10 gallon brewing!

Well we are up and running with a 10 gallon (80 pint/60 litreish* set up. My mash tuns a bit small so longer brews are correspondingly weaker, or strong brews shorter brew lengths. So far its been 10 gallons of my coriander wheat beer followed by  a new recipe cascade ale 'snapper'.

Shiny returned, plastic is the future

Well the stainless shiny leaked, dispite me and dads best efforts it we'ed all over the show. So I was credited the £199, meaning I could get a plastic 60 litre boiler, twin element, a 60 litre fermenter and two pressure barrel! I'm far happier with this set up. Trust in plastic!

Shiny new boiler

I sold my guitar, see the link for my shiny new gear!

http://www.leylandhomebrew.com/item1573.htm

cofro

We had the shop repainted, looks good in the sun.

Planning an Imperial Russian Stout

Change of plan on the stout....as usual I have found some more info about the style.
Heres the current fave:
1089-1022 (8.8%)
Ivan
M otter 6000
Roast Barley 250
Black Malt 500
Flaked Barley 500
Crystal 500

Goldings (5%) 100 90 mins

Plan to mash sat night, brew sunday, ferment a week or two, biottle by mid may, drinking in November or so.

Wherry Ready

Well its made it to the barrel anyway. 20 ish litres and 100g demerara in the king keg. Just have to wait three weeks (like hell will I).

Woodfordes Wherry

40 pints of this has at last fermented and is ready for barrelling. Should be ready to drink in three weeks.....bet it won't get the chance to mature, it tastes wonderful already.


Maris Otter 3800
Crystal 300
Hops: AA Time Grams
Fuggles (3.8) 90 17
Challenger(7.5) 90 20
Goldings (4) 15 30
Styrian Bobek (5.2) 15 20

Windsor yeast (needed a stir after a few days to get it going again, fermented at 18C (fish tank heater).

wheat beer

I bottled 20 litres of wheat beer last night. I'm right chuffed with the effect of using a proper wheat beer yeast (WB06), nice aroma. That coupled with the 20g of coriander seeds should give a good wheaty taste. Its cloudy in the manner of Hoegaarden but I did'nt add orange peel so this should have a unique taste. the bonus with wheat beers is they don't need much maturing, they're actually better drank young. So they should be ready next week. Hooray!

Mash Tun

Heres my mash tun, the copper manifold has slits cut in it and a mash bag wrapped around it to prevent blockage. The grain goes in this with water heated to 66C then left for an hour and a half to 'mash' this releases the sugars. Then water at about 80-85C is poured carefully over the grain, a tap at the bottom of the tun is opened to collect the 'wort' this process is 'sparging'.

Brewing along quite merrily

I'm up to my 500th pint ofr the year, brewed that is, not drunk. Theres not alot ready at the moment, just some sarah hughes dark ruby mild and some of the highly dangerous Dr Whoover (8 or 9% hop monster!).
Theres gonna be plenty around for the summer, cock-a-doodle-do, more ruby mild, wheat beer, tribute, wherry and planning more stout.