First extract brew! Seymour's Saltaire Blonde clone

[VANDEEN]

Courtesy of all the advice on here tonight is brew night

Doughed in in stages 5L / 500g at a time at 50 Deg C

Up to 68 deg and steeping grains in, not as much temperature drop as I'd thought & I hadn't budgeted for the retained heart in the element so it crept up to 70, by the time the 30 mins were over down to 66 again.

All wrapped up

Something to help the evening along

93 degrees now and approaching the boil gently on one element, more to come...

[VANDEEN]

Almost at the boil and looking like dirty water...

10 mins into the boil, first hops are cooking away merrily.

I hadn't figured on how much the bag would affect the movement of the wort, not that adding the malt would increase the level by about two litres so it's close but holding so far

20 mins in and feeling a little more confident, 10 mins till next hops, back in a bit......

[VANDEEN]

10 mins into second hop addition, meet her coming down stairs " what's that smell?" Walls are streaming with the 2 liters that have boiled off already so have had to jury rig some extraction

[VANDEEN]

Well finally flame out now, made 1 mistake, just as I turned off the elements I realised because the Irish moss wasn't on the "timeline" I'd forgotten it, so element back on, moss in and boiled for another 5 mins .

Now begins the 30 min steep before cooling starts, it's gonna be a late one...

18 mins with the immersion chiller saw me down to 20 degrees C

Looks like I brewed dirty brown ditch water...... (No offence to anybody who is dirty, brown, or called Ditch

Gave it a damn good whirlpool stir but there was far more gunky bits than I'd expected.

Taking inspiration from Jim I rigged up the "Sieve and string" method for draining down the kettle

I really wished I'd kept the grain back at this time or something similar to "filter through", the first few litres were murkier than I would have liked.

With 10L of the 21L I eventually collected in the FV I took a sample & got the following reading.

Intending to top up to 23L I was pretty happy with that.

Here came another mistake, suddenly realising that the syphon tube had gone brown instead of the nice clear it had started to get too, I panicked, grabbed the tap handle & turned it the wrong way Queue a stream of brown wort over the top of the Sieve up the wall & more in the fermenter.

Clean up completed I pitched the un-started dry yeast as per the instructions by sprinkling on the surface.

Then headed to bed.

[laithclark]

Do you have the recipe for that brew?

[VANDEEN]

Hi Laithclark,

This was based on Seymour's Saltaire Blonde Clone from this post:-

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=56797&p=605402&hili ... ct#p605402

& I asked for a bit of help with the recipe conversion from him & others here

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=73944&p=772028&hili ... de#p772028

& also help with my procedure here

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=73940

Hope they help, let us know how it turns out.

[VANDEEN]

Came home tonight to a steady stream of bubbles in the blow off at <> 1-2 per second at 20 Deg C

12 hours in it's not the thickest krausen I've seen but never used 04 yeast before

Seems to be quite a few bits hanging on the sides of the FV as well, again not something I've encountered so soon.

So far so good though

[Ren]

Let us know how it turns out?Love Saltaire blonde

[GeeThom]

Sometimes making mistakes helps to refine your process. You will still end up with a drinkable ale.

just as an aside, I was trying to work out what you used the washer and spin dryer for (first pic) and then you mentioned the boil looking like dirty water?

[VANDEEN]

Sometimes making mistakes helps to refine your process. You will still end up with a drinkable ale.

just as an aside, I was trying to work out what you used the washer and spin dryer for (first pic) and then you mentioned the boil looking like dirty water?

Yep they're to wash it clean again & to wash and dehydrate the yeast at the end Having ran a couple of washes through it the other night and the vibrations have loosened most of the stuff stuck to the sides of the FV & it's going like a train

Let us know how it turns out?Love Saltaire blonde

Will do, it's going head to head against a beer in a bag of the real thing on Christmas day to be judged by a couple of guys who drink it as their favourite tipple so 'll get a good idea how it turns out!

[VANDEEN]

Due to time constraints today finally saw me kegging this one at 16.5 days, quite a bit of trub left behind

Which meant a nice clean beer

And a FG of 1009

I'll need to do some maths as I topped up with 1.7 L to 23L after taking the OG but it should be pretty close to where it should be.

Went with 80g of priming sugar in about 250 mls of water and its now sitting in the keg.

The taste is gorgeous, even in its green state, certainly well ahead of the kits I've brewed previously, done of them even after they've had some bottle conditioning.

So far so good

1 week warm and then a couple of weeks in the garage & I'll let you know what the "judges" say come Christmas

[seymour]

Great work, VANDEEN, it's coming along beautifully.

[VANDEEN]

Well the day has finally arrived...

Back to back blind taste test, colour is bang on, but the mouthfeel and hop taste is quite different, had I brought some hops with me I would probably make up a hop tea and add it to get it closer to the original.

All in all I'm very pleased with it as a beer in it's own right but it would still need a bit off tweaking for me to make it the same as the original. The label on the box from the brewery states Chech and German hops now so I'm not sure if they've changed the recipe from just using Saaz?

Thanks to everyone for your help, and at the rate it's going down nobody else has a problem with it either

Cheers & Merry Christmas to all