Brew day in pictures – brewing ‘how to’

Here’s the log of my most recent brew, my first of the autumn, and again it’s kinda my own recipe, for an IPA.  I bought the ingredients based on what I’d been reading, and then used an online calculator to just check my thoughts and timings.  Click on the image below to see what I’m pretty much aiming for – I’m using the traditional high quality fuggles and golding hops – for hopefully a quality ale.  (you can find the calculator here)

my IPA recipe.. strong an hoppy (I hope) - click image to view

So generally this is going to be a STRONG ale – I should think it will reach between 8-9% when done!  But that’s still within the range of a good old style IPA, so I’m not worried.  Plus it’s for Xmas, and brews need to keep you warm

The main ingredients - minus the water!

So going into my brew was the following;

* three 1.5kG tins of finest pale malt extract (so 4.5kg in total.. hence the strength!)
* 250g of pale malt grains (I wanted to add some fresh malt flavour and depth)
* 250g of crystal malt grains (for a bit of darker colouring and flavour)
* 100g of Kent Golding hops
* 100g of Fuggles
* 5g of irish moss (to help take out some of the protein during the boil)
* few g of yeast nutrition (can’t hurt)
* Nottingham dried yeast (yes I know liquid is prob better, but the beer was already costing me lots!)
* 22 litres of charcoal filtered tap water (just be patient with a normal water filter jug!)

The water I took time filtering and adding to a spare fermentation bucket (which I just use to store water etc now).  Once I had about 22 litres (I was only going for a 19 litre final brew size) I added 1/2 a camden tablet and left alone (the Camden tablets are meant to remove all the chlorates I believe).

My brew project plan - know what you're doing when!

I cleaned and soaked my fermenter and bits n bobs in cleaner overnight, and gave my boiler a bit of a clean up and quick sanitize.

I then drew up a bit of a simple project plan – well a timeline starting from ‘grain steeping’, through the 90 min boil, the cooling, and into the fermenter.  It makes sense to list what you’re going to do, and when – so you don’t mess up the brew with something simple missed (like adding hops at the ‘flavour stage’ – something important I messed up last time).

So I’ve got everything I’m going to use sterilized and clean, and all my ingredients to hand – ready to start!

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