Home Brew Beer - Est. 2006

After my last post I decided to check that my made-up-on-the-spot recipe would produce something like the English Best Bitter that I hoped for. I read up about extraction efficiencies and the like from Jon Palmer’s excellent How to brew site and I also crunched my numbers through a piece of open-source software called Qbrew (site). This is similar to the very popular Promash (site) but is free so I went with it. Qbrew is available for Windows, Mac, and various flavours of Linux (I have it running on Kubuntu 6.06 for those that care).

Anyway back to the beer/recipe at hand. The outcome of all this tiresome research is that I have seriously over-estimated the amount of extract and/or grains I’ll need for the beer style I’m making. It turns out that I’ll need only the following:

• 1lb Amber/medium DME
• ~0.25 lbs Crystal (115L)

The hops are also reduced but I guess that’s more of a matter for personal preference than actual, technical beer making. I prefer less bitter beers so they will be reduced.

I’m going to order these tonight from one of either Easybrew or The Home Brew Shop. Basically, whichever comes out cheapest. I’ll buy the grain pre-crushed (I don’t have the facilities to do that); I think it’s the same price anyway. I’m also going to order a 1 gallon fermentor, a new syphon (an auto-syphon, I think), and possibly a digital thermometer to aid with the grain steeping.

I believe I have the home-brewer version of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome)!

First things first, I have made the decision to brew smaller quantities of beer for each batch starting with #4. The main reasons for this are as follows. I only have limited space in which to house fermentor etc. and I was having difficulty storing large quantities of brew in post-production.

All future brews will be produced in 1 gallon batch sizes. This will allow me to use a much smaller ferementor (5 litre demi-john) than previously and, more importantly, will allow me to brew more often (with more recipe variation etc.) due to faster consumption of beer

Anyway, on to the recipe. As mentioned in a previous post I am going to make this beer entirely from ingredients (extracts, grains, hops) rather than a kit. I have decided on a British Bitter style-wise, as this is my favourite beer type to drink…

The recipe will probably look something like this:

• Batch size: 1 gallon (imperial)
• 1 lbs. Light Dry Malt Extract
• 1 lbs. Amber Dry Malt Extract
• 0.5 lbs. Crystal Malt
• 1 oz Fuggles Hops (60 mins)
• 1 oz Fuggles Hops (15 mins)

Method will be along the lines of put crushed grains into pot with 4 pints water. Raise temperature to around the 150 Faranheit mark and let seep for ~30 mins. Strain grains out and add another pint or 2 of water. Add Malt Extract, stir well and bring to boil. Add 1st hops. Add 2nd hops with 15 minutes to go. Tranfer to fermentor and top up to the 1 gallon mark with cold water. Pitch yeast when temperature becomes acceptable.

I will have to check if that will give a decent starting gravity etc.