Thornbridge Competition

After driving to Bakewell and dropping off my Vienna IPA entry into the National Home Brew Challenge, I figured that most likely it would be the last I'd hear about it. Being a rookie home brewer, only in my wildest dreams did I harbour thoughts of actually winning.

Obviously I'd tried the beer before entering - it was clean and tidy, I was happy with it and in all honesty, I had felt that it may do okay. I always believed though, that there was bound to be a few absolutely stand-out entries and that one of these would inevitably triumph.

It came as a bit of a surprise then, to find a missed call and voicemail from Thornbridge's Alex Buchanan one day in mid-August, asking if I could call him back. It could only really be one thing, so I shakily dialled and spoke to Alex, who said that after much deliberation, my beer had come out on top!

Since recovering from the initial shock, it's been a fantastic experience to be involved in helping Thornbridge's brewers scale up the recipe and make the beer. I discussed the recipe via email with Rob Lovatt and visited in early September for the brew day.

Receiving my certificate and cheque

The kit at Thornbridge is bigger and more automated than in other microbreweries I've helped out at. They have a 30 barrel plant with separate mash and lauter tuns, a copper and a Rolek Hopnik.  Add 18 conical fermenters and it's quite a setup. The brewers were unfailingly friendly and helpful and it was good to put faces to names. James Buchanan took me off for a tour round the old brewery and the grounds of Thornbridge Hall, including the statue of Flora, a photo of which adorns every bottle.

Walking under some of the fvs

Flora, Roman goddess of flowers

The grain is delivered to silos in bulk so only the speciality malts and the hops are handled manually. All the vessels have clean-in-place (CIP) systems so this frees up the brewers, allowing them to focus on measuring and monitoring rather than wearing themselves out shovelling used grain around and cleaning up.

The whole process is managed from a pc in an air-conditioned brewing control room. On its monitor, this shows a schematic of the brewhouse with quantities, temperatures and other critical information displayed alongside each vessel. A click of the mouse is all it takes to start each part of the brewing process. Behind the control room is a laboratory, where the brewers take samples to be analysed at certain points in the brew.

Will Inman checks the pitching rate of a batch of Halcyon

Every brew gets tested for limit of attenuation, dissolved oxygen, pitching rate and a host of other variables and it's this culture of constant quality monitoring that in my opinion sets Thornbridge apart from most other UK micros.

Rob stuck to my recipe as closely as he could, making changes where necessary to allow for their different kit. A small bittering charge of T90 pellets was added to the copper at the start of the boil and a 6 grams per litre (30kg) charge of Columbus, Citra and Ahtanum was put into the Hopnik. This is a vessel through which the hot wort is circulated after the boil is finished. It's the most efficient way of getting the volatile hop flavours and aromas into the beer and much of the bitterness is derived here as well.

Once brewed, the beer was left to ferment for a week and condition for a further two then I visited again later in September to see it being bottled. The beer tasted fantastic - a flavoursome, amber-coloured IPA with the big Columbus and Ahtanum aromas particularly evident. I've recently developed a bit of an obsession with looking at the best before dates on beer so it was a privilege to sample some within minutes of it being bottled.

I could tell it was the same recipe as my home brew but as I expected, Thornbridge's superior processes and their attention to detail had taken it to the next level. There were a few little things I would have changed about my brew and Thornbridge had done it. This was the beer I was trying to make - ten thousand bottles of it!

That just over two months after driving to Bakewell with my entry, I'll be able to go into Waitrose and buy a bottle of the beer with my name on the label, made to my recipe, is pretty amazing. I hope the beer is well-received by the Waitrose customers and I'd like to extend my thanks to all involved in organising and running the competition.

Having a well-earned beer back home

Brew 18 - Divine Hammer

10.5% Triple IPA

Brew date 28/7/14

This was my first attempt at making a really high strength beer and it was a special request, with the finished result destined for my mate Nick's 40th birthday weekend.

I wanted to make a big double or triple IPA, with multiple dry-hop additions and dextrose in the boil, to boost the ABV while keep the body light. I called the beer "Divine Hammer" after the song of the same name by excellent 90's band The Breeders.

With the strength so high, it was always going to be a bit of a step into the unknown so I wasn't going to get too precious about hitting numbers spot on. The starting point was simply to make an educated guess about the maximum amount of grain I could fit in my mash tun. I'd used 7 kilos before and there was some room left, so I guesstimated at 8.5 kg being the limit.

I came up with a simple recipe: 8200g of low colour Maris Otter and 300g of Caramalt (that's 3.3%). I added 700g of brewing sugar to the boil, to make 9.2kg of fermentables.

The mash tun looked like this:

Pretty full. It was all dribbling over the edge at the beginning so I'm satisfied I've found the limit. I did the usual big 0 min addition and 60 minute bittering addition to make up the IBUs. The bittering addition was really big: 314g of Cascade, Columbus and Citra, using up a few bag ends along the way. Added to the kettle, it looked like this:

I stirred it in and let it all stand for 20 minutes before turning the cold tap on for the cooling coil. The OG was 1.088 and I used 3 packets of US-05 yeast for the fermentation. That's still probably nowhere near enough but it's what I had and this brew was also an exercise in using up some old ingredients.

Hop schedule

The fermentation went ok, if maybe a bit slow, taking about 10 days to bottom out at 1.008. This was much lower than I'd been expecting, giving 10.5% ABV. In hindsight, I think I got carried away with the dextrose in the boil, resulting in wort which was a bit too racy.

I'd figured that this beer would be made or broken by what happened after fermentation finished, with good dry-hopping technique being really important. I did two separate additions, all T90 pellets, with the first being 100g of Columbus and 100g Citra into the primary FV and the second 100g of Citra and 100g Ahtanum into a secondary vessel after doing a transfer.

I cold-crashed in the second vessel and didn't add finings as I wanted to retain every last bit of flavour. The beer tasted brilliant at this point; like an orgy of hops.

Unfortunately, it went a little wrong from then on. I transferred into an open bucket for bottling, adding enough priming sugar to get 2.4 - 2.5 vols of carbonation. However, the tap got clogged up with hops and after trying in vain to find another way, I ended up having no choice but to blow down the tube to clear the blockage if I was going to get the beer out. The bottling went fine but I tasted a bit of the beer at the end and sadly it was already a bit tired and oxidised; definitely not as good as it had been a day or two before.

Fast forward two weeks and there was no sign of any carbonation. I emailed Dom Driscoll from Thornbridge and he confirmed my fears that 10.5% ABV is just a bit too big an ask for tired US-05 to bottle-condition. He suggested opening the bottles and dropping some fresh champagne yeast in each one.

I'm a bit annoyed with myself for not seeing the problem coming but as they say, you live and learn. I'll do the champagne yeast thing but I'm already itching to just re-do the brew with the schoolboy errors ironed out.

For the record, next time I would:

• Aim at a little lower ABV, say 9%, for the next one
• Use less dextrose in the boil
• Use wet yeast - a big dose of WLP001
• Do all the dry-hopping in primary
• Be more careful not to oxidise the beer during transfers
• Possibly re-seed with fresh yeast before bottling

In hindsight it was probably a bit ambitious to try and make a beer over 10% this early in my home brewing career and I've learnt that it's definitely not the sort of brew you can just do on a whim, with loads of careful planning needed if you want the best results. There is certainly a lot to catch you out when venturing into this territory and the one thing that stands head and shoulders above the rest is the importance of dissolved oxygen control. It's always important to minimise O2 takeup after fermentation is complete but these super-hoppy beers really show you up if you don't.

This is one area where a homebrewer has a serious disadvantage over a professional. It's so much harder to keep oxygen out of a small batch than a big batch because the small batch just has a higher surface area-to-volume ratio. There are steps, such as purging tanks with CO2, that can be taken to help minimise the problem but it'll always be a struggle.

There is one key advantage a homebrewer does have over his or her professional counterpart though: we don't have to make a profit. This beer had a stupid amount of hops in it: 21g/l in dry-hopping and 12g/l in the late kettle addition. Sadly though, if the technique isn't spot on, the amount of hops counts for nowt.

Mind your IBUs

This is just a quick note to explain what an IBU is and how to work out how many of them your homebrew's got. It's also the 100th post on this blog. What a milestone!

IBU stands for International Bittering Units and the bitterness of a beer can be quantified and expressed in IBUs. One IBU is the same as one milligram of isomerised alpha acid per litre of beer.

The proper way to work out the bitterness of a beer is by analysing a sample in a laboratory but if, like me, you don't have a spectrophotometer, then you can make do with using a figure calculated from the hop additions.

It's convenient to use brewing software that does this for you but it's just as easy to work it out for yourself. Here's how:

Each hop addition adds bitterness to the beer and the bitterness from all the additions can simply be added together to give the total bitterness. To work out how much bitterness any given hop addition provides, you just do the following:

1. Multiply the grams added by the alpha acid percentage of the hop. This gives you a total amount of alpha acid available from that addition. (in grams)
2. Multiply this by the utilisation rate, which is the percentage that gets isomerised. I use 26% for 60 minute additions and 5% for 0 minute additions. This gives you a total amount of isomerised alpha acid. (still in grams)
3. Multiply this figure by 1000 to get milligrams and divide by the batch size to get a per litre figure. This is now your IBU figure for that particular addition.

For example, if you add 15g of a 12%aa hop at 60 minutes, then you get:

1. 12% of 15g is 1.8g
2. 26% of 1.8g is 0.468g
3. 0.468g x 1000 / 26l = 18 mg/l or 18 IBUs.

Repeat for each hop addition and add them all together to get the total. This could get pretty tedious so instead of doing the sums each time, I've put it all in a spreadsheet which works it out automatically. All I have to do is alter the alpha acid percentages and the weights. The beauty of this is that you can fiddle around with your own utilisation rates.

A few brewers, such as Marble, are starting to cut out the middle hop additions and add the majority of the hops at flameout, making up any remaining bitterness with a small addition at the start of the boil.

According to the Tinseth numbers, which most of the brewing software use as default, flameout additions don't contribute any bitterness. In reality this isn't the case though. I've spoken to one brewer, who does have a spectrophotometer, who says they get 10-14% utilisation from flameout hops. Another pro brewer suggested 4-5% is a good ballpark figure to use. I suspect that for normal homebrew kit, with a 15-20 minute hop stand, a figure somewhere in between is going to be right.

It's important to remember that the utilisation percentages are approximate and will vary a lot depending on the kit you use but the above figures are good enough to get started. If you're adding a big flameout addition and are using a generic brewing calculator to work out the IBUs, then be careful, because the chances are your beer could end up more bitter than expected.

 The only way the flameout hops add no significant bitterness is if you cool the wort down to below 80C before adding them, which means little isomerisation takes place. This is what some brewers do, with great success. It's just another way of doing things but as ever, it's probably best to get brewing and see what works for you.

Brew 17 - Vienna IPA

5.9% IPA

Brew date 27/6/14

This was my entry for The Great British Homebrew Challenge 2014, a competition run jointly by Thornbridge Brewery and Waitrose. The winning entry would see their recipe scaled up and brewed by Thornbridge and stocked in Waitrose stores nationwide. Quite a prize!

The first major hurdle with competitions is deciding what to enter, so I thought hard about what kind of beer might have a chance of success. I figured the beer would have to appeal to a wide cross-section of drinkers and therefore be commercially attractive. So no rhubarb and marmite-infused saisons then. I thought it should also be at least a bit different to any of Thornbridge's current offerings.

I narrowed it down to two possibles that appealed to me; a Belgian golden ale or an IPA made with Vienna malt. As I had never used Belgian yeast before, I opted for the Vienna IPA as a safe choice because I could just use WLP001 yeast and hopefully hit the numbers pretty well.

I wanted to make it quite full-bodied, not too dry and quite dark in colour for an IPA, with a complex flavour so I added a bit of biscuit malt and some caramalt. I decided upon using Columbus, Citra and Ahtanum hops as I thought they would create a good range of taste and aroma, from dank through to floral. A pale ale water profile was used, high in sulphates to keep the bitterness from becoming too harsh.

Again, I went for just three hop additions; at 60 minutes, 0 minutes and a dry hop. The bittering addition was a small amount of Columbus and the big 0 minute addition was 1/3 Columbus and 2/3 Citra, providing about 60% of the IBUs.

I'd been a bit disappointed not to hit the numbers very well when making my last beer, so I put some considerable effort into researching brewhouse efficiency and attenuation rates and such things. It turned out that to end up with a 5.9% ABV beer I would need to collect 32 litres of wort with a pre-boil gravity of 1.046. There should then be 26 litres left in the kettle after the boil is complete, with an original gravity (OG) of 1.057. This should then ferment down to 1.012, giving a 5.9% beer. Quite a tall order!

Happily, this brew behaved itself impeccably and hit every number spot on. Seeing the hydrometer bobbing about at 1.057 after hours of toil was a very nice sight. The pH of the mash was even 5.2, exactly as it should be. It was as though the stars had aligned and everything fell into place.

I bottled with 100g of dextrose, enough to get a carbonation of about 2.4 vols. After two weeks it was lovely and fizzy and tasting delicious. This beer definitely has the best hop aroma out of any I've made, with the Ahtanum quite prominent. The Columbus and the Citra seem to play very nicely together as well. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and hopefully the judges think so too. Fingers crossed!
-------

Edit: They did think so! 

Brew 15 - Propaganda (2)

6.3% Black IPA

Brewday 11/5/14

A bit of a belated post here. Just continuing the theme of writing up notes on my last few brews, to get up to date. It's fair to say that my most successful brew up until this point had been Propaganda, my black IPA, so I decided to have a crack at another one.

I tweeted that I was trying to plan a black IPA and didn't know whether to use any crystal malt. I received a few replies and among the people responding was James Kemp, or JK, formerly of Fullers, Thornbridge and Buxton breweries, who knows a thing or two about black IPAs to say the least.

The answer to my question by the way, was yes. About 5% crystal malt will help to darken the colour a bit, limiting the amount of Carafa III needed and would also help to support the massive dry-hopping needed. JK also very helpfully supplied me with some further advice regarding water manipulation and hop schedules. Thanks mate!

The grain bill I ended up with looked like this:

Maris Otter 5000g (69.4%), Munich 1000g 13.9%), Crystal 120EBC 350g (4.9%), Carafa Special III 325g (4.5%), Chocolate Malt 175g (2.4%), Wheat Malt 350g (4.9%)

The important thing was to use about 5% medium crystal and to limit the Carafa to the 4.5% region, to minimise the roasted flavours. I didn't add the Carafa at the end but instead mixed the whole lot in together. 

 

I decided to use a single hop, Citra, with a single bittering addition of 28g at 60 minutes and a flameout addition of 175g. JK said that the 0 minute additions do add bitterness and suggested using 4-5% utilisation when working it out. With such a large amount being used, the effect is substantial and with this brew, over half the bitterness is added after flameout.

Unfortunately, when took a gravity reading, it was only 1.060. I'd been hoping to make a beer nearer the 7% mark, so it was nowhere near. In hindsight, all I could think of was that I'd not broken up the grain properly when mashing in and had left some doughballs behind. I went and bought a big stainless mash paddle for next time.

I carried on and the ferment finished at 1.012, making the finished beer 6.3%. I dry hopped with 200g of Citra pellets, which makes a rate of about 9grams per litre.

I had been gradually cutting down on the carbonation over the last few brews but probably went too far with this one and should have gone for a bit more. It eventually got to the point where it was just about carbed enough but the beer still needed swirling round in the glass to get a decent head. I'd try to get it a bit fizzier next time.

Overall, I was pleased with the end result, which was definitely black and had a really good hop aroma. I'd use some other hops next time, probably Columbus, Citra and Nelson and of course try to iron out some of the little mistakes I made. As always, I learnt a lot though, which is the main thing!

Brew 16 - The Beer That Went Clear

5.0% American Pale Ale

Brewday 31 May 2014

There were a lot of firsts in the making of this beer. It was the first time I'd cold crashed with a fridge, the first time I'd fined with gelatin and the first time I'd done proper water manipulation. I obtained a set of mini-scales to weigh the salts on, as can be seen below:

There was no special plan for the beer, it was just an exercise in trying out some new techniques more than anything, so I decided a 5.0% pale ale would be just fine for this.

MASH
Grain		Amt (g)	Amt (%)
Maris Otter Low Colour		4600	92.0
Caramalt		250	5.0
		0	0.0
		0	0.0
		0	0.0
		0	0.0
Torrified Wheat		150	3.0
Total		5000

BOIL
Time	60	10	0	Dry	Total
Hops	Citra		Citra	Citra T90
Alpha (%)	14.0		14.0	12.8
Amount (g)	7		125	125	257.0
Amt / L	0.3	0.0	5.0	5.4
Total AA (g)	0.98	0	17.5
Gravity	1.052		1.052
Utilisation	0.26		0.05	0
IBU (mg/L)	10.2	0.0	35.0	0.0	45.2

Sorry for the poor layout. The recipe is copied from the spreadsheet I use. I'll try to find a better way of displaying them in the future. The lower table shows three hop additions; 7g at 60 mins, 125g at 0 mins and a 125g dry hop.

The last few beers had had a fair bit of "craft haze" about them so I paid a lot of attention to technique during this brew, with the aim of trying to get it clearer. I recirculated the first runnings for longer and went out and bought a second-hand fridge off ebay halfway through, which was useful as I could now cold-crash properly. This, combined with using gelatin as a fining agent, worked wonders and resulted in the clearest beer I'd ever made.

Unfermented wort

Before cold crash

After cold crash

I took a case along to my mate Dan's 40th birthday party, where it went down very well. Having a dedicated brew fridge is really useful and I now don't know how I managed without one for so long!

Beer reviews

Hey all

We're moving our reviews of commercial beers to Untappd - get in touch if you want to read them there. 

This blog will now be focused on home brewing and the eternal quest for the perfect pub...

Homebrew 13 - Low ABV Pale

Brewday - 13/04/14

Boy Racer - 2.8% ABV Pale Ale

With a window of brewing opportunity presenting itself at fairly short notice, I had a look through my ingredients box and decided to do something I'd been meaning to do for a while and try my hand at a low alcohol beer. 

After a bit of calculation, the measly collection of grain and hops I had left appeared to lend itself quite well to this beer. All I needed was some yeast so I decided to use liquid yeast for the first time, seeing as how it was a bit of an experimental brew anyway. I got some White Labs WLP001.

The grain bill was mostly Maris and lager malt. I decided to use 5% torrified wheat for head retention and a bit of Munich and Crystal for flavour. The colour would have been so light with this, that I had to add 20g of chocolate malt to get the colour to hit 7 SRM, which is the kind of area I was looking for.

MASH
Grain Bill	Type	Amt (g)	Amt (%)
	Maris Otter	2095	58.2
	Lager Malt	1024	28.4
	Crystal	101	2.8
	Torry Wheat	180	5.0
	Munich Malt	180	5.0
	Chocolate Malt	20	0.6
Total		3600

These low ABV beers require mashing at a high temperature for a short amount of time, to limit the conversion of starch to fermentable sugars, thus retaining body in the beer. I decided to mash at 71C for 60 minutes although in hindsight, 45 minutes would probably have done it.

I dumped a kettle of boiling water into the mash tun at the end, to try to stop the enzymes and sparged with 80C water until 32L had been collected. The OG was 1.032, which considering I was trying to make a 3.4% beer, was a little less than I had been expecting.

I used Northern Brewer, Target and Amarillo hops for no other reason than they were what I already had. I wanted to make it quite bitter and hoppy so went for 50 IBU, with decent late additions and 100g in dry hop.

After 2 weeks, the FG never made it past 1.011, which gives a strength of about 2.8% ABV, much less than I had been expecting. It's a good job I hadn't been trying to make a 2.8% beer really, as it'd have ended up as utter dishwater. This beer was a bit of a journey into the unknown but given that a short, hot mash would create less fermentable sugar, I suppose it shouldn't come as too big a surprise.

I eventually filled 37 bottles, priming with 99g of dextrose, which should give carbonation of around 2.1 volumes. Looking forward to the verdict in a few weeks.

The verdict:
Horrible! The beer looked okay, was nicely carbonated and didn't have any off-tastes but was simply not a very nice recipe. The Northern Brewer was vile and the small amount of chocolate malt seemed to have the effect of making it taste, well, like watery, weak chocolate.

Little homebrew improvements

This is just a quick post to record a few small but important upgrades I made recently to my brew equipment.

The first was a temperature controller I made a few weeks ago. It's absolutely critical to producing good beer, to maintain the temperature at the right level throughout fermentation. Yeast hates variations in temperature.

Up until now, I'd been putting the fermentation vessels into a small room and relying on keeping the air temperature as constant as possible. I'd done this by turning fan heaters on and off and opening and closing doors and windows. It was as hit-and-miss as it sounds.

I decided to sort it out and made an electronic temperature control unit, copying this design. The unit is based around this little device, which I bought off Ebay:

The screen displays the temperature of the fermenting beer, via a temperature probe mounted in the wall of the tank. You simply set the desired temperature and when it gets too cold it switches on a heating circuit and when it gets too hot it switches on a cooling circuit. It's currently cool enough to operate only the heating circuit and rely on the ambient room temperature to do the cooling.

This is my current fermentation set-up, with the FV on the left. It's wrapped in a foam jacket, to regulate the temperature losses and is sat on a 40W electric heating mat. The heat mat is plugged into the heating circuit on the controller, which is the grey box to the right. The clear vessel in the middle is being purged with CO2, ready for use as a conditioning tank later on.

I also came to the conclusion that my boiler wasn't quite getting hot enough to produce a proper rolling boil. It was always a bit weedy really, so I wrapped a bit of foam around it to reduce heat loss through the sides. This worked brilliantly and meant that I had a nice vigorous boil.

Brewday number ten

To mark an occasion as special as my tenth homebrew, I decided to take a risk and make something a bit different. I enjoyed making the Black IPA and it's fair to say it's probably been my most successful brew so far so I decided to do another black beer.

With a rush of blood to the head, I came up with the idea of trying to make a fruit-infused black beer and settled on mango, based on my immense enjoyment of Magic Rock's The Great Alphonso. I have no idea whether it's possible to get the subtle mango taste to stand out against a dark malt background but I figured that if it worked, it would probably be quite nice.

I reduced the ABV from last time, to 5% from the grains plus whatever the sugar from the mangos adds. I currently have no idea what this figure might be nor how to measure it. A bit of googling is probably required.

I kept the grain bill percentages fairly similar to the Black IPA, with 6% Light Crystal, 5% Torrified Wheat, 5% Carafa Special III and 2% Chocolate Malt complimenting a base of Maris Otter. Propaganda had so much dark malt, it easily went black but with the volumes of malt being lower, I was a bit worried about this one ending up dark brown at one point. I needn't have worried though and the final result looks to have scraped in as black by the skin of its teeth, which is just what I wanted.

I wanted the finished product to be much less bitter than a Black IPA, to let the fruit character come through and I designed the hop additions to hit 35 IBU, using Centennial and Nelson Sauvin. Mrs Nelly very kindly got 12 juicy mangos for me (have you seen the price of mangos?) and I put the flesh of five of them in the boil. Adding fruit to the boil can cause haziness but with a black beer, this doesn't really matter, of course.

I'm going to put the rest into a secondary ferment, once the initial fermentation is largely complete after 5 days or so. To avoid oxidation, I rigged up a neat system (pictured below) which uses the CO2 from the primary ferment to purge the air out of the secondary fermentation vessel. I drilled an extra bung hole into the lid and dropped a tube from it down into the vessel. This can be used for the CO2 and also to feed in the beer when I do the transfer. I'll dry hop at the same time as adding the mangos.

It's always good to take a risk and try something a little out of the ordinary once in a while. This may not work but if it does come off, I'll be very happy.

Upgraded brew kit

After the last brew, I had decided that some of the kit I was using needed a bit of an upgrade. The main thing that needed sorting was the filter at the bottom of the mash tun. There is a tap fitted to the bottom of the mash tun, for draining out the wort. This needs a filter fitted to the inside, to stop the grains clogging up the tap. The filter should have some substantial surface area to it, as it helps when the sparge water is flowing down through the grain bed during sparging.

The mash tun I bought was supplied with this filter:

It was okay but doesn't have much surface area and was a bit wobbly and delicate. I had previously tried to make my own replacement, out of a length of stainless steel braided hose reinforcement from a plumbers' merchant:

This worked pretty well, and covered more of the bottom of the tun. I hadn't bought stainless jubilee clips though, and these started to get corroded. The braiding was also very hard to keep clean and had a tendency to trap bits of grain.

I bit the bullet and bought a proper false bottom from the homebrew shop in Stockport. This is made from a sheet of stainless steel, perforated with small holes to let the wort through. It's got a domed shape and the fluid actually flows back up through a fitting in the centre and exits the mash tun through a short hose going to the usual tap. 

The false bottom came as a full circle, designed to fit bigger mash tuns. I had to cut slices off the edges and make a few tweaks to get it to fit, as the pictures show.

I also bought another coolbox, to use as a hot liquor tank (HLT). I'm going to fill it with 75C water to use during the sparge. Previously, I'd been heating water up to the required temperature in pans on the hob but this was really hit and miss. Hopefully these two upgrades will help out a bit.

Black IPA taste test

Well, the time has come. The mighty Propaganda has been bottled for two weeks and is ready to drink. Instead of the usual simple tasting, I decided that Mrs Nelly and I should do a "Black IPA comparative blind taste test". I bought a bottle of Thornbridge Raven (which used to be called Wild Raven) and a Buxton Imperial Black IPA (7.5%).

In the brief period of time between our child going to bed and tea being ready, we did an "in-depth" taste test.

Drink A (Thornbridge) was hoppy-ish, with a head that stuck around. It had a medium body and a slight caramel/toffee taste. It also pulled off the clever trick of managing to have a fairly white head on a black drink.

Drink B (Buxton) had the least aroma and had a head which subsided the quickest with the least carbonation. We noticed a distinct liquorice flavour which, while not unpleasant was different to the other two.

Drink C (Nelly Brewery) was the darkest in colour and had a slightly brown foamy head. It had more carbonation than the other two and more mouthfeel.

Mrs Nelly, the Father-in-law and I agreed that we liked Beer A the best, Beer C second and Beer B third. I felt that the Buxton was too flat and became a bit chewy and hard-going as a result, which I think can happen easily with very strong, dark ales and was something I had consciously been trying to avoid. The Thornbridge beer definitely had more flavour, with a lovely complex roasted, caramel taste and was really nice, as you'd expect, having recently been voted best Black IPA in the World.

I think that next time, I would slightly reduce the amount of dark malts used, as there was more than enough to make it go black. And it needs more hops. When I tried a few bottles in the first week, the hop aroma was still there but after two weeks in the bottle, it's all but gone. You have to put a stupid amount into these beers, to get the delicate hop aromas to stand out against the strong roasted malt background. I reckon about 400g in late and dry-hopping would be okay for the next batch.

**update**

I had another three bottles of Propaganda and can now report that the hangovers you get from homebrew are very similar to the ones you get from shop-bought ale. Urgh!

More home brewing

Well, I've been quite please with myself lately, having finally made a homebrew which isn't minging!

Propaganda, my first attempt at a Black IPA, was quite fun to make and the results are really promising. It's only been bottled for a little over a week as a write, but of course I've had a few "sneak previews" already and it's really nice, even if I do say so myself!

I've added a homebrew page to the blog, which I'll keep updated as a log of my brews. It's actually quite a useful exercise for me to write down the recipe and my thoughts for each brew.

This Sunday morning was another brew day and I went for a single hop US Pale Ale, with Cascade hops. This one was intended to provide a bit of a learning opportunity more than anything.

My brewing kit is starting to need upgrading, with a proper false bottom for the mash tun and another coolbox for use as a Hot Liquor Tank top of the list. I'll try to get these bits and pieces sorted out over the next couple of weeks before setting about the next one. Onwards and upwards!

Hedgehog update

Well no beating about the bush - unfortunately the little fella didn't make it. I have to say I hadn't given it much of a chance at the outset and my initial impression was right. Despite having food and water right under its nose, it just never really moved and didn't see the following day out. I returned it to the compost heap from whence it came and resolved to bury spent hops under the surface in the future.

As for the brew it succumbed to, it's still in the fermenter after two weeks. It's still bubbling and the gravity readings are still falling slowly so I'm not going to rush it anywhere. All my previous brews had been done in a week so this one's certainly very different. I think it will finish at around 5.5% but whether it's nice or not remains to be seen.

Homebrew 4 - Hedgehog Down.

I did another brew today - my fourth overall and third using a full mash. They had been getting progressively better but I had decided to look after the yeast a bit better for this one and made a starter for the first time. I pitched a packet of Safale S-04 into 1L of weak dry malt extract solution the evening before and left it overnight.

I had been determined to not pitch too hot so cooled the starter down to 18C before popping the yeast in, to give it a nice gentle start. I included some wheat in the mash for the first time as well, because this supposedly helps with head retention. We'll see.

All went well and I cooled the wort right down to under 20C before pitching the yeast starter in. A few hours later and there was plenty of bubbling going on, all the trub had congealed into a nice krausen and the body of the liquid was looking really clear. Textbook stuff.

After everything was finished, I cleared out the copper first, putting all the spent hops onto the compost heap as it's meant to be good fertiliser. I had to go out for a bit, so filled the mash tun up with water to stop the grain drying out and left it until later to clean.

When I took the grain down to the compost heap later on, I was surprised to see a hedgehog sitting next to the pile of hops.

I'm no hedgehog expert but it didn't look very well. Naturally, I turned to Google for help and it turns out that spent hops can be really bad for dogs. I couldn't find any reference to hedgehogs but I figured that the hops seemed likely to be the cause of the little fella's current predicament.

I had no idea that hops could be so poisonous and feeling very guilty, decided that I had to try and help. I don't give the little thing much chance but it's now in a box, with plenty of warm newspaper and some food and water on hand. Come on, little dude!

Homebrew 2. Down the drain.

Well, to say I'm a bit disappointed would be an understatement. I've just poured 18L of beer down the sink and need to blog about it. My first attempt at a full-grain brew had left me so full of hope and anticipation but in the end it was a right load of undrinkable piss.

I've already blogged about where I think I went wrong with this brew but it still deserves an actual review. After having conditioned for 2 weeks, I cracked open a bottle.

Oh my God, the smell was something else. A kind of metallic, soapy aroma which was very difficult to describe in any further detail. Whether this smell was diacetyl, skunking or other random off-flavours I don't know. With a bit more experience I may have been able to hazard a guess but as a newcomer to brewing, I'm afraid I didn't have a clue what the smell was.

Although I didn't fancy swallowing it, I tried holding some of the beer in my mouth and swilling it around. It had a decent amount of carbonation and a quite nice mouthfeel. However, swallowing even a little bit would have been unwise, judging by the aroma. It was so clearly undrinkable that I made the decision to chuck it. I poured all but three bottles down the sink in order to free up the bottles for my next, highly improved batch. 

Perhaps one day, those three bottles will mature and become really nice. I won't start holding my breath though. 

Homebrew 1 - Woodforde's Nelson's Revenge kit.

Well this has been in the barrel for a few weeks so it's not going to alter much now - unfortunately. Time for a review.

Considering this was my very first attempt at making beer, at least I can say that the result actually qualifies as beer, unlike attempt 2. (More of that to come later.) However, for me the positives end here. It's drinkable but overpoweringly malty. I actually added a hop "tea" into the secondary ferment but even this has only tempered the doughy onslaught slightly.

It's not a nice maltiness either. Not biscuity, no caramel notes, just kind of stale. I've never had a pint of Woodforde's in the pub so I can't say for sure but surely this simply cannot be anything like the real thing. Other Woodforde's beers were winning CBOB not very many years ago, for pete's sake.

I don't know what would cause a successful brewery to launch a range of homebrew kits but it simply can't be a good idea. For me personally, the name is now tarnished forever and I'm now very unlikely to ever buy a pint of real Woodforde's beer having had the taste of this stuff indelibly burnt into my consciousness.

As I've now discovered, proper full-grain brewing is a nuanced affair; easy to do but difficult to do well. I won't be making any more kit beers again but I'm glad I did one to start off with, just to get used to cleaning and sterilising all the kit, pitching the yeast, racking and all the basic stuff.

Having been quite harsh about the taste, it wasn't undrinkable by any means. My father-in-law quite enjoyed it but he's more of a whisky man and is pre-disposed to having a fondness for malt. He'd better get cracking on this lot because I need the barrel for my next batch.

Home brew three

I was very disappointed with my first effort at a full mash home brew. It had a weird taste, sort of a metallic bitterness. I reviewed what I'd done and tried to figure out what I should be doing differently as honestly as I could.

After some soul-searching, I came up with the following:

• The mash was sub-standard. I had mashed a little too cold and also didn't sparge properly. I reckon I'd left a ton of sugars in the mash tun and ended topping up the boil with water to make 23 litres. The OG was 1032, which is quite weedy.
• I didn't filter properly. I ended up transferring a right load of trub and shit into the FV, including bits of hop stalks.
• I didn't aerate the wort. 
• I pitched the yeast in too hot. My cooling coil got the wort down from 100C to about 40C very quickly but then further reductions in temperature were getting exponentially harder. I lost patience and pitched the yeast in while the wort was probably still 35-40C.

Today, I set about making brew number three. I didn't follow a recipe but used what ingredients I had. I used more malt. 3kg Maris Otter, 1.8kg Lager malt, 450g Light Crystal and 250g Carapils. I had swapped the supplied filter in the mash tun for a homemade one I assembled, which had more surface area. I also made a sparging tool which sprinkled liquor into the tun for me while I was drawing off from underneath. It all worked very well and I filtered the runnings through a little sieve before they reached the boiler.

After the boil, I cooled the wort with the cooling coil right down to 30C, which took some time. I then transferred to the FV via a fine sieve and allowed the liquid to drop down, splashing in and aerating itself.

I then left the wort to cool while I cleaned the equipment up, which took an hour. I pitched in at about 25C and popped the FV in my lovely brew kitchen. (see below).

Considering that on my last attempt it had taken two days for the yeast to show any signs of activity, I was surprised to find this batch bubbling away after five minutes. The OG was 1052 and I am very confident that I have cut out loads of technique errors from last time.

Home brew one and two

Recently, I have decided to start brewing my own beers, rather than just criticising other people's brews. It's not as easy as you might think.

Effort number one was from a kit. Woodforde's Nelson's Revenge. Two tins of malty gloop went into a fermenting vessel, watered down to make the required amount. I added the yeast, waited a week, then transferred it into a cask for a secondary ferment. After a week in the cask, it settled down nice and clear and I nervously poured out a pint.

Holy crapping monkey balls, it was shite. Just a sweet malty mess, worse even than Tetleys Original. I tried to bring it back from the brink and bought a packet of hops from Brew2Bottle in Northwich and made a hop tea. I added the bitter hop juice and left it a further week. After this time it was a little less awful but still not good.

I resolved at this point that I would persevere but upped my game and bought all the equipment needed to do a full mash brew. A mash tun, a boiler, a cooling coil, a new fermenter, a capper and a bunch of malt and hops. £300. No excuses.

Brew 2 was my first attempt at a full  mash. I found a recipe for an American Pale Ale and went for it. 3.8kg of lager malt and 450g of Light Crystal malt and loads of Amarillo and Cascade hops later, I had my brew in the Fermenting Vessel. I added the WYeast yeast and waited....

Two days later, some bubbles started to appear. Another day in and the thing was a broiling mayhem, swirling and whirling as the yeast did its stuff. I transferred to 23 bottles and a 10L cask after 11 days and had high hopes.

Unfortunately, after 5 days of secondary, this tastes worse than the kit beer. I had a few days of soul-searching, trying to figure out why.