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.
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.
