Loosing our Virginity..

[yorkshirebrewery]

Previously posted in wrong section....

So, We're hoping to loose our brewing virginity tomorrow! At last it's all plumbed in and ready to go!! We're very excited and can't wait to get started.

We're going to start with a half/quarter of a brew tomorrow, I've been in touch with Fawcetts Maltsters who I think i'll approach again when I've got the basics down to a T, especially with their minimum order being 1/4 of tonne when collecting !! and a tonne for delivery. Fingers crossed We'll eventually get to the stage of getting it delivered a tonne or 2 at a time, seems very well priced!!

So, I've decided to go to Brewplas at Cleckheaton in the mean time to purchase ingredients at smaller quantities. I'm heading there in the morning to hopefully buy all the necessary bits. I'm hoping to make a pale ale, we're doing half a brew so we will be starting with 400l/200l. I'm still unsure on actual quantities so again, any advice would be greatly appreciated (and reciprocated where possible).

From looking at the advice from Orlando above, and ingredients available from brupaks, as well as a little bit of research, I've decided on the following recipe.

http://www.brupaks.com/ingredients.htm

MALT
I'm looking at buying some Maris Otter Extra Pale as the majority of my malt (80%?) a caramel malt - Crystal (10%?) and Pale Wheat Malt (10%?) for some head retention. Unsure of actual quantity required for 400l of water.

To be mashed with approx 133l or a third of the water at 66°C for 90 mins, and then flushed through with the remaining water and pumped into the copper ready for boiling.


HOPS
A pale ale hops with EBU 30-50, I'm assuming this is a dual purpose hop which can be used at the beginning of the boil as well as to add an aroma to nearer the end of the boil. Again, I'm unsure on quantity?

to be added at the start of the boil, then again with 15 minutes to go, total boil time, 90 mins.

YEAST
Brupaks Genuine Real Ale Yeast. Yet again, unsure of quantity.

to be added to the ale once it's been chilled to 20°C and moved into the fermenting tank.

FERMENTING
I'm then hoping in 7 days that it'll be ready for me to quieten down the pubs and invite an experienced taste panel over for a hopefully extended tasting session, anyone in the Halifax Area? If feedback is good (And there is some beer remaining ), to then transfer it to the firkins.

This is my first ever brew, so please any advice on quantities,temperatures, ingredients, additions, subtractions, time etc would be great at this stage and could even earn you a free pint or two, not that you'll need it..

Thanks for reading this lot, hopefully all that lot makes sense..

[Normski]

Hi and good luck with your 1st brew.
You will need some conditioning time after fermentation, before getting an experienced taste pannel to sample your brew.
Or it will be a bit 'Green'
Keg it and start tasting, you'll know when its nearly ready.
Norm

[Deebee]

Previously posted in wrong section....

So, We're hoping to loose our brewing virginity tomorrow! At last it's all plumbed in and ready to go!! We're very excited and can't wait to get started.

We're going to start with a half/quarter of a brew tomorrow, I've been in touch with Fawcetts Maltsters who I think i'll approach again when I've got the basics down to a T, especially with their minimum order being 1/4 of tonne when collecting !! and a tonne for delivery. Fingers crossed We'll eventually get to the stage of getting it delivered a tonne or 2 at a time, seems very well priced!!

So, I've decided to go to Brewplas at Cleckheaton in the mean time to purchase ingredients at smaller quantities. I'm heading there in the morning to hopefully buy all the necessary bits. I'm hoping to make a pale ale, we're doing half a brew so we will be starting with 400l/200l. I'm still unsure on actual quantities so again, any advice would be greatly appreciated (and reciprocated where possible).

From looking at the advice from Orlando above, and ingredients available from brupaks, as well as a little bit of research, I've decided on the following recipe.

http://www.brupaks.com/ingredients.htm

MALT
I'm looking at buying some Maris Otter Extra Pale as the majority of my malt (80%?) a caramel malt - Crystal (10%?) and Pale Wheat Malt (10%?) for some head retention. Unsure of actual quantity required for 400l of water.

To be mashed with approx 133l or a third of the water at 66°C for 90 mins, and then flushed through with the remaining water and pumped into the copper ready for boiling.


HOPS
A pale ale hops with EBU 30-50, I'm assuming this is a dual purpose hop which can be used at the beginning of the boil as well as to add an aroma to nearer the end of the boil. Again, I'm unsure on quantity?

to be added at the start of the boil, then again with 15 minutes to go, total boil time, 90 mins.

YEAST
Brupaks Genuine Real Ale Yeast. Yet again, unsure of quantity.

to be added to the ale once it's been chilled to 20°C and moved into the fermenting tank.

FERMENTING
I'm then hoping in 7 days that it'll be ready for me to quieten down the pubs and invite an experienced taste panel over for a hopefully extended tasting session, anyone in the Halifax Area? If feedback is good (And there is some beer remaining ), to then transfer it to the firkins.

This is my first ever brew, so please any advice on quantities,temperatures, ingredients, additions, subtractions, time etc would be great at this stage and could even earn you a free pint or two, not that you'll need it..

Thanks for reading this lot, hopefully all that lot makes sense..

Personally i would drop the pale and wheat a little and increase the pale malt. But thats just me.

As for IBU, i usually bitter pales at around 28 or .6:1 ish ibu/og

[Jim]

This is probably all over with now; hope it went well.

Re the yeast, if you were intending to use home brew style packs, you would need several of them for that size brew or you'd be underpitching.

You didn't give actual weights for the malt so it's difficult to see exactly what you're aiming for there. Did you try using a brewing calculator to work out the actual quantities of malt and hops required? Did you have a target starting gravity?

You seem to be groping in the dark a bit at the moment!

[Patterd Ale]

Some of my favourite times were had groping in the dark.

[mozza]

What do you mean by Pale Ale Hops? What recipe did you go for in the end?

[Normski]

I'd love to know how this is progressing.

[Jim]

Perhaps he's still in his mash tun, shovelling.

[Jocky]

Perhaps he's still in his mash tun, shovelling.

Quite possibly if his first ever brew is 200l.

I wish him all the best, I think he'll need it if he's built an entire brewery without ever having brewed before!

(FYI I am jealous though)

[far9410]

This should have been April 1st post surely?

[yorkshirebrewery]

Thanks for the responses....albeit after the proposed 'Brewing' weekend . nonetheless the brewery ended up gathering dust at the weekend as I've decided to delve a little deeper before jumping in head first, the 200l brew is on ice at the moment! I was just very eager when the brewery was fully installed to get the ball rolling and hope that somehow some award winning beer would come out of it. If it wasn't for some perfect motorcycling conditions this weekend, I could now be the potentially proud owner of approx. 200l of fermenting............beer?

Time for the more sensible plan....research, research, research, gather advice, maybe a dash more research then on to the experiments, I'm going to make a much smaller batch first and scale up as necessary. So my new questions are, to all you brewers out there.......Where did you start? How long did it take you to master the skill of brewing or at least to a standard where most people enjoy the result? What steps would you recommend i take to naturally progress and develop required brewing skills? Has anyone tried the http://www.beeracademy.co.uk/ courses or could recommend alternatives?

I appreciate all your responses so far, and appologise if it seemed like i was jumping the gun and not giving this process the respect it deserves, as well as not returning to the forum with some good news such as, "I've managed to brew some liquid gold that you're all welcome to come and try!", or probably what the majority of you were expecting, bad news such as, "I failed miserably, does anyone know where i can dispose of 200l of fermenting green slime?".

I'm hoping i'll get there eventually, i must have already read the equivalent of the bible researching brewing but still have a long way to go. Back to the books.....

[Patterd Ale]

Chin up, it isn't difficult with a little practice!
Tis just cooking after all, convoluted tea brewing with booze. Twas a good weekend for the bikes though, wise choice.

[Befuddler]

I've decided to delve a little deeper before jumping in head first

Very good plan. You don't need to be an expert to make drinkable beer, but having a recipe in place before you heat up the water is probably a good idea.

Get some brewing software to help you thrash out your first attempt. Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine is pretty easy to understand, if a little crude by modern standards. Set your batch volume at the top, untick both "[ ] Fixed" boxes and start adding grains and hops by weight. The program will do the calculations for you and give some rough numbers in the top right corner.

When you're ready for it, BeerSmith is a much more complex piece of kit, and it's still in active development.

Start with a simple recipe, see what you reckon to it, then iterate on the process as you gain experience. Don't worry about anything fancy like water treatment at this stage, just get some beer in the fermenter and go from there.

[Deebee]

Hi.
If you ask here there maybe someone who lives nearby who will let you brew with them. Learning by doing from someone in the know is good.
My first batch was respectable. My first solo batch went to the big drip tray in the sky. After say 4batches under your belt you should be on the way.
Start small and in the mean tkme get to know your system. Boil a batch worth of water in your boiler so you know your boil off rate. Fil themt then drain to know deadspace. Run your sparge arm and open the valve at the bottom of your mt to get the flow rate right.

[Jocky]

Purely from a business point of view I would also figure out who you will be supplying and what they want to drink, and zero in on a recipe/process for one beer for that first.

Unless you're running a brew pub yourself, anyone that is going to stock your beer is going to be doing so by replacing someone else's beer. So your beer needs to be better, and even then most pubs are tied into stocking certain beers.

Process wise, you need to brew, brew and brew some more on a small scale to get the feel for it. You're going to be competing with people that have years of experience, although the good news here is that as long as you stay open to new ideas and techniques you are going to be able to be more innovative than established breweries.

Follow a recipe (follow a few) be super critical of what is produced, and do blind tastings against other beers with friends and local publicans. Think about what is wrong and what is right about those first beers, and figure out how to fix it.

Good luck!