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Brews and brewfacturing February 28

I've done three more brews in the last two months and just got round to writing them up. They are:

AG #7 - Timothy Taylor Landlord
AG #8 - Nerdinger
AG #9 - Nelson's Challenge

The first two were of mediocre quality, so I set about building a fermentation chamber to regulate fermentation temperatures better and also enable me to make lagers :)


I've written up the build with photos. The Nelson's Challenge is currently fermenting at 20C inside it :)

Something for the winter months December 14

I brewed a nice strong (5.3% ish) English bitter called Tumbleabout Strong Bitter last weekend, as I wanted something a bit darker and more warming than the pale ales I've been brewing recently.

The brewday is written up here although I didn't take any pictures of this one. I did however sustain my first brewing injury - a skinned knuckle due to slipping whilst trying to push the hose pipe for the chiller inlet onto the outside tap and then managed to scald the same hand with boiling water when the chiller outlet hose jumped out of the sink.

Collected almost 23 litres in all and it's almost finished in the primary with S-04 yeast. Next up I think I'm going to be brewing a couple of well know classics for around my birthday - Morland Old Speckled Hen and Timothy Taylor Landlord. :)

Fifth all grain brew - Chinooks Away October 12

Got another brew on at the weekend - the second in as many weeks(!). This was to use up my leftover Chinook hops from the freezer - a good excuse I thought :)

Brewday went smoothly. I got hold of some pH strips and so could test the mash pH for the first time. Happily, it was 5.2 as far as I can tell, which I've been told is where it should be. I used US-05 yeast for the first time to try to bring out the hops some more. Should be good by Christmas :)

Writeup of the brew day with lots of photos is now in the brewing section.

Brewing a stout October 5

Did my fourth all grain brew yesterday, Four Shades of Stout, from a recipe off the jimsbeerkit.co.uk forums.


I tried to treat the water with all the needed salts for a stout and did a 60 minute boil instead of the usual 90. This ended up giving me the correct volume but at a slightly lower gravity so I need to work on my mash efficiency or up the grain slightly. I also used Nottingham yeast for the first time - hopefully this will give the beer a slightly drier finish.

Writeup of the brew day with lots of photos is now in the brewing section.

Brewing Calculator for Android September 24

My friend Arthur has started writing Android applications and as I couldn't find a home brewing calculator for Android I asked him to write one.

Behold, the just released Brewing Calculator - available on the Android Marketplace for £2.


    


At the moment it has the following features:

  • Strike temperature
  • Water heating time
  • Dilution
  • Batch Sparge Volume Calculator

I've made a couple of suggestions already, namely that the tabs are replaced with buttons allowing more features to be added and support for US measurements (which will be coming soon apparently), but as it is it's a great start and a useful app to have :) SRM measurement via the camera would be awesome but hard to calibrate ;)

Thanks Arthur :)

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