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Saturday 17 November 2018

Juggling things about

I'm off work, using up annual leave, again next week, so I want to get a couple of brews in. Thing is, I don't have any fridge space or Inkbirds & fish tank heaters spare. So tonight, I went out to the garage to see what was happening.


The Barklay Perkins Lager using Kolsch yeast has dropped to 1012 already. Oh dear, I didn't manage to catch that for a diacetyl rest at 50% or so attenuation. As I suspect it has a couple of points to drop still, I've started raising the temperature. 14.5 tonight, 16.5 tomorrow and then to 18 on Monday. My logic behind the slow increase in temperature is that the Inkbird is measuring the water bath, not the wort, so I want to give the thermal mass of the FV a chance to slowly catch up to the raised temperature of the water in the bath before ramping it up again. And the sample? Wow. Double wow. I had forgotten how lovely Saaz hops are. This is a lovely drop, and already tastes clean and lager like. Once carbonated up and then left to pseudo 'lager' in the bottle for several weeks I think I may be onto a winner. Very impressed with the CML Kolsch yeast at this point and am already thinking about other historic lagers I could commit heresy with brew with this yeast ~ darker, more complex, malty beasts. Won't be ready for bottling till the end of this week at the earliest, however. So no Inkbirds to free up there.

Next up for testing was the best extra stout. This appears to have dropped to 1014 already, but, again, needs to be left for finish off. Tastes incredibly chocolaty and rich. Very nice, in fact. Both these have cheered me up a bit, after coming to the realisation that my brown ale is pants. More on that later. Again, no freeing up the brew fridge.

So I popped a bottle of ESB in the fridge, cracked it open to see of they had fully carbonated. They have, which is excellent as it frees up an Inkbird and a couple of immersion heaters. That is all I need to ferment the CML California Common version of the Barklay's historic lager.Now, it hasn't totally cleared, but it tastes really good, just what I was aiming for. It also has a cracking head, which I think has me converted to flaked barley.

So, I'd better cover the 1954 Whitbread Double Brown. On bottling, I quite liked the fruity flavour the yeast gave it. But, I'm afraid, it just doesn't work. In fact, the whole recipe is just thin, and uninspiring. Its not undrinkable, but it's not enjoyable. It just doesn't really work at all. Still, its the first all grain brew I've done that I haven't liked, so I'll chalk that up to experience.







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