cake, the smell is often just divine, which contrasts to some starters I've made which have been just a bit naff but in the end have fermented out fine, although at times I was nervous about an infection.

 

[big78sam]

Ok I thought I'd post the final brew. I decided to ditch the LLME extract and replace with some DDME I had on hand to save a bit of money.

1 can coopers dark ale
500g DDME
1 kg morgans dark crystal
1/2 kg amber plus 1/2 kg crystal grain, 60 minutes at 65-70 degrees
35g goldings 20 minutes, 5g 10 minutes
10g fuggles 20 minutes, 20g 5 minutes, 10g flameout

us-05

OG 1048
current SG after a week in the fermenter 1018 (and still dropping)

The hops additions were rough as I just poured into the brew in stages from 40g packets.

It's brilliant but if I had it over again I'd up the malt a little bit. I'll post again once it's had a few weeks in the bottle for completeness.

Just completing this for posterity. When steeping the grain I let the temp get too high and had some astringent tannins at first however these have disappeared somewhat over time. I'd ditch the the amber malt given the above posts but other than that I can highly recommend this recipe if you want a nice malty brew and can afford to give it a bit of time in the bottle. In fact it's one of my best kits and bits. Thanks all for the suggestions and RobboMC for the recipe base.