Home Brew Forum

I was meant to be in Germany today, but my flight got cancelled last night and I couldn't get another one, so I took the opportunity to stay at home and brew instead.

I'm going for a fairly Guinnessy type of Stout, based on the 70/20/10 recipe from Garth, with a couple of mods due to neccesity.

Aiming for 21l at 1048 (although I don't know what I'll get as I cocked up and calculated the water for a 21l brew length, but left the grain for 23l)

I also made a mistake on the water treatment. Normally, I add 30ml of CRS to 50l of water to end up at 20mg/l CaCo3 equiv. So I did the same this morning without thinking about it. The when I went to use Graham's water calculator to work out the dry salts I realised that as the Dublin water is so hard, I should use less CRS to try and match it. The calculator agrees - I should have used 13.5ml of CRS instead of 30 if I wanted to use the "Stout" water profile.

Oh well...I just set it to "General Purpose" and went with that instead....I guess it'll be a bit "softer" than I was planning.

Grain Bill
3.75Kg Pale 68.2%
1.0Kg Flaked Barley 18.2%
0.5Kg Roast Barley 9.1%
0.25Kg Crystal 4.5%

This isn't quite the 70/20/10 recipe, but it does mean that I can use whole 0.5kg bags of Flaked and Roast barley (and I prefer round numbers). I added the crystal just to make up the numbers.

Hops
Perle 6.9%AA 35g 24.9 IBU First Wort
Perle 6.9%AA 46g 15.4 IBU 15 Minutes

OK - so Perle isn't a traditional Stout hop, but I had an open bag to use up and I think it will go quite nicely in this. I was going to bung it all in at the beginning, but I've decided to do a 15min addition to try and give it a little Perle flavour.

Yeast will be a 4l starter of Wyeast Scottish Ale (I was originally going to do an 8G batch of this, but backed it off a bit) and I'll fement it at 18C as it says it can get quite estery if it's fermented high.

I plan to do an Imperial Stout from the yeast cake of this one

Anyway. I'm halfway through the boil now. I'll post the pics once it's done.

It smells nice in my garage right now!

hope it's going well mate, what a nice day when you're supposed to be a work but off brewing, ah what a life

btw I was under the impression that Dublin water was semi soft, but not hard?

adm, are you constantly pissed? You always seem to be brewing!:lol:

Garth wrote:hope it's going well mate, what a nice day when you're supposed to be a work but off brewing, ah what a life

btw I was under the impression that Dublin water was semi soft, but not hard?

Almost done now. Just waiting for the trub to settle out before running off to FV.

As for the Dublin water, you're probably right. (Googles...) In fact you ARE right 'cos I've just found a Dublin water report (post pinched from an Irish site):

Dublin Water treatment for all grain homebrew
There was some talk about water treatment on another thread and people were wondering if the Dublin Water listed as a reference in Palmers How to Brew, is accurate for the tap water supplied in Dublin.

I can tell you that it is not. The reference water in How to Brew is Dublin water as it was, when Guinness were taking their brewing water straight from the Liffey, outside St. James's Gate.

The water coming out of your tap is different and using the Dublin water information from How to Brew will lead to errors if you try to make water adjustments. My water, in Dublin 7, for example, comes from the Liffey Works, Ballymore Eustace.

I got a water report from Dublin city council's central lab last year and it shows a much softer water profile, than the Dublin water shown in How to Brew, with a Total Hardness (mg CaCO3/l) of 55, almost perfect for pale ales.

The report is about a year and a half old, but I doubt the water hardness has changed much in that time. I would try to get a new one, to see if it has changed, but it took me about two weeks of emailing and phone calls to get this one and I really don't want to go through that again.

Please note that this is the water in my area. I have no idea if the water in the rest of the city is the same, but I am under the impression that it probably is.

Also note that the water report is only relevant if you are mashing grain. If you are brewing an extract beer, you don't need to worry about it.

Here it is, for anyone who is interested:


Liffey Works
Ballymore Eustace

08.03.2005
Water Quality - Guide Values


Volume Produced (m3/day)............................. 250 000

Colour (Hazen)................................................ < 10
Turbidity (NTU).............................................. < 1
pH................................................................... 7.5 - 8.5
Conductivity (µS/cm)....................................... 140 - 150
Chloride (mg/l)................................................ < 25
Sulphate (mg/l)................................................ < 35
Total Dissolved Solids (mg/l)........................... 95
Total Residual Chlorine (mg/l)......................... 0.05 - 0.10
Nitrate (mg N/l)............................................... < 1.0
Nitrite (mg N/l)................................................ < 0.01
Ammonia (mg N/l)........................................... < 0.02
Phosphate (mg P/l)........................................... < 0.02
Aluminium (mg/l)............................................. < 0.1
Iron (mg/l)....................................................... < 0.05
Fluoride (mg/l)................................................. 0.8 - 1.0

Total Coliforms (MPN/100ml).......................... <1
E.coli (MPN/100ml)........................ <1
Heterotrophic Plate Count 22°C (CFU/ml)....... < 20
Heterotrophic Plate Count 37°C (CFU/ml)....... < 20

Odour.............................................................. None
Taste................................................................ None

Magnesium (mg/L)........................................ 1.5
Calcium (mg/L)............................................. 18 - 20
Total Alkalinity (mg CaCO3/l)......................... 28
Calcium Hardness (mg CaCO3/l)..................... 45 - 50
Total Hardness (mg CaCO3/l).......................... 55

Saturation pH.................................................. 8.7 to 9.2
Langelier.......................................................... -2.0 to -1.5
Ryznar............................................................. 10.2 to 11.2

Borodave wrote:adm, are you constantly pissed? You always seem to be brewing!:lol:

I try hard Dave!

The problem is, I keep buying more cornies (8 now), and there's nothing more soul destroying than empty cornies sitting there, looking at you with their big sad eyes.

I'm only doing it as a humanitarian gesture.

That looks a nice recipe i hope it turns out well.

Whats i could i substitue the Perle hops with?

I think i have EKG, Nothdown, Styrian, Challanger or Fuggles.

Ive done a nice Porter with Northdown then EKG at the end so would that work with this recipe?

adm wrote:there's nothing more soul destroying than empty cornies sitting there, looking at you with their big sad eyes.

too true

Robdog wrote:Ive done a nice Porter with Northdown then EKG at the end so would that work with this recipe?

I think that would work quite well, I've used Northdown many times in stout.

Right - all done and dusted. It went as smooth as silk today! Let's hope the beer comes out similarly.

I started this beer at 1230, and even with a 90 min boil and 90 min mash, I could have been finished by 5pm (although I let the wort sit for an hour after cooling while I was on the phone), so this could have been my quickest brewday so far.

Here's the porn:


The Grain Bill


Mashing in


66.8C at start of mash, 66.2C after 90 minutes


Mash pH 5.2 or thereabouts. Difficult to tell with a black wort!


The 3 tier system makes for super easy brewing. I really must get my pump and HERMS/RIMS heat exchanger sorted out though.


Today's hops. Lovely fragrant Perle


Mmmm......


First runnings. Tastes good....


Grain after sparging


Coming to the boil any minute now.


Yeast from a 4l starter of Wyeast Scottish Ale


Flying starter - 1l of wort added to the yeast. It's kicking off already.


OG 1048 at 16.6C


Pitched, added yeast vit and aerated


And finally....put to bed. I'll monitor this over the next few hours as I suspect i may be better off with a blow off tube instead of an airlock

I'm looking forward to this one to see how my 70/30 gas bottle works on a stout. Hopefully thick, creamy and better than Guinness!

Although.....I'll need to get another stout on the go in the next couple of weeks to make sure that I've got backup. If this comes out good I'm going to pig the lot in a short space of time.

Nice one Adm, nice piccies, must get myself sorted with a proper three tier setup and a pump to save on wear and tear on the back.

I think i may have a crack at this when my grain comes monday or tuesday . Il use northdown and goldings at 15 mins as it seemed to work well for my Gail Porter.

Talk of the thick creamy better than guinness type drink has got me itching to try my 70/30 gas.

Lokks like a resounding sucess there adm, nice one!

The airlock is now purring like a salmon fed cat!

We'll see how this goes, but if it's done by the middle of next week, I'll probably wash the yeast, do another stout with it and THEN do an Imperial stout off the same yeast. I've realised that liquid yeast is even more expensive than I thought. It was a fiver for the yeast, plus i've used about £2.50 worth of spraymalt in the starter.

The downside is that if I don't like the yeast I'll have three batches of stout that I don't want to drink.

Oh well. How bad could it possibly be ?



If i was to wash the yeast from this fermentation and then split it (and maybe make some slants), would there be any issue with it ? Or is it better to just do this with a fresh pack of yeast before it's been used to make a batch of beer?

adm wrote:The airlock is now purring like a salmon fed cat!

We'll see how this goes, but if it's done by the middle of next week, I'll probably wash the yeast, do another stout with it and THEN do an Imperial stout off the same yeast. I've realised that liquid yeast is even more expensive than I thought. It was a fiver for the yeast, plus i've used about £2.50 worth of spraymalt in the starter.

The downside is that if I don't like the yeast I'll have three batches of stout that I don't want to drink.

Oh well. How bad could it possibly be ?



If i was to wash the yeast from this fermentation and then split it (and maybe make some slants), would there be any issue with it ? Or is it better to just do this with a fresh pack of yeast before it's been used to make a batch of beer?

If you dont want to drink it mate you can always send it my way.

Think ill have a go at this tomrrow and maybe add 250g torrified wheat, especially as ive over ordered lots of grain and think ive got about 5kg of this. Thats teaches me to place an order when ive had a few lol.

This is my 4th AG so im still fairly new to subsituting hops but as stated above ive used Northdown and Goldings before in a porter and that was great and as its what ive got now thought id use them again.

So the recipe states

Hops
Perle 6.9%AA 35g 24.9 IBU First Wort
Perle 6.9%AA 46g 15.4 IBU 15 Minutes

Ive worked out on the hop calculator that i shous use 29g northdown 8% first wort and 40g Northdown at 15 mins.

Im not sure though whether northdown on there own are ok or if i should replace the 15 mins hops with goldings or whether to use all northdown and just add 10g goldings or something at flame out?

Any suggestions as i dont want my first proper stout to turn out rank?

Cheers guys.

That looks like it's going to be a stonking beer. Are you going to bottle any of it?