BIAB #16 - Celebration American IPA

[AdyG]

It must be good if you are doing a second batch so soon! I have everything ready for my brew so hopefully will get round to brewing my American IPA this weekend or next.

I will be sticking it straight in a king keg though.

[john_drummer]

I'm not keen on kegs. one little bit of contamination and the whole batch is a goner. Lost a couple of brews that way before I switched to bottles

but, yeah, it's a good un, I want to see what it's like with some carbonation

[AdyG]

I'm not keen on kegs. one little bit of contamination and the whole batch is a goner. Lost a couple of brews that way before I switched to bottles

but, yeah, it's a good un, I want to see what it's like with some carbonation

I have the problem with bottles being over carbonised and fizzing up, but I have tried taking some more bottles off other batches and I'm waiting to see what happens them them.

What happened to your kegs then out of interest? Infection got in somehow and the beer went off? One of my worst nightmares....

[john_drummer]

My keg is a Rotokeg with a tap at the top and a float attached to some tubing, I had one batch go bad (or maybe it was supposed to taste like that, Woodforde Wherry two can kit) and it got into the float and its tubing; I never managed to clean it properly as the next two batches also went bad; bear in mind that this is a huge keg, and I tended at the time to brew kits a little bit short, so I'd only end up with 19-21 litres in the keg, that leaves a huge amount of air on top of the beer. I tried gassing it up with CO2 as soon as I put the lid on, to get the air out, but to no avail. So I gave up and switched to bottles

For bottles I used to do batch priming - and last night I bottled 18l of a golden ale with cascade & citra hops, again I batch primed. 95g of brewers sugar poured into the FV a couple of hours before bottling. (usually 80-110g for a 23l batch is the received wisdom, but it's a bit cool in the house at the mo so I went for the higher end)

I've never used the Coopers Carbonation Drops - they may be a measured amount but is it enough? is it too much? how hard is it to measure 80-110g of sugar and pour it into the FV? It's certainly cheaper to use sugar.

I did over-prime a batch of Hobgoblin once. hmm, fizzy like cola, but hobgoblin flavour. very strange

[john_drummer]

BTW If you're anywhere near Leeds & you're prepared to risk being able to clean this keg, I've still got it.

[AdyG]

My keg is a Rotokeg with a tap at the top and a float attached to some tubing, I had one batch go bad (or maybe it was supposed to taste like that, Woodforde Wherry two can kit) and it got into the float and its tubing; I never managed to clean it properly as the next two batches also went bad; bear in mind that this is a huge keg, and I tended at the time to brew kits a little bit short, so I'd only end up with 19-21 litres in the keg, that leaves a huge amount of air on top of the beer. I tried gassing it up with CO2 as soon as I put the lid on, to get the air out, but to no avail. So I gave up and switched to bottles

For bottles I used to do batch priming - and last night I bottled 18l of a golden ale with cascade & citra hops, again I batch primed. 95g of brewers sugar poured into the FV a couple of hours before bottling. (usually 80-110g for a 23l batch is the received wisdom, but it's a bit cool in the house at the mo so I went for the higher end)

I've never used the Coopers Carbonation Drops - they may be a measured amount but is it enough? is it too much? how hard is it to measure 80-110g of sugar and pour it into the FV? It's certainly cheaper to use sugar.

I did over-prime a batch of Hobgoblin once. hmm, fizzy like cola, but hobgoblin flavour. very strange

I have 2 king kegs with the bottom taps, and apart from a leaky tap once, I've not had any real issues with them. I used to do kits for a couple of years and I always bottled them, but I had a lot of problems with bottles frothing up and stiring up the sediment once opened. Now I've switched to BIAB and my brew is a lot more precious I put them in the kegs. I bottled 10 from the keg on my first BIAB Timothy Taylor Landlord, but as the bottles got older and were meant to get better... they also had problems with frothing up when opened.

I have sucessfully bottled my BIAB christmas ale, and also bottled some BIAB Old Hooky & Batemans XXXB, so I'm just waiting to see how they age. My aim is to try and keep a few from each batch to build up a little stock pile of all the best brews... easier said than done though. If it's really nice, it just gets drunk from the keg!

It does sound like the tubing and float thing on your keg caused problems, or maybe the kit was a bit off. I've had a couple of kits that didn't taste quite right, hence my move to BIAB, it just seems consistantly more reliable for good drinkable beer.

I normally prime with 80g of brewing sugar disolved in 300ml of boiling water. I put it in the keg then the wort from the FV added on top so similar to your priming for the bottles.

BTW If you're anywhere near Leeds & you're prepared to risk being able to clean this keg, I've still got it.

Cheers for the offer but I'm down in Leicester, and incidentally a mate gave me a king keg with a top tap the other week for me to try. He doesn't like them and uses the other barrel type kegs with bottom taps. I've not tried it yet, but the Graham Wheeler book says you can have problems with the top taps as you are pulling beer off the top oxidised bit in contact with the air.

[john_drummer]

weird thing is, my FIL uses king kegs with top taps for his kit lagers & never has a problem. I can see him ending up with another keg

[AdyG]

Right... I'm all set to brew this tomorrow.

I also use Brewmate and it came with this recipe, but I'm going to up the quantity to 25l. I will let you know how it goes!

I may even attempt to take photos and do a brew day blog to convince some of my friends how easy it is to do BIAB!

[john_drummer]

I scaled my grain bill back from "Dirty Celebration Ale" but still get it to 5.6% so that's plenty strong enough for me. I think this batch has finished fermenting now, so into secondary then bottles over the weekend

[AdyG]

I brewed mine yesterday, Everything went exactly to plan, I ended up with what looks like about 24 litres and hit the OG of 1060. It is now fermenting away quite happily. Those American hops smell amazing.... can't wait to try some!

[john_drummer]

I just tried some. It's loverly

trial jar tells me 1010 FG from an OK of 1054, giving just shy of 5.8% ABV. had to do something with the trial, couldn't put it back in.
So now it's in secondary with some auxiliary finings, will be bottled Tuesday evening

[AdyG]

I just tried some. It's loverly

trial jar tells me 1010 FG from an OK of 1054, giving just shy of 5.8% ABV. had to do something with the trial, couldn't put it back in.
So now it's in secondary with some auxiliary finings, will be bottled Tuesday evening

So do you put yours in another FV to rest for a couple of days before bottling? And do you add the priming sugar as soon as you stick it in the other FV or just before bottling? I was contemplating a bit of extra dry hopping for 48 hours just before priming and sticking in a keg.... although I'm going to put a few of these in bottles just to see what happens to them. Been having a few teething problems with bottling my BIAB beers unfortunately

[john_drummer]

Well I racked it on Sunday and added finings, will be bottling tonight so I'll add the sugar before I start washing bottles.

<edit> CBA doing it tonight, and tomorrow's band practice is off so I may be doing it tomorrow or thursday instead </edit>

[AdyG]

Mines still fermenting vigorously. I normally leave the FV top sealed on but it keeps on popping off! No sign of it calming down yet!

[john_drummer]

gave a few samples from the second batch to my band mates; one of them wants a full batch of the stuff! result

tomorrow I'll be brewing a second batch of porter for our bass player; his missus has also bought a batch of my CaraGold recipe too