Update: Fixby Gold

Just got a chance to test this today, after roughly 2 weeks in the fermenter.  It's dropped down to 1.012, which I reckon means it has stopped.  Unfortunately, my second pressure barrel sprung a leak with the last brew I had in it so I need to buy a new one before I can barrel this.  Hopefully that should arrive by next weekend and I'll sling it in there then.  An extra week to let the yeast settle out a bit more shouldn't hurt it.

On another note, a friend and I got pretty seriously stuck into the Terrier last night and it was good.  Didn't even feel too bad this morning either...

Brewing: Fixby Gold

So I put this brew on a few days back (Tuesday 7th) but haven't got round to blogging about it till today.  As it is a two can kit it was really easy to sling into the fermenter and get going.  I'm a bit worried as it didn't get a massive foamy head going up in the first day, but it seems to still be going quite strong.

The Terrier is building up lots of gas but is not clear enough for drinking yet.

Barrelling: Yorkshire Terrier

I finally got around to putting the Terrier in a barrel today after three weeks in the fermenter.  All seems to have gone well and the beer tastes pretty good at this point.  Just got to wait a couple of weeks now for it to build up some CO2 and probably mellow out the hop flavours a bit.

Here are just a couple of shots from the barrelling process:

Next up I'll be starting a batch of Fixby Gold, which I'll put on as soon as the boiler room is free again to get the beer stock rolling.

Thanks for reading!

Update: Yorkshire Terrier

I got back from a lovely weekend in Northern Ireland (or Norn Iron as the natives call it...), which incidentally is a total dry spot for real ale. If anyone knows of any decent breweries in the County Tyrone or County Derry areas it would be great if they could let me know.

Anyhow, I've just tested this brew and it is down to 1.014, which is showing good progress.  I guess I'll check it again in a couple of days then put it in a barrel at the weekend, all being well.  Had a cheeky taste from the test jar and it seems to be losing quite a bit of the harsh bitterness it had when it first went on.

Brewing: Yorkshire Terrier

So it's been ages since i posted anything here, because it has been ages since I brewed anything.  Various things have happened to stop me from doing anything but now they have all calmed down I figured I should get back to it, even if just to do a kit and get my beer stocks back up.

Handily, I had a kit knocking about that the old housemate (She Who Must moved in the other week...) bought me for my birthday.  It was Yorkshire Terrier by York Brewery, so I stuck that on.  It was pretty much a standard kit apart from it had a pack of hop pellets to steep first.  They didn't come in any sort of permeable bag so I whcked them in a hop bag I had knocking about so I could yank them out when the steeping was done.  Not sure if this was the right thing to do as the instructions were very vague, but I'm sure it won't change much.  Other than this the main memory I have of this brew is how much of a pain it is to dissolve spraymalt.  It took ages and all the stirring I had to do made a bit of a mess, but it got done in the end.

I pitched a pack of Safale S04 by just sprinkling it on (normally I rehydrate but actually read the packet this time which said just to sprinkle).  Checked it this morning and there's a massive head of foam in the fermenter, so it's all good I guess.  I'm a little worried as I had a taste of the wort before pitching and it was very hoppy, almost astringent, so I hope this doesn't turn out like the St Peter's brew that I did last which had such a weird after taste (probably from the hop powder) that I only drank half of it...

Anyhow, we'll see how it goes.

First Taste: 'I Agree With Nick' Summer ightning clone

I cracked open a bottle of this honestly not knowing what to expect last night and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't overly carbonated, which I quite like and is probably down to bottling method (the real test of this beer will be when I tap the mini keg).  The colour is a bit darker than Summer Lightning is, which I think is due to the boiling of the extract, I'm looking into ways of avoiding it next time. Taste wise, it is very light in the mouth and not overly bitter.  It has a wonderfully pleasant hop aroma and taste that is nicely balanced (I'm starting to dislike overly hopped light ales because they are everywhere, so this is a good thing).

All in all, I'm very impressed and will now forge on ahead with extract brewing, knowing that I can produce genuinely good results.

Update: 'I Agree With Nick' Summer Lightning clone.

I'm already kind of regretting the name of this brew, but don't want to change it really.  Anyway, politics aside, I put this into bottles and a mini-keg last week but forgot to blog about it.  Really, it was such a hassle I didn't want to write about it at the time, but feel like I should now.

I started off with 10litres in the fermenter, and the plan was to put half into the keg and half into bottles.  I've got a 10litre fermenting bucket with a tap on that I used as a bottling bucket of sorts.  I basically had a length of hose on the end of the tap to deliver the beer to the bottom of the bottle.  It kind of worked in theory as a crude bottling stick, but was a lot of hassle and I will therefor be getting a bottler before the next brew. By the time I had syphoned the brew into the bottling bucket, it was down to 8 litres on account of there being a whole pile of grossness at the bottom.  I guess this was mostly cold break material as this brew wasn't crash cooled.  Again, before the next brew, I need some way of cooling it quickly. Filling the keg went without incident but the bottles ended up being a pain and I only got 5 filled before I got too annoyed with holding the bottle and tipping the bucket etc.

Anyway, it's done now and I just have to wait about 4 weeks to tap the keg and see if it was all worth it.

In other news, the St Peter's Ruby Red is tasting pretty nice.

Update: St Peter's Ruby Red

I've been tasting small amounts of the Ruby Red every now and then since it went into the barrel and I have to say I started out disappointed.  It had a very harsh, almost astringent hop aftertaste to start with.  Tried a bit today and it seems it is starting to get better, so here's hoping for it being really nice in about two/three weeks.

Update: I Agree With Nick (Summer Lightning clone)

Gave this a test this evening.  The SG is down to 1.016, which seems a little high so might leave it another day or so.  As ever, I tasted the sample and it had a good level of sweetness and was very bitter (probably something to do with the slapdash way I measured the hops), but this should mellow after some conditioning.

My main worry is that it looks very cloudy and there were large chunks of what appear to be spraymalt floating about in it.  I guess this is down to me not mixing the extract in well enough before the boil but I don't think it will effect the beer particularly.  I really hope it clears well in the keg, or it'll be a bit disconcerting to drink.

Name for Summer Lightning clone, and Homebrew Primer started

I mentioned the other day wanting an election themed name for the brew I made the other day and Housemate has come up with one for me.  As I made the beer on the day of the first televised debate, it will be called "I agree with Nick" as that was such a popular phrase during the debate.

Also in the news, I have begun writing a Homebrew Primer.  Several people at school have asked me to write a little thing that explains the process of homebrewing and the equipment one needs etc.  On account of me being nice and all, I decided to oblige and sat down yesterday and wrote.  It all came quite easily and I ended up with about 3,500 words written quite quickly (about 6 pages).  I'm going to write one more section, edit it it etc. then make it available for free download on this site.  It will start off just about getting into kit brewing as that's the simplest and the one I know most about, but it will expand when I learn more about the other methods.

Update: Summer Lightning clone

Checked on this this morning and it has started fermenting away nicely.  I didn't put the OG on here last night, but it was 1.044, which is a bit higher than it should have been (1.041), but that's cool, it'll just be stronger.

Brewing: Summer Lightning clone (First ever extract brew!)

So, this is the beginning of my extract phase of my brewing journey.  I'll explain it all in more detail at some other point but this basically means that I'm no longer relying on someone else to do the hopping for me, but I am relying on them to do the extraction of the the sugars from the malt.  Luckily for you, I managed to take some photos whilst doing it, so i'll talk you through how it went down...

I decided I wanted to do a really simple brew for my first go so I chose the clone of Summer Lightning in Graham Wheeler's near ubiquitous book Brew Your Own British Real Ale.  As I also only wanted to be making 10 litres at a time to start with, I plugged the recipe into Beer Engine (also by Graham Wheeler, he seems like a great guy).  This meant I would only be using small amounts of hops so instead of using 2 different types of hop (1 for bittering, 1 for aroma) I decided I could afford to use just the one hop.  This really means that the beer I've made isn't much like Summer Lightning anymore, but oh well.  The long and the short of it is that I ended up with recipe for 10 litres of a simple, one type of malt and one type of hop beer.

After all of that japery, and having ordered the ingredients etc, I finally got down to brewing today. 

I started by marking out some measurements on the inside of my boiler as the ones on it already are a) on the outside so you can't see the water level, and b) pretty obviously wrong.

I then weighed out the ingredients, the Spraymalt was quite easy as I needed 1400 grammes and had 1x1kg bag and 1x500g bag.  The hops were a little less easy as I need 31g, 10g and 6g, and my small, precise scales were not to hand.  This meant that most of my hop amounts were enitrely guessed (the first thing that could make this a disaster).

Once the ingredients were weighed out, I mixed the Spraymalt into the water that had already been warming upto about 50C.  This was just as tough as it is when doing kit brews and gave me a really sore wrist, but got done eventually.  The froth on top here is a product of my thrashing it, not any boiling or anything.

Once it was all stirred in, I turned the thermostat up and set out to get the stuff boiling.  I was pretty chuffed with this thermometre holding arrangement until (about a minute after this picture was taken) the tape gave up and dropped the thermometre in.  I just had to hope that I wouldn't find it smashed at the bottom once I drained the boiler.

This is it just starting to boil.  The frothy stuff here is scuzzy material that gets kicked up by the boiling.  This part of the brewing is called the hot break.

The froth built up incredibly quickly and because I was taken photos, I almost didn't notice it has pretty much reached the top of the boiler.  Luckily I turned it down in time and it settled down again.

Once that died down I chucked in the first lot of hops( ~31g).  I'm using hop bags at the moment because I don't have a hop filter fitted to the tap.

It seems I forgot to take any photos when the other two hop additions happened, but one of these (~10g) went in 10 minutes before the end, and the other lot (~6g) went in right at the end and just got steeped for a while.  This was the less than satisfactory solution I came up with for the shelf thing I had the boiler on not being high enough.

After some searching I found stuff to build up the shelf with, and it went pretty smoothly from there.

I ended up getting pretty much exactly 10 litres, but I'm not sure what OG it has yet (will update when I know).

This is the junk left in the boiler after I ran the wort out, the astute among you will notice the thermometre (not smashed) wedged at the bottom.

And this is where it is as I type.  Obviously the wort is really hot afte the boil so it need to be cooled before pitching the yeast, hence standing it in cold water.  Ideally, it should be cooled much quicker (crash cooled) to facilitate a cold break, which helps it clear.  I don't have the equipment to do that, though, so this'll have to do.




Thanks for reading, I'll update you as the fermentation of this one proceeds.

EDIT: Finally got around to pitching this at about 10:00.  It had been at a low enough temp for a while actually, but I was engrossed in the leadership debate so couldn't do anything about it. I suppose I should give this brew a suitably election-based name, but can't think of one yet.  Answers on a postcard.

Boiler Test

So now that the kegs to put my own creations in have arrived, I'm going to start actually making them, putting my boiler to use.  This means that I have to test the boiler to make sure that it a) holds water, b) heats water up and c) keeps that water at the temperature it reaches.  I also need to measure how much water it loses during a long boil.  When I know this, I can plug the loss figure into Beer Engine and work out how much water I need to put in at the start of the boil in order to get a beer the right strength (does this make sense?).

The water is in and the element is on, I'll fill you in when the test has progressed further...

EDIT: It just finished getting up to 70C, which is roughly where I'll need it for steeping grains.  At some point I'll need to figure out how to get it to stay at that temp, but right now I'm leaving it on full to get it to boil.

EDIT 2: Up to the boil now, just need to let it do its thing for 90 mins and measure how much less water is in there at the end...

EDIT 3: Forgot to update this earlier (went to the pub instead), but after a 90 minute boil, the water had gone down by about 4 litres.  This seems like quite lot to me, but that's how it went...I'm just about set to start extract brewing now, so expect a post about that in the next few days (while I'm on easter holidays...)

New Stuff AND St Peter's goes in the barrel

So, I remember mentioning in a previous post that as well as all the swell stuff I got for Chistmas, I was due something else that hadn't arrived in time on account of stock shortage or something.  Well, it arrived and my parents brought it up to me last weekend.

These will be what I put my self-designed beers into so that I don't have to make (and drink) huge amounts of experimental beer that might taste rank.  They should also get a bit of use at parties as they're a good size and less complicated than the other kegs I have.  This is how one keg looks with the tap fitted:

The kegs themselves are pretty cheap too so I expect to buy a few more and get a good rotation going on them.  There is also a plan in the pipeline to use these kegs to deliver homemade beer to my friends and family, which I shall elabourate on further once I've worked out exactly how it will work.

Also in the news today: The St Peter's Ruby Red has been put in the barrel and is hopefully doing its secondary fermenting as we speak.  I'll let you know how it tastes in a week (I'm not going to wait for it to mature properly).

Happy Cask Ale Week!

So the powers that be (probably Cask Marque) have decided that this week is Cask Ale Week.  Not entirely sure what it means practically speaking, but it definitely means you should find your nearest Cask Marque approved pub and spend at least a little bit of time there at some point this week.  While there, you should drink some ale because it is the best drink ever and you will be supporting British microbrewers and British pubs, which has to be a good thing!

As for me, I will almost certainly be heading to the Jolly Brewmaster this evening, and possibly venturing even further afield.  Expect some more appreciation-style posts tomorrow where I will write up the ales I have tried.

Cheers!

Brewing: St Peter's Ruby Red AND General updates and whinery

Hey, so it's been ages huh?  Truth be told, I kinda fell out of love with brewing after the Geordie Mild went down with the same infection as the Old Ale before it and the Wherry ended up having been left too long and gone off, then decided to leak all over my record collection (thank god MDF is so absorpent -no records were harmed!).  I've gotta be honest, I felt pretty low about the whole thing.  But this weekend it seemed about time to head back into Pop's and pick up a new kit.  I initially went for Fixby Gold until I saw that they had the new(ish) St Peter's Ruby Red kit in.  I've heard great things about both this beer and the kit, so figured I'd pull the trigger on it.

So I left the fermenting vessel sterilising all night and day, then sterilised it again with all the equipment in it when I got home from school today and set about brewing.  It's a pretty standard 2 can kit (open can, pour in contents, add water) apart from the fact that it comes with a sachet of 'hop powder'.  It seems this is maltodextrin powder (some kinda sugar) infused with hop oils.  You make up the kit as usual, then add this powder and stir it in.  The hop smell is pretty damned powerful when you open it and stirring it in made the beer smell wonderful.

So anyway, I just put this to bed in the boiler room, will maybe check on it in a few days.  Another thing I have done to avoid contamination is leave the immersion heater out (in fact, I've thrown it away in a fit of frustration) as I think that may have been harbouring germs.

As ever, thanks for reading, and I'll update you when I check on this baby...

Update: Geordie Mild

I know I should have put this in the barrel yesterday but the day ended up being too full with being hungover and playing boardgames (the crazy Tomb) so I thought I'd do it today.  Unfortunately I hadn't banked on this being the first day of term and therefor I am shattered so may not bother.  I'm just sterilising the sample jar and hydro ready to test it.  If it's the same again tomorrow, in the barrel it'll go (really can't be bothered with bottling any after the nightmare that was last time...)

Update: Geordie Mild

Just tested the mild and it's down to 1.014 from a start of 1.038 (I think).  That's not bad but I think it's still got a ways to go (still tasting quite sweet).  Will test it again Wednesday with an eye to putting it in a barrel next Sunday.

Brewing: Geordie Mild

Not wanting to let the infection-appendix disaster of 2010 put me off, I have jumped straight into making a new brew.  The only kit I had knocking about was a can Geordie Mild, which is a budget kit so I made it up with 1kg of medium spraymalt.  It all went without a hitch (as far as I can tell so far), and I deliberately made it in a different fermenting bin, to avoid cross contamination.

OG came out at 1.036, which is a bit low (suppose that suits a mild) but perfectly respectable nonetheless.

Update: Brewer's Choice Old Ale

So I've come back to my house after convalescing at my parents' place for a couple of weeks after the operation.  This means I've finally been able to check up on the Old Ale.  I wasn't too hopeful when I smelled vinegar after opening the fermenting bin.  I was even less hopeful when I saw a whiteish film on top of the beer.  Not to be put off, I took a sample and checked the SG (down to 1.010, which is good).  Just to make sure all was definitely lost I took a swig from the sample jar.  Disgusting vinegar taste.  Disaster!

Oh well, I'll tip it down the drain and start the next brew (Geordie Mild).

On a more positive side, I brought the Wherry in from the shed and have drawn off a bit to see what it looks/tastes like.  Pretty happy with it (it's a bit cloudy but I think that's just a chill haze).

Unexpected hiccup

So I had to go into hospital on Monday to have my appendix (it was gangrenous, yuk!) out and am currently convalescing at my parents' home.

This means that Brewery japes will have to be put on hold for awhile as I don't know when I will recover the ability to do all the lifting of water filled containers required.

This means that the Old Ale currently fermenting, and now almost certainly stopped and ready to rack into a barrel, will have to sit there a while longer.  I hope this won't have too much of an effect on it, but we'll have to see...

Calendar update

I really will do some schoolwork soon, but I've just worked out a better way to add the calendar to the site, so if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see it in all its multi-coloured, interactive glory.  The red events are my brewing activities and the mustardy ones are real ale events from Aletalk's calendar.  Click on one for more details.

I've also been putting some thought into the idea of 'monetising' this blog.  I think that's Googlespeak for 'putting adverts on' and I would normally be dead against this sort of thing (and am currently 90% against it).  All I was thinking was that if the income that could come from this monetising would be enough to put towards purchasing ingredients and equipment, that would be a good thing.  I'd imagine, however, that one probably gets about a penny a month, which would make it ludicrously ineffectual.  If you are reading this and have a Blogspot blog that you have monetised (or even if you don't), could you comment here with any thoughts you have on this please?  That would be awesome!

Update: Old Ale

So I have yet another snow day today, thanks to overnight snowfall.  I am going to get a whole pile of work done today, but first I thought I'd test the Old Ale as it's now at the 10 day mark.  The Hydro read 1.011 at about 17C, which Beer Engine tells me is actually 1.010.  This suits me down to the ground.  Beer Engine also tells me that this gives me a roughly 4.9% ABV beer, which would have been great during these winter months, but my skewed timing means I'll be drinking it around March time, so might not be quite so good.  I've really got to get my head around when I need to be brewing different types of ale...

New feature: calendar

Hey, you!  Do you enjoy reading about the exploits of that crazy guy at the Boiler Room Brewery?  Do you sometimes feel like he doesn't let you know when he's planning on doing things?  Do you wish there was a way that you could find out when he's going to do things in the brewery at the click of a mouse?  You do?

Well, luckily for you, I have just set up a Google calendar, which you can (hopefully) find here.  I'm going to try and 'imbed' it somehow into the blog too  I fully intend to keep this up to date not only with what I plan to do, but with what I actually end up doing too.  I'm not sure why, but it seems like the right thing to do...

Update: Brewer's Choice Old Ale

I've just taken a sample of this to check the gravity after a week in the FV.  It's at 1.014, meaning it could do with dropping another couple of points.  I was planning on leaving it in for another week anyhow, which I will definitely do now.  After all, I've still got about 8 pints of Linthwaite left in the barrel.

I obviously had a sneaky taste of the sample I'd taken out, am drinking it now actually.  It's pretty dark and tastes malty rather than hoppy.  Smelling it, there is very little hop aroma.  In the mouth it has a decent amount of body and some dominant smoky/coffee flavours.  These will mellow as it matures in the cask. At the end, you get just enough hop bitterness coming through to balance the maltiness.

It's a promising start...

Brewing: Brewer's Choice Old Ale

So I'm back at school tomorrow so probably should have been finishing off lesson plans and that sort of gubbins today, but the Linthwaite is looking kinda low and I need this brew to be ready to go into that barrel when it's empty, so figured I'd stick it on now.

Only took a few photos partly because most of what I did has been charted on here already and partly because I was also cooking dinner towards the end of the brew so didn't really have time.  So let's go:

The ingredients for this brew.  This particular kit is different from the others I've done in that it's a dry kit.  In that there silvery packet are some muslin bags containing various specialty grains and hops, which get steeped in hot water for a time, then the liquid i mixed with all that Spraymalt (2kg of the stuff) and diluted to the standard 23 litres.  I liked the fact that I didn't have to open any cans.

This is the bags in the pan, ready to have boiling water poured over them.  As far as i could tell, there was one bag of hop pellets (Fuggles I think) and three different bags of grains (no idea what they were).

The bags steeping.  They give off a wonderful smell.

And finally here are the used bags, looking much like spent tea bags.  I had a good old poke and sniff of them and ascertained that one of the grain bags was quite fine, black and smoky, making me think it was black malt or something similar.  Another smelt kind of caramellish, so that could be Caramel, but I'm no expert.
After doing this process 3 times (a 20 minute steep each time), the rest of the brew was the same as ever: mixing in loads of spraymalt, adding cold water and pitching yeast.  I think it all went well, but the proof will be in the drinking in about 2 months.

I guess that's me done, thanks for reading, I'm off to bed to panic about tomorrow...

All set for 2010!

Merry New Year! I hope the next year holds a whole pile of wonderfulness for all of you, and that you had a marvellous Christmas full of drinking and far too much food (I certainly did).  Santa brought me some brilliant brewery related presents, which I shall share with you now.
First up, a group shot:

A book of recipes; a general book about setting up a brewery properly; an Electrim 'Mashing Bin' (really a boiler) and (best of all) my very own Boiler Room Brewery T-Shirt (merchandise may become available very soon...)

Another shot of the T-Shirt 'cos I love it so much:

And finally the inside of the boiler (needs a hop filter made for it really, but I intend to start off just using hop bags to save needing one.  It's essentially a plastic bucket with a kettle element and a tap, but I could never have made one myself as some people have.  The best thing about it is the thermostat.

Also on the way, but not yet with me thanks to Hop and Grape being out of stock, is a 'mini keg starter set' made by Brewferm, which I'll obviously put photos of up here when it does arrive.

I'm hoping tomorrow I'll get time to put the next kit (a Brewer's Choice Old Ale) on tomorrow, so you may well hear from me then...