What are you Brewing - 2018

[akx]

That time I decide to pitch and then catch a plane

What a mess! I was going to brew tonight before my flight but will wait til I come back! Thanks for sharing!

 

[shacked]

View attachment 111100 That time I decide to pitch and then catch a plane leaving my daughter in charge of monitoring the fermenter. I normally use a blowoff tube but as this was a midstrength I thought it would be a pretty tame ferment.. (hope my gif turns out okay, posting from my phone)..

Wowsers! What yeast did you use?

 

[Schikitar]

Wowsers! What yeast did you use?

I used WLP041 Pacific Ale. I got home last night and managed to get everything cleaned up, there was also beer on top of the lid, was a real mess. I swapped the lid and airlock over for clean ones, left my man cave smelling like a pub the morning after..

I discovered another problem though, when my daughter took the pic I posted I didn't realise that the temp probe had come unstuck from the side of the fermenter. When she opened the door the probe fell out of the fridge, this caused the temp probe to think things were hotter (thanks to the ambient temp of the room) and kicked the fridge on. I don't know how cold it got for the last day and a half but when I cleaned it all up last night the temp was down to 13.5 degrees. I fixed it all up and the temp ramped back up to 19 overnight, it's still gurgling away, hopefully it will be okay!!

I won't ever leave the baby unattended again - all my previous brews have had fairly uneventful ferments, Murphy's Law that this one wouldn't, lesson learnt.

 

[Dan Pratt]

Brewing again....This beer is a little out of the box for style, making a Black hefeweizen by adding Chocolate Wheat malt to the mash out only.

Going to also add 5g/L of Dextrose to the boil and ferment at 22c to push that banana aroma.

165 - Black Hefeweizen 1

OG 1.042
FG 1.006
ABV 4.8%
IBU 12.5
EBC 52
Vol 20L
Eff 80% +

46% Wheat Malt
32% Vienna or if i have some Munich ;-)
11% Rolled Oats

Mashed at 63c for 90mins - target pH is 5.6. Adding some Calcium Chloride to get 90ppm Chloride
8% Chocolate Wheat @ Mash out

60 minute boil using magnum for bittering
3% Dextrose @ 5m of boil

Fermented with M20 Mangroves Bavarian yeast @ 22c

Slight change to the plan for this beer.

After having only 230g of the Chocolate wheat (design was 290g ) the final colour was more on the side of dark brown coming in at 45ebc.

So, last night I had a Saison on Belle yeast which was split into 2 x 9.5lt kegs: one as is, the other with 56g of Mandarina Bavaria hops added to the keg to see how those hops come through in the aroma of the beer. ( left it at room temp for 12hrs before cold crashing to carbonate later this evening )

I now had a Belle saison yeast cake and a cube of planned black hefe, so I pitched the wort into the yeast cake for a Dark Farmhouse Ale

Only took about 2-3hrs before the Krausen was fully formed with a temp of 22c which by morning was at 20c and a big thick yeasty krausen.

 

[Schikitar]

Hi guys, just after a bit more quick advice;

So I've got about 26 litres of drinkable beer left in my fermenter - fortunately no infection so far after the mess from a few days ago. This was originally going to be a mid-strength beer but now because of the extra efficiency and the current lower-than-expected FG it's headed more into 'summer ale' territory. It looks and tastes like a S&W Pacific Ale (quite accidentally but that's good, my wife loves that beer) and hitting about 4.2%-4.4% depending on the FG and priming.

Last night I added 20g Citra and 25g Cascade for a 4 day dry hop, I now want to finish with a 3 day Galaxy addition, I'm just not too sure how much to run with. I was thinking 100g but is that too much or too little do you think? I'm also concerned there isn't enough bitterness, so I was also thinking instead about maybe doing a 50-75g Galaxy dry hop and perhaps a 25-50g Galaxy hop tea to add when bulk priming, worth doing or just stay on course? I am trying to make a very easy drinking beer but would like just a little more punch than the S&W..

Thoughts/advice?

 

[Dan Pratt]

^ ^ for a lower ABV beer like that which already has citra/cascade, just another dose of 28g galaxy for 2 days will add some more aromatics to the beer. by all means load up however with the style, less is more works in these and you get alot of bang for your buck with galaxy being so high AA and oil content.

p.s. when can i see that temp data logger for the cube in water you were testing??

 

[Rocker1986]

My first brew for 2018 is an old favourite, my regularly brewed red ale. This turns out consistently the same every time I brew it, which is great. It's a bit of a mixture of ingredients from all over the world so I haven't classed it as anything other than a red ale I'll also be using some of my own home grown Cascade flowers in this batch instead of pellets because that's all I have. I'll be brewing this one on Saturday, was meant to be last Friday but other **** got in the way.

Batch Size: 25 litres, brewhouse efficiency: 75%.

Water and Treatment
36.00 l Brisbane Water Water 1 -
4.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 2 -
2.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent 3 -

Grains
4.000 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) (5.9 EBC) Grain 4 86.6 %
0.300 kg Caraaroma (Weyermann) (350.7 EBC) Grain 5 6.5 %
0.200 kg Carapils (Weyermann) (3.9 EBC) Grain 6 4.3 %
0.070 kg Black Malt (Thomas Fawcett) (1300.2 EBC) Grain 7 1.5 %
0.050 kg Acidulated (Weyermann) (4.5 EBC) Grain 8 1.1 %
70 minute mash at 67C, followed by 15 min rest at 72C then mash out.

Hops
20.00 g Cascade Flowers {5.00 %} - First Wort 75.0 min Hop 9 10.3 IBUs
11.00 g Hallertau Magnum {10.50 %} - Boil 60.0 min Hop 10 11.4 IBUs
20.00 g Centennial {10.00 %} - Boil 20.0 min Hop 11 12.0 IBUs
75 minute boil

Yeast
Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale 10th generation, fermented at 18C.

May do a dry hop with some of the Centennial in place of the Cascade but haven't decided yet.

The Stats
Est Original Gravity: 1.0434 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.0127 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.0 %
Bitterness: 33.7 IBUs
Est Color: 31.9 EBC

 

[Schikitar]

you get alot of bang for your buck with galaxy being so high AA and oil content.

Cool, thanks, I might just hit it with 50g ('cos that's what I'll buy from the LHBS) and see how it goes..

p.s. when can i see that temp data logger for the cube in water you were testing??

Sorry, haven't plugged it in yet, I promise I'll get to it soon!

 

[fungrel]

. I MZ&. S.] €¬] `SX°`[€¬^€¥¢

 

[Schikitar]

. I MZ&. S.] €¬] `SX°`[€¬^€¥¢

I agree.

 

[Zorco]

interesting point there

 

[Midnight Brew]

Yeast
Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire Ale 10th generation, fermented at 18C.

Impressive! Have you noticed any flavour differences or performance differences? Was this top cropped or rinsed generations?

 

[Rocker1986]

Impressive! Have you noticed any flavour differences or performance differences? Was this top cropped or rinsed generations?

Performance and flavour hasn't really changed, although I did notice improved flocculation after 2-3 generations. I harvest from yeast starters, the longest I've taken one was to about 14 gens with 2001, and I only retired it so I could try 2000 before it was removed from regular sale.

 

[Zorco]

wonder why it flocculates better

 

[Rocker1986]

No idea, but definitely noticed improvement. The first couple of uses it didn't drop all that well at all but after that it has been great. Noticed the same thing with a couple of other strains I've used too.

Sent from my Agora 4G+ using Aussie Home Brewer mobile app

 

[CJW]

wonder why it flocculates better

I suspect because the harvesting process favours those cells that have flocullated.

ie Make starter, let settle and drain off leaving the "sludge", pitch the sludge while keeping some for next time. I might be wrong about the process but I am suspecting that is why.

 

[DU99]

haven't decided what i am going to brew.might do a few K/ K's

 

[Rocker1986]

I suspect because the harvesting process favours those cells that have flocullated.

ie Make starter, let settle and drain off leaving the "sludge", pitch the sludge while keeping some for next time. I might be wrong about the process but I am suspecting that is why.

My process for harvesting is basically pitch and stir the starter for a day, let it sit another couple of days, then stir it all up again and pour some into a jar. The flask is then put in the fridge overnight and is poured off before pitching into the main batch.

Sent from my Agora 4G+ using Aussie Home Brewer mobile app

 

[Midnight Brew]

My process for harvesting is basically pitch and stir the starter for a day, let it sit another couple of days, then stir it all up again and pour some into a jar. The flask is then put in the fridge overnight and is poured off before pitching into the main batch.

Sent from my Agora 4G+ using Aussie Home Brewer mobile app

The reason I ask is because top cropping strains (when top cropped) have minimal to no reported strain drift and was curious if you ever got a flavour drift. I have heard prior that the English strains tend to perform almost the same but always become more flocculent. Always curious as to when flavour change comes because I rarely run a yeast more than 3-4 batches due to what I brew.

 

[Zorco]

nice