Friday 20 September 2013

37 - Wheat

Another birthday party beer, again half to jerrycan and half bottled. This time a wheat, for no other reason than the quick turnaround. I forget what the gravity ended up as, but it was under target. We decided not to do anything about that though. Also, I would have chucked some oranges in this but forgot to buy them. We'll chuck some slices in at the party.


  • .5kg Flaked oats
  • 1.4kg Pale Wheat malt
  • 1.7kg Pilsen malt
  • 15g Northdown @ 60
  • 29g Bobek @ 5
  • 1.5 tsp crushed coriander seed @ 15
  • 1 chamomile teabag (contents) @ 5
  • Mash @ 66 for 60 minutes

36 - Fuggly Pale

I'm not sure why, possibly because I destroyed my decent thermometer somehow, but the next couple of beers both came out 10 points under the gravity that I was aiming for. Either that or I messed up the recipe creation in BeerSmith2.

I decided to do a more classic British pale ale, mainly to use up a packet of Fuggles, if I'm honest. This was also destined for the 40th birthday party, however, in the end we decided to bottle and keep half of it. There was a sugar addition to this, but Daz did it at fermenting time, so I'm not sure exactly what he added.

The birthday party beers have been put back into jerrycans. The idea being that we'll syphon into another jerrycan after they've settled and serve from that. I have some taps that should be OK for serving. I know this isn't exactly ideal, but it was the best we could come up with with limited time and resources.


  • 2.13kg Pale malt
  • 0.35kg Pale crystal malt
  • 0.35kg Pale wheat malt
  • 45g Fuggles @ 60
  • 30g Fuggles @ 15
  • Mash @ 66 for 90 minutes
  • Make up to 1038 with sugar

35 - Weakling

We realised with something of a start that we had agreed to make some beer for a 40th birthday party and hadn't done anything about it, so I had a few brew sessions after knocking off work early.

I thought it might be an idea to make a reprise of the Thornbridge Kipling-a-like that I brewed a while ago, but perhaps knock the gravity down. And thus decided it should be called Weakling.


  • 2.69kg Pale malt
  • 0.26kg Wheat malt
  • 0.26kg Munich
  • 15g Nelson Sauvin @ 60
  • 15g Nelson Sauvin @ 30
  • 45g Nelson Sauvin @ 5
  • Mash @ 65.6 for 60 minutes
  • OG 1041

34 - 100% Wheat

I had quite a lot of wheat malt left and not that much of anything else, so I started casting around to look for articles/posts about doing a 100% wheat. There was a lot of 'thou shalt not do this' style talk, mainly centering around stuck mashes and the like. Well, since we do brew in a bag I figured that wouldn't be an issue.

  • 5kg Wheat malt
  • 36g Hallertauer Northern Brewer @ 60
  • 30g Bobek @ 10
  • Mash at 66.7 for 60 minutes
This had an additional random couple of litres of water chucked in as it was coming up to the boil, a 90 minute boil and an additional litre of water to compensate for evaporative loss. OG 1043.

33 - Smoked Amber Lager

I haven't kept this blog up to date with recent brewing. Naughty me. A while ago we made wort for a smoked amber lager which, for one reason or another, has sat in jerrycans for ages. We're kind of ready to ferment it now - this will be our first lager since we used to do kits ages ago.


  • 2.5kg Pilsen malt
  • 1kg Munich malt
  • 1kg Rauch malt
  • 40g Tetnang @ 60
  • Mash @ 66.9 for 60 minutes

Monday 1 April 2013

On no-chill

Using jerry cans for no-chill wort production is working out quite well for us. Because of changes in the kitchen I no longer have much room to ferment - and until recently Daz's cellar has been off limits. These factors has changed now, but we have managed to build a stockpile of wort ready to ferment, which is quite nice. Removing the chilling step also knocks the length of the brewday down by quite a bit and also not wasting all the water is nice.

Beer 32 - Blackberry surprise

I got given a 2 tin Woodford's Wherry kit for my birthday. I decided just to chuck this in a fermenter with some old frozen blackberries and also chucked in 25g of Bramling Cross into the fermenter. Update: Realised I totally forgot to take a hydro reading for this. Just tested it after a week and a bit and it's down to 1012. Not sure whether much sugar will have been added from the blackberries. I intend to rack it to another vessel this afternoon and leave it for a day or two to settle out and then bottle from there.