I'm not sure yet, I was thinking about mixing marris otter with pils for the IPA base and using straight pils for the tripel base. I'd like to keep both fairly light in colour, but I'm blindly experimenting, so the results should be interesting! The IPA will probably just have some additional crystal malt in, but the tripel I'm planning to add flaked barley, flaked oats, and some wheat malt as well as coriander, orange peel and star anise.
I guessed the adjuncts were for the tripel, unless you're going for a very adventurous IPA! All my pales so far have been with either Maris Otter or Maris Otter & Crystal (they say that crystal malt should make up no more than 20% of the grain bill). These days though, I tend to make very pale American style beers with very little malt profile, so no crystal (which has a noticeable toffee/caramel flavour). I want to try combining pilsner malt and Maris Otter soon though as this should give even less malt profile than Maris Otter alone, and with an american ale yeast (Safale US05) it should make a very clean, hop-dominant American style beer. I notice you're blindly experimenting, and there's nothing wrong with that, but have you tried playing around with brewing software? It's good fun and very useful for formulating recipes. Brew Mate (now called "Brewer's Friend" it seems), for example, is completely free. http://www.brewersfriend.com/windows/
Just took a gravity reading of my pale ale and it's down to 1004. Lower than planned but the mash was a couple of degrees cooler than intended so not altogether unexpected. Tastes very nice too (for young uncarbonated beer). Looks like I'll be bottling this weekend.
I hate bottling, so tedious, especially if you have to clean bottles before too. I'm just about ready to start brewing on Sunday.
Tell me about it! I have 50 bottles to wash, although it shouldn't be too bad because they were rinsed immediately after use. Then of course they'll need sanitising too, but Starsan makes that fairy painless, being "no rinse" and all. Thankfully I'll be bulk priming so I won't need to add the priming sugar to each individual bottle (tedium maximus). Nice Buffalo setup you have there (and plate chiller), what are you brewing - the tripel or the IPA?
Good luck with the bottling! I do mine over the bath, I have a few pieces of mdf with holes in that hold the bottles upside down so they can drain. Clean and starsan, then bottle by gravity. I would love to keg, but SWMBO won't let me (also we don't have space in the apartment) plus it's difficult to get co2 here. IPA this weekend, just about got the recipe down, hope it turns out good! Just not sure whether to add some crystal or just stick with half maris otter half pils. Pictures will be made of the brewing if I remember!
Cheers, it should be ok and I don't really mind doing it - i find it's quite nice once I find a rhythm and it soon gets done. To clean, I fill the sink with hot water and submerge 4 bottles at a time (2 in each hand), shake vigorously, empty and re-submerge 3 times. I usually do that the day before bottling day. On bottling day, I fill a humidifier spray with starsan solution, and squirt inside each bottle a few times before balancing each bottle, upside down, on a large plastic tray to drain. This has gone dramatically wrong in the past as you can imagine - bottle dominos - but I'm quite good at it now. I should really buy or make a better method though. Kegging is appealing, especially since there have been some very good Corney keg deals recently. Force-carbonating would be awesome but it would mean even more kit to store and I'm trying to keep things reasonably small-scale. As for your IPA, I know what I would do! That's the beauty of home brewing isn't it? It really doesn't matter what you do because you can tweak the recipe over subsequent brews. I hope your brewday goes well.
Almost 2 months on, I've just poured my first glass of this and it's not bad at all. In fact, it's so remarkably white-wine like in both taste and appearance, I'm shocked!
After a couple more glasses, the QC department has given it the thumbs up. This was just an experiment really but I shall be making it again. Edit: the pineapple juice isn't as dominant as I thought it would be. I thought this would be quite a pineappley wine, but instead the pineapple juice, once fermented out, has added a lovely background fruity note which doesn't taste pineappley at all. It's a very quaffable fruity table wine. Very nice indeed. I'd put it against any £5 (or maybe slightly more expensive) supermarket wine, any day. Not bad for about 50p a bottle.
After a week in the bottle I thought it was about time to crack open one of my all grain pale ales, just to see how carbonation was coming along of course. Checks like this are vital, as every brewer knows. It's not looking too bad at all, and tastes great too.
The mead is coming along nicely, will get a better picture later. Been clearibg for 4 weeks now going to do a hydrometer reading this weekend I think and see how it's coming Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
the tap is leaking on my youngs barrel - its the tap seals not where it screws into the barrel - any ideas?
so filtering- made some cider , was nice but was cloudy after a week in the bottle with sediment at the bottom? any tips to get it crystal clear? should I move to a barrel then move to bottle after?
If you want sediment free, perfectly clear cider you are going to want to have it settle as much as you can and then either Filter it to get out as much as you can, or you can try cold crashing it that should clear it up. I know some people who will primary for 1-2 months then secondary for 3 or so and thats usually giving clear results. I know when we make cider at home there's always a small amount of sediment in the bottles, but as long as your wary of this fact only you only waste a fraction of the cider and get practically no sediment in the final glass
so was thinking , a week or so primary in the bucket , then move to a barrel (once tap is sorted) , then finally once settled there after another week or 2 (or more?) bottle from primary and prime a little sugar?
That PA looks mighty refreshing Yadda... mighty refreshing... Cracked open a bottle of the elderflower wine... it's... not matured enough... "Kicks like a mule, makes you sleep like a baby, and you wake up feeling dog rough!" was how a friend described it... and I feel I have to agree.
Cheers, yes it is a very refreshing beer. There were quite a few fairly large late hop additions. The dominant flavour is cascade, with Chinook and willamette in support. Very easy to drink and should go down well in this nice weather. Your "head-wrecker" wine experience sounds familiar - I have suffered similarly after sampling a friend's wine. How much longer will you give it - another month or two?
