Jim's Beer Kit

So, it is Saturday and no measured movement. I made a sacrifice of a nip bottle of my dark, strong.complex 8.5% Winter Ale with yeast rescued from a bottle of Proper Job. Poured carefully into a suitable receptacle the yeasty dregs were diluted with boiled brewing water left over from this brew. The...

It actually did a good fist of the first 2/3 of the ferment if rather quickly. I actually want a neutral yeast on this one since it's a first attempt at a recipe using a good stout recipe using pale ale malt and roasted barley, using the general rules of proportions for the rest and trying to get th...

Next one planned is a big Imperial Stout for long maturation, traditional recipe then a Harviestoun Schiehalion Clone Pilsner.

This ones an oatmeal stout recipe, OG 1.053 Safale F2 yeast. The yeast went woosh! it was over in less than 24hrs, head gone. It was 1.026 by then. FG should be about 1.015. I added more yeast nutrient, it woke up and is now 1.022 and absolutely quiet and dead. The harsh hops have gone, subsumed by ...

Except I have used this yeast to very good effect in my very first full grain mash. A Wadworth 6X clone, no sugar. My other brews and my wines which include boiled tap water all ferment to dryness very effectively. I use the simple scheme in Dave Line's book for water treatment of soft waters. I boi...

It all ground to a halt, no OG movement since original post. No more burping. So I bought a sachet of Beoir a yeast for Scottish and Irish brews, hydrated, it added it and regularly burps again. It might just be that a yeast from the purists (no slur) at Shepherd Neame might not have been the best c...

I haven't done a pH of the boiled wort but my mash is usually at pH4, a benefit of soft acid water to start with here in Dundee. Add in hop acids and it may even be lower. No point testing it now with all the dissolved CO2 of course. As I said I got good head, not very thick but that varies with the...

Whoops, last 15min there. It went in with the aroma hops.

I only introduced more air in the last dropping since it was the only thing I could think of doing to try and get things moving again. The first one where the head did not form again was done to exclude as much air as possible as is good practice. The sucrose point is a good one which is of course w...

FG should be around 1.007 predicted start was 1.041 so I slightly overshot that. But at 1.022 now it still has a way to go.

It's the Harviestoun recipe from Wheeler & Protz's book.

I drop all my beers and this is the first time I have not had a new head form afterwards. Just islands of bubbles hence having to use a tight lid with airlock. It would appear to indicate a lower level of ferment not sufficient to establish that new head. It was 15litres and included 450g of dark br...

I did it the second time to get it off the accumulating trub. There was a thick layer on the bottom of the bucket.

Syphoned from one container to a new one. Likely done by gravity in a brewery hence dropped. Leaves the old dirty head and the trub behind.

Scottish Heavy, Simpson's golden promise pale malt, 50/50 dark crystal/carared, dark brown sugar. Temperature adjusted post boil OG 1.043. Yeast rescued from a bottle of Shepherd Neame 1698, I have done this before to excellent effect. Initial ferment was good, good head. I dropped it after 2 days 1...

Yes, of course. I've done a lot of brewing, extract and partial mash into bottles. This is just my first full grain and into a barrel. I have an idea that it was the yeast nutrient in with the sugar wich enabled that to work. I didn't get the best extraction, dry mash. So maybe it was short on nutri...