Home Brew Forum

Wow,

What a long day

It started with me going to see a friend of a friend who owns a microbrewery http://www.bradfieldbrewery.com/ to pickup some empty bottles, also picked up a couple of full ones while I was there. Would have been rude not to

So the brewing began, 3:30pm.

5kg Pale
150g crystal

30g Northdown 90mins
15g Northdown 15mins

Rehydrated S04 yeast

Had a few issues along the way mash temp ended up being too low about 62/3 degrees and also only finished with 4 gallons instead of 5!

SG is 1060 so will be a pretty strong beer. Not sure what to expect of it!

Oh well guess i'll know in 5 weeks time!

Learnt a little with my first AG brew and will probably start another on saturday. Lots of bottles and kegs to fill ready for what I hope will be a good summer.

PS. Sorry for the lack of pics but I was a little rushed.

So you finally got the kit together and working.

Bring a couple of bottles over when its ready - we could blow the froth off a few.

softlad wrote:So you finally got the kit together and working.

Bring a couple of bottles over when its ready - we could blow the froth off a few.

Will do mate.

Need a slight modification of my mash tun but other than that it all worked as expected.

I must have done something right as its started fermenting overnight. Fingers crossed

Here it is 20 hours on fermenting nicely.

I've got pretty much the same beer fermenting away right now!

Took a reading of this last night and its down to about 1020 in 4 days which isn't bad.

Only problem is its so cloudy! I can see so many little specks of something floting around in it i'm a little worried

Not sure if any break material came through after boiling. The sample tasted ok though

You certain those "little specks" are not the yeasties doing their dance ??

Alton_Bee wrote:You certain those "little specks" are not the yeasties doing their dance ??

Quite possibly as i've never taken a sample before. I used to just dip my hydrometer in the wort.

Didn't expect to see so much floating in the sample though.

We'll have to wait and see.

Bottled this tonight. It had got down to 1012 in 7 days.

Ended up with 29 bottles.

Roll on n5 weeks time!

mdex wrote:Bottled this tonight. It had got down to 1012 in 7 days.

Ended up with 29 bottles.

Roll on n5 weeks time!

Me thinks in 5 weeks time there wont be 29 bottle left ,,,

i sold a few packs of Northdowns to the fellas on here, I got hold of 10Kg of them when i bought my Ag gear,,, hindsight is a funny thing,,, all gone now,, wish i still had a few left,, as a newbie AG brewer the nicest beer i have done was with Northdowns,, Oh well,, Paul sells em at BB

mctoon wrote:

mdex wrote:Bottled this tonight. It had got down to 1012 in 7 days.

Ended up with 29 bottles.

Roll on n5 weeks time!

Me thinks in 5 weeks time there wont be 29 bottle left ,,,

i sold a few packs of Northdowns to the fellas on here, I got hold of 10Kg of them when i bought my Ag gear,,, hindsight is a funny thing,,, all gone now,, wish i still had a few left,, as a newbie AG brewer the nicest beer i have done was with Northdowns,, Oh well,, Paul sells em at BB

I reckon I can manage it. I'm not drinking for 3 weeks until I go away, then a week away. Only have 1 week to wait when I get back. Might have to try one for quality control purposes obviously! The fact that I don't currently have anything to drink helps too.

I also bought mine from www.Barleybottom.com. When I first tried softlads version of Northdown Wonder I made my mind up that it would be my first brew.