This is a beer I brewed back in late October. It's a Christmas Stout which is 6.5% and pretty hearty!
In the original version of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas', originally called 'A Visit From St. Nicholas', the last two reindeer are not Donner & Blitzen, but Dunder & Blixem.
Blixem's Revenge
Brunken Dastard Brewery
Style: Christmas Stout
ABV: 6.5%
Grain Bill:(Cant remember right now - will fill it in when I get home and check my ipad)
Hops:
50g of EKGs @60 mins
10g of EKGs @15 mins
1tsp irish moss (usually use protofloc but had none in stock)
Yeast: Nottingham
This was my second test batch on the new Electric HERMS brewery. It was a success apart from a stuck mash, which was soon sorted.
Ok, now pics!
This is the brewery - it's an eHERMS system I built from scratch, had to learn to weld and stuff it was a real learning experience and I'm really happy to finally be brewing on it!
I use a brewing app called iBrewMaster on the ipad for recipe storage, batch organisation, scheduling, etc. The one thing it doesn't have is stock control which is a pain.
Here's the grain bill
Mashing in
Recirculating through the HERMS coil
Hit the mash temp pretty much perfectly
View of the recirculating mash - I should really make some kind of return manifold, but that can wait until the spring (I have no workshop so everything I've built has been made in the back garden!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ZqVWbz0RA
Recirculating video
I only have one pump at the moment, so I have to sparge by adding the sparge water, recirculating, then lautering it all in one go.
I bring it all up to 75c mash out temp, and then recirculate and pump to boil kettle.
Spent Grain
Once the wort is over the elements by 2" I turn both of them on. They're 1275 watt elements, so the boil gets started pretty quickly. I have to turn off one element and stir as soon as it starts to boil or I get a huge boil over.
60 min hops ready - 50g of EKGs
15 min hops ready - 10g of EKGs with 1tsp of Irish Moss to help coagulate the proteins and get a clearer beer.
Hops in!
Camera and phone ran out of battery here
I chilled with a cfc which took bloody ages - next time I'll pump it through but I'm not sure how clean that would be!
I left it to ferment and came back the next day to find that the yeasties had got exited and made a right mess!
Bottled 2 weeks later, and then left it in storage for a month or so.
Labels on. These should make good christmas pressies!
A month later and it started snowing - so I cracked open a pint and gave it a go. It's great! The only problem was that I did my refractometer calculations wrong and ended up bottling at 1.020SG with half a tsp of sugar in each bottle, which made it a little more carbonated than I had intended. The beer has a deep coffee taste with bitter chocolate and a good background hoppiness to balance the maltiness. It's surprisingly easy to drink considering the alcohol content, and one pint does get you a little squiffy
Maybe I should send a couple of bottles out for you guys to critique... bottle swap anyone?
