The first is John Palmer’s How to Brew. Excellent book, well worth buying even though the first edition is available online for free. Loads of information. If Daniels’ Designing Great Beers is a textbook then this is an instruction manual.

The second is Graham Wheeler’s Brew Your Own British Real Ale. It’s about half the size and yet was the same price, the main for myself being it is written from a UK perspective. Although it sets itself out as “mainly a recipe book” it does contain an overview of the main elements of homebrewing, but it doesn’t stand up too well against Palmer’s book.

I have a load of stuff left and a spare day so I thought I’d give it another go. I’m trying once again for an IPA as each attempt so far has been not quite there, either too sweet, too bitter, or just not pale.

1.5Kg light 2-row liquid malt extract (Brupaks)
1.5Kg Maris Otter pale malt
500g British caramalt
Kent Goldings: 30g @ 60, 20g @ 20, 10g @ flameout
1tsp Irish Moss
Safale S04

Mash was 1hr30 at 70C

Bit of an accident with the mashing temperatures – I misread the scale initially (70C instead of 60C) so the whole mash took place at 70C. Interesting to see what will happen.

I’d also forgotten just how appealing the smell of hops in boiling wort is.

Of the batches I can remember about now, the best has to be the wheat beer from 11. I’m well impressed with the Munich yeast and it produced a very creditable weissbier. Lots of fruit, subtle hops, light, sweet, perfect summer’s day drink.

The Cascade Pale from 12 is very citrusy – it’s almost like Coronoa and Lime in a bottle. I think this is down to the US ale yeast. I have to admit, I’ve little experience of US ales so it may well be they are all like that – quite hoppy, quite citrusy. It’s not at all bad.

The brown ale from 13 spoiled in the pressure barrel. It’s drinkable but oxidised due to a poor seal. I’m not sure if it’s all pressure barrels or just mine – it is a BeerSphere, though, so I’d have expected it to be fine.

The IPA kit from 14 is fine. It’s a creditable pale ale, though there aren’t enough hops left to call it an IPA. Still, it holds up well to a couple of commercial real ales I’ve sampled recently.

And finally, the brown ale with oats from 15 spoiled during fermentation. The yeast I used took too long to get going and a wild yeast took hold. Annoying. Wasted £25.

Anyhow – so far, so good. In many cases the beer I’m producing rivals commercial bottled beer, and it’s certainly better than the cans by Smiths, Tetleys, Boddingtons, etc.

Mash schedule was 30 minutes at 40C, 20 minutes at 50C, 20 minutes at 60C and 10 minutes at 70C in 2.5Gl water. Mashout was approx. 76C. Sparged with 2Gl 80C water. Total boil time was about 90 minutes.

The main difference between this batch and the others is the use of liquid yeast. I’ve not used this before so it was a bit of a worry – should I start it? Should I add it to some more water? Should I just chuck it in? Will it even work and have I wasted my money? Dry yeast is 1/5 of the price of this stuff and the Danstar stuff works fine, the Safale S05 gave the citrus tang, and the T58 was decently spicy.

I decided to try and wake the yeast a little seeing as I had it stored in the fridge since buying it. I took it out before I started mashing so it was up to room temperature before I needed it. Reading afterwards I see you;re supposed to make a started a day before brewing, which isn’t very convenient, but never mind. I added some cooled sugar solution and wort and set it aside for an hour. Nothing seemed to happen. Dry yeast springs to life and you get scum forming – this stuff just lay there. I thought it was dead. A bit of reading reassured me – liquid yeasts take longer to start, or rather, they can have a much longer lag time than dried yeast (so again, why use it?). We’ll see what it does.

After reading the instructions I was torn between dumping the lot in as stated, or boiling as Palmer suggests. I went for Palmer and boiled the lot for an hour.

After boiling there wasn’t much hoppiness left. I think this was a mistake, and reading other sites suggests 15 minutes max. Ho hum.

Anyhow, I used Danstar Windsor yeast. We’ll see how it turns out.

It’s a simple dark brown ale that I’ve done many times already.

1.5Kg Brupaks light malt extract
1.5Kg Maris Otter pale malt
500g Caramalt
500g Chocolate malt
30g Challenger hops (60 mins)
20g Challenger hops (15 mins)
10g Challenger hops (5 mins)
Safale S05 (from previous batch)

Another double decoction mash – I love not having to worry about hitting the correct temperature. With this method I hit the right one every time, repeatably. Love it. A quick batch sparge and it’s away and boiling, the Challenger hops smell quite good.

Transferred across to the racking bin to cool and let any trub settle – the odd thing I’ve noticed is that I get a lot of trub settling out of the pale ales I do but very little from the darker ales. I wonder if it has anything to do with the darker malts.

Anyhow, I had previously poured and scooped the yeast out of the bottom of the pale ale fermentation bin and into a pyrex measuring jug. It was pretty full – I think I got a pint of pure yeast. Nice.

Opening the tap on the racking bin over the clean fermentation bin should allow plenty of aeration, and into this the yeast gets pitched. Lid on, airlock on, and after an hour or so it’s glugging merrily. I’d like to try reusing this yeast too, but I’m not sure how many batches it would be viable for as I don’t treat it particularly well – temperature changes, a single fermentation step… we’ll see how this one goes.

Anyhow, this is the second batch of the weekend. I’m trying to build up a stock so I can leave it to condition slightly longer than previously – so far I’ve drunk the batch in about three weeks after bottling which is normally how long it should be left for!

1.5Kg Brupaks Maris Otter light malt extract
1Kg Maris Otter pale malt
500g wheat malt
500g caramalt
40g Cascade (7.4% AA) (60 minutes)
15g Cascade (10 minutes)
5g Cascade (5 minutes)
Safale US05 yeast

Again, double decoction mash makes raising the mash temperature easy, reliable and repeatable. The batch sparging method also seems to work very well – I’ve calculated my efficiency for both the wheat beer and this pale ale batch at 70%, which is a nice consistent result.

1.5Kg Brupaks wheat extract
1Kg wheat malt
500g Maris Otter pale malt
500g Caramalt
20g Cascade (7.4% AA) (60 minutes)
10g Cascade (10 minutes)
Munich yeast

Double decoction mash. Batch sparge.

I’m paying more attention to the mashing temperatures now and so this mash was 30 minutes at 40C, 20 at 60C and 40 at 70C before raising to 75C before sparging. I think I’ve got the hang of sparging now, keeping the water level a couple of centimetres above the gain bed.

Again, more details to follow. I seem to be really busy at the moment…

Single decoction in addition to multi-rest mash.

Going for a hoppy brown ale with this one. More details to follow.

I also tried a little bit of a change with the mashing schedule too:
30 minutes at 40C
20 minutes at 60C
40 minutes at 70C
5 minutes at 75C

This should end up with a little more flavour than the last batch of pale ale, which was a little disappointing.