First Gravity reading on Coopers Stout

Its been 4 nights since kicking off the Coopers Stout. My new bottles and bottle caps have arrived and Im just waiting on the bottle capper which is on its way, so I wanted to see if the beer was getting near to bottling time. I ran the hydrometer under boiling water from the kettle and dropped it in the beer. It dropped to the point i couldnt quite see the black section - so between 1010 and 1008, I forgot to take a picture. Im not that surprised, as the room has been very warm for the most part so I expected it to go quickly. I will take anotehr reading tonight and another the next night. Im busy Wednesday night but could thenbottle it on Thursday if its stable.

Starting again

So its been many years since my last home brew, as this blog shows. The motivation to finally get back into it is for my wedding. Its all about people bring their own made things and favourite things, so it seems only fitting that I should bring some home brew myself. therefore I'm back at it.

The long break does bring with it some challenges. First of all I have forgotten everything I learnt, so thats no ideal. I've been back to googling things and following the exact instructions. Secondly all my gear hasnt been touched in years. I toyed with just buying a new starter kit with new bucket, stirrer, tubing etc, but given the urgency of needing several brews inside a few months I wanted to get started straight away.
 
 I chose a Coopers Stout from the packs I got for Christmas to start with. The good part of this is its the cheapest so if I ruin it, its not quite as painful. The bad news is its a one can kit and I'd never done one of those before. I also don't have quick access to anything but white granulated sugar, so opted to add the full 1kg of white sugar as instructed, rather than brewing sugar, MLE or any of the other things google talks about.

 I had bought some fresh sanitiser, and set to work on swishing round freshly booiled water and then some cold and then sanitising power, and then filled it up to allow the whole bucket to soak along with the hydrometer, brush, stirrer and thermometer. I think there is a high probability that this brew fails due to something getting in the beer somewhere, what with the old gear and the faffing as I haven't done it in ages. We shall see. When I finally started I poured the 1kg of granulated sugar into the bucket, and poured a kettle of boiling water. I then reboiled the kettle so that I could pour some over the tin and stirrer and then opened the tin and poured that in. Even after filling the tin with boiling water to get more out it was obvious that lots was left in the tin still. After another boiling water I opted to fill the rest of the bucket by constantly refilling the tin with cold water. This worked with the tin being mostly clean on the inside in the end. Before getting to the fill level on the bucket I took a temperature reading and found it was 21 and still falling slightly. Its very cold outside at the moment so the tap water would have been very cold. Given I was only filling with cold water and needed to add another few litres yet I boiled the kettle again, twice, and along with some more cold water while waiting I tested again at 23 and when finished it was 24. It took longer than I would like but it was done.

There was a pretty big head from alll the splashing and stirring but I seem to recall from the back of my memory that you were supposed to get as much air in as possible at this stage. Next I took a gravity reading, which was really tough given the huge head, but after some faffing I think it was pretty close to being bang on 140. I then nearly made a dreadful error - I put the lid on and started packing up... only to then see the yeast (if I hadn't brought it in half way through the job I might have forgotten completely). I sprinkled this in, and gave it a heck of a stir ot try to get it all mixed in. There didnt seem to be any floating on top so i figured I was finally done.

Now I will try to leave it alone for a few days, but keep an eye on the room temperature at least - its been fairly cold recently so I'm now wondering if I should be keeping the heating on a lot of the time.

Bottled the Eastern Ale

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

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...

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

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

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.