Home Brew Forum

Haven't brewed in a while, so thought as it was a bright day and i'm on leave, I'd take my opportunity! First brew of 2013

Attempted a Spitfire clone, based on the one on here somewhere that originally came from the Clone Brews book.

BIAB using a Buffalo 30ltr and my new BIAB bag, courtesy of Eoinmag's wife @ CustomBIAB.

3110g Crisp Pale Malt
200g Crystal (60) Malt
180g Biscuit Malt
100g Amber Malt
100g Torrified Wheat
80g Wheat Malt

23g Target (10.2AA, First Wort)
30g EKG (5.1AA, Cube hop)
12g First Gold (8.1AA, Cube hop)
Approx. 45g EKG (Dry Hop, exact amount to be determined)

Total Water - 26.25ltrs

Target OG 1.046, 46 IBU

Mashed in @ 66C for 60mins. Lost less than 2C throughout.
Boiled for 60mins.
Hops added to cube, then wort run off after approx. 20mins.

Was left with about 20ltrs post boil (before run off) @ 1.048, which is over a litre more wort than predicted and with an extra 0.002 on the SG.
Not bad, ay? That's 83.3% efficiency for my setup!

I no chill, so I'm trying cube hopping for the first time today. Gonna leave the cube outside so it'll cool relatively quickly, and hopefully it'll leave me with good aroma and flavour without extracting too much additional bitterness.
Plan is to harvest some yeast from a couple of bottles of 1698, then pitch in a few days time. The last Spitfire I tried was the real ale almanac version, and I thought it was a little lacking. This could've been due to a few things; it was my second brew (miniBIAB); I used Nottingham; I no chilled, but went by the recipe (scaled down) resulting in too much bitterness/not enough aroma/flavour...
Whichever, I'm hoping this'll turn out better. And as there are shed loads of hops in there, it should taste lovely

It sure does sound lovely. Good luck!

The last time I brewed a Spitfire clone I used white labs irish ale yeast, certainly gave it another dimension taste and mouthfeel wise.

I've heard that yeast is a good choice for SN style beers. May try that one next up, or if this bottle culturing thing doesn't work out.

Started this up a minute ago, poured slurry from two bottles of 1698 into approx. 100mls of 1.030 wort, and popped it onto the stirplate.
Plan to let this ferment out, step up to 500ml, then finally to 1 litre, pour off the excess after cold crashing and pitch the remainder. According to YeastCalc, this should get me where I need to be.
This is a first for me so should be an interesting little experiment, I'm hoping the yeast are viable and I can get this going. Really think that it'll make a difference to the final brew.

Should be an interesting experiment + if your ever over E. Kent area dont forget to bring a bottle along

No dramas barneey
Its been on the stirplate since yesterday afternoon and no signs of life yet, but hopefully it'll come to life over the next day or two. I'm starting to think I should've started it smaller, but since my flask is 1 litre i kinda needed a decent amount of liquid...maybe I should buy a 100ml flask for the first step in future.
Even if this doesn't work this time around, I'm determined to culture this yeast. I'd love to use SN's own strain and this appears the only way of procuring it easily. I fired off an email to brewlab and they stated they couldn't help me...

Well, the little bugger is starting up! Tenacious little yeasties. Going to let this one keep going, then step up to 500ml.

Stepped up to about 700ml, I think it was about 250-300ml before. Good amount of yeast from the first step, so poured in some more wort and back onto the stirplate. Next step up will be to 1.5 litre I think...

Last time I checked BrewLabs stocked SN yeast. That was a year or two ago, but they well still hold it. Could be worth checking with them.

That was my thinking Richard, here's what they sent back to me:

"Hi Darren, sorry we do not hold Shepherd Neams yeast for homebrew supply.

Regards

Brewlab"

This way seems to have worked out ok though a bit more effort, the yeast seems to ferment quickly and flocculates very well. Am going to check how well it attenuates when I have decanted the spent wort out of the starter, then add the slurry to a fresh 1.5l starter, chill, decant and pitch.
I've got a good feeling about this beer, hope it meets my expectations...

Just popped this into a fresh 1 litre starter. FG from the remains of the last was 1.007! Tasted...pretty rough, but not in an off kinda way. Just what I expected from unhopped spray malt. Smell was fine too.
Gonna ferment this out again and step up to 2 litres, then pitch and pray...

Woke up to this...



Lively little fella! Could be interesting stepping this up to 2 litres...

I stepped this up and it overflowed as expected, but no dramas as I made sure it was in a bucket to catch the mess.

Pitched last night, and it is beginning to produce a nice Krausen this evening. Got it in the fermenting fridge at a steady 18.5C.

Thought I'd update as its been a while. Dry hopped this about 10 days ago and was going to rack this evening. Opened the FV and was confronted with this;






Not looking too good! Somewhere along the lines infection has slipped in, probably when I dry hopped as it looked ok before then. Having said that, when I added them the yeast on the surface was unusually 'lumpy', but definitely yeast.
This one is destined to go down the drain now, will have to brew again...will review my dry hopping as well, was never really happy with just chucking them in so will make sure they are bagged and weighed down next time.