Thursday 23 June 2011

Beer #13 - Fermentation

I was a little worried that by pitching really high I was going to either kill off the yeast or cause off flavours in the beer. The day after pitching I awoke to a healthy krausen. Unfortunately the next day it had subsided massively. I've just checked with a hydrometer and it's around 1014/1013, so I think it's done OK. I will test again tomorrow and then syphon off into 3 demijohns for a week of secondary fermentation. I'm going to try them with differing amounts of the vodka extracted spice mixture and one with a bottle of raspberry syrup in it.

Sunday 19 June 2011

Beer #13 - A Belgian Wit to split?

Daz came round on Friday night to go through the BIAB process and to act as an assistant. Much less disastrous than the previous attempt. And much easier with an assistant, although given the beer intake went up quite a bit it had the potential to end up a mess.

  • 26L in big pot @70C, 3L removed for temperature correction
  • 6L in little pot @70C
  • 900g lager malt
  • 2370g wheat malt
  • 450g porridge oats
  • 15g Northern Brewer @ 90 minutes
  • 28g Saaz @ 30 minutes
  • 28g Saaz @ 5 minutes
  • Safale T-58
Mashed for an hour @ 65C resulted in a SG of 1046. Dunk sparged in the other pot to get 6L at 1034 which went straight in the big pot when it was boiling. 90 minute boil and then pot left overnight to cool with sanitiser soaked towels over the lid. Into the fermenter the following afternoon at 32C and cooled a couple of degrees by sitting on some coolbag ice blocks. Pitched yeast, and the following morning a healthy krausen on top, but it's fermenting a little warm at 24C. Circa 16L @ 1044.

I also started a vodka extraction of coriander, orange peel and coriander. I'm considering splitting the batch to do half like that and half with Polish raspberry syrup.