This is a custom brew to experiment with some dried elderflowers. We had bought a pack of dried elderflowers on eBay and were looking for a recipe to use them in. The recipe was posted in a thread on Jim's Beer Kit forums.
The elderflowers cost £3 delivered for 100g from the seller geordie256.
This has been brewed for a family wedding and was originally called Under The Thumb.
One thing we noticed was that some of the elderflower bits got through the hop filter and additional sieve and have ended up in the bottle. At least it shows that it's got elderflowers in it! If we were to brew it again we'd probably use a muslin filter rather than the sieve when transferring from the boiler in to the FV.
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 4360g
- Pale Crystal Malt, 250g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
Hops & Copper Finings
- First Gold, 13g pre boil
- First Gold, 13g for 90mins
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 20mins
- First Gold, 7g for last 10mins
- Dried Elderflowers, 40g for last 10mins
- First Gold, 6g for last 5mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 20th March 2010
- Transfered to Secondary: Didn't transfer this one, direct from primary to bottling
- Bottled: 5th April 2010 (21 litres)
- Yeast: Safale US-05
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 67°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.042 / 1.050
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.011 / 1.006
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 4.1% / 5.9%
- EBU/EBC: 21/11
- Priming: 80g granulated sugar boiled in 250ml of wort and added to bottling bucket
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
The customary shot of the grains and salts awaiting the mash:
The first runnings from the mash tun. We seemed to miss the pre-boil volume by about a litre, which explains why the OG was higher than we expected, and why the ABV was a lot stronger than planned:
This was another brew where we mashed-out on a Saturday evening, wrapped the wort up overnight and started the boil first thing on the Sunday morning.
The hops and dried elderflowers, ready to go:
The start of the boil with the pre-boil and 90minute hops added:
Finally the post-boil gravity. Way higher than we expected, but that's down to missing the pre-boil volume from the mash tun.
We didn't take any more pictures for some reason.
Here's the label that we put together for this brew:
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
This is a brew of the Hop Back Brewery Entire Stout. The recipe has been taken (and ammended) from the Hop and Grain online recipe database. The original recipe can be found in their Stout section.
The recipe has had the Black Malt and Carafa Special 3* added. The Black Malt was originally added to bring the colour up to 170EBC, but then we found the small bag of CS3 in the box and chucked that in too. This brought the colour up to 192EBC.
* A note on the Carafa Special 3 from the Hop and Grape brew shop website
Adds aroma. colour & body, with a milder, smoother flavour than achieved with husk-on. For use in Dark Beer; Salvator Bockbier; Stouts; Porters; Alt beer; Bockbier; Schwarzbier. Max. 5% 1200 E.B.C.
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 3840g
- Chocolate Malt, 160g
- Roasted Barley, 160g
- Crystal Malt, 160g
- Black Malt, 90g
- Carafa Special 3, 45g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
Hops & Copper Finings
- Challenger, 30g for 90mins
- East Kent Goldings, 20g for last 15mins
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 20th January 2010
- Transfered to Secondary: 28th February 2010
- Bottled: 10th March 2010 (~23 litres)
- Yeast: Safale S-04
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 66°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.043 / 1.041
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.013 / 1.011
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 3.9% / 4%
- EBU/EBC: 33/192
- Priming: None
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
The grain, Pale Malt underneath then from the top, clockwise: Dark Malt, Crystal Malt, Roasted Barley, Carafa Special 3 and Chocolate Malt. The Gypsum and Epsom Salts are in the middle.
The mash - it was looking dark from the offset:
Very dark indeed:
The mash was done in the evening, drained out and the wort was left overnight before starting the boil. It was wrapped in the red insulation jacket and amazingly it was still at 54°C over 12 hours later.
Here are the hops waiting while the wort comes up to the boil - Challenger on the left and the EKG on the right - the Challengers go in for the full boil:
Post boil gravity not too far off the target:
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
We thought we'd try something different and try a honey beer.
The recipe for this honey beer is taken from The Home Brew Forums. You have to be a member to log in to their recipes area. The recipe is called BuzzBee Bitter and was created by eskimobob. We have pretty much followed that recipe. The recipe was originally for 19 litres, so we've converted the amounts slightly to match our 23 litre brew length.
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 3270g
- Chocolate Malt, 120g
- Honey*, 1089g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
* The comment regarding the honey on the original recipe is as follows:
Boil the honey separately in 1 litre of water then add straight to the fermenter on top of the cooled wort.
Hops & Copper Finings
- East Kent Goldings, 19g for last 60mins
- Fuggle, 28g for last 60mins
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 14th February 2010
- Transfered to Secondary: 22nd February 2010
- Bottled: 28th February (42 Bottles)
- Yeast: Safale S-04
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 65°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 3.2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.051 / 1.044 with honey, 1.034 without
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.014 / 1.009 (in to secondary)
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 4.9% / 4.5% (maybe)
- EBU/EBC: 26/47
- Priming: 75g granulated sugar mixed with 250ml of wort, boiled and stirred in before bottling
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
We seem to be unable to take the right photos, so there are no photos of the grain.
The 3.2:1 water:grain ratio produced a really watery mash. We're not sure how the original recipe got to its OG:
The hops awaiting their turn - EKGs on the left:
And they didn't have to wait long. The hops went in just after the chiller:
If you've ever wondered what 1.1kg of honey looks like, well here's your answer. The second picture is the honey and 1 litre of water coming up to temperature:
And here's the honey mix in the bottom of the FV waiting for the wort to be transferred from the boiler:
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
The recipe for this clone of the Sierra Nevada American Pale Ale is taken from The Home Brew Forums. You have to be a member to log in to their recipes area. The recipe was originally for 25 litres, so we've converted the amounts slightly to match our 23 litre brew length.
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 5300g
- Pale Crystal Malt, 280g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
Hops & Copper Finings
- Magnum, 15g for 90mins
- Magnum, 10g for last 30mins
- Cascade, 50g for last 15mins
- Cascade, 25g steeped for 30mins post-boil while wort cools from 80°C
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 17th January 2010
- Transfered to Secondary: 24th January 2010
- Bottled: 3rd February 2010 (44 Bottles)
- Yeast: Safale US-05
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 67°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio: 2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.054 / 1.052
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.014 / 1.011
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 5.4% / 5.3%
- EBU/EBC: 54/14
- Priming: 82g granulated sugar mixed with 250ml of wort, boiled and stirred in before bottling
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
The grain and salts waiting for the mash tun to get to strike temperature:
The eager assistant:
The customary shot of the mash tun tucked up in its jacket:
The mash tun during the run-off from the first batch:
One batch of the many hops to go in, and the steeped hops just after the chiller was turned on:
The hop debris, post drain-off; there's two heating elements in there somewhere!
With all the excitement of the 4 batches of hops, we forgot the protafloc :( It's hasn't cleared down as much as it might have done had the protafloc been remembered - as illustrated by the murky trial jar during bottling.
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
This clone of the Exe Valley Autumn Glory is taken from Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale (3rd Edition).
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 4250g
- Crystal Malt, 370g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
Hops & Copper Finings
- Fuggles, 41g for 90mins
- East Kent Goldings, 30g for 90mins
- Styrian, 23g for last 10mins
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 1st January 2010
- Transfered to Secondary: 12th January 2010
- Bottled: 16th January 2010 (40 Bottles)
- Yeast: Safale S-04
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 66°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.045 / 1.043
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.011 / 1.010
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 4.5% / 4.5%
- EBU/EBC: 42/21
- Priming: 80g granulated sugar mixed with 250ml of wort, boiled and stirred in before bottling
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
For some reason we didn't take many photos of this brew.
The mash tun all tucked up in its blanket:
Preparing the hops:
The contents of the boiler during the transfer to the FV:
We bottled it after 13 days. Here's our Exe Valley Autumn Glory on the left (after 10 days in the bottle) and a glass of our Timothy Taylor Landlord on the right:
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
This clone of the Timothy Taylor Landlord was our first attempt at all grain brewing. The recipe itself is taken from Graham Wheeler's Brew Your Own British Real Ale (3rd Edition).
Grain & Fermentables
- Pale Malt, 4250g
- Black Malt, 30g
- Gypsum, 1tsp
- Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp
Hops & Copper Finings
- East Kent Goldings, 25g for 90mins
- Styrian Goldings, 30g for 90mins
- Styrian Goldings, 20g last 10mins
- Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins
Brew Details
- Brew Day: 13th December 2009
- Transfered to Secondary: 20th December 2010
- Bottled: 24th December 2009 (45 Bottles)
- Yeast: Safale S-04
- Brew Length: 23 litres
- Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 66°C
- Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 2:1
- Boil Time: 90 minutes
- OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.042 / 1.040
- FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.010 / 1.010
- ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 4.5% / 4%
- EBU/EBC: 35/20
- Priming: 85g granulated sugar mixed with 250ml of wort, boiled and stirred in before bottling
We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe. Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.
Pictures
The Mash after 90 minutes:
The first runnings after the 1st batch top-up:
The remains of the mash/grain:
In go the hops:
The boiler and me doing our thing:
The transfer from the boiler to the FV. Only a few bits of hop debris get through, but the sieve catches all the bits.
The trub in the FV after transfer in to a secondary vessel at 7 days:
In to the bottle after 11 days, and pintage three weeks later :)
The Styrian and EKG hop aromas comes through nicely. Unfortunately some of the trub got picked up by the syphon so there's a little more sediment in the bottles than we'd hoped.
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
A wort chiller is used to cool the boiled wort from boiling, down to about 30°C so that the yeast can be pitched. The quick chilling of the wort causes the "cold break" (the "hot break" coming during the boiling phase).
Ours is an twin-coil immersion chiller, which means it sits in the boiler and cold water is pased through the copper pipe, cooling the wort in which the chiller is sat.
Our garden hose is connected to the blue valve and cold water is passed in through the blue valve. The pipe splits to feed the bottom of both the inner and outer coil. The cold water then flows up through both coils and passes out through the red valves (to which lengths of hose are also attached). The valves allow the inner and outer coils to be isolated, but in reality we always have both coils open.
The outer coil is 25cm in diameter and is 16 rotations. The inner coil is 17cm and 14 rotations.
Here's the two coils in construction - just before the cold feed was added to the inner coil.
On a brew day the chiller has a spray of disinfectant spray, a scrub and a good rinse with warm and cold water in the shower before it goes in to the boiler for the last hour to sanitise the chiller.
Once the boil is complete the elements are switched off and the cold inlet is opened on the chiller. The chiller cools from boiling to 30°C in about 10-15 minutes. Then out it comes - all covered in hops.
There's not much more to say really other than to list the various plumbling hardware that have been used to create it, and the basic construction approach.
- 10mm copper microbore - this is by far the bulk of the financial expense. I got 25m for £45 from Screwfix and used 19m in total.
- 15mm copper pipe - about 2 metres to provide the vertical and horizontol pipework.
- 2mm x 20mm x 3m aluminium for the spacer stand and the horizontal bracing. The outer spacer is 40cm high and the inner is 35cm.
- 4 x 15mm to 10mm reducers
- 5 x 15mm elbows
- 1 x 15mm equal tee
- 3 x 1/2" or 3/4" washing machine values
- 3 x hose connectors - these and these
- Some hose
- Various M3 nuts and bolts for the bracing some pipe clips to hold the upright pipework to the coil.
Tools: Pipe cutter, spanners/mole wrenches, files of various sizes, drill and bits.
We used compression plumbing fitttings as this is what we were comfortable using. Solder would have been neater and cheaper, but we didn't have the tools or the experience to do the soldering.
We built the outer coil to stand above our kettle elements in our boiler and within the hop filter, so you'll need to decide what height and diameters you want to go with. The top of our outer coil is slightly higher than the 32 litres of wort in the boiler, so in hindsight we could have had one less rotation on the outer coil.
The holes in the spacers are drilled at 20mm intervals, meaning the gap is 10mm, so this will allow you to work out the total number of rotations you require in order to achieve your desired coil height. Ours are 16 on the outer and 14 on the inner.
Our tip is to roll the microbore around something solid which is the same diameter as you want. You'll want at least half a rotation extra to allow some margin of error when connecting everything up.
When you mark out the series of holes on the spacers remember to make the holes on the second and third spacers progressively higher to allow the coil to rise :) About 7mm higher in our case as the hole interval is 20mm: 20/3 = ~7mm. So the first spacer has holes at 7cm, 9cm, 11cm etc, the second spacer at 7.7cm, 9.7cm etc and the third spacer at 8.4cm, 10.4cm etc. The holes are 10mm in diameter, but (in hindsight) if you can find one go for 10.5mm or 11mm as the microbore isn't always 10mm - which is why it took us so long to thread the spacers on to the coils!
When you thread the spacers on make sure you put the third spacer (with the highest series of holes), i.e. the highest hole is threaded on the bottom of the coil first. My brain hurts if I think about this too much - you'll figure it out ;)
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
Our boiler is made from a six gallon plastic bucket that we picked up from our now defunct local home brew shop. The bucket had been used for storing grain so was only a few quid.
The boiler is fitted with two Asda SmartPrice kettle elements, each costing about £5. According to the hand book, the elements are 2.2kW. Two of these will boil 25 litres of tap water in a little over 30 minutes, and one of them will hold a rolling boil after that.
It appears that only cheap kettles have accessible elements these days. Spend over £10 and you get a hidden/enclosed element which is no good here.Sub £5 kettles from Tesco and Argos are also suitable, although we know that the pins on a Wilkinson's cheap kettle are too short to take a 3-pin kettle lead.
The kettles came apart pretty easily, unfortunately we didn't take any photos of this process, but if you see a screw it's a fair bet it will need removing :) From the kettle we also kept the rubber grommit that forms the water tight seal between the inside and outside of the kettle (and now boiler).
The elements each need a 38mm hole, in to which the rubber grommit snuggly fits. The inside and outside parts of the element simply screw together either side of the bucket's wall, and it's pretty much done.
We also removed the switching mechanism (the lever and metal plate), but kept the boil dry plate and the LED power light. This means that when the element is plugged in and power is supplied, the element is on - the LED giving a visual indication of this. Note the element is actually mounted upside down to how it is in the kettle. This is to provide clearance over the base of the bucket and the hop strainer (covered later).
This image shows one of the elements from the outside. The other element is fitted on the opposite side of the bucket. Some people mount their elements 120° apart, i.e. at 4 O'Clock and 8 O'Clock as this apparently gives a better rolling boil when both elements are on. Given that one of these elements will give a good rolling boil to 30 litres of wort, our elements are mounted on opposite sides, 180° apart, i.e. at 3 O'Clock and 9 O'Clock.
The elements need three-pin kettle leads. Each element draws around 10 amps, so the leads need to be rated to 13 amps, have 13 amp fuses in the plug and should be rated for high temperature. These high temperature leads have a little notch taken out of the connector between the two top pins. Our kitchen and downstairs are on separate ring mains, so each element is plugged in to a different ring main to reduce the load on a single ring. We also have an RCD device for each plug.
Liquid and electricity really do not mix and coupled with large volumes of boiling liquid can create a very dangerous environment. We would always strongly recommend you seek advice if you are unsure about any aspect of plumbing or electricals, and always take care when lifting any volume of hot liquids.
Unlike on our mash tun, the ball valve couldn't be mounted directly on to the bucket, so there's a tank connecter plus a 1/2" rubber washer on the inside of the bucket, with a plastic washer and the back nut on the outside. The tank connecter required a 20mm hole to be drilled in the bucket. On to the tank connecter thread is a 1/2" tap connector from Wickes. We fitted a short length of 15mm copper pipe via the compression fitting on the 1/2" ball valve from Screwfix (as used in the mash tun). This 15mm pipe then pushes into the pushfit side of the tap connecter. This rather convoluted approach is shown below.
The advatage of this valve set up is that it can be really quickly and easily taken apart for cleaning and storage, without having to remove the tank connector from the boiler.
The final part of the boiler is the hop strainer. This acts as a filter to catch the hop debris after the boil and stops the debris entering the fermentation vessel (FV). The filter stays in the boiler all the time.
The filter is a length of 21mm stainless steel braided wire, which is filled with 15mm lengths of 15mm copper pipe. The braided wire is the same length as the internal circumference of the base of the bucket. Either end of the wire then wraps over each side of a 15mm push fit copper tee, forming a circle. This has proven to be a good fit, both in terms of the wire around the tee and the wire around the bottom of the boiler. We initially had some jubilee clips to hold the wire, but they seemed unnecessary. A final piece of 15mm pipe goes on to the remaining tee connector, and that then slots in to the tank connector on the inside of the boiler.
The hop filter is pretty good, but we still pass the wort through a normal kitchen sieve, just to catch the teeny-tiny bits that get through. They would probably settle out in the FV, but we've never tried it without the sieve. There isn't really that much in the sieve at the end of the transfer to the FV.
Cleaning the filter is a bit of a faff, but the braided wire simply pulls off the tee and the individual pieces of copper pipe fall out and can be rinsed. The wire then needs rinsing and the bits of hops removing from the wire.
And here is the outside of the finished boiler, complete with a hand-crafted volume gauge.
We use this twin element boiler as our Hot Liquor Tun (HLT) as well, so use it to heat our initial mash water, top-up water and second batch water. We also have a 4 gallon bucket with a single element, configured as above minus the strainer, which we use to reheat and hold the mash water for the second batch.
Just to reiterate, liquid and electricity really do not mix and coupled with large volumes of boiling liquid can create a very dangerous environment. We would always strongly recommend you seek advice if you are unsure about any aspect of plumbing or electricals, and always take care when lifting any volume of hot liquids.
More pictures here.
Dave & Suki.
