Home Brew Forum

Been a while since I've posted a Brewday, and I needed to make up for the jinx of last weeks failure, when my boiler died in disappointing fashion after 30 mins of the boil.
So, with a shiny new spade connector and upgraded thermal switch, the Buffalo was ready. I hoped...

As Floydmeddler's original recipe looked so damn good I decided to do something in a very similar vein today (at long last!) in the hope that the Gods would smile upon me...

Aiming for 22 litres into the fermenter (I usually end up with more as my boil off is pretty good) I proceeded;

Crisp Pale Ale Malt (5.5 EBC) - 4426g (82.2%)
Munich Malt (25 EBC) - 323g (6%)
Crystal Malt (150 EBC) - 215g (4%)
Crystal Rye Malt (150 EBC) - 215g (4%)
Carafa Special Type II (1200 EBC) - 102g (1.9%)
Torrified Wheat (3 EBC) 102g (1.9%)
Target OG - 1.052

Apollo (19.5% aa) - 30g, 15 mins
Amarillo (8.7% aa) - 30g, 15 mins
Apollo (19.5% aa) - 30 g, 5 mins
Amarillo (8.7% aa) - 30g, 5 mins
Apollo (19.5% aa) - 40g, 0 mins
Amarillo (8.7% aa) - 40g, 0 mins
Ahtanum (5.2% aa) - 100g, dry hop


Grain shot!


Bringing up to strike temperature


Mash on


Mash off, after 90 mins. Not bad


Occasionally, the Black Arts can help your beer...


5 min & 0 min hops


The Aftermath


Run off into fermenter

All in all, a fun day. Hit my numbers ok, got slightly more wort at the target gravity. Good efficient mash, crisp pale ale always seems to give really good results.
Yeast wise, I decided to plump for NBS West Coast. Quite like this yeast to be honest, I've had good experiences in American style red ales before. Now all tucked up in the fermentation fridge at 19C after a good blast of O2.
Really hoping this brew will meet my high expectations, haven't used Apollo before and it smells bloody lovely, very resiny and sticky, pungent aroma...just what I like!

Nice looking brew Captain! .... gotta ask, where did you get that funky looking fermenter..never see nothing like it! And a Stacker, by the looks of..

Cheers Timbo. Picked it up cheap on eBay but you can get them at BrewUK amongst others. 30 litres one will set you back about 40 notes but it's sturdy. Big improvement on the wilkinson ones I've got!

That looks a great brew, and a nice FV . Apollo are a fave hop of mine! Incidentally, I see a lot of people with you type of thermometer, what make is it? Any good?

Cheers. Its a Comark, see here.
Its a decent little thermometer, does the job well and batteries last a good while, got over 18 months of use out of my last one.

For anyone interested in the fermenter, after a browse around think BrewUK is cheapest. Only down side is the tap is a bit of a waste of time. Otherwise, very sturdy and less prone to scratching. Although mine was less than half that price!

Is there room to drop a sort of dip tube from tap? Otherwise looks like a lot of dead space if the tap is used for racking to secondary

Nice looking brew. The dry malt pic is a work of art!

Nice one Captain. This will be DAMN tasty.

timbo41 wrote:Is there room to drop a sort of dip tube from tap? Otherwise looks like a lot of dead space if the tap is used for racking to secondary

I just circumnavigate the tap, I use an autosyphon to rack to bottling bucket and go from there. I'd rather the tap wasn't there at all to be honest! One thing I do like is the small opening that I use to rack from/to. Less fear of nasties falling into the brew and good for flooding headspace with O2.

Jim wrote:Nice looking brew. The dry malt pic is a work of art!

Cheers Jim

floydmeddler wrote:Nice one Captain. This will be DAMN tasty.

Hope so Floyd Got my fingers crossed this will be as good as I hope. Looking for some MAJOR hop flavours!

Dry hopped this with 100g Ahtanum pellets today. My first time using pellets so interested how it turns out.

Sounds great. Have never used pellets. Might use them to dry hop soon.

I'll let you know how they go in a few weeks. A lot of people seem to recommend them and I've noticed Rob has got quite a variety in stock!

I like pellets for dry hopping as they drop out very well when I crash chill the fermenter prior to bottling.

Now that I do all grain, I am not so happy about using them in the boil unless I have a decent amount of leaf in there to filter them.

Well, I must say my first experience with pellets was...excellent
I've had these Ahtanum pellets hanging around for a while, but they did not disappoint, lovely aroma and flavour in the sample I tried. Also, they dropped out of suspension really well, cold crashed for about 2 days prior to bottling and did the job.
Just looking forward to the finished beer now....

Had a sneaky one last night, lovely beer! Carafa adds a little roastiness that I like, came out quite dry so may increase the Munich and crystal a little more next time but not by much. Really hit the spot, refreshing and good body. Hop flavour was excellent