Fermentation proceeding nicely
It appears you're nobody if you're not brewing beer this weekend! Like Glynn, I'm also brewing a batch of beer at the moment - a Smithwicks clone, adapted from a recipe in Brew Classic European Beers at Home. Adapted, since I didn't have quite the right hops on hand, so with a few sums converting alpha-acid values, I think I've got it right - no doubt it'll taste totally different from actual Smithwicks, but I'll find out in a month or so.
(as an aside, the Sun Ireland weekend away this year is in Kilkenny, where Smithwicks was originally brewed - unfortunately they don't run brewery tours during the weekend - oh well!)
I'm still really enjoying brewing at home, though I've definitely outgrown the pot I'm currently using, a 12.6l 32cm Le Creuset casserole, which weighs a ton! I'd much prefer to be able to boil the entire batch, which means investing in an electric boiler, and something to cool the wort quickly. If that goes well, then I could start looking at moving on from malt-extract brewing onto partial or full mash brewing. Would probably need to move out of the kitchen in that case, into the shed (and get a bigger shed!) in that case, so we'll see how things go.
In the meantime, here's a few snaps from Friday's brewing session, which started at lunchtime on Friday, for a few minutes to make a yeast-starter (another undocumented benefit of working from home on Fridays!) then back to work till 6pm. Put Bananas to bed at 7, ate dinner then started setting things up, and worked out the ingredients needed at about 9pm, and started the 1.5hr boil at 11pm.
All done and kitchen spotless again by 2am - spilled wort is sticky!
What's the recipe!? :)
Posted by Glynn Foster on August 26, 2007 at 10:26 PM IST #
Doh, nevermind, I can see from the picture! :)
Posted by Glynn Foster on August 26, 2007 at 10:38 PM IST #
Oh, okay - here's what I started with: 3.75kg pale malt extract (2 x 1.6kg cans of John Bull pale liquid malt extract and about 55g of Muntons light spraymalt), 495g crushed crystal malt, 30g northern brewer hops, 35g styrian goldings, 8g saaz, yeast & water! The original recipe called for challenger and northdown seeded hops for bitterness and fuggles and goldings for aroma.
I boiled 4 litres of water, dissolving the malt extract. Added the crystal malt, the northern brewer hops, and 28g of the styrian golding hops all in their own musin packages (easier than straining molten wort at the end!)
For aroma, I added the saaz hops 25 mins before the end of the boil, and 8g of the styrian goldings during the last 5 mins.
I added another 16l or water, and pitched in the yeast starter (based on rehydrated Gervin English ale yeast with a bit of malt extract). Original gravity was around 1040.
Posted by Tim Foster on August 26, 2007 at 10:50 PM IST #
Quick update, this is bottled now, and so far tastes pretty good. A few more months to condition a bit more and I think it'll be wonderful.
Posted by Tim Foster on September 22, 2007 at 07:24 PM IST #
Going to start preparing an Irish stout today. Take one 1.7kg can of BlackRock gold miners stout, add 1kg of Irish Stout 74 converter (I have no idea what this is, but figured i'd add it anyway), and some goldings hops. I really need to get a book so some of this is a little less random!
Posted by Glynn Foster on September 23, 2007 at 12:57 AM IST #