Home Brew Forum

Milling the grains. First run went back in as it was too coarse:


Adding the grain to the mash tun:


Stirring the grain into the water to get rid of the dry pockets:


Checking the temperature ready to begin the mash:


Returning the first runnings:


Into the Boiler:


Into the boiler - close-up:


Checking the Gravity:


Ticking off the brew day instructions:


Adding the bittering hops:


Switching on the home made immersion chiller:


recycling the chiller water:


Into the FV:


Aerating the wort:


Adding the starter yeast:


Adding a glug of schnapps to the air lock:


And here's one I prepared earlier:

Show off!

Good skills there... whats with the schnaps?

I was going to ask that too.. so.. whats with the schnapps?

no-one ever told me what to shove in the airlock, so I use schnapps (well it's 7 euro's a litre here and it's sterile at least).

especially when I was filling it with the the water from the chiller

Looks like you had fun
What was your recipe?

That's some set of instructions What software do you use?

I use excel.

For the ABV, I use the calculator I posted on the forum already:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9794 or find it here:

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/889761/ABVCalculator.xls

For the grain/hops calculations I use this tool from hopandgrain.com:

http://www.hopandgrain.com/formulator.aspx

and here is my excel brew day instructions file. This is an own recipe summer ale that I haven't tried before - so no idea how it will turn out:

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/889761/Cr ... 090726.xls

Some nice cheesey grins there. What took you out to Austria?

in hindsight, I think I overdid the piccies of me took the pics straight off facebook!

Austria? Well it has real weather - bloody hot in summer and good snow in winter - so you can always do stuff! It's a truly amazing part of the world. I live in the south, so we get Italian weather and the occasional thunderstorm the likes I've never witnessed before. I love walking and I like the friendly people and the lifestyle here. It's also not Spain - so we are off the tourist route! Moving to Austria got me into homebrew because I missed my real ales - even though they have excellent lager/pilsner beers here.

Looks beautiful. Hope the beer turns out to be a cracker.

The beer has turned out to be an absolute cracker.

It's the first time I secondary fermented and dry hopped (for a week only in the secondary), before removing the hops and letting the beer condition in the secondary before bottling.

It's still a little early, but I am tasting the first one as I type.

The taste, the aroma, everything is perfect for a beautiful summers day. Lovely refreshing, fruity and really really tasty.

The best beer I've done up to now - and it's my own recipe! I feel like shouting from the roof-tops!!!!

towser wrote:The best beer I've done up to now - and it's my own recipe! I feel like shouting from the roof-tops!!!!

In Austria, shouldn't that be yodelling from the mountain tops? Or is that just Switzerland....