Over the month of August, I take off most Fridays and of course we have our holiday. I managed to do two brews, a Chocolate Oat Milk Stout and a Simcoe IIPA, But dry hopped with Citra, or will be when it’s out of the primary.
Both brews have under performed and I’m putting it down to the Thomas Fawcett malt which I have used for the first time! Compared to the Warminster Maltings it is very powdery and seems to have a high percentage of unmilled kernels !
The Chocolate Stout OG came in at 1.065 but FG only came in at 1.020 giving it a 5.86 % ABV instead of 6.8 %, during the mash the sparge stuck …and I’m not sure how much the 500g of Cocoa powder in the last 5 mins of the boil will have effected the OG if at all…

The Simcoe-Citra IIPA only achieved an OG of 1.066 instead of 1.076 even though the mash profile and temperatures were pretty much spot on !
Below is the Temp plot of the ferment left in the capable hands of the @BrewPi Controller whilst we were in a log cabin on the outskirts of Keswick in the Lakedistrict

and… Whist we were away it was the Olicanabrew meeting, quite an important one as the club is to have a presence at the forth coming Addingham Festival early October. I have been paired with Gaz and together we have been tasked with producing a session Pale Ale. We will be meeting shortly as timings are very tight for a collar brew !
In anticipation before our holiday I bought a larger Vessel to be used as a FV , a 60 L food safe barrel so I have the capacity to do a firkin… But after a call with Gaz I think we might only be doing a 20L polypin ….

Just a Quick foot note the air was as blues the new FV this afternoon when I bottled the Chocolate Oat Milk Stout, I had 20 paired up and in a line ready for the crown cap to go on when I knocked something off a shelf… 3 1/2 pints of Stout on the Cellar floor 

I normally buy my Pale Maris Otter in bulk. I have in the past mainly used Warminster Maltings and have had good results with them, recently I tried Thomas Fawcett but of the two brews I have done with it , one stuck on sparging and the other didn’t achieve the efficiency I normally get with Warminster malt !
So to the Olicanabrew members, What Malster do you use ? In fact I’ll open the question up to any other brewer who reads my blog …

Last week was a week of Shedquarters visits ! Wednesday saw @bubblingbuckets visit for a quick tour and a chat over a 1/2 , it’s probably best that he only had a good chat and catch up as the following night, plans were afoot for a sleep over by 2 work mates. Unfortunately @jnhazel one of the two became a victim of some virus or dodgy take out from the night before ( and he’s still off work as I Post this) So It was down to me and @couperman to make a dent in the  shedquarter keg levels, after a visit to the local Wetherspoons’ (thursday is Curry Night ) . The following Video is the result… apparently he’s always wanted to do the last bit but never been allowed. !!!!

[videojs mp4=”http://purpleogre.com/images/Shedquarters%20SD%20480p.mp4″ width=”480″ height=”270″]

Well I finally bought 2 taps and made my fridge into a kegerator 

They work really well, currently there’s  Black IPA and Anchor Steam on them !

Just finished and currently conditioning up in the house cellar are a Wheat beer and the Columbus Challenge II,  FG ‘s were 1.007 and 1.006 which means they’re 5 % and 4.5% respectively.  I’ll Let them condition a little more and swap them to the kegerator.. So if any one wants to meet up and sample  a few at the shedquarters …just get in touch…

Just a quick update to show the recorded temperature rise whilst the fermentation of the Columbus brew started on tuesday was at its peak..

not sure why the fridge and Room  probe are 1˚c above the other as they are sat next to each other….

Monday evening was the @olicanabrewing meeting @Bar_tat,

Another successful event, It was the Imperial Stout or Fruit Beer Challenge , there were some really promising and nice beers for tasting although again we were suffering from young Beer and needed another week or two to condition properly and unfortunately Toms tasted slightly antiseptic one of the off flavours of an infection, during the Meeting and discussions on the train home we agreed we need to be more open with our criticism,  that way people have a chance of learning  and rectifying things for future brews. I thought my Russian Imperial was ok but Possibly  too sweet as it was designed to be 10.5 % but only achieved 9.5%

Gaz Brought up an idea for manning a stall and hopefully having beers from us at an event in Addingham in October. This sounds like Great Idea, I have never done anything larger than 25L , a while ago was given a plastic 9 from my local, It was from a small brewery in York that closed and the Brewer just disappeared leaving the cask behind, so this would be an ideal opportunity to try out cask conditioning.. this conversation led on to discussions of selling beer, I have had several people asking me to sell them some but I have to say no, I personally would love to be able to sell my beer but find the process of registering with HMRC, setting up and registering a business more than a little daunting, Maybe we should try and organise a speaker or a workshop event from some one who has gone through the process…

The morning after @olicanabrewing saw me very Groggy but still able to have Allgrain BrewDay No 37.

I used a slightly modified Columbus challenge recipe. Still using to original challenge weight of 50g of Columbus high alpha hops but now Designed to have an OG of 1.040 a bit lower than last time. The Pale malt went down to 2.5Kg and the Pilsner malt went up to 2Kg

It hit the mark spot on   although, I think I need to tweak my equipment profile as I ended up with 26L in the FV and using the pump to Aeriate the wort I ended up with a foam monster..!!

I decided to let this one ferment out in the Cellar which seems to be holding out around 19-20 ˚c this time of year, its using a starter from a US-05 second generation yeast and The Brew had already started when I checked it later in the evening 

As well as doing my brewing I have been keeping a closer eye on BrewPi, I have recently updated both systems and rebuilt one (software wise) from scratch.

Hats off to the whole team, the new install/update  process has been automated and is now much easier, however there was a mild moment of panic when the one I chose to just update, (the BlackPi in the Shed with a brew in the FV), didn’t carry over the sensor configuration but that was soon sorted ! Also my suggestion of adding the system name into the web code hasn’t been adopted so I had to change the code to make my systems distinguishable again but thats very very minor ..

I spotted in the forums about The move to the Spark Core, this looks promising and I hope that with a re write in progress, the extra memory on the Spark Core builtin WiFi etc. Elco and MDMA choose to move the display buffer out of the display library and have it in a black box of it’s own so that other display libraries can be just bolted in….I still like the idea of multiple I2C displays so that you could have a dedicated display per chamber… If I was more proficient and had more free time I’d like to have a proper go but hey ho, I know I’m not ! so I’ll just tinker on the sidelines and Brew some Beer 🙂

Monday was a brew day , Belgian WheAt Beer !  I have brewed it  it a couple of times before ! The first time I brewed it I put the coriander seeds in Whole, result = not much flavour ! The Second Occasion I used a pestle and mortar to crack the coriander seeds, Flavour = moderate 🙂 .

This Time I put the coriander seeds through my manual coffee grinder on Course before adding then to the boil, lets hope it’s not too strong flavoured….

After listening to several BeerSmith Podcasts on my daily commute, I have changed my Wort Aeration technique ! instead of sitting there for 10 minutes violently aggitating the FV, I have invested in an air pump for a fish tank,  currently I’m using a normal  airstone but may upgrade to a stainless Steel one, the wheat beer was already off the blocks and producing gas 2 hrs after putting in the starter , I have had to change the blow off bottle every morning and evening  since Monday as its full of Krausen….

Monday I also Kegged the Black IPA , it’s FG was 1.016 making it a 7.59% brew, looking forward to sampling it…

On the saturday morning I also Kegged my Anchor Steam Clone, this had an OG of 1.060 and  the ferment  had slowed dramatically by friday evening and on taking the SG (1.010) saturday I decided to Keg and cold crash it , should be a healthy 6.58%

Hope fully I will see all the Olicanabrew folks on the 23rd , I’ll bring a couple of bottles of the RIS along but it’s only been bottled 2 Weeks and if the BIPA or Anchor has Conditioned  possible a pet of one or the other 🙂

My Next Brewday may be the day after the Brewclub meeting, thats if I’m not too Grey ……

Yesterday was a brewday an Anchor Steam Clone Brewday ! It’s a while since I brewed an Anchor Steam Clone but I have a minor problem ! The Russian Imperial Stout that I placed in the cellar to finish in a secondary FV whilst the Black IPA fermented in the BrewPi fridge when I was away on training, to put it simply hasn’t .. and it’s causing a bottle neck.

I am wondering if the Cellar temp of 18-19˚c just wasn’t warm enough to finish it , as you can see from the above readings it only moved by 0.2 %

It’s the first time I have used this strain of yeast (WLP007), it is supposed to have a medium-high alcohol tolerance and an optimum 18-21˚c fermentation temperature. So the Freshly brewed Anchor Steam clone using  Fermentis US-05 yeast, which I know will ferment at lower temperatures than the Cellar temperature is now, is In the Cellar  along with it is the Black IPA which is  using a 2nd generation of the WLP007 . The RIS is in the Fridge at a warmer 23˚c . Lets hope its finished before the next Olicanabrew meeting.!

Although without an optimum 8 months bottle conditioning won’t be at its best.

This was the vista when I checked on the RIS on saturday Morning !

It Took a while to clean up and it was still going strong  yesterday morning……!!!

At last the Cascade Hops have surfaced from their Slumber…