How to brew your own beer - The All Grain method

Associate
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I'm sure you've sent them an email explaining that to them...

There are posts on every brewing forum about the errors so hopefully they will take notice, they are some pretty bad ones as well like describing a beer a a complex mix of seven malts and then only listing one malt in the ingredients of the recipe.
The tin foil hat brigade are even starting to make an appearance about it :p
 
Man of Honour
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Started my first all-grain brew a week past Wednesday. I took a load of photos but forgot to make a post. After looking at many recipes, I decided on Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild from the CAMRA "Brew your own British ale" book.

The dry ingredients:

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5110g Mild malt
900g Crystal malt
Bittering hops: 31g Fuggles + 26g Golding
Aroma hops: 19g Fuggles

The Mash:

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Sparging:

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First hop addition:

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End hop addition (including 1/2 a Protofloc tablet):

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Cooling:

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Aerating:

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Pitching the yeast (Wyeast 1968 London ESB ale yeast) - starter made two nights previously:

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OG spot on at 1.058:

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Finally, into the fermenting fridge at 20°C:

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That was 11 days ago. Checked the sg today and found it to be 1.012. This is a bit confusing as the expected FG of the brew (according to the book) is 1.015 :confused: The airlock is still bubbling occasionally which means it is still fermenting.
How concerned should I be about this?
 
Man of Honour
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What temp did you mash at? Depending on the temperature you may have ended up with more fermentable wort which will obviously affect your FG and ABV.

edit: also (apologies if you already know this) small amounts of bubbling may also just be gas working its way out rather than actual activity.
 
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*ambles in and waves!


*shameles bump

Haha, even Mr Seabiscuit sent me here, You two must be up to something here :D

Going to have to dig through my past posts in here to see what setup/equipment I had in mind ages ago to look at getting it all setup when I move into my new house.
 
OcUK Staff
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Deifinitly!!
So tell us about your brewery? I take it you do this commercially? How long have you been running? What made you want to start?
So many more questions too, but I don't want to turn this into an interrogation :p
 
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Deifinitly!!
So tell us about your brewery? I take it you do this commercially? How long have you been running? What made you want to start?
So many more questions too, but I don't want to turn this into an interrogation :p

dDHdqVM.jpg

This is the brewery, 2.5bbl electric system with 2 jacketed fermenters.
I do brew commercially we are a brewpub currently producing beers for on sit consumption only with views to expand.
we've been running for 12 weeks now!
We had the building anyway and decided after having some bad renters to do this instead, as its something the city needed. I've also wanted a brewery for years but never had the funds at the time.

Ask away!!
 
Associate
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This is the brewery, 2.5bbl electric system with 2 jacketed fermenters.
I do brew commercially we are a brewpub currently producing beers for on sit consumption only with views to expand.
we've been running for 12 weeks now!
We had the building anyway and decided after having some bad renters to do this instead, as its something the city needed. I've also wanted a brewery for years but never had the funds at the time.

Ask away!!

Nice!

Look forward to hearing more about it.

(and seeing more of the shiny brewporn!)

:D
 
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So which city? How many brews are you doing per week? How's feedback been so far? How long did it take to build? Is it new kit, or have you had it from a brewery closing/changing scale?
 
OcUK Staff
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We'd love to go commercial in a lot of ways, but I'd be worried about it losing being something fun, and the whole start-up business is pretty scary to risk everything.
Anyway, in regards to our home-brewing, right at the start of the year our kitchen door/back door broke, which meant that for a couple of months we weren't able to brew all-grain as we hadn't got suitable ventilation to get rid of all the steam. Then real life got in the way, so other than a brew new years day, we've not done any all grain untill a few weeks ago. Unfortunately an error in reading the erecipe and tiings meant that what should have been a late addition of hops got put in at the start of the boil, along with the bittering hops. I'd hoped with it being fairly low AA EKG that it wouldn't have made too much difference, but it has. It's pretty bitter. Just about drinkable, but not good.
We've done one other brew that is currently in fermenters, and we'll hopefully bottle this today, if we have time.
And we're doing a new brew today to get back into the swing of things. We're just using cascade hops for bittering, flavour and aroma. We might even dry hop it with cascade, just to finish off hops in the freezer, as they were opened last year. I know they should be ok sealed in the freezer, but I don't think it would be a bad idea just to use things up.
 
Associate
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So which city? How many brews are you doing per week? How's feedback been so far? How long did it take to build? Is it new kit, or have you had it from a brewery closing/changing scale?

Good old LESTAAA :D.
Doing 1 brew one week and 2 the next so far. But i've got bottling kit on the way now so its going to be 2 every week and the difference will be bottled.
Feedback in house has been very good so far, with a few tweaks and changes as recipes have gone on and I enjoy involving all of the customers with the process of R&D! Currently we are the highest rated Leicester brewery on untappd :D:D. But we are the newest.
I got a company to build the kit for me brand new, took about 3 months. I had some extras fitted like racking taps in the fermenters and a whirlpool for the copper.
 
Associate
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Good old LESTAAA :D.
Doing 1 brew one week and 2 the next so far. But i've got bottling kit on the way now so its going to be 2 every week and the difference will be bottled.
Feedback in house has been very good so far, with a few tweaks and changes as recipes have gone on and I enjoy involving all of the customers with the process of R&D! Currently we are the highest rated Leicester brewery on untappd :D:D. But we are the newest.
I got a company to build the kit for me brand new, took about 3 months. I had some extras fitted like racking taps in the fermenters and a whirlpool for the copper.

So is this part of a pub, what kind of beers have you been brewing and how long were you home brewing before? It would be cool to see how you get on as time goes on.
 
Associate
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New toys.

T2IXEes.jpg

I actually bought the wireless module as well but it is still packed in its box (I know that it isn't really great on its current firmware but I do like the fact I can start the heating of the strike water from my bed and not baby sit it during the mash/boil, along with the short malt pipe I am hoping it will let me brew a LOT more often despite having young children.
 
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