Fuller's ESB

Intro and Welcome

Hello again! Although my stats on blogger are showing me that it's literally just me that's looking at this blog so it's feeling more like some elaborate exercise in getting in touch with myself instead of the wildly popular blog which soon turns into a steady (and sizeable) income stream, resulting in me packing in my job at Christmas and ending up doing my own TED talk next year. I'm an absolute novice in the world of getting traffic directed places so I'm just going to have to hope that the content is so quality it shines on its own

UPDATE: this has been sat in my drafts for a couple of weeks for various reasons (work on the house, more brewing, holiday and work getting busier than I want - what's all that about). As outlined above no-one is reading this blog so there's no-one to disappoint but wanted to apologise for the drop in the standard no-one has come to expect. Anyway - one with the show!

Brewday!

Anyway - brewtime again and this time it's my favourite shop bought beer, Fuller's ESB, using the recipe in the Brew Your Own books. I've made it twice before:

- Number one was a shocker - full of musty off flavours but I convinced myself it was fairly close to the real thing enough to soldier on through most of the batch. I think poor sanitation was to blame on sterilising the FV. I also used the recipe that involved dry hopping, I had a vague suspicion that this introduced some infection.

- Number two was great! Unbelievably pleased with it and very close to the real thing. Had a lot of gunk in the bottom of the FV though which did make its way into the last couple of bottles I filled which ended up being chucked. I found another BYO recipe that didn't involve dry hopping and did include torrified maize so I tried this one and it was much better

Here's the recipe. Not a hop fest it's fair to say

It's apparently Bruce Dickinson's favourite beer as well - if I ever meet the guy (again - I did shake hands with him at a record signing in 1996!) I'll ask him to try my version. If that is his favourite beer I'm not sure how he ended up championing the Trooper beer for Maiden which, let's be honest, is a handful of Crystal malt short of being a mass produced lager. Still, I've got a branded glass kicking about and it's sometimes good to kick back with a pint of branded beer and crank Weekend Warrior until the neighbours complain it's not Seventh Son.

Dave, your ESB is a Revelation(s)

So I'm having a crack at recipe number 2 again and also looking to store it in my pressure keg this time on the basis of a) not being naffed to bottle and b) liking the idea of having a keg of ESB in the house as Xmas approaches. That said, ease of access to it may well be the latest step down the road to alcoholism. 

Brewday went fine - nothing major to report other than I boiled it for 90 mins rather than the usual 60. This must have had an impact as I hit OG which I never do - indeed I exceeded it at 1.062 instead of 1.060. I got about 20 litres out of the kettle and cooled it overnight.

There was an absolute stack of sediment in the bottom of the FV, seriously about 2 inches. After 2 weeks-ish I racked it into my pressure keg, filtering through a muslin bag to clear the sediment. Samples taken at this point tasted pretty good.

As above I was keen on the keg idea but having not used it before did a bit of research - thanks to the Dude's Brews for teaching me how to do it , although with hindsight I could and perhaps should have worked it out for myself. 60g of sugar went in and the following day a sample taken was overly sweet. I panicked that I'd ruined the batch but what do you know 24 hours after that I poured a pretty awesome keg sample of ESB - it's since matured and is tasting absolutely brilliant. Really really pleased with it - a subtle carbonation just like you get when you've got a beard and order a cask ale in a pub to gesture with while you pontificate on Brexit.

Final Thoughts

The pressure keg is awesome! Really pleased with how it all worked out and I think I'll always look to have something on keg in future. I haven't really got the technical knowhow/inclination for a corny keg so this feels like a good mid ground. It definitely lends itself to a bitter type drink that is gently carbed rather than a honking IPA - perhaps I'll just look to get a lug of ESB in it at all times.

Tiny Rebel Re - Rerack

 

Moved it from the FV into the Pressure Keg for bottling over the next day or so. It doesn't seem too badly oxidised / impacted from the previous re-rack and is tasting not bad so fingers crossed!

All the hop matter was floating on the top of the beer when I started - i left the room for about 2 mins and came back and it had all disappeared, apparently sinking to the bottom. No idea why!

UPDATE

This actually turned out OK once it had been bottled despite the somewhat slapdash initial re-rack. A nudge on the bitter side but I think that is by recipe design rather than any process issues. Nothing I could pick up that suggested any kind of oxidation although it's fair to say my palate is somewhat simplistic so may have missed the odd nuance. But that's a good thing right?

Tiny Rebel Re-Rack

 Arggh, just reracked and did the dry hops. I think I've badly oxidised the brew in reracking - I'd got set up to pipe it out of the spigot on the original FV, only to realise I'd used my FV with a non-standard size spigot, i.e. the bloody pipe didn't fit. I was in a bit of a rush as I've got to pick mini Dave 1 and mini Dave 2 up from after school club shortly so I panicked and just opened the tap and ran it down the side of the new FV. Hello Mr Oxygen...

Anyway, it's tasting not too bad just now, a little bitter still but hopefully that will drop off through secondary / be totally overwhelmed by the off taste I get from exposing all 20 litres to the debilitating effects of O2. At least it'll be a good study in what not to do.

Clutching at straws department: I once had a batch that the spigot started leaking on after 24 hours of fermentation - I quickly sanitised another bucket and literally poured the lot in there and that ended up as one of the best brews I've made. So maybe not all is lost

Tiny Rebel Urban IPA

 Happy Monday everyone (well, anyone I guess),

As promised/threatened the other day I'm giving a quick write up of my last brew, a clone of Tiny Rebel Urban IPA which I got from the Malt Miller / Jon Finch. I didn't think to take any photos at the time so you'll just have to imagine what it all looked like.

Selection

I chose this because...it was pretty straightforward to buy and make and looks like it should be a good brew. I was doing a Malt Miller order and was about 8 quid short of the free delivery value so used this to justify spending an extra £18 on this recipe. Also of benefit is that the fine folk at MM weigh out all the ingredients and put it in a bag for you, meaning my usual malt weighing technique of 500g at a time on the kitchen scales was not needed. Also bonus points for the lack of malt dust (does that have a name?) that this weighing technique inevitably spreads round the kitchen. I love the malty smell but other members of my family are less keen.

Anyway, here's the MM link

https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/tiny-rebel-urban-ipa-jon-finch/

Looks like a pretty decent recipe - lots of Big C hops which are usually pretty good, also Safeale 04 yeast which is becoming my go to, largely based on it being fairly cheap on a well known online retailer.

Brewday - more on the brew set up is here

I fired the kettle up slightly apprehensively as I'd got a mild electric shock off the casing on the last brew I did. This seemed to be due to the (very old) extension cable I was using as opposed to the kettle itself so I replaced the cable and all seems to be well. No shocks of any kind :)

The bag being preweighed saved a chore as above so I heated the mash water in the kettle. I've found adding the water to the grain is more efficient than the other way round so did my usual pouring out of the water at strike temp into an empty FV, putting the mesh bag with the grain in the kettle and then pouring the FV back into the kettle.

Nothing to report on the mash; I heated the sparge water as usual on the hob and then sparged after an hour. A side note but my brew set up is pretty inefficient, I usually miss OG by several points, today was no exception. I'm certain it's due to an inefficient sparge technique.

Again fairly straightforward on the boil, a bit complicated at the end with regular hop additions over the last 15 minutes but I'm not a total chump, I can weigh things out and make sure I put them in the kettle at five minute intervals.

The flame out hops stood for about 10 mins - no real idea of if/how they contribute any IBUs or if the length of time has an impact.

Then cooled overnight on the patio and yeast pitched the following morning at an OG of 1040 vs the recipe of 1051. A bit of a miss but hopefully won't impact flavour too much and will make it a sessionable 3.9%.

Three days on from pitching the yeast and it's at 1012 so pretty much there in terms of Primary Fermentation. I'll leave it a few more days before dry hopping. Here's a snap of the vessel and sample taken just now:

The sample is a bit bitter at the moment, hoping that drops off as Primary continues and dry hops go in. I'm on the fence about re-racking before Dry Hopping on the basis of it being a hassle but I think I'll end up going for it as there is a decent inch of sediment at the base of the FV as you can see from the snap.

I'll keep you posted as to how it goes!

Happy Monday

Dave

Welcome!

 Hello Folks,

Hope everyone is well. I'm Dave and the grand plan here is for me to write down some musings on my home brewing, hence the near perfect pun of Dave's Brewsings. Although on re-reading it may give the impression of the blog being about some kind of middle England fight club as well. I did toy with Dave's Brewtality as a title as well and I'm not certain I've made the best (or least worst perhaps) decision. 

Other than homebrew, there may be some diversions by way of the following:

- Heavy Metal

- Cricket

- Rugby

- Running

- My kids being either total legends / absolute nightmares or somewhere in between

But you'll be thrilled to hear the main crux of the blog will be about my attempts to brew beer. I'm not particularly well up on the science behind it all but I've cobbled together a fairly basic system that churns out all-grain brews of middling to decent quality, with the occasional shocker thrown in for good measure.

Quick run down of the system:

Klarstein 30L mash kettle that occasionally gives me electric shocks and is tough to clean 

That's pretty much it!

Rough brew routine (Brewtine! Seems there are no end to the puns today) is:

- heat the mash water

- add the grain (in a mesh sack)

- mash

- Dispense into a fermenting vessel while sparging using pans of water warmed up on the hob

- Take the sack out 

- Pour the wort back into the kettle

- boil, hops etc

- Dispense into a (sanitised) FV 

- Cool outside overnight (told you it was basic)

- Pitch yeast

- Dry hop if needed

- Re-rack if I can be arsed

- Bottle

- enjoy/howl at the sky for the misfortune of making a duff batch

It is pretty basic but it generally works as long as everything is clean; several times I've considered and got close to buying more equipment (mainly thinking about a Grainfather or similar), even getting sign off from Mrs Dave to spend the cash, only to decide that the system isn't broken and not buying anything. 

Anyway, the plan is to write up my brewdays, mostly for my own reference but if anyone does read this and have any advice / general chat to offer it would be much appreciated!

I did a brew yesterday so I'll write that up shortly. 

Cheers

Dave