" Ditch's Stout " Master Class .....

[WalesAles]

Thanks Ditch. Love your way of drinking straight from the FV. Can`t wait to try it, that will really send the Mrs round the bend. She was watching me hang the washing out yesterday and she said `Why are all the socks facing to the right? Have you got OCD?` I said `No, I`ve got CDO, all the letters are in the right order!`
WA

[Ditch]

Love your way of drinking straight from the FV. Can`t wait to try it, that will really send the Mrs round the bend.

That's right, mate. Just tell her; " But, Ditch does this ..... ". Her response is bound to be fun

[WalesAles]

<a href="http://s733.beta.photobucket.com/user/p ... f.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww33 ... 37c3cf.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Beerphotos001_zps9437c3cf.jpg"/></a><a href="http://s733.beta.photobucket.com/user/p ... 5.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww33 ... 523515.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Beerphotos002_zps59523515.jpg"/></a><a href="http://s733.beta.photobucket.com/user/p ... 0.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/ww33 ... a04c60.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Beerphotos003_zps3aa04c60.jpg"/></a>
And to think I only started in January. Must get the Beer Shed built rather quickly I think!
WA

[Ditch]

Wales; Use the links " IMG ".

etc

[WalesAles]

Ta Ditch, will do. Fingers crossed!
WA

[Ditch]

Wait one ..... Ye shots are too big too. PM me and I'll tell ye how to get them so they show. Like this:

[WalesAles]

Ditch,
How do I PM you? Tried 20 mins ago, don`t know if it worked or not! Bloody computers, why can`t we just use pigeons like in the old days!
WA

[Ditch]

PM'd ye back, long since. My system says ye've read it. No reply yet though? Dunno.

Anyway, let's get this stuff out of the way. Then I'll ask the Moddies to crop this thread out of our little exchange here. There's quite enough extraneous chat on this thread, I'm sure, without us discussing HTML issues too

Meanwhile; If ye haven't got my PM. Or ye can't manage to reply to it? Say so on here. I'll alert Andy to the situation and he'll ..... god knows!

[WalesAles]

Hello Everyone,
Me again, sorry about all this but I am trying to PM Ditch but they keep coming back to me! Any tutorials out there to show me how to navigate this site? How do I PM? Thought I had it cracked but it still came to me! Wait!, What`s that noise in my ear? `Are you still on that bloody beer thing, when are you going to move that stuff out of the front room, It stinks in this house, It`s like a bloody brewery in here, I need to go in there when you are watching football all the time or making your bloody beer and taking over my kitchen, blah, blah blah!` Yes Love, I`ll do it Tomorrow etc, etc, etc. He He He.
WA

[Ditch]

Hang on in there, Wales. I've asked the Moddie's to see what they can do. This situation's f**ked up

[Andy]

Click on the "PM" icon on one of Ditch's posts and type away. Are you clicking on the "PM" icon on your own posts ? If so then you're sending a PM to yourself

[tazzymutt]

I just wanted to thank Ditch for initiating the most entertaining thread I've read on any forum. Thanks Mate; all 55 pages were worth reading (I just need to catch up on my sleep now )

I don't really know why I started reading the thread, as I don't like stout... Well, I thought I didn't. However, when I thought a bit longer I realised that the only stout I'd ever drunk was Guinness, so, in a spirit of exploration, I set off for a few pubs to find some alternative stouts from smaller brewers and some of them were near perfect neck oil (a few were too much like clones of the above mentioned peat drainings) so it had to be tried.

Tesco provided a stout kit for £9.77 and Shane provided everything else I needed for a bit over £150... Hmmm, I only visited his site for a bag of dark spray malt. Oh well, I have a few other kits to keep me amused over the next few months. (Hope you're on commission, Ditch).

So on Sunday my first pseudo Ditch's Stout went into the FV. It will not be an exact clone, I over did the water slightly, more than I anticipated settled out of the well whipped up froth once I stopped beating the living daylights out of it with a paddle, so I ended up at 21 litres rather than 20. I guess that won't be fatal. I added 280g of additional sugar as recommended (measured in a mug, but the nerd in me wanted to know how much I'd added so I used a mug, then weighed it). My FV is sat in a waterbath rather than chuck the heater straight in and the temperature is slightly lower at 20C rather than 22 although I have now turned up the thermostat. (One advantage of having the heater in a water bath rather than the FV is that I don't mind fishing it out to adjust the temperature and I don't need to worry about infection when I make a tweak. I also figured that the waterbath would capture any spew and possibly avoid a marriage threatening moment...)

The krausen is doing a good impression of Ditch's pictures, 36 hours after pitching the yeast it has reached the lid and started to try and escape and the brew smells wonderful. I have a shiny new pressure barrel for this brew (I have always used bottles for my previous brews) which has been given one good clean and will have another one before sterilising and filling with black gold. My only planned deviation from the true path is that I intend to add a little priming sugar to the barrel, probably about 80g of the same sugar used in the brew. I'm only doing this because I doubt I will be able to drink the brew as quickly as Ditch seems to, so a protective blanket of CO2 seems a good idea, however I am open to suggestions.

Provided that spew does not do what it seemed to be threatening last night (namely eat the house, wife, son, dog and the poor sod who gets to pay for it all (me)) I shall report back in due course and let you know how badly my seemingly insignificant tweaks (all right; errors) have kocked this up. If you hear nothing, either the krausen got me or it was so good that I have tried to emulate Ditch's rate of consumption and died a very happy man.

Watch this space...

Happy brewing,


Ian.

[WalesAles]

Hello Everyone,
Kegged My Ditch`s Stout after 10 days in the FV Yesterday. First pint flat as a witches tit! Is it supposed to be flat? Tastes lovely, malty, chocolate, Mmmmmm. I followed the instructions to the letter. Who cares, 4 pints later I had to go to bed at 11pm for a 6am start and 12 hr shift. Just finished my 4th flat (lovely) pint of the evening and it`s not even half time with the football yet! Long night ahead tasting this Stout awaits! (No 6am start tomorrow Ha Ha).
WA

[Ditch]

Tazzymutt; At the length of this thing these days, I'm highly relieved ye didn't feel ye'd just wasted a lot of ye life on it!

As for other stouts? Yeah. I think a lot of people assume that Guinness = Stout. Full stop. But, of course, that's utter nonsense. Guinness is a stout. Just like there are various brand names of " Lager ", " Bitter ", etc. No one of them in any way defines what a " Lager " is. I think Fosters is absolutely disgusting. But, I find Karpaki tolerable and used to love the odd couple of bottles of Skol Special.

Me, on a Commission? These days, mate, I'd be happy just to be on time with my f**king dispatch and deliveries! Ordered a load of gear Sunday night? Still waiting. Don't think it was even processed till f**king Tuesday

Yeah; Over filling, due to the extraordinary amount of froth generated (especially by my drill!) is a Very easily made mistake. I've come to recognise this now too. So, I leave it well enough alone and gently top it off to 20 only after it's all died right down.

I did my last one in a trug of water too. Been clearing that room out and trying to make space for the extra nonsense. Frankly? The jury's still out, as we speak. Mine fermented alright. I too ~ due to an earlier cock up ~ only had the heater set to 20 C. So the fermentation was more subdued than I'm accustomed to.

But, what relatively little 'spew' there was went into the trug water Now, that maybe fine, by some. It's probably preferable, to most, to having beer on ye floor? But, beer on the concrete floor of an 'empty' room doesn't bother me. And there's no bitch to nag the Ditch .....

What does bother me though is that bucket full of slimy looking, beer laced water in there. It's murky and shitty and I can see me slinging that out after each brew. I can't put up with that

Adding priming sugar to the keg? We'll get to that presently. In my next post here.

[Ditch]

Kegged My Ditch`s Stout after 10 days in the FV Yesterday. First pint flat as a witches tit! Is it supposed to be flat?

Wales; I like canned Beamish, when I have to fall back on a can. Only, it has to be the 'Draught In A Can' stuff. With the widget. Straight tinned stuff is just f**king disgusting!

Now, the journey to what I'm drinking as I type has been a long one. And not exactly as straight as an arrow either. I've had to try things. Iron out things. Adapt and body swerve as I've gone along.

Dig right back into the earliest days of my journey and ye should find how I Did use gas, originally. Circumstances forced my hand though and so I gave up using it. And so discovered I actually prefer my stuff flat.

Truth is; So many people try to judge a beer with their eyes. They don't see a thick, creamy head? Bad beer.

F**k all that! Can they see temperature??? Believe me: I like my stuff flat and well above freezing. I don't give a shit what it looks like. I just don't want it to give me frost bite on my tongue.

But, ye've already sussed that yeself, see? Flat it may be. But it still tastes sublime.

Welcome to the club