Busy week, and beers

Using up some annual leave this week, and have got lots of beer related stuff to do. I've also got a ton of DIY tasks to complete, and want to get back exercising, so something will no doubt fall y the wayside, but here are my home brew plans.

Tomorrow, I will be bottling my ESB. I switched off the brew fridge yesterday, so it will be gradually cooling down to 9° C or so ambient temp. I have decided enough is enough with my King Kegs. Since returning to home brewing, I have suffered leaking S30 valves, leaking taps, taps that leak gas under full pressure, but most annoyingly, two Hambleton Bard S30 cylinders that were faulty and lost all their gas. These aren't cheap, the the only solution would be to get a pub bottle and adapters, which is a lot of clat. I really like the way that a properly working, primed King Keg can dispense cask ale like beer, if the tap is right and the pressure is correct, but I'm fed up with the S30 expense / reliability issues. Cornie kegs are meant to be more reliable, but are a bit keg like (obviously!) with all that force carbing malarky. So, I'm bottling all my brews for now. I really (really) dislike bottling, so this might not last, but a leaking bottle is a single bottle lost, rather than a whole keg, and they can be warmed / cooled if the ambient temperature is anywhere near beer cellar serving temperature. You can also set down bottles for ages, and it only ties up some bottles, not a whole keg.


I want to get one of my pseudo lagers on the go this week, with the Crossmyloof Kolsch yeast. Ambient temps here aren't forecast to exceed 14℃, which in my garage will be more like 12℃ ~ so a builders trub heated water bath will be fine, as it will onl need to heat at night when its cold, and never have to worry about cooling. This will free up the brew fridge, which I am going to use to do a   'Coopers best extra stout sort of clone', or more accurately something that started with a Coopers Best Extra Stout clone recipe that I then modified to suit what I have in my brewing cupboard.

I cracked open two bottles of my 1954 Whitbread Brown ale yesterday. Its really nice, but also a testament to my lack of brewing experience, I think. The style would have suited a more neutral yeast, the lovely esters given off by MJ's Liberty Bell just don't seem to site right with the style. I am hopefully going to do some yeast re-culturing soon (more on that in another post), but if I brew a historic brown ale before I've banked a suitable liquid yeast, I'll probably try Fermentis S04, which is meant to be a Whitbread strain. Being still rather young, the head wasn't very long lasting (as you can see from the photo) but then I don't really remember brown ales being massive, lacy headed monsters? I am encouraged to brew more brown ales, however.

Next up is my Kentucky Common. Let's be honest, I've no idea whatsoever how authentic this tastes, but its a really great beer. Very, very drinkable. Smooth, malty, but not heavy in any way; the CML Cali common yeast really gives it a snappy clean finish. Having heard directly from CML that this yeast benefits from a decent lagering / storage period, I am probably drinking it too young, but I don't care. Its lush!