Brakspear Special Extract

[PureGuiness]

I've only got a small stock pot so I've altered my extract brew process slightly with a smaller boil and adding DME and sugars after an hour.

This is using the recipe from the GW book.

Sugar and DME prepared and measured.



Hops and Speciality grains measured and prepared.



Getting water up to strike temperature for the grain steeping.



Disolving the DME and sugars.



Steeping the grains.



Rinse the grains.


Boil the hops in the wort.


after this I added the sugar and DME mix after 1hr boil, added Irish moss with 10 mins to end of 90min boil.

At the end of the boil, wait 10 mins for temperature to drop to 80oC before adding post boil hops for 20 mins.

Strain the wort into the FV & top up with water.



Test OG (1045 so spot on)



Aerate the wort and pitch the rehydrated wort.


Now for the waiting game!


Looking forward to this one. It smells great and fermentation has started well.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Your process looks similar to mine. How have you adjusted the hop schedule to allow for the lower SG (and correspondingly higher hop utilisation) during the early part of the boil?

[PureGuiness]

This is my first real attempt using this process so I've not really thought of changing the hops schedule at this stage. I thought that the increased concentration at 60 mins when I add the extract and sugars might offset the increased utilisation at the start of the boil. I'll try trial and error for the next one unless you have any good advice on this?

I'm probably only going to do 1 more extract brew like this before I move onto AG - that's the intention anyway

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Back in old days I used to brew using Ken Shales's method which in today's terms would equate to about 1.5KG LME in 7 litres water, crystal malt etc, 85(!)g hops, 30 minute boil, add extra fermentables, cool, dilute to final volume etc. Hops must have been a lot cheaper in real terms in those days as that's a pretty poor hop utilisation. Since returning to brewing I've only just done the one extract brew (still in FV) and that's got a very simple hop schedule of 39g Fuggles at start of boil. Playing around with Beer Engine showed me that with no sugars or malt extract in the boil I could drop the boil time to 35 minutes for my target EBU. It should work out OK.

[PureGuiness]

After 5 days in the FV I took the first sample. It's down to 1014 and dropping. I tasted the contents of the sample jar and it's pretty good. The bitterness is nearly spot on - although maybe there could have been a little more.

My start of boil hops were about 50g of Challengers (The exact amount given in the recipe). I'm fairly happy with the result so far so I think I'll stick with my procedure for the next one.

[PureGuiness]

FG is 1012. Normally I would leave it longer in the FV but I'm keen to get this one conditioned a bit before I have visitors next month

I sampled from the trial jar and it tastes superb! Much better and fresher than kits. The dry hopping in the FV has given it a really nice finish and it smells and tastes better than I had hoped.



So now into Secondary fermentation



Not the best of labels but it will do.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Ooo that looks nice