What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[Kelly Milligan]

Element 5 @ The Brewery Britomart! Cheers for the opportunity John and Lawrence! :)

[Liam Callaghan]

Nice little blonde yesterday and ran starters for a Helle and Saison.  Just made the Saison and about to sparge the Helle.  Forgot to add Whirlfloc in the Saison... so have to clear it in the fermentor now...  Gutted.

Great day for being lazy in the workshop.  Completed my grain mill and tested, running mint, just need a guard for the pulleys now and somewhere to mount it away from my brewing area.  Half built a keg/carboy/bottle washer too.  Oh and tested my new sparge manifold :)

Plus a couple of beers of course...

[sockmerchant]

Brewed a belgian dark strong ale. Made my own candi syrup for the first time, which i'll be doing again. All round a good brew day, but went quite long. Didnt realize i ran out of gas warming water for the mash. Oh well.

Kegged my first session beer. The lowest % i had previously was for my oatmeal stout at 5.5%. Its been 2 years or so, i thought I should do a session beer at some point :)

[Stu H]

Just sparging off my first Tripel. It's basically the recipe from Classic Brewing Styles, except I'm using WLP 545 instead of WLP 530, and using jaggery in place of cane sugar. Basically just brewing it for kicking arse at the next WBC ;-)

Strict Observance Tripel - Jamil

OG 1.081

IBU: 34

87% Weyerman Boho Pils

1.2% Aromatic Malt

11% Jaggery Sugar

60m Tettnanger to 34 IBU

10m .6 g/L Czech Saaz

Mash @ 65

Ferment with 2nd pitch of WLP545 Belgian Strong Ale.

[MrC]

Nice!  What type of Jaggery is it, Palm or Cane?

[Stu H]

I dunno dude, it's kind of moist, and tastes buttery, and oddly somewhat like ripe pawpaw.

[Martin Bridges]

Where did you get it from mate? I'm thinking about using jaggery in my next ginger beer experiment.

[Stu H]

Bulk Savings, behind Wendy's on Dominion Rd. Awesome shop for spices, weird ingredients etc.

[MrC]

If it's buttery then it'll be palm sugar.  Let us know how the beers comes out.  Sounds nice.

[Stu H]

For sure. Had a bastard of a brew day. Ever since moving to a 3 vessel system my efficiency has plummeted (sub 60%), and is quite difficult to predict.  

I've been racking my brains to fix the problem. 

The sugar smelt nice in the kettle though, I added it in the last 10 minutes to try and preserve the aroma.

[Grant R Baker]

Just finished another brew of Scotch Ale... new liquid White Labs yeast this time.... but had a  wee mishap...

 

Ran out of Gas 15 minutes from the end.

 

So I got two 8l pots and a 3l pot boiling the wort on the stove... boiling hard for 5-10 minutes then adding back to my 60l kettle... then repeating till I got the OG up to 1.070 (at 45C)... added the armoa hops for a last 10minute boil in one 8l pot and I think I may have saved it.....

 

Just hope the bitterness & hop flavour is okay... in all it added about another 25 minutes to the boil duration.. so the bitterness could be quite a bit higher than target..

 

Spare gas bottle is on my shopping list next.

[Sam]

Finished wiring up a temperature controller (using an STC 1000), and a stir plate. The stir plate needs a bit of adjustment as it doesn't catch the stir bar very well (probably the distance of the magnets to it and to the motor). 

Incorporated the temp controller, with brew #1 yesterday, Jamil's Bock beer from Brewing Classic Styles. Managed to hit all the numbers bang on, which made a change. I had a feeling the water was pretty soft based on a previous brew with terrible efficiency, so I dropped in a teaspoon of calcium chloride, and it may have helped some... I forgot to change the temp on the controller, so overnight it cooled everything down to 5C, hopefully no damage done. 

Brew #2 was a Belgian Pale Ale, also from Brewing Classic Styles, with WLP550. I was in the middle of doing this, when a local city council member dropped of a very recent water report (great service for an Easter Friday). It was too late to assess it for that brew, so I'm crunching the numbers now, but the water is quite soft.

So brew #3 (I don't get much time to brew) may be an IPA, but as yet undecided. I have an irish ale yeast pack ready to go, but not sure I'll make an Irish.