Bell's Beer Home Brew Blog

Bottled the Eastern Ale

2008-09-19T14:31:00.000+01:00

The weekend before last I finally got round to bottling the Woodforde's Eastern Ale. I didn't realise I hadn't blogged the bottling until someone added a comment asking how it went, so here are the details...

Before statring anything I took a gravity reading, and confirmed the reading hadn't shifted from its 1.010 position a few days ago, so the bottling was good to go... I measured out the 60 grams (I think) of sugar and mixed it with a small amount of freshly boiled hot water in a jug. I then microwaved the jug to get it back to boiling and then placed the jug in the fridge to cool down asap.

I decided to use the dishwasher to prepare my bottles again. I think the lazy patr of me is prepared to keep doing this until it goes wrong... Although some of the bottles were quite old, I decided that I would first fill each bottle with boiling water and leave it for 15 minutes. If after a quick shake and rinse, the bottle still looked dirty to the eye, the bottle was put in the recycling. If it looked clean, I put it in the dishwasher. I eventually ended up with 48 (hopefully) clean bottles).

I soaked the tube, and bottle tops in hot water with sanitizing powder, and rinsed them ready to go. Once the sugar was cool, I gently mixed it into the beer and left it for another 20 minutes. I laid out the caps, capper, the labels I had prepared, and some milk along with the pastry brush and I was set.

I connected the tube up and started to fill the first bottle. The process flowed nicely, and here are a few action shots:

Less than an hour later, I had 43 bottles of beer ready to put in the 'Brewery'.

I am looking forward to this one. I have wanted to do a nice summer ale for ages. In fact this was supposed to be for this summer, but my enforced absence from brewing means it might now turn out to be a relaxing Xmas ale ;-)

Woodforde's Eastern Ale down to 1.010

2008-09-02T18:40:00.000+01:00

I am intending to bottle the Woodforde's Easterne Ale this coming weekend, so I thought I would check how its doing...

I took this reading to be 1.010, which I think is as low as I have had a beer go, so I am very pleased. This is the first summer time brewing I have done, so I suspect that explains this success. I will check on the brew again later in the week, and then before bottling - probably on Saturday.

Eastern Ale fermenting well, perhaps too well...

2008-08-24T17:08:00.000+01:00

After cleaning the brewing bucket and lid yesterday, I had mishaped the lid by forcing it inside the bucket while it soaked. I therefore snapped the lid on tight with the intention of releasing it after an hour or so, once it had gone back into shape. However, one day later I realised I had forgotten when I opened the brewery door. There was a strong smell of beer, and I was surprised to find the towel I still throw over the bucket was soaked, as was the floor around the bucket. I don't know how much the closed lid was to blame, but it had definitely overflowed.

I'm afraid there isn't much mess to see in the photo (not least as I had done most of the clearing up before thinking to take a picture). However, you can see that the beer has an amazing head on it, which I know is from the fermentation as the original head had gone by the time I finally got the temperature down yesterday and pitched the yeast. This is definitely the first time I have had a fermenting head as big as this, perhaps because of the warmer temperature of the wort.

Hopefully the beer hasn't been contaminated from the spill, and judging by the head, it shouldn't be too long before the beer is ready for bottling. This was supposed to be my summer tipple, so it would be nice if it was drinkable before all trace of summer has gone.

Tasting the Forest Bitter

2008-08-23T16:12:00.000+01:00

Partly as a reward for kicking off the Eastern Ale, and partly to test out the brew before using it in a beef burger recipe tonight, I have just popped open a Forest Bitter.

I am very pleased with how this brew has matured. Checking the label, it is now just over 3 months since it was bottled. Sadly it has very little head, and zero head retention. However, it does actually have enough fizz. Its got a very matured taste, which as always I struggle to describe but I would say it is a wissened old beer. It also leaves a different but pleasant aftertaste on the pallet.

It is going to be absolutely perfect for my beef burger recipe I think, so I better get in the kitchen and churn out some burgers while I finish my pint :-)

Woodforde's Eastern Ale - Brewing again at last

2008-08-23T15:53:00.001+01:00

At last, after a long long break, I am brewing again. After finally getting the credit card company to get my money back from EasyBrew after filling in a bunch of forms, what should arrive through the post - the Woodforde's Great Eastern Ale pack...

Anyway, onto the brewing. I filled the brewing bucket with hot water and sanitizing powder and left it to soak for about an hour. I rinsed it out, and found despite my scrubbing, there were still a few subtle signs of the previous brew around the top - hopefully this will be ok.

I put the two tins into the washing up bowl and poured a little boiling water over them to loosen the contents.

I then poured the two tins into the cleaned bucket and added two full kettles of boiling water - about 3.5 litres. I filled the rest of the bucket with cold water, again dropping the water in from a great height to mix in as much air as possible. I don't recall a brew ever having such a big head at this stage before...

Unfortunately I did not learn from my previous mistakes and filled it right up to the fill level before checking the temperature. The instructions didn't mention temperature at all, but I knew better and should have checked earlier. Sadly the temperature was around 28 degrees C - far to warm to pitch the yeast. It took me a good 30 minutes of mixing, and sitting the bucket in cold water (and eventually ice) to bring it down to around 22/23 degrees.

I finally added the yeast (hopefully this isn't too warm still) and gave it all a good stir. I was surprised to see the yeast all dissolved very well (after initially appearing to almost congeal on the surface).

I placed the top on the bucket and tucked it away in the brewery for a week or so. I will check on it carefully over the next couple of days to confirm that all is well. I have been waiting for this brew for a long time so hopefully it will be worth the wait.

Sorry for the enforced break

2008-07-03T10:32:00.000+01:00

Hi folks,

Sorry to those of you who regularly check out my blog - I have not done any brewing recently, though not out of choice. I'm afraid the fault lies squarely at easybrew.co.uk. To cut a long story short, I spoke to them about possible affiliate links through my site, and after promising initial talks, I though I ought to order through them myself to see what they were like to deal with

I placed two separate orders, for Fruit beer kits and for Woodford's Eastern Ale. Despite the money being taken straight away, I received e-mails for both orders saying they were out of stock and it would take 10-14 days. I accepted this was fair enough really, and decided I could wait a couple of weeks, but after 3 weeks I had heard nothing, so e-mailed them, and was told the orders would be another 10 days. After this time I gave up and e-mailed back (as instructed) to request the orders be cancelled and my money refunded - I have since heard nothing.

I am not impressed. I am currently out of pocket, and my beer supply is dwindling. I will soon be back to the local home brew shop I think.

Tasting the Forest Bitter

2008-05-26T21:19:00.000+01:00

It has been about a week since I bottled the Sherwood's Forest Bitter. I decided to give one a go to see how it is progressing.

As you can see, there isn't much head at the moment. It is also not very fizzy currently, which may be a good thing as it is also very sweet. Hopefully some of the sweetness will go as the sugar is converted to CO2.

I am not especially good at describing beers. It has a very similar smell to the wort at the moment. The taste is definitely very green. That said, it is not at all unpleasant, just a little sweet. Under the sweetness it has a very smooth, malty taste, with a nice bitter after taste.

All in all, I'm pretty happy, I just really hope the sweetness subsides. The final gravity of the brew was 1.013, which was a little above the target, again, so Im not that confident all the sweetness will go. Time will tell.

Getting the Rose Racked

2008-05-25T21:16:00.001+01:00

I had intended to rack the rose last weekend at the same time as the plum. However, I somehow didn't get round to it (nothing to do with buying GTA 4 I might add ;-) ) I also meant to rack it yesterday, but somehow didn't get round to it, so I was determined that I would do it today. The bubbles had stopped coming through the airlock now.

Once again I sanitised the demijohn, airlock, gromit and syphon. While I did this, I took a gravity reading just to confirm fermentation was finished. The target was 0.990 to 0.996 for a rose.

I took the reading at 0.995, inside target.

I emptied the contents of the stabiliser into the empty demijohn and syphoned in the wine to mix it in.

I shook it as much as I could for the next few minutes, until the pressure stopped building up. I will repeat this as many times as possible over the next few days, before adding the finings.

Damn my lazyness

2008-05-25T21:09:00.000+01:00

24 hours after racking the plum and I had been pretty slack. I only shook the contents up once. I now did it a second time, but I should really have done it at least 6 times by now according to the instructions.

I decided to give it another shake after 48 hours, even though I was only supposed to be shaking it for 24 hours. Hopefully the wine won't turn out to be fizzy. I believe it will just take longer to clear now. We shall see. I will certainly learn my lesson if it does affect the final product.

I returned the demijohn to The Brewery where it will remain until clear.

Racking the Plum Wine

2008-05-25T19:29:00.002+01:00

It had been 3 weeks since I got the plum wine going, and the bubbles had completely stopped going through the airlock for at least a few days, so last Sunday (18th May) I decided it was time to get it racked into another demijohn and get it clearing.

The instructions for this wine do not mentioning racking, but given a lot of the sediment has already dropped out of the wine, and the next step involves shaking up the contents, it seems to make sense. I therefore sanitised the syphon, and spare demijohn, airlock and gromit. I added the contents of the stabiliser sachet to the empty demijohn, before syphoning the wine into it, once again starting it off with a quick suck.

Once all the wine had transferred, I added the sachet of plum flavouring, and the wine finings. I placed a gromit in the demijohn and shook it vigorously with my thumb over the hole, and then removed my thumb to release the pressure. I repeated this for a number of minutes until little pressure was building up. I then placed the airlock in the gromit and returned the wine to 'The Brewery', with the intention of shaking up the contents regularly over the next 24 hours.

Bottling the Sherwood's Forest Bitter

2008-05-22T18:35:00.000+01:00

Time at last to get my 4th brew bottled...

I started by taking another gravity reading. My intention was to bottle whatever the reading, given I knew it was down at 1.013 a week and a half ago, so it should have had plenty of time to finish fermenting.

As you can see, the reading is still 1.013. I was a little surprised by this, as I thought that with the warmer weather, my problems of not getting brews down to the 1.010 target would disappear, but seemingly not. I was also a little worried that this meant that the brew had been sat for at the very least one and a half weeks having finished fermenting. Given the autolysis problems with the Linthwaite Light, I am perhaps over sensitive to leaving it in the bucket, but I just hope that this brew turns out fine.

I decided to try out an alternative to the painstaking task of sterilising bottles - putting the bottles in the dishwasher. Someone suggested this to me, and given I had only just emptied the bottles of their previous contents and had thoroughly rinsed them, I felt it was worth experimenting. (Please forgive the poor quality photo - the camera is full again so its from my phone.)

So with the bottles cleaning themselves (well almost), I got my 60 grams of brewing sugar dissolved in a little boiling water and microwaved it back to the boil, before putting it in the fridge to get it cool asap. I brought the brewing bucket into the kitchen and connected up the sanitised tube and let it hang into the cleaned washing up bowl. I knocked up some labels and a saucer of milk, and sanitised the crown caps.

I took a small sample from the tap on the bucket both to taste, and to ensure the tap was clear. It came out very cloudy to start with, and didn't wow me with its flavour, but it was unpleasant, and didn't seem to show any signs of the dreaded burnt rubber taste.

As soon as the sugar had cooled I gently stirred that into the beer and left while the bottles finished. Some time later they were all clean, dry and cooled and it was time to get the conveyor belt going. Unfortunately I was being pressured for time, given I had taken over the kitchen and it was rapidly approaching meal time, so I rather rushed the job, resulting in more than a couple of overflows as I filled the bottles to quickly while I capped and labelled the previous bottle. I learnt that the only thing more annoying than overflowing a bottle of your precious beer, is having the next bottle overflow as well, while trying to quickly clear up after the previous overflow and cap and label it too.

Anyway, at last I had 43 bottles of Sherwood's Forest Bitter, and hopefully it will take after the Stout that I am currently enjoying, rather than the Light that the fish in the channel are now probably breathing in.

Binning the Linthwaite Light.

2008-05-21T17:49:00.000+01:00

With my latest brew just about ready to bottle, I decided it was finally make or break time for the Linthwaite Light. If you remember, this was the brew that I unfortunately left in the fermenting bucket for around 6 weeks before bottling, and as a result it was suffering from autolysis - where the yeast cells start to break down, leaving the associated burnt rubber smell and taste.

Tests of the brew over the few weeks following bottling showed the unpleasant flavour to be slowly reducing, though the smell was as strong and unpleasant as ever. Even with the slow subsiding of the undesirable flavour, the tastes left behind were not especially enjoyable.

Given I wasn't expecting the taste to ever become a good brew, I decided to bite the bullet and pour it all away, freeing up space in 'The Brewery' as well as bottles for my next brew. It also put an end to the constant chore of trying another bottle, only to gag on the smell, and the suffer the disappointment of tasting the beer.

So remember, get it bottled asap - don't be lazy.
Sometime in the future I will avenge these ghosts and brew a Linthwaite Light properly :-)

Another Sunday lunch, another bottle of Merlot

2008-05-20T18:32:00.000+01:00

As we sat down for Sunday lunch the Sunday before last, we decided to treat ourselves to another bottle of my Beaverdale Merlot. Thanks to the excellent idea of bottling it into half sized bottles, I feel able to dip into the supply when the occasion arises.

Once again I was very pleased with the product of my hard work. The flavour has clearly deepened a little further, and the overall finish is a little smoother and better balanced. I must make the effort to leave some bottles for a few months time, when it really will be a delight to drink.

Sherwood's Forest Bitter Gravity Check

2008-05-20T18:19:00.000+01:00

As it approached the second weekend after starting the Forest Bitter off I took a gravity reading to see whether it would likely be ready to bottle over the weekend.

The reading was 1.013, slightly short of the 1.010 target. From this I deduced that it could use a little longer fermenting, so I gave it a stir with a sanitised stirrer and left it, with the intention of bottling the following weekend instead.

First taste of John Bull Irish Stout

2008-05-20T17:53:00.000+01:00

A week last Friday, a week and a half after after bottling it, I decided to take my first taste of the John Bull Irish Stout.

It certainly looked the part, all be it without tremendous head retention. My primary concern was whether it had kept the deep, delicious coffee flavour I had so much enjoyed when I sampled some during bottling. Sadly, the answer to this was no, at least not with such depth. I would say there was a very subtle coffee undertone. That said, I certainly enjoyed my still very green pint of stout. It was very mild, most likely as a result of the extra water I added when I kicked off fermentation, but this made for a very relaxed and easy to drink stout. I rather suspect the flavours are going to grow and develop in the bottle, meaning that in a month or so, I will likely have a really enjoyable beverage - that is, if I can keep my hands off it that long :-)

Welcome to the new Bell's Beer Blog

2008-05-20T11:06:00.000+01:00

If you have made it here, you are now viewing the new Bells Beer Home Brew Blog. I have just finished moving this blog, which was not without incident, so if you spot any problems I would be really grateful if you could add a comment to the post in question to let me know. Thanks.

With the move complete, I can now get back to the process of brewing my beer and wine, and reporting on it here. I already have a number of posts backed up, so expect them to appear in the next day or so.

Thanks for reading.

Ooops, overflowing Rose

2008-05-01T19:11:00.000+01:00

I stated in my post 3 days ago, about kicking off the rose (Chablis Blush), that I made a silly mistake and filled it too high in the demijohn. I left it as it was, rather than pouring away the extra, as there was still an air gap, and it felt wrong to pour away some of what would be lovely wine in the not too distant future.

As you can see, pouring away the excess looks like it would have been a very good idea. I stupidly didn't check in on the wine until the strawberry wine needed topping up, so it may have had a couple of days like this before I realised. If I am honest, I also didn't sanitise the airlock given the wine wouldn't come in contact with that - would it ;-). All I can do now is hope that I have got away with it and the wine has not been contaminated. At least I know know you really shouldn't fill the demijohns above the 4.5 litre mark with these kits.

Topping up the Plum wine.

2008-05-01T19:00:00.000+01:00

Three days after starting the plum wine going, it was time to top it up to the full 4.5 litres. The instructions simply stated it should be 'tepid' water. I took this to mean basically the same temperature as we wanted the wine to be fermenting in, so 20-25 degrees. I tried pouring just a little boiled water in the bottom of a 1litre jug and topping up the rest with cold tap water. I measured this and found it to be about 23 degrees so I added this and another 3 jugs to take the level up to the 4.5 litre sticker. I replaced the airlock and the job was done.

Tasting the Strawberry Wine

2008-04-30T10:27:00.000+01:00

As we had some guests round on Tuesday, we opened one of the half bottles of Strawberry wine, os that the girls could have a glass each with their meal:

(Please forgive the quality of the last few images on here - my camera is still full of holiday pictures and I keep having to delete pictures to make just enough space for the odd beer blog picture. They all looked ok on the little camera screen, but I didn't have the space to take 2 or 3 like I normally would, just in case.)

After only a few days, its no surprise the wine tasted much as it did on bottling day. Its definitely not a wine lovers wine, but its sweet and tasty, though still with a very slight chemically after taste. It certainly went down very well with the girls.

Adding the hops to the Bitter

2008-04-30T10:20:00.000+01:00

So, 3 days after I kicked off the Sherwood Forest Bitter, it is time to add the bag of hops. I stupidly added them before taking a picture, but it was basically a small seal bag, about the size of a couple of postage stamps next to each other, full of what looked like a dark cat litter - mmm, nice.

I sprinkled the contents into the beer and, having poured boiling hot water over the stirrer, I stirred them in. Initially, they mostly stayed on the surface, but I'm sure I recall reading that aerating the wort during the early stages of fermentation is not a problem, so I made my best effort to stir them all off the surface. Job done. Hopefully this will add a little more flavour to the final beer.

Prior to adding the hops, I did take a gravity reading:

I took the reading as being about 1.020 - not too bad after 3 days. I will now leave it for at least another 3 or 4 days before taking another reading. I am now keen to not leave any brews for more than a few days once fermentation has stopped.

Tasting the Merlot

2008-04-27T16:11:00.000+01:00

As intented, with today's Sunday lunch, I had a glass of the Merlot that I bottled yesterday.

As you can see, it looks the part. Tastes pretty good too :-)

I am really pleased to report that this is definitely a decent quality Merlot. I'm very pleasantly surprised. It already has a complex, fairly deep flavour with a pleasant oaky after taste. There is a very very minor chemically taste right at the end, but I'm sure this will fade completely as the wine matures. If the flavour improves further it really will be a great wine.

Getting the Beaverdale Chablis Blush going

2008-04-27T16:04:00.000+01:00

My final task for the weekend was to get a second wine going. I have had this kit for quite a while now. I got it with the first lot of wine gear, so its about time I got it going.

I emptied the bag of grape juice into the demijohn and rinsed out the bag with water and poured that in too. I filled the rest of the demijohn with a mix of cold and boiled water in order to keep the temperature of the wine at about 20 degrees. I shook it well and measured the gravity to check it was fully mixed. It was about 1.080, matching the target of 1.075-1.080.

I was told this was a Rose but it looks pretty dark at the moment - I therefore ignore the "white wine only" instruction to add the Bentonite. I did add the oak chippings and then the yeast and gave the demijohn a good shake until my arms hurt. I then poured a little extra water into the demijohn to wash all the yeast and chippings that had stuck to the mouth of the demijohn into the wine. However, I got a bit carried away and filled the demijohn up a little higher than I should have done. Hopefully this won't be a problem.

I finally put the airlock in the top and placed the wine in the brewery.

Unlike the Plum, this can now be left alone for 2 to 3 weeks while fermentation completes.

Brewing up a Plum Wine

2008-04-27T13:43:00.000+01:00

After a quick taste of the recently bottled Strawberry wine suggested it would be a very pleasant summer tipple, the missus persuaded me to kick off another. She picked a plum this time. Starting it brewing began by pouring the contents of the tin of grape juice into a sanitized demijohn and adding 1.8 litres (3 pints) of cold water. I then dissolved 450g (16oz) of granulated sugar in 0.6 litres of boiling water. (I actually did this in 2 batches as I didn't have a large enough jug to do it in one), and added this to the demijohn. Finally I added the wine yeast and nutrafine sachets and shook the demijohn as vigourously as I could. I also tested the strength of the demijohn by dropping it in the sink - its pretty strong ;-) .

I finally added the airlock and placed the wine in the brewery. In 3 days I need to top up the level to the 4.5 litre mark with tepid water.

Brewing up a Sherwoods Forest Bitter

2008-04-27T13:34:00.000+01:00

After bottling the stout I took a trip to the homebrew shop while the fermentation bucket was soaking. I had intended to buy a lager style beer ready for the summer, but for no reason at all the missus pointed this box out so I figured - why not. I am keen, for now at least, to stick to two tin kits where no sugar is required.

The kit didn't take long to get going. I emptied the two tins into the bucket and added a kettle and a half of boiling water to the bucket, via the tins to rinse them out. I stirred this for some time until all the wort was dissolved. I then filled up the rest of the bucket with cold water, before checking the temperature, and then adding the yeast. This again became very lumpy, but with another really good stir they finally all broke down. I popped the top on the bucket and carried it into the brewery.

In 3 days time I will add the hops. There were two options for adding the hops - either boil it to add extra bitterness, or simply add it to the wort on day three. Given the amount of home brewing I had done by this point I went for the easy option. It will be interesting to see how this comes out, and whether it misses a bit of bite.

Bottling the Beaverdale Merlot

2008-04-27T12:18:00.000+01:00

After yet more bottle cleaning, I was ready to bottle the Merlot that had been clearing. Having had issues when syphoning the Strawberry, I bought a new syphon from the homebrew shop. I also attached an extra length of tube to the tap, so that this could be fed to the bottom of the bottle, as well as meaning the tap was no longer the last part of the syphon.

I followed the same method I used for the Strawberry, and I'm pleased to say that with the new syphon, it went very well. Again I had knocked up some labels to imprive the bottles appearance, as well as to identify the wine.

With the win bottled, corked and labelled I placed it on the rapidly filling wine shelf in the brewery. I only managed to get the equivalent of 5 full sized bottles of wine, which is one whole bottle less than i should have done. This is quite a hit on such a small amount of wine. I did actually get a further quarter of a bottle, which I am looking forward to having with my Sunday lunch today :-)

Bottling the John Bull Masterclass Irish Stout

2008-04-27T12:05:00.000+01:00

The next task for the weekend was getting the Stout bottled. Having got the laborious job of cleaning all the bottles done, I added 60 grams of sugar to some freshly boiled water and stirred it until it was dissolved. I went for 60 in the hope it would come out a little less fizzed than my previous brews as I thought this would better suit a stout. I then very gently mixed this into the stout, and left it to settle.

While I left the beer to allow the sediment to settle down again, I set about knocking up some quick labels. I was happy to keep them fairly similar to previous ones:

Once these had been designed, printed and cut down to size, I was ready to bottle. I went for the same setup as I had done previously, with the beer on the kitchen side and a tube attached to the tap, bottles lined up along side the capper and caps, labels, milk and a brush. The process went very smoothly, leaving me with 45 bottled John Bull Masterclass Irish Stouts.

After filling the last bottle, I filled a small glass with the dregs. Even flat, and a fraction cloudy, this smelt and tasted wonderful. It had a delicious deep coffee flavour. If the final brew tastes as good as this glass, this will be an awesome beer.

Bottling the Strawberry Wine

2008-04-26T15:07:00.000+01:00

At last I finally had a free weekend, so I had lots of brew related stuff to do. I started by bottling the Strawberry wine which has been clearing for about a month. I had already knocked up some labels:

As it had been my girlfriend who had wanted me to brew this wine, I decided she could take pride of place on the label.

So, back to the bottling. I soaked 3 full sized wine bottles, 6 half sized bottles and 3 third sized bottles in sanitising solution. I shouldn't need them all, but i wanted to be prepared just in case. I rinsed these, lifted the demijohn onto the kitchen side and inserted the syphon. The syphon had a tap at the end, and I didn't have any tubing to put on the end of this and insert into the bottles, so I decided I would just insert the end of the tap in the bottle and hold it on the edge to minimise bubbles. I started the syphon with a quick suck, and we were off.

The first bottled filled without any problems at all. I had previously purchased a corker, but this would be the first time I used it, so wasn't sure how easy it would be.

I had already placed some corks in a bowl of warm water to soften, so I inserted one of these into the corker, placed the pincers over the top of the bottle, and squeezed the handles. Effortlessly the cork went into the bottle. Easy :-)

I continued with the next two bottles without any problems. However, the forth bottle wouldn't fill. The syphon stopped sucking wine through, and even another suck on the end of the tube couldn't get it going again. This was a real pain given I was dealing with such a small amount of wine (compared to the beer) and I really didnt want to damage over half the batch. I decided to remove the tap and see if it would come through better. It did, but too quickly now. It raced into the bottle filling a full-sized in a couple of seconds. I tried to stem the flow by squeezing the tube, but this just increased the speed the wine came out at, so I grabbed the next bottle and filled that. I continued until the wine dropped below the level of the syphon in the demijohn. All of the wine filled without the tap was massively aerated of course. I'm really hoping this doesn't adversely affect the wine too much. I had a taste of the wine that was syphoned without problems and it tasted great. It wasn't a very strong strawberry taste, but it was a lovely subtle and light rose style wine. It would be horrible if half the batch was ruined. I did taste some from the aerated batch, and this too tasted ok so fingers crossed. When I tried to lower the syphon in the demijohn to bottle the last bit I only succeeded in disturbing all the sediment, so I called it a day with the equivalent of 5 full bottles filled.

Having corkered all the bottled I then attached the labels and placed the bottles on the wine shelf (well it is now) in the brewery.

Tasting the IPA

2008-04-23T09:00:00.000+01:00

My first brew has now had over two months in the bottle. After throwing away the Light as detailed in the post below, I decided to see how the IPA is now. I opened one of the beers bottled in the cheap lager bottles (and my initial suspicions with these bottles is that they don't develop the flavour quite as well as the thicker bottles, but its too earlier to tell really - and Im not sure if there could be any logical reason for this). The initial sweetness had mellowed nicely, so while still a little sweet, it is no longer overly so. It is definitely a refreshing summer beer. There is a noticeable subtle taste that reflects the fine flavour Phil's IPA produced, but mine doesn't have the depth or breadth of flavours he produced from the same kit.

Overall, I'm not too disappointed with this brew. I was my first brew, it suffered from major temperature problems because of the heating issues in my house, and it has still produced something pleasant and drinkable.

The real test will be of the stout that I will hopefully bottle at the weekend - another brew where Phil and I have done the exact same brew. If this one doesn't turn out similar to Phil's, I will start playing around with my brewing, warm week and maturing temperatures to see if I can improve the final product.

Tasting the Linthwaite Light

2008-04-23T08:52:00.000+01:00

Oh dear :-( Phil and I cracked open the first 2 bottles of the 3 week old Linthwaite Light. It is not good. I find it hard to describe it, other than to say it had a very cheap beer taste and smell. There was a, perhaps yeasty, taste that hits you almost before its even in your mouth and then very little else after that. Phil politely finished his pint, but I ended up chucking mine down the sink. It doesn't really have much of a green taste so Im not even that hopeful tat it will improve dramatically with age, but I shall leave it well alone now for probably another month and see if anything good comes of it. (My judgement probably wasn't helped by having just finished a bottle of Phil's Colne Valley which was really good, and having just returned from a trip to Brussels and all the fine beer that comes with that.)

[edited]

I forgot to mention that this was the brew that spent 6 weeks in the fermenter - I don't know if this could be part of the problem with this brew.

Checking for movement on the Stout

2008-04-14T08:12:00.000+01:00

Having got back from a weekend away, I decided to do a quick check on the Stout, to check that the gravity was still falling:

Disappointedly, I took this to be another reading of 1.013 meaning no more movement. I know Phil got down to 1.012 and ideally I'd like to be a fraction lower, therefore I gave the brew a gentle stir for a minute and will give it another reading in a couple of days.

I did take a bit of a risk with the stirrer - given it never fits in the sink properly anyway, and Im never convinced the kitchen sink is likely to be bacteria free, I opted to carefully pour a full kettle of boiling water over the stirrer, rather than soaking it in sanitising solution. I hope this will be fine.

I did note that the Stout already had a very strong smell. Given my poor sense of smell I couldn't put my finger on what it was - though it wasn't particularly unpleasant. My missus could smell if from the next room within 30 seconds of me taking the top of the bucket it was so strong. There was also a slight but noticeable greasy residue on the surface of part of the beer. Hopefully this is nothing untoward.

Checking on the John Bull Stout

2008-04-09T14:07:00.000+01:00

I recently did some research into whether the 6 weeks that my previous brew spent in the fermenting bucket was too long (mostly on Jims Beer Forum - see my blogroll). It is clear that while modern yeast should be fine for up to a couple of months all being well, its certainly not advisable. I'm therefore keen to bottle my brews from now on as soon as they are finished fermenting. Therefore after a week and a half I wanted to take a look how the stout is doing:

I measured the gravity at 1.013. I didn't take an original gravity reading as I was kicking it off in a rush, but this seems pretty close already to where it needs to be. I know Phil (see my blog roll) recently bottled this same brew at 1.012. (We had a first taste of it yesterday and despite tasting a little green still, its already good after just a month.)

I will take another reading of my stout sometime in the near future , and if it hasn't moved further I will give it a gentle stir and the bottle once it is definitely not moving any further.

Kicking off the John Bull Masterclass Irish Stout

2008-03-30T20:49:00.000+01:00

Having finally bottled the Light, I can get this Stout going. I wanted to do a stout to start giving me a real choice of ale types in the future. I chose this one as I read that it was the closest stout kit to Guinness. I doubt it will come out anything like it, but much to the missus's annoyance, I still went for this over the Chocolate Stout (She doesn't even like stout, but it has the word Chocolate in the name ;-) ). Phil (see my blogroll) has just bottled his attempt at the same brew, so it will be interesting to see how ours compare.

As soon as I finished bottling the Light I emptied the bucket, scrubbed off the obvious dirt and then filled it with sanitising solution. After rinsing it out with cold water I poured in the wort from the tin and added two 1.7 litre kettles of hot water to it (which now that I do the maths is considerably more than the 2.5 litres I was supposed to add, but I can't imagine that matters greatly.) I also used a little of the hot water to rinse out the tin as best I could without making a complete mess. With freshly boiled water, it dissolved fairly quickly. I then went about filling up the rest of the bucket with cold water. I did this by continually filling a jug with water from the tap on the assumption that this brew, like the others, requires the wort to be aerated well. This aerates the water as it fills the jug, and then I also poured the water in quickly and from a height.

When the bucket was almost full, I measured the temperature to check it was between 21 and 16 degrees as instructed. It was 20 degrees, so I continued filling it with cold water. However, I did slightly overfill it, but hopefully this won't dilute the stout too much, and also, hopefully it won't foam over the side during the initial fermentation. I followed the extremely brief instructions by sprinkling the yeast on top and stirring it in. I was worried this might caught lumps as happened with the IPA when I just sprinkled in the yeast, and although there were initially some small lumps, these seemed to break up after a good stir.

Finally, I gently rested the lid on the bucket and placed it in the brewery. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this comes out. It already looks good :-)

Bottling the Linthwaite Light

2008-03-30T17:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I finally got round to bottling my second home brewed beer. It had been about 6 weeks since I first started it going, so hopefully it will come out ok.

I started off by knocking together a new set of labels:

I wanted to make the label a little different on each brew, so while the basic label layout is the same, the logo (shown above) is slightly different. I printed out 6 sheets of 8 labels and during breaks in other preparation, I cut them neatly down to size.

I lifted the brewing bucket onto the work surface in the kitchen and tried to attach the sanitised tube to the tap. I found it hard to put on and came across another useful tip - pouring a little recently boiled water over just the end of the tubing loosened it up a lot, and it easily slipped over the tap then.

When bottling my first brew I found that adding the sugar to the bucket worked well rather than the faff of priming each bottle individually, so I decided to repeat it this time. The first brew has ended up being fairly fizzy - probably too fizzy for an ale, but given this latest brew is supposed to be fairly light, I'm hoping that a similar amount of fizz this time will make for a very nice relaxing summer drink. Therefore, I added 80 grams of brewing sugar to a sanitised jug and added just enough freshly boiled water to cover it, and stirred it until all the sugar had dissolved. Having covered the jug with cling film and made a few holes in it, I popped it in the microwave until it started to boil again, just to ensure it was sanitised. I then left this to cool and later slowly added it to the bucket, very gently stirred all the time.

And then, onto the laborious job of cleaning the bottles :-( Even with the bottle tree, this is still a slow and boring job, but given I had cleaned and rinsed all the bottles when I first got them, I felt a soak in sanitising solution and a good rinse was sufficient for each bottle. Some time later, I had 45 clean bottles ready to fill. With the last few bottles, I also dropped 45 caps into the sanitising solution, and then rinsed them off ready for use.

I took a quick gravity reading before starting the bottling:

I took this to be a reading of 1.010, which surprisingly had therefore dropped a little after I stirred up a little of the yeast a few days ago. However, after 6 weeks, I decided not to wait any longer to check it had finished. Hopefully this wont come back to get me later. At 1.010, this has now reached the upper limit of the target final gravity, so hopefully this won't be as sweet as the IPA.

As before, I setup a nice conveyor belt, of filling, capping, and then labelling (applied with milk of course):

I had originally decided to use about half proper thick-glassed bottles, and half the thinner lager bottles (after none of them exploded last time :-) ) but when I realised I had enough proper bottles to do them all, I decided to just do a test sample of 5 thin bottles again, to further assess them.

Finally, some considerable time later (it somehow took me over 3 hours from starting the labels to being completely finished) I finally had 45 Linthwaite Lights bottled, capped and labelled:

For the more astute of you, yes - I did take this picture before I finished, hence there only being 37 bottles in the photo.

Given the missus and I needed to make room in the kitchen for the imminent arrival of our first dishwasher, it made sense to store all our beer in The Brewery, so with the addition of the Linthwaite Light it now looks like this:

Its slowly starting to look like a brewery. When I get time, I'll be adding the wine and champers we have to the top shelf, and somewhere I'm sure there is some more commercial ale, but for now, I'm pretty happy with it.

Adding the Chitosan to the Merlot

2008-03-19T11:08:00.000Z

Just a quick post to confirm that last night I did add the second part of the finings - the chitosan - to the Merlot. The sachet for this was slightly larger than for the kieselsol. I shook the contents for 10 seconds again, before replacing the airlock and returning the demijohn to the brewery room where it will sit for at least 2 or 3 weeks before I bottle (hopefully) nice clear wine.

Adding the Kieselsol to the Merlot

2008-03-17T19:55:00.000Z

Following the instructions, I took the gromit out of the demijohn and poured in the small sachet of clear liquid labelled kieselsol. I took the airlock out of the gromit, replaced the gromit in the demijohn and with my thumb over the hole, I shook it for 10 seconds. I then replaced the airlock and returned the wine to the brewery for another 24 hours before adding the second sachet, this time of chitosan.

Linthwaite Light Gravity Check

2008-03-17T19:15:00.000Z

On Friday, I decided it was time for a quick check on the status of my second home brewed beer, before going away for the weekend. I dropped the hydrometer in and went to look for my camera to take a picture. Unfortunately, I had already packed it, and my phone doesn't have a flash, so the pictures were not good:

I took the reading as 1.012. I noted that the 1.012 line was just about the last thing visible before the bubbles covered the hydrometer. The target gravity, as stated in the instructions, is 1.010 or less. While checking the instructions just now for my blog, I note that it also suggests stirring the beer a little if it hasn't quite reached target, to re-suspend some of the yeast. Given there were still bubbles noticeable on Friday (and still are today) so I can assume it is still just about fermenting, I will now sanitise the stirrer, and give it a go. My first brew finished a few points high, and it is noticeably sweet, so I'd love to get it down some more. I will also place the towel that I wrap around the bucket on the radiator for a short while in the hope of encouraging the yeast along.

Stirring completed, I will give the beer a few days before measuring it again.

Shaking up the wines

2008-03-13T21:53:00.000Z

24 hours after wracking the Strawberry, and a couple of days after wracking the Merlot, I was continuing to shake the wines as often as I remembered. This involved simply removing the airlocks and covering the hole with a cleaned thumb and shaking until it stopped fizzing when I removed my thumb (or until I got bored, which ever came first).

Following the instructions, this would be the last shaking of the Strawberry, and given my busy weekend, tomorrow would be the last shaking of the Merlot. The Strawberry will now sit for a few weeks until it is completely clear, where the Merlot will tomorrow have the finings added before also being left to clear.

Racking the Strawberry

2008-03-13T21:44:00.000Z

Having given the Strawberry another 11 days after it seemed to have got to the edge of its target gravity, I decided it was time to wrack it to the secondary demijohn. Like the Merlot, I decided to take a gravity reading anyway, which was again easiest from a picture:

The gravity was really hard to read, but it definitely wasn't any lower than the 1.008 I had measured last time.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite
1	8
3	4	1062
6	1.5
12	50
19	103 (after hydrometer reading)	1.008
30	103 (after hydrometer reading)	1.008

In fact, I even thought the gravity might be 1.009, so I'm not sure if that suggests a misread last time, or perhaps the gravity has dropped with the clearing of the wine. Speaking of which, the wine was already very clear, and was noticeably lighter in colour than the Merlot, which was a very dark red.

Anyway, onto the racking. I had sterilized the demijohn that had previously contained the Merlot, as well as the tubing, a grommit and an airlock. I placed the wine on the side in the kitchen, and positioned the empty demijohn in the washing up bowl on the floor. (I actually placed the washing up bowl on top of my wine making tool box so that the tubing would reach to the bottom of the demijohn.) I again sinned by sucking to get the wine going, and away it went, again without so much as a sip of win for me. :-( As it got near the end, I very gently tipped the demijohn in order to get a little more of the clear wine off the top of the sediment.

I tried to pour a little of the remaining wine from the nearly empty demijohn into a glass to taste, but as soon as I moved the demijohn the sediment mixed with the clear wine to turn it very sludgy. I was impressed at just how much the wine had cleared, and how well the stiff tubing had taken the wine from above the sediment without disturbing it.

The instructions suggested mixing the stabiliser with a couple of tablespoons of water and then adding it to the primary demijohn. As I was wracking to a secondary to remove much of the sediment, I actually added the stabiliser into the empty demijohn before wracking the wine into it. As instructed, I then added the Strawberry flavouring to the wine. This took the form of a small clear sachet containing a surprisingly small amount of red liquid. Unlike with the Merlot, the instructions then told me to add the finings straight away, before shaking the demijohn vigorously for a few minutes. I must then shake it on at least 6 occasions over the next 24 hours, before leaving it a few weeks to clear. I wondered whether the difference between this and the Merlot (where I hat to add just the stabiliser and shake the contents regularly over 3 days before adding the finings and then leaving to clear) was a genuine difference, or just lazier instructions given with a cheaper kit where it wouldn't make much difference, and might be being made by a less professional brewer.

I found after a few minutes of shaking, the wine stopped fizzing when I removed my thumb.

I replaced the airlock and placed the demijohn back in the brewery, with the intention of shaking it a few times over the next 24 hours.

Sampling the Munton's IPA Again

2008-03-13T18:45:00.000Z

With Phil and another mate, Chris, round on Tuesday, I decided it was time to crack open a few more bottles of the IPA, and see how its doing at the 4 week (since bottling) stage. I seem to be swinging back and forth with my thoughts on my first brew as I'm back to being a bit disappointed. It hasn't really changed since last week, so while it is nicely fizzy, and with a pleasant and mild taste, it still doesn't have the depth of taste that Phil's IPA had. I'm comforting myself with the fact that the best of his were at least a couple of months old. It still looks pretty good though:

Racking the Beaverdale Merlot

2008-03-12T18:26:00.000Z

I decided the time had finally come to rack the Merlot - the first home brewed wine I had tried. I decided to take a hydrometer reading, even though I expected to see little or no movement and would wrack it anyway. I took a picture for future reference:

It was hard to get a reading as I couldn't see through the glass clearly, and the opening of the demijohn was very tight. Zooming in on the photograph was actually the best way of deciding on a reading. I put it down as 0.995.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21<	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite	0.997
34	infinite	0.996
44	infinite	0.995

As I said, I was determined to wrack it anyway. Its had a long time in primary now and I don't think the gravity is going anywhere now.

Having sanitised some tubing, a gromit and an airlock, I placed the full demijohn on the work surface, and a freshly sanitised demijohn on the floor in the washing up bowl (to catch any spillage). I had a couple of different bits of tubing, with and without taps, but having had a bit of a play with syphoning earlier I decided that I couldn't find a way of starting the syphon without sucking anyway, so I went for a basic tube connected to a stiff tube with a hole a couple of centimetres from the bottom. This stiff tube goes into the full demijohn and the hole allows the clear wine to be syphoned off while leaving the sediment at the bottom.

The instructions actually didn't mention transferring to a secondary container, but given the next steps were to help with clearing the wine, it seemed sensible to rack it at this point. I committed the sin of starting the syphoning by sucking, and quickly putting the end into the demijohn. It worked perfectly, sadly so well I didn't even get a taste of the wine. The only problem I found was that I left a little more wine in the original demijohn than I wanted, but after a second attempt to collect a little more failed, I decided I would rather lose a glass of wine than ruin all the wine so left it alone.

Returning to the instructions, I poured the contents of the sachet labelled Stabiliser into the demijohn, placed the sanitised grommit in the opening, and with my cleaned thumb over the opening I shook the bottle for several minutes to release the co2. Whenever I removed my thumb, there was a strong hiss of co2 escaping, so I continued shaking until no fizz occurred. I then placed the airlock into the grommit.

I will repeat the shaking several times a day for the next 3 or 4 days as instructed before adding the ingredients that make up the finings.

Boxing up some bottled Munton's IPA

2008-03-12T17:52:00.000Z

I have decided to box up some of the Munton's IPA, in order to ensure that at least some of it lasts for a few months. This should allow me the freedom to pinch a beer when I fancy one, but still allow me to learn how my beer tastes after a longer maturing period.

Second tasting of the Munton's IPA

2008-03-05T10:44:00.000Z

Three weeks after bottling the IPA, and a couple of weeks since the first (very early and slightly disappointing) tasting, I decided it was time for another go. I hoped this time, given we are approaching the 4 week mark where some suggest the beer should be at its best, the beer would be much more enjoyable. Phil (of Phil Norton's Brewing Blog in my blogroll) had come round for the evening, so I popped open a bottle and poured the contents into two rather unmanly glasses and took a picture:

With the previous tasting, I took one of the beers which was bottled last, and so contained a great deal of sediment. This time, I went for one of the first to be bottled. The cap came off with no noticeable fizz, which concerned me, given my fear that all the sugar had dropped and so the earlier beers might not have been primed, but as I poured a very pleasant head appeared. The beer had also cleared nicely, giving what I felt to be a very attractive looking beer, all be it a little dark for an IPA.

The beer had only a subtle smell, but still a pleasant slightly fruity smell as before. Now for the tasting... mmmmm, thats a tasty beer :-) I am really pleased with the results. While it is a fraction sweeter than I would choose, it is a really nice tasting IPA. It is nicely fizzed, though I hope it doesn't get any fizzier. The taste is subtle but very enjoyable. There are plenty of flavours, but none are too strong or overpowering. Only the sweetness prevents you from considering it for a heavy session, but I could easily see mates downing a few over a relaxing evening. In fact, having had just a small glass each, I cracked open another bottle for Phil and I shortly afterwards. (This second bottle was the other silver topped bottle, so the last one bottled, but it was fairly indistinguishable from the first bottle to be honest.)

I am putting the slight over sweetness in the beer down to the boiler related temperature issues preventing me quite reaching the target gravity. However, this simply makes it a pleasant and relaxing post-meal kind of beer, which I am sure I will enjoy over the next month or two. I now intent to dig up a box or two to put away perhaps as many as 20 bottles so that I cannot be tempted to drink them all over the coming months. This should free me up to pick from the rest as I wish. I will also be taking a number of bottles to a family do towards the end of March, and will be interested to see how they go down.

Over the coming months I will continue to monitor and report on the beer as it matures. As always this will serve as a record to myself, and hopefully will be of interests to readers of this blog too.

Linthwaite Light first gravity reading

2008-02-28T22:01:00.000Z

While I was on a roll, I decided to check on the beer too. It has been about 15 days since I started it going, so it should be coming along nicely.

There is clearly still activity which is pleasing given the gravity is currently at 1.016, with a target of 1.010 or less. I'm happy this is doing well at the moment, and I will be leaving it another couple of weeks before taking another reading.

Strawberry Wine looking good

2008-02-28T21:54:00.000Z

After checking on the Merlot, I decided to see how the Strawberry was doing too. After leaving the hydrometer to soak in the sanitising solution for a couple of minutes I rinsed it and dropped it gently into the strawberry wine. Again, I photographed it so that I had a definitive record to compare against next time. Unfortunately I couldnt take a picture through the glass demijohn, so I had to take it through the opening:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite
1	8
3	4	1062
6	1.5
12	50
19	103 (after hydrometer reading)	1.008

As the picture shows, the gravity is around the middle of the small black band on the hydrometer, which is the 1.008 mark. This actually puts it in the target of 1002-1008, however, as it is still bubbling, all be it slowly, it has clearly not stopped fermenting yet. The instructions do state that it should not drop below 1.002, so hopefully it is fairly close to finishing.

Merlot check...

2008-02-28T21:29:00.000Z

With the prospect of a free weekend on the horizon, I wanted to take a reading of the Merlot to have something to compare against at the weekend to see if it has finally stopped fermenting. Hopefully it will have done, so that I can transfer it to secondary and begin the final stages before bottling. I have taken to storing the hydrometer in a bottle containing water and sanitising powder so that I can take readings without any further sanitising hassle. I rinsed it and gently dropped it into the wine, and as mentioned previously, I took a picture:

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>

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite	0.997
34	infinite	0.996

I think this has gone down a fraction more in the last week since the previous reading, but I'm hopeful it will now have finished. The target gravity of 990-994 is close enough for me to be fairly happy, but only time will tell whether this is close enough to still make a great wine.

First IPA Tasting

2008-02-24T16:48:00.000Z

I debated when to open the first bottle of my very first home brewed beer. I had intended originally to leave it at least one month, but some expert advice stated that it could be at its peak after as little as 4 weeks. This advice went against my experience when tasting Phil's homebrew (see my blogroll), as it seemed to get better and better up to at least 9 months in some cases, and not being close to its best until it had been in the bottles for 3 or 4 months.

My uneducated theory on these time differences is that it may be the case that after around 4 weeks, some of the strongest flavours like the hops and bitterness begin to fade slowly. However, other flavours grow as the beer matures. Therefore as time goes by you get a deeper, more blended and more well rounded beer, which to my personal pallet, is much more favourable.

Getting back to the point, I decided that as this is my first beer, I need to learn as much as possible about the phases the beer goes through, so opening a few of my 42 beers before the beer is at its best will be worth it. So, on Friday, 10 days after the beer had been bottled, I opened my first one.

I opened the very last bottle I bottled (one with a gold cap if you read the bottling post here). This would therefore have had a number of the lumps of yeast in. There was also the chance that it had extra priming sugar in, given I had intended to leave the beer with the priming sugar mixed in for around 30 minutes, but it had well over an hour as I cleaned all the bottles.

There was a pleasant fizzing sound as I popped off the cap. I poured it carefully and no head really appeared until I straightened the glass to pour the final third in, but even then it was just a very short-lived co2 head and was gone in 30 seconds. There were lots of bubbles rising in the beer to start with. As the picture shows, the beer was very dark, and not very clear at all. The aroma was pleasant, though very mild. I would say it was a slightly fruity smell.

When I finally tasted the beer, I was rather disappointed. It had very little flavour at all - barely anything to have an opinion on. It was pleasantly fizzy, but perhaps already slightly more fizzy than I would want an ale like this to be. There was a very slight after taste to the beer. It wasn't very noticeable, but I might describe it as a slightly yeasty taste. The beer was also quite sweet. This made it hard to drink.

My overall feeling currently is disappointment, but I still have some hope for this beer. This was after all the last beer bottled, so the the yeasty taste, the fizz and the sweetness could all be explained by this. The desired flavour I hope will come with time, as will clarity. I intend to leave it a couple of weeks before opening another one, which will be one of the first I bottled.

Massive slowdown in the Strawberry

2008-02-21T17:17:00.000Z

After checking on the Merlot, I realised I hadn't done a bubble count on the Strawberry in a while, so I sat down by the demijohn with a watch and timed how long it took, on average, between bubbles:

>

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite
1	8
3	4	1062
6	1.5
12	50

Comments:

The bubble rate has dropped massively, but I did forget to take any readings for 6 days.

Given the very fast bubble rate previously, it is possible that this could have could the Merlot up and almost have finished fermenting.>/li>

Given the goings on with the Merlot uncertainty, despite the suggestion from the bubble rate that the Strawberry might be coming to the end of fermentation, I will be leaving this alone for a week or so yet.

I will give the Strawberry plenty of time to finish. All the advice is that leaving it in the primary for longer, even if fermentation finishes, should do no harm at all.

It should continue to provide me with feedback via the airlock.

Merlot still going...?

2008-02-21T17:07:00.000Z

I took another reading of the Merlot with a hydrometer, having convinced myself it must have stopped fermenting and I wanted to get it into the secondary demijohn. The hydrometer dropped to a level where only the very top of the yellow section was visible, and none of the digits of 1.000 could be seen. Given the results of my hydrometer test showed I should be taking a line from just above the actual level of the liquid (not the level of the bell), this is a reading of about 0.997. I didn't take a photo as I didn't want to expose the wine to a bright flash, but I wish I had so I could look at it again.

I have tried to be very descriptive about the reading this time, so that I have something to compare against next time I take a reading. The reading does seem to be below the 0.998 from last time, but now I am doubting my reading from last time. Hopefully if I leave it another 5 days or more, if I can see any of the yellow section, fermentation is over. If I can't, I should leave it longer.

I should add that I have still seen no bubbles at all from the Merlot recently, and not even any sign that pressure is moving the water round the airlock at all.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998
27	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.997

Conclusions:

From now on, I will photograph my hydrometer readings. Any exposure to the flash will be worth it I think, given it will save me doubting readings, and making extra readings because of it.

Merlot Impatience

2008-02-18T21:11:00.000Z

Since taking the hydrometer reading 3 days ago, I have been keeping an eye on the airlock on the Merlot to make sure it got going again. In 3 days I hadn't seen a single bubble. I put the first day down to it needing to fill up the remaining space with co2 before it started coming through the airlock, but after 3 days I was worried it had stalled.

I decided my best bet would be to try to get a bit more of the yeast suspended back into the wine, so I removed the airlock, placed a clean thumb over the hole and very slowly and carefully turned the container upside down so as to get some of the yeast off the bottom, while trying not to let the wine splash or bubble.

Having done this, I decided to take a hydrometer reading just to confirm nothing had changed. (Yes, I know I should have done this first.) I was surprised to find the reading was 0.998, though now I'm not sure if this is because of the extra yeast suspended in the wine, or if it really has been fermenting, despite the lack of bubbles. I will try to do some research to see if yeast would decrease the gravity and post an edit back here.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000
24	infinite (after hydrometer reading)	0.998

I think this is the first time since I started brewing that I have let impatience affect my brewing. Hopefully I haven't done any damage, but I will be sure to leave it a while now before taking another reading.

Linthwaite Light fermenting

2008-02-15T22:41:00.000Z

Having been concerned about pitching the yeast into the Linthwaite Light mixture at only 14 degrees C, I had meant to check on it after a day or so to check it had started fermenting ok. I kept forgetting, but finally got round to taking the lid off today and having a look.

As the picture shows, there were clear signs of fermentation. The beer has been bubbling away, so I am very pleased. I saw no reason to disturb it with a hydrometer reading, so I gently replaced the lid, re-covered the bucket with a towel and left it to do its stuff.

Strawberry bubbling like crazy

2008-02-15T22:34:00.000Z

While I was checking on the Merlot, I spotted that the Strawberry was bubbling away much faster than it was previously, so I decided to do another count for future information:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite
1	8
3	4	1062
6	1.5

It really is bubbling fast now. The temperature in the brewery is around 17 degrees currently so I don't think it is too hot, so hopefully this is fermenting as it should. Interesting at this point the Merlot had already slowed to more than 9 seconds per bubble. It will be interesting to see if the Strawberry finishes fermenting any quicker.

Checking the Merlot

2008-02-15T22:05:00.000Z

It is 3 weeks to the day since I set the Beaverdale Merlot going. the results of another bubble check are below:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite	1.078
3	2
5	9
9	15
12	18
15	30
21	55	1.000

As you can see, the wine is now getting close to the target of less than one bubble a minute. I decided to take a hydrometer reading in order to see for certain the state of the wine. As shown in the table, the reading was exactly 1.000. The instructions state that the target is 0.990 to 0.994. I'm pleased to see that the wine has made it a long way down from 1.078. I hope it can make it down just a few more points now. Hopefully by recording the bubble rates and gravity with this, my first wine, I will have a better understanding for future wines of whether it is likely that it will drop further points now that its almost at just 1 bubble a minute.

I also had a little taste (just the juice off the hydrometer). It didn't taste unpleasant, but it had a very alcoholic taste - like a very cheap wine. I was a bit disappointed, but hopefully it will just take time for the flavours to mature.

Topping up the Strawberry

2008-02-13T11:33:00.000Z

Yesterday evening marked 3 days since I had set the Brewmaker Strawberry wine going, so according to the instructions it was time to top up the demijohn to the 4.5 litre level. Before doing this I measureed the bubble rate again:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	Gravity
0	infinite
1	8
3	4	1062

Now onto the topping up. The instructions stated that "tepid" water should be used, so I filled up a sanitised jug a couple of times with cold tap water and a hint of boiled water and topped up the wine to the 4.5 litre level I had marked when starting the Strawberry. The instructions then stated that I should shake the demijohn well. This still seemed very strange given the beer and wine I had done previously required air to be kept out. However, I placed a sanitised bunk in the demijohn and shook fairly lightly for 30 seconds. There was a noticeable sediment layer on the bottle of the demijohn already, so I wonder if this instruction is about re-suspending the yeast (though the instructions only suggest this for certain flavours of wine - and the flavour is only added at the end of fermentation - all very strange).

Anyway, with the demijohn now filled to the required level and mixed I thought I would take a hydrometer reading. This came in at 1062. I then replaced the airlock (after replacing some lost water from it) and took a picture.

I finally placed the demijohn back in the brewery and wrapped the tea towel around it. I will continue to monitor the the bubbles over the next few weeks.

Brewing up a Linthwaite Light

2008-02-13T09:41:00.000Z

As soon as I got my previous brew bottled (the Munton's IPA) I gave the fermentation bucket a quick clean to remove all the obvious dirt and then left it full of a sanitising solution all day, with the stirrer and the lid in it. (I rotated the lid a few times as only half of it would fit in the bucket at once.) I didn't have much time in the evening, but I decided that there was still time to get the next brew going. I wanted to do it asap or else it could be another week before I got time again. I rinsed out the bucket as well as the stirrer and top and was ready to go.

I placed a can opener, jug, thermometer and hydrometer in the sink and covered them with warm sanitising solution. I also placed the two cans from the kit in the water to soften up the contents. After a few minutes I rinsed the jug and thermometer and half filled the jug with water from a boiled kettle and the cold tap, until I had water at about 20 degrees C. I added the sachet of yeast to the jug and gently stirred it with the thermometer. Initially some of the yeast stuck together in clumps but I ensured I broke these down, and then left the yeast on the side.

I rinsed the cans and the can opener, and opened the two tins, pouring the contents into the fermentation bucket. I then filled both tins with boiling water from the kettle and stirred both. Into one tin I also added the hop bag (like a large teabag) to impart the hops flavour and left this for 15 minutes. I removed the bag and poured both tins into the bucket again. I stirred the mixture in the bucket for about 5 minutes, until it was completely mixed. As with the last brew, it was easy to see when this was done as no extract remained on the stirrer. I then proceeded to fill the bucket with jugs of cold water from the cold tap up to the 4.5 litre level marked on the side. I deliberately poured this into the bucket very quickly and from a high, as well as filling the jug from the tap very quickly, in order to add as much air as possible.

Once the bucket was full, I measured the temperature of the contents, to ensure it was below 25 degrees C (as per the instructions). I found, due to the very cold temperature of my cold tap, the contents were actually at 14 degrees C. I was a little worried this might be too cold for the yeast, but decided to go ahead anyway. I pitched the yeast, which now had a small head on it, and stirred the bucket for another 5 minutes to ensure as much air was taken in as possible. I then took a hydrometer reading, for future reference. It was hard to see the exact level due to the head on the beer, but the hydrometer dropped to about the bottom of the red section - a reading of 1040.

Finally I gently rested the bucket lid on top of the bucket, and moved the very heavy bucket into the brewery and placed it on a large book, so that I would be able to attach a tube to the tap later on.

I wrapped a warmed towel around it and the job was done. However, I was still worried about the low temperature of the beer, so I whipped out the missus's hair dryer and gave the bucket a quick blast of hot air all around the base under the towel. Hopefully this will have helped bring the temperature up a couple of degrees.

Unfortunately, due to having to get this brew going quickly, I didn't have time to put an airlock in the fermentation bucket lid like I had intended so I will have to do without that feedback with this brew. Hopefully I will add it next time.

Munton's IPA bottling day

2008-02-12T09:41:00.000Z

At last, the time had come to get my beautiful beer into bottles. I'd spend a lot of time working out exactly how I was going to do this, so I felt well prepared.

I started off by filling the trial jar I bought on Saturday using a sanitised tube connected to the tap. Using the hydrometer, I confirmed that the gravity was still around 1015, and also confirmed that the beer was coming out of the tap ok - it was cloudy but with no noticeable sediment from the bottom of the bucket. I took a taste and found the flavour very mild and rather shallow, but pleasant none the less. Hopefully with time in the bottle the flavour will develop, but I was pleased to still find no unwanted flavours at all. I lifted the bucket from the floor of the brewery, to the work surface in the kitchen.

Next I needed to add the sugar. After lots of indecision (worrying - thats what homebrewers do while waiting for their brews to do their stuff), I finally decided to add the sugar into the bucket before bottling, rather than added sugar to each individual bottle. This was considerably quicker and easier, and some research had reassured me that a gentle stir would not bring up the sediment from the bottle of the bucket. I weighed out 80 grams of glucose. This might be be slightly preferable to granulated sugar in terms of flavour but it is unlikely to be noticeable with such a small amount. In all honesty, I used it as it came with the beginners equipment I was given. I used 80 grams rather than the 85 recommended partly because by beer was already above the target gravity (and so slightly over sweet) but this also matched some recommendations from the web. I added the glucose to a jug, and poured on freshly boiled water - just enough to cover it. With a quick stir it was all dissolved. I covered the jug with clingfilm and made a couple of holes in the film before placing the jug in the microwave on full power until it began to bubble. This should ensure the sugar is sanitised. I left this to cool for a while, and later added it to the beer, very slowly making as little splashing as possible. I very gently stirred the beer for 20 seconds with a sterilised stirrer. Before adding the sugar, I had noticed quite a lot of clumps of a soft brown substance floating on the top. I hoped these wouldn't be a problem.

Next it was onto the bottles. Thankfully the 48 bottles that Phil had ordered me as part of my Christmas present had now been delivered, so I didn't have to complete the cleaning of all the donated bottles - that can wait for the next batch. I also included 4 of the cheap lager bottles I bought previously, as a tester for using more of them next time. During my trip to the brew shop on Saturday I had also bought a bottle tree, thinking that this would be the easiest way to dry 45 bottles at once. Having constructed the bottle tree (only 5 large pieces) and sterilised it, I filled the sink with water and sterilising solution and placed in 8 bottles. For about the next 45 minutes I continually took out 4 bottles and place them on the bottle tree, and added 4 new bottles to the sink. I always aligned 4 bottles facing towards the taps and 4 away in the sink, and with the most recently added bottles resting on top, so I could always see which bottles had been in the longest. I returned every 5 minutes to swap the bottles, so each bottle got 10 minutes of soaking. With the final few bottles, I also dropped in the crown caps to sterilise them.

I was certainly correct about the bottle tree - what an awesome purchase - I don't know how I would have coped without it.

Once all the bottles were done, I removed them all, emptied the sink and, after rinsing the bottle tree, and proceeded to rinse each bottle in cold water and place it back on the tree.

In the gaps between cleaning, I had finished cutting out the labels I had printed out (using a craft knife and ruler). I laid these on the floor alongside a bowl with a little milk in, and a pastry bush. Between these and the beer bucket I laid the sanitised and rinsed crown caps in a bowl, and the capper which I got with my original equipment. I attached the sanitised tube to the tap again and let this fall to the floor and into a sanitised washing up bowl.

Finally it was time to actually put my beer into bottles. I pushed the tube right to the bottom of the first bottle and slowly opened the tap. The first couple of bottles I filled too quickly, giving them something of a head inside the bottles. This also didn't give me enough time to cap and label the bottles. I quickly found a nice slow pace was best. I also discovered that lifting the tube a little when the bottle was almost full allowed me to easily fill to within a couple of centimetres of the top of the bottle. I also added a clean towel to my setup, on which I placed each just filled bottle. This dried the bottom of the bottle and also allowed me to wipe any beer from the bottle ready for labelling. I spent the next 45 minutes repeatedly filling, capping and labelling. Having everything laid out for this turned out to be a very good idea:

The first 30ish bottles all filled easily and without incident. However, after that, I started to find that bottles would only half fill and then the flow would slow or even stop completely even though the tap was still open. I found this was due to the clumps that had been left floating on the surface of the beer being drawn into the tap. I couldn't see any sensible way of preventing this, so I continued bottling. I found that lifting the tube up a little would often free the flow, or failing that, opening the tap further worked (all be it with the occasional sudden overflow). Given these bottles would now likely have these clumpos in, I decided to label them as such, and put a small "L" on these bottles to remind me which were bottled later in the process. As I got to the last few I added "VL" for very late, as these were picking up quite a lot of the clumps. I even bottled a couple of extra bottles by tilting the bucket up. This were capped with a different colour cap (mostly because I had used the 40 blue caps now) but this was also a useful further indication that these last 2 would definitely not be ones for sharing.

It was a very satisfying sight when I finally had 42 capped and labelled bottles on the kitchen floor.

I took the 4 beers in the thin lager bottles, and a couple of standard bottles and put these in a big black bin in my study. Hopefully, these will be fine, and I can use more of these thinner bottles with the next brew. However, if something does go wrong, at least the damage should be contained.

I must have been on a roll on bottling day, as I managed what I now think was another very good idea. In addition to labelling the last few bottles, I managed to keep all the bottles in the order I had bottled them. I maintained this order when putting the bottles on the shelf in the brewery, so that when picking a bottle to drink, I will be able to tell when it was bottled. This will be useful not only for seeing the effects of the clumps and any sediment that got picked up in later bottles, but also for seeing if the sugar (and so fizz) is equally distributed, or whether it dropped down the bucket while I was cleaning all the bottles. It will also allow me to select bottles for friends and family from whichever part of the bottling produced the best final beer.

If I felt satisfied after I finished labelling the last bottle, I felt even better when I had them all neatly shelved.

Job done. Now we wait...

The Strawberry is fermenting

2008-02-11T17:10:00.000Z

Having started to Brewmaker's Strawberry wine, I was keen to check whether it had started fermenting, so I did a bubble count yesterday:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)
0	infinite
1	8

Observations:

I was pleased to see it bubbling, though a little concerned its not as quick as I'd hoped.

My first Merlot reading was after 3 days, so it will be interesting to compare then.

Brewmaker Strawberry Wine

2008-02-09T17:50:00.000Z

Given that my lovely ladyfriend has not only been ok with my new hobby but she has actively encouraged me, I thought I should have a stab at Strawberry wine she was eyeing up on our first trip to the brew shop. I was already planning a trip back to Harvey's (see 4u2brew in my blogroll) so added 2 second hand glass demijohns (at just £2.49 each), 2 rubber bungs and airlocks, a bung without a hole in to help with shaking the bottle, and a pack of the Brewmaker Strawberry wine. There was a choice between Young's or Brewmaker's, but the owner said they were moving to sell only the Brewmaker's as it was easier to make a good wine with.

The pack contained a tin of juice and, hidden in a plastic top on the tin, 5 sachets of ingredients and some instructions.

After giving one of the demijohns a good couple of hours full of a strong sterilising solution and then a good rinse, I got to work on the wine instructions. I opened the tin (having placed the end I was going to open in sterilising liquid) with a sterilised can opened. I didn't have a funnel, so I poured the contents into a jug to ensure I could pour it into the demijohn without spilling any. In addition to the juice, I added a further 1.8 litres of cold water to the demijohn. (I did realise as I was getting started that I hadn't sterilised the jug. It had already been cleaned, so I rinsed it with just boiled water, so hopefully that will be ok.)

I weighed out 16oz of granulated sugar (Tate and Lyne cane sugar) and poured it into the jug, which I had filled with 500ml of fresh boiled water, and began stirring. I was supposed to add the sugar to 600ml but the jug wouldn't hold this plus the sugar (I found this out the stupid way but I don't think I lost too much sugar, and I added some extra water to the demijohn). I took the boiling water from the kettle, and by the time I'd poured in the sugar I think it had cooled a bit so it was a struggle to get all the sugar to disolve, but I just about managed it, and then added the liquid to the demijohn.

I carefully poured the contents of 2 sachets into the demijohn, the first being wine yeast, and the second Nutrafine. I then placed the bug (without a hole in) in the demijohn and shook the bottle for around a minute to ensure everything was well mixed. I then placed the airlock in another bung and pushed it into the demijohn to seal it.

Finally I placed the demijohn in the brewery and wrapped a tea towel around it. There is nothing more to do now for 3 days, when I will have to add the remaining water to make it up to 4.5 litres.

Comments:

I don't have very high expectations for this kit. I'm more into my traditional wines, but hopefully this will turn out well, and more importantly my girlfriend will like it.

The instructions suggest the wine should now be stored somewhere with a temperature between 20 and 30 degrees C. The brewery is definitely lower than this, and given the wine was made with cold water, I hope it ferments ok.

I will be looking out for bubbles tomorrow.

I am surprised that the kit suggests adding water and then shaking after three days at which point the fermentation will have begun. With the beer, and aeration of the liquid while fermenting is a big no no. I will try to do some research on this before the 3 days are up.

Wine check

2008-02-09T09:48:00.000Z

I am making a trip to the brew shop today, and I'm tempted to buy another wine kit and a couple more demijohns so that I can have the current one in secondary and two more in primaries. However, I didn't want to start another couple of wines if the current one was struggling in the cool temperatures, so its time to take a hydrometer measurement. I carefully moved the demijohn to somewhere I could see it more clearly, removed the top and gently placed in the sterilised hydrometer. I was pleased to see it drop pretty low, and when I took the reading it was at about 1.006. It still has another 8ish points to drop, but it has already dropped 72 points and it was still bubbling so I'm hoping its possible.

Prior to taking the reading I also did another bubble count:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	bubbles per minute
0	infinite	0
3	2	28
5	9	7
9	15	4
12	18	3
15	30	2

Hydrometer Test

2008-02-08T22:19:00.000Z

Given the fact that the Munton's IPA appears to have stopped slightly short of the target gravity according to the hydrometer reading, I thought I should test the hydrometer's accuracy. An accurate hydrometer should measure exactly 1.000 in pure water at 20 degrees C.

I filled a bottle with water from the hot and cold tap, and after more messing about than I think it should have taken, I finally had a bottle containing 20 degree C water. I popped the hydrometer in and took a picture...

The line visible around the water level is the 1.000 line. It was noticeable that this line is below the top of the bell of water gathered around the hydrometer, but (when trying to read it from above the water) it appears to be slightly above the true level of the water. I would have liked to have been able to test this in coloured water, so that I could more accurately see where the correct level is with an opaque liquid like beer, but of course mixing the water with cordial would have added sugar and invalidated the experiment.

This was only a very quick experiment, but it has been useful. It showed that the hydrometer is pretty accurate. I also think that it means I have been very slightly over estimating the gravity of my beer. I had assumed that the actual level I was recording would be just out of sight below the visible level but looking at this experiment I believe the level I should be reading should be visible.

Just about bottling time.

2008-02-08T08:49:00.000Z

With the prospect of some time on Sunday where I might be able to bottle the Munton's IPA , I decided it was time to take a hydrometer reading. I still don't have a trial jar, though I hope to get one from the homebrew shop on Saturday. That mean carefully taking the lid off, at which point there was a noticeable hiss - yet more signs of life I hoped. I gently placed the hydrometer in the beer and took the above picture, before also holding the thermometer in the beer. The temperature settled at 16.5 degrees again. The gravity however I still find a little difficult to read, what with the markings only down one part of the hydrometer, as well as trying to decide exactly what level the reading is at. I settled on a reading of 1016, or possibly a tiny fraction below (though certainly much closer to 1016 than 1015). I had hoped for a reading of 1014 or less - the suggested finishing gravity in the instructions, but it does look like fermentation has just about finished, having changed so little now.

If it looks like I will have time to bottle on Sunday, I will first use the trial jar I should have by then, and take a final reading and a taste. If the gravity is still at 1016 and it tastes nice, I will bottle it. While at the brew shop, I will buy some light spraymalt to prime the bottles with (as suggested by the instructions on the box (and on various forums). I believe this is a better choice that standard sugar, in terms of the final flavour produced. I have opted to prime the bottles as I do not have a bottling bucket to siphon the beer into (while leaving the yeast sediment behind) and I do not want to stir sugar in and disturb all the sediment. I have bought some cheap measuring spoons to ensure I can prime each bottle with a very similar estimate of 1/2 teaspoon of spray malt, hopefully reducing the chances of any explosions.

I am looking forward to getting this brew bottled, both so that its closer to being ready and so that I can kick off the next one and see how well that copes with the temperatures.

Yet more Merlot bubbles...

2008-02-04T21:36:00.000Z

Another few days have passed, so Im counting the bubbles coming from the Beaverdale Merlot again:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	bubbles per minute
0	infinite	0
3	2	28
5	9	7
9	15	4
12	18	3

The fermentation is continuing to slow, but I'm reassured that despite it being about a week and a half since it started, it looks like the wine is still some way off the one bubble per minute that should indicate fermentation is over. I feared this would come very early, indicating a stuck fermentation. I'm still keeping everything crossed though.

The Label Experiment Results - Final Review

2008-02-02T11:28:00.000Z

Before starting this experiment I had expected stickers to look more professional, but paper to come off more easily. I was not exactly very accurate with my predictions. Paper, regardless of how it was attached, made the most impressive looking labels, and all the labels came off incredibly easily.

My intention, based on these results, is to use paper, attached using milk, for bottles that I will give to people, and stickers attached straight to a dry bottle for my own supply. This is because the paper labels will require more work, what with having to neatly cut them out and applying the milk carefully, but will give a really good finish. The stickers will be much less effort but should still look ok if applied carefully, and will still be effortless to remove.

The Label Experiment Results - Part 2: Removal

2008-02-02T11:19:00.000Z

Having inspected the bottles for appearance, I soaked all 6 bottles in hot slightly soapy water in the sink for 10 minutes, without touching them at all. On returning to the sink, I was surprised to find all 6 labels floating around the water. Not one of them even needed peeling off?

I had expected the labels using stickers to be a bit of a pain, but there was very little to choose between all the bottles. The milk label had left the milk residue on the bottle, but this effortlessly wiped off. The sticker applied with glue stick had lots of glue residue left on the bottle, but this also came off with a single wipe. All the other bottles were pretty much spotless, with perhaps a single tiny residue on some, which again wiped off instantly.

This part of the experiment has shown that, given I would give each bottle a quick wipe anyway when cleaning and removing the labels, there is nothing to choose between the methods of attaching the labels as far as removal is concerned.

The Label Experiment Results - Part 1: Appearance

2008-02-02T10:30:00.000Z

It has been over a week since I started the label experiment so its time to find out the results. In this post I will order the labels by appearance, in reverse order:

Appearance:

6th: Sticker pressed on jumper first

The label is a little scruffy looking. It has a few major crinkles on and slightly light and dark patches on it. The corners are also peeling off. The method definitely has an amateurish look.

5th: Sticker on wet bottle

There are a number of crinkles on this label too. (One of these does seem to be due to 'seam' on the bottle though.) The edges are all fairly well attached though. Still not a very professional finish.

4th: Plain Sticker

This label has a few crinkles. It has some slightly light and dark areas. The edges seem to be attached fine. Another pretty poor finish though.

3rd: Sticker with glue stick

This has only minor crinkles on. The colour of the label is more consistent (though I think this is because the whole label is dark because you can see more of the bottle colour through it.) The edges are all perfect. Of all the labels done with stickers, this is the only one that looks nicely finished.

2nd: Paper with glue stick

It was a very difficult decision between the two paper labels for first place. Both had good and bad points, but both looked excellent. They both have perfect edges and no crinkles. This one with the glue stick suffers only from a couple of bobbles under the label where bits of glue or something got under it. The glue stick appears to have left the paper slightly darker, but only very slightly. This is a professional looking label.

1st: Paper with milk

The winner for appearance is the label attached with milk. Just to confirm, there is no smell at all. The label itself is perfect. Its the whitest of all the labels - the milk seems to have left the paper in really good condition. The only downside of this method is the bottle itself around the label has some stains on, signs of the messy milk. I imagine with some practice just the right amount of milk could be applied to avoid this.

Final Appearance Notes:

The paper labels are clearly preferable to the stickers. They are thicker, and had less wrinkles. Either of the paper solutions would be a great way to attach labels. One interesting point is that having brought the bottles out of the cold brewery room, after a day all of them had considerably less crinkles, but even after this the order didn't actually change.

More wine bubbles...

2008-02-01T21:12:00.000Z

The Beaverdale Merlot has been going for a week now. Time for another bubble count I think:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	bubbles per minute
0	infinite	0
3	2	28
5	9	7
9	15	4

Observations:

the bubbles were coming through extremely slowly now

it was seemed to be very consistently one large bubble every 15 seconds

The instructions that came with the kit stated that fermentation for a red wine should take 15 to 20 days. It also said that less than one bubble every minute is a sign fermenting is ending. I therefore intend to leave the wine undisturbed for a little longer yet before taking any measurements. The target gravity is 990-994. I suspect the cool temperatures in the brewery are having an effect on the wine now. I'd be surprised if it is supposed to have slowed this much already. Like the beer, I consider this first wine a test of whether it brews well in the current conditions. I will make changes if they are needed for the next batches.

It's not over yet...

2008-01-30T18:27:00.000Z

Great news. The beer is still fermenting. I popped the top off and gently dropped the hydrometer in. The reading was 1016, unmistakeably less that the previous reading. There were also some bubbles (though not that many) on the surface. I chose to give it another very gentle stir, being very careful not to splash at all. I think this will be the last stir as I really don't want to risk introducing oxygen to the beer now.

I also measured the temperature of the beer, as it was pointed out to me that the temperature of the beer can often be a lot lower than the room temperature, and of course brewing guides refer to beer temperature. The beer was at 16.5 degrees, about a degree lower than the room temperature. I suspect this really is on the limit of what I can expect to produce beer consistently well, so depending on the success of the wine and the next beer (which hopefully won't suffer the same boiler problems) I might have to seriously consider some form of heating for the brewery.

This temperature also means, according to my research, that I can actually lower the hydrometer reading by a point, meaning it is actually at about 1015, very close to 1014 - the highest target gravity for bottling according to the instructions.

Overall I am very relieved to see proof that the beer is still alive and kicking, even if it is a little sluggish. I will take another reading on Saturday, but will probably not be able to bottle until at least the following weekend anyway, so it will likely get another 10 days to finish fermenting.

Wine keeps on bubbling

2008-01-30T18:12:00.000Z

Time for my next bubble count on the Beaverdale Merlot:

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	bubbles per minute
0	infinite	0
3	2	28
5	9	7

Observations:

the bubbles were coming through noticeably slower now, though still very regularly.

the bubbles were all the big kind now, which slowly moves the water round before go ing through in one rush. This means the slowing of the fermentation compared to day 3 isn't quite as large as the figures suggest.

it is clear there is still constant CO2 coming from the wine.

Despite having nothing to really compare this behaviour to, I'm very happy to see evidence of activity from the wine. I'm sure its fermenting, and have no intention of opening the top to take a measure with the hydrometer until the bubbling has slowed much more.

Fermenting or not fermenting, that is the question.

2008-01-29T12:02:00.000Z

Having given the beer four days since giving it a good stir to try to kick it back in to life, I decided it was time to take another measurement. Rather than taking the lid off I decided I would draw a sample through the tap. I wanted to do this for a number of reasons: I wanted to avoid taking the top off and exposing it to yet more oxygen, I wanted to be able to taste a sample, I wanted to be able to get a more accurate hydrometer reading, and I wanted to test out the tap before the bottling stage as I suspected being so low it would catch too much of the sediment.

Having put the bucket on a thick book to raise the tap off the ground to allow me to attach the tubing, I was fairly easily able to fill the tube the hydrometer came in with beer. As it happened I originally filled it to a level where, with the hydrometer in, the beer came up exactly to the top of the tube. This made taking a hydrometer reading very difficult with the beer making a bell shape at the top. The tube was also very tight, and so the hydrometer didn't move smoothly up and down. However, taking a number of readings I would estimate the gravity at between 1017 and 1018 - in other words it might have gone down a fraction from the previous readings of 1018, but I'm far from certain that it has. I carefully poured out some of the beer (into my mouth of course but I'll come onto the tasting in a minute) and tried to take another reading with the hydrometer, but the tube was definitely too narrow lower down, so I couldn't. I took some reassurance from noticing that before drawing any beer, the lid of the bucket was noticeably pushed up in the centre, presumably the result of the beer producing co2 and the pressure building up. This dropped a little after I drew off some beer - perhaps there is still hope that it is fermenting ok.

So onto the tasting... I was very pleasantly surprised. Having fairly recently drunk a bottle of this exact beer (thanks Phil - see my blogroll for his blog) I could clearly recognise the taste as the same, just currently with a milder and shallower flavour and perhaps a fraction sweeter.

As for for using the tap, my suspicions were correct. With it being so low down the bucket, it picked up far to much sediment. I will use tubing fed into the top of the bucket to bottle the beer rather than the tap.

Overall I'm not very happy with the progress of this beer. Having nothing to compare it against, its hard for me to know whether things are still ok or not. After all, it is to be expected that the beer will be late finishing, given the 17-18 degree average temperature normally, not to mention the several days of 16 degree temperatures while the boiler was broken, which caused it to stop fermenting entirely. The pushed up lid today, and the hiss and bubbles when I opened the lid a few days ago give me hope. I will leave the beer alone for another couple of days before taking the lid off to inspect things and take a more accurate hydrometer reading.

If I'm keeping everything crossed for the wine, I'd better tie myself in knots for the beer...

Wine bubbling away

2008-01-29T11:12:00.000Z

I have decided to make regular measurements of the number of bubbles coming through the airlock on the wine. Regardless of whether my first attempt at brewing wine ferments perfectly, or stops short, having something to compare future fermentation against should be really useful.

Day	Time per bubble (secs)	bubbles per minute
0	infinite	0
3	2	28<

Observations:

There were no bubbles immediately after mixing all the ingredients and attaching the airlock.

I was away for the next couple of days, but after 3 days it is bubbling away. :-) The bubbles are sometimes small ones you can see pass through the airlock, and other times you can see the pressure building and pushing the water round the airlock before it all bubbles through in one big bubble. (I counted all these as one bubble)

It looks like so far so good for the wine. I'm keeping everything crossed though.

Bell's Beer finally branches out into wine

2008-01-25T17:20:00.000Z

I was very kindly given a wine starter kit for my birthday. However, what with getting the beer going, setting up The Brewery, and then all the boiler problems, I haven't had chance to get the kit out and have a good look at it, never mind actually get some wine going. Finally today, I found myself with enough time, and the house to myself, so I got all the wine gear out to inspect it.

This kit included:

a 5 litre PET plastic demijohn

a gromit

an air lock

a 1.2 metre syphoning tube

a syphon tap

a small container of steriliser

6 tapered corks

The birthday present also included a 6 bottle Beaverdale Merlot kit.

The wine kit contained:

a large bag of grape juice

oak chippings

yeast

stabiliser

kieselsol

chitosan

I started by measuring 4.5 litres of water into the demijohn and marking this level. I them moved onto the all important sanitising, soaking the demijohn and top, gromit, airlock, as well as my measuring jug, hydrometer and thermometer. I also boiled the kettle to give a supply of clean, warm water. Ten minutes later I rinsed everything thoroughly with cold tap water. I opened the grape juice bag and poured it into the demijohn, before filling the bag with warm water and pouring that into the demijohn too. (All the warm water I used came by filling the measuring jug half with the cold tap and half from the boiled kettle.) I continued to fill the demijohn with warm water until it was just above the 4.5 litre fill level. I then placed the top on, covered the hole with my finger and shook the wine vigorously. The instructions stated that if the wine was fulled mixed it would have a gravity of 175-180. On inspection, the gravity was around 155. I was concerned given I had shaken the wine considerably already, but I shook it for a further minute, and a second reading showed the gravity at around 178.

Before I could add any further ingredients the temperature of the wine had to be between 20 and 25 degrees C. Using the thermometer, I found it was around 22 degrees C, so I continued with the instructions. I added the optional but recommended oak chippings. As someone who likes a Merlot with a deep oaky flavour, this was a no brainer. I was surprised to find the sachet marked oak chippings basically contained course saw dusk. I'm not sure what I expected, but sprinkling this into my wine seemed strange. After stirring in the oak chippings using the thermometer, I added the final ingredient - the yeast. I placed the top back on the demijohn, covered the hole again with my finger and gave it a good shake. I then filled the airlock with water so that the lower 'ball' on each side was filled with water, and inserted it tightly into the hole in the demijohn top.

Thats it. Job done. I wrapped a warm tea towel around the demijohn to try to keep the heat in for as long as possible and placed it in the corner of The Brewery. The instructions recommend a room temperature of 20 degrees C and not less. As discussed previously The Brewery temperature is more like 18 degrees C, but having already researched this topic, it seems this should be ok - only time will tell.

The wine should take around 3 weeks to ferment (though I wouldn't be surprised if it took longer in the cooler conditions). The aim will be for a gravity of 990 to 994, and less than one bubble per minute going through the airlock. I am looking forward to the feedback I should get from having the airlock - hopefully being able to watch bubbles pass through it fairly regularly, so I will know for certain the yeast is doing its job. This feels like a big advantage over the beer, which is why I am considering fitting an airlock on the beer fermenting bucket too.

Coming Unstuck

2008-01-24T19:38:00.000Z

"The Brewery" temperature is now back up to about 18 degrees C and the beer had a stir yesterday. It was time to take the lid off the beer again, and see if it was still dead as a dodo, or if it had been resurrected, like the boiler.

Good news I think. Comparing the picture from today (above) and the picture in yesterdays post, there are a lot more bubbles on the surface of the beer today. This I believe shows that the previously stuck fermentation has started to become active again. I took another hydrometer reading, and not unexpectedly it gave a reading of around 1018 still. However, I gave the beer another stir and I'm fairly hopeful that the beer will now continue to ferment.

The instructions suggest it should get down to at least 1014 and then stabilise, though I think I'd feel more confident that the yeast had properly woken up and finished fermenting if it gets to 1012 or less.

Beer Bottle Labels Experiment

2008-01-23T18:29:00.000Z

I have decided to put labels on my bottles, at least to start with. I know this will mean some extra work, but if the beer is sufficiently good, I hope to give a good proportion of it away to friends, and family (either because they have helped to fund my new hobby, or to prove to them that home brewed beer can be very tasty).

I am already well aware of the hard work involved in removing labels, so after a little research on the web, I have decided to conduct a small experiment to judge the various techniques for sticking the labels. I will judge them on presentation and ease of removal.

As you can see I have put labels on to 6 bottles, each attached in a different way. From left to right in the picture, these labels are:

sticker attached to a wet bottle

sticker attached to dry bottle (the control sticker)

sticker which has been stuck to a jumper several times to remove some of the stickyness

sticker with addition of glue from a glue stick

plain paper attached using glue stick

plain paper attached with milk (tip from Jim's Homebrew forum - see my blogroll)

I will leave these for around a week before judging their appearance. I will then soak them in warm slightly soapy water and judge how easily the various labels come off.
Initial Observations:

wet bottle sticker -looks crinkled already

control sticker - looks great, easiest to apply

jumper sticker - corners peeling off from where I peeled it off my jumper several times

sticker and glue - looks great

paper with glue stick - looks superb - best so far as paper is slightly thicker than stickers

paper with milk - slight crinkle and messy to do - both could be avoided with careful application

A second glance

2008-01-23T18:09:00.000Z

With the boiler fixed (at least for now) it was time to see what damage had been done to my beer by the cold temperatures in the house. I took the lid off (with a slight hiss) and took a gravity measure with the sterilised hydrometer - it was 1018. This doesn't seem much below the 1022 from 8 days ago (which was measured 5 days after the beer was started.) I gave the beer a stir with the stirrer (which I had also sterilised) for 10 or 15 seconds to get the yeast mixed back in, trying to stir firmly but without splashing and introducing oxygen. I took the following picture and then quickly replaced the lid.

I intend to measure the gravity again tomorrow and if it has not decreased, I will give the beer a longer stir to hopefully encourage the yeast to get back to work over the weekend.
Observations:

it is very difficult to sterilise a stirrer which is slightly larger than the size of a sink, and a hydrometer whose whole purpose is to partially stick out of the water

the beer had a few clumps what appeared to be dry brown powder floating on the top

the beer still had the very mild but pleasant smell of a light ale

the scum on the surface that was noticeable on the last inspection after 5 days has gone

Oh so cold.

2008-01-22T14:50:00.001Z

I recently made my first visit to my closest home brewing shop, Harvey's in Fareham, which is just 11 miles from my house. (Check out their somewhat limited website 4u2brew on my blogroll.) I somehow managed to spend around 40 quid, but I'll save talking about most of the things I bought for when I actually get chance to use them.

One item I had wanted for a while and finally managed to get on my visit was a thermometer. I was amazed that I couldn't get hold of a simple glass one like I used to use at school from anywhere else. Anyway, I wanted it to measure the temperature of "The Brewery" which I suspected is too cold most of the time for ideal brewing conditions. (I will also use it in the future to check the temperature of the beer mixture before adding the yeast.) I found that the room temperature seems to stay at about 18 degrees C but increased a little when the heating is on in the house. I recalled reading that anything below 20 degrees is not good for brewing, but after asking a few experienced brewers on jimsbeerkit forum (check my blogroll) it seems it should be fine.

However, the recent failure of my boiler has sent temperatures down to 16 degrees C, which is definitely too cold, but there really isn't much I can do about it. The boiler man came today and is due back tomorrow with the required parts. I've got my fingers crossed that all will be well after he has returned. It's bad enough being freezing cold, and not being able to get a shower, but if it ruins my first home brew beer too - it doesn't bare thinking about.

The Brewery

2008-01-20T18:07:00.001Z

As you can see, I've been very busy. I have turned the cupboard under the stairs into something that is slightly more deserving of the name "The Brewery". I have fitted 3 big shelves (all held up with 3 brackets and very big screws) carpet tiles, a light, and a suitable poster. I cannot believe it took me all afternoon on Saturday and Sunday, but Im really pleased with the result.

More bottles...

2008-01-20T17:51:00.001Z

Thanks to some kind colleagues at work, I now have an extra 50 brown 500ml beer bottles. (Unfortunately, I now have 50 500ml brown bottles to clean and de-label). This brings me up to the 3 sets of bottles that I wanted, with the 48 bottles ordered with my equipment and the lager bottles, assuming they stand up to the job. This means I should be able to brew 3 different beers, giving me a choice of tipples, and then brew new ones whenever I have enough empty bottles.

First inspection

2008-01-15T22:48:00.001Z

I had intended to leave the container for at least 2 full weeks without opening it at all in order to stop air getting to the beer, but I was persuaded by Phil to open it up to take a look and a hydrometer reading (clearly its now his fault if there are any problems with the beer at all). As can be seen in the picture, it didn't look very pleasant with a residue on the side and a bit of scum on the top, but it smelt fairly good, and I'm assured it looks as it should.

Before taking the top off, I put the hydrometer I recently received (pictured) into the sink in an inch of hot water with a quarter tea spoon of sanitising powder for 10 minutes. I rinsed it with cold water, took the top off the bucket and placed the hydrometer gently into the beer. It dropped entirely under the beer, and then resurfaced and settled with the black line marking the ready to bottle level about a centremeter above the beer. The gravity measurement was 1.022, suggesting as expected after just 5 days that it still has some time to go.

Bottle Bargain?

2008-01-13T11:46:00.001Z

I already have 48 empty home brew bottles coming soon. However, I will need some more bottles for my second home brew, while the first is still maturing in the bottles. At 80p per bottle for the empty home brew bottles, I decided that I might be able to get bottled beer from the supermarket for close to 80p per bottle. They needed to be large brown bottles (green and clear bottles let too much light through, which can damage the beer). I failed to find any at Sainsburys, but Tesco came up trumps, with a 6 pack of 500ml imported German Eichbaum costing £4.99. This comes in at about 83p per bottle. I was aware that the quality of the bottles would undoubtedly be lower, but I decided to chance it, given that the bottles were already holding gassy lager, so I bought 48.

I have decided that the IPA is likely to be one of the less gassy beers I produce, so I will use the new bottles for this, and save the home brew bottles for the next brew. This means I have to get through 48 large bottles of beer in a little over 2 weeks now. Providing the beer when a few friends came round for my birthday has got 20 emptied, just 28 to go.

Only time will tell whether I am currently enjoying 3p high quality lager (and it is really nice lager), or whether I am a couple of weeks away from having to clear up beer and lots of broken glass from under my stairs. I think its worth finding out just once whether cheaper bottles can be used in the future...

The First Beer - Munton's Gold IPA

2008-01-10T21:13:00.001Z

So, it was time to make my first jump into the world of home brewing. Despite some reading on the subject, some instructions that came with the beginners set, and some instructions on the Munton's beer kit box, I still wasn't especially confident, but I started out anyway.

All the equipment needed to be sterilised, so following the beginners instructions I rinsed the bucket, the lid and the stirrer and then filled the bucket with 5 teaspoons of steriliser powder and warm water from the hot tap and left it for 10 minutes. I also sterilized the jugs I intended to use, and even the can opener. I was rather nervous with regard to ensuring that all the equipment was clean given that every set of instructions or tips I had read stated that contamination of the beer was the number one cause of poor quality beer. After 10 minutes I rinsed all the items with lots of mains cold water, and the cleaning was done.

With a choice of sets of instructions to follow, I decided that it made most sense to follow the set that came with the kit itself. I placed the two cans of hopped malt extract in the sink in warm water, to soften the syrup. I filled the kettle and turned it on. After 5 minutes I opened the tins and poured the contents into the bucket, at which point the kettle had boiled. Using a Pyrex jug I measured out pints of boiling water, and poured them into the bucket. I discovered that my kettle perfectly held 3 pints without taking the dregs at the bottom. I stirred the mixture while waiting for the kettle to boil again. When it had, I poured the contents into the bucket, making up the required 6 pints. It turned out to be very easy to tell when the hops was fulled mixed in. The unmixed syrup sat stubbornly at the bottom of the mixture meaning that if an inspection of the stirrer revealed syrup coated on the end, it wasn't all mixed in yet. I would say it took around 5 minutes of hard stirring.

Next it was time to add the cold water. The bucket was pre-marked with a fill level, stating 5 UK gallons or 23 litres. However, the maths in the instructions stated that adding 6 pints (3.5 litres) and then 29 pints (16.5 litres) would make 5 UK gallons, though this only added up to 20 litres not 23. I decided to fill to the marked level of 5 UK gallons or 23 litres as not only would this allow me to fill to the marked level rather than have to measure out 29 further pints of cold water, but also, if I were to add the wrong amount of water, I felt that a slightly weaker than intended beer ought to be pleasingly mild, where a too strong beer might not be so palatable. So, without any way to feed the sink tap straight into the bucket, I used two jugs to fill up the bucket. I did this as quickly as possible, which meant causing a great deal of splashing in the mixture. This was mostly out of practicality, wanting to get the job done as quickly as possible, though one guide I read had suggested that getting lots of air into the mixture at this point was a good thing. (we shall see...)

The next step required leaving the the mixture to stand until it had cooled to between 18 and 21 degrees C, but without a thermometer, I chose to leave it for around 5 minutes. Continuing to follow the instructions as closely as possible I "sprinkled" in the yeast. This seemed to be a mistake however, as the yeast sat on top of the foam that had formed, and it was then hard to get it to actually go into the mixture. It also formed into little globules of yeast, meaning I had to spend 5 minutes spotting these floating in the foam and breaking them down. Finally however, the yeast was all dissolved and looked something like this:

I then put the lid on the bucket, and carefully carried it to "brewery" (see previous blog post) where it will remain for 2 to 3 weeks. By then the hydrometer I have ordered should have arrived, which will allow me to test whether it is ready for bottling. This is the only time I am deliberately deferring from the instructions that came with the beer kit. The kit suggest leaving the mixture for 7 or 8 days, but Phil has suggested it has always taken closer to 3 weeks for his beers to be ready for bottling.

Final Observations:

Despite my best efforts, it was clear that it is all but impossible to guarantee that there is no contamination of the beer. My hands constantly had to touch work surfaces, taps, the kettle, the stirrer etc. Small amounts of water from the outside of the tins and jugs would have made it into mixture. Hopefully these were all clean and all will be well.

The process was all over very quickly, even with my first timers mincing tendencies. Amazingly it might take longer to drink the beer than to make it (though there is still the bottling stage to come)>

Having multiple sets of instructions was not helpful. I deliberately chose to follow just one set of instructions, but this did mean I didn't use the water treatment tablet just before adding the yeast which I had otherwise intended to use. I also still have to decide whether to use the finings that came with the beginners kit, but which are not mentioned in the beer kit instructions.

My current expectations are not high for the beer. It feels like I am bound to have done something wrong first time round, but I look forward to being able to bottle the mixture in a few weeks, and giving it a quick taste then.

The Cupboard under the Stairs

2008-01-10T19:55:00.001Z

One of the things making me question whether to try making my own beer was where I would be able to store it, but as it was fermenting, and also later in the bottles. I decided that I could convert the cupboard under the stairs into a mini brewery. I've emptied it out, and will shortly put down a hard floor of some kind and install some kind light (don't worry mum, it will most probably just be something battery powered rather than electrocuting myself). I had grand plans to build a smart wrack to hold all the bottles as well as looking impressive when showing the 'brewery' off, but after doing some research it seems that beer should be kept stood up, so I will be putting up some shelves in the cupboard soon.

The Equipment

2008-01-10T19:13:00.001Z

So having decided to give brewing beer a go, I had to get some equipment. Phil kindly agreed to order everything I would need, while I started to read up on the processes and the kit. The picture shows everything that he ordered for me, minus the 48 bottles which would need collecting at some point.

The equipment included:

Beginners Kit including
- 5 gallon fermentation bucket with tap,
- beer paddle
- 1 meter of tubing
- steriliser powder
- water treatment tablet
- finings
- 1kg glucose powder
- set of instructions

Beer Kit: Munton's Gold Indian Pale Ale

40 blue tops

40 gold tops

capper

All the equipment was ordered from Art of Brewing (see the Blogroll) as recommended by Phil. I have been perfectly happy with the quality of everything so far.

The beginning

2008-01-10T18:07:00.001Z

My name is David Bell. For my 29th birthday I asked for money to purchase equipment to try brewing my own beer. The idea appealed having recently sampled a number of successful home brews a friend had produced. (Check out Phil's blog for details of his beers.) Trying his beers has also started to get me into drinking real ales, rather than supping the mass produced cheap lagers I had grown up old with, so the idea of producing my own real ales was now even more attractive.

So read on to find out how I get on...

About

2008-01-10T13:19:00.001Z

My name is David Bell. For my 29th birthday I asked for money to purchase equipment to try brewing my own beer. The idea appealed having recently sampled a number of successful home brews a friend had produced. (Check out Phil's blog for details of his beers.) His beers have also started to get me into drinking real ales, rather than supping the mass produced cheap lagers I had grow up old with, so the idea of producing my own real ales was now even more attractive.

I have since done a bit of DIY in the cupboard under the stairs, turning it from a dark, cold, concrete floored mess, into something more useful and attractive:

So the DIY was a success. Check out the blog to find out how I get on with the beer...