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

[James Lawson]

I went there to get some spices yesterday and the Fijian sugar is $2/kg. They also have Indian raw sugar for $1.75/kg, although I haven't tried that.

[James Lawson]

This beer has an incredible peach/apricot flavour and aroma. Not 100% where it came from but it's awesome.

[Paul Broome]

Recently brewed Duvel.  Now drinking.  I mashed overnight and as a result the beer finished at 1.002.  Great, but lower than expected therefore ended up 9.3 % alc.  

Although well carbed, its slightly under carbed at 3 vols and next time the following adjustments will be made:

Ferm will only get to 26 C max. and this will be right at the end to help the last couple of points attn.

Bottle Carb will be 4 vols CO2.

Sugar addition to the primary will be less. Down from 1.5 kgs to about 700 gms, plus about 300 gms more at bottle priming.  Everything else being the same, it should end up at 8.5 % and with less spice and fruit.

Very nice al the same and preferred over the original by everyone thats tried it so far, probably due to the estery profile from ramping the fermentation a little too early and finishing at 28 rather than 26 C. The slightly higher ester profile is all very well but can be a tad rich after a while, hence one bottle seems to be sufficient.

My first post... Hi to all...

 

[Ralph]

Nice first post. 

 

Mashed overnight? I am interested!! What do you use for a Mash Tun, how long was your "overnight" mash and how much temperature did the mash drop overnight? Have you overnight mashed before?

[Paul Broome]

me mash tun is a simple chilly bin.  I bought an el cheapo one years ago and I paid the price because it is not very thermally insulated.  However 3 years ago I made an insulation box from 50mm polystyrene with a lid and this has been awesome, I now get only about a 1.5 degree C drop over a normal mash time.

I mashed in for the overnighter at 11 pm and sparged the next morning at 6.  Mash temp was 66 C and by morning it was around 58 from memory. 

 

That was my first overnight mash and I only did it for increased attenuation, Primary went from 1.072 to 1.002 and took 2 weeks.   Primary began at 18 C for 4 days then slowly ramped to 24 over about a week, then finished off at 28  for the last couple of points.

After tasting this beer I'm in a better position to make the necessary adjustments for next time.

[Ralph]

Sweet. I had never heard of overnight mashing before! I like that I keep learning new stuff at the moment!!

[Richard Jack]

It's pretty common for home distilling when you are mashing something with low enzyme content (like a bourbon or canuk whiskey) at lower temps for max attenuation. Haven't thought about applying that to beer, very interesting. Isn't the body problematically low?

[Paul Broome]

I don't find it so Richard, all reports said to get the Duvel as dry as you can.  Its a moderately big beer in terms of OG and for me at least, it doesn't suffer from lack of body.

[Llew Bardecki]

Doing a Szechuan Peppercorn Saison tonight.

I'm thinking about 50/40/10 Malteurop Pilsner/Munich/Rye malt, to around 1.060 OG

Probably around 30IBU with hefty doses of NZ Goldings late (though the NZ Goldings I have are pretty old... They've spent about 18 months in the freezer in an un-opened vacuum pack.  What do you all think of that?)

And 5g crushed szechuan peppercorns right near the end of the boil.

Ferment using a 1.5L Wyeast 3711 starter from the slurry that Dave Wood was kind enough to gift me. 

I'm a bit worried about the fermentation temperature, given that my flat ranges from 10-18 these days, but Dave said it worked fine for him at cool temps.  And his saison turned out great.  We'll give it a shot and see what happens.

[Paul Broome]

Llew, I don't notice any issue with frozen hop pellets after that long.   But I would probably not want to go any longer.

[Paul Broome]

If you're worried about ferm temp you might consider a fermentation box ?  It would cost about 60 bucks but you could improvise and do it cheaper with some kiwi ingenuity (also known as Scottish ingenuity)

Build a polystyrene box big enough for your fermneter and one of those tiny oil fin heaters from Bunnings.  I need not elaborate, you get the idea.

I have two of these things, one for bottle conditioning and another which serves as a bread proover and a fibreglass hot box, but it works equally well as a fermentation box.   With the thermostat on the heater set just right you can control your ferm wherever you want it and inside the polystyrene it hardly ever needs to run to maintain 18 C.

Sorry, slightly off topic here...

[Dan Filihiahekava]

For me this weekend (depending on my form from Sat night ) im doing my 1st AG  , doing a SMaSH 100 % GP and NZ Cas