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Back brewing beer rather than plum and elderflower wines.... !

London Pride this time (one of my favorite beers) using Protz & Wheeler's recipe found on t'interweb.

3.65kg MO
290g flaked maize
130g crystal
25g black

Hops:

Target 19g (9% - 2006 crop) - 90min
Challenger 25g (5.6% - 2006 crop) - 90min
EKG 20g - 15min

(upped the bittering hops a bit as they are from 2006...)

Another first for me this one - using yeast recultured from a bottle of Fuller's 1845 and going to ferment at 19C in my fridge (controlled by the ATC800). Going to try and skim off after a couple of days to preserve the yeast for future use too.

Anyhow, it went very smoothly - finished in 5 1/2 hours flat and got about 22L at 1041 in the FV.

Pictures!:

Yeast reculturing from last week - it's been in the fridge for a week waiting for wort! Used spraymalt at 1020 to get it going.




Sparge:



Runoff:



Cooling the wort post boil:



Yeast starter (ran off a litre after 10 mins and cooled) - going potty!!



Fermentation fridge...



... and ubitquitous ATC800:

nice one!

Looks like you had a productive day of it

Nice pics and a you have a tidy looking fridge/800 set up CG

So that was two of us using re-cultured commercial yeast yesterday … more signs of wallet tightening amidst the big scary apocalyptic recession

Matt wrote:So that was two of us using re-cultured commercial yeast yesterday … more signs of wallet tightening amidst the big scary apocalyptic recession

Plus you have to drink a beer to get hold of the yeast from the bottle. The things we put ourselves through in the name of brewing...

I was a little concerned that I had underpitched somwhat, but I had a load of trub thrown up this morning (8 hours after pitching). Skimmed that off and re-roused - looked like it was starting to reform something on the surface so I assume all is well... will see how it goes.

Nice pics and a you have a tidy looking fridge/800 set up CG

Thanks - it's currently in the kitchen (yay!) since although it normally lives in the shed, we just replaced it since it was rotten and it's not wired up again yet.

Good luck with it. I was eyeing up one of those tall Beko fridges recently - mine is an under-counter small one at the moment and I'm itching for more fermentation space.

Matt wrote:Good luck with it. I was eyeing up one of those tall Beko fridges recently - mine is an under-counter small one at the moment and I'm itching for more fermentation space.

It was a cheap thing off ebay (£40 or so), but is perfect. Lots of shelving for conditioning bottles or storing beer at serving temperature.

When it turned warmer, I put all my bottles in there - when fermenting, the fridge space sits at about 17C. When not fermenting, I turn the temp down to about 10 or 12C, so anything conditioning has a nice temperature to sit at.

During the winter, I'll use shelves in the garage as per last year - then I can use the fridge for lagering/fermenting.

Looking good - fair bit of krausen. May skim some of that off tonight and keep it for another brew...

Graeme,
How did the fermentation go using the 1845 yeast

I'm not sure to be honest! It has an odd (clove-like) smell so I'm not sure I've I'd underpitched it or not (though the fermentation seemed fine - maybe a tad slow, but it looked healthy). Finished at 1008 (4.3%) so certainly no problems with being stuck. Most strange.

I've bottled it so I'll ignore it for a few weeks and see how it turns out when it clears out....

Right. This one has the potential to be the first poured away AG I've done. It's been banished to the garage for a very long conditioning proabably until the winter (or I get desperate for a beer) as it's stuffed full of acetaldehyde. Grrr.

Graeme,

Did this improve at all? How's it tasting?

Funnily enough my batch made using re-cultured SN 1698 yeast also had major acetaldehyde problems. Now it just tastes odd

Matt

Not really - it landed up becoming massively over carbonated (despite being OK for the first 3-4 weeks and having a stable gravity on bottling) and it too landed up with an odd flavour which was hard to describe. The initial flavours were a little clovey and then these went to give what tasted like the acetaldehyde. Then this changed after some weeks in the cold to give this odd flavour which remained - and I can't really describe it. It wasn't quite like cut apples - it was just "not quite right" - it certainly tasted better cold, and I had the odd funny head the next day after a few of them.

Occasionally, once you got rid of the massive gas which certainly didn;t help (!!) there was the odd hint of a Pride flavour, but certainly nothing like what it should be. I did wonder if it was infected (hence the gushing) but to be honest, the taste wasn't bad, just a little strange.

Still, I only have 1 bottle left as I have persevered... not one of my best though.