First extract brew - Martin's Special Bitter!
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 5:44 pm
I've been lurking on this site for a while, and have been wanting to try home brewing again for as long - last experience of it was one odd tasting kit from Boots while i was at Uni.
So i got prepared - Charles Papazian's book for Xmas, a 15 litre stock pot from eBay and a load of supplies from Hop & Grape (fermenter, utensils, ingredients). I decided to start simply with a Special Bitter receipe from a table in the homebreing book - 3kg of Amber malt extract and 100g of Roasted Barley for a bit of colour. I also decided to use Worcester Goldings hops - i've not been exposed to hops in person before, so don't really have a handle on how they differ. As our water round here is amazingly hard, i decided to use mineral water as brewing liquor (Tesco Ashbeck) with a spoonful of gypsum.
Brew day was last sunday. Put two 2 litre bottles of mineral water in the freezer for later and started my water boiling. I put the roasted barley in a grain bag and left it in the water from room temp up until boiling. I then took it out and added the extract - forgot to stir as I put it in so it burnt a little on the bottom. Doesn't seem to have affected it too much. Once boiling again added the first batch of hops, then second batch with 15 minutes left and so Irish Moss at 10 minutes left.
I didn't get a visible hot-break, however! The stock pot was rather full, so i was hesitant at having it boil too vigorously; the hob couldn't get it much hotter, anyway. I could see some sediment in the boiling liquid, so i assume the hot-break happened, but not so quick that it foamed over. It also seemed like there was jelly-like stuff stuck on the nylon bags the hops were in - not sure if this was coagulated protein or irish moss....
Next step - put the two 2 litre bottles of chilled water in the fermenter and slowly seived the boiled wort in too. Then topped up with room temp mineral water. This brought the wort temp down to about 40 degrees C. Took ages to cool down to below 30 degrees for yeast pitching, so had to do it just before bed. Also measured the gravity to 1.042. Tasted the sample - very sweet as you'd expect and very hoppy.
Fermentation had started by morning, and was going very well by evening. Beersmith suggests it'll be ready for bottling today so i took another sample; gravity is now 1.023, so some time to go yet. Our kitchen is quite cool (14 to 16 degree), so i assume this is the reason. Tried another sample - still sweet, with the hoppiness mellowed somewhat to a nice bitterness. Beer sample was cloudy, which was my first clue that it hadn't finished yet.
When it comes to bottling though i have a question. I'll have to bottle straight from the fermenter (handy tap on the bottom), so not sure what to do about priming sugars? I have some spray malt to use for this, but haven't got an accurate way of dosing each bottle. I was thinking of boiling up a solution and introducing that to the wort, giving it a while to mix in before bottling as normal. Any thoughts?
I'll add more as it happens. If this goes well i'm tempted to brew a stout next - i'm partial to Guinness but have had some other, even nicer, stouts from smaller breweries recently...
So i got prepared - Charles Papazian's book for Xmas, a 15 litre stock pot from eBay and a load of supplies from Hop & Grape (fermenter, utensils, ingredients). I decided to start simply with a Special Bitter receipe from a table in the homebreing book - 3kg of Amber malt extract and 100g of Roasted Barley for a bit of colour. I also decided to use Worcester Goldings hops - i've not been exposed to hops in person before, so don't really have a handle on how they differ. As our water round here is amazingly hard, i decided to use mineral water as brewing liquor (Tesco Ashbeck) with a spoonful of gypsum.
Brew day was last sunday. Put two 2 litre bottles of mineral water in the freezer for later and started my water boiling. I put the roasted barley in a grain bag and left it in the water from room temp up until boiling. I then took it out and added the extract - forgot to stir as I put it in so it burnt a little on the bottom. Doesn't seem to have affected it too much. Once boiling again added the first batch of hops, then second batch with 15 minutes left and so Irish Moss at 10 minutes left.
I didn't get a visible hot-break, however! The stock pot was rather full, so i was hesitant at having it boil too vigorously; the hob couldn't get it much hotter, anyway. I could see some sediment in the boiling liquid, so i assume the hot-break happened, but not so quick that it foamed over. It also seemed like there was jelly-like stuff stuck on the nylon bags the hops were in - not sure if this was coagulated protein or irish moss....
Next step - put the two 2 litre bottles of chilled water in the fermenter and slowly seived the boiled wort in too. Then topped up with room temp mineral water. This brought the wort temp down to about 40 degrees C. Took ages to cool down to below 30 degrees for yeast pitching, so had to do it just before bed. Also measured the gravity to 1.042. Tasted the sample - very sweet as you'd expect and very hoppy.
Fermentation had started by morning, and was going very well by evening. Beersmith suggests it'll be ready for bottling today so i took another sample; gravity is now 1.023, so some time to go yet. Our kitchen is quite cool (14 to 16 degree), so i assume this is the reason. Tried another sample - still sweet, with the hoppiness mellowed somewhat to a nice bitterness. Beer sample was cloudy, which was my first clue that it hadn't finished yet.
When it comes to bottling though i have a question. I'll have to bottle straight from the fermenter (handy tap on the bottom), so not sure what to do about priming sugars? I have some spray malt to use for this, but haven't got an accurate way of dosing each bottle. I was thinking of boiling up a solution and introducing that to the wort, giving it a while to mix in before bottling as normal. Any thoughts?
I'll add more as it happens. If this goes well i'm tempted to brew a stout next - i'm partial to Guinness but have had some other, even nicer, stouts from smaller breweries recently...
