Home Brew Forum

Been a long time since I made a contribution on Jim's so I thought I'd share my brewnight. After some good input from members about my proposed recipe I have gone with the version from Graham Wheelers new book with a few enforced modifications. I won't put the recipe up here to respect Graham's "copyright" but suffice to say I was 50g short on the MO as I ran out (note to self - order a sack from Paul tonight before he goes on holiday)! Shouldn't make a great deal of difference!!!

I also have Barley Bottom Goldings which were 4.6% instead of 5.7% mentioned in the book so I recalculated the hops on that basis. When I plugged the numbers into Beersmith I got IBU's a bit higher than in Graham's book (32 instead of 28) but I just went with it.

I used the amount of black patent malt mentioned in the recipe but Beersmith predicts only EB 17.7 whereas the recipe says it will be 27! Not sure what's going on there but I will see. Maybe I have made an error in Beersmith but no big deal.

I'll attempt to add some photos here as we go along.

Here's the grain bill weighed and ready to go........


Now the mash is underway.........


And the temperature in the MT is at 65C ................TRUST ME ON THAT!


Hops are weighed and ready. Bittering on left and aroma + protofloc tab' on the right



More to follow.....................

Its a great recipe brewed it earlier this year!!

Glad to know someone else out there in beer land is brewing tonight!

Im currently just about to start the boil on this little beauty

Dark Dreams 5.7%

5.1kgs of Pale Malt
500grms of Crystal Malt
250grms Torrified Wheat
100grms Chocolate Malt

20grms Northdown for 90mins
40grms Challenger for 15mins
10grms Northdown for 15mins
20grms Styrian Goldings 5mins

Zatoichi wrote:Its a great recipe brewed it earlier this year!!

Oh goooood...........hope mine turns out well then! Boiling nicely now, gonna grab some dinner and try to get more pics online. Who says blokes can't multitask

OK, here are some more shots - hot from the brewery!

First addition of sparge water..............


First runnings from the Daabs false bottom MT look quite nice...........


1st sparge into the boiler............


First runnings from sparge 2 a lot lighter in colour of course.............


At the boil 31.8 litres collected, just over target and gravity is 1032 a fraction above the 1031 target so all looking good so far.............


Nice rolling boil and bittering hops in at 8.15pm..............

And the final shots from last nights brewnight....................

Running the wort from the boiler into the FV and trying to get as much air in as possible. Despite doing it this way I sometimes have to give the FV a good stir after 24 hours to really get things going. Am I just impatient or do other brewers have the same problem? I guess you just can't have too much air at this stage.



Hops and trub.............actually mostly hops - wonder if this one is going to clear well?



Finally into the FV and my beer is allowed to come into the house (thank you SWMBO) - just under 23 litres and bang on 1038 so Graham's recipe and predicted efficiency of 75% has worked very nicely.



I'll try and update this post as we go through the next few weeks so that we will also see how the TTBB develops and finally ends up in a pint glass!

God Im sad, I Never get bored of ogling these pictures!

Did very similar to this exactly two weeks ago. Bit of a cockup on the mash temp front, rather low at 63-64C, but I ended up with 25L at 1041. Pitched a Nottingham starter. It went into a cornie and a mini keg last night looking very clear having rested for the last week at about 12C (in the garage) after racking off and a bit of finings.
It tastes bloody wonderful if completely flat!!

You did all the right things, so yours should be even better!!

befuggled wrote:You did all the right things, so yours should be even better!!

Thanks! I hope you are right - I've ever done an all EKG brew before so I am looking forward to getting an idea of how this hop performs on its own.

farmhousekeg wrote:And the final shots from last nights brewnight....................

Running the wort from the boiler into the FV and trying to get as much air in as possible. Despite doing it this way I sometimes have to give the FV a good stir after 24 hours to really get things going. Am I just impatient or do other brewers have the same problem? I guess you just can't have too much air at this stage.

Running the wort through a sieve into the FV will put more air into it, which may help.

Looks like you had a pretty good one all said and done. Keep is in the loop with this one!

Brewed this as well using the Timmy Taylors yeast, just in warm conditioning at the moment so a few weeks to go before supping. Brewed a TTL as well a few weeks back and that is ready for supping this weekend

looks like you had fun

The story of the TTBB continues.............

Here we are after 36 hours and the S-04 is hard at work and producing wonderful aromas. If it tastes as good as it smells, its gonna be a beauty.

Looking really good

But somehow the name seems "out of character"