Beer 31 - American IPA

Daz ended up staying over one evening after I cooked for him & Jen. In the morning when we got up we decided on an impromptu brew session because the allotment was off the cards due to snow. We knocked together a US IPA recipe on the fly as a user-upper of hops in the freezer.

• 0.32kg Pale Wheat Malt
• 1.44kg Munich Malt
• 4.84kg Pilsen Malt
• 30g Simcoe @ 60
• 17g Challenger @ 50
• 10g Cascade @ 40
• 10g Colombus @ 30
• 10g Cascade @ 20
• 10g Colombus @ 10

Mashed at 69 for 60 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes. Hit 1070 bang on post-boil - after a fairly large sparge step.

Beer #30 - Table Saison

I had a very early morning at work, and left very early, Gemma was away, so what else to do of an afternoon except get a quick brewday in. With the exciting news that the Malt Miller is stocking a new dry saison yeast, I decided a saison would be in order, so set about constructing a recipe. Because all of the available recipes seem to be for quite punchy, high in alcohol beers I had a bit more of a dig around to get inspiration finding Northern Brewer's Petite Saison and their former videographer Chip Walton's Le Saisonette. Although I didn't exactly follow these, they gave me some ideas for my smaller, table saison.

• 2.59kg Pilsen
• 0.74 Munich
• 0.37 Wheat malt
• 10g Northdown @ 60
• 25g Tettnang @ 30
• 20g East Kent Goldings @ 5
• 1g Black pepper, coarsely crushed @ 5
• 5g Coriander, coarsely crushed @ 5
• Rind of 1 Seville orange @ 5

Ended up mashing a degree too low at 67.2C for 60 minutes. OG 1.042, which was a couple of points higher than anticipated.

Went into the no-chill cubes without problem. I await Daz picking it up to ferment. The temperature control box for the fridge is now constructed, it just needs modification of the fridge door and we're away.

Beer # 29 - Porter

Hot on the heels of the previous day's brew, I got the liquor on and grains measured out and wondered whether assistant brewer Daz would turn up at all given his day out at the beer festival. He did as I was doughing in, and seemed relatively chipper. We'd decided a while ago to try our hands at a dark beer, and not satisfied with the recipe that we had selected from Brew Your Own British Real Ale, I did a bit of reading the previous evening and constructed a recipe.

Daz did seem to start suffering more and more as the day went on, but at least whilst he was in the up-phase we got the groundwork laid for the temperature controller we're building for a fermentation fridge.

This was also the first time I've dabbled with water chemistry, by basically chucking a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in the mash to up the carbonates because we have very soft water here. This is an area we really need to explore more.

The recipe:

• .26kg Wheat malt
• .31kg Chocolate malt
• .52kg Munich malt
• .52kg Dark Crystal malt
• 1.03kg Pilsner malt
• 2.53kg Maris Otter malt
• 1tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 20g Northdown @ 60
• 10g Northdown @ 10
• 10g East Kent Goldings @ 10

90 minute mash, at 66.4. The hydrometer straight out of the mash indicated that we were slightly high on gravity, so I chucked another 1.5L in the kettle, on reflection I should have put a little more in as we finished the boil a touch high at 1.056 when the target was 1.054. The colour of this was lovely, deep and dark. It will just be ready for summer when we don't want to be drinking dark beers - ha!

Beer #28 - American Wheat

I was left sad and alone on Saturday as everyone went to the Winter Beer Festival in Manchester. Because the medication I am on at the moment is strictly no-alcohol I decided not to go. The perfect excuse for a lazy brew day even though I already had one planned with Daz for the following day.

Looking at the stocks of malt and hops led me to think about making wheat beer, but then I thought I'd mix it up a bit by using US hops. As the last couple of brews had come out short in gravity terms, I adjusted my efficiency down to 65% in Beersmith 2 and came up with the following.

• .3kg Munich malt
• .42kg Rolled Oats
• 1.44kg Pilsner malt
• 1.66kg Wheat malt
• 11g Columbus @ 60
• 15g Cascasde @ 10

Mashed at 68.7C for 90 minutes, losing 1.4 degrees. After the mash I topped up with 1.5L boiling water as the hydro reading was indicating it was already around the target gravity (before loss to evaporation). I had issues with the hop stopper blocking as I ran off into the no-chill cubes, which was annoying and meant I had to get busy with a spoon. It came in on target gravity wise though, and aforementioned issues notwithstanding was quite relaxing, if a little odd for the lack of a homebrew in hand during the process.

Beer #25 & #26 update

I did think number 26 was going to be for the sink too, as it had quite a difficult ferment and in the end finished very high. I tried a bottle after a month and it was undrinkable sweet water. Because time heals all wounds in homebrew I decided just to leave it another month and then feed it to Daz, who pronounced it fine. Not the world's greatest beer, but certainly drinkable.

Beer 25, the red ale, on the other hand, after 2 months was a lovely balanced hoppy beauty. If anything the initial shock of the hops had worn off somewhat, perhaps it could have done with some dry hopping. But still, a very good beer.

Beer #27 - Ruined

Unfortunately for one reason or another (mainly my illness of the past few weeks) this beer ended up sat in primary for way too long. When I went to check it when I was able there were clear signs of infection on top, so the lot got tipped down the drain. Not a happy job.

Beer #27 - Christmas Wheat

I decided to get a brew in quickly once the no-chill cubes arrived. Because I don't have a massive stock of beer available at the moment I wanted something that will turn around quickly, so settled on a repeat of the Wheatherder recipe with a bit of festive spice added.

• 2kg Pilsen
• 1.75kg Wheat Malt
• 500g Oats
• 30g Saaz @ 60
• 20g Bobek @ 10
• 200g mixed peel @ 10
• 1 tbsp cinnamon powder @ 10

Came out at 1054. Yeast not pitched, but will be W06.