Home Brew

[chuffer]

APA brewed, the OG came out at 1040 so it was a little low, think I may have over egged the water by 2 litres which a contributing factor, I also need a better (more efficient) Sparge method

Got any brewing sugar? If so, maybe chuck a bit in to bring it back up a bit?

[TheDuke]

I do, but 1040 should give me over 4% which will do me fine

 

when beer is too high ABV I cant drink too much of it!

[TheDuke]

So the next steps are to build a fermenting fridge, I have freed up my STC100 temp controller, as I bought a cooling only controller for the kegerator

 

I am also looking to harvest and re-use my yeast, a pal of mine has 20 yeasts on stock!

[chuffer]

My ruby has cleared up well, prob needs another week or so though. Oddly, its strong on the toffee notes rather than the fruity zing I was hoping for, should have dry hopped with the cascade for this, oh well you live n learn

[TheDuke]

it will still be better than some shop bought stuff

[TheDuke]

APA is now on tap, its a really nice drink

[chuffer]

APA is now on tap, its a really nice drink

That was quick! Do you not bother to let them warm / cold condition then?

[TheDuke]

i force carb my beer and its straight into the kegerator, so i dont have to wait as long

[chuffer]

it will still be better than some shop bought stuff

It actually is, just had one out the bottle now - lovely....the rest of the batch I left in the PV but it goes flat and you have to keep recharging the barrel with CO2 after pouring just a couple of pints....think I'll stick to bottling in the future

[TheDuke]

Have you thought about Corny Kegs?

[chuffer]

Finished my DIY Mash Tun and Wort Chiller at the weekend, hope to be giving them both a baptism this weekend...

[Bob8]

A lady in Sweden had a question for me. 

 

The thingy that you fill with water to stop contamination was not filled with water.  The resulting batch tastes like beer, but might be a bit cloudier. 

 

Should it be bottled?

[chuffer]

Is she talking about the airlock in a fermentation vessel? If so, dont think the water is absolutely necessary, its just that when there's water in you can see co2 production by way of the bubbles...and so you know its nearly fermented when the bubbles stop...but if you dont have this, it should be about done in about 2 weeks anyway...this shouldn't affect the clarity, I then bottle after fermentation and leave for a few weeks to clear up but others do different things like keg

[TheDuke]

i have 80 pints of tetleys currently being cooled with the wort chiller, looking forward to this one

 

my vienna lager has now gone for lagering, so thats 6 weeks away, i fear i will run dry for a period

[chuffer]

Tried my first all grain yesterday. Didn't all go according to plan. Preheated the mash tun and let water stabilise to strike temp, added grain but temp dropped much lower than I hoped so had to keep topping up hot water until mash temp reached. Same trouble with sparging an hr later, heated sparge water but grain bed was cooler than hoped during sparging, ended up getting less liquid out above 1.010 than hoped and so had to add top up water. Then my rehydrated yeast looked dead, pitched it anyway but also threw in a packet of dry yeast I had spare just to be sure.......so lord knows how this is going to turn out

[TheDuke]

i ended up slightly short 42 instead of 46 Litres, but my OG was 1038 instead of 1034 so i am happy enough with that, i only use 19L corny kegs

 

Did you mix your mash?

[chuffer]

Did you mix your mash?

Mix, as in stir it?

[TheDuke]

yes

[chuffer]

Yes, at the start when I added it. But I did a make shift fly sparge and so didn't unsettle the grain bed after that so it would filter through ok...next time I might just batch sparge and see if it works better

[TheDuke]

seems very very low then, i made a IPA and didnt dough in properly, tasted good but very weak

[TheDuke]

have you any honey or golden syrup in the cupboard?

 

if so i would be sticking that in to get the gravity up, DME also does the trick

[chuffer]

Oh no sorry, my OG is 1.050. What I meant is that, since you're supposed to stop sparging when the gravity of your running's drops below 1.010-1.008 (at this point sugars are gone and you're just getting water and tannins), I had to stop sparging and had not collected the anticipated volume...so had to top up with tap water before the boil

[TheDuke]

ah, i wouldnt worry too much about that, i just sparge my calculated amount of water through, dont worry at all about that

 

i imagine fermentation is vigourous?

[chuffer]

It was a slow starter, got going well for about 24hrs or so but now seems to have stalled

[TheDuke]

whats the current gravity?