Brewday Hudson 20th April. What to make?

[matthewdick23]

actually working on the recipe now. do you know what hops you have, if any? alpha acids of them too?  although, may not need any hops from your end, just checked and I have more than I thought.  I'll post a draft recipe asap.

[sub82]

That's great! If I can do anything let me know!

Hops-wise we'd have, at the very most, 20g Magnum 14.0% and 20g Cascade 7.8%. I can order more if needed to balance the contribution out.

Oh yeah, sorry for all the questions but what about the flyers for the demo?

[matthewdick23]

wot about this?



the iipa that we tasted on the friday had 7.2% of the amber malt. remember how much that added? we all thought there must have been more to the grain bill. anyways, thought we could add a little of that in to see what it does at a lower %

as for the hops, I have more. never made a recipie for a pale ale before- how does the hop schedule look to you all?

and the yeast, i have others, thought 001 would work well

let me know what you think. we can change anything/everything

matthew

[matthewdick23]

as for equip/ method etc- we need another hlt. my one wont hold enough sparge water for such a big volume. I've pm'd barry. use 2 hlt should be fine

I've tweeked my equipment a bit this wk- added tubes between hlt and mt and between mt and boiler. should make things a little easier.

chris- you wanna bring your big bag? i want to put the hops in free into the boiler this time. once boil is done, could pour the wort throught your bag into fvs

I was thinking we could just split the batch in 2 fvs. one for me and one for u. u could use diff yeast (or i have enough for us both). was thinking you could dry hop and I wouldn't n compare the differences.

Happy to give barry a batch too- drop it off to him once we're done.

wasn't going to worry about cooling there, just bring home, get to temp ourselves and pitch

what you think?

[Bazza]

Hi Matthew and Chris,

Firstly, Huge apologies for not replying to your earlier PM's. I genuinely only spotted them today. As if the notification at the top of this page wasn't enough of a giveaway   

Regarding HLT and boiler, I have both. They're both electric and if not home made then home altered. The HLT is 30L and is fine for water, but I've never risked boiling any wort in it. The boiler is an old Electrim with a second element stuck into it. The original element always seemed to cut out at 90 degrees, so I added a cheap Tesco kettle element to the bin. What I do is boil the wort to 90 degrees using the older element. Once it starts cutting out I disconnect it and do the rest of the boil with the other element.

Now, with all that said, either HLT, boiler or both are at your disposal, but the boiler does have exposed electrics at the switch of the Tesco element. Fine for me who knows not to poke it with a metal spike, but I guess there could be potential safety concerns there for the general public.

Regarding Saturday 20th's planned brew. Have you any idea of a time yet? Later in the afternoon is a lot better for me but you'll probably want to brew early in the morning.

BTW, shout if you need grains, etc. I've a whole new 25KG of Marris Otter not opened yet.

I like the recipe you posted too. I was going to suggest to keep it simple first time around and that recipe looks perfect; it's all about showing folk the order of things without too much complication first time around.

If you're looking for an IPA type beer then I would suggest the Cascade should be used as later additions. Their excellent aroma and flavour would get lost at 60mins. I'd say add them at 5 mins and at flameout. (one of us could dry hop too). Maybe boil half the Northern Brewer for 60 mins and a quarter for 30 mins and the rest at 10 mins (or 5 mins). A little concern would be that their flavour might overpower the Cascade, but it's a small concern.

I have some NB and Cascade if you need them.

Never used Centenial before so can't really comment. If they're just a bittering hop then leave as is.

Yeast-wise, that WPL001 is the liquid equivalent of US-05, right? If so, it'll ferment pretty dry, so maybe try and use an English Ale yeast for one of the batches to see the difference.

I'm not allowed to install Beersmith on my work PC (Boo!    ) but I'll see if I can tinker with the recipe a bit when I'm home.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Cheers,

-Barry

[matthewdick23]

barry- thx for the suggestion on hops- havent done many hoppy recipes before. can we borrow your hlt- we just needa heat more water than im capable of wth my equip. and think ur rite, would rather use the hlt than the boiler wit ppl hanging around!!

cheers. i think we'll b there most of the afternoon- starting at 11

[matthewdick23]

just realised the hops r backwards nearly- nb for bittering, not aroma and other way round for others

[sub82]

Thanks Barry and Matthew.

That recipe looks great - yes the amber gave an almost chocolatey hint iirc? Thank you Barry too for the hop advice - might be good to have more additions.

I was thinking of bringing some other speciality malts for people to taste, like black malt and chocolate malt. We've plenty of MO. I will order some cascade as we'll need some anyway ourselves.

Can bring the straining bag no probs. We also have a 30L pot but guess it won't be much use unless we can get a gas burner? Again health and safety?

The different yeasts would be great - we have WLP-002 english ale and WLP-550 belgian ale that have only been used once before, as well as the yeasts donated by matthew. We could bring some of those if either of you wanted to use them too.

[matthewdick23]

could be a good opportunity for you to step a yeast up from the bottles i gave you to pitching amount- but I have the same yeasts and am happy to do it

I was going to boil with my gas burner- figured it'd be ok as long as someone was around it watching people didnt stick their head in the gas.  it's a pretty safe set up. the boiler covers the flames completely

good idea about bringing spec grains

why don't you use whatever hops you have to dry hop your fv- I can cover the hops for this brew. no worries.

matthew

[sub82]

We've actually already used some of them over the easter weekend. Made a stout and an IPA and split the batches to try with different yeasts. Should be racking tonight though so will probably wash them and reuse one for the demo batch.

Nice one at the gas burner - where did you get yours? Don't think our hob has enough energy - it was struggling to keep our last batch boiling.

Cool about the hops! Yep will save them for that then.

[matthewdick23]

got mine at www.gasproducts.co.uk which happens to be based in bangor iirc.  cost me 43 all in for the lrg boiling ring.  bit of cash, but the first AG i did was nearly stripping the paint off my kitchen walls cos I didn't have an extractor- so hadda move outside sharpish!

[sub82]

Ha ha! Class man - will check it out!

[matthewdick23]

so, we wil split it 3 ways. we each just look after our own yeast?

chris, haven't heard from michael today yet.

[matthewdick23]

Chris

Did I give you some wlp 001?  can't find any in my fridge.  no worries for this brew, I'll use some 051.  but was just curious if I had given any to you?

thanks

matthew

[sub82]

Yeah - there was one but I wasn't sure if it was 001 or 007? We made a starter from it and used half in a demijohn of beer last week. I could bring that or would you prefer it to be fresh?