Home brew? Homebrew? Winemaking

Cracking!

That sounds like such a great experience.

I've just cracked open the 10% imperial stout I bottled 2 weeks ago. It's undercarbed which I think is because the room it is in is a bit cold but other than that it's tasting lovely already. Proper chuffed with it.

Wish I'd had the guts to referment it in the bottle with champagne yeast as that would have made it spectacular. Just too scared of bottle bombs.

I found my stronger beers took longer to bottle condition than the lighter ones. I guess the yeast begin to struggle more when you get up to those sorts of ABVs.

Yeah I should have put some fresh in really before bottling. Ah well, not planning to drink them properly until Christmas so plenty of time.

I did a 9% Weizenbock, it has definitely got better the longer it has been left. I stuck the rest away about a month ago and have resisted drinking anymore, going to give it another month at least.

I've unfollowed all the booze stuff to sober up so don't know if repost or of any use but...

https://www.brewdog.com/lowdown/blog/diy-dog

I am strangely excited about making a Brett starter tonight. Chorlton brewery were lovely enough to send me 2 samples of the Brett they have used in their Brett Citra Pale (harvested from a 1970's bottle of berlinerwiesse). I'm going to make a fully bretted blood orange saison this weekend and need to grow the brett from its little pot to a 1l starter. Never done it before but I have my stir plate at the ready!

Made the Brett starter and fermented a beer with it

https://haveigotbrewsforyou.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/saisons-in-the-abyss/

Today I'm brewing a wit which I'm going to split and add lemon thyme to one batch and verbena to the other.

After donating to Moss Cider last year we are fermenting ourselves this year. We pressed 5l apple juice yesterday all from our "eater" tree.

A trip to julies home brew got us the bits missing, mainly campden tabs, yeast, and an airlock. Got a funky bottle brush for our v.dirty demijohns (from the garden, pictured) but using a new dj for this batch.

Campden Tablet in tonight, GV13 yeast tomorrow. Rough Hydrometer test suggests it could hit 6.5% if all the sugar ferments.

I've a feeling this'll be a learning batch.

Question: Would you brew with apples from a public cemetery? We have access to about a dozen trees unpicked, deep red colour apples too. Just seems disrespectful though...?

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Made a gamma ray clone yesterday... will report back if it actually tastes close.

Question: Would you brew with apples from a public cemetery? We have access to about a dozen trees unpicked, deep red colour apples too. Just seems disrespectful though...?

The dead don't give a shit...

Also, try cleaning stuff like that with a Oxyclean solution. Works a treat on all my gungy DJ's.

Ooh, recipe?

I'll post it up soon but its all done in Beersmith so will take some formatting...
We tried a low oxygen brewing method for this one, which involved using a pump to fill the mash tun (filled with pre-moistened grains to avoid clumps) from below and then again for getting the wort back in the kettle to minimise contact with air. Also treated the water (inc sparge) with sulphites which helps strip it of oxygen after boiling.

The low oxygen thing isn't really part of the recipe so no idea how it will affect the flavour vs the usual method of maximum agitation to aerate the wort. It should be good though ;)

Ohh, get you :)
Humour me, why wouldn't you want to aerate/oygenate the wort? Or are you just minimising it in the mash stage.

Apparently its the trick behind Bavarian beers – it minimises oxidisation of the malt compounds and perhaps more tenuously, less flavours escape through the air. There was noticeably less aroma wafting out during the whole process, which in theory is trapped in the liquid now.
Minimising oxidisation is the main point though.
We weren't scientific enough to do a normal brew alongside this, so I won't really be able to report if it made much difference. Yet...

This should help explain it better: http://www.germanbrewing.net/docs/Brewing-Bavarian-Helles.pdf

Okey doke, worth a punt I suppose!

Would be interesting to hear the outcome of this

Yay go me

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Nice one!

Respect!

In other news, I am brewing again on Sunday for the first time in ages. Massive excite!

^ Nice!

And congratulations Kat!

In other news, the coffee porter came out of fermenting and got bottled. The small glass I tried is very coffee, very smooth and very alcoholic...

We never got round to cemetery pick, maybe next year. Them demi-johns are gleaming now, thanks for the tips.

New shiny today 😁

And here she is. Klarstein double-walled SS boiler, with stepped temp control, false-bottom and hopback filter. Used it as MT and copper yesterday.

Cool! What's the capacity?