Home brew? Homebrew? Winemaking

It's here!

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Dear diary. Jackpot.

Oh mayyyynnnn.

Just waiting for the wort chiller to be delivered then I can brew me my first batch. Going to try the Beer Geek Breakfast clone in the Mikkeller book.

Haven't done any brewing for AGES, but I realise it's ~3 months until Christmas so perhaps I should get a batch on soon. I'm still in the kit-brewing stage at the moment, although I'd love to get more into it one day when I have more space and free time. Any recommendations on kits to try at the moment? I'd love to do something like Adnams Broadside, which I adore, or a really hoppy lager, maybe. But not sure either is possible while I'm still playing with kits. Any thoughts?

What sort of wort chiller is it?

It's also time to admit that the raspberry beer I did last year is a flop, and to empty the fridge of it...

Decent ale kit: Woodfordes Wherry. Lager is not technically possible at room temperatures, so the kits are usually faux-lager (very light ale).

I've done the Wherry kit a few times and it's come out really well. Good call. Bit samey, but results were good. Plus I'm a Norfolk lad so it's patriotic.

Or buy some malt extract and hop yourself which is more fun.

The wort chiller is the speidel one that comes with the braumeister, just gets delivered separately for some reason.

My only attempts to go off-piste so far have yielded... mixed results.

Just pre-ordered some cascade plants to grow in my garden, may have some hops going free next year.

Me too! Also ordered some Polaris hop plants as they sounded cool too.

Ace! LFGSS hop exchange anyone?

I've been baking loaves of bread with spent grains too.... I think I've gone home brewing mad. Oh, and flapjacks too.

Have you been mixing the grains with flour? What sort of ratio?

I've made flapjacks and a sort of sour dough with spent saison yeast.

Picked up a Woodfordes Wherry pack for a tenner at the local Wilco today. Close to use by date hence price.

Nice...

Haven't perfected it yet, but you don't need much. I'm about to try a new method: drying spent grains first (possibly milling further) before adding to flour. I'll try and update this thread with details.

Try rehydrating the yeast for 30-60mins in a cup of sterile water at roughly 25c before starting. Many of the yeast in the pack may have died if it's close to BBE, so best to give it the best chance possible. Or buy a sachet of S-04 or US-05. If you are ever near Leytonstone then I can give you a spare pack of S-04.

Cheers for the offer but up in the grim norf.

I usually pre-start the yeast in body temperature water, with yeast nutrient, anyway before adding it. Got some spare yeast and a good brewing supply shop down the road anyway.

Great. When I did a Wherry a while back, I brewed it short to 20L. The kit yeast doesn't taste nice when fermented warm (I did 22c and it tasted of bananas initially). Flavour really comes together after a few months.

Used the Braumeister for the first time yesterday. Main issue is finding a kitchen surface low enough for me to reach into it. I had to use a step and get Simon to stand on the kitchen side to remove the grain tube after the mash.

Also I'm going to go back to using tights as hop bags, the tap got clogged up very quickly and bits of hop got all in the pump which was a pain in the arse to clean after.

Other than that was a dream to use. Less things to clean at the start of brewday and a lot less faffing.

Drinking the decaff coffee stout I made in the braumeister and it's great. My stouts and porters have always come out thin and horrible but this is great. It was loosely based on the Mikeller Beer Geek recipe except due to my tap getting blocked up with hops I had to remove it and some hops got into the fermenter and so it has a slight cascade hop finish which works well so alls good.

Going to make an IPA and condition it on tropical fruit next.