Fermenting : Old Grumpy Hen (Old Speckled Hen Clone) BIAB

Check out my old school GLASS air lock, found at a car boot sale with a load of bits for £1.00.

Anyway, the Old Grumpy Hen is fermenting away in the 10 litre fermenting bucket.

I used about 250ml of the yeast cake from the Wherry brew to ferment this beer and added 1.5 litres of water to bring the starting SG down to 1050.

It started fermenting the same day using the yeast from the Wherry.

Kegged : Woodfordes Wherry Real Ale (KIT)

The Wherry is now filling my other pressure barrel, after a bit of hooharr but I'll go into that in a bit.

The beer finished at a respectable 1010 SG, so 4% ABV, just nice for a session beer.

Primed the Barrel with 80g of castor sugar dissolved in a little warm pre-boiled water and transferred the beer into the nice clean Barrel. Capped the barrel and left it to condition and clear some more.

Came back to it a little later to find the barrel tap was leaking beer all over the Cabin Brewery floor.

As a temporary fix, I wrapped the tap with electricians tape to help with the leak, and ordered a new tap online. The tap came two days later and I released the pressure from the barrel, replaced the tap and injected Co2 back into the barrel.

In total I lost about a pint of beer, so not all that bad, and I hope that the Wherry will survive, I'll know in a few weeks after a proper condition.

Brewday : Easy Cider

Made up a quick Cider today, it's a dead easy method, just get some cheap supermarket Apple juice (from concentrate) pour it into a demijohn, I got 4 litres of juice at £0.60 per liter.

Then just add the yeast. In my case 1/2 a pack of youngs Cider Yeast.

Should have taken a SG reading, but I forgot, so I'll have no idea how strong the alcohol content will be.

I'll just leave this to ferment out completely then bottle into about 8 bottles with a bit of priming sugar so I get a effervescent cider.

£2.40 for the Juice and £1.30 for the yeast, not the cheapest cider at around £0.50 a bottle.

Only really made this for the odd non beer/wine drinker that visits, and I'll need a couple of bottles to do the Xmas gammon ham that we do every year.

Brewday : Old Grumpy Hen (Old Speckled Hen Clone) BIAB

BIABacus Pre-Release 1.3K RECIPE REPORT
BIAB Recipe Designer, Calculator and Scaler.
(Please visit www.biabrewer.info for the latest version.)

Old Grumpy Hen

Recipe Overview

Brewer: Simon Scott
Style: English Pale Ale
Source Recipe Link:
ABV: 4.5% (assumes any priming sugar used is diluted.)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.05
IBU's (Tinseth): 36.8
Bitterness to Gravity Ratio: 0.74
Colour: 21.8 EBC = 11.1 SRM

Kettle Efficiency (as in EIB and EAW): 84.1 %
Efficiency into Fermentor (EIF): 75.8 %

Note: This is a Pure BIAB (Full Volume Mash)

Times and Temperatures

Mash: 90 mins at 66 C = 150.8 F
Boil: 90 min
Ferment: 10 days at 17 C = 62.6 F

Volumes & Gravities

(Note that VAW below is the Volume at Flame-Out (VFO) less shrinkage.)
The, "Clear Brewing Terminology," thread at http://www.biabrewer.info/

Total Water Needed (TWN): 18.42 L = 4.87 G
Volume into Boil (VIB): 17.48 L = 4.62 G @ 1.04
Volume of Ambient Wort (VAW): 13.32 L = 3.52 G @ 1.05
Volume into Fermentor (VIF): 12 L = 3.17 G @ 1.05
Volume into Packaging (VIP): 11.11 L = 2.94 G @ 1.015 assuming apparent attenuation of 70 %

The Grain Bill (Also includes extracts, sugars and adjuncts)

Note: If extracts, sugars or adjuncts are not followed by an exclamation mark, go to www.biabrewer.info (needs link)

79.4% Golden Promise  (4.5 EBC = 2.3 SRM)   2049 grams = 4.52 pounds
8% Crystal Malt (150 EBC = 76.1 SRM)   206 grams = 0.45 pounds
12% Brewing Sugar (0.01 EBC = 0 SRM)   309 grams = 0.68 pounds!
0.6% Black Malt (1160 EBC = 588.8 SRM)   16 grams = 0.03 pounds

The Hop Bill

34.1 IBU Challenger Flowers (8.16%AA)  22.6 grams = 0.797 ounces at  90 mins
2.7 IBU Goldings Flowers (5.69%AA)  7.5 grams = 0.266 ounces CUBE HOP (or 10 mins)

Mash Steps

Mash Type: Pure BIAB (Full-Volume Mash)   for 90 mins at 66 C = 150.8 F

Miscellaneous Ingredients

3 g Irish Moss (Boil) 15 Mins - Clarity

Chilling & Hop Management Methods

Whirlpool: 15 mins after boil end.

Conclusion 

Well today I attempted to brew a Old Speckled Hen clone beer from Brew Your Own British Real Ale Book by Graham Wheeler using the BIABacus spreadsheet.

The brewday went okay really, the boiler using the BIABacus was pretty much full to the brim, so I'm happy with the way it works out the volumes pre boil.

I lost 1'C over the full 90 minute Mash time which wasn't bad, with 15 minutes towards the end of the 90 minute Mash the temperature dropped to 65'C

I added the brewing sugar at the end of the mash, seemed silly to lose the extra ABV by getting it all soaked up in the grain bill.

The SG before the boil came in at 1.040, with the sugar added. BIABacus estimated 1.039 so pretty bang on so far. BIABacus gave me a pre boil volume of 17.5 litres but I was unable to measure this volume at this point (must get a metal ruler at some point)

Boiled the Sweet Wort for the 90 minutes but lost more in evaporation than BIABacus estimated as by the end of  the boil and transfer into the No-Chill Cube I ended up with 10 litres instead of the expected 12 litres, but with a slightly higher gravity at 1.058, so with 1.5 litres of water added to the fermentor when I come to add the yeast, that will give me a final fermentation volume of 11.5 litres at 1.050 so pretty dam close if ya ask me. 

Due to the fact I No-Chill my Worts before fermenting, the 10 minute addition has been added directly into the No-Chill cube to allow for the hops sitting at a higher temperature for longer.

I hope to start fermenting this in the next few days, with yeast recovered from a bottle of Fullers 1845, if it is viable when I make up a starter. (if it is viable I'll blog how I recovered it from the bottle of beer)

Brewday : Peach Wine

Picked up 4 punnets of Peaches in the supermarket going cheap, £0.60 a punnet, with four fruits in each. So all in all we got 16 peaches for £2.40.

I couldn't find a recipe in my books for Peach wine so I've made this one up.

1. 16 peaches chopped and stoned.
2. 200g sultanas (that's what was in the cupboard)
3. 1.3kg sugar
4. boiling water
5. pectolase
6. yeast and nutrient

Put all the ingredients into the bucket and poured over boiling water until it reached the 5 litre mark on my fermenting bucket, stirred it all up to dissolve the sugar and left it to cool over night, before adding the pectolase and yeast.

I'll leave this now for a week or so and the strain into a demijohn.

Brewday : Elderflower Wine (3 gallon)

The Elderflowers are out on the trees, so that means only one thing. Elderflower wine, this is one of the Good Lady's favourite wines, so on the Bank Holiday Monday what better way to spend it than to go foraging for Elderflowers and make up a wine.

We got a little carried away collecting the Elderflowers and came home with two big carrier bags full of sprays.

The remainder that was not used to make up the wine have now been dried using my dehydrator, leaving us with 144 grams of dried elderflowers that we can use all year. Had to dry the Elderflowers in two batches we collected that much.










The wine recipe is nice and easy for this wine.

1. 1 pint of Elderflowers with the stalks removed.
2. 1.3kg of Sugar
3. 2 lemons, zest added to fermenter bucket along with the juice.
4. Boiling water
5. Yeast and Nutrient

I have made up a 3 gallon batch for the girls this time around so all the ingredients where increased to match.
Once the Must had cooled over night the Yeast and Nutrient were both added and this will be left to ferment in the Bucket for a week, then it will be transferred into 3 demijohns to finish fermenting.

Furry Blighters

Bunnies.  Cute furry things.  Love to see them hopping around with their little cotton tails and washing their little faces with their paws.  Shame they like beans.  Little b***ers have taken the tops off most of my climbing and dwarf beans, love em.  Went to the plot yesterday in lovely sunshine with wonderful optimism to find carnage and weeds.  Mostly.  After 5 minutes of frowning and a few choice words and nearly handing in my allotment keys, I realised this is a war and I am not prepared to let bunnikens win this one.  So up went Fort Knox, the dwarf beans had a thick gauge wire covering and the row that had been most damaged had a protective covering of chard leaves, for some unknown reason the bunnies do not touch the chard (maybe because they are covered in stink bugs and even I dont like touching them...)  Then a 4ft high chicken fence around the whole of the bean plot.  I'd like to see them get in there now.

 



Whilst I was having a hissy fit about Peter Rabbit and friends, Simon was having a depressing moment in the greenhouse.  Got a bit warm in there, nearly 50 degrees.  And with potential over loving of his chilli plants (aka overfeeding) he has some sorry looking chillies.  The sort of sorry looking plant that loses all its leaves when you shake it.  Most of them are OK though so not all is lost.  The greenhouse door is now being left open (and its rained ever since....)  You cant win with the British weather.

Otherwise all is growing really well.  The weeds mostly.  Spent a good few hours weeding the beetroot bed and managed to find one or two.  Loads of poppies though, so will have few beets but at least the plot will look pretty!  Someone has moved into the strange shaped triangle plot that is next to us (the one that was created when the hedge was removed).  They are working very hard, looking good - lots of things for bunny wabbits to eat before they reach our plot.

Hops are over the top.  Because thats what they do.



And fruit area is fruiting lovely.  Should be lots of juicy goodness to make wine out of.  And there is no chance of blighters getting in there.



And to end on a pretty note - the first tomatoberry flowers.  :)



 

Brewday : Woodfordes Wherry Real Ale (KIT)

Made up the last of my Beer kits today, a Woodfordes Wherry Real Ale, I have done this kit three times now and it's always come out a nice light Ale.

It's a two can kit so no extra ingredients apart from water are required and we picked this kit up on sale at £14.00, so a bargain beer at that.

I've made this kit up as per the instructions with no tweaks as it's a good beer as it is.



This is going to go in the other Pressure barrel once it is all done


I'm going to ferment this in the Cabin Brewery so I hope the nights don't get to cool, it's had it's yeast pitched and I'm just waiting for fermentation to begin.

The starting SG came in at 1048, so around the 4% ABV mark and less than £0.50 per pint

Brewday: Ginger Wine (2nd Batch)

Now that the Ginger Wine is in bottles and I had all the ingredients to hand, I have started another 6 bottle (4.5 litre) batch off.

The recipe is the same as for the other Ginger Wine I made this year, the only things that have changed are;

1. 500g of Raisins instead of 450g (as there was 500g in the bag from the shop)
2. 1/2 a tsp of home grown and dried Chilli flakes (to spice it up a bit more)
3. Boiled the bruised Ginger for 15 mins (just to kill any nasties as it smelt a bit musty)

So it's now sat in The Cabin Brewery cooling before adding the Yeast and Nutrient.

 

Sunny Day, it's Strimmer Time!!

Spent best part of the day playing with my new "POWER TOOL" a petrol strimmer.



It did a great job for tidying up all the bloody grass that keeps growing at this time of year. With 2 full plots to keep tidy it made it so much quicker and easier on the hands to power through both plots.

Did a load of weeding around plot 119, trying to catch up a bit after a week away.

The Hops are right at the top of the flagpoles now, something has been eating at the Goldings hops but it's still okay and all the hops are now sending out side shoots.



Tied up the Tomatoberry plants, and thinned out the Gardeners Delight in the polytunnel.

The Chillies are coming back from the cold nights, some are in flower and others even have a few fruits on them. All a good sign for later on in the year.

They all got a good drink with added Tomato feed to perk them back up a bit more.

Bottled : Ginger Wine

The Ginger wine is now in bottles, I think it could have cleared a bit more, but as it's quite a dark wine it's hard to tell. I don't mind it clearing in the bottles as it's for our own consumption anyway.

We got just under six full 750ml bottles of this wine, it's one of my Good Lady's favorite wines that we make. She likes this years added Chilli kick as well which I was a little worried about due to her not liking hot chillies much.

Had a nice early sample myself, and it is a very good wine. A real warmer with the ginger and the chilli.

I think I'll get right on with another batch this week, well it's not that I'm short on demijohns.

Bottled : Well in 2 small Kegs : Chinook APA (BIAB+No-Chill)

Well fermentation has come to a halt for the Chinook APA, it's been steady now at 1018, a quite high Final Specific Gravity but the beer still comes in at 3.3% ABV. So a nice light Summer Ale, the sample from the trial jar when I took the SG reading was very nice, little sweet due to the remaining unfermented sugars but still VERY drinkable.

Due to it's lower ABV, I decided to put this beer into my recycled Old Speckled Hen mini kegs, of which I now have two. I didn't bother with the Dry Hopping as the beer was fine as it was.

After a good clean out with warm water, then StarSan, they both got primed with 11g of sugar before filling them up from the fermentor to about 2cms from the top.



Kept the priming sugar level low so I don't buckle the kegs, and after a couple of hours I vented a small amount of gas out of each keg to make sure I had just a Co2 blanket. I'll try and leave these to condition for 3 weeks before cracking into one of these kegs.

Both these little Kegs hold 10 pints and I managed to fill both right up.

So even with the mess up during brewing it still looks like I have a good 18-20 pints of beer ready for the Summer BBQ season.

Car Boot Bargains

Went off to a Car Boot sale this morning. Went looking for boozy related items.

Got eight one gallon demijohns for the massive price of £3.00, they all need a good clean but a bargain at that price, I asked the seller for the price of 2 and he said I could have the lot for £3.00 so it just had to be done. So I have now 16 demijohns in the Cabin Brewery, that should keep us in wine for a while and allow me to bulk condition the wines better.

Found a little tiny pewter tankard, it can't be more than 1/4 of a pint in size, a hefty price tag of £1.00. Here it is next to a pint Tankard. It's just a trinket really but looks nice next to the 1/2 pint pewter tankards I have.

Then on to what I was looking for. Bar Towels, got hold of three in total. Was after some of these to make a screen for the bottled wines as the morning Sun is coming directly through the window onto the wine bottles. £0.50 each

My lovely wife found me a old Pump Clip for £0.20, Black Sheep Brewery. A Yorkshire Brewery. The Clip is for Best Bitter and was the first Black Sheep brew conceived back in 1992.

So a nice bit of Brewing memorabilia for The Cabin Brewery














Another bit of Brewing memorabilia was an as good as new and still in it's box. Old Speckled Hen Limited Edition Millennium Tankard. No.850 from a limited run of 1000.

£2.00 if I remember right.

£0.50 for a half pint Keo Beer mug. I had one of these a long time ago, but lost it somewhere. So I grabbed this w
one to replace the one I had when I was in Cyprus.














£1.00 got me some Hobgoblin (Wychwood Brewery) halloween bunting. No idea what I will do with it yet, but this was brand new and still in it's wrapper.



Found a couple of Wine and Beer books there as well today. £0.50 each.

The first one is The Compleat Home Winemaker & Brewer by Ben Turner.

Then we found another old Country Wine book. Country Winemaking & Wine Cookery by Muriel Hooker Mackay


These old books are great for unusual wine recipes and a great bit of history as well.

So all in all a very successful car boot sunday.

Ginger Wine : Finished Fermenting.

Took a sample of the Ginger Wine today, as we like our Ginger Wine sweet. The extra ginger has really made a difference.

Picked up a few bits from the homebrew shop in town, Young's Fermentation Stopper and Clear It Wine & Beer Finings.

Both of these have been added to the demijohn, as per the instructions on both, the Young's Fermentation Stopper was added first, then two days later the Clear It Wine & Beer Finings were added. (1ml of each) and a crushed Campden tablet. I'll let this do its work before bottling in a fews days.

Fermenting : Chinook APA (BIAB+No-Chill)

Started to ferment the Chinook APA, not holding my breath on this one as the temperatures during the MASH went a bit wrong. Used Youngs Ale Yeast, a whole 5g packet pitched directly onto the Wort.

The SG after adding 4 litres of dilution water was at 1043. Tasted the wort when taking the SG reading and I don't think I'll bother with the Dry Hopping, I may change my mind before the ferment finished though.

There's about 11 litres in the fermentation bucket so should see around 20 bottles worth of beer, hopefully.

Racked: Blackcurrant Wine (Tinned Blackcurrants)

The Blackcurrant wine has now been racked from the plastic fermentation bucket into a clean Demijohn. Added 300g of sugar to bring the SG up a bit. Smells lovely of Blackcurrants.

This will now sit in the brewshed fermenting away for as long as it takes.

Brewday: Chinook APA (BIAB+No-Chill)

Well the first brew in the Brewshed. It didn't go quite as planned, as my nice NEW digital temperature gauge I found to be faulty after I finished the brewday.

.

Chinook APA American Pale Ale

---

Recipe Specs

Original Gravity	Final Gravity	Colour (SRM / EBC)	Bitterness	Alcohol by Volume
1.043	1.011	8.5 / 16.7	46.7 IBU	4.2%

Brewhouse Specs

Recipe Type	Batch Size	Boil Time	Efficiency
All Grain	12.0 Litres / 3.2 Gal	90.0 min	60.0%

Fermentables

Name	Type	SRM	Percentage	Amount
Golden Promise Malt	Grain	3.0	95.24 %	2.60 Kg / 5.73 Lbs
Crystal 80	Grain	80.0	4.76 %	0.13 Kg / 0.29 Lbs

Hops

Name	AA%	Amount	Use	Time
Chinook	12.5%	10.00 g / 0.35 oz	First Wort	90 mins
Chinook	12.5%	10.00 g / 0.35 oz	Boil	15 mins
Chinook	12.5%	10.00 g / 0.35 oz	Dry Hop	3 days
Chinook	12.5%	10.00 g / 0.35 oz	Dry Hop	3 days

Misc

Name	Amount	Use	Time
Irish Moss	3.00 g / 0.11 oz	Boil	15 mins

Yeast

Name	Attenuation
Safeale S-04	75 %

Mash Steps

Step Name	Time	Temperature	Type
Saccharification Rest	90.0 min	66.0 °C / 150.8 °F	Infusion

NotesRecipe Generated with BrewMate


Got all my grains and water sorted the night before.

So this morning all I had to do was weigh out the Hops that have been sitting in the freezer for a long long time. The Chinook hops where 2011 harvest so they needed using as soon as possible. They still smell good though.

Got the water on to boil, about 16 litres at a guess. I really need to sort out a measurement for the strike water next time. So that was a mistake on this run that next time I'll fix.











Got the hops measured out and ready, FWH and Boil, and the Cube Hops all ready to be added when needed

Then on with the brewday as normal. Rained in the grains at a Strike temperature of 72'C, this brought the temperature down to 68'C, then mashed for 90 minutes, with a stir at the 45 minute mark.

The temperature at the 45 minute mark was at 67'C, then this is where I think the temperature gauge then had a hissy fit and died, because at the end of the Mash the temperature had risen to 70'C???

I didn't really think much of it at the time so I just carried on with the brewday using a now faulty temperature gauge.

Did a mash out at 77'C (maybe) and let the grains steep at this temperature for 10 minutes. Lifted the grains out and ran some hot water through them about 1.7 litres to try and get as much sweet wort as possible.

Then hung the BIAB bag over the boiler to let the wort run out.

Decided at this point to leave it there while the Wort went through the boil. Not sure if this is a good thing to do or not.

Checked the SG of the Wort and it came in at 1046 at 40'C ( maybe, faulty temp gauge!! ) so 1053 corrected.

Chucked in the FWH addition 10g of old Chinook and set the boiler to max, it took around 20 minutes or so to get to a good boil.

Twenty minutes before the end of the boil, I squeezed as much Wort out of the BIAB bag as possible, and put the spent grains to one side.

Added the 15 minute Hop addition along with the Irish Moss.

Once the boil was complete, a good whirlpool and a rest for the Wort to settle out the hot break material. I left it 15 minutes in total and the Wort temperature may have been around 85'C, but I can't be sure now.

Tested the SG of the Bitter Wort and it came in at 1070 at 25'C or 1072 temperature corrected.

Then transferred the Wort to the No-Chill cube with 10g of Chinook hops ready inside the Cube. Got a grand total of 7 litres of wort out of the boiler, which has to be my worst and lowest amount yet.





The Wort is now sitting in the Cube ready for fermentation at a later date.

I'll be adding 4 liters of water to the wort when I ferment it to give me a SG of 1043 and also Dry Hop with more Chinook, which will hopefully end up with a Hoppy 4% ABV beer and around the 20 bottles mark.


I still need to decide what weight of  hops to Dry Hop with and for how long. I will make my mind up on that when I start to ferment this brew. It will probably be around the 10g mark, doing a Hop Teabag. But I might add more. I'll decide on the day.

Beans, Beans and more Beans

A glorious day to be planting my beans.  Simon had very nicely positioned all the canes and stringed them beautifully so all that was required today was a lot of bending and poking beans into holes.

So what went in?  Runner beans, 3 different sorts, 15 x Polestar (stringless and courtesty of vegseeds.net), 15 x Enorma and 15 x Equator (last years seeds so hopefully they will germinate.  Climbing French beans - 2 sorts, 90 Cobra (the bigger and better version of the Bluelakes we did last year), and 30 x Hunter (again, courtesy of vegseeds.net).  That filled the canes.

In the wide gap inbetween the canes I planted a long section of French dwarf green beans - Purple King.  Not had much luck with dwarf ones when I did them on plot 69 so hoping to have a bit more sucess this time.



Everything is starting to grow now, lots of sunflowers poking up through the soil, flower beds are looking a bit more busy, broad beans, onions seeds and courgettes all doing what they should be.  Very pleased with the peas, more goodies courtesy of vegseeds!



Polytunnel is going to be very cramped when all grows, Simon is in charge of that this year and he has filled it with cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and not a lot of space will be left, think he will need a machete to get through it all!



His hops are growing like billy-oh, almost growing visibly whilst we were down there today!  Don't think it will be long before they reach the top and create a lovely hoppy tunnel.



And so to an overview of how it all looks at the moment, very happy with progress this year, filled the last two raised beds today with Florence Fennel (Sirio) and Chard (Bright Lights).  No more room left now.  Except for the raised tubs which will have carrots in if we get around to mending them, need a bit of hammer and nail attention first.





And in the greenhouse.  'tis chilli season again.  Very much Simons department!