28th July - London Pride

[coatesg]

Back brewing beer rather than plum and elderflower wines.... !

London Pride this time (one of my favorite beers) using Protz & Wheeler's recipe found on t'interweb.

3.65kg MO
290g flaked maize
130g crystal
25g black

Hops:

Target 19g (9% - 2006 crop) - 90min
Challenger 25g (5.6% - 2006 crop) - 90min
EKG 20g - 15min

(upped the bittering hops a bit as they are from 2006...)

Another first for me this one - using yeast recultured from a bottle of Fuller's 1845 and going to ferment at 19C in my fridge (controlled by the ATC800). Going to try and skim off after a couple of days to preserve the yeast for future use too.

Anyhow, it went very smoothly - finished in 5 1/2 hours flat and got about 22L at 1041 in the FV.

Pictures!:

Yeast reculturing from last week - it's been in the fridge for a week waiting for wort! Used spraymalt at 1020 to get it going.




Sparge:



Runoff:



Cooling the wort post boil:



Yeast starter (ran off a litre after 10 mins and cooled) - going potty!!



Fermentation fridge...



... and ubitquitous ATC800:

[Gurgeh]

nice one!

[prodigal2]

Looks like you had a productive day of it

[Matt]

Nice pics and a you have a tidy looking fridge/800 set up CG

So that was two of us using re-cultured commercial yeast yesterday … more signs of wallet tightening amidst the big scary apocalyptic recession

[coatesg]

So that was two of us using re-cultured commercial yeast yesterday … more signs of wallet tightening amidst the big scary apocalyptic recession

Plus you have to drink a beer to get hold of the yeast from the bottle. The things we put ourselves through in the name of brewing...

I was a little concerned that I had underpitched somwhat, but I had a load of trub thrown up this morning (8 hours after pitching). Skimmed that off and re-roused - looked like it was starting to reform something on the surface so I assume all is well... will see how it goes.

Nice pics and a you have a tidy looking fridge/800 set up CG

Thanks - it's currently in the kitchen (yay!) since although it normally lives in the shed, we just replaced it since it was rotten and it's not wired up again yet.

[Matt]

Good luck with it. I was eyeing up one of those tall Beko fridges recently - mine is an under-counter small one at the moment and I'm itching for more fermentation space.

[coatesg]

Good luck with it. I was eyeing up one of those tall Beko fridges recently - mine is an under-counter small one at the moment and I'm itching for more fermentation space.

It was a cheap thing off ebay (£40 or so), but is perfect. Lots of shelving for conditioning bottles or storing beer at serving temperature.

When it turned warmer, I put all my bottles in there - when fermenting, the fridge space sits at about 17C. When not fermenting, I turn the temp down to about 10 or 12C, so anything conditioning has a nice temperature to sit at.

During the winter, I'll use shelves in the garage as per last year - then I can use the fridge for lagering/fermenting.

[coatesg]

Looking good - fair bit of krausen. May skim some of that off tonight and keep it for another brew...

[timb]

Graeme,
How did the fermentation go using the 1845 yeast

[coatesg]

I'm not sure to be honest! It has an odd (clove-like) smell so I'm not sure I've I'd underpitched it or not (though the fermentation seemed fine - maybe a tad slow, but it looked healthy). Finished at 1008 (4.3%) so certainly no problems with being stuck. Most strange.

I've bottled it so I'll ignore it for a few weeks and see how it turns out when it clears out....

[coatesg]

Right. This one has the potential to be the first poured away AG I've done. It's been banished to the garage for a very long conditioning proabably until the winter (or I get desperate for a beer) as it's stuffed full of acetaldehyde. Grrr.

[Matt]

Graeme,

Did this improve at all? How's it tasting?

Funnily enough my batch made using re-cultured SN 1698 yeast also had major acetaldehyde problems. Now it just tastes odd

Matt

[coatesg]

Not really - it landed up becoming massively over carbonated (despite being OK for the first 3-4 weeks and having a stable gravity on bottling) and it too landed up with an odd flavour which was hard to describe. The initial flavours were a little clovey and then these went to give what tasted like the acetaldehyde. Then this changed after some weeks in the cold to give this odd flavour which remained - and I can't really describe it. It wasn't quite like cut apples - it was just "not quite right" - it certainly tasted better cold, and I had the odd funny head the next day after a few of them.

Occasionally, once you got rid of the massive gas which certainly didn;t help (!!) there was the odd hint of a Pride flavour, but certainly nothing like what it should be. I did wonder if it was infected (hence the gushing) but to be honest, the taste wasn't bad, just a little strange.

Still, I only have 1 bottle left as I have persevered... not one of my best though.