brewday 15th June report

[brenmurph]

Great day today again. Very impressed with the brews the lads brought. Diva is right in the mode now and cant get enough info and ideas from us.
Thanks to 3 HBC members chilled day as in the brewday plan we didnt mash today but modded kit.
I have a few spruce beer recipies but decided a strange brew which so far is looking very good.

Step 1  pick the crop from the spruce tree ( 700 grams of fresh lime green twigs)
step 2   boil up the kettle with 15 litres water
step 3   add dana hops and spruce to BIAB bag.
step 4    boil spruce and hops with the MYOB wheat beer kit and 1 kg glucose
step 5 add finishing dana hop.
step 6   blast chill the wort after removing the BIAB bag
step 7  transfer to fermenter top aerate to 23 litre
step 8  add the lager yeast

The boil............what an aroma unusual but all agreed nice. Floral & fruity
the wort taster........very pleasent light herby/ citrussy flavour

The rational:

used the wheat beer kit to act as base malt driving off the kit makers aroma and flavour hops in the 40 minute boil leaving a very lightly bittered base malt
Added our spruce and hops to make a floral pale beer using a lager yeast at ale temp and will lager this brew.

food... kellie done a spread again

banter:
Diva learned loads
John seems more geared towards onwards and upwards in the brew scene and done some tasting based on BJCp guide
Gavin is planning an experimental batch with me and enjoyed the adventure today and the gadgetry

Hopefully a few more can jump onboard next brewday


another successful day all round

[Will_D]

Any chance of a photo as to what a Spruce tree looks like - would be a shame to use the wrong conifer!!

[brenmurph]

no prob will . Ill get one up, brew dive took some pics she may have some as well.

they are easy enough to recognise. The 'twigs' are a term for the new growth which can clearly be differenciated from the old wood. from my research its the new growth about 2-3 inches long which are soft / fluffy and tender that are used. The taste is fresh, citrussy, clean and a hint of bitterness.

We were very surprised with the wonderfull aroma from the boil and Im looking at the fermenter motoring away now aroma still very nice.

We had a taste at different stages of the boil coz we wernt sure how long to boil for and wer afraid we may bring out tannin or something but there were no worries. Aparantly short boils dont do much.

[brenmurph]

hopefully the close up pic shows the new growth. There is a little brown nodule that the new branch comes out of so break off the new (pale green) leaf after the nodule. The old growth is dark green and firm, woody and needles may be sharp.

I think my tree is a 'sitca' spruce or a 'norway' spruce but Id say any spruce would do.

took 3 of us about 10 minutes to collect 700 grams from the 25 year old tree.

[Will_D]

So its Christmas Tree spruce then. Think we may have some at the club.
Cheers for the info

[John]

Another great day yesderday at the south Kildare mashup. Thanks to Brendan and Kellie for their hospitality. Wonderful to meet Brew_diva and Gavin.An interesting beer brewed and I'm looking forward to the results. Some super beers sampled and Brendan explained to me the art of describing the various tastes and aromas found in beer, something I need to work on  . Good and honest feedback received on 2 of my own brews. Brendans hop plants are growing strong and will be interesting to see how things will turn out come harvest time. I was very impressed with Brendans kegerator. He used a method that allows for far more costomisation than just sticking to using a fridge or freezer carcass and it will be the method I will use when I get around to building my own kegerator. I forgot to take a pic of the kegerator, maybe Brendan you could post a pic?
I got a pic of Brendan and Brew_diva hard at work foraging at the spruce tree.

[Brew_Diva]

Thanks John  , great picture, really captures the moment I think. Good to meet you too

Beer tasting on the day was good I enjoyed particularly John's Blonde Ale as a lovely after lunch tipple, all the ladies present agreed that the flavour texture and sweetness (alcohol content) were agreeable to us.
Also like Brendan and Keith's Alt Beers from the amazing Kegerator.

The spruce beer was a real eye opener as to what can be explored using the fruits of the garden. The Spruce is very unusual and flavours are well locked in, there's not much of an aroma from it at first but when you chew the leaf it was like an explosion of taste and bitter citriusiness!!!
Also interested in Brendan's Lime Wheat beer; would love to try such late additions such as this myself at a later date after a few brews have come out successful, with a particular emphasis on sterilising anything that goes in last minute, when the boil is complete, whether it be hops fruit or whatever.

I was also very impressed by the range of Hops Brendan has growing in the polytunnel and outside, this is the real deal homegrown homebrew- fantastic!!

Kellie's cooking went down very well. I think we all enjoyed it immensely, and the quails in the polytunnel are lovely, producing a lovely egg that John and myself were lucky enough to enjoy fried on crackers! One of the little birds went on a wander while we were there but thankfully was found in the end!!! phew

As you say Brendan got some great tips and info re my current brew and ideas for future pursuits.

Have taken hydrometer reading this morning (at 7 days) and have also had a taste.
Initial gravity was 1056 and the reading I got today was 1012 so 44/ 7.36 = 5.9% vol and we were expecting it to be about 6% so as you suggested I will take another reading 24 hours on and see if there is much change then am eager to get bottling.

The taste is quite good, (but am probably a bit biased... )
its definitely a Pale Ale somewhat hoppy, mellow enough and with good round mellow end taste, I wonder how much this will change over the next steps....
Colour is a pleasant amber, it looked dark in the fermenter but on pouring its bright and clear enough considering.
Anyway was good to get some use out of Syphon and stuff am sterilising like mad, so bottles should be interesting aswell, have a handful of flip tops so will see about practising on two or three in the next couple of days and then must get on to Thomas to collect the rest. Its coming together anyway am delighted.

Regarding sugar syrup and so on to condition the bottles... is this essential even at the earliest stage?

[Gav]

Well Folks it was great to spend a couple of hours in the company of Brendan , Kellie, John and Diva yesterday, just wish I had more time to spend chatting, brewing and sampling. As always Brendan had some new stuff to show us and some new beers to try. John had a few nice beers to sample too and I'm looking forward to trying his nettle beer that youv got in the fermenter John. Diva also has her first batch in the fermenter which seems to be coming on we'll.

Well last night/thismorning I brewed my first all grain batch which went great....ish. Everything went perfectly, hit my mash temp first time , p h was pretty good, the boiler which is the same as Brendan's setup worked great and my counter flow chiller hit the pitching temp first time too. But then it became apparent I was going to come up short on my total volume to the tune of 5 liters!!!! I boiled off way more than I thought I would and the dead space liquid/trub must have been greater than I thought. So at 3:15 am and under the influence of my last brew I decided to just pitch the yeast and see how it turns out. The OG was 1.060 instead of 1.050 but what the feck it tasted pretty good when I sampled it thismorning. And the safale 04 just pitched straight in from the packet was active in less than 4 hours. All Grain brewing, I love it.

Thanks again to Brendan and Kellie, see you all soon.

[Kellie]

Well done Gav......... Look forward to a sample of your first all grain!

It was a great day in Kildare, all run very smooth and lots of banter and information passing happened, was great to see John, Michelle and Gav again. Thank you for the beer samples and contributions, John I am looking forward to cracking open your bottle of Pinot Grigio...... I will let you know how I get on! John's wife also makes fab candles I just love the beer glass with a candle in it, it has took a place on the shelf in the bar!

Michelle is flying with her beer adventures, well done i am also looking forward to a sample of your first brew.

I bottled my aldi white grape juice wine earlier, we never got around to it yesterday, and I am pleased I prepared well (sterilised)  Just needed a wee bit of assistant from Brendan, but am pleased with myself!

The next batch of wine is now on and going well, this batch is a red wine.

See you all at the next brew day........