Home brew? Homebrew? Winemaking

Here ya go.
https://share.brewfather.app/Mp4rf7QZ3pSNfT

Thanks. Did you steep the Chocolate Malt separately just for colour or add it to the mash?

All into the mash together.

Planted a couple of hop plants earlier in the year not expecting much for a few years but they look to be producing already. The fuggles is very bushy and covered in flowers and some are starting to turn into cones at the moment. The yeoman is weedier but has some flowers forming so hopefully they’ll also turn to cone.

Just wish it would cool down a bit as wanting to brew something but there’s no way I’ll be able to get a good ferment at the current temperatures. Been looking at cheap fridges and temperature control but just don’t have the space to fit it anywhere at the moment.

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Ferment with Kviek yeast, it loves warmer temps

Ah awesome thanks, I've always assumed Kveik had a specific beer style to fit to but after a quick glance online that's not the case. Will look at getting something brewed up with that then I think.

Has the added bonus of being quick

Belle Saison yeast also loves the warmer temperatures.

But if you can find room for a fridge/temp control unit, I'd recommend it. Streets ahead of the aquarium heater in a trug method and works throughout the summer too. I've got a Belgian bretted bitter in the fermentation fridge at the moment, sitting at a constant 25 degrees thanks to the fridge/greenhouse heater/Inkbird. Great for making lagers/lagering too.

This reminds me, I have a fridge like the above, going largely unused, mostly for occasional bread making but largely redundant in the winter. Brewed wine before, but not beer. Have airlocks, 25l tub, demijons. Is there anything else I should be looking out for on marketplace if I want to have a crack at bewing some kind of IPA/Saison things?

Do I need a pressure keg or is that only for lager?

Pressure fermentation can also be an option when temp control isn't, but it will limit ester production if you are going for that in a style. I'm far from an expert on it, but I think the pressure fermentation is pretty forgiving (ie don't have to have CO2 and a spunding valve - could just allow the pressure to release at regular intervals so it doesn't become a bomb)

My fermentation room in my brewshed was really struggling in the really hot weather a couple of weeks ago.
I'm going to be building a new brewshed later this year so I'll make sure it's really well insulated .
Meanwhile I've been experimenting with an old chest freezer and temperature controller to build a kegerator. Seems to work OK! The temperature controller is less than a tenner on ebay.

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Yeah definitely want to get a fridge with a temperature controller just need to work out a place I could fit it.

You can do a kit beer without any more equipment than that (assuming you've still got the stuff you made the wine with), but if you want to make better beer, you'd need some additional stuff.

You can do extract or brew in a bag, which means you only need to get a kettle (a 30 litre stainless pot with a tap on it will do the trick), or you can go all grain, which means you need more stuff like a mash tun (converted coolbox is a good way to go if you're just starting out).

Cheers, yes was just reading about extract Vs all grain, think I'll want to do it the 'proper' way soon enough. Just watched some videos on cool box mash tuns and still a bit confused, don't you boil stuff in a mash tun?

Nope, you steep the grain in the mash tun at between 62 and 68 degrees depending on what you're making and whether you're going to do a step mash or not (that's for later on in your journey). Basically, the cool box with a towel over it keeps everything at around the right temperature for an hour. The one I've got (which I don't use anymore as I have an all-in-one system) never let me down - only ever lost around one degree over an hour, which is good going.

You boil the wort (steeped grain water) that you get from the mash process in the kettle (big pot with tap) before cooling it and sticking it in the fermenter with the yeast.

Got you. Seems like I'm also gonna need pot big enough to boil enough water for the mash and to boil it again after? Biggest I own is currently only 5l.

Yeah, you need something that'll hold about 30l for circa 21-23 litres in the fermenter. I think mine set me back about £70. You can DIY with a massive pan, a q-max cutter and the right tap fittings/washers. But less of a ballache to buy one ready made.

If you're after a mash tun and live in London, mine's surplus to requirements and can be let go for a reasonable fee.

Not in London otherwise I probably would

No worries. It's actually pretty easy to make one yourself - loads of Youtube videos on how to do it. You just need to make sure you get a decent sized one that'll hold all that grainy goodness.

Definitely not best practice, but with just a 25L electric coffee/tea urn, you can do a 20L batch, which is probably as much as you'll want to bottle (or put in a corny keg). If you are vigilant on watching the temp, you can do mash and boil in the urn pretty easily I find. To make your volume, though you have to top up with sparge water (you could just put your grain bag in that 5L pot you have and cover it with water) and often a couple times through the boil (which means it isn't all being boiled the full amount. This also gives you a bit of control around the gravity as your sparge water will be much lower gravity than the main mash you did in the urn, so you can mix to meet your target gravity.

I've been happy with my Peco Electrim Boiler with brew in a bag so far.

https://www.pecoservices.co.uk/basic-boiler---eb1b-116-p.asp

Can get one with a temperature control for a bit more and one with a digital temperature control for more again, but I haven't needed that for anything I've made at this point so haven't wished I'd got one of the pricier ones.

I started out with a peco, they're great. I'd just bulldog clip a bag to the top and it worked perfectly.

That looks good, and probably light enough to get up in to the loft to stash between uses

Yep. Just got mine down from the loft this morning in fact.

Checked out the bretted Belgian pale just now. Now that's a pellicle.

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