Home Brew Forum

Over the last month or so I've made the following...


27L of. Simcoe extra pale ale Smash with a belgian yeast. Butlers simcoe smash belgian yeast = BUSSBY
25L of my VB clone, used up the last of my pride of ringwood hops
27L of an IPA recipe using CML tropical England hops
50ish L of my BUMPA best bitter.

Yesterday afternoon before I went to work I labelled the bottles - 251 total.

Then today I fired up the 3 vessel HERMS and wood fired boiler to make 60L of Jimgaarden - slight variation on the recipe I entered in the brew like a monk competition last year.

While I was at it I did a 26 L BIAB of my Coniston bluebird clone. Minor hiccup when I heated up the water in the HERMS boiler that I use as sparge water only to find a massive cooked slug in it, couldn't bring myself to ignore that and use the water so I poured it into the bottle delabelling bucket for a nice hot soak and started again!

The shed is filling up nicely but I'm planning a 25L batch of a Belgian dark strong and a 60L batch of Marzen using a kolsch yeast - the weather is cool so let's brew!

Still have plenty of ingredients and my full set of cornies and a couple of Sankey's to fill so will be keeping going.

You should have put some pellets in the water that gets rid of slugs.

The perils of outdoor brewing!

I have found a snail in a fermenter. Not good.

It actually got worse, I had taken test samples from the fermenter tap a couple of times before bottling day for the VB, and after the last one a slug must have climbed into the tap body for a drink. I stuck the hose on and let it rip down to the bottling stick. Opaque hose and stainless bottling wand. I saw a black blob coming down the tube, wondered if it was sediment and then flow stopped. Had to dismantle the stick and remove the shredded slug from the spring bit. Gave it all a damn good clean and ran a few hundred ml through the pipe to hopefully get rid of any slug taint.

In future I'll squirt sanitiser in to clean the tap body after any samples and have a look before attaching tubing, it was most unpleasant!

As I say - the perils of outdoor brewing!

Not nice, I had one in my mash tun tap a few months ago. It makes a change from spiders setting up home in there!

My mate runs a brewery and reckons there are often slugs and snails in bales of leaf hops, so care has to be taken when dry-hopping.

Will I am pleased I am not alone.

Got 27L of dark brown Belgian/quadrupel underway yesterday.

Despite temperatures being around 18C overnight I found it this morning heating itself to 32 degrees and blocking the airlock with Yeast, which proved that my electrical box conduit glands seal very well as the stainless fermenter was trying to leak around the lid seals as it was pressurised!

Some ice from the freezer in plastic bags strapped to the side has brought it down to mid 20's which is a happier place, even for a Belgian! It's crossmyloof belgian yeast which says 15-28 so I'm sure it will stilll turn out OK, especially as it was effectively a pressure fermentation!

drjim wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 05, 2024 4:28 pm

Got 27L of dark brown Belgian/quadrupel underway yesterday.

Despite temperatures being around 18C overnight I found it this morning heating itself to 32 degrees and blocking the airlock with Yeast, which proved that my electrical box conduit glands seal very well as the stainless fermenter was trying to leak around the lid seals as it was pressurised!

Some ice from the freezer in plastic bags strapped to the side has brought it down to mid 20's which is a happier place, even for a Belgian! It's crossmyloof belgian yeast which says 15-28 so I'm sure it will stilll turn out OK, especially as it was effectively a pressure fermentation!

Yup I think you *just* caught that.
I keep frozen milk cartons for just the same use.