C'mon Pilsner

Lagers take ages! I need a second fridge to get another brew going!

The current candidate names are:

Hanoverian

Oldenburg

or

Holsteiner

Currently Oldenburg is proving the most popular but we'll see.

In the meantime I need to start jotting down my recipes for the next brews in the hope of making them repeatable. So recipes should soon start appearing on the blog which is a lot more interesting that me wittering on about random rubbish. It's like talking to myself really.

Barrel Racer has run out!

Showcasing your beers is very satisfying as you prove to many that homebrewing doesn't produce the yeasty slop that many experience on their first and only outing into homebrew.
The down side is that the beer gets drunk and you run out ...fast! I've managed to retain three bottles which I'm meant to conserve until Christmas...fat chance!

Here's the only photo I managed to capture of it: *sigh*

You have to move on and I have. The pilsner is coming along nicely I replaced Spalt with Tettanger but otherwise I remained true to the recipe which I will be putting up here. - watch this space!- and letting you know how it tastes too. Although the lagering is going to take this brew up to Mid- Novermber which wont leave much time for the steamship porter I have planned.

My engineering department (read Dad) has made a counterflow chiller for the next batch with is very exciting. After this set of ingredients is used up I'm thinking of getting the equipment for all grain. I'm scared.

Neeeext!

So I'm sticking with Scribbling Horse as my fantasy brewer name in the hope that people don't associate it with the smelly cafe in the town centre.
I've also come up with a theme for my beers - Horses - Not really that much of a leap but a good solid theme none the less.

I will be showing a few pictures of my first brew - Barrel Racer - Soon (just so you know I'm very proud of it)

Now I need a simple label maker and designer to get them out with some blurb.
 The ingredients for my next beer is on it's way so with a brew day set for next weekend I'm slowly becomign a production line!
Next stop wort chiller and mashing!

Brewing success! - Rinsing ...Hmmm ...not so good

So it's been a while..... the brew is finally bottled. Still working on a name as the first beer out of the scribbling horse brewhouse.

The yeast worked a treat inspite of the beer explosion in the primary fermenter while I was on holiday. Took the final gravity and we're talking total conversion - 1.010 from 1.058 - 6.3%. I'll put a picture of the bottles up at some point.
 
I think I need to work on a decent keg session beer at some point especially as I'm liking the Ringwood Best Bitter at the moment at 3.8% of drinkablity!

The yeast harvesting and rinsing didn't work as well though but as long as I turn it around in the next week or two it should be ok - I hope - watch this space

Shopping list for next time is:

3x Kilner Jars
Ice - Lots of it until the counter flow chiller is finished
Pressure cooker - Sterilising is hard without one!
Dextrose - suprisingly hard to find and I'm convinced this will make a difference to the finished beer.

The move to the garage is a bit of a pain at the moment not merely because of the garage door breaking but also carrying things to and from there.... need a boiler and water supply then I'll be set.

Hop shopping.... the last stop before lift off!

There are so many factors to a beer and so many types to try.... I've been doing way to much reading on yeast and hops and I think I'm ready to get back into the brewery (now partially located in the garage) and get my brew on.
As a keen hop head and lover of the IPA I figured the best way to get some of my commercial beer drinking (mainly lager) mates over to the ale was to brew steam/common and lager of my own. Then hop over to the pale ales and by next Christmas they'll be drinking porter like the best of 'em!

I've purchased some San Francisco yeast which will allow me to brew 'common' beer types and lagers. This will also force me to practice rinsing and propagation. Mainly because the yeast is so damn expensive!

I've purchased a few little add ons and will be making use of the fridge in the garage. Item's I've purchased are as follows:

Siphon upgrade - My current one is pants and this is a very important step to get right!
A fermenter with a bottler attached - This will be my lagering vessel and making bottling a lot easier!
Concial flask - This is for propagation
Thermostat - This is to control the fermentation and lagering temperatures in the fridge.

I'm now working out my four brews and what hops I'll need for each of them.... here's the list so far:

Cascade
Tettnanger
Centennial
Saaz

I'll post some info on these at some point soon as well as the base recipes I want to work from.

Mark Emiley - What a nice chap

During the early stages of my voyage of discovery in extract brewing I did a lot of reading on how to do certain things. Making a starter, steeping specialty grains and racking were areas of concern for me. Utilising the power of the internet and video tutorials I was able to see how these things were done by the experts. The best of these were the video tutorials by Mark Emiley. Not only an enthusiast and probably a great guy to have a beer with but also clear and consise in his brewing tutorials.

Sadly the lack of order of the videos and the titles make it pretty impossible to watch them in sequence without click on them (this may have been sorted now). You have to piece them together from what you can find too as there doesn't seem to be one place for them all.

Here's a link I just found it's a good starting place: Mark Emiley tutorials obviously youtube is another good source for them.

The stuff I've got so far

So many homebrew shops provide a great starter kit to help you on your way to brewing some nice basic kit brews. That's just dandy but there might be a few other items you might want to think about on top of your basic package.

Here's my current list of gear:

15 Litre boiling pot with lid
Glass Carboy - lovely but there are plastic alternatives.
Plastic fermenting bucket with airlock
Grain/Hop bags
Funnel
Syphon tubes
Racking Cane (Basic)
Bottler (basic)
Thermometer
Hydrometer
BIG spoon
BIG jug
Brewing belt (for temperature regulation)
Santisation powder

48 - 500 ml bottles with flip off tops
2 5 Gallon plastic barrels (although I'm a bottle convert so not in use)

On the wish list

Bucket fermenter with airlock and bottling tap  (little bottler)
1 Litre Jar
4 250 ml Jars with lids
A much better racking cane
Brupak Electic Boiler (Mmm pricey!)

So there's nothing quite like a home brewer taking pictures of his equipment and endlessly going on about it. If you're still reading this post then firstly well done!

Secondly in essence my lessons here are:

Hop and grain bags for extract brewing (your next step from kits) are invaluable
It's worth investing in decent syphon/racking cane - you want this to go smoothly
Buy a BIG pot for the boil - until you get a boiler.
Always have 2 fermenters

What are the jars about I hear you cry. They're for yeast rinsing covered in the R&D posts a little later.