Kev's Brewing Blog

Brewing Again

2010-09-25T10:06:00.002+02:00

You may well be asking why so long since the last post, well the answer is simple, no brewing ! Many reasons for this but the main one is that we are in the middle of a drought in Port Elizabeth and restricted to 500 litres of water per household per day. Whilst this is enough for brewing its a problem for for immersion cooler. I've always used to outflow from the immersion heater either to water the garden or top up the swimming pool. However after chatting to an old friend of mine (who was also my first brewing buddy) who was keen to join me for a brew a plan was made.

He had a submersible pump so we brewed (a light ale) and cooled by using the pump to pump the water from the swimming pool (about 16 deg C) though the coil and back into the pool. It took about an hour to drop the temperature to 22 deg C.

Brew day was great fun and everything went smoothly, so with a full fermenter I'm now off shopping for a submersible pump !

Brewery Redesign

2009-08-10T07:34:00.019+02:00

I've been meaning for a long time to redesign my brewery and change put on new quick connects as my old fittings were leaking (not a good idea with electricity around) ! I blew the element in my Hot Liquor Tank which I had to replace and this gave me the perfect opportunity to break down my existing set up (although I still wanted to use most of the parts). What I wanted from my new set up was.
1. Still be able to use it sitting down2. Be able to pump from anywhere to anywhere.
3. As dry as possible.
Here is a schematic of what I came up with :-

Below are the flows for the brewing steps. The colours represent the rows of valves/pumps the schematic above.

And photos of the set up

Summer Beer Festival - Competition Scoresheets

2009-05-10T00:20:00.004+02:00

I entered two of my beers into the BJCP sanctioned competition and being out in the sticks looked forward to getting my results. Its only the second time in nearly 9 years of brewing that I've had formal feedback. I was happy with the scores received for my mild ale but a little disappointed with the dry irish stout. Anyway here they are :-

Dry Irish Stout

Mild Ale

Not The Only Brewers In PE

2009-05-07T21:14:00.008+02:00

I thought that my brewing protege and I were the only homebrewers in Port Elizabeth, apparently not! See the article from the Herald (our local newspaper) from yesterday 6th May 2009

2009/05/06

Lee-Anne Butler HERALD REPORTER

A WESTERING home was raided yesterday when police discovered a couple had been illegally brewing and selling beer using a make-shift brewery in their backyard for about three to four weeks.

In a joint venture, Nelson Mandela Bay police, Customs and the Eastern Cape Liquor Board raided the house yesterday morning with an order to dispose of the beer.

Police spokesman Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg said the beer was initially tested on April 29 by customs after investigating the owner of the home for some time.

Police then returned to the house yesterday morning to destroy the alcohol, which had a combined street value of more than R40000.

The beer was tested and found to have an alcohol level of 5,1per cent.

Van Rensburg said police suspected that the couple had been selling the alcohol for about three to four weeks without a liquor licence or necessary permit.

When The Herald arrived at the house, there were hundreds of bottles packed in crates in the back yard and more bottles in the garage.

There were also two 5000 litre plastic drums with a filtration system to manufacture the beer.

Police said the drums were full on their arrival.

The mini brewery and beer crates were hidden behind the home‘s boundary walls.

Two journalists were locked in the house for 20 minutes when the angry owners arrived home while the man drove off to fetch his lawyer.

Police tried to negotiate with the woman to allow the journalists to leave the house but she refused, until one policeman said she would be also be liable for a kidnapping charge.

Police and the team from customs then commenced with the disposing of the liquor in the back yard of the premises.

Van Rensburg said the couple were fined and would pay a further fine to customs for brewing and selling the illegal beer.

Taking The Great North Road - Worthogs 2009 Summer Beer Festival

2009-04-22T08:27:00.025+02:00

For the first time since 2005 I decided to head north for the Worthogs Summer Beer Fest. Together with Rick and Niall we set out from PE at 5.15am on Friday the 17th April 2009 with a stop at Nanaga to pick up Peter at about 5.45am. After a pleasant (but long) drive we arrived in Johannesburg (where we were staying with Peters daughter and son) but it still it took us about 90 minutes to get to our destination (Joburg traffic at rush hour !). After having KFC for supper it was a relatively early night before an early start on Saturday as we needed to be in Pretoria by 7.30am. We did arrive at 7.30am and immediately started on our stand. Before we knew it the public started arriving and day passed very quickly. Below are some pics.

Above :- Niall and myself at the entrance to the hall and a close up of the welcoming sign.

Above :- Setting up our stand and the completed project.

Above :- Outside Exibitors in the courtyard

Above :- Inside Exhibitors in the Hall

Above : - The Grounds outside the hall.

All in all a great day was had (despite the thought of the long drive home). More details of the festival can be accessed on the Worthogs website click here.

An Interesting Video

2009-02-09T20:39:00.006+02:00

Here is an extract from a TV program shown here recently about homebrewed beer (traditional), which may contain battery acid. Can anybody tell me why anyone would even consider putting battery acid into a brew like this ?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

My Brewing Protege

2008-12-13T23:03:00.017+02:00

A few months ago a friend of my son asked me for some help with an experiment for school on fermentation. He was so taken with the process that he decided to build his own brewery. This became a family project with the first brew being done a week ago and a follow up brew yesterday. I think that their setup puts mine to shame so here it is :
The Hot Liquor Tank
The HLT is basically an old pressure geyser which has had the top cut off. The thermostat has been replaced and can be seen in the bottom left hand corner. The HLT is bolted to the wall and runs into a washing machine pump which can be seen in the bottom right corner. The pump is used to pump the hot liquor in the mash tun either through the mash tun outlet or through the sparge arm. Tubing runs up the front for checking the level of the water
The Mash Tun
The mash tun is the same as mine, a fifty litre plastic drum which has been insulated and with a copper "manifold" at the bottom. The sparge arm consists of a shower head. The copper piping on which the shower head fits swivels so it can be swung around if need be to recirculate the hot liquor (to ensure a uniform temperature.

The Kettle

The Kettle (or copper) in this case is definitely "The Copper" having been made from an old copper geyser. In the picture you can see the kettle is wearing its insulating sleeve, but with the sleeve off its all nice shiny copper ! The picture shows the run off pipe from the mash tun running into the kettle. At the bottom you can see the pipe running from the bottom of the kettle into another diswasher pump, the T piece after the pump enables the hot wort to be pumped back into the kettle at the bottom to create a whirlpool (to aid cooling when the immersion cooler is being used and to assist in dropping all the hot break to the bottom of the kettle) or into the fermenter. The old 2 kilowatt element in the geyser has been replaced with a four kilowatt element.

Record Keeping

I think I taught him well, a blackboard is an intergral part of the brewery for record keeping.

Turning 50 And The Twinorbs Trilogy

2008-08-28T19:47:00.006+02:00

Well I eventually brewed the Twinorbs Trilogy for my 50th which was in August. I had 6 cases of quarts (750ml) 2 of Mild Ale, 2 of Bitter and 2 Dry Stouts. I didn't think that more than 2 cases would be drunk (this is pretty much Brandy and Coke country) and I was right, by the end of the night 25 quart bottles had been consumed ! Ah well leaves plenty for me. The most popular by far was the Mild Ale (my personal favourite as well). All of the beers were slightly underhopped, a result I think of using Pre Isomerised Hops for bittering. I had been told that because they were pre isomerised that I should use about 20% less than normal. With hindsight I think that 10% is a better number. Here are two photo's one of the booze table with my daughter and her boyfriend waiting for a customer and a closeup of the bottles showing the specially made labels.

In addition to the birthday beer I also made a birthday T Shirt. This was a scanned a modifed picture from a birthday card I received last year, here is the logo.

OFIF Ale And A Foray Into Podcasting

2008-06-18T21:22:00.002+02:00

This is my first blog entry for quite a while, hopefully I'll update a bit more frequently from now on (vain hope !). Anyway the brewing has been a bit slow this year with only three brews completed (and consumed). The three which I now call the "TWINORBS TRILOGY" were an ordinary bitter (Wannabee 36B), a mild ale (Mild Pam) and a dry Irish stout (PMS). All came out well.

My latest brew is also an ordinary bitter, to be known as OFIF ale, its a little stronger than my normal brews which are about 1034 this one being 1040. This is being brewed for my fiftieth birthday bash which is about 2 months away. Hence the name which is short for OH F I'M FIFTY. Time permitting it may be joined by an OFIF Mild and an OFIF Stout. Will let you know what happens.

On another note I had a brief foray into the world of podcasting (or brewcasting to be more exact) being interviewed by Grham Sanders on Craftbrewer Radio. Please have a listen. You can pick up the link opposite, the program was the May 02 show or alternatively use this link.

Have a listen and please let me know what you think !

Making My Own Crystal Malt

2007-10-23T23:18:00.001+02:00

Well, this is my first blog entry for a while. I haven't done to much brewing lately but am about to start again to see if I can get in a good stock of beer before Christmas. I want to brew some English Bitters but had run out of crystal malt so decided to try to make my own based on Peter Grant's (member of the Worthogs) method. Full details of the method can be found at the end of this blog.

Although my method was supposed to be the same, what with one error (translated into English that means complete cock up !) and another my method turned out quite differently. Lets hope the results are the same ! Here'sa brief pictorial of the master maltster's method :-

I mixed the malt with water as per Peters instructions, but in typical male fashion I hadn't read the instructions to well so added far to much water at first, only realising my mistake once all the water had been mixed in. Had to pour off most of the water to get back to the right volume. I could well have poured off most of the enzymes as well !

Once the malt had been left to absorb the water in the fridge the malt was placed into watertight (in theory at least) zip lock bags from which I removed as much air as possible. This was now ready to be mashed for 90 minutes at 65 deg C (my normal mash temperature). The mash tun was a picnic cooler box and my HLT the kettle.
Now the fun and games really started, despite my best efforts there was still obviously more air in the ziplockthan I thought and no matter how hard I tried the bag would not stay down in the water (which would have meant no conversion for the top layer of malt. Being a resourceful fellow however the problem was soon solved by the use of a brick and a full jug of water on top of the bags to keep the little buggers from floating to the top. Once the malt had been mashed I placed it into a foil lined baking tray and placed
it in a fan oven where it was dried out before being roasted to the right colour. This was a long process taking about two and a half hours. I did however have a considerable amount of malt and it was probably

spread to thick which needed more time and lots and lots of stirring ! Once finished I crushed a few grains and made some tea with it to check the colour. It all looked good to me, the proof will be in the using which I plan to do soon (A lager extract recipe which calls for crytal malt to be steeped)Homemade Crystal Malt

Many thanks to Peter Grant for permission to use this on our website.

Hydration:

Start with whole, pale malt, add 38% of the malt mass of cold tap water (ie.1000 g malt + 380 g water).1 kg pale malt

yields about 1.1 kg of dry crystal malt. (You add water molecules to starch during mashing).Don't use more water, you

will wash away enzymes. I guess you could pre-boil but I don't bother since malt is contaminated anyway. Pour water

over malt, cover with clingwrap and leave in the fridge overnight mix after a few hours.

Keeping it cold is important to eliminate growth of bacteria found on the malt.Next day, all the water should be

absorbed by the grains.

Mashing:

Put the moist grains into plastic bags, flatten bag to 1-2 cm thick, suck the air out and tie a water-tight knot.

Zip-lock bags will also work if they are water-tight. Almost fill a large pot, bucket, fermentor or whatever with water at

68 to 70 degrees C .Put the bags of damp malt in and mix around a bit, you can adjust temp back

up after 15 min or so. Leave for 1 to 2 hours for the whole grains to mash themselves.

Baking:

(Here you dry, then bake the now mashed whole grains to the desired colour and flavour).Preheat the kitchen oven to

200 deg. C. Line a large baking tray with tin-foil, shiny side up (important because the tray can be very difficult to

clean). Pour your damp, mashed whole grains into the baking tray to a depth of 2 to 3 cm and put into the middle of the

oven. The inside of the grain will be sweet and mushy at this stage - have a taste. After 20 minutes or so, turn gently with

a spoon or egg lifter. The grains will be steaming and starting to dry out. A fan oven will be faster, I don't have one. Stir

every 15 to 20 minutes or so to speed drying. Once the grains are dry they will start darkening, you can take a few out

and check on the colour inside and taste. Once caramelisation starts happening, the grains start crackling (like rice

crispies do when you add milk). That's normal, reach for another home-brew to steady your nerves. Take the grain out

and cool when you are happy with the colour and taste. When cool, store in a dry container as you do with your other

brewing grains.

Types of crystal (caramel) malts you can make:

Carapils - just dry the mashed grain in a warm place (be sure its dry before storage or it will go off).I find this

tends to give too much body and little to no residual sweetness.

CaraVienne - Dry and bake at about 160 deg and stop baking at a very light brown colour.

English crystal malts:

20 L Crystal - Dry and bake at 200 deg. stop at light brown, sweet toffee taste.

60 L Crystal - Dry and bake at 200 deg. stop at darkish reddish brown, sweet toasty dark toffee taste.

120 L Crystal - continue above to dark bitter coffee, sweet toffee taste. -

Pete's Multi-grade Crystal:

Don't stir too often while roasting and get the whole range of colours, all in the same pan even a little blackening here

and there.Great stuff, all the tastes mixed together! My last batch of English Bitter got good reviews at the Worthogs

tasting, I made it with this. 220 g of PMG special + 3.8 kg pale malt gives the right colour, huge body

and a good creamy head

The Hop Farms around George

2007-07-10T21:11:00.000+02:00

To the best of my knowledge the only place which hops are grown in South Africa (or for that matter Southern Africa) is a small area between George and Oudtshoorn in the Southern Cape. I seem to recall reading somewhere that once up a time they used to grow some in the Zimbabwe highlands but thinks its highly unlikely that this is still the case seeing that Zimbabwe can't even grow sufficient crops to feed itself these days.

On our way back home from Cape Town we passed through this area and I noticed for the first time road signs showing it as the hop route. Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop and enquire as to whether any of the farms offered tours, but will definitely do so the next time I'm in the area.

There has been some discussion of late on the use of lighting when growing hops outside of the traditional hop growing areas of the world. Lights are used extensively in this area for growing hops and even though at this time of the year the hops have died back, I thought it may be of interest to anyone who grows hops to see a photo of the lights used in the hop fields.

Western Cape Breweries and Brew Pubs Part 2

2007-07-10T19:44:00.000+02:00

My second visit to a brewery was really enjoyable, that being the Birkenhead Brewery near Hermanus (and not to far from Cape Agulhas which is the most Southerly point of the African Continent and also where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. The Birkenhead Brewery is named after a ship which sank nearby. Both the ship after which the brewery is named and the brewery itself are interesting, however these details can be found on the brochure (which is included below - click on the image to get a full size view) or on the brewery's website (see the link above).

Anyway enough of the history lessons and on to the tour and the tasting. At the entrance to the restaurant and shop stand the mash tun and kettle behind glass doors. They are both lovely shiny copper and brass and the kettle has a capacity of about 2000 litres. From the kettle the wort is pumped to the primary fermenters where the temperature is controlled by means of glycol. From the fermenters the beer is then pumped into maturation tanks and finally to storage tanks prior to bottling or kegging. The beer is all filtered and pasteurised (the only exception being the honey blond wheat beer, which is a live unfiltered and unpateurised beer.

The price fot tasting was R10 for 6 100 ml tasters and as I was driving 6 500ml glasses seemed out of the question. The six beers together with my comments were :-

Premium Lager - Very pleasant but a bit sweet for my palate.

Lite Lager - More bitter and hoppy than the premium lager, more to my taste.

Old English Bitter - Very Pleasant !

Honey Blonde - See my comments on previous post from Paulaner on wheat beer !!!

Red Reloaded Lager - Not an energy drink, not a beer uugh.

Chocalate Malt Stout - Very Pleasant and we had the right weather for it (cold and windy !)

All in all a most enjoyable and interesting detour from our planned route. Well worth a visit.

Western Cape Breweries and Brew Pubs Part 1

2007-07-09T20:33:00.000+02:00

Whilst in the Cape Town area I tried to fit in a couple of Breweries for some tasting (This was a family holiday and so it had to fit in with what the rest of the family were doing). I managed the Paulan er Brewpub on the Cape Town waterfront, which happened to be right next to where we got off the boat after a trip to the infamous Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was held for much of the time of his imprisionment).

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see the brewing setup but did manage to taste 3 of their beers. A Lager, a Weissbier and a Dunckel. I don't want to pass comment on the Weissbier because I dislike Weissbier intensely and so any comment of mine is likely to be remarkably biased. The Dunckel was a bit to malty for my palate. Being the first Dunckel I've ever tasted though makes it difficult for me to judge properly. The lager I found to be a bit to sweet for my taste. Having said that I enjoyed both of the beers. A final observation from one of the poor of The Eastern Cape is that the prices, to my mind, appeared to be pitched at foreign tourists. R19.00 for 500ml or R14.00 for 3 100ml tasters is a bit steep.

Moving To The Dark Side

2007-07-09T20:09:00.001+02:00

Well I've just come back from a 10 day trip to the West Coast of South Africa. The area known as the West Coast is about 100 kilometres north of Cape Town. Whilst there I spent a couple of very pleasant hours with Leon du Preez a member of the Southyeasters (which is to the best of my knowledge one of only 2 homebrew clubs in South Africa, the other being the much larger Wort Hog Brewers based in Gauteng).

There were 2 reasons for my visit to Leon, the first being to drop off some of my PMS (Perfectly Made Stout) for an upcoming competetion they are having. The reasons for this are, I admit, mostly selfish as I am keen to get some feedback on my beer. Friends locally either think its great (mostly because its free I suspect or possibly politeness) or tell me its great and then ask if I have any Castle (The local megaswill). These opions whilst good for the ego do nothing to help me identify real problems or even pick up where improvements can be made.

The other reason for my visit was simply to spend some time chatting to a fellow homebrewer, it being rather lonely here in Port Elizabeth. It was great to spend a couple of hours talking about homebrewing to a fellow enthusiast, whilst tasting the fruit of someones else's labours. I tried a couple of Leons homebrews which were all very good. It gave me a new respect for what can be done with extract and steeped grains. Far superior to anything I've managed with extract and in fact, I thought, could well hold their own against many All Grain brews !

The Real Fathers Day

2007-06-17T21:02:00.000+02:00

Well this is my first post for a while. I have tried both the stout and the 2nd batch of bitter. Both are good but I think that the stout has a touch to much roasted barley, I will cut down a bit next time.

Today I brewed a mild ale, but first I had to clean some kegs. Below are a couple of photos taken from inside the brewery looking outside into the back garden. Note the kegs standing around just begging to be cleaned !

The table and chairs are where I was served my Fathers Day breakfast, just outside the brewery. Good weather here today considering we are now well into winter, reaching a maximum temperature of 28 deg C.

Anyway back to the mild ale. The following was my recipe (for 38 litres).

4.8 Kg Pale Malt

125 grams black malt

675 grams wheat flour.

1 Kg Invert sugar.

33 grams Southern Brewer Hops (Pellets at approx 9% alpha acid).

1 packet 6g Brupacks Ale Yeast made up to a 2litre starter.

Mash - Single infusion mash at 65 deg C for 90 Minutes

I prepared the wheat flour (which was normal cake flour) by mixing it with about 200 grams of crushed pale malt, mixing with water and letting it stand for 30 minutes at about 45 minutes before raising the temperature to about 55 deg C and letting it stand for a further 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes or so. This was then added to the mash with the other grains.

The mash and everything else went well, but I did miss my anticipated gravity by 3 points. (ending up with 1032 as opposed to the 1035 I expected).

Below is a photo of the colour of the wort when being recirculated (ie first runnings) as well as a photo of the colour of the wort into the fermenter.

Will keep the blog updated with what happens !

The Perfect Bitter ?

2007-05-24T21:37:00.000+02:00

Well I did brew on Sunday, turned out to be the coldest day of the year ! After much thought and after bottling some of the Wannabee 36 Bitter on Saturday decided to try another Bitter with some minor modifications to the recipe. The modifications were to increase the crystal malt by 200 grams to 350 grams and to reduce the 2nd hops from 32 grams to 25 grams. I also added three teaspoons of calcium sulphate to the mash. We shall see, its fermenting away merrily as we speak.

But what of the my first attempt at bitter. Well with no real comparison heres what I did
1)Reviewed BJCP Guidelines to find commercial examples and followed up with a quick trip to bottle store. Only example on sale was Boddingtons Pub Ale. Bought 1 can at the same price as a six pack of locally produced beer (homebrewing is not a good way to save money on booze).
2)Tasted Boddingtons
3)Tasted Wannabee 36
4)Decided Wannabeepretty good
5)Consulted various beer experts (my 16 year old son, red wine drinking wife and occasional sherry drinking mother).
6)Preened as a result of their glowing reports.
7)Decided a more impartial opinion was called for, mine.
8)Came to the conclusion that it was a bloody good beer, probably my best so far.

My observations

Carbonation - about the same as the Boddingtons
Aroma - a little more hoppy than the Boddintons but given a little more time to condition will probably end up at about the same level.
Bitterness - Similar level to Boddingtons but a bit harsher, also probably a bit more time to condition will sort out.
Clarity - My son said 9 out of 10, my own feeling would be about 7.5 to 8, again it may clear with age.
Taste - good after a pint but great after 4 !!!

Decided that I like the style, ale yeast is readily available and that I will dedicate my next few brews to trying to perfect it.

I also kegged the stout on Saturday and will report back as soon as it is ready to drink.

This is the Home of The Twinorbsbrewery

2007-05-17T22:30:00.000+02:00

Planning another brew this weekend, probably a mild ale again. Well that all the brewing news Ihave for now other than to say that the stout seems to be doing well and the lager is still shit !

For those of you who don't know where Port Elizabeth (or for that matter South Africa is) have a look at the map on the left, Port Elizabeth is right on the bottom of the African continent. For a real close up follow the link you'll see where its all going to happen !! Home of the Twinorbsbrewery.

Daddy's Day

2007-05-12T22:22:00.000+02:00

Well tomorrow is Mothers day so I decided to make today Daddy's day and do another brew. A dry irish stout. The day went well with me measuring the ph of every step of the way. One of the things I did for the first time today was add some gypsum to the mash tun to bring the ph down a little (From 5.6 to 5.2). The amazing thing for me was that I was drinking a coke at the time and for interests sake checked the ph of the coke as well 2.71 !!!! No wonder it gets used for removing rust.

The stout recipe to give me a final volume into bottles of 38 litres was

4.5 Kg pale malt

750 grams roasted barley

120 grams chocolate malt

900 grams cane sugar

46 grams southern brewer hops at 10% alpha acid.

Single infusion mashed at 67 deg C.

Yeast SAFALE 04 (cropped from primary of Bitter)

I got good conversion and think that the colour is almost right (it could be a little blacker). The only real problem that I had all day was battling to get the pump for the whirlpool chiller to prime. I will have to have a good look at why it is only that pump which I cannot get to prime, but nothing obvious springs to mind. Tou can see in the pics below the iodine test for conversion which was good and the start of the recirculation where you can clearly see the colour of the wort.

This picture of the wort is of the first running but the colour stayed extremely dark all the way through the sparge to the last runnings.An interesting observation is that when I emptied the mash tun all the roast

barley seemed to have settled in one place. I have no idea why that would be.

The bitter which I kegged last week seems to be coming along nicely. I needed a name for it and seeing that it was supposed to have 36 gravity points and only ended up with 33, gave me the name. "Wannabee 36" or abbreviated "1AB36". Pam our brewing supervisor and insiration for the brewery name can be seen in my proposed label.

Kegging The Bitter

2007-05-06T16:51:00.000+02:00

To start, a photo of the pictures on one of the brewery walls.

Well the bitter has been in the primary for a week now and the gravity has been at 1006 for at least 2 days, so today was the day to rack to the fermenter. As is normal whenever I decide to anything in the brewery, it has to be hot. It was 42 deg C in there at lunchtime today (33 deg C outside) and this is supposed to be the early stages of winter ! I didn't get quite as much as I expected into the kegs, probably 35 litres to my expected 38, but the beer looks (and tastes good). The final gravity was 1006 and the ph 4.3 (not sure w
hether the ph is good, bad or in between, but have meter must measure). I managed to collect quite a bit of yeast which I intend using next weekend for a dry irish stout.

The lager which I made a few weeks ago still hasn't cleared and leaves a strange aftertaste in the back of the throat, not sure what it is but it doesn't taste infected or off in any way. I'm going to add some finings later and then forget about it for a couple of months. Not a good first experience with dried lager yeast.

The hops appear to be still growing will despite the fact thats its early winter and they should be dying back by now, mind you with the weather its not suprising they don't know what season it is. You can see on the photo all the new growth. The Great Gardening Experiment continues !

Brewing Sunday Part 2

2007-05-01T22:03:00.000+02:00

Brewday started off disasterously as the previous evening when I'd turned on the HLT so that I would have my liquor heated up to strike temp for the mash, I'd actually turned on the power to the pumps so at 11am when I was ready to start I had 70 litres od 16d eg C water. Only the supervisor prevented me from giving up on brewing for the day. Anyway I emptied 30 litres out of the HLT and heated up the rest to 82 deg C. Given the ambient temperature of about 16 deg C and the heat lost in the pipes a better temperature would have been 85 deg C (I had to add an additional 3 litres of 82 deg water to reach my mash temp of 67 deg C. After mashing in I took a ph reading with my newly aquired PH meter. The ph at 5.6 was a bit on the high side, which could also be part of the reason I haven't been getting good mash efficiency. Next time I'll add some gypsum if the PH is to high. After a ninety minute mash conversion appeared good and the sparge was commenced. This time I sparged really slowly for just under an hour. I collected 50 litres into the boiler and also boiled for 90 minutes. From then on everything went well, the cooling, the transferring to the fermenter and even the cleaning. The interesting thing is that I missed my anticipated gravity again, but pleasing for me was that my spreadsheet was the closest at an OG of 1035 vs the actual of 1033 (still within the parameters for an ordinary bitter). I will adjust my mash effeciency on the spreadsheet down a little to cater for this and do the same with my next brew (use all three recipe formulators and see which is the closest. My transfer to the fermenter was a perfect colour and really clear which I was pleased about (see the picture below).

One other brewing tool which I must mention is my ipod. I really enjoy listening to all the brewing podcasts (see links) on my ipod via a radio, but for brewday nothing beats the Brewing Networks Sunday Show, its long enough to just about long enough to get you through a complete brew day !

Brewing Sunday Part 1

2007-04-29T23:22:00.000+02:00

Well, its the long weekend and as mentioned in my last post one day this weekend was going to be brew day, the only change was that instead of a stout I decided to do a British Style Bitter !! I started by relistening to the Jamil Show on the style , unfortunately the recipe discussed mentions a whole lot of ingredients that we in South Africa don't have easy access to, so I created my own recipe loosely based on a recipe in Grham Wheelers CAMRA book on homebrewing. The recipe which is for 42.5 litres (which gives me a collected volume of 38 litres or two 19 litre (5 US Gallon) corny kegs is as follows :-

6kg Pale Malt
0.33 kg Crystal malt
0.215 kg light Brown Sugar
35 grams Southern Brewer Hop Pellets (approx 9% Alpha Acid) boiled for 90 minutes.
32 grams Fuggles whole hops (approximately 4.5% Alpha Acid) boiled for 15 minutes.
Single infusion mash at 67deg C for 90 minutes.
1 teaspoon irish moss for 15 minutes.
1 sachet 11.5 grams Fermentis Safale S04 ale yeast made up into 2 litre starter.

I created the recipe using my own spreadsheet and then entered the same recipe into beer tools and Qbrew. My idea was to see which came closest to the actual gravity achieved. So armed with my recipe brewday was about to begin !

Preparing To Brew

2007-04-22T21:17:00.000+02:00

Well, we have a long weekend coming up at the end of the week and I've decided that at least one day will be dedicated to making another stout. I started preparing today by milling the malt. I've had some difficulty with this recently due to some fairly extensive wear on the shaft of the mills roller. This is where the electric drill is attached making it difficult to get the drill to stay connected to the mill. Anyway I eventually got it milled. I decided on a finer crush as I have not been getting the expected gravities from the mash with my last couple of brews. Hopefully this will help. You can see how finely I crushed the malt in the photo. I took the opportunity whilst out in the brewery to water the hop plants in their temporary home. I'm a little confused as to what to do with them as we are just entering winter here and I would have thought that by now they would have gone "dormant", but that doesn't appear to be the case and they seem to be doing quite well. As I said before I'm no gardener !

Labeling my Bottles

2007-04-17T22:48:00.000+02:00

I thought I'd do a short blog about how I do my labels for bottles. I create the label in MS Word and then copy it 9 times in the word document. When thats done I then print the required number of pages. Here comes the tedious part, I then cut out each label by hand place about 6 carefully into a laminating sleeve and laminate. Each label is then cut out ensuring that enough is left on the top to punch a hole in with a normal office punch. An elastic band is then looped through the hole and the label hung over the neck of the bottle. Why did I do it this way, well firstly the labels are reusable, they look pretty good and being plastic can be written on with a Koki pen. This means you could design a label for your favourite style and write onto the back of the label the specific details of a particular batch, when the bottle is empty the label is removed, the specifics wiped off the back of the label with a damp cloth and the label stored for use with the next batch. I think it adds a nice finishing touch (and hopefully if the design is good enough a distraction if the homebrew isn't). You can see in the photo to the left how effective these labels are, well I think so anyway !!

A Weekend Update

2007-04-14T15:31:00.000+02:00

Well in the past few days I have planted the hops, roasted some barley and bottled the rest of the Mild Pam and PMS. Planning my next brew which will be another stout. Going to try a different recipe this time, adapted from Charlie Papazians book. Received the photos which Llew took when he came to drop off the hops. You'll see on the photo that he insisted on standing next to Pam. A photo of the planted hops will follow as soon as they look like they haven't died.

The Great Gardening Experiment Begins

2007-04-07T11:14:00.000+02:00

Firstly please understand that I'm not an avid gardener, in fact I'm not a gardener of any kind ! Having said that since I started brewing I've always wanted to try growing hops. This even after reading somewhere that growing hops is gardening, not brewing. I was fortunate to be able to source some hop rhizomes from Llew of the Worthog Brewers in Pretoria/Johannesburg. Llew was gracious enough to bring these down to Port Elizabeth for me yesterday, so today they will be temporarily planted in a plant pot until I have prepared my garden for them. See the photo above of the rhizomes I got.

Llew also had a look at my brewery and tasted both my mild and stout. As a certified BJCP judge his comments were invaluable and I will be making some modifications to my recipe based on them. See also the photo of the stout label.

Checked the gravity of the lager again yesterday and it was at 1018 so my guess of two weeks was a bit shy.

Another Check

2007-04-02T20:54:00.000+02:00

Checked the garvity again today, now down to 1026 at a temperature of 12 deg C. Could definitely take more than two weeks to ferment out. As always I had a taste of the sample and I think that the final product will be a good beer. We'll have to wait and see. Went away for the weekend and took some of both the mild ale and the stout along. Both beers have got better with age, although the mild could do with slightly more bitterness some of the esters, which were quite pronounced have mellowed. Anyway heres a photo of the mild together with its label.

So Far So Good

2007-03-28T20:58:00.000+02:00

Did a gravity check tonight. Dropped nicely to 1030. The fermentation temperature is 15 deg C. Tasted the sample, not quite as bitter as I expected but that may change as the sugars are gobbled up.The photo shows clearly just how pale the beer is. I guess at this rate total fermentation will take about 10 days.

24 March 2007 Another Day Another Brew

2007-03-25T21:37:00.000+02:00

Bottled both the Mild Ale and the Dry Stout yesterday as well as doing another brew. The Stout came out really well, but the Mild Ale is watery and insipid and badly underhopped. I think that all of my ingredients are well past there sellby date by now. Having said that mixed together they make a pretty good brew.
My new brew is a lightish lager and I used pale malt and sugar. Again I missed the gravity (think that my malt is past it) so added some malt extract in to boost the gravity . The recipe was as follows for 36 litres :-
6.6 kilo's pale malt
500 grams white sugar
1 kilogram pale malt extract.
32 grams Southern Brewer hops (pellets) at 11% alpha acid for 90 minutes
10 grams SAAZ hops (whole hops) at 4% alpha acid for 15 minutes.
1 teaspoon irish moss into boiler for last 15 minutes of boil.
Single infusion mash for 90 minutes at 65 deg C.
Boil Time 90 Minutes.
Yeast was Youngs Lager Yeast (Dry Yeast Sachet) made up to a 2 litre starter.

I did the basics of the recipe on a simple spreadsheet I created which can be seen here.
The green beer transferred to the fermenter was remarkably clear and pale (see the picture above)with a gravity of 1038 so I expect an ABV of about 4%, which is roughly what I was shooting for. The ambient temperature was around 30 degrees so it was impossible to cool down below 29 degrees, so I tranferred into the fermenter at 29 degrees and left in overnight in the fridge to cool down to my required pitching temperature of 10 degrees C.Yeast was added this morning and hopefully by now its bubbling away

First Entry 11 March 2007

2007-03-25T10:35:00.000+02:00

Well my first blog entry. Have finished the modifications to my brewery and eventually got around to brewing 2 weeks ago. The brew went well and everything seemed to go OK. I brewed a mild ale based on a recipe from Graham Wheelers book Homebrewing. The final recipe is basically pale malt, black malt, wheat flour (I used normal cake flour) and invert sugar (I used golden syrup) together with some target hops. Everything went well but when I was finished I realised that I hadn't let the cooled wort stand after the whirlpool, oh well its at least a dark coloured beer. Overall though not a bad first brew. My major problem is getting the pump for the whirlpool primed.
After a week in the fermenter I racked into two corny kegs and cropped the yeast for use in my next brew, which I eventually did yesterday. This time a dry stout using extract. You can see by the photo of the yeast after 12 hours that it took off like an express train