High Hopes Extract Brew!

[Rich_B]

Hi all

I've asked you guys plenty of questions over the past few months so thought I'd sign in here and document my 2nd (well, third really but I don't the calamity that was number one!!!) extract brew.

No photos unfortunately as I've lost the lead to comnnect my phone to the laptop but basically I'm trying the Old Speckled Hen clone from BYOBRA.

What I've done is scale it down - calamity number one was really due to my electric hob struggling to heat a lot of water and lots of things going wrong while I panicked and tried to sort it out - and 40 pints is really too much to be sitting in a keg for me to drink so I'm going to do several smaller runs (10 litres) and bottle them - that way I've got some variety and it's not months between brews! I'll do a nice big one soon to keg up as well, then there's something on tap too which is nice.

So my recipe is:

Old Speckled Hen Clone

DME - 1010g
Challenger - 16g @ 90min
Goldings - 5.5g @ 10min
Sugar - 240g @ 45 min
Crystal Wheat- 155g steeped for 30 mins

The only real difference I've made is that I don't have any straight crystal so I've used the crystal wheat that I've got. To be honest, I'm not too worried about ending up with a perfect Speckled Hen - I'm just hoping to have something nice and tasty and really just have a brew I can actually be proud of! I've got a brewing friend coming down to visit at the end of March so it'd be nice to be able to give him something nice!

I'll also be trying my new aquarium heater during fermentation as there were huge temperature swings during the last fermentation which I'm sure didn't help the flavour.

Just taken out the steeped crystal wheat, all smells good and on the way to a boil (well, struggling to a boil as the electric hob is definitely a drawback for brewing - I've only got 5 1/2 litres in the pot!).

Cheers,

Rich

[Rich_B]

Final hops added, Irish Moss in - just about to rehydrate the yeast. Fingers crossed all seems to be going well so far!

[Rich_B]

Ok, all cooled and in the fermenter, yeast rehydrated and ready to be pitched. First balls up noticed - having only done 9 1/2 litres, my shiny new aquarium heater doesn't sink low enough in the FV to be up to its minimum water level mark. Ho-hum. So back to the radical temperature fluctuations!!! Might have a trip to Wilkinson tomorrow to try and get a big bucket to make a water bath... Still, looks and smells nice!

OG is 1044, need to correct for temperature though so it's closer to 1.048, so not too far away from the target 1.050!