Brewing Log

This is a working log of all my brewing activities.

§2023-02-04 beer brew (notes by Charlie)

• 15L water into pan
• Weighed out 326g Caramalt Crisp EBC 30 barley and put into drawstring bag
• Heat water to 66oC and immerse in bag in pan for one hour.
• In the meantime, I washed the fermentation bucket with soap and water, rinsed out, and then filled with 5 gallons of warm water. 
  • Added around 7 teaspoons of sterilising powder into the warm water in the fermentation bucket, stirred with the long spoon to dissolve
  • Put the bucket lid on and gave a shake to sterilise
  • Leave until ready to fill (but be sure to rinse thoroughly).
• Boiled for one hour once it reached the hot break, then added 7g of hops in a sock.
• 5 mins before the boil finished, added 7g more of hops in another sock.
• Once boil finished, carried upstairs and put in a bath of cold water with lid on. Hops were still in at this point. 
• Let the pot sit in the bath until it cooled. We were aiming to pitch yeast at around 20oC, we took the pot out at 24oC.
• Brought the pot down. Gave the fermentation vessel a final shake with the sanitiser, drained out and rinsed (we had also soaked the thermometer, spoon and hydrometer in the sanitising liquid).
• We spooned out both bags of hops.
• Took a gravity reading from the chilled wort.
  • Reading was 1.045
• Took another temperature reading, it was around 21 or 22oC, so we decided it was fine and pitched the yeast.
• Pitched the yeast, around ⅔ of the 11.5g pack, and stirred it in with the long handled spoon. 
  • Yeast was Safale US-05 dry ale yeast (made by Fermentis)
• We picked up the pot and poured it straight into the fermentation bucket, then put on the lid and shoved in the air lock.
• We stuck on the stick-on-thermometer and wrapped up the bucket in a duvet to hopefully maintain a stable temperature.
• On evening of Thursday 9th Feb, added mosaic hops, ~75g, into the brew. We added them in a drawstring bag with a glass weight to weight them down. Boiled the bag and glass weight for approx 20 mins prior to putting hops in and chucking them in the brew.
• On evening of Monday 13th Feb, bottled the brew. Filled up a keg with hot sanitising solution and submerged the bottles one by one, plus caps, into the sanitiser. Also submerged siphon tube and hydrometer, although hydrometer was unnecessary. Left to sit for >30 mins to sanitise. Rinsed each bottle and cap thoroughly before bottling with hot tap water.
• Bottled the brew, putting approx 500ml in each bottle then adding a heaped teaspoon of granulated table sugar (approx 4 to 5g) to each 500ml bottle. Ryan is good at the siphon. This part is definitely a two-person job minimum. 
• Closed caps and stored in dark at room temperature.
• To clean up, washed out the fermentation bucket, put in the siphon and other bits and bobs, and poured the remaining sanitiser into the fermentation bucket to soak overnight (topped up to fill).
• Final gravity prior to adding bottling sugar was 1.008
  • calculated as 4.86% at https://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/

Possible errors or improvements:

• I should have soaked the airlock in sanitiser, to decontaminate it.
• We were generally a little unprepared for the key steps of taking the hydrometer reading and pitching the yeast. I faffed about a bit not being sure how to take the hydrometer reading and may have risked contamination in the process.
• When we picked the bucket up, by the handle, the lid domed outwards, increasing the internal bucket volume and therefore decreasing the pressure. This sucked in water from the airlock, hopefully it didn’t contaminate it too badly.
• In future, we must pick up the bucket by the rim! - Possible equipment to get: - Autosiphen (to minimise Ryan’s saliva per volume)
• No rinse sanitiser for ease of use

§beer brew on 5th March 2023

§2023-03-05 robin chat

• Crystal malt Spay malt Belgian candies
• Split across 2 to avoid yeast head Age in 1, leave for a bit somewhere dark Secondary aging 1.071-80 strong Imperial stouts hard Enough yeast Full satchel of yeast New world strong ale Same Mosaic dry hops
• Right hoppy 100g 80-90g total Most drive hop Alpha acid bitterness 5% English 8-9 American East Kent Golding - late addition, better aroma Bitter with that 30g hot Late additions 10mins from end Challenger 3 months aging
• Challenger Easy king goldens
• Full mash Sparge - wash the final sugars, 74C Heat, lots efficiency
• Come back for barley wine

Translation: Makes 5 litres, will be roughly 9% 1kg medium dry malt extract 70g dark crystal is a roasted barley malt he got a bag of for me 175g carapils is from the bag we bought earlier Ryan 23g EKG (East Kent Goldings hops) added at start of 60 min boil, we might want to tone that down if we plan to age for less than 3 months 100g honey, will be fucking delicious 6g East Kent Goldings hops at turn off of the boil Will be ~50 IBUs (international bitterness units)

§Brew

• 15L water in big pot
• 325g Carapils malt + 178g Caramalt crisp in mash bag
  • Mash at 66oC 1 hour and squeeze out bag
• Added 1534g Ritchies light spraymalt and 509g Muntons extra light spray malt
• Put to boil, at the hop break, added 5g of amarillo hops + 5g of mosaïc hops in a sock
• Took off the heat but not into cold water until 2h later
• Pour into the vessel, Then add some hot water and some cold one until the water is 20°C
• Add yeast (liberty bells?)
• Specific gravity 1.045
• Dry hopped 75g leftover mosaic topped up with amarillo (don’t know the ratio) on Friday 10th
• Bottled on 26th Sunday at 1.012 with 1 tsp sugar (~2g) per 1l

§2023-03-05 barley wine brew

• 5L water in pot
• 70g Dark crystal + 175g Carapils malt
• Kept at roughly 66°C for 1h
  • Unsurprisingly, temperature control is much harder with the smaller volume
• After 1h, add 1081g of malt extract
• Boil until hot break
• Add 80g of hops
• Realised I fucked up after 10 min, removed the hops, added again 100G of wet hope (out of a total of now 600g wet hops)
• After 45 min, added 100g of honey
• At the end of the hour, added 6g of dried hops
• Left it to cool
• Pitched the yeast (don’t remember the variety)
• Specific gravity 1.112
• The yeast head was way too high and escaped the demijohn into the airlock. It then dried blocking the airlock, and the bung blew off overnight. Rescued it into two demijohns but it got quite oxygenated during this.
• Bottled on 26th Sunday at 1.021 with 1 tsp sugar (~2g) per 1l

§2023-04-17 mead

§2023-03-22 robin mead chat

• bought:
  • mead yeast
  • camden tablets (if want to be sweet)
  • potasium sorbate
  • yeast nutrients
• Age in fermentation chamber by
• Camden tablets Potassium sorbate
• 5.5-6 Aging
• Clear Acidity drops
• Rack into bottles for aging
• Dry English heritage gift shop Long aging 6 months - 1 year Back sweetening shorter
• Fermentation stopper Back sweetener
• Aging - bottle really clean
• Splash cap Airlock try
• Tight sealing small bucket
• Bung bucket
• Bret Sour beer
• Under pitch Stressed yeast Can’t over yeast
• Starter culture Rehibrating Cream Dummy batch 1-2 litre Pitche yeast slurry Same temp 1.040-1.050
• Different wine/mead and beer nutrients
• Tea for tanin Bite
• fruit wine:
  • elderflower seasons
  • elderberries
  • blackberries
• Cider:
• need eating apples for the sugar
• mill road cemetery

§Brew

ingredients

• 1.36kg honey
• 4l water
• 1 package of yeast
• 5 grams (or 1 tsbp) of yeast nutrients

steps:

• heated water to nearly boiling to sanitise it and make it easier to dissolve the honey
• sanitise fermentation vessel, e.g. demijohn
• soften honey in a hot water bath
  • I meant to do 5l but I think I miscounted
• Charlie was worried about the yeast head like from #barley-wine-brew-5th-March-2023, so I fermented in two demojiohns, but there was actually very little yeast head
• 2023-04-17 pitched on
• specific gravity: 1.087
• fermented for 2 weeks (and a day)
• 2023-05-02 racked on
• specific gravity: 1.000
• tasting notes:
  • really dry
• 2023-05-26 might backsweeten on
• 2023-05-27 add 2 camden tablets (280mg sodium metabisulfite per tablet) and 1/5 tsp (~1g) potassium sorbate
• 2023-05-28 backsweeten with about 70g of honey dissolved in 100ml wataer (should have gone higher but this is all I had) and bottled
  • NB autosiphon doesn’t fit in demijohns
  • hydrometer reading 0.998 before backsweetening and 1.001 after

resources:

• https://traditionalmead.uk/making
• but I didn’t sterilise honey

where to buy honey:

• darwin beekeeping society
  • unfortunately they don’t have any surplus
• cambridge beekeeping association

§2023-05-24 Nick and Ryan brew: `Summer Sun’

ingredients:

• Barley: 500g carapils weyermam EBC 4 14/03/24 £2.99
• Malt extract: 3kg light malt liquid £21.99
• Hops:
• boil start: 14g East Kent Goldings 2022 100g AA 5.18% nitrogen packed £6.79/100g
• boil end: 10g Amarillo 2021 AA 8.9% dried £7.99/100g
• dry hops:
• 30g Citra 2019 AA 13.3%
• 46g Amarillo 2021 AA 8.9%
• Yeast: Gervin GV12
• Ale Yeast

steps:

• mash:
• fill pot with hot water
• bring to 66°C
• immerse barley for 1 hr
• (sterilise fermentation vessel)
• boil:
• add malt extract
• boil until hot break
• add 10g hops
• boil for 1 hr
• add 10g hops 5 mins before end of boil
• cool
• take out hops
• cool, pour into fermentation vessel, top up with hot water
• take hydrometer reading
• pitch the yeast at 20°C
• 2023-05-01 dry hop 80g on 2023-05-29

specific gravity:

• before: 1.042
• dry hop: 1.012
• after: Broke hydrometer so didn’t get final reading
• 2023-06-12 bottled
  • Hops stuck in jar, but probably okay cuz left way too long

§2023-08-30 mead

peter’s honey

made 4 batches:

1. 800g spring honey 4.5l must [0] 1.059 OG [1]
2. 1.6kg spring honey 4.5l must 1.110 OG
3. 2.4kg spring honey 4l must, OG was off the charts (my hydrometer doesn’t go that high, but a spirit hydrometer should).
   • estimated 1.170 from brix calculations using 1 and 2 to estimate sugar / honey as 0.75, which tracks with rough hydrometer reading off the scale 4. Diluted summer honey processed from honeycombs with some bee bread 4l must 1.111 OG

used water boiled and left to cool overnight

stored like:

1 2
3 4

after 10 days (2023-09-10)

1. 1.050
2. 1.010 - tastes a bit acrid, still bubling a lot so going to leave for a couple more days
3. 1.120
4. 1.090 - why is this taking longer?

Racking 2023-10-25

Stored

4 3
2 1

1. 1.42, grim af
2. 0.989 15.88%
3. 1.082 11.55%
4. 1.031 10.50%

Bottled 2023-12-11

1. normal 0.990
2. sweet 1.82
3. dark 1.31

§blackberry wine

start, no idea

test:

• 0.994 about 9%?

bottling;

• 0.990
• 1 Camden table
• 7 grains of potassium sorbate
• 100g sugar
• 1.5l

§2024-03-16 mandy english pale ale

ingredients:

• 500g carapils malt
• 200g east keng goldings
• 3kg spraymalt light
• Safel US

-05 yeast

method:

• 15L mash for 1hr
• bring to boil, added 2kg of malt extract, and brought to hot break NB this took a really long time. Pull put up to concave base for better contact.
• 70m mash with hops:
• 30g 0m
• 25g 15m
• 25g 65m
• 30g off
• Cooled in sink for ~1hr, added to sanitsed fermentation bucket and topped up to 5 gallons (just under 23L) with bottled water which brought us to a good 22C to pitch the yeast.
• OG 1.050

plan to next Sat 40g dry hop

forgot to dry hop

1.010 FG

§2024-08-29 honey

I have 12kg of dark honey.

I want to make a big tub of ~10% mead, 1.1 OG.

And a smaller demojiohn of as strong as we can get… start it off at around 1.1OG and then add more honey later.

Let’s just make one big pot to start… then can siphon some off with the other. Main thing is yeast.

2024-11-02 mead

okay, 23L water 6kg honey, let’s see what happens

aim for 1.110OG

okay 5g for 4L, so 20g for 20L yeast nutrients

added honey 2766g

• 1.039 added honey 2639g
• 1.060 added honey 1000g
• 1.090 dregs
• 1.099 641g last year’s
• 1.103 1000g
• 1.111 Totalling 8043kg

20g yeast nutrients

totalled just over 20L with water and honey

added one pack of mangrove jack’s mead yeast

2024-11-23 demijohn 1.015 12.6%

2024-12-17 1.005