Posts Tagged ‘Hop’
AG#22 – Bramling XB
Posted on: April 18, 2010
The Plan… to make a solid wholesome malty pint with English hops and a fruity Blackcurrant flavour & Aroma from Bramling Cross hops 🙂
I’m starting this brew off and getting all my liquor from my hot & cold feeds in the garage today, probably try and tidy up a little while the mash is on too. (Note to self B&Q Pushfits are crap, can’t get the buggers back off, glad I only bought one of them)
Bramling XB – (Bramling Cross Bitter)
Fermentables:
Maris Otter 2700 grams 60.8%
Flaked Barley 500 grams 11.3%
Brown Malt 500 grams 11.3% (Bag end from work which will hopefully balance the Blackcurrant of the Bramlings)
Munich Malt 500 grams 11.3%
Caramalt 200 grams 4.5%
Chocolate Malt 40 grams 0.9% (Just to add a little deeper colour)
Hops:
Challenger 20g @ 60mins (FWH)
Fuggle 30g @ 30mins
Bramling Cross 20g @ 15mins
Bramling Cross 20g @ 0mins for 80c steep
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.042
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11.1 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 46 EBC
Mash Temp aimed at 67c to keep some body
Yeast Safale s-04
1 Tsp Gypsum to Mash + 1 to boil
Mash on at 8.50am
Twittered some pics as I went https://twitter.com/pdtnc
The Malt bill:
Mash Start temp, not far off my aim of 67c:
Hops all weighed out:
First batch sparge just sitting before running off, and it ran off beautifully:
First Wort Hops (FWH) just going in on the first spargings:
80c Steep hops left for 30mins before cooling to 23c:
Dropped from a good height caused a heck of a lot of foam:
Aiming for 1042, so this is near enough for me:
Brewday seemed to go really easy, very relaxed, it seems having a dedicated area for brewing is going to smooth things out considerably… and I’m far from organised at the moment! 🙂
The wort was tasting pretty nice, though there were lots of roasted and biscuit aromas while the boil was on, will be interested how this one turns out, its a nice deep tawny copper/brown by the looks of it too :)
Bottled 25th Apr ’10 with 60g Sugar priming
AG#3 – Fuggles Bitter
Posted on: August 1, 2009
AG#3 – Fuggles Bitter, H.Hillbilly’s House Bitter Grain bill
Thanks to Horden Hillbilly for answering my questions, I’ve used his grain bill for this recipe and just replaced the Goldings Hops with Fuggles.
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Maris Otter 4.25 EBC 4 lbs. 9.2 oz 2080 grams 90%
Crystal Malt 120 EBC 0 lbs. 4.9 oz 135 grams 6%
Torrefied Wheat 4 EBC 0 lbs. 3.3 oz 93 grams 4%
Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 60 mins 0 lbs. 1.0 oz 28 grams 65.9% ((FWH))
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 15 mins 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 10 grams 24.4%
Fuggle Whole 4.9 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 0.1 oz 4 grams 9.8%
Protafloc Tablet Pellet 0 % 0 mins 0 lbs. 0.0 oz 0 grams 0%
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.043
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 18.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 5.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 16 EBC
Water Treated to the ‘Bitter’ profile on the GW calc.
Mash on!
Water Treatment for Keighley Area to the ‘Bitter’ profile.
The Grains. (I Just sneaked in a little oddment of Crystal Wheat malt)
Mash temp at start.
Mash pH. (Is this a little on the low side? I think its about pH5.7, shouldn’t it be more like pH5.2????)
Hops Weighed out, Half a Protafloc Tab in with the 15minute addition.
Sparge!
Mash finished.
FWH in with first batch or wort warming up.
Recycling at second batch sparge, trying not to disturb the grain bed. Had some sticking issues which I think are down to the flexibility of the plastic false bottom something I need to address before the next brewday.
Mash fun! I poked it with the paddle handle which seemed to keep it going.
Boiling.
Boil and Cool!
Last 15 mins and the Cooler going in to Sanitize.
Cold break.
I scooped up a little from the boiler, looks pretty clear once the cold break settles.
Sanitised sieve to catch the occasional hop seed and give the wort a good aerate.
Boiler to FV setup, the long restricted (down to 8mm bore) copper pipe makes for an excellent syphon effect.
Trub left overs.
I was a few points short of my OG, seems I hit about 1036/38 ish @ 22 Deg C, Pitched Safale s-04 dry sprinkled.
I’m pretty sure my excess volume was me overestimating a little while sparging as the last was boiled with the cooler in for the full 90 mins, this time I only had a 60 min boil and put the cooler in for the last 15 mins. I think leaving the IC in for the full boil actually makes for more boil off, hence the overcompensation! 
All in all not a bad day, started at 7.40am and finished about 2pm with just a little clearing up left to do.
**The morning after:
Good Yeast head this was getting going well last night less than 8 hours after dry pitching the yeast.
**Bottled 12/08/2009
Bottled about 15L with 70g sugar and re-pitched approx 5g of rehydrated s-04 yeast (see if I can solve my carbonation problems with the AG brews) First bottling using Starsan to sanitise. A tiny taste and it was pretty smooth.
Little Hop Update
Posted on: July 7, 2009
A Little Hop update 🙂
From Left to right…
Fuggles cuttings still alive!
WGV cutting doing well 🙂
Replacement WGV from aplus hops 🙂 Doing well as the first one just died.
The Challenger plant is now making its way onto the strings I’ve strung across the yard.
The Fuggle is really going for it!!!!!
All Grain Brew #1 – Deuchars IPA
Posted on: June 28, 2009
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Deuchars IPA – www.caledonian-brewery.co.uk
Time to pop my Cherry, Started at 8.30am, the Mash is now on at 9.20am 🙂 I’m going to do a 90 minute Mash and a Boil of 60 mins… which should hopefully time well with the Bacon & Egg butties for breakfast with the other half 😉 *so we can actually use the cooker and grill ‘cos its not got a fecking huge pan on it!* 🙄
I’ve just slightly over estimated my grain weights to be on the safe side as have I with the Batch Sparge volumes using DaaB’s Batch Sparge Calculator.
Fermentables:
Maris Otter Malt 2180 grams
Crystal Malt 105 grams
Hops:
Fuggle 9 grams @ 60 mins (FWH)
Aurora 9 grams @ 60 mins (FWH)
Willamette 9 grams @ 15 mins
Bobek 10 grams @ 5 mins
Fuggle 9 grams @ 5 mins
Copper Finings:
Protafloc Tablet – Last 15-20 Minutes
Predicted stuff:
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.043
Final Gravity: 1.010 *final reading was actually 1010*
Alcohol Content: 4.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 18.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 5.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 33 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC
The Mash:
Recipe done in BeerEngine software www.practicalbrewing.co.uk and notes scrawled!
The original recipe came from www.hopandgrain.com
Most of the ingredients from www.barleybottom.com
Pre-heating the Mash tun with hot tap water, good pinch of Sodium Met treating the Hot tap water in the FV
Grain Temperature 18.5 Deg C
The Maris otter malt and Crystal Malt
Water at Strike heat and Grain ready to mash
Strike Temp, tweaked with a dash of boiling water as I decanted from the boiler with a jug and lost a few degrees
Starting Mash Temperature, Mash to last 90 minutes
All tucked up and monitored with a cheap Fish Tank thermometer from Dealextreme.com 🙂
Wort to the Copper:
End of Mash period, I actually went 15 minutes over the planned 90mins
Mash topped up and stirred ready for first runnings
First runnings, which are returned to the mash until it runs clearer (Which was at least 3 Litres)
Filling FV before transfer to boiler (Think you’d call this an Under-back)
Hops all weighed out, First Wort Hops, 15min hops, 5 minute hops and half a protafloc tablet
First Wort Hops with boiler filling
Spent grains
The Boil:
15 minute hop addition + Protafloc
5 minute Hop addition
The Wort (still hot)
Left overs (Still hot as I haven’t made an IC yet)
Safale s-04 Pitched once this had cooled down in the bath 🙂 Now its cooled I can really see the cold break forming as its gone all clumpy and is slowly settling.
All done, not bad for about 6 hours, not including cooling time as it will be a while sat in cold water in the bath 🙂
And all pretty stress free, I’m glad I have been doing some extract brews as its got me fairly confident with the boiling and hop schedules, the Mash was a piece of cake with no problems.
Lessons learned:
I need to do is calibrate all my buckets and my boiler pot.
It would be handy to have an IC.
HLT isn’t necessary for the moment.
Time to look into water treatment a little.
🙂
Mash details:
about 18-20 Litres collected @ OG 1022 / 62.1 Deg C
In the FV:
Final Volume was about right looking for my 12 litre brew length, maybe slightly more than planned which would probably be due to Sparge Volumes / 60 vs 90 minute boils.
OG 1026 / 72.8 Deg C *Actual OG is 1046, just a little higher than its supposed to be.
I think this makes my efficiency pretty good. 🙂
**Update** Bottled today 10th July 2009, tasted pretty good 🙂
Bit of hop repotting
Posted on: June 21, 2009
Fuggle put into a big planter with enough room to give it a pile of mulch on top for winter.
Challenger is a bit more spindly but growing well, also in a large planter, the bit of wood screwed to the wall behind is my ‘Heath Robinson’ hop climbing frame and has strings attached stretching across the yard for the hops to grow on.
Left hand plastic bottle is a couple of broken off Fuggle cuttings and the right hand pot is the WGV cutting, which was kindly given to me, is coming on nicely now.
Probably Due To Network Congestion 
