Pint of AG11, all grain homebrew Batemans Victory

Oops, here's another pint that I haven't actually posted the brewday for. It was a typically brew really, nothing special but it's made a cracking beer. Really enjoying this, it's a tad paler than original as I'm currently using up a sack of pale crystal malt I ordered by mistake. EDIT I lie like a cheap watch, here's the brewday, all grain Batemans Victory. One thing that has struck me is, having just been over to Batemans website is they say there are US Liberty hops used in the recipe... EKG and Styrians according to my recipe. So I think I'll be re-brewing this one anyone as it's nice and I'll get hold of some Liberty hops and see what the difference is.

Lovely wash of hop aromas as you stick your nose in the glass and a pleasing, creamy mouthfeel. Soft and delicate but at 6.1% abv it's one to keep an eye on. It goes down faster than a £300 escort light, summer session bitter. It has a lovely, thick white head that lasts the course and even when it begins to thin out a little, a quick swirl in the glass and it's back.

Here's the pic, sorry it's blurred I'm getting worse at photos. I seem to have a knack of getting backgrounds in perfect focus... meh!

While I'm on the subject of summer session beers, I've just bottled an own recipe Golden Bitter ready for summer, target abv was 3.9% but I ended up at 4.1% so it's still pretty low. A quicker taster before bottling and it's hoppy and fresh. I'm looking forward to trying the first small, sampler bottle in a few days.

AG#12 All Grain Felinfoel Double Dragon

Brewday 3rd April and again a recipe from Graham Wheeler's book.

I hit my target volume for once but was over gravity, the downside to this was I topped up with some freshwater and ended up with 26 litres. Which was nice.

Pale malt
T. wheat
Pale crystal
Black malt
white sugar

Bittering Hops:
Challenger
Target (I had to make up a shortfall of challenger to get the right bitterness)
Bramling Cross - becoming a favourite
East Kent Golding

Aroma Hops:
East Kent Golding

Irish Moss

Safale SO4 starter made from reclaimed yeast from previous brews. It kicked off like a mo-fo in the FV.

Few words for this one, a pleasant brew again. My only gripe really is the immersion chiller. It works very well but the hosepipe I bought for it gets a bit soft and easily kinks causing back pressure that hasn't yet popped a fitting but probably could do. My other gripe with the immersion chiller is it don't half bugger up the hops settling onto the hop filter in the bottom of my copper.

Anyway, some piccies.

Grain shot obligatoire.

Nice clear run off from the Mash Tun. I only had to run off about a litre before it came clear, often it's 3 or 4 litres.

Sparging, allowing the sparge liquor to circulate around over a slotted foil try. I haven't bothered with my spray bar for a while.

Approaching the boil, getting ready to skim the surface crud away.

Surface crud skimmings, not as much as previous brews.

Rolling boil and bittering hops and debris rolling around.

Chiller and 10 minute hop addition

1,046 or thereabouts. Over OG so I added water to bring it down to 1,042 giving me 26 litres :)

The remains of the day. Notice the hop filter isn't entirely covered with hops! Bloody immersion chiller collects them in the centre. I need to address this, maybe some legs to lift the chiller off the base of the copper a bit.

Krausen about 4 hours after pitching the yeast. Took off like a rocket!

Bottled on 9th April and I had my first sneaker sampler bottle on 14th... WOW!!!!!

I've had a few glasses of this so far, it's absolutely bloody gorgeous! I haven't gotten round to any pics of pintas yet as the weather has turned a bit shitty and they just look better, taken out doors.

To date, this is my favourite beer that I've brewed.

Update: May 20th 2012 - Weather still shit, not sure if we're going to get a summer this year so here's a link to an indoor photo of this batch, pint of all grain Double Dragon. I do have a second batch in the Fv right now along with a Timothy Taylor Landlord I just really need to get my arse back in gear and blogging again.

AG#11 All Grain Batemans Victory

No photos alas. This was brewed on 31st March and was really a test brew to see if I still felt like and enjoyed brewing having been very down in the dumps over the loss of the Wuppit.

It went well. The recipe is from Graham Wheeler's superb Brew Your Own British Real Ale (3rd edition) and as I've written frequently before, if you haven't got a copy... GET ONE!!! get it here right now, this minute!

Have you got it yet?

Pale Malt
Crystal malt
T. Wheat

East Kent Goldings
Styrian Goldings

I ended up slightly under target volume of 23 litres but not enough to worry about and it gave me an OG of 1,056 rather than 1,054.

Final gravity of 1,011 which I calculated to give me a beer of 6.1%ABV

12 days in the FV which is a bit longer than usual and finally bottled on 11th April with 80g sugar dissolved in 250ml water.

I've only had a sneaky taster so far, it's primed well but needs to drop a bit clearer looking at the single, clear glass bottle I always have each brew (kept in the dark). Tastes very nice and it's probably the palest beer I've brewed yet. I used pale Crytsal malt due to mis-ordering the standard stuff.

I'll update this post wit a photo of the first proper pinta when I have it.

AG#6 All Grain Everards Tiger (ish)

I brewed this beer during the same weekend as my previously posted All Grain Winter Warmer. This recipe is based on the all grain Everards Tiger recipe taken from page 145 of Graham Walker's Brew Your Own British Real Ale. If you don't already have this book, I highly recommend it!!!

I say that this brew is based on the recipe as I chose to replace the 12g of Black malt in the recipe with some Amber malt instead. Why? I found that the addition of the black malt in my all grain, home brew Banks Bitter made the finished beer a little too dark. I also have a surplus of amber malt and so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and use up some of my amber malt whilst adding some darker colour but not too much. I also like the subtle, biscuity flavours the amber malt brings to the beer.

I also (accidentally) added more Crystal malt and Torrefied wheat than the recipe required, I was getting some weight fluctuations that I didn't spot initially and had to put new batteries in my scales. Too late to remove and reweigh as I had already tipped the grains into the bulk of the pale malt... Next time I shall weigh the grains into separate containers before mixing.

Brewday, Sunday16th October, target volume 23l.

The grain bill:

• Pale malt: 3400g
• Crystal malt: 386g
• Amber malt: 200g
• Torrefied wheat: 197g

The hops:

• 31g Challenger in at start of boil (90 mins)
• 20g Fuggles in during the last 10 minutes of the boil.

200g white sugar to go in approx half way through the boil and as with my last couple of brews I rehydrated the Irish Moss which was added in the last 10 minutes of the boil.

Before bottling I will also be dry hopping with a few cones of Goldings.

Again, the brewday went without any major problems, my equipment is behaving and performing well.

The mash schedule: 10 litres of liquor at 66C for 90 minutes - again my mash tun didn't lose a single degree :) HLT temp was 75C giving me a strike temp in the pre heated mash tun (kettle of boiling water for 20 minutes) of 72C. After the addition of the grains and doughing in I hit the target of 66C bang on.

Unfortunately the yeast starter I had made from some yeast reclaimed from a previous brew didn't appear to get going and so I chose to bin it rather than risk using it. I had one pack of Wyeast 1968 London that I was saving for an ESB I plan to brew soon so I used that.

Target gravity was 1041 but I got 1045. I'm still not up to speed with calculating efficiency but I keep achieving higher gravities. I can only put this down to my mash tun being very efficient and extracting more fermentable sugars from the malted grains. I'm not overly concerned at this point, I'm far from being ready to consider selling my brews, as a slightly stronger beer isn't really a bad thing.

Here are the piccies.

First run off from the mash tun, I'm liking the colour. Note, I ran a couple of litres off into a jug first until the grain bed settled and the wort began to run clearer.

From the initial 10 litres of hot liquor for the mash I extracted about 7 litres of wort prior to sparging.

I heated the hot liquor tank to 80C for the sparge and slowly sparged the grain bed to end up with 25 litres of wort with a gravity around 1039 bearing in mind this lower gravity is pre boil and pre addition of 200g of sugar during the boil. Unable to calculate exactly what the boil and sugar was going to add to the gravity I wasn't sure how much water to add to the wort pre boil.

From previous experience of the evaporation losses, in order to end up with my target of 23 litres I'd need to start the boil with around 30 to 31 litres... I topped up to 30 litres and hoped the gravity would climb to the target 1041 with the evaporation losses and sugar taken into account.

Approaching boil, the hot break material begins to form. As before I skimmed the surface froth away as it formed prior to reaching the rolling boil.

Some of the skimmed surface break material... nice isn't it?

Getting down to business now with a vigorous boil, in go the bittering hops - 31g Challenger. This is my first brew using Challenger and the smell was very nice indeed. I have yet to find hops I don't love the smell of when they go in the boil.

As this was quite an uneventful, other than ending up with 23l of lovely beer, I haven't gone mad on photos. they are all beginning to look a bit samey. You can see the cold break material starting to clump together in the photo above as my home made wort chiller brings the temp down to 30C after the boil. The aroma hops, 20g Fuggles, went into the brew ten minutes before end of boil.

This addition of hops towards the end or after the boil is to me a bit of a pain when using an immersion chiller like above. As the chiller has to go into the boiling wort 15 or so minutes before then end of boil to be sterilized, the (end of boil) hops go in afterwards and tend to get all caught up in the coils of the chiller as they roll around. Not bad to begin with but they gradually collect together and rise up out of the boiling wort. I keep tapping them back in with my brewing spoon but, it's a bit of a pain in the ass.

The hopped sweet wort has been chilled and can be seen running off from the copper into the fermenter.

I pitched the yeast and as with my previous use of wyeast smack pack yeasts, nothing bloody happened for two days! I was beginning to worry the pack had not been viable - I followed the instructions to the T - when finally the brew burst into life and began to ferment.

A day or so later my order of bottles arrived along with some airlocks and grommets so I drilled the fermenter lid and fitted an airlock to it. As I write this, it's still glugging away like a goodun and the gravity is taking longer than normal to drop. This might be due to the slightly lower temperatures now or it might just be the yeast was struggling to get going. So even with my delayed posting, there's no photos of the finished beer just yet.

On the subject of temperatures I am looking to, in the not too distant future, convert and old fridge by way of an external controller with a probe in the beer and a tube heater fitted internally into a temperature controlled fermenting cabinet. More on that soon...

I am about to open a bottle of my Banks Bitter that I have been enjoying recently and, weather permitting, take a nice photo to post later on.

AG#5 All Grain Christmas Beer / Winter Warmer

With winter approaching way too quickly for my liking I have got to thinking about getting the Chritsmas brew on the go. I'm wanting something with all the traditional Christmassy flavours ie oranges, chestnuts, cinnamon and cloves but not a beer that's too strong. I don't mind the occasional head banger but I'm looking for something that allows everyone to enjoy a few, hearty glasses full during the festive season. Around 5% abv will do me.

Brew days, weekend of the 15th and 16th October. A late start for me due to some errands earlier in the day. I didn't get the HLT warming up until 16:45.

In the end I settled on:

The grain bill and sad Keanu for my Winter Warmer

• 3,800g Pale malt
• 270g Crystal malt
• 230g Amber malt
• 50g Roasted barley
• 110g Flaked barley
• 200g Brown sugar - this was added to the recipe by myself during the brew as it began to come clear the gravity was going to end up lower than the book made out. 

Mashed for 60 minutes with 10l liquor at 65C

First runnings from the mash tun

Sparged slowly for 30 mins with 20l liquor at 79C HLT with 62C run off from Mash Tun

Sparging

The taste of the run off remained sweet until the very end this time. Usually in the past I've stopped sparging when the flavour has gone and the run off is almost colourless. I think I could have ended up with an additional few litres of beer out of this brew but I currently don't have the fermenters for it.

60 minute boil - I have been doing 90 minute mash and boil but the book this recipe is based on calls for 60 mins each... we'll see. The book also didn't give any idea of target OG or FG so it's a bit of guesswork as to if the brew runs on track. Based on the approx ABV given in the book I aimed for a target gravity after the boil of 1048 to 1050 - I got 1048.

Skimming the hot break material from the wort as it approaches the boil.

As with my last brew I skimmed the hot break material away as it built up prior to reaching the rolling boil. I'm sure this makes a difference to the clarity of the final hopped wort as my last beer and this one (as I later found when running it off to the fermenter) are noticeably clearer to begin with than my others. It also makes cleaning the boiler easier afterwards as there isn't so much baked on gunk around the top of the pan.

Bittering Hops: (in at 60 mins remaining)

Nice vigourous boil and in go the bittering hops.

• 6g Goldings
• 20g Northern Brewer
• 7g Styrian Goldings

Roasted chestnuts (360g peeled and chopped up) in at 15 minutes remaining.

360g of roasted chestnuts, peeled and chopped up. Not sure if 360g is enough...

Spice mixture in at 10 minutes remaining along with the rehydrated Irish Moss copper finings.

The spice ingredients were mixed together the evening before in a small tub and allowed to melange together.

The spice and orange mix for this winter warmer. Also in shot, a pint of my Olde Wizard, All Grain Stout

• Zest of four med oranges - don't zest down to the bitter white pith, just take the surface off. Wash the oranges first, some are waxed, we don't want that.
• 1 stick of cinnamon, approx 50mm long snapped in two
• 3 cloves
• 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds

Post Boil Aroma Hops in at 10 minutes after the boil finished:

Post boil hops added.

• 8g Goldings
• 14g Styrian Goldings
• 12g Bramling Cross

Something I did differently this time (partly due to the lateness of getting started but partly due to a theory I had, read on below) I didn't use the wort chiller opting instead to cover up the finished, hopped wort and allowing it to cool overnight.

I popped the lid onto the boiler and left it all to cool down overnight. I've been reading about oils from chestnuts and the orange zest not only imparting flavour and aroma but also causing problems with the beers head retention. My thoughts were that if I allow the hopped wort to cool overnight the oils can do their thing and hopefully float to the surface. As my system drains via a filter from the bottom of the pan the oils should be kept away from getting into the Fermenter... this I do not know to be a fact.

The following morning the wort temperature was still at 35C, too high to pitch the yeast so I ran the wort off into the FV, covered it up to continue cooling while I cleaned up and got ready for my second brew of this weekend which I will be posting shortly.

When fermentation had taken the gravity down to 1,009 I racked off the beer into my secondary fermenting bin and dry hopped with a light handful of Bramling Cross hops. A sneaky taste before sealing the lid up and fitting an airlock gave me a subtle but pleasant Christmassy flavour. Great colour too and looking like it's clearing down ok.

UPDATE 20/10/11:
I have now bottled this beer and it's smelling, tasting and looking very good. All Grain Christmas Beer Bottled.

All Grain Brew #2 - Courage Directors

Since my first brew day and the lessons learned then I have upgraded some of my equipment before brewing again. This time, everything went like a dream and was a lot more relaxed and enjoyable than my first brew day - possibly this was also due to somewhat knowing what to expect this time around.

Brewing Equipment Upgrades:

Additional insulation to my Mash Tun

Larger Wort Boiler / Copper

New 9.2kW Gas Burner (3 valve taps)

Modified sparging device - Original was fitted in the lid which made it awkward to see it in order to adjust the flow rate.

I was very happy with the performance of all my home made stuff, especially the mash tun this time around. Only 1C temperature loss over a 90 minute mash. The other star of the day was my homemade Wort Chiller - I fired it up to get the boil down to 80 to add the post boil hops, before I had chance to fill in my brewing record and grab the thermometer to check it was close to 80, the temp had been brought down to 70C! Less than 3 minutes!!!!!

Anyway, on with the brew... it was a later start than I'd planned thanks to some boring, work stuff (I'm supposed to be on holiday).

Courage Directors from Graham Wheeler's superb Brew Your Own British Real Ale a book I can't put down or recommend highly enough.

Target volume 23l - I only ended up with 20l so there was more lost during boil than allowed for. I didn't top up this time, the gravity was a little higher than target but I decided to leave it alone - one of my biggest mistakes on brew 1 was to top up the post boil hopped wort with freshwater... This brew may be stronger than the recipe suggests or it may be a bit sweeter if the excess sugar is fermented out but I'm just going to wait and see.

Target OG 1046 - Actual reached 1050 (I still don't know how to calculate brew house efficiency)

Grain Bill - Maris Otter Pale Malt, Crystal Malt & Black Malt

10:00 As well as the above mentioned malted grains the recipe called for Target bittering hops and Styrian Goldings post boil aroma hops. Irish Moss copper finings and BruPaks Top Fermenting Ale Yeast which I re-hydrated and started off with a little of the wort from the first runnings of the mash. (It was going like the clappers by the time came to pitch the yeast later that day)

HLT coming up to 75C for the mash.

11:30 This time I heated the liquor in the HLT to 75C and preheated the mash tun with a kettle full of boiling water.

Transferring 10.3/10.4 litres hot liquor (water) to the mash tun - fitted in the PU foam insulated box

11:40 I got my strike temp in the mash tun after hot liquor transfer at 72C which was about what I was aiming for. After the addition of the malted grains and doughing in the mash temp was bang on 67C that I was aiming for.

Doughing in the grains and hot liquor in the mash tun.

pH test strip showed 6 (possibly 6.5) after a couple of minutes and just prior to putting the lid on.

11:45 - 90 minutes mash time gave me time to go into the office and get some work done. I was really pleased to find the mash temperature had only dropped to 66C in the 90 minutes and the smell, on removing the mash tun lid was awesome!

13:15 Running off the sweet wort. It quickly got darker than it looks above.

13:15 As before, the first run off was a tad cloudy and contained a few bits of debris but I was ready for it this time, caught it in a jug and returned it to the mash tun. The filter bed established quickly and after maybe a litre and a half in the jug I began to run the wort off into the brewing copper.

New sparge system in place and connected to the HLT

13:20 While the sweet wort was running off into the copper I set up the modified sparge system (shown above seated on the top lip of the mash tun) and heated the sparging liquor in the HLT to 80C

Beginning to sparge the mash bed. Gorgeous colour and the smell was fantastic!

13:30 Began sparging the mash bed with liquor at 80C. The new version of the sparging system worked well but need a bit of help to keep it level to ensure the hot liquor flowed out of all the holes around the tube matrix to cover the grain bed surface area. My mash tun just rests on a chair for now and is slightly off level. Run off temp of the sparged wort was 60C.

13:55 Finished the sparge as the run off (now 58C) was no longer tasting sweet and was virtually colourless. Total wort volume ready for the boil, 22.5 litres. I topped this up to 30l with the remaining liquor from the HLT and got ready for the boil.

30l wort in the copper and approaching the boil. Break material forming.

The new gas burner again came into its own for the boil. Starting temp of the sweet wort was 58C and a vigorous rolling boil was achieved in 30 minutes! Brew 1 took almost an hour to begin boiling and never actually reached a proper rolling boil.

14:20 Rolling boil and the hot break begins.

14:20 There was a lot of things happening very quickly once the rolling boil began. I had to adjust the burner quite a bit for the first 10 minutes or so to avoid a boil over. The break material on the top came very close to the brim of the copper - even before I'd added the bittering hops. Having read that the hop addition can cause a big surge in the surface activity I waited a few minutes for things to calm down a little before adding them.

14:23 Bittering hops added. The effect was minimal the surface of the boil behaved.

14:23 26g of Target hops added to the boil. Totally expecting a big surge in the surface activity and further scrabbling to adjust the burner I was surprised that not a lot happened when the hops went in. The break material head (not really sure what it's called) rose up a little but settled quickly.

As you can see in the video above the rolling boil was definitely rolling this time. I got nothing close to this on brew 1. For the most part the burner wasn't on full power either, the outer burner rings turned to about 50% and the inner ring around 65-70%

15:40 Wort Chiller placed in the boiling wort, 15 minutes before the end of the boil.

15:40 Wort chiller placed into the copper - The boiling wort sterilizes the copper coils of the immersion chiller.

15:45 Irish Moss copper finings added with just ten minutes of boil time remaining. 

15:55 Boil finishes and the wort chiller is turned on. Cold water runs through the chiller and via heat exchange begins to lower the temp of the boiled, hopped wort to 80C for the addition of post boil, aroma hops (Styrian Goldings) and then further still, after a rest to allow the hops to soak a while in the still hot but not boiling wort, to get the temp ready for pitching the yeast (between 20C and 30C).

Aroma Hops added at 70C - The chiller worked so well the temp whizzed past my target 80C in the time it took me to make a few notes and rinse the thermometer... Almost 30 degrees in 3 minutes ish.

The first water out of the chiller was hot enough to fill the sink for washing up and the mash tun for washing it out but quickly cooled. The remaining "waste" cooling water barely filled 3 watering cans so the actual amount of wasted water is quite low. My homemade wort chiller is very efficient it seems :)

OG 1048 @ 30C (calculated to 1050 at 20C calibration of Hydrometer) See also how I have managed to get the background perfectly in focus... FFFUUUU!

A quick test of the gravity at 30C gave me 1.048 and using the conversion table I made that to be actually 1.050... 0.004 over the target gravity of 1.046

Running the cooled, hopped wort into the fermenter.

16:50 I only managed to get 20l of wort out of the target 23l so boil evaporation losses were higher than the recipe anticipated. I decided to leave it alone rather than top up with freshwater, even though the OG was slightly higher I didn't know how much difference to it adding 3 litres of freshwater would make. I didn't want to end up below the target gravity. Next time I'll add more water to the pre boil total liquor quantity.

17:00 At the time I thought I'd seriously screwed things up at this point. Having taken the gravity reading with the temp at 30C some minutes before while the wort was running into the FV - with me beating it vigorously to aerate it - I pitched the yeast assuming by now the temp would have dropped further below 30C...

Waiting for the froth to subside a little before pitching the yeast.

I'd got 30C in my head but that was the temp in the small hydrometer test tube, NOT the fermenter! With a grimace I found my way through the foam and dipped my thermometer into the fermenter... 32C Aaaarggggghhhhhhhhhh! After all that careful rehydration and nurturing of the yeast during the brewday had I just pitched it into the wort, too hot!??!!!?

Yeast rehydrated and mixed with wort from the mash tun (taken during sparging). By the time I pitched the yeast the froth was above the level where you can see the foil reaching.

All I could now was place the lid on loosely, take the fermenter through to our entertainment room and onto the bar (22-24C most of the time) and wait with fingers crossed that after such a good brew day I hadn't gone and buggered up the yeast.

Four hours later, I knew I'd gotten away with it...

4 hours after pitching the yeast

After 4 hours the yeast head was already better and more lively than the head on my first brew. 

I was delighted with the whole day, my equipment worked well, I felt more relaxed and in control of what was going on and ended up with a bucket of amazing smelling, superbly coloured beer.

Why are we here? For the beer! Roll the bones.

UPDATE 12/09/11 First pint of my all grain Courage Directors enjoyed :)

Last few items and first ingredients ordered.

Unfortunately the last few days have seen me having to get some "proper work" done and so my brewing project has been on hold. However I have ordered the remaining kit required, stuff that I can't make myself eg the fermenting bins, thermometer, hydrometer etc

I have also ordered a selection of malted grains (ready crushed), adjuncts and hops:

Pale Malt
Amber Malt
Crystal Malt

Torrefied Wheat - useful in aiding the head formation and retention.

East Kent Goldings Hops
Northern Brewer
Fuggles
Cascade

I am waiting for confirmation of the overseas shipping charge but unless it's way different to what I was quoted by the supplier (I'll hold off naming names until I've been impressed by the service) it should be ok. My initial contact with the supplier has been very positive, helpful and polite.

In the meantime I am going to look at making a wort chiller although I am a bit wary about pumping gallons of cold tap water to waste - some of the heated water (cold to begin with but exchanging heat with the hot wort) can be used for washing equipment etc but... well, it seems to me that in this time of water management I may have to come up with an alternative solution.

Watch this space.

Next post should hopefully be my first brew :)