bottling

been bottling up my larger today.

I have to use my HLT as a bottling bucket at the moment but might invest in one soon.

Sterilising bottles alway takes longer than I think it will.

And here she is. this is a coopers larger kit. interestingly this is my first ever kit beer!

racking off in to bottling bucket.















I didn't get any pictures of me bottling or the finnished bottle. I will get one later and post it.

I also bottled some wine today, which I did get a picture of.

All done

Yeast is in and fermenter is in its water bath. :-)

finished wort with yeast added. 

















Fermenter in its water bath. Bluebird is the one on the left. this right on has a coopers larger kit in it.

all tucked in and left to do its thing.












Will keep posting during fermentation.

Thanks.

cooling and transfer

sending the wort to the fermenter thought my CFC.

sweet sweet wort going into the fermenter 

Using the hot water from my CFC to fill up the mop bucket

the recipe said the OG should be 1.042 but it come out at 1.048

the boil

The boil is on and the humidity in the flat is 100% :-). smells really good in here!

nice rolling boil 

all set up and ready for cool down and transfer to fermenter.

mash mash mash

15 minuets left on the mash. heating up the sparge water to 86oc. looking good so far.

Just about to up the mash temp to 70oc

Doughing in

Just finished doughing in and all went well. the protein rest has just finished and I am heating the mash up to 66oC where it will be held for 70 minuets. It smells amazing in my flat right now mmmmmmm. Eve dose not agree!

and the wait begins. If you think about I brewing beer is 90% just waiting around. Which normally means 90% of the brew day is spent drinking beer :-). I am enjoying my last few pints of my Cumberland ale clone.  

brew time!

Ok so parcel force arrived with my box of goodies after what seemed like an eternity.

I

All I need to clone Coniston Bluebird and Deuchars IPA.



Also got some  muslin bags and a new beer tap which will be part of my corny keg A-Z section.









I got my order from Here I have not yet had a problem with this company and deliver is alway quick. Please not I do not work for this company.

The recipe I am using today I got from the jimsbeerkit blog.

I have just finnished weighing out the grain and hops.

Now I'm just waiting for my HLT to heat up to temp before I can doh in.

Keep tuned of more updates as my brew day continues.

Thanks for reading

Prep for brew day

If you are new to home brewing then my first piece of advice to you would be that "proper preparation prevents piss poor performance" anything you can do before hand to save time on the big day will pay off.

I have just made my Yeast starter

In my kitchen I have an electric hob which in real life glows red but for some reason its blue/purple in this picture?? anyway my yeast starter was made from 500ml of cold water which is boiled in a conical flask. when the water is boiling I add 50g of dried malt extract (DME). watch out of boil over as it happens quickly when using a conical flask.

When the wort (un-fremented beer) is cold to room temp I add the yeast and put the flask on my home made stir plate and leave it to do its thing. if you want to know more about yeast starters try these videos youtube link

another thing I do to save time is to assemble as much of my brewery as possible the night before. I keep all my brewery packed away when I'm not using it as we live in a tiny flat (see my brewery) 

all that is left to do is pray to the parcel force gods that my ingredients arrive in good time tomorrow :-)

Hello and welcome.

Hello and thank you for stopping by. I intend to use this blog to document my adventures in home brewing. I will also be doing reviews on beers and beer making products. This is my first blog and it might take me a wee while to find my way around the software but I intend to post a section about myself and my brewery setup. I will also be doing a brew day tomorrow so hopefully this blog will grow fairly quickly. right from the start I would like to point out that I do have mild dyslexia. I will try and make this blog as legible as possible but you might have to forgive the spelling and grammar mistakes :-).

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.