It's been a while since brewing, too long - 3 weeks now, so I couldn't resist. I had some ingredients at home, so decided to try and make my Black Ale in a new extract based process. I wanted to implement the idea I got from James Spencer (from Basic Brewing) about short wort cooking time that I used on the Cranberry Ale on my Black Ale. The short wort time is based on the fact … [Read more...]
Some updates and a new development for the Black Ale
Last weekends was thanksgiving (my wife is American, so we do a small gathering in London), and so many beers were drunk, but non made. The much needed fridge is here too, so there is good storage and refrigeration for all the beers, resulting in every man's dream - a beer fridge! The Cranberry Ale was a great success, and managed to appeal both to the more heavy drinkers … [Read more...]
If you can’t make beer – drink beer!
This weekend I wasn't due to be home, but I was ill all week, and decided to stay home. As a back up plan I ordered more beer ingredients, hoping to make more beer, but sadly the delivery haven't arrived, so I had no ingredients to make any, and so no brew day report. The plan was to try for the first time BIAB (Beer In A Bag) - a one pot process of making beer from grains … [Read more...]
Bottling day and a good Black Ale vs a less good one standoff
Our house is now officially at full storage capacity for beers. The fridge has a quarter of it full of beers all the time, and after bottling the Cranberry ale last week and bottling the higher gravity Black Ale (more below) this week, all the storage space is in full and the need for an extra fridge becomes vital - I hope to find one by next week, and then some more beer … [Read more...]
Bottling, hopping and the lack of space
This weekend was just some of the less exciting sides of beer making - I've added dry hops (Goldings, 4.6%) to the Black Ale split batch from last week, 15g to each fermenter. The beers have been through some fermentation, with the lower gravity one seemed to have finished the fermentation (1012) and the higher gravity one still going (1019), we will see how it will be at the … [Read more...]