Well, in the interests of “simplify, man!” this blog is being absorbed into our urban farming blog:
I realised that the spirit of home-brewing is very much in line with the spirit of what we’re doing with our garden and our home.
SO from now on, all home-brewing posts will be found over there, as well as all the other interesting bits and pieces….
So head over to the Urban Farm for a nice creamy brew……
Posted in Uncategorized
Ingredients
Method
Mashed the grains together in esky for an hour – boiled 7Lt water to 75°C, then poured into grains in esky. Drained wort into poy, added DME and brought to the boil. Added hops as per schedule. Added kit wort at flame-out. Pitched yeast at 24°C.
OG: 1.048
Posted in Extract Brewing, Stout, homebrew
What with the wonderful new boiler and my growing experience working with grains and partial mashes, I am having some quandaries taking the next step into brewing with grains.
Essentially, I don’t think the boiler is the best equipment for mashing grains – merely because of its size. Also, because there is clearly a wisdom (and a science) to draining the wort from the mash-bed, and the sparging. Very different to the process I am doing using the muslin liner.
It also means I am somewhat limited with how I can go about doing two batches at the same time that are different – which has been my intention with thinking about the next batch (or two).
So the next one may well be two batches – just that they will have to be the same. About the only difference I can make is in the yeast and aroma hops used (which can be put into each fermenter).
My plan is to use the fresh hops I just harvested: cascade and golden cluster. With any luck, this year we will be able to expand on the varieties we have growing in our garden, and this will be good for variety.
So, I’m planning to head to the local HBS to get some grains and some advice…
Posted in Uncategorized
This is a partial mash version of my previous Irish Red Ale, using my new boiler pot. A few snags, but generally this worked out ok. The boiler sits on legs, but isn’t high enough for the fermenter to sit under the tap – so I had to use a stock-pot and transfer in a couple of stages. I may have to look at this sitting higher for this to be resolved. The rustic thermostat did not cause any serious problems for maintaining a constant temperature.
I did find the muslin wasn’t quite as good as a cheese-cloth – it doesn’t stretch as well as the grain-bag I had bought from the HBS, but it held OK. I did feel some give to the weave as I squeezed the last few drops of wort from the grain. I may have to replace this already, but at grand total cost of AU$4, it doesn’t worry me that much – just the hassle of having to sew it all up again.
The limitations with this boiler is in a single batch – I feel this would have worked better with more water in it (a double batch, for instance). But I have to reserve my judgement for when I taste the results, to determine what I can do better.
Ingredients
17 litres of water was warmed up to 70°C, then the Maris Otter, Carared, and Melanoidin malt was placed into the muslin liner and kept at 65-67°C for 1 hour.
The crystal and chocolate malt was steeped in water the same temperature for a little under 30 minutes, in a small saucepan.
Once the wort had been drained from the grain, I poured it back into the boiler and brought it to the boil, where I added the hops pellets in a hop-bag and left to boil for 1 hour.
At the end of the hour, I added the Irish Moss (dissolved in a cup of warm water), the LDME, and the steeped grain wort. Turning off the heat, I poured the wort into the fermenter, put the hop bag in that adding the two hops plugs, and topped up to 23Lt with cold water. I left the hops sitting in the wort for about half-hour before pulling out and leaving to cool down to a temperature suitable to pitch the yeast (19-20°C).
In order to get the most out of my hops, I mashed grains in 17 Lt water, and working out the total amount of fermentables (4.15Kg), meant that the what I had left in the wort was the right amount for hops isomeration (roughly 3kg of potential extract). This is all according to the formula that I have written about here. Thankfully, a lot of the number-crunching was done by my copy of Promash.
The brew was bulk-primed and bottled with 160g Dextrose.
Posted in Partial Mash, Red Ale, homebrew
I recently inherited this little trinket…
Its designed to heat inside the fermenter, and can clearly be used to keep a brew between 15-35°C. Obviously for brewing ales in winter.
Don’t know if I’ll ever use it, as I prefer to brew according to the seasons – but there is a chance I may be able to incorporate this into the 50Lt boiler (see this post).
I have also bought some muslin to make a grain bag/liner for the boiler, and trying to work out how to sew it all together….
Posted in Brewing Hardware, Brewing Hints, homebrew
The freakishly, stupid hot weather is definitely gone now!
Not that we could say Summer here was hot – for the most part it was cool, but then we had those crazy 40°+ days which scorched the vegies and almost wiped out the Cascade Hops bine growing up the north side of the house.
But now is the ideal time for starting up those ales again. And seeing that apples and pear (and other fruits) are also now in season, ciders, perrys, and other drinks can also be started.
I have recently acquired this little beauty:
This is an electric urn which holds about 50Lt. The elements are hidden underneath a copper plate, and I believe this could be utilised for mashing large amounts grain. Admittedly, I think the grains would need to remain in some kind of bag or liner, but one that has the dimensions of the urn.
I actually played around with heating water, and once it brings water up to the desired temperature (63-65° for dryness, 65-67° for sweetness), turning it down successfully holds the water at temperature. I’m not the biggest fan of electric heating elements, but in this instance the on-again/off-again nature of electric heating elements works a lot easier for such things. Trying to keep a constant temperature on the gas stove in the past has been somewhat of a nightmare, and in a previous brew I used an esky for the grains.
This urn however, will start to allow me to play around with much greater volumes of water and grain. However, if that is the case then I need a bigger pot to boil up in.
And so, it looks like this is the first step into the world of all-grain brewing. The amounts of grain I can play with now eliminate the need for malt extract.
So now I am getting together all the bits and pieces for the next brew, and that looks like a re-hash of the Witches Promise ale. Having reformatted my hard-drive a few weeks, I just need to reload my copy of Promash and find the recipe details. I had purchased all my ingredients late last year, so they are sitting there and waiting for me to use.
The other exciting thing I will be doing is bottling in champagne bottles, thanks to Mrs Ravenwolfe buying me that Bench Capper for Christmas with the larger size bell for capping the larger sized bottles. I have enough of those size bottles for two batches. I think beer in these bottles is classy – hence my penchant for Beechworth Brewery’s Chevalier series and the farmhouse ales from Prickly Moses.
Here’s to another productive brewing season!
Posted in Brewing Hardware, Brewing Hints, homebrew
Well……
Mixed results with this lot. Firstly, the Gluten-Free batch has turned out wonderful and crisp. It is certainly sweet, but not overly so like a standard Mead would be. The hops qualities are subtle, and I think counter-act the sweetness of the honey. This is wonderful when it is super cold.
Not my particular cup of tea, but I don’t mind drinking it. Those who don’t like beer and most females love it! To me, its more like a glass of bubbly than an ale – remembering of course that there is no malt in this whatsoever.
The malted version on the other hand turned out terribly!! I believe that I have here my first infection. In the dim dark days of being a beginner-brewer, I was always warned about infections and the need for good sanitation practices. The crusty old experts would always say, “you’ll know when you have an infection”.
And yes, for all you who ask how you know when you have an infected batch… you’ll know it! Like I do with this batch. So 10 Lt of Snail-Ale now awaits the slugs and snails that have shown up with the rain….
I can also add here that Cascade hops IMHO are definitely not the hops of choice for a mead/braggot! The original recipe had hops with gentler, subtler flavours and bitterness – Cascade, whilst wonderful in an American-style Amber (such as Mountain Goat’s Hightail Ale), is certainly not suited to this kind of taste.
Remembering that a Braggot is essentially a mead made with malt! It lies somewhere between a beer with honey and honey with beer…
Ultimately, I have been disappointed with these brews. The original Midsummer Night’s Mead was a gem. Perhaps in making a larger batch, we don’t just multiply the numbers by a particular factor. Perhaps also this is to do with the quality and type of honmey used. I had no control over the honey this time around, and I don’t know what type it was, as a friend bought it for us. The original used ‘Brewer’s Honey’ which is available from my local HBS – perhaps this stuff isn’t as strong in flavour. Clover honey is what is usually used in traditional mead recipes, as it is sweet and not too overpowering. Whilst I don’t mind the strong Eucalypt honeys that we can get here in Australia on toast, that strong aroma could interfere with the complex flavours we play around with in beers and braggots.
I actually split this batch into 2x 10Lt batches: one with malt, and without malt (gluten-free) for Mrs Ravenwolfe.
Midsummer Night’s Mead
OG: 1.103
Merry Xmas Mead (GF)
Without malt, fermentation needs some assistance – hence the addition of yeast nutrient. Also, shaking the barrel up a little every now and then re-introduces oxygen into the mix and helps fermentation push along somewhat.
OG: 1.077
Each batch was done simultaneously, using separate pots and stirrers (obviously) to avoid contaminating the GF batch with any malt. I topped up each barrel to 10 litres, and because the weather was warm didn’t add the yeast until the following morning, where it had cooled to about 26°C.
As I write this, the meads have been bubbling away for about 8 days, and temps have stayed constantly between 20-24°C, even with the crazy fluctuations in temperature outside. They don’t even sound like they have slowed down any, so I suspect they are going to take the full 2 weeks, or possibly a bit longer. I suspected that the GF batch may even take a little longer than the malted batch, just because fermentation without malt has always been a little slower in my experience.
It was a good thing that Mrs Ravenwolfe found another fermenting barrel at an Op Shop, as this means I still have a free one to start the next ale…
We had a wwoofer from France staying with us, and after tasting some of the home-brew, wanted to learn about brewing beer himself. So, we took a visit to the local HBS and bought a kit, more to show him the basics and how easy it is brew beer yourself. I decided on making a Brown Ale, akin to Newcastle or any generic Northern Brown Ale. Essentially, I followed the recipe suggestion that Brewcraft make for making a Newkie Brown….
Steeped grains at 65-67C for half-hour. Brought 2-4Lt water to boil, added kit wort, LME, corn syrup, and steeped grain wort. Once everything was dissolved, added Irish moss and the Fuggles plug, stirred through and turned flame out. Left for a while to cool down.
Strained wort whilst pouring into fermenter, and topped up water to 25 Lt.
This was rather weird, and we could not work out why there was such a high gravity – especially given this was a beer made from a kit wort.
Had some interesting stuff happen with the yeast starter too. This was the first time I actually used any of the British Ale II yeast starters I made back in April, and my starter did not krausen – but clearly the yeast cells had multiplied.
The Final Gravity reading was 1.014 a couple of weeks later, and I bulk-primed with 120g Brown Sugar.
The consensus with the exceptionally high OG was that there may have been a deal of sediment in the tap, and thus got a false reading. For the sake of it, I am going to take the estimated SG as calculated by my copy of Promash, which was 1.044.
If this is correct, this batch should be around 4% Alc/Vol.
Let this be a lesson to all who read this: ensure you take accurate gravity readings. Drawing some more beer out of the fermenter and taking a second reading would have most likely confirmed for us what was really going on….
Posted in Brown Ale, Extract Brewing, homebrew
Here is the partial-mash version of the highly successful and lovable Wanton Wench Belgian Witbier…. and I was graciously assisted by the maker of Wanton Wench, Damon, from Merlins Socks.
I used a 24 litre esky for mashing the grains, placing the grains in a grain bag, heating 10 litres of water up to 70°C, then putting it all in the esky for 1 hour. I checked temp half-hour in, and it was holding well at 65°C.
Tipping this wort into a pot, I added about 2/3 tin of LME and the whole of the DME, bringing to the boil and adding the first lot of hops.
While this was happening, I had the orange peel and coriander seed boiling in a pot, adding water as necessary.
Once the boil had finished after 1 hour, I added the rest of the LME, the coriander/orange decoction, turned off the flame, and added the hops plugs. Left this covered for about half-hour whilst we got ready to transfer it all into the fermenter (and having a beverage or two whilst we were at it).
We then strained this wort, getting all the bits of hops out of it, and letting it cool. We pitched the yeast at 24°C. It was bubbling like a geyser by the following morning and has been consistently fermenting since… although today being such a hot day, I’m concerned that the wort is reaching the upper limits that the yeast strain can handle; but all seems ok….
ALC/VOL. 5.4%
Posted in Belgian, Spicy Witbier, Wheat Beer, homebrew
