How to brew your own beer - The All Grain method

Marvt74 said:
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?
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Once it's in the fermenter, you're best just letting it get on with it's own thing. The yeast will multiply, then start fermenting the sugars in the wort into ethanol and carbon dioxide.
It ideally needs to ferment about 16-20 degrees for an ale (depends a little on the yeast too), and colder for a lager (not made lager as we don't have a dedicated fridge to lager (store it cold while fermenting) in). So I guess a loft might be a bit too variable, and might be difficult to carry 5 gallons of syrupy wort up to, and 5 gallons of beer back down from. But possible I suppose.
 
Marvt74 said:
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?
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No it does need to be watched to be honest as times need to be fairly specific and you will need 6+ hours to do it.
It depends how much you drink, but recipes you find online unless stated otherwise are for 40 pints. we typically try and make 1-2 beers a week but we have 4 barrels and bottles.

When you say bung in the loft what exactly do you mean what parts? I would not want to put say a 40 pint brew in the loft. :D:D
 
Hmmm good points. Perhaps i should try and start with a smaller kit style thing until i move somewhere which gives me more space! Having looked at the kit SB posted the link to i reckon i could get away with storing it in the boiler cupboard in the utility...might just need to relocate the hoover and mop bucket!

Can you make decent beers with the kits? I'm thinking more along the lines of very hoppy IPA style beers as to buy them in shops they always seem pretty expensive.
 
Marvt74 said:
Hmmm good points. Perhaps i should try and start with a smaller kit style thing until i move somewhere which gives me more space! Having looked at the kit SB posted the link to i reckon i could get away with storing it in the boiler cupboard in the utility...might just need to relocate the hoover and mop bucket!

Can you make decent beers with the kits? I'm thinking more along the lines of very hoppy IPA style beers as to buy them in shops they always seem pretty expensive.
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Who needs a hoover and mop bucket? meh chuck em out, hey presto you have beer store. We have yet to find a really good hoppy kit beer. But you could start with the basic kit. and get a boiler later I tell you what let me just sort out I will take a pic of all kit for AG and you can see an idea for scale and size. :)
 
Well, I think you could potentially take some of the wort from a kit (say a gallon of it or so) and boil some hops in it (the longer it's boiled the more bitterness, but the less flavour/aroma). Or you could dry hop it later in fermentation.
We've generally liked the Brupaks Pride of Yorkshire kits...
http://www.brupaks.com/beerkits2.html
They include a teabag of hop pellets that you steep in hot water for 15 minutes(ish), and then add this hoppy water to the wort to add in a bit of fresher hop aroma.
 
Yeah, we were very pleased to get enough to do a couple of brews. While it's still only been in the fermenter less than a week, we did try half a pint of our first green hopped beer to see. Well, we didn't want to do a second brew if the recipe was totally nasty now, did we. :p
 
I received 2 packs of hops and some yeast yesterday. Just need to sort out some malt and a hose pipe and I can get a brew on; it'll be the first time I've brewed for ages!
 
we've been donated an old, and rather grubby, lab stir plate. Thank you very much to the donor. It was extremely kind, and totally uncalled and un-asked for. But thank you. We will try to put it to good (or from a certain point of view - bad) use.

So we have boiled 250-300ml of dry light malt extract in a flask with a stirbar. We've had it stirring for a few hours with the dregs of a bottle conditioned beer.
I've turned it off for the night for safety. Given it a bit swirl with the stirbar just now before going to sleep.
Will step up to a 1l flask tomorrow. Fingers crossed we should end up with billions more yeast than we started with. Hopefully enough to pitch a full 5gal brew.

Edit/ Got the Yeast book, amd that talks about scaling at a factor of 10!. Doubling to factor of 4-5 seems to me that yeast should outnumber any other nasties to a reasonable extent. Beyond that I'd be too worried about the domestic envionment that we're working in. It's a kitchen, not a lab after all.
 
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336 Black Ipa

Well the Kit brewers thread has been busy but what about you guys ? any new brews ? Well Saturday the Sun was out.. so time to brew. This might just be ready for Easter.

4.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.5 EBC) Grain 4 63.5 %
1.00 kg Golden Promise Pale Ale Malt (5.0 EBC) Grain 5 15.9 %
0.50 kg Rauch Malt (5.0 EBC) Grain 6 7.9 %
0.80 kg Carafa III (1400.0 EBC) Grain 14 12.7 % (cold step end of sparge)

15g US-05 yeast

Mash In 66.0 C 60 min (0.5c off on mash)

First Wort Hops
40.00 g Chinook [13.40 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 7 51.3 IBUs

Boil Hops
85.00 g Ahtanum [5.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 7.7 IBUs
43.00 g Nelson Sauvin [11.20 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 11 9.2 IBUs

Steeped Hops
68.00 g Simcoe [14.20 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 10.0 min Hop 12 15.2 IBUs

Dry Hops
100.00 g Amarillo [8.90 %] - Dry Hop 4.0 Days Hop 15 0.0 IBUs

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Sorry scrap the beer just a moment! What's THAT! *points at device. It looks cool also have you set your pi up as a brew monitor explain explain.
We have really got into bottling our beers now we are knocking on 200 bottles! We have a strong bitter conditioning for Christmas. :) :)
 
Nice. How much did the BrewPi setup cost you? I've thought about one in the past and although it's awesome most of the beers I make are IPAs with quite forgiving yeasts in terms of temperature control.
 
We have a strong bitter conditioning for Christmas
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I dont have the patience for 200 bottles !
Its a shame cornelius kegs are not cheaper I would brew more beer. Xmas beer already brewed :eek:, have you two planted more hops this year?

The device is a arduino + shield that connects to the pi.
He no longer makes the Brew PI Shield, Hes working on a spark core that does full mash and boil control like a brumister/grainfather. (and all things shield did to). Things i don't have + cant afford, maybe one day when i dont rent !

How much did the BrewPi setup cost you
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Tall Fridge was £60 of ebay (used as normal fridge between brews), and parts were probably about £60 its nice but you can do it for 1/3 cost with a stc1000 and a half height fridge, thats how my bodged kegerator does it (I will post guide + pics on how not to make one later ;P )

The area it really shines is diacetyl rest with lager, wheat beer yeast etc, crash cooling is handy and if you missed the fermentation temp when after cooling from boil it can drop 8-10 c in a hour ready to pitch !

tell us about the shiny kit!
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The rest of shiny kit i got from guy who runs homebrewbuilder.co.uk he lives 5 mins from me in bristol and i was lucky he gave me silly good price on pots as they where his old ones that he made into a make shift BBQ/ left in the garden! But they cleaned up really well with some hard work and PBW, and have been adding bits ever since like a magpie !

I'm working towards a Raspberry Pi Hat that does simple one wire probes uses rj45 and drives 2 SSRs. Its a long way off and I only have a bash script working reading values atm, it will be like the old brew pi shield but should work with new pi screen whens its out.
 
Squid said:
I dont have the patience for 200 bottles !
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It helps that there are both of us. And we didn't just suddenly bottle that many brews. But we have started bottling more over the last 6 months particularly, with the idea that it gives us more range (we did our Christmas + New Year brew on New Years Day, and wouldn't want that tying up a barrel for a year) as we can bottle brews that we might only want more occasionally, or more special brews that we'll want over a longer period of time.
Oh, and a bench capper makes it much, much easier too.
 
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