Jim's Beer Kit

Over the last month or so I've made the following... 27L of. Simcoe extra pale ale Smash with a belgian yeast. Butlers simcoe smash belgian yeast = BUSSBY 25L of my VB clone, used up the last of my pride of ringwood hops 27L of an IPA recipe using CML tropical England hops 50ish L of my BUMPA best b...

I think I worked out why the stout went wrong, giving the stainless klarstein fermenter a good clean before putting a batch of IPA in it on Tuesday. Despite it having all been cleaned and left soaking in chemclean, the lid smelt horrible. I realised there was a load of gunge behind the lid seal whic...

I generally use crossmyloof brew kolsch yeast for lagerish stuff in the summer. I did do some very nice lager and vienna lager in Feb with Bigger jugs pils yeast, all done at ambient in the shed so the lagers were 11-15 degrees for a month and as I say very nice. The kolsch stuff works fine at UK sp...

How did it turn out?

Fermentation is at ambient in the chosen room! Guinnish was under the stairs at about 20 degrees, the bitter was in the boiler room on the floor with its temperature sticker showing 20 as well. The previous lagers were done in the shed in Feb/March so very cool slow lager fermentation as it should b...

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 ...