How to brew your own beer - The All Grain method

jimmy321 · 7 Sep 2013 at 22:05

I started a Soured Beer on 29/06/13, the plan is to leave it till next summer then rack it on to some fruit, I'm thinking gooseberries but that may change.

Anyway, made a beer at 1060 and pitched Gervin G12 ale yeast.

Don't know efficiency etc. But I used...

3kg Lager Malt
1kg Pale Malt
1kg Wheat Malt
170g Acid Malt
8g Cascade 7.5AA start of boil with a 90 min boil should be ~7 IBU's
Collected about 20-21L of fermenting wort, hard to tell because it's in a 23L glass Carboy

Pitched Wyeast 5335 Lactobacillus Yeast 12/07/13
For the Brettanomyces I added the dregs of Anchorage Galaxy IPA which was bottled in August last year. This was added 2 weeks ago and the pellicle has started to form.

Pics of pellicle which I found hard to get a good image but here they are...

seabiscuit · 8 Sep 2013 at 09:03

Just how sour does a sour beer get? I've never had one (at least not on purpose) and it seems to go (pardon the pun) against the grain of what you would typically want from a beer. But I know they're the big thing in the US at the moment. Are there any commercial ones you'd recommend so we can try one to see if we'd enjoy them?

FrenchTart · 8 Sep 2013 at 14:18

Hops for today's brew. 800g mix of cascade and summit

seabiscuit · 8 Sep 2013 at 19:49

800g of hops?!? What's the brewlength?
Was thinking about using 100-150 Apollo for an American IPA for 5 gallons, but 800g?!!!

Ahleckz · 8 Sep 2013 at 19:51

My kind of brew! They don't look very fresh though...

FrenchTart · 8 Sep 2013 at 19:53

seabiscuit said:
800g of hops?!? What's the brewlength?
Was thinking about using 100-150 Apollo for an American IPA for 5 gallons, but 800g?!!!

It's this one: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/drypur

Basically based on a rather OTT recipe we found online with a few tweaks. We've made three versions of it so far and they've all been awesome

Ahleckz said:
My kind of brew! They don't look very fresh though...

Yeah..they're not as fresh as I'd like :/ Planning to move to the malt miller for all our next brews as I've heard good things about it.

jimmy321 · 8 Sep 2013 at 20:12

seabiscuit said:
Just how sour does a sour beer get?

It can be very sour, aged Lambics 3 years+ are normally blended with younger versions.

seabiscuit said:
Are there any commercial ones you'd recommend so we can try one to see if we'd enjoy them?

Not the one's I've seen in the supermarkets, a 250ml-375ml of blended lambic will cost about £4.00 or more, for the fruit lambic check the label and avoid the ones with added sweetener again the price will be quite high the low cost ones most likely have added sweeteners also they normally have crown caps where as the proper ones have champaign style corks. The breweries add sweeteners as the sourness can be off putting which begs the question why make them in the first place.

Also if you do make a sour beer keep it away from the others as it only takes a few cells of Brett (Brettanomyces - Brittish Fungus) to infect it.

I have mine hidden away in the hall cupboard and will only use that carboy for beers that are intended to have Brett in them.

jimmy321 · 8 Sep 2013 at 20:15

FrenchTart said:
Planning to move to the malt miller for all our next brews as I've heard good things about it.

I use the Malt Miller on a regular basis and give them the thumbs up.

The hops come in the usual silver seal bag but they are flat and easier to work with, they also crush the malt to order so it's always fresh.

FrenchTart · 8 Sep 2013 at 20:23

jimmy321 said:
I use the Malt Miller on a regular basis and give them the thumbs up.

The hops come in the usual silver seal bag but they are flat and easier to work with, they also crush the malt to order so it's always fresh.

That sounds about right from the other reports I've heard. Good to hear

seabiscuit · 22 Sep 2013 at 13:03

So We've picked probably just under half the hop cones (I'm guessing here) which has been about 110-120g wet green hops.

We're just getting water up to mashing temperature. 5kg of marris otter. 30g of magnum at 60 mins for bittering, and then 60g of fresh green cascade at 10mins and the rest at flame out. Using US-05 yeast.

Will post pictures either later or over next couple of days.

Ahleckz · 22 Sep 2013 at 19:15

Were the hops easy to grow? What conditions do you need? How much looking after do they need?

FrenchTart · 22 Sep 2013 at 20:25

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with your fresh hops. Is there any danger of getting more 'grassy' flavours from the non-driedness?

I just brewed another APA today. Blend of nelson and citra hops along with summit for bittering. We're short on FVs atm so no dry-hopping sadly but I'm hopeful that it'll be a nice result.

seabiscuit · 22 Sep 2013 at 20:54

Ahleckz said:
Were the hops easy to grow? What conditions do you need? How much looking after do they need?

Water, sunlight and some nutrients in the soil. So compost in the soil when it's planted, then occasional bit of tomato feed, or better fertilizer if you prefer. They are basically a weed, so they're really pretty hardy. I wasn't expecting any hop cones to brew with in the first year, so that between two plants we've got enough for a couple of brews is something I'm really pleased about.

FrenchTart said:
I'll be interested to hear how you get on with your fresh hops. Is there any danger of getting more 'grassy' flavours from the non-driedness?

Maybe. But we've left them on the bine a fair while. There are flecks of brown as they're drying out on the plant, and the majority of them are a bit dried/"paper like" and when scrunched up in your hands smell of hops, rather than cut grass/plantllife.
We have only got enough this year to do a couple of green hopped brews, none extr to dry, but I wasn't expecting even that in the first year. I was thinking there would be foliage, and the hop would be able to develop it's root system to get something going forward. So we're really pleased that we've got a good amount of hop flowers/cones.

For a grand total spend of less than £40 for a couple of hop rhizomes, some canes for them to start to grow up, some compost and plant food, some screw/eyelets and some cord for them to grow further up I think it's been very well worth it.

Mrs S hasn't shown much interest until today when we've actually been out picking them, but I think she's really enjoyed it too, and has been talking about buying several more varieties.
I'm not sure that's possible for us due to space and how much it would cost us to make "proper" hop poles, or equivalent. But hopefully we can make a structure taller for next year for the cascade to grow up, and maybe look at one or two more varieties. I'll have to get something in writing from Mrs_S before she sobers up. (joking, we'll never sober up).

Anyway, we'll try and answer any any questions, but take my word for it, we are NOT gardeners. We've had the advantage that hops are weeds and so are pretty hard to kill, even for us. I think they just need to be watered, but not too much or the roots can rot. But watered frequently. They can apparently grow up to a foot a day at the peak of their growing season.

Right, that's enough rambling on my part. We've taken LOADS of photographs, but will try and sort them out to the highlights to post soon.

Watch this space.

seabiscuit · 26 Sep 2013 at 11:59

OK, so as promised, the first of the updates with photographs.

So we had two plants, and this is their first years growth

Including some additional wildlife

Some of the hops are surprisingly large

Someday soon hops, you'll be beer too

So we got a little over 100g picked initially, but there's at least the same still on the bines

Will do a second post showing the brewday itself too shortly.

jimmy321 · 26 Sep 2013 at 14:43

1. How big is that mat and hand because they look massive.
2. Ladybirds FTW!

seabiscuit · 26 Sep 2013 at 15:39

It's a standard size beermat, not a mousemat ;-)

As for MrsSeabiscuits hand, it's a perfect size, it's just closer to the camera. (thinking of Father Ted here explaining small sheep, and sheep further away)
But some of the hops were well over 2" long.

I've just harvested the remaining hop cones, and got 180g wet green hops. If dried they apparently go to 1/4 to 1/6th the weight.
Not sure of the alpha acid content, so only using them late in a brew for flavor and aroma.

Martynt74 · 26 Sep 2013 at 16:00

Having never really considered home brewing (partly because my dad once made some wine at home and it was horrific!)

How much storage space do you need? I live in a terraced house with a small back yard and not much available space to leave big multi gallon containers lying around.

The alternative would be to try and use my parents garage but thats a 30min drive so if things need to be kept on top of regularly that might not be very practical!

EDIT: Frenchtart, if you want to just invite me into your group so i can watch/steal some of your homebrew that might be easier

Mrs Seabiscuit · 26 Sep 2013 at 17:24

Marvt74 said:
Having never really considered home brewing (partly because my dad once made some wine at home and it was horrific!)

How much storage space do you need? I live in a terraced house with a small back yard and not much available space to leave big multi gallon containers lying around.

The alternative would be to try and use my parents garage but thats a 30min drive so if things need to be kept on top of regularly that might not be very practical!

Hey Marvt I reckon you need 1mx3m square of space obviously when you brew you move boiler into your kitchen for ease. Here is a picture of our brew store.

Kit brewing takes a lot less space and time. However once you get on to all grain you will never go back hehe, it is also cheaper than kit. Well if you just buy basic hehe. We have expanded are equipment and added., Please ask anything at all we are happy to help any begginer brewers.

Oh btw that beer in the fermenter was using the hops from a few posts above hehe.

Martynt74 · 26 Sep 2013 at 17:44

How much do you need to keep on top of it? If I made it at my folks can I just go there set it up and leave it or does it need adjustments.

Also does it need a stable environment? Could I bung it in the loft?

seabiscuit · 26 Sep 2013 at 17:45

yeah, a broom cupboard, utility room or similar is ideal place to put a fermenter out of the way for a while.
We started with kit brewing and had one fermenter and one barrel. And things just expanded from there gradually adding to it. We now have quite a bit of kit allowing us more flexibility in making the beer and allowing us also to bottle if we want to.
The big leap was going from kit brewing to all grain, but to start with, the only extra bit of kit initially was a big tea urn type boiler and a large cloth to make a bag to put the grain in to mash and to lift the grain out. In terms of ingredients, I recon it's about £8-15 a brew of beer that is comparable to pub/commercial beers.
To start kit brewing though doesn't take masses of space, and you can start from about £65 including a decent beer kit. That'll make 40 pints of a pretty nice beer.
We stick the fermenter on some shelves that are just used for general storage, along with things like the iron (Mrs_S might be able to explain what one of those does. It's a mystery to me) and other miscellaneous things.
As Mrs_Seabscuit says, we are happy to answer any questions if we can. Ahlekz and The_Blue helped us loads when we were starting. And I just like making sure this thread stays alive