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I am almost certain that the lessons i have learnt while doing BIAB are down to me being extremely lazy and trying to cut too many corners as well as trying to do things as cheap as possible.

After losing three or four batches and cutting fewer corners each brew, i am almost at the stage where i may be able to drink something i’ve brewerd

So…

• No Chilling in the kettle is a rubbish idea…. its not sealed, the beer is sitting on all the break material. It just shouldn’t be done
• Temperature control is a must.  It’s generally just way too hot to brew without it. Guaranteed to get a heat wave the second the beer touches the fermenter.
• As ive said before, brewing AG without a thermometer is like flying blind. Use one!
• Use a decent no rinse santiser. Its easy and cheap

From the list you can see i was just being lazy. Should have most of the laziness taken out of my brewing process now. We’ll see how the next batch goes.

14th November, 2009

This time around i was going to brew a wheat beer. With no idea what recipe, i decided to brew one from the book “Brewing Classic Styles”. Obviously, from the title of the post you can tell i chose the recipe “Harold is Weizen”.

Recipe:

• 2.5Kg Pilsner Malt
• 2.5Kg Wheat Malt
• 23g Hallertauer @ 60min
• Safale US-05 Ale Yeast

A nice simple recipe. Sort of a “set and forget” type brew. Came up a litre or two short in to the fermenter, so for the next brew i need to adjust the figures slightly. This was a definite improvement from the last attempt where i missed post boil volume by several litres.

November 22nd, 2009

Time for the bottles, pretty sure im going to be drinking beer that all have varying levels of carbonation. Not to worry, tasted great from the fermenter. Can’t wait to drink this one cold.

January 11th, 2010

Quick update, tasted this beer first back in December and again over the weekend, its a real disappointment. Cant pin point where exactly i went wrong. Probably comes down to excessive temperatures whilst fermenting.

Down she goes. *flushes toilet*

:’-(

7th November, 2009

Time for the second Brew In A Bag – All Grain brew attempt. The recipe this time around is very similar to the previous attempt, which was meant to be a James Squire Golden Ale clone. This beer has almost the same recipe, just lacking a few specialty grains.

Recipe:

• 4.35Kg Joe White Ale Malt
• 0.50Kg Joe White Wheat Malt
• 0.15Kg Weyermann Carahell
• 20g Amarillo @ 80min
• 20g Amarillo @ 25min
• 20g Amarillo @ 5min
• 20g Amarillo @ 0min
• Safale US-05 American Ale Yeast

The brew went good, hit pre-boil volume but realised pretty quickly when trying to squeeze 5kg of grain at about 80 degrees C that insulated gloves would be very handy! Note taken for the next brew.. Would of hit my estimated OG if i had diluted the wort by 3 litres. The OG was measured at 1050 (18L) but was meant to be 1045 (21L), unfortunately i realised this a bit late and just left it as is. Another note taken for the next brew, need more water in the boil.

12th November, 2009

Needed to get this batch in bottles as soon as possible to free up space for the next batch, it was quite obvious that fermentation was done, but i was bottling this 3 or 4 days too early. This was pretty obvious as the beer in the bottles looked like mud!

Didn’t quite get as much beer out of this batch as i would have liked, but with the few notes taken next batch should hit the required volumes.

January 11th, 2010

Update on this brew, tasted back in December, way to bitter. I think this is down to undershooting the volume and not topping up, as well as no chilling adding an extra bit of bitterness.

Try again….

The first attempt at brewing was basically a disaster. Without going in to detail about recipe etc, here are the lessons learnt:

• Use a thermometer! It is necessary
• Be patient
• 70 degrees Celsius is hotter than it sounds!

I’m sure there is more, but i brewed this so long ago i forget now.

Number two should be better…

This was exactly the same as number 03, an English ordinary bitter. I thik this one came out a little better, the temp was alot more stable, it sat around 20C for the whole fermentation.

The tasting and carb of the first attemp at this style was very promising. Quite a bit of butterscotch flavor coming through though, could be due to the high brew temp.

Can’t add much more. Waiting for carbonation.

Finally got around to brewing again. Changin things up this time, after consuming a fair few of the previous 2 extract brews ive made, i have not been that impressed with the dry extract. So for the sake of making a few comparisons this time around i am using all liquid extract.

So, to the recipe:

• 2.5Kg Liquid Malt Extract
• 0.5Kg Amber Malt Extract
• 34g East Kent Goldings @ 60min
• 14g EKG @ 30min
• 14g EKG @ 01min
• S04 ale yeast

Starting gravity ended up being around 1034. Could have been slightly higher.

Tasted just before pitching yeast, and it was very promising. Looking forward to drinking this one

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Ok, now, second time around with my attempt of brewing an all extract beer. Same recipe as the first, only difference is the hop amounts and timings.

Recipe

• 2kg ldme
• 1kg dextrose
• 06g POR @ 60min
• 12g POR @ 45min
• 10g Saaz @ 15min)
• 10g Saaz @ 05min)
• US05 yeast

The Orginal Gravity was the same as the first (as expected, considering i used the same malt and dextrose) at 1044

You can see from the photos that i bought myself some new scales, so no more guesstimating the amount of hops. Hopefully this saves me from another spicy beer

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After two weeks in the bottle, yes i know its still “green”, but what the hell, i have to taste it. I could see in the bottle this was going to be a cloudy beer, most other beers ive made have settled by two weeks and are almost clear, not sure what to put that down to.

Anyway, i poored two glasses, and i have to say, the head retention on this beer was the best of any beer ive made, so was the quality of the beer (ie no “homebrew” flavour to the beer), unfortunately, it was super hoppy, almost peeled the paint off the walls.

So, lesson learnt. Time to revise the recipe. I will note though, that this is going to have a very Coopers Pale Ale type flavour to it, probably down to the Pride of Ringwood hops, i dont mind, its a tasty beer.

After several years of making homebrew beer from a can of goo and a kilo of sugar, i have taken the next step to try and make a tastier (and hopefully not to much more expensive) beer.

I bought enough ingredients for two batches from thebrewshop:

• 4kg light dry malt extract
• 2kg dextrose
• 100g pride of ringwood hops
• 100g saaz hops
• 2pkts US05 yeast

As you can see, this was going to be a very basic extract beer. Single malt, with just two hop additions. The reason for this was i didn’t want to mess about with mixing different types of malt extract and too many hops because i wanted to see what a basic beer tasted like and use it as a benchmark for any beers after this one.

Recipe

• 2kg ldme
• 1kg dextrose
• 20g POR @ 60min (edit: 26g measured with scales)
• 25g Saaz @ 15min (edit: 23g measured with scales)
• US05 yeast

Beer is in fermenter at about 20 degrees (some may say too hot! but its the best i can do).

Original Gravity was around 1044

The beer has a really spicy smell, i think i may have added too much saaz. Will post once have bottled and tasted.

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Finally, after breathing in too many solder fumes, i have finished building these two kits. Not much to say, it was pretty easy. Here are a couple of photos

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Next thing is to buy the transformer, and set this thing up. Hopefully i don’t have to spend hours debugging!