Brew update

Bit of a cold snap here, down to 6 Deg at 10pm so popped out to the garage to check on the brew. It's sat in a water bath made from a 40l builders trug with two 25w fish tank immersion heaters to keep the temperature stable. Together, they are set to keep the brew at 20 degrees Celsius, and they seem to be coping with the colder weather with no issues; the brew is happily bubbling away.

*A quick update  - checked today after 2 days of cold weather and wind, and the temp had dropped to 18, so I've turned the heaters up a notch.*

First Brew after house move

I've recently purchased and moved into my own place; the whole process took ages, as it developed into having to re-model the whole house. So, despite having been in my new place over 4 months, this was my first opportunity to get a brew on.

I thought I would do a Canadian Blonde, slightly modified, to ease me back into the swing of things. I also wanted an opportunity to give the yeasts I got from Crossmyloof brewery a try; Their Real Ale, Pale Ale and Californian Common. I used the real ale on this brew. So, here are the details.

Type: Modified Kit Brew
Sugars: 1 Coopers Canadian Blonde, 1 Kg Richies Brew Enhancer, 500g Medium DME
Yeast: CML Real Ale Yeast, re-hydrated as per packet instructions.
Hops: 25b Bobek 15 mins, 25g  5 mins  boiled in the Medium DMD + 5l water
Additions: Water de-chlorinated with 1/2 Campden tablet.
O.G. 1048

The sample tased nice, and the medium DME gave the sample a sort of IPA colour rather than a true pale ale, so we'll have to see how it all turns out. Obviously, all of my equipment hadn't been ued in a while, so I sanitised thoroughly, but am still worried that I might get an infection. I'll just have to see. I plan to Keg this one, then immediately brew something dark for bottling.
...

Brews update

As I said below, I knocked up two brews (a Coopers Euro and Mexican Cerveza) as my 'get back into brewing' brews, and just kept them simple, kit plus 1Kg of Brew Enhancer.

However, I couldn't stand it and decided to hop them up a bit, so now the fermentation has subsided a little, I have brewed 30g of Saaz in a litre of water for 5 mins for each brew, and poured the lot, including hop bag, in the FV.

I am hoping to freshen up the taste a little, but may have just infected my brews. We'll have to see!

Back to the brewing..

So, I'm back brewing.

I had a fairly 'life changing' 18 months or so, which involved stopping smoking, getting seriously into fitness & health, and moving house. That, and some events in my personal life which needn't concern us here, meant I didn't brew at all.

However, happily in my new house, which has more room for brewing, I am now back. I have two summer, simple beers on the go now, both unmodified Coopers ~ their Euro lager, and Mexican Cerveza, just done with 1kg Brew Enhancer. I might dry hop them later, but we'll see.

However, then my new brewing quest begins. A little back story here, one of the two pubs in my Village, that frankly had been on its arse for years, with a selection of, whilst often friendly, sadly unsuccessful tenants trying to scratch a living and failing. Owned by Punch Taverns (as is the other village pub), it really needed major investment, and freeing from Punch's seemingly appalling strategic management.

This happened when a local business man brought it lock, stock and barrel, and transformed it. The beer is now local (Batemans), the food good, and it's busy again. One of it's two real ales, next to the excellent XXB, is Batemans new 'Yella Belly Gold', which is a blonde, lowish alcohol, hoppy beer ~ Think Cascade and Chinook. I love it, it's a great session beer, while still having an interesting taste.

Now that I'm a bit of a fitness freak, I want to try and brew lower alcohol, light beers that still taste interesting. I'll be aiming for hitting the 3 - 3.5% mark.

Hopefully, I'll also remember to blog!

Hopping Honey Monster

Type: Modified Kit Brew
Sugars: 1 Coopers Australian Pale Ale, 1 Kg Extra Light Dried Malt Extract, 500g Lidl Clear Honey, 100g Crystal Malt (steeped in DME)
Yeast: Coopers Kit Yeast
Hops: 25g Saaz for 10 min boil + 20 Min Steep, 50g Challenger, 5 min boil plus 20 mins steep
Additions: Water de-chlorinated with 1/2 Campden tablet.
Time in Primary: Erm... 2 weeks?
Secondary method: King Keg
Time in Secondary: 4 - 5 weeks
O.G. 1050
F.G. Erm......

OK, so this is a story of two things. The first, as you can see from the specifications above, is a lesson in decent record keeping. Not only did I forget to record the final gravity, but I forgot to record the date that it went into the King Keg, so I'll have a guess at both, around 1014 for the F.G., and 2 weeks in the FV. My bad.

The second lesson is that the honey was lobed in with the hops, as I was concerned that it may contain wild yeasts (that I wanted to kill). I have since read up and discovered two things ~ most commercial honey is pasteurised, thus no wild yeasts, and boiling destroys much pf the honey aroma and taste.

To be honest, this was no better that the modified Coopers Canadian Blonde below, and had hardly any noticeable honey notes to it. Not one I'll do again, I'm afraid, at least not without some modifications first.

Magnum Apple Cider

First post for a long while, and I've got a bit behind on writing about my brewing. What can I say ~ real life intervened! Women, work and the festive season ~ all things to drag you away from the blogging lark.

Anyway, back to the brewing. Todays report ~ Magnum Apple Cider.

As I've posted here, I've made a few batches of 'Turbo Cider' from budget apple juice, so I thought I'd give this a go.

Thinking along beer kit lines, in that it's the quality and type of your 'sugars' that often make a difference between an 'OK' and a 'Great' batch of homebrew, I was keen to see if I could get a really top class product by replacing some of the required 'household sugar' with something better.

With a beer kit, this would be liquid or dry malt, brewing sugar or a mix of them, such as with beer enhancer. With a cider kit, the obvious thing to do is use apple juice, as you can work out how much sugar is in each litre from the nutritional information on the side of the carton. Reviews of this (and most other cider kits, if I'm honest) tended towards the view that the resultant product could be a little 'thin', so I was hoping to minimise this by the use of apple juice as part of the fermentable sugars.

Making the kit up is pretty standard faire ~ Kit contents plus sugars in the fermenting bin, plus some hot and cold water to 20 odd degrees, and thrash the yeast in. My calculations for the given amount of sugar required (1.3kg of household sugar) came to a substitution of 10L of Lidl apple juice, plus 600g of sugar. Finally, you add the 'cider yeast / sweetener sachet' (which I assume is a non fermentable sugar plus yeast) and wait. I left it 2 weeks in the FV, which saw it drop from an OG of 1052 to 1004 (ABV 6.4%!). All good so far. Then, into the pressure barrel with 60g of priming sugar, and the 'Cider Flavouring Sachet', which smelt of pearl drops or nail varnish.

Two weeks later, I had a drinkable cider, but nothin special. In fact, compared to turbo cider, which I've just about perfected now (more anon), I was a little dissapointed ~ it was very 'thin' tasting, and not at all as 'apple' like as home made TC. Also, the TC would have been cheaper, and just as simple if not more so, and what on Gods green earth was in that flavour sachet?!? The finished product still had a 'nail varnish' twang, even after several weeks. And boy, did it take me several weeks to chug through this one!

Not one I'd try again. However, if you are tempted, I'd recommend bottling as, just as with lager, the King Keg can't maintain sufficient pressure to get the CO2 to dissolve in the beer and give you proper 'fiz'. Unless you like traditional, flat, cider, but then, this kit wouldn't be to your taste anyway ~ too commercial tasting. Also, unless you have some 'keg in a fridge' set up, you can't chill the cider, which I also like (purists, look away now!).

Modifying a Canadian Blonde

As I have posted before, I'm a big fan of Coopers Canadian Blonde, and I slightly prefer it to the Coopers APA, which is often the kit of choice for UK 'kit modders', which will become apparent if you browse through the Kit Brewing forum on Jim's Beer Kit. So for my first 'modified kit' experiment (these posts are out of chrolilogical order, I actually did this one before the 'Stout Old Gentleman outlined below), I thought I would keep it simple and 'Saaz up' a Canadian Blonde. What inspired me was a bottle of 'Saltaire Blonde' that I got on special offer, which is described as;

A straw coloured light ale with soft malt flavours, delicately hopped with Czech and German hop varieties.

So, I thought Saaz would be a good place to start.  Just for the record, the piccy in the right is my crap photography, not official Saltaire promo material! While on the subject of pictures, I'm afraid I didn't take any of this brew, but if you look at the 'Stout Old gentleman' post, you will get the general idea.

Type: Modified Kit Brew
Sugars: 1 Coopers Canadian Blonde, 1Kg Muntons Brew Enhancer, 500g Muntons Extra Light Dried Malt Extract
Yeast: Danstar Nottingham Yeast
Hops: About 75g Saaz, boiled in 5L water + 500g of malt extract, 50% @ 15mins, 50% @ 5 mins
Additions: Water de-chlorinated with 1/2 Campden tablet.
Time in Primary: 3 weeks
Secondary method: King Keg
Time in Secondary: 4 - 5 weeks
O.G. 1050
F.G. 1014

The method for using the hops was as follows. The 500g of Extra Light DME was mixed into about 5 litres of water in a stock pot, which was brought to the boil. Once boiling, half of the hops were added in a muslin bag. After 10 mins, the other half were added and it was left to continue to boil for 5 more mins. Then, it was taken off the heat and the hop bags removed. This was then added to the FV containing the brew enhancer, the kit malt extract, and also used to swill out the kit tin. Once it had cooled sufficiently, the packet of Danstar Nottingham Yeast was thrashed into the wort, and then the FV was placed in my usual builders bucker water bath set to 21 degrees C.

The idea of using the Nottingham yeast was that it was meant to give a clean taste to brews, with little esters, and that is what I thought would suit this style of ale best, what with it using extra lager hops. The first thing I noticed, after fermenting had begun, was the usual 'slight pong' given off by some brews was pretty intense, and had my spare room smelling a bit like a drain for a couple of days! I don't know if this was the hops or the yeast or what, but it was interesting to note.

I left it in the FV under an airlock for 3 weeks to allow the yeast plenty of time to clear up after itself, and it was then king kegged with the usual 80g of priming sugar. It took much longer to come good, after 2 weeks although fully carbonated, it was more cloudy than Gordon Brown's mood on election night, and wasn't fully clear and suitable drinkable until after 4, more like 5, weeks. Oh, and it was really, really hoppy!

After  7 or 8 weeks it was improving, or perhaps my pallet was getting used to the Saaz hops, when a friend came to stay to go fishing. After a long fishing session, ending at the local watering hole, we returned to my house with the customary Chinese takeaway. He asked to try this creation, and was suitably impressed. I showed him how to keep the keg gassed up as he took beer out, and left him to it, with a 'help yourself, there's over thirty pints left'.

The next day, while cooking Sunday lunch for us both, he turned to me and said, 'What am I doing wrong, it's stopped coming out'.

'Erm, that's because the barrels empty, mate'

I will take that as a success, although I didn't get anywhere near the Saltaire Blonde taste. A good first attempt then.