Jim's Beer Kit

I built a HERMS thing a couple of years ago which has a 20L buffalo boiler wrapped up in foil insulation as the heat source, acopper coil in there heat exchanges to the mash tun. For the HERMS batches the probe was sat in the 20L tank rather than the tun itself. Previously I just had the thermostat ...

It was bang on first time but maybe changing the probe messed it up. I'll see what temps it actually runs at next time.

The yeast packets were bought last summer, and have been sat in the shed since. Mostly been cold out there, these were the last two packs of the batch I had, so maybe been there 6-8 months.

The fermenters are sat with chemclean in, and will stay there for a while. I'm going to give the cooling coil a boil in something strong as well. Next batch will be done using the mash tun/HERMS, wood fired boiler, and into the 60L spiedel fermenter, so different kit all round apart from the copper ...

It's my neighbours 50th in a few weeks so I said I'd bring beer to the party. I have several kegs of shed lager and my catfish vienna lager ready to go. However that's not enough really, so I brewed a guinnish stout and a bodgles bitter, used the recipes before. Done on separate days as 25L brew in ...

I would say crossmyloof but they mainly do pellets. If you ask they get stuff in though.

Funny yeasty taste. Caveat - I made it shortly before my Dad died. It was left in the fermenter for about 3 weeks after it had finished, I remember tasting it out of the fermenter and thinking it was OKish. It then got hurriedly kegged and force carbed, then abandoned in the shed throughout the summ...

Kveik and lager didn't go well for me last year. I actually found a keg full of it in my spare fridge the other day, over carbed and been at ambient temp since last May at a guess. still tastes weird so planning to pour it down the drain!

Just don't use dark brown for priming, it's brown from molasses and the taste doesn't clear like if you put it in the boil stage. Want to ask how I know???

Although a bit of dark muscovado primes an imerial stout nicely!

Day off today and bizarrely (for South Manchester) the skies were clear this morning with no rain so I went out to clean up my brewing area. It's under a roof but outdoors and has had a lot of footballs kicked at it since last used! Green liquid in the bottom of the mash tun, and some of the copper ...

I suppose I've actually lagered it! Have to see what the other two equally aged lagers taste like.

I usually just do the bittering hops in stout - it's about the roasty taste not hops. I've sampled a few so called "craft" ale stouts recently that were cherry flavoured or had loads of american hop flavour at the end - not nice at all. Your northdown/challenger concept is entirely inoffensive thoug...

I tend to add the roasties in the mash tun but been contemplating chucking it in later or even in the kettle which supposedly adds less bitterness....

Would work for a stronger brew though - that's supposedly at 5.8%. I normally get 40ish in my stouts - according to the calculating software, who knows what it really is! My Imperial mad strength (really nice coffee laced) stout was nominally 83IBU from chinook and first gold, so bitter can be good ...

I've just poured a pint of this, no idea how much is left in the keg, it's been sat abandoned in the fridge at the back of the bar shed. I cleaned the lines through around Christmas but the weather being standard UK, not been out to the shed for a beverage since. This beer is showing as 230 days old...