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

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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!